HD DVD vs Blue ray for games

Thegodzero

I was thinking about this the other night why would developers need so much storage space? At what point is it too much space?

A DVD can hold 5 GB - 15 GB.
A HD DVD can hold 15 GB – 60 GB.
A Blue Ray disk can hold 25 GB - 100 GB.

All the current systems don’t have jack shit for texture memory so textures still have to be small. Small textures don’t take up that much memory, so the extra storage space is useless there. That is unless you want to have more textures, but that means longer dev time or half ass textures. What about the models, do we need the extra space for the game models? Sure we could fill up the disk with millions of models, but again that would increase dev time. We could make more levels or bigger ones to use the space, but that too would mean longer dev time. We could let the programmers fill up the disk but that would be pointless. That only leaves us with audio, how much music and or sound effects could we ever need or want in a game? I don’t see us needing 30 GB’s of songs for a game, so don’t think well be using the space for that.

All and all I think we have hit a point where we don’t need any more storage space, not until we get more system memory in the systems. With our current gen of consoles I can’t see any game needing more than what can be put on a DVD.

So what about you, do you think we really need more storage space rite now?

Daz

Clearly next gen consoles weren't the massive leap that the manufacturers would have us believe at all. I agree that the storage capacity of Blue Ray is overkill, but I always just assumed that Sony threw it in there to make the machine seem more like an all round multimedia device. i.e for watching movies too?

monster

The producers of DOA4 were complaining the HD cinematics for the game took up most of the disc. Also I hear the RPG game Blue Dragon for the 360 will be on multiple DVDs.

Personally I'd be disappointed to play a Next Gen Final Fantasy without HD cinematics.

McIlroy

Yeah im with monster here better resolution cinematics and also less compressed sound files and maybe less compressed texture files . Personally I think instead of trying to dupe the public with the fancy processors they should have stuck to well tested main stream processors and spent more money on more fast memory . The PS3 has a really nice processor but what good is that when the graphics chip and the memory are not as advanced ..makes no sense .

Thegodzero

I had almost forgotten about none in game cinematics... Yeah i guess they would need more room, but thats the whole movie thing again.

Daz

Surely less compressed texture files are still dependent on available video ram? Unless you have some kind of fancy streaming shit going on which most games don't. But yeah, I dig the point about movies.

Btw, slightly OT but hopefully not too far off. I bought an awesome 40" LCD Sony TV recently, and at the same time the Best Buy rep was trying to tell me that Blue Ray was *infinitely* superior in terms of picture quality compared to HD DVD and that in fact HD DVD wasn't true 1080p at all and he even went as far as saying that HD DVD was no better than current up conversion DVD players. Surely not true? More like BB have some evil scheme to shift thousand dollar blue ray players? I would love to be more clued up on this stuff.

Dark Bob

HD-DVD is true 1080p if you can support the resolution. Some how some company that was responsible for the creation of blue-ray started this rumor that HD-DVD can't do 1080p. And at the moment how ever Blue-Ray is compressed it renders at an odd aspect ratio.

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/trainingday.html

But I have found as of late that Best Buy employees are not up to date on the next stage of home entertainment. I had one tell me the Xbox360 only supported 480p and I would be best off to wait for the PS3. I was forced to show him the video setting on the dashboard....and apparently that was a new setting that came with an XBL update.

but again an HD-DVD is true 1080p.

Steve Schulze

Our lead coder mentioned that the Blue Ray player in the PS3 results in considerably longer loading times (longer than the PSP even). Anyone know if this is accurate and if so, is it an inherent floor in the blueray itself, an issue in the playstation hardware or just a lack of optimisation in the first lot of games developed to unfamiliar hardware constraints?

ElysiumGX

I once heard a rumor that cinematics aren't games. And the amazingly high quality rendered trailers you see at conventions aren't games either.

I think game developers should try to put as many assets and as much quality as possible in the space they are given. In fact, many companies could use less assets, and more gameplay. That doesn't require much room. Think Resident Evil 4 for gamecube, and Shadow of the Colossus for PS2.

We shouldn't be fooled into buying more expensive hardware, and getting little in return.

Thegodzero

so i take it were pretty much all in agreement that we have no need for the extra space given on blue ray or at this point even hd dvd's.

Maybe the next line up of systems, the "next next gen" will have more texture memory and will give us reason to use more disk space. At this time its pointless for none cinematics games. My guess is when that "next next gen" systems comes out they will have hd dvd as the storage medium. The funny part is that at that point having games run at 1080p wont look like ass because the textures will be the rite pixel density so that they can be crisp. Rite now ps3 games running at 1080p look like ps2 games because the textures are so low res compared to the screen res.

sonic

What kind of regular DVD holds 15gb? The highest capacity DVD for the 360 is a dual layer DVD which holds roughly 9gb. Anyways, 9gb is plenty for 99% of the games you'll see on PS3/Wii/360. So many people are mislead about their statements concerning storage capacity because they base all their figures around the previous generation. Games in previous generations were laid out on discs very inefficiently with concerns to space utilization because they didn't have to be careful. When your textures on a PS2 game are all 256x256, you don't have to be careful at all. For example, God of War was a dual layer DVD, but they pretty much just threw several copies of each texture, model, and map all over the disk to improve load times throughout the game.

Also remember that the compression used in current generation is far superior to the last generation. Most 360 titles use the 720p WMV video format. It takes around 1gb per 30 min of high definition video using this format. Not many games will have more than 30 min high def cutscenes, even RPGs. As far as sound goes, the 360 apparently offers up to 6:1 audio compression for near lossless audio, and up to 14:1 for lossy audio with it's new proprietary audio codec.

A good real life comparison of previous generation to current generation is the new 360 game Blue Dragon and the PS2 game Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. Blue Dragon spans across 3 dual layer DVDs and contains about 40-50 hours of gameplay. It includes tons and tons of HD cutscenes, much of it being fully uncompressed WMV video. The newest Star Ocean, which was released near the end of the PS2's lifecycle, spans across 2 dual layer DVDs and has about 40 hours of gameplay as well. Keep in mind that Star Ocean:TET is a PS2 game, which means all the cinematics, textures, models, and sounds are low resolution.

Thegodzero

Sonic good points, my hi-end numbers are using double sided disks. And that info is all from wikipedia.

sonic

[ QUOTE ]
Sonic good points, my hi-end numbers are using double sided disks. And that info is all from wikipedia.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ahh, I knew I was forgetting something

I seriously do wonder why game publishers dont decide to use dual-sided disks more. I wonder, since dual-sided disks are less common, if it would cost more for one dual sided than for 2 single sided.

I would also like to add that I can't see the difference between 1080p and 720p at all. I can tell the difference between 1080i and 1080p because of the progressive scan, but as far as the resolution goes, I think unless you sit closer than like 4 feet from your TV you wouldn't notice a difference.

KDR_11k

The newest Star Ocean, which was released near the end of the PS2's lifecycle, spans across 2 dual layer DVDs and has about 40 hours of gameplay as well.

Then I must be playing it slowly since I was at the 40 hour mark by the time I had to change discs.

Joshua Stubbles

I don't know how it will relate to games.

For movies though, I'm digging HD-DVD more.
Blu-Ray uses Mpeg2 compression, which is pretty funky. HD-DVD uses the H.264 codec, which is far and above better.
I compared both at the store, before picking up the 360's HD-DVD player. If you have a HDTV and a 360, I suggest picking one up.