There will still be a natural progression in the quality of software on the 360, in part due to the tri-core nature of the CPU. The Xbox 360 is no PC. That's not a good comparison anyway -- since PC games also benefit from further optimization. Look at Call of Duty as an example.. poor DX9 optimization resulted in very poor performance on early DX9 hardware -- Call of Duty 4 actually runs better by comparison.

But anyway.. this thread was far more interesting when we were talking about electric cars.

O'really? Where do you think I get my information from?

I think when I get some more time I will go quite a couple developers on the issues of multi-threading and the 360 to show you how your "every" is way off. Heck, go google Capcom--whom you reference--and their comments on threading the 360 GPU.I never said the PS3 was easier than the 360. Only pointing out the analogy and parallels to the PS2/Xbox are broken and that the 360 has a lot more overhead than the Xbox did and the PS3 is much easier to tap into than the PS2.

And I've heard plenty of developers say the same.. so.. trust Jollipop to take something out of context... ;)

Again, Jolli, I don't think you understand how computationally expensive stuff like soft shadows with little aliasing is. There is a reason why games like Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed have shadows that look like total crap. They are very expensive -- because they are very high quality.

Those weather effects don't come cheap either--especially when you are mapping realtime reflections onto them.

Which is another HUGE jump in QUALITY. The cars reflect realtime content--namely cars and spectators.

These are all quality issues. Toss in a 50% increase in pixels, and PGR4 is easily pushing out a sizable increase in quality.

Like I said before, the issue is diminishing returns in terms of what casual consumers percieve. Realtime reflections and soft shadows solve HUGELY ass-tastic issues that harm the quality of games -- but they aren't whiz-bang lense flares-bloom obvious.

The cost of the last mile is indeed heavy. 90% of reality is easier to obtain than the last 10%.

Ok, seeing as artifact free soft shadows and realtime reflections aren't a "jump in quality" and you are tanking this with the PS2/Cell talk, please humor us: What graphical jumps will we be seeing from the all might Cell that are a "huge jump" in quality like seen in PS2 games.

The fact Bizarre did some computationally expensive stuff, as noted above, means developers are harnessing a lot more power in 2007 than they were in 2008. If they chose they could have taken that investment, kept the core of PGR3, and spent it elsewhere. "Where" is the question though. Textures & poly count are already at diminishing returns (a 2x fold in geometry would hardly go noticed--heh, they already bumped it up a ton on Shanghai and some cannot see it) so I am curious where these jumps will come in.

One of the reasons the PS2 gen saw large jumps was because the PS2 came in low--indeed, a number of DC games looked better. When your game is full of aliasing (texture and edge) and is using low quality assets it is going to look crappy.

Its like Gun to Gears of War.

No, Jolli makes blatant statements and doesn't like getting called on them. I will never forget the classic, "RSX has 2x the shader ops, so is faster" non-sense. He even ignored quotes from PS3 exclusive developers who said it was a useless marketing metric. When he says stuff like, "Well petty much every "developer" out there is saying the oppisite to you Acert" -- when in fact many developers aren't saying what he is saying -- is just another example.

Like I mentioned before, the issue is diminishing returns. That was MY point. Quality soft shadows, realtime reflections (even FM2 lacks these), and 50% more resolution are a huge performance sucker -- and do, indeed, improve quality.

PGR4 is a huge leap in performance/improvement (which was the PS3 tie-in) as well as quality. Visual impact is another issue, which leads into the diminishing returns issue. The PS4/Xbox3 will have it even tough, as a 1M poly car doesn't look substantially better than a 100K poly car.

Oddly, reviews tend to be at odds. Some think it looks amazing, others not so. Interestingly IGN refused to answer my email -- they accuse if of having horrible aliasing, which it doesn't in 720p. And no one has yet identified a better looking 360 racer. Part of the problem was until PGR4, 2 years in, PGR3 was still the best looking 360 racer. And most consumers cannot appreciate the amount of work, detail, and performance required to eek out the last 10% of visuals. Better shadows are very expensive, and are a huge jump in quality.

But it is like edge aliasing--most consumers don't care. Hence why games like AC and ME, both priased, have HORRIBLE shadow aliasing. A lot of consumers cannot see it, and when fixed it doesn't matter to them. So developers move on.

But that shouldn't stop us from confusing consumer apathy with technical quality. Whether it impacts your perception of visual impact depends on whether you find it freaking annoying seeing huge aliased black chunks crawling across your screen.

Calling it now: next gen, graphics really won't matter. Art will, and gamers will confuse the concept of having an opinion about art (like/dislike) and the quality of the art direction (more concrete and less subjective, even if you dislike the result).

@ Jolli: I am a poster as well as a mod. I can post in a thread if I wish.

So basically we all agree that Bizarre made some big technological jumps but visually it doesn't look a proportionate amount better because the upgrades were technical in nature and spent on stuff that most people don't notice.

Lovely!

I heard there were no cone challenges though.....surely that's a total downgrade, why?! :(

http://gameplanets.blogspot.com/2007/10/pgr4-vs-pg...

Comparison shots.