More realistic games if customed made for specific PC hardware?

[AndroidVageta]

Me and a friend were just discussing about whether or not PC games could look and act more realistic if taken full advantage of the hardware and software...completely coded and made for that PC...think console games. Xbox 360 and PS3 games look as good as they do because they are made specifically for that system, to use the hardware to the limit.

Current generation game console hardware is going on 4 years old now. With slow CPU's, less RAM, and weaker GPU's games still look like their high-end PC brethren.

My question to you is how much better do you think PC games would look like if they were custom fitted to a PC's individual parts? Imagine a modern higher end PC...talking a Intel i7 or even down to a Core 2 Quad or Phenom II, 4-6GB of RAM, ATi 5890 - 4890 Xfire or GTX285 SLi, etc...any of these combinations is vastly superior to current consoles but yet produce almost the same graphics that they do. Sure PC gamers have higher resolutions and better textures, AA, AF...but overall the games are a lot of the times remain basically the same.

What do you think a custom made PC game would be like? Using all the cores to the maximum, taking full advantage of a current GPU (i.e. above), and 8 - 12+ times the RAM...

 

[Zacharry]

From what I understand, it's more about tailoring specific hardware to game development.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor)

The cell microprocessor is specifically engineered to be able to perform the function required of it.

Current consumer microprocessors are made to be able to handle a wide variety of tasks.

To those in the know, do I make sense?

 

[spikespiegal]

The reason Console games keep up with more state of the art PC hardware is just that; the developers are forced to do the best with the existing hardware that is optimized for the task.

Realism is subjective. I find games that have consistent frame rates and attention to detail more important than brute force. Higher frame rates and resolution doesn't instantly equate to more realism in my book.

 

[soccerballtux]

From what I understand, it's more about tailoring specific hardware to game development.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor)

The cell microprocessor is specifically engineered to be able to perform the function required of it.

Current consumer microprocessors are made to be able to handle a wide variety of tasks.

To those in the know, do I make sense?

problem with the cell is it takes extra work to code your data specifically in a way that the SPEs can be used. Sony chose the Cell for BluRay decoding-- they planned this way before any video cards were accelerating HD video decoding.

Microsoft did the right thing, in my opinion, and just slapped 3 dual-threaded in-order-execution processors on. In order = weaker, but dual threading made up for that just like it does on Intel's Atom. It's much easier on the programmer to simply worry about threads than it is to have to specifically code AI into some obscure matrix format that the SPEs can easily and efficiently work on.

 

[abhaybhegde]

My question to you is how much better do you think PC games would look like if they were custom fitted to a PC's individual parts? I.

IMO,it's really a challenging task to code for the PC platform ,not because of the difficulties involved in the coding alone but also the change in the PC architecture

Intel and AMD , both keep changing their Processor for every 2 years.Typically a low to medium budget game ,spends a 1 - 2 years in Game development.So by the time they finish their project and their title ready to be shipped a new architecture would have already been in the market.

Add to it, you will have to cope up with GPU side as well .
Hence game developers really need to think ahead of time while designing a game for the PC alone.

 

[AndroidVageta]

All of you have vaild points, but fail to answer to question...the lot of you are getting to technical LOL.

This is a "what if?" scenario...that is all.

 

[Gibsons]

the lot of you are getting to technical LOL.

The forum is called "highly technical." What did you expect?

 

[AndroidVageta]

Well, it is technical just based on the topic matter, but again, I wanted this to be a "what if" situation.

 

[AbsoluteParadigm]

Depends on what types of games really I think. Certain games would scale very well with hardware on realism, like racing games. I've seen ray-traced renders of car models, and I really have trouble distinguishing that render vs an actual picture. However, other games like RPGs, where there's people, no amount of hardware advancement can make humans behave realistically to any degree. That's more of a programming limitation.

 

[jimhsu]

Graphical realism is only one small part (that I don't care so much about). What I do care about in game development right now is AI: either a) massively parallel simulations of thousands of individual AI units (i.e. a war), or b) extremely intelligent motivation-based AI (which does NOT mean that the AI is extremely "good" at the game, BTW). Currently few games deliver on one or the other, and it is currently computationally infeasible to develop an AI that does both. GPGPU may slowly change that though...

I.e. a scenario:

1. Dark corridor. AI cannot see player.
2. AI sees "something" blocking a ray of light. (happens to be the player). Goes to check out what it is.
3. Player throws grenade. Explodes at nearby wall. AI is shocked (severe penalty to aim for a few seconds), and then goes check out wall, then tries to deduce where grenade came from.
4. Walking to place where grenade should have been, AI finds nothing. Spooked out, he tries to report to his superiors.
5. Player stops that with a knife on his back.

This is only an example with a "brave" AI. An AI with the "coward" personality would go straight to step 4, while an AI with the "psychotic" personality would fire at random at every dark corner in the room.

Currently some games (i.e. Crysis) do implement one or more of these things, but the behavior never seems "natural". All actors have the same reaction to stimuli, same degree of perception, etc.

 

[AndroidVageta]

Ive always been interested in that...AI with common sense is the best way to put it in my situation.

Games like Prototype...where they know a tank cant hurt me but they endlessly keep sending them and the AI is all like "this will be it!" When in REAL LIFE soldiers would be like "fuck that shit, Im going to die"...AI that reflected this kind of common sense would be awesome.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Ive always been interested in that...AI with common sense is the best way to put it in my situation.

Games like Prototype...where they know a tank cant hurt me but they endlessly keep sending them and the AI is all like "this will be it!" When in REAL LIFE soldiers would be like "fuck that shit, Im going to die"...AI that reflected this kind of common sense would be awesome.

Realistic AI? Forget it man, when games like C&C 3 clicking a enemy tank with my selected forces means my snipers must uselessly shoot the tank instead of, the enemy infantry around it.

 

[Modelworks]

Gaming should not be about being more realistic or better graphics, it is all about the game play. Chess is such a simple game to understand the rules, but the game play takes a life time to master. I am afraid if the trend continues to focus on graphics and catchy terms that it is only going to get worse, no game play but wonderful cut scenes to watch.

 

[schneiderguy]

With slow CPU's, less RAM, and weaker GPU's games still look like their high-end PC brethren.

No they dont. Take MW2 for example. The console version doesn't even run at 720p on consoles, has no AA or anisotropic filtering, and isn't running the equivalent of high graphics on the PC version. The PC version can be maxed out by a 9600gt at 1080p. A 9600gt is low end hardware.

So really, all the consoles manage to do is fail to keep up with low end hardware that is running at over twice the resolution and higher detail settings. :hmm:

 

[SonicIce]

You might find arcade games interesting. The new ones these days basically use a PC inside. Some of the screenshots are pretty good for the rather old (p3, p4, pentium D) hardware they use. And from what I understand the games are written specifically for that hardware and use no real OS so there's no overhead.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sega_arcade_system_boards

 

[soccerballtux]

No they dont. Take MW2 for example. The console version doesn't even run at 720p on consoles, has no AA or anisotropic filtering, and isn't running the equivalent of high graphics on the PC version. The PC version can be maxed out by a 9600gt at 1080p. A 9600gt is low end hardware.

So really, all the consoles manage to do is fail to keep up with low end hardware that is running at over twice the resolution and higher detail settings. :hmm:

whoa it doesn't? what resolution does it run at?

 

[Smartazz]

whoa it doesn't? what resolution does it run at?

The PS3 and Xbox 360 run it at 600p(1024 by 600). I've seen MW2 multiplayer up close in person on a 360 and it doesn't look that great. There's jaggies everywhere and a lot of the textures look really bad. That being said, there are still some nice looking effects.

 

[Smartazz]

To answer your question OP, games would probably look a lot better visually, but the processors found in PCs wouldn't trump the ones found in consoles due to their generality. The Cell and Xenos are more specialized than the i7, Ph2, etc.

 

[bobsmith1492]

To answer your question OP, games would probably look a lot better visually, but the processors found in PCs wouldn't trump the ones found in consoles due to their generality. The Cell and Xenos are more specialized than the i7, Ph2, etc.

The processor has little to do with the graphics. The latest graphics cards are far superior to what's in consoles. Also, I think the i7 is still more powerful than the cell; the only thing the cell had going for it is multiple cores which aren't easy to work with and so usually don't even help. Perhaps for physics processing the cell could be powerful, but even there, graphics cards are starting to take over from the CPU on PCs, pushing them even further ahead in terms of available processing power. One modern graphics card has several times the processing power available in any console.

 

[soccerballtux]

To answer your question OP, games would probably look a lot better visually, but the processors found in PCs wouldn't trump the ones found in consoles due to their generality. The Cell and Xenos are more specialized than the i7, Ph2, etc.

Xenos is not "specialized" it is "specially weak", read the wiki article on it-- it's IOE only; desktop processors are all OOE (Atoms excluded)

 

[soccerballtux]

The processor has little to do with the graphics. The latest graphics cards are far superior to what's in consoles. Also, I think the i7 is still more powerful than the cell; the only thing the cell had going for it is multiple cores which aren't easy to work with and so usually don't even help. Perhaps for physics processing the cell could be powerful, but even there, graphics cards are starting to take over from the CPU on PCs, pushing them even further ahead in terms of available processing power. One modern graphics card has several times the processing power available in any console.

yeah those "cores" aren't really "cores" at all, they're just FPUs+VPUs.

 

[BushLin]

To the OP, what you've asked is pretty much answered by the original XBOX.

It ran a 733Mhz Pentium III with 64Mb of shared 200Mhz DDR, 5x DVD-ROM, 8GB HDD, 10/100 ethernet, the "soundstorm" chip used in Nvidia chipsets and essentially a cut down Geforce 4 for video, USB ports...

At the time they could have used higher specification hardware, however, as console manufacturer you want to please the developers by selling as many consoles as possible. The cost of a system you imagine would multiply the price of such a console and therefore not generate enough sales to ensure the big titles are made for it.

At the same time they want to deliver a platform that'll allow even the most complex games of the next few years to run smoothly and look good on a living room setup. However, they won't try to compete with the latest PC hardware unless it's financially feasible.

If you want to run most console titles at higher resolutions, with higher detail settings, you buy PC hardware that'll cope with it... most folk don't want to make that kind of investment and just want to play the game. Sadly I want to play Pro Evo at 1080p with full detail at 60fps and no console will do that currently.

 

[cheesehead]

Several models of arcade hardare offered by Sega are actually just PCs using Intel processors and Nvidia graphics cards. While I would imagine that some benefit results from coding games for a specific CPU and graphics card, the end result is pretty close to what you'd get from a generic PC game running on equivalent hardware.

On the other hand, power consumption can be dropped drastically by coding for specific hardware. For example, the Apple MacBook is really just a standard PC laptop using standard PC components. However, Mac OS manages to get seven hours of battery life, while Windows only gets five.

 

[soccerballtux]

Several models of arcade hardare offered by Sega are actually just PCs using Intel processors and Nvidia graphics cards. While I would imagine that some benefit results from coding games for a specific CPU and graphics card, the end result is pretty close to what you'd get from a generic PC game running on equivalent hardware.

On the other hand, power consumption can be dropped drastically by coding for specific hardware. For example, the Apple MacBook is really just a standard PC laptop using standard PC components. However, Mac OS manages to get seven hours of battery life, while Windows only gets five.

the main benefits are that you can access the hardware directly if you're not running Windows underneath the game.

 

[NeoPTLD]

A relatively primitive CPU in a handheld camcorder can encode high definition in 1080p or 720p real time, but it would take all the resources on a good computer. This is a good example of application specific hardware.

On the opposite, Adobe Flash based games take a huge amount of CPU resource even though the games' graphic quality resemble that of SNES games.

I think there will be a good amount of inefficiency as long as the program has to be coded around the hardware. i.e. making a encoder/decoder to run on x86 architecture.

You'll need a fuel powered generator to provide hundreds of watts needed to run a standard computer to process the raw signal from the CCD and encode to HDTV standard in real time and such a setup would look like a 1970s VHS camcorder with separate unit for camera unit and a separate unit for recording/processing unit.