Just had an enlightening conversation with someone I work with who is also a huge gaming nerd. He made a pretty strong point about the relative power of these two next gen consoles. Thought you may find it comforting.
We were talking to one of my students (also a huge gamer) about the two consoles in lab this morning. The student was going on and on about how much more powerful PS4 would be when my colleague initiated a back and forth with the student something along these lines (fake names, lol):
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Dr. Blah: Why do you think PS4 will have better looking games?
Dudebro: It's got more GPU power. More ROPs, more flops, more CU's...
Dr. Blah: Ok, but so did the PS3. Didn't make much of a difference there over 360.
Dudebro: Yeah but that's because PS3 was complex to program for. PS4 isn't. That's the difference. I mean Sony has companies like GG and ND that are friggin technical wizards! Imagine what they will do on PS4...
Dr. Blah: Wait...you are highlighting the efforts of GG and ND why? Because they thoroughly exploited all the ins and outs of the PS3 hardware and allowed it to reach close to tis peak theoretical output? Is that what I'm hearing you suggest?
Dudebro: Damn straight!
Dr. Blah: I see. Question...what is the game with the best graphics overall right now on consoles, technically speaking, in your view?
Dudebro: Well, Sony's first party has tapped into its power thoroughly, so probably KZ 3 or Uncharted 3...
Dr. Blah: What about stuff that's multiplatform, like Crysis 3, BF 3, or even Crysis 2? Are you sure those aren't every bit as impressive? You REALLY believe Crysis 3 is less impressive tech-wise than those other games you listed? Really?
Dudebro: Ok, so maybe those games are up there too. I'd agree the best looking game on consoles is likely Crysis 3. I can't really argue against that from a tech pov.
Dr. Blah: Ok, and which console version of Crysis 3 had the best tech? PS3 or 360? Surely 360, right?
Dudebro: So what? It's a multiplatform game...
Dr. Blah: Right. So are you not in agreement with the view that Crysis 3 on the 360 has the best tech graphics of any game on consoles overall?
Dudebro: That's...fine I guess. Where are you going with this? Yes, I agree.
Dr. Blah: Ok, so then you agree that PS3 had more theoretical potential on paper than 360 right?
Dudebro: Absolutely. And companies like ND and GG dug into every last inch of it.
Dr. Blah: Right. But...even doing so it was Crytek's 360 game that is top dawg from a graphics tech pov as far as consoles go, yes? Didn't we just agree on that?
Dudebro: Yeah...
Dr. Blah: Ok, so on paper PS3 had a massive 1Tflop power advantage, supposedly at least, over 360. Yet, 6, 7, 8 yrs later after devs got fully comfortable working on PS3 and even made it the platform their code was based on in order to fully exploit it...even despite that 360 had games like BF 3, Crysis 2, Crysis 3, maybe even Halo 4 and Gears 3...which at the very least were as good or better than the titles from Sony which fully-exploited their console's theoretical peak.
Dudebro: ...
Dr. Blah: My point is, with a massive 67% theoretical, on paper, spec advantage...even when devs used the PS3 as their target platform and ported to 360, the end result was still a strongly competitive 360 platform in terms of tech graphics and visuals. Yet this time around, in the absolute worst case scenario, we are looking at something like a 33% power gap if we really ignore a lot of important stuff. So if we compare game visuals at the end of the current gen and find that even with PS3's power fully exploited the 360 still had some of, if not the, best looking games available despite having a MUCH larger spec gap between the two, how can you be so sure we will somehow see massive differences this coming generation?
Dudebro: ...
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Seems to be a strong point. Last gen both machines were fully exploited by both 1st and 3rd parties by the end of 2012 at the very least. Yet even in that scenario in theory PS3 should have dominated 360 visually, yet it didn't neither in 1st party titles or in 3rd party titles.
Why not? Because Sony's devs had to come up with new AA techniques and stuff like that, whereas on 360 that was handled effortlessly on the eDRAM. MS designed the embedded memory in 360 to handle AA and AF for free because they knew it would be vital to having games look good in HD resolutions. So Sony had to allot much of its flops to doing those things while MS didn't. The same is likely to be the case this coming cycle. eSRAM can still handle AA and AF on X1.
We aren't taking into account the possibility of a clock speed bump in X1 which closes that flops gap even further. We aren't accounting for the possibility that the special tiling method I have noted in the past could be exploited heavily on X1 titles. We aren't including considerations for the display planes and how they can help devs manage pixels to make the already diminished resolution gains even less noticeable.
All in all, there's a reason Drive Club and Forza look very similar visually. There's a reason Quantum Break and inFamous look similar.
Just thought I'd share that conversation with you since I felt it was an interesting point to make. I see lots of ppl making the asserting that since PS3 was hard to program for that's an excuse for why the gap in-game didn't match the gap on paper this current gen. But that would only be valid when comparing early gen stuff...not late gen stuff after ppl figured out how to program for PS3.
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