id Says Rage on 360 Runs Faster Than PS3, Brings the Ruckus

[Jamash]

What people don't understand is that Sony intended it to run slower, so that people get twice as much playtime out of the game on the PS3 than the 360.

It's all part of their long term plan, they make the PS3 harder to develop on, thereby making the games run slower, which in turns makes the games last twice as long as their 360 counterparts.

By the time 360 owners will have completed the game and become bored of it, the PS3 owners will still be enjoying the game with another half still left to savour.

Sony is so genius that none of us normals can understand their plan, but believe you me, it is genius, like 'Rain Man', 'Forrest Gump' 'My Left Foot' genius.

Slow and Steady wins the race

 

[phoenix352]

What people don't understand is that Sony intended it to run slower, so that people get twice as much playtime out of the game on the PS3 than the 360.

It's all part of their long term plan, they make the PS3 harder to develop on, thereby making the games run slower, which in turns makes the games last twice as long as their 360 counterparts.

By the time 360 owners will have completed the game and become bored of it, the PS3 owners will still be enjoying the game with another half still left to savour.

Sony is so genius that none of us normals can understand their plan, but believe you me, it is genius, like 'Rain Man', 'Forrest Gump' 'My Left Foot' genius.

Slow and Steady wins the race

sarcasm win?

 

[Treblaine]

It shouldn't matter either way (for me at least). I now have both PS3 and 360 but the point is I will play it on neither. id Software are PC developers, FPS games play best with a mouse + KB on PC, this is a PC game and though id will likely make the majority of their income from their console releases everyone should know it is the PC version that will be the definitive version.

One thing I worry about for those poor souls who only have a PS3, if after all this time of parallel development (yes SinisterDeath, all versions of this game HAVE been developed parallel) and the PS3 version is running at UNDER HALF the frame rate... you can't just magic out more performance.

If the rasteriser is the imitation, you can go around it, you can't up the clock speed or plug in an extra GPU, you have to make compromises. There is a very good chance that the PS3 version will have to make graphical sacrifices to get the high frame rate of 360 and PC version.

If Carmack CAN get the frame-rate up without sacrificing game detail, resolution or other performance then he is not A god... he IS God*!

(*in the religion of Gamerology)

 

[Jamash]

sarcasm win?

I certainly hope so, because if I wasn't being sarcastic then I'd be very worried, either about my state or my mind of about the possibility that some PS3 fanboy is hidding somehwere in my room and writing posts when I go downstairs.

Shit! What was that mouth breathing noise? Phew, it's just the wind.

 

[Break]

Eh. Naturally, the version of a game on a console that's more complicated to develop for, is going to look sketchy in mid-development preview builds. They say in the interview that they could make it work better on the PS3, and that they're going to bring everything up to speed for launch, but it takes longer to achieve with the PS3 than with others. Which, let's face it, isn't exactly breaking news. If people are actually surprised by this, they either didn't read the interview, or are being really silly.

 

[Aura Guardian]

Valve and id software have problems developing for the PS3. Well Sony, what do you have to say?

 

[phoenix352]

Valve and id software have problems developing for the PS3. Well Sony, what do you have to say?

they would say the following : "we made it hard to develop for a reason"

now why is unclear but in speculation this is exactly what the developers of the "new" generation need a F'ing challenge every developer got so cozy(no idea how to write that)
with the current coding and stuff that they keep releasing the same games with different themes which have practically no innovation at all >.> . i say good on you sony make them work harder so their skills as programmers actually gets better instead of staying the same!

 

[mikecoulter]

I'm pretty sure it isn't Sony's fault...

Surely it's just how they've programmed it? If they cant access the PS3's power correctly, their programming skills aren't efficient enough.

 

[Nutcase]

the real shitter here is that id has coded Tech5 to work on all platforms right from the start, that includes the PS3. It's not just a port so to speak.

It doesn't mean they know exactly what to do on the PS3 branch. ID has never worked on asymmetric machines. It is not something that you learn overnight.

Anyways, this has my wondering just how bad it really is to work on the PS3.

Having seen LucasArt's troubles with the PS3 version of The Force Unleashed first hand, I instantly knew then that the PS3 was not a port-friendly platform, but LucasArts made TFU primarily on the 360 and then ported it to the PS3. PS3 testing for us started quite a while after the 360's testing began. Anyways, having Carmack come out and say that they are having some issues with the PS3 version of Rage really gets me to wonder why the hell Sony intentionally failed so badly.

Eh? PS3 works, and works well, if the programmers are good enough to begin with and have a little time to get their head wrapped around the Cell. That was pretty much apparent from the beginning when Sony announced what their architecture was going to be. Sure it would ease things if the RSX was a bit more powerful, and if the PPE was more powerful, so that people could do quick and dirty 1:1 ports from other systems and just leave all the remaining power be. But it's a good machine as is, and does some things that other platforms can't, such as this.

Spoiler

Solid 60Hz. <3 The video is crap, of course - with this game, unless you have seen it in person (preferably in 1080p as that is the true rendering resolution), you haven't seen it.

 

[DamienHell]

Wow I knew the PS3 was a pain to program on but....thats a huge difference.

 

[FloodOne]

Carmack said they're going to make all the versions run exactly the same. This game is still a year or more out from release. Fanboys have to get their panties unwedged from the asscrack and breathe.

John Carmack is one of the best programmers this industry has ever seen. I'm almost 100% sure he's up to the task.

 

[jboking]

Instead of trying to comprehend what sinister death just wrote, I think I'll ask something that could be a stupid question. What is Rage and why should I care?

its what people on the interwebs called the big "omfg Fallout 3 Rip-Off omgbbq!!!!"

A Fallout 3 that is actually an FPS. I'm interested already.

 

[Credge]

Carmack said they're going to make all the versions run exactly the same. This game is still a year or more out from release. Fanboys have to get their panties unwedged from the asscrack and breathe.

John Carmack is one of the best programmers this industry has ever seen. I'm almost 100% sure he's up to the task.

This.

Look, id is a really great company. The only thing people should be commenting on is how they took the wrong approach to developing this game. If you're making a multiplatform game, you develop first for the hardest platform and then port it out. That's how it should always be.

That's the only fault they've done at this point.

If the game is released with terrible FPS, then they'd be at fault big time.

Edit: Further, at this point, it's not a sign that they suck as developers. If the game is released and it's laggy, then sure. That's a sign that they're not that hot as we've all seen PS3 games that look incredible and play smoothly.

 

[Viruzzo]

What happened is simple: the PS2 was hard as hell to program for, but this meant that after many years game were made for it that were always more visually stunning. With this generation Sony did the same thing, not counting the fact that the system has changed, now there is a competitor that has easy of programming in his base advantages and that means having same quality (or better) for a much smaller price. Sure, in a few years we will probably see some incredible PS3 games, but here and now Sony's move is seriously damaging the PS3's chances. BTW note that the difference is that of a console made by a software company and one made by an electronics company.

I'm suprised though, didn't ID make UT3? Woulda thought they'd have known going from ps3 to 360 = easier then 360 to ps3.

No. That would be Epic.

Epic fail, to be precise.

I'm pretty sure it isn't Sony's fault...

Surely it's just how they've programmed it? If they cant access the PS3's power correctly, their programming skills aren't efficient enough.

That's really arguable. Sure, developers don't seem to be able to access PS3's full power, but it's also (actually, more) a fault on Sony's part for not being able to make their technology accessible (and we're talking about professional game developers, not amateurs).

 

[Nutcase]

It shouldn't matter either way (for me at least). I now have both PS3 and 360 but the point is I will play it on neither. id Software are PC developers, FPS games play best with a mouse + KB on PC, this is a PC game and though id will likely make the majority of their income from their console releases everyone should know it is the PC version that will be the definitive version.

Rage is not a pure FPS game, and Carmack himself said their primary UI focus is... a gamepad. The PC version might still be the definitive version - certainly it will look the best as long as your computer is up to it - but it might be that this time around you will have to plug a pad into that PC for the best experience.

One thing I worry about for those poor souls who only have a PS3, if after all this time of parallel development (yes SinisterDeath, all versions of this game HAVE been developed parallel) and the PS3 version is running at UNDER HALF the frame rate... you can't just magic out more performance.

You don't have an overall understanding of the technology involved. Assuming you wrote some platform-independent multithreaded code, it would run on only one core on the PS3, and the six SPU cores would be idling, while the code would run on all three cores of the 360. The expected thing here is that builds are dog slow up to a certain point and then rapidly ramp up in speed as the devs get around to offloading things on the SPUs. Which is what Carmack says they are doing now.

 

[Pendragon9]

Wow. This is a first. They don't seem to be able to grasp the PS3's tech. Sorry to all the Rage fans out there.

Still, the game should be enjoyable, right? If it's laggy, then I can see the problem.

 

[Zer_]

It shouldn't matter either way (for me at least). I now have both PS3 and 360 but the point is I will play it on neither. id Software are PC developers, FPS games play best with a mouse + KB on PC, this is a PC game and though id will likely make the majority of their income from their console releases everyone should know it is the PC version that will be the definitive version.

Rage is not a pure FPS game, and Carmack himself said their primary UI focus is... a gamepad. The PC version might still be the definitive version - certainly it will look the best as long as your computer is up to it - but it might be that this time around you will have to plug a pad into that PC for the best experience.

One thing I worry about for those poor souls who only have a PS3, if after all this time of parallel development (yes SinisterDeath, all versions of this game HAVE been developed parallel) and the PS3 version is running at UNDER HALF the frame rate... you can't just magic out more performance.

You don't have an overall understanding of the technology involved. Assuming you wrote some platform-independent multithreaded code, it would run on only one core on the PS3, and the six SPU cores would be idling, while the code would run on all three cores of the 360. The expected thing here is that builds are dog slow up to a certain point and then rapidly ramp up in speed as the devs get around to offloading things on the SPUs. Which is what Carmack says they are doing now.

"The rasteriser is just a little bit slower - no two ways about that...processing wise, the main CPU is about the same, but the 360 makes it easier to split things off, and that's where a lot of the work has been, splitting it all into jobs on the PS3."

Actually, according to id it seems they've already done a large portion of the offloading to SPUs. It is likely that the performance hit is more due to the GPU. They might rewrite some shaders and redo some of the rendering code to work more effectively with the PS3's GPU. They may yet find a more efficient way to distribute the workload on the cell, though who knows.

As for the FPS controls, what you said is simply false. There's a reason id Software said they were focusing on bringing out some great controls on the consoles, and that's because they've got all the mouse/keyboard controls to where they like it. The input coding from id Tech3 all the way up to Tech4 didn't change much at all. If anything the input code for Tech5 is not much different.

That's not to say they won't simplify some of the controls, but let's face it, id games are not known for their complex controls. Binding each weapon to a specific key is about as complicated as it's gotten. Assuming they add a few more interaction methods in Rage, then yeah maybe they'll use more buttons, but the 360 and PS3 controllers are definitely not lacking in buttons.

 

[Doug]

Well the issue is that the PS3 is difficult to program for. Just ask any developer out there, hence why the PS3 lost a bunch of exclusive titles that turned into multi-platform titles. Spec wise the PS3 is absolutely more powerful than a 360, the catch is re-designing your code to take advantage of all that horsepower, with budget issues and deadlines, it makes coding for the thing very difficult.

But heck, Sony wants it that way...

That and they intentionally made it hard to code for that necessary - mad, I know, but its apparently to 'stop them using all the power too early in the process'

 

[Jumplion]

Valve and id software have problems developing for the PS3. Well Sony, what do you have to say?

Get over it and just work? I dunno, you'd think people would get used to the PS3's hardware by now, but seeing as how id is primarily a PC developer like VALVe, I can't imagine them becoming masters overnight on their first game (to my knowledge, I'll retract that partially if wrong) on the PS3. 360, maybe, that's similar to PC, but even then it's all pretty different.

Besides, RAGE is supposed to be so big that it fills a Blu-ray disk and needs 2 or 3 360 discs, so take that Xbots!

 

[Treblaine]

It shouldn't matter either way (for me at least). I now have both PS3 and 360 but the point is I will play it on neither. id Software are PC developers, FPS games play best with a mouse + KB on PC, this is a PC game and though id will likely make the majority of their income from their console releases everyone should know it is the PC version that will be the definitive version.

Rage is not a pure FPS game, and Carmack himself said their primary UI focus is... a gamepad. The PC version might still be the definitive version - certainly it will look the best as long as your computer is up to it - but it might be that this time around you will have to plug a pad into that PC for the best experience.

One thing I worry about for those poor souls who only have a PS3, if after all this time of parallel development (yes SinisterDeath, all versions of this game HAVE been developed parallel) and the PS3 version is running at UNDER HALF the frame rate... you can't just magic out more performance.

You don't have an overall understanding of the technology involved. Assuming you wrote some platform-independent multithreaded code, it would run on only one core on the PS3, and the six SPU cores would be idling, while the code would run on all three cores of the 360. The expected thing here is that builds are dog slow up to a certain point and then rapidly ramp up in speed as the devs get around to offloading things on the SPUs. Which is what Carmack says they are doing now.

I guess it makes sense being gamepad based from all the driving in RAGE. I've been using a Wired X360 gamepad with PC games for a while now for PC based racing games that benefit so much from a gamepad yet it is amazing how poorly some PC games implement gamepad. Games for Windows titles usually don't have any problem.

Anyway, I think my computer is up for it, I built it myself with help from my dad, I selected all the components to give the best performance so I know a thing out two about what it takes to get the most out of a game. Mainly you need a powerful GPU and ample memory to get the job done and taking any old vanilla computer and upgrading those two you can take it from PS2 graphics to PS3 graphics, easily at totally reasonable cost.

With that I can say with confidence, CPU is not such a limit on frame-rate, in fact Carmack explicitly stated that it was the rasteriser (i.e. GPU, he uses the older term because he has been in the business for so long) that was the problem, which is completely separate from Teh Cell. In fact everyone has been incredibly sidetracked by the hype around Teh Cell since graphics are mainly rendered in a GPU, not CPU. The entire reason GPUs invented was because CPUs are so inefficient at rendering multi-polygon and large textures i.e. what makes games today look good. Some effects can be effectively offloaded to a CPU but they are still inefficient and need very careful resource management = hard to program.

Also, I know enough about the PS3 to know the PS3 only has FOUR Synergistic Processing Units' (SPU) available rather than 6 as was originally touted. This is because Teh Cells used in PS3s are basically all units that fail Sony's quality control for other commercial use (mainly supercomputers, servers, etc), where one of the 6 cores is faulty so is disabled so only 5 physical cores are active. On top of that the 5th core is ALWAYS reserved for PS3's background operating system, that 5th core is not available to developers now and no sign of it ever being made available in the future.

The SPUs are so complex the main Power Processing Element (PPE, actually almost identical to one of the three cores in Xbox 360's Xenon processor, only at a lower clock rate) is almost totally devoted just to managing the 4 + 1 SPUs.

So it is a lot more like 3 vs 4 in terms of sheer CPU power of 360 vs PS3 but bottlenecks like the rasteriser that Carmack has mentioned is a bit like having a 1000 horse power engine in a car yet spindly bicycle tires; if you can't transfer the power to the road then you aren't going to get the speed you expect.