PS3 Oblivion Seeing Double To Counteract Blu-Ray
January 17, 2007 4:05 PM | Simon Carless
Having just got the newest February 2007 issue of EGM (you guys should subscribe and keep print alive, it's wholesome and woody!), perhaps the most interesting tidbit is hidden in the middle of a story about Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD. Specifically, it comes from Todd Howard, talking about the PlayStation 3 version of Oblivion.
Howard notes: "Drive speed matters more to me [than capacity], and Blu-ray is slower", with EGM revealing that "the PS3 Oblivion team compensated for the slower drive by duplicating data across the Blu-ray disc, making it faster to find and load."
Well, I say ugh - that sounds like a terrible kludge to have to do. What happens if you don't have your pieces of data correctly sync-ed and one of them is an old version of an object/piece of code and one is a newer version? Unless this was well-dealt with, it could lead to some nasty issues, I'd imagine.
OK, so apart from you wags who are now proclaiming: 'So _that's_ what the Blu-ray's extra disc capacity is used for!', it's worth mentioning that Oblivion for PS3 has now been pushed out to March 2007, even though it was officially going to be a launch title until November 8th or so of last year - that is to say, very close to the PS3 launch date.
Not sure if this was unfortunate planning on Bethesda's part or technical difficulties, but I noticed a bunch of two-page adverts for Oblivion, specifically mentioning the PS3 version, in the holiday issues of Official PlayStation Magazine and EGM - so I'm guessing that marketing was booked before the game was pushed back. Ouch. Still, I imagine that the final product will be up to scratch.
[UPDATE: A perceptive comment from 'Marvin' is worth reprinting: "You'd automate the duplication at the image creation stage to avoid any stale data problems. People have done this on other platforms before for the same reasons - particularly the PSP, with its horrible UMD seek times. However, it does rather negate the whole increased storage capacity advantage."]
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19 Comments
You'd automate the duplication at the image creation stage to avoid any stale data problems. People have done this on other platforms before for the same reasons - particularly the PSP, with its horrible UMD seek times. However, it does rather negate the whole increased storage capacity advantage.
Marvin | January 17, 2007 3:42 PM
Agreed, but this completely negates the biggest selling point of the PS3, blu-ray. The drive speed isn't changing, so when Sony says "Blu-ray storage capacities will allow developers to fit more information on the disc", are we to assume that its the same information? Bethesda Softworks is one the best and most technically gifted developers. If they can't do it, who can? In a sad way (because I'm a gamer at heart) this is almost a death curdle for Sony. If developers are not using your format to improve game engines and store more content, because they have to compensate for the slow drive speed, you've negated the very thing your system was based around. Not a good sign at all. I wish all consoles would succeed, it only makes better games. But man, this is a serious problem.
alex | January 17, 2007 6:33 PM
With Blu-ray discs already at 50GB capacity and reaching 200GB in the near future, this is actually a great solution. Not only do they get plenty of space, but a quick workaround for the drive speed.
Oblivion's what, 7GB? Double that and they've barely taken over half of a single Blu-ray disc. Doesn't negate the storage advantage at all. =]
Alex | January 17, 2007 9:19 PM
This sounded like FUD to me when I read it. PS3 has a hard drive. Caching data is easy. I'm pretty sure the whole porting to a completely different hardware architecture will be the hard part. No DirectX style libraries and such.
Corey Holcomb-Hockin | January 18, 2007 1:32 AM
It sounds like a bad thing, but can this help deal with piracy issues. It has gotta be a plus side to this. I mean, people trying to crack theses formats and people are willing to waste more space for the same info? It MAY prevent enthusiasm to pirate Blu-Ray.
phenomenon9999 | January 18, 2007 2:24 AM
"Bethesda Softworks is one the best and most technically gifted developers"
Uhhh... What universe are you living in? Bethesda are far from being the "most technically gifted" developers. All of their games have bugs and things that could've been easilly fixed. They make good games, but they never polish their games as much as they should.
Gangustar | January 18, 2007 3:31 AM
"Bethesda Softworks is one the best and most technically gifted developers"
lol what a retard. bethesda releaess some of the bugiest shit code in gaming history. learn what your talking about before you speak again thx.
kernalkaddafy | January 18, 2007 4:40 AM
Bethesda best gifted developer..... lol I am an a-hole that has to make fun of someone for thinking a great game was made by some talented people.. what a silly notion people are so stupid k thnx
bobby | January 18, 2007 5:12 AM
One problem for Bethesda is that their game is going to require lots of separate small loads since they can't predict what inventory item data you'll need. Something like Resistance or Gears is going to have fairly predictable loading needs, but Oblivion will grab lots of small stuff all the time. I remember when my Xbox DVD drive was dying it would have extended pauses everytime it loaded something, and that was basically everytime I looked at an item in the inventory or store. Bethesda should just include the option to do a 2-3 gig install.
mister slim | January 18, 2007 3:45 PM
fuck the usa!
Gabo | January 18, 2007 6:57 PM
yeah fuck the USA, damn warmongers are gonna end the world
k-fresh | January 18, 2007 11:11 PM
I think you're confusing objects in memory (as in the PS3s RAM), with data on the blu-ray disc, which cannot be changed as the PS3 only reads from the blu-ray disc, it doesn't write to it. There are no synching issues. This idea is only centered around getting the data off the disc off the blu-ray disc quickly, such as loading textures or model data, by placing two copies of each datum, be it a texture, sound file or landscape model, on the disc at different locations so that you can half the maximum time it takes for the read head to get to the required data. The data is then read off the blu-ray disc into memory. However only one copy will loaded into in memory, since RAM is not disc based and data in it can be accessed very quickly by the processor, thus providing no advantage to having two copies of the data residing in memory. The data can then be atlered in memory by the game engine. This data will then stay in memory until no longer needed, which basically means that it's alterable lifetime only exists in memory, with only one copy present and therefore no possible synching issues. Sorry if this is a long winded response, but the idea of duplicating the data on the blu-ray disc is actually a good idea and should help make the experience a lot smoother, especially if they coupled it with an optional install on the hard disk. They're making an attempt to counteract the lousy situation we'll be faced with in future games thanks to Sony shoving blu-ray down our throats.
ChaosInTheSnow | January 19, 2007 5:00 AM
the ps3 sucks!
is much better the xbox360 and has better games
Gabo | January 19, 2007 7:17 PM
This sounds just like stupid Sony bashing if you ask me. If Bethesda was at all technically competent they would use the build in hard drive to cache stuff that need quick-loading instead.
TnT | January 20, 2007 6:01 PM
Lol TnT you retard, Oblivion caches around FOUR GIGABYTES of data to the hard drive. I think your head got stuck up your ass at birth.
Mahblack | June 2, 2007 11:29 PM
I don't think Bethsoft is the best thats for sure they made no use of the SPEs of the Cell Processor meaning the games just running on the single Core unit, I'm impressed by this actually only using barely any of the PS3s power they got the game to run on equal to the Xbox.
Volomon | August 31, 2007 12:17 AM
I don't know about everyone else, but the PS3 isn't exactly pumping out the fastest load times.
The duplicate-data trick must surely help to bring down load times to an acceptable level, but the point is the developers shouldn't have to do this in the first place! And now they have that much less disc space to use too (if they needed it).
This next-generation drive should have gotten a boost in the various transfer speeds too, not just capacity. Developers probably favour transfer speeds over capacity, especially considering that probably hardly any games are going above 10-20gigs or whatever.
This is definately a bad mistake by Sony, and if you don't see that, you gotta check your head.
Squarepants | November 27, 2007 5:20 AM
funny how every ps3 defender just claims the developer isn't smart enough to use the ps3s power:P
perhaps its the other way around. the ps3 was designed in a stupid way.
woot | December 14, 2007 4:30 AM
thanks for sharing, i like it very much!!!!
wholesalebeads | February 21, 2011 10:36 PM