I' ll appologise for the longwinded post in advance......Sorry!

When PS3 was unveiled at E3 last year there was an awful lot of ooooh-ing and aaaah-ing and yet it wasn' t made entirely clear what of the footage shown was ' real' or pre-rendered.

Some people still aren' t actually sure about the video' s shown. SOME people think that if the Killzone video was pre-rendered CGI, yet it wasn' t. Now none of the footage shown was created with and/or running on PS3 dev-kits, they hadn' t been finished yet. The platforms they were developed and running on were custom IBM PCs containing an early Cell processor and two NVIDIA 6800GT graphics cards working together in SLI configuration. Although Cell was unfinished, Sony (and NVIDIA) claim that the two 6800GT' s represent the capabilities of the now finished RSX and referred to as the ' alpha' kit.

Now...

KILLZONE:- Probably the most stunning (along with MGS4) video shown was, technically, running in realtime on the hardware noted above. It was however running at less than 5 frames per second and sped up to 60 in post-production.

WARHAWK:- Again running in realtime but without any ' cheating' or post-production added effects.

VISION GRAN-TURISMO:- A very high-res version of GT4 with added pit-crews and bystanders. Tons of post-production effects added to the technically ingame generated ' vision' . (Gran Turismo sucks!)

I-8:- Insomniacs 8th game (hence the codename), running on the ' alpha' kit. Doesn' t look anywhere near as good as Killzone and that' s because it' s realtime and probably a very good representation what the final product will be like.

The Getaway:- A massively updated tech-demo based on Team Spho' s previous Getaway games. Higher resolution textures, advanced lighting effects and additional animation added in post-production. Again running in realtime on an ' alpha' kit.

FIGHT NIGHT ROUND 3:- Real time and playable demo showed up at E3. Looked nice but not actually as nice as the soon to be released Xbox 360 version.

Most of the others were pre-rendered CGI, those include Motorstorm, Tekken, Gundam, Ni-oH amost others.

The other big game showed at both E3 and TGS was MGS4 and although running in realtime on an ' alpha' kit (as demonstrated by Kijoma-san), still wasn' t running on final PS3 hardware. An impressive (to say the least) cutscene that we all hope is a close representation on what the game will be like.

Anyway, on to the hardware...

Cell itself with a core clock rate of 3.2GHz and with 512MB of onboard RAM and 7 Synergistic Processing units (SPE' s) each with 256KB of work RAM sound very impressive. It' s certainly fast on paper but is bottlenecked bu only having 256MB of main system memory available to it. Still, it' s certainly fast enough for games since it' s the GPU that doesn the bulk of the work.

The GPU (basically the graphics card) in PS3 is based on existing NVIDIA technology. Dubbed the Reality Synthesizer and running at 550MHz and with 256MB of video memory attatched to it (although it can poach the 256MB that' s available to Cell but would have to take none or all of it). The GPU in PS3, because it hasn' t been custom built and is just there to serve it' s purpose is outdone by far by the GPU in 360.

PS3 can support higher resolutions than 360, but only if you have a HDTV that will take them.

The amount and diversity of available ports (USB' s, HDMI' s etc) don' t actually interest me and most will not be used by casual gamers. They add to the cost.

Now, the main topic here is what PS3 will be capable of, and will it be capable of what was shown at E3 and TGS, The short answer is no, not initially. PS3 will likely suffer from aliasing issues in it' s first generation of titles until the game developers and middleware tool developers come up with ways around it. 360 doesn' t have to worry about that because Microsoft had 10MB eDRAM (VERY fast) embedded RAM added for just this kind of thing. That' s not to say the games won' t look great, but the jaggies will be even more apparant when playing games in a higher resolution (on a HDTV).

Other than potential and likely jaggies in titles launched within the consoles first 6 months on release, developers tryng to figure out how best to utilize the RAM available which will likely produce sub-standard (when compared to late 1st gen and early 2nd gen 360 titles) graphics, i see only 1 other problem. Blu-Ray!

Beacuse Blu-Ray is still in it' s infancy, Sony only have working 1x and 2x drives. This, coupled with PS3' s lower (than 360) memory bandwidth will mean longer loading times than you may be expecting. The drive will only be able to ferry so much data from the disc to be rendered by RSX per revolution, much less so than 360. It' s not REALLY a problem and Sony are looking into an 8x drive for PS3 but that' s unlikely to make the launch models, simply due to the additional cost. The 2x drive adds more than $101 to the final cost to produce the unit so faser drives will initially cost them more.

I have no doubt about PS3' s potential capabilities and when developers have been given time to learn more about the system then we' ll see a similar evolution in it' s visuals as have been seen with PS2. But don' t exect anything like you saw at E3 to be available at launch, it doesn' t work like that and neither do Sony.

PS3 has other issues but none that relate to this subject.

What do you guys expect to be playing when PS3 hits, what to you envisage for the future?

What do you guys expect to be playing when PS3 hits

Gradius 6

what to you envisage for the future?

Gradius 7

Well, Kikizo is shortly going to post hands-on with PS3. So there will be plenty of detail in there.

This is not sarcasm by the way.

FIGHT NIGHT ROUND 3:- Real time and playable demo showed up at E3. Looked nice but not actually as nice as the soon to be released Xbox 360 version.

No way is it.. the E3 demo looked much more fluid than the demo ive D/l from Xbox live. Its so obvious that the E3 dmo was running of some Dev Power PC it had extremey fluid motions almost like how that Killzone CGI ran..

BTW Dont expect graphics near that Killzone Demo in this coming generation or PS3/ 360. I think it' ll be more like another one or two generations away myself..

We did not know about many ps2 games before ps2 now did we,now let the console get a launch date and you will hear about many many titles,im 100% sure the ps3 sortiment will outdue the 360 big big big time.

Fluid yes, obviously, but the visuals weren' t quite as good. The models and effects in particular aren' t to the standard that FNR3 is on 360. Remember that the ' alpha' kit wasn' t PS3 hardware and like you said just a dev pc with an unfinished Cell and 2 NVIDIA cards as a stand in for RSX.

And again, Killzone wasn' t CGI. It was an ingame video using the alpha kits to render it but it was developed and ran at 5fps then they sped it up to 60 and showed it at E3. It' s doesn' t even look like CGI, you can see murky textures in places, some clipping (slight) and you can see where the aliasing has been smoothed out. It' s not what PS3 will be capable of but it was still rendered using a game engine and not a CGI.

What WILL PS3 be capable of?

Sorry, but it seems obvious to me that the most obvious capability of the PS3 is going unmentioned. It' s going to be able to cook a frozen steak to meadium rare in under 7 minutes!!!! It' s gonna KNOCK out the fat!!

Even though I don' t trust Sonys comments on their own hardware I believe that they know a lot more about consoles than any on this forum does. They' ll manage to make a great console, I' m sure of it. The question is if it will be good enough to motivate the speculated price.
I don' t care if the graphics are better or worse than the 360 because the new standards are so high that I can' t see any difference unless I really focus on it. And I don' t play games to evaluate graphics, I play them to have fun.
What interests me more is what Sony will do with other things. What will the controller be like, how many games will be released and will they be any good? How will their online services work, if there will be any at all? There is so much more than just graphics that can make the PS3 great or pure crap.

If WADA doesnt make FF13+Dragon quest 9 multiformat Sony has already won...big.

I' m not sure if they will be capable of making a fantastic system , but if they fail , 3rd party like capcom , square and konami (and others) will do it for them.
Just like with PS2.

The worse scenario for Sony fans is that they will have a great system no sooner than 2009 (that' s when the games will rock).Is it bad? I think many PS2 games were worth the wait.

MS is the company I will remember for dissapointing me with overhyped products like Jade Empire (who didn' t want that game after KOTOR?) FORZA (GT killer ? whatever) , Halo 2 (not even close to HALO 1 when it comes to single player and with glitches) - some hyped 3rd party hits were very dissapointing to me - like FAR CRY.
I played a lot of amazing games on X - Ninja Gaiden , DoA 3 / Ultimate , Soul Calibur 2 ,Rallisport challenge 2 , Outrun 2 , Otogi 1 ,2 ; HAlo , Half-life 2 and many more , but I had way to many dissapointments (especially with games I dreamed about - hype works I guess).

Homebrew and modding scene really helped X gain my respect

Did I mention that we have a world exclusive hands-on with PS3?

I don' t believe anything I' ve seen supposidly running on PS3 apart from the Metal Gear Solid 4 trailer. It was the only one that looked real enough to be playable, unlike the over produced and fake looking tech demos also seen.

Adam, I can' t wait. It' ll be interesting to see if the games running in real time match their E3 trailers. If not people have a lot of explaning to do.

Did I mention that we have a world exclusive hands-on with PS3?

Damn ...I thought I' m the only one :)

Seriously - will you get to hold and pet it for w while or will you play some demos on it or at least something like that?

That' s because you haven' t seen anything realtime on PS3 except for MGS4 (apart from Sonic which was realtime as well)... ;-)

All the E3 stuff was prerendered to reflect what the developers " thought might be possible" on the final spec, this is complete fact and openly admitted these days, so the creative liberty they were able to take resulted in demos that can, ultimately, be described as misleading.

Sony still says that Killzone was realtime so it doesn' t matter if it' s possible - everyone knows it' s a lie.

This kind of " Action" really sucks on their side.

--- Kikizo at E3 -----

I played the ps3 today, it rocks. Too bad the games could never be on the 360 becuase the 360 is so inferior! i want to have blue-ray' s babies and sell them to toshiba becuase the ps3 is the best console ever. even the boot video uses one of those faked nintendo RS screens! how cool is that? and i can play halo anytime i want since the console is allready hacked before its launch.

anyway, what other console can provide cooked food [which was handed out by middle aged men in tight leather since booth babes are illegal], sexual pleaure and 1080p? stupid 360 cant.

- MR.X

---

can I indeed see into the future?



I am getting one anyway.

People,MGS4 was real time,and hell no would kojima misslead you people,awesome to know that ps3 can handle that graphic,this early :)
It can only be better.

ORIGINAL: Adam Doree

That' s because you haven' t seen anything realtime on PS3 except for MGS4 (apart from Sonic which was realtime as well)... ;-)

All the E3 stuff was prerendered to reflect what the developers " thought might be possible" on the final spec, this is complete fact and openly admitted these days, so the creative liberty they were able to take resulted in demos that can, ultimately, be described as misleading.

No, Killzone as i said was running on the alpha kit (witht the two 6800GT' s in SLI to stand in for RSX) but had been done ingame, recoreded at 5fps then spend up to 60 in post production. Yes misleading but not pre-rendered.

MGS4 was done on an incomplete devkit too since the final kits only went out during CES.

I am curious though as to what you mean by ' hand-on' , like with a specific developer or with a final shelled unit (i had heard information to the effect that Sony were still struggling to fit everything in)??!!

And QuezcatoL, we know it was real time, we saw Kojima pause it and play around with it. But even though it was real time, it still wasn' t playable. It was a cutscene, all of it, even the fps bit (which was taking the piss out off the Killzone trailer because it was suppsoedly pre-rendered). MGS cutscenes ALWAY looks better than actual gameplay footage!

If WADA doesnt make FF13+Dragon quest 9 multiformat Sony has already won...big.

In Japan.. Gamers there will sell their families into slavery just to get their hands on those games. Other territories (U.S., Europe) aren' t as nutso about those games.

I REALLY REALLY want to be proven wrong but I' m calling it, Final Fantasy 13 and Dragon Quest 9 will be PS3 Exclusive.

If it was sped up that means it was prerendered. Yes they used the ingame engine to create it, but they used the ingame engine to create CGI. It wasn' t rendering in real time when they played it. If it was in real time then it would be shown at 5 frames per second.

And about hardware. They can easily do antialiasing on PS3. They just have to use power from the GPU instead of using that power to add more detail in textures and stuff like that. XBox 360 has the embedded ram so they basically do antialising for free which is much better. Most PS3 games will probably use antialiasing.

Also most PS3 games will probably be in 720p. Games could be made to play at 1080p but the higher resolution means they are using a lot of power for the higher resolution instead of putting in more detail. They probably will do most games at 720p. Xbox 1 could do games at 720p but most games were only 480p because they could put more detail in, and not as many people had 720p TVs at the time. The PS3 is in a similiar situation. There will be some games in 1080p but most will be 720p.

I' m sure most people at sony in the higher positions know more about hardware than most people on these forums. But I know that isn' t true for everyone. And you also have to realize that the people who end up controlling what goes into PS3 don' t base their decision on what the fastest hardware is. They have time constraints, budgets, and many other reasons.