Getting back to something that really irked me, it's also true that parallelism can vastly decrease latencies if the implementation is elegant, and Carmack is just plain wrong if his sentiment is precisely how you referenced it. Since the only realistic way to improve CPU performance these days is to go multi-core, it's like it's 1900 and Carmack is endorsing steam engines over gasoline because they may be theoretically more efficient in some unsatisfiable criteria.
Just curious: what do you do in the high tech industry?
1) I'm not sure on the exact quote, but I guess you could look it up. It might have just been that multi-threading games will not give them a significant performance boost (or at least the 1000x faster performance that the media and Microsoft/Sony marketing says it will).
2) The other way to improve CPU performance is to wait for quantum computers....
3) I'm working as a Systems Administrator right now. I just graduated with my BS in Computer Science (looking for a Software Developer job at the moment).
I've worked with POSIX threads while in school. I've not had a chance to work with Windows threads or Cocoa/Carbon/Whatever threads that Apple has in their toolkits yet.
I've worked with OpenGL before (the basics), but not in a video game manner, or with a multi-threaded project. I'm thinking that with gaming it would take tighter integration of the threads because you would need all of the information to be displayed for each refresh of the screen. So all or most of the threads would need to be sync'd at 60Hz (or what ever the refresh/frame rate is). To me that seems like an awful lot of cycles that will be spend just on pulling the information together.
[edit] Stupid me. I wasn't thinking of shared data between the threads. But the problem that still remains is that the threads would need to keep in sync in case one of them got lost in a process queue waiting for processor time. But that would be more of a problem with the OS implementation. Not really the fault of the programmers.
Not that you've forced me to think in-depth on the issue... I can think of one thing off the top of my head that could benefit from multi-threading: game load times. There could be a process in the background that loads what is needed next while the player is still in-game. (Loading level 2 from the disc as the player battles the boss to level 1, for example) But this might depend on memory requirements.
As for those 'poor programmers,' it's not like simple business applications and DB front-ends... POS systems are taxing the limits of our current technologies. Multi-threading them won't produce great benefits.
1) I'm not sure on the exact quote, but I guess you could look it up. It might have just been that multi-threading games will not give them a significant performance boost (or at least the 1000x faster performance that the media and Microsoft/Sony marketing says it will).
A multi-thread application will always be slower than a single thread application, unless you have per-thread limits on CPU time, or unless you have multiple cores or multiple processors. Of course you do have multiple processing units in both the PS3 and Xbox 360 - but not 1000 of them.
The only exceptions that I can think of to the above rule is access to slow devices, and high CPU low priority tasks - since with multi threading they can be done as a background task. Hopefully the games for the new consoles will predictively load what it thinks is your next game segment (so no more "loading..." screens).
But there are so many more race conditions and ways that your game can crash now...
Personally I'm not going to touch the 260 with a 10' pole unless I see some really impressive games.
I would really like to believe that the Xbox group really is separate and nothing like the mothership, but the fact is it's the same company. Feeding the Xbox only feeds to machine we loathe.
Do you really want MS to dominate Gaming in the next couple of years? They have never been known to do good things once they dominate, they will kill off all the competition and then let the whole thing turn to shit.
The phrase Xbox 1.5 keeps popping up. And it seems to be happening with the games too so far. Even PGR3 was referred to as like a PGR2.5 or 2.75.
It can't even support HD all that well, it cant do 1080p, and it doesn't really do 1080i since it fakes it by upsampling from 720p.
While it may have more Japanese support I doubt it will have that much more, and certainly not more than PS3. I really don't care for games that are only targeted at Western users. I hate sports, FPS games can be fun but I have fallen out from them alot recently.
If the rumor that PS3 may not have any region locking on it will make it even better. I loved to import japanese games, and buy special editions like Eternal Arcadia for my Dreamcast. It was great because all I needed was a CD to bypass the region lock. So far i've been too lazy to do the same to my PS2 since i don't want to mess with the hardware. Final Fantasy has been pretty good on it though, but I still yearn for Japanese VA's.
Does anyone know how the Xbox 360 will handle regions? I'm guessing the same as last generation since it still uses DVD's
I think the PS3 could get a lot of cool stuff on it too from the linux community, since its OS is based on Linux(last I heard, if this isnt true let me know).
A multi-thread application will always be slower than a single thread application, unless you have per-thread limits on CPU time, or unless you have multiple cores or multiple processors. Of course you do have multiple processing units in both the PS3 and Xbox 360 - but not 1000 of them.
The only exceptions that I can think of to the above rule is access to slow devices, and high CPU low priority tasks - since with multi threading they can be done as a background task. Hopefully the games for the new consoles will predictively load what it thinks is your next game segment (so no more "loading..." screens).
But there are so many more race conditions and ways that your game can crash now...
I know that it won't be a 1000x increase in speed/efficiency/whatever. I'm just making a statement about how Microsoft and Sony hype up their systems as being 35 times or 50 times faster than their previous consoles. They are just taking some formula like 3 cores * core speed = 50 * old console processor speed. Tech savvy people might be able to decipher the lies, but others really can't. You don't get 3 times the power of a single core just because you added 2 more cores. Even with effective use of multi-threading in games, you'll never see that type of performance boost.
You will see things like possibly predicted loading in the background to reduce/eliminate load times. You might see things like AI running in it's own thread on a separate core than the one that is coordinating the GPU while it crunches geometry numbers. (These things have GPUs in them aside from the Cell/TriCore PowerPCs, right?) Hopefully things like this will help improve game speed, response time, etc. I can't comment much on the graphics pipeline though, because I don't know how much of it is done in the GPU on modern systems, and how the interaction with GPU will be in these consoles.
Not for a while. I have the current Xbox and it is my favorite system. However the 360 has some problems. They are temporary ones, but there are enough to make me not want one for well into 06.
First, the DVD drive. Microsoft has said in the future the 360 may be equipped with HD-DVD drives. I'm waiting for that.
Second, the price. $400 for this system seems like a bit over-priced, especially now because of...
Third, launch games. I actually bought the orginal Xbox for a game called Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee. I was a huge fan of Oddworld and that game warrented buying the console (even though it wasn't that great). If I had known about Halo, that also would have sold the system for me. On the 360 there is no one game that makes me need the system. DOA4 is good, but not a console seller.
Not a major reason, I don't have a Windows Media PC, (Duh, I got my iMac G5), so I lose some of that extra functionality, which appears to be quite impressive. Though I may get another PC in the future (Games, Media Center)
All of these problems can and probably will be fixed in the future, and when they are I will buy one.
From the slashdot comments, the one that makes the most sense to me:
"The graphics glitches in those screenshots look like what happens when a modern graphics card overheats. For some reason the contents of the video RAM tend to get corrupted (covered with checkerboard blocks or rainbow colors) right before the system halts altogether."
My 360 was on, and playing perfectly, for about 13 hours yesterday.
Compare and contrast to the PSP: I returned mine twice on the day I bought it. 3rd time has been a charm.
My PSP has worked flawlessly, and I picked it up in the first day of sales. You can't tell much from personal experience, but the PSP did not have a rising tide of disgruntled users due to widespread problems (like the xbox360 seems to).
My 360 was on, and playing perfectly, for about 13 hours yesterday.
Compare and contrast to the PSP: I returned mine twice on the day I bought it. 3rd time has been a charm.
Same for a buddy of mine...running in HD (720 i think) and it was really nice, load times need to be faster but this is true with all optical media baced consoles (longs for the days of N64s solid state instant on cartrages)
My PSP has worked flawlessly, and I picked it up in the first day of sales. You can't tell much from personal experience, but the PSP did not have a rising tide of disgruntled users due to widespread problems (like the xbox360 seems to).
Where were you during the PSP launch ... dead pixels, faulty umd drive doors, pockmarked screen plastic ... it was terrible.
It's always the noisy minority who get heard, whether it's the PSP or 360.
Comments
Originally posted by Splinemodel
Getting back to something that really irked me, it's also true that parallelism can vastly decrease latencies if the implementation is elegant, and Carmack is just plain wrong if his sentiment is precisely how you referenced it. Since the only realistic way to improve CPU performance these days is to go multi-core, it's like it's 1900 and Carmack is endorsing steam engines over gasoline because they may be theoretically more efficient in some unsatisfiable criteria.
Just curious: what do you do in the high tech industry?
1) I'm not sure on the exact quote, but I guess you could look it up. It might have just been that multi-threading games will not give them a significant performance boost (or at least the 1000x faster performance that the media and Microsoft/Sony marketing says it will).
2) The other way to improve CPU performance is to wait for quantum computers....
3) I'm working as a Systems Administrator right now. I just graduated with my BS in Computer Science (looking for a Software Developer job at the moment).
I've worked with POSIX threads while in school. I've not had a chance to work with Windows threads or Cocoa/Carbon/Whatever threads that Apple has in their toolkits yet.
I've worked with OpenGL before (the basics), but not in a video game manner, or with a multi-threaded project. I'm thinking that with gaming it would take tighter integration of the threads because you would need all of the information to be displayed for each refresh of the screen. So all or most of the threads would need to be sync'd at 60Hz (or what ever the refresh/frame rate is). To me that seems like an awful lot of cycles that will be spend just on pulling the information together.
[edit] Stupid me. I wasn't thinking of shared data between the threads. But the problem that still remains is that the threads would need to keep in sync in case one of them got lost in a process queue waiting for processor time. But that would be more of a problem with the OS implementation. Not really the fault of the programmers.
Not that you've forced me to think in-depth on the issue... I can think of one thing off the top of my head that could benefit from multi-threading: game load times. There could be a process in the background that loads what is needed next while the player is still in-game. (Loading level 2 from the disc as the player battles the boss to level 1, for example) But this might depend on memory requirements.
As for those 'poor programmers,' it's not like simple business applications and DB front-ends... POS systems are taxing the limits of our current technologies. Multi-threading them won't produce great benefits.
Originally posted by pyr3
1) I'm not sure on the exact quote, but I guess you could look it up. It might have just been that multi-threading games will not give them a significant performance boost (or at least the 1000x faster performance that the media and Microsoft/Sony marketing says it will).
A multi-thread application will always be slower than a single thread application, unless you have per-thread limits on CPU time, or unless you have multiple cores or multiple processors. Of course you do have multiple processing units in both the PS3 and Xbox 360 - but not 1000 of them.
The only exceptions that I can think of to the above rule is access to slow devices, and high CPU low priority tasks - since with multi threading they can be done as a background task. Hopefully the games for the new consoles will predictively load what it thinks is your next game segment (so no more "loading..." screens).
But there are so many more race conditions and ways that your game can crash now...
I would really like to believe that the Xbox group really is separate and nothing like the mothership, but the fact is it's the same company. Feeding the Xbox only feeds to machine we loathe.
Do you really want MS to dominate Gaming in the next couple of years? They have never been known to do good things once they dominate, they will kill off all the competition and then let the whole thing turn to shit.
The phrase Xbox 1.5 keeps popping up. And it seems to be happening with the games too so far. Even PGR3 was referred to as like a PGR2.5 or 2.75.
You can find that in the "Video Review" from IGN.
http://media.xbox360.ign.com/media/7...62/vids_1.html
It can't even support HD all that well, it cant do 1080p, and it doesn't really do 1080i since it fakes it by upsampling from 720p.
While it may have more Japanese support I doubt it will have that much more, and certainly not more than PS3. I really don't care for games that are only targeted at Western users. I hate sports, FPS games can be fun but I have fallen out from them alot recently.
If the rumor that PS3 may not have any region locking on it will make it even better. I loved to import japanese games, and buy special editions like Eternal Arcadia for my Dreamcast. It was great because all I needed was a CD to bypass the region lock. So far i've been too lazy to do the same to my PS2 since i don't want to mess with the hardware. Final Fantasy has been pretty good on it though, but I still yearn for Japanese VA's.
Does anyone know how the Xbox 360 will handle regions? I'm guessing the same as last generation since it still uses DVD's
I think the PS3 could get a lot of cool stuff on it too from the linux community, since its OS is based on Linux(last I heard, if this isnt true let me know).
how long did it take ps2 to have anything at all? at launch it had virtually nothing but madden.
xbox had halo1 and then nothing else for a while.
the ps2, last year, came out with some of its best games yet.
so like most console launches the innitial releases will focus on graphics.
i wonder if you'll be saying the same thing when the Ps3 comes out and is lacking innovative games.
Originally posted by e1618978
A multi-thread application will always be slower than a single thread application, unless you have per-thread limits on CPU time, or unless you have multiple cores or multiple processors. Of course you do have multiple processing units in both the PS3 and Xbox 360 - but not 1000 of them.
The only exceptions that I can think of to the above rule is access to slow devices, and high CPU low priority tasks - since with multi threading they can be done as a background task. Hopefully the games for the new consoles will predictively load what it thinks is your next game segment (so no more "loading..." screens).
But there are so many more race conditions and ways that your game can crash now...
I know that it won't be a 1000x increase in speed/efficiency/whatever. I'm just making a statement about how Microsoft and Sony hype up their systems as being 35 times or 50 times faster than their previous consoles. They are just taking some formula like 3 cores * core speed = 50 * old console processor speed. Tech savvy people might be able to decipher the lies, but others really can't. You don't get 3 times the power of a single core just because you added 2 more cores. Even with effective use of multi-threading in games, you'll never see that type of performance boost.
You will see things like possibly predicted loading in the background to reduce/eliminate load times. You might see things like AI running in it's own thread on a separate core than the one that is coordinating the GPU while it crunches geometry numbers. (These things have GPUs in them aside from the Cell/TriCore PowerPCs, right?) Hopefully things like this will help improve game speed, response time, etc. I can't comment much on the graphics pipeline though, because I don't know how much of it is done in the GPU on modern systems, and how the interaction with GPU will be in these consoles.
Originally posted by Elixir
nintendo? who knows. the gamecube sucked and this time they are taking a HUGE risk on the revolution.
I've played all 3 of the current systems, and IMHO:
PC/Mac > GameCube > PS2 > Xbox
8)
Originally posted by iPoster
I've played all 3 of the current systems, and IMHO:
PC/Mac > GameCube > PS2 > Xbox
8)
now you're just silly.
I have yet to find that perfect thing for which I'm willing to camp out.
($280). A friend sells electronics online & asked for some macromedia flash
help with his friend's website in trade. I'm also getting some other accessories
& games at cost while I'm at it. It's kind of amazing at what he can order online
at cost (4gig iPod nanos for $150!!)
The rub is that I have to wait till Dec. 12th. Another strange thing is that he had
no problem ordering 50 of them to sell on his site. I thought that shipments
were really constrained.
I currently own the PS2, Xbox, & Gamecube. I keep reading how this system is
better than that system but the fact of the matter is that there are great games
on each. Favorite games that I have on each system:
PS2 - Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, GTA San Andreas
Xbox - Kotor, Burnout 3, Splinter Cell, Jade Empire
Gamecube - Zelda, Metroid
I plan on picking up all three next-gen systems because I know there will
be games that I want that I can only get on each. For the Xbox 360 I'm
really interested in picking up Mass Effect & Gears of War. For the PS3 I'm
excited about Warhawk, GTA, Metal Gear, & Fight Night. I'm really curious
about some of the new games for the Revolution just because of the
controller.
First, the DVD drive. Microsoft has said in the future the 360 may be equipped with HD-DVD drives. I'm waiting for that.
Second, the price. $400 for this system seems like a bit over-priced, especially now because of...
Third, launch games. I actually bought the orginal Xbox for a game called Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee. I was a huge fan of Oddworld and that game warrented buying the console (even though it wasn't that great). If I had known about Halo, that also would have sold the system for me. On the 360 there is no one game that makes me need the system. DOA4 is good, but not a console seller.
Not a major reason, I don't have a Windows Media PC, (Duh, I got my iMac G5), so I lose some of that extra functionality, which appears to be quite impressive. Though I may get another PC in the future (Games, Media Center)
All of these problems can and probably will be fixed in the future, and when they are I will buy one.
I'll answer questions, if you have any.
Heh. Heh-heh. -Ahem- Bwhahaha...
Originally posted by sCreeD
Apparently, they're crashtastic! (via Slashdot)
Heh. Heh-heh. -Ahem- Bwhahaha...
From the slashdot comments, the one that makes the most sense to me:
"The graphics glitches in those screenshots look like what happens when a modern graphics card overheats. For some reason the contents of the video RAM tend to get corrupted (covered with checkerboard blocks or rainbow colors) right before the system halts altogether."
So I will wait a bit before buying.
Compare and contrast to the PSP: I returned mine twice on the day I bought it. 3rd time has been a charm.
Originally posted by audiopollution
My 360 was on, and playing perfectly, for about 13 hours yesterday.
Compare and contrast to the PSP: I returned mine twice on the day I bought it. 3rd time has been a charm.
My PSP has worked flawlessly, and I picked it up in the first day of sales. You can't tell much from personal experience, but the PSP did not have a rising tide of disgruntled users due to widespread problems (like the xbox360 seems to).
Originally posted by audiopollution
My 360 was on, and playing perfectly, for about 13 hours yesterday.
Compare and contrast to the PSP: I returned mine twice on the day I bought it. 3rd time has been a charm.
Same for a buddy of mine...running in HD (720 i think) and it was really nice, load times need to be faster but this is true with all optical media baced consoles (longs for the days of N64s solid state instant on cartrages)
Originally posted by e1618978
My PSP has worked flawlessly, and I picked it up in the first day of sales. You can't tell much from personal experience, but the PSP did not have a rising tide of disgruntled users due to widespread problems (like the xbox360 seems to).
Where were you during the PSP launch ... dead pixels, faulty umd drive doors, pockmarked screen plastic ... it was terrible.
It's always the noisy minority who get heard, whether it's the PSP or 360.
these suckers run kinda loud, hell even kinda hot sorta like the powermacs.
anyways, they were going on ebay yesterday morning from 700-2000 dollars.
i've played Condemned and that is by far a killer launch title.
PDZ kinda sucked, madden looks amazing, and fifa is wonderful online.
however its condemned man, condemened is insane.