Kojima interacts in real-time with MGS4 trailer at TGS

Isn't early development performed on a PC rather than actual hardware? Does any developer actually have a PS3 yet?

I think it's pretty to look at, however I'll reserve my own judgement for when I actually see it at a game store or TRU.

Oops...

Sorry Dan Choi... I hadn't seen your comment at number 13.... (now 14 actually) I guess I'll make an exception for ya :)

[Yeah, there was a rather fanboy-ish comment made at the "new" #1 -- it was just publicly activated a few days after being made. I have chosen to hide it again. =)

--Dan]

Wtf are you guys talking about? If you think that the trailer was real in game footage then you are smoking crack. People here hinestly believe that was real? I have lost all faith in man kind. How stupid do you get? As for the fake trailer that I just saw, It was alright and if the ps3 can do it then its going to be alright. From what ive seen from Gears of War, I think Microsoft will win this generation.

Anyone who thinks that Microsoft will win the next gen, based simply on Gears Of War....well buddy, you are out of your freakin' mind!

They're all corporate pimps, and you're all playing into their hands. Companies will take the best of what they can show in their arena, and put it "out there" to create buzz.

We video game consumers have been fooled about 1,455,394 times by screencaps or fmvs touting the newest title, only to end up with something like River Raid (didn't the 2600 carts' box art make you drool?).

And every generation, they get us to wag our tongues. It's just the box art that's fancier now. And all the fanboys here will buy one for their favorite system to prove the other guys wrong in the spirit of rivalry.

Congratulations on being corporate sheep. I, for one, will buy all the consoles to prove I'm not a sheep. ;) (After that 2nd mortgage comes through)

"Did you know that the GPU is a part of the same SYSTEM as the CPU?"

Yep. Did you know that these two components operate loosely asynchronously? In a consumer/producer paradigm where you are bound by the producer, it isn't fair to say the consumer is doing all the work.

Remember, I'm not saying the MGS4 trailer isn't realtime, I'm just saying it does not justify getting one's hopes up. I would much rather see some real gameplay footage, and show them hand the controller off to a fan in the audience.

"While canned graphics demos(Nvidia) are the pinnacle of power/performance display and not a measurment of graphics achievable in a gameplay environment, they still tout the performance of the graphics subsystem, and are not drastically different than what can be achieved in the gameplay environment."

So you're saying that, for any generation of geforce cards, the demos released by nvidia are not drastically different than the graphic quality in games based on the same cards? Okay, just checking to make sure that's what you meant.

Yes, I agree that they are demonstrating as close to the theoretical performance of the graphics chip as they can get. I disagree that adding an actual game engine behind it will not impact performance. And I disagree that showing theoretical performance (or even talking about such numbers) adds anything meaningful to the conversation of next generation gaming. They are just figures of male posturing used to convince the consumer prematurely.

Remember, I'm not saying the MGS4 trailer isn't realtime, and I sincerely hope the final game looks as good as the trailer. I'm simply saying there isn't any reason to get your hopes up.

"While arguably yes, physics can be baked to keyframes, animation is still realtime or its prerendered, as by its nature..."

Imagine a scene where a bullet hits several ragdoll objects. You pre-calculate the physics calculations, which in turn allows you to pre-calculate the animation of the ragdolls the bullet struck. If it can be calculated beforehand, you do so. This is the nature of realtime trailers.

The point is, they *could* pre-calculate everything to the point where the cpu is merely streaming data from the hard drive, in final, fully transformed, form. The graphics card could treat everything like it was in screenspace, and essentially skip any frontend calculations.

Now, I'm not saying they actually *did* any of this, I'm merely pointing out that they *could*, and that being the case, a little skepticism is wise.

"his isn't even necessary to mention, as while you'd be correct for a canned realtime demo, occlusion culling (hardware especially) is so prevalent, overdraw is minimized extensively."

That's debatable. I would say that even in these circumstances, there is no reason to NOT store a list, per frame, of the visible objects. Remember, their goal is to get as close to theoretical as possible. Even if it's only a minor performance boost, you do it - because in the end your trailer lives as a result of many minor performance boosts.

Again, I'm not saying the MGS4 trailer was not realtime. I'm just saying it's not a bad policy to be skeptical at this point. It's still easily a year before anyone gets a chance to buy this game, so Sony can literally show anything they want at this point without consumers holding them accountable. (Some of you will note that I said the exact same thing about Nintendo and MS when they were a year out from launch).

I never said that their use of sprites was not fair, I merely pointed out the possibility that a slew of graphical tricks were employed that would probably not be used in the real game. (Again, it's wise to be skeptical).

Image caching is very useful for distant objects because the parallax shift is very minor. You can't use this technique for nearby objects in a real game because the effect is not maintained. In a realtime trailer however, it's not only easy, it's common practice. If you know for example that either the camera or the object (or hopefully both) are stationary or moving at a predestined speed on a preset course, you have immense image space optimization possibilities. There are a slew of siggraph papers on this, but the best are from 2001-2003. If you would like references, I can provide them.

"I don't even know how to take this? While I may not have touched a PS3, I am developing on next-gen tech, the same next-gen tech that was run on the proposed PS3 platform at the E3."

It's funny that you take this so personal. I'm sorry - I didn't mean to offend you (and it wasn't even directed at you).

"I'm not trying to impress anyone with my pedigree or deceive anyone for personal gain. Rather, you can take it for what its worth, and that I can at least offer some insight as to what you have all been seeing regarding next-gen graphics."

You sound very pompous. I don't think any of us need to be enlightened by your insight or pedigree.

Again, I'm not saying anything negative about the MSG4 demo. Nor am I trying to act as an "indifferent fanboy" - check my track record, I've posted on here many times, and I have always been unbiased towards all platforms. I am simply pointing out logic that defies the marketing agenda that is being shoved down everyone's throats.

:)

Why is it when ppl say Gears of War they automatically assume it's in-game footage, but when they see MGS4, they think it's video and that the PS3 will fail?

This site should remove comment postings.

There isn't a comptuer or console aroud that could produce an entire game like that. The MGS4 is obvious Sony hype once again. I would love to see a game look that good, and if the PS3 can produce visuals that play as good as they look, then I may have 2 consoles in my A/V cabinet.

As it stands, I've seen actual 360 games, and I even played one or two at E3, my money is going towards 360 at the onset. If and when games such as this MGS4 "video" appear then I will certainly consider a PS3.

...raise your hand if you realize how meaningless this display was.

Does anyone have a link to the "realtime" demo link. 1UP had to remove theirs. Anyone cache it?

Now I'm pompous? Wow, is this how you talk to all the people you simply do not know?

...you said it wasn't directed at me yet you quoted me so...um.

Bottom line, Sony always deceives, but Kojima in the past has not...so in all fairness to the integrity of the man himself, I'm calling this realtime projected for gameplay. The sheer fact that he included that clip of Killzone2 at the end would be incredibly audacious if he backed off his proclamation that this was all realtime and having it be 'less than' on release.

Wow, this is incredible. I've never seen anything like it. Hideo Kojima is able to make a trailer utilizing the in game engine rendered on the fly so convincing that he fooled people in thinking it's fake. Wow, just wow.

Because of that. Hideo Kojima is my hero and God. If you're able to produce something with such graphic fidelity that people scream "FAKE!", well, then you are a God amongst men. Little men.

You know what else is funny in that real time trailer? It looks like Otacon is giving Snake the finger when he props up his glasses. Not that I think of things like this when it happens, but when I first saw the low quality trailer I seriously thought he gave him the finger. Then I saw he was fixig his glasses a second time through.

"This site should remove comment postings."

LINES, I've just removed a few, how you say, fanboy-ish postings. Hope that helps, but let's try to keep things civil, everybody.

I'll also note the changes over at 1UP, brake, but I don't think we have the bandwidth to support video hosting of that magnitude here. Remember, though, that the official trailer's up at Kojima/Konami's site, and that GameTrailers has the better audio versions on their site.

EvoG: "While canned graphics demos(Nvidia) are the pinnacle of power/performance display and not a measurment of graphics achievable in a gameplay environment, they still tout the performance of the graphics subsystem, and are not drastically different than what can be achieved in the gameplay environment."

CB4D: "So you're saying that, for any generation of geforce cards, the demos released by nvidia are not drastically different than the graphic quality in games based on the same cards? Okay, just checking to make sure that's what you meant."

---

Dripping with sarcasm, but sarcasm helps when you know what you are talking about. That's not what he is saying. If you knew what you were talking about, you'd realize that a graphics subsystem demo like Nvidia's only shows you what is possible within that subsystem independent of typical system bottlenecks. Just because your "old architecture" systems (PC's and consoles alike) haven't been able to come closer to that paradigm doesn't mean you can say the same thing about these radically different next-gen systems which have a lot more fast bandwidth between the main processor and the graphics subsystem. The PS3's (and XB360's for that matter) architecture SHOULD allow it's graphics subprocessor to come closer to that operational zenith than ever before. That's the whole design concept of both systems, though they use somewhat different means to get there.

---

CB4D: "Yes, I agree that they are demonstrating as close to the theoretical performance of the graphics chip as they can get. I disagree that adding an actual game engine behind it will not impact performance. And I disagree that showing theoretical performance (or even talking about such numbers) adds anything meaningful to the conversation of next generation gaming. They are just figures of male posturing used to convince the consumer prematurely.

---

The NVIDIA demos aren't showing "theoretical performance," they are showing *actual* performance. They are manipulating/rendering the objects in real-time, so it is real performance. The only difference is those subsystem demos are running in a sandbox that doesn't have bottlenecks. The theoretical performance part only comes in when you mate the subsystem within the rest of the system and they have to work together. You seem to be determined not to see the strides that both the PS3 and the XB360 have made to minimize those communication problems and be a skeptic based on *old models* of performance in either the last-gen consoles, or current PCs, which have nothing to do with these consoles.

---

CB4D: "Again, I'm not saying the MGS4 trailer was not realtime. I'm just saying it's not a bad policy to be skeptical at this point. It's still easily a year before anyone gets a chance to buy this game, so Sony can literally show anything they want at this point without consumers holding them accountable. (Some of you will note that I said the exact same thing about Nintendo and MS when they were a year out from launch). "

---

Fine. Except "Sony" isn't showing this. Kojima is. Kojima has always been very accountable for what he shows, and hasn't made such a stir this week because he just randomly throws pretty pictures out there that have no basis in reality. What Kojima shows always shows up in the game, usually looking *better* than it did in the demo.

This is the reason people don't have to be as skeptical. Proven results. A history of excellence and a flawless reputation for not hyping the fans on something he can't deliver.

You can ignore Kojima's reputation and history of tech and artistic excellence, just as you can ignore the PS3's raw processing speed and system bandwidth.

I cannot ignore those things. That's why I'm as giddy as a schoolgirl for this next-gen of consoles.

"LINES, I've just removed a few, how you say, fanboy-ish postings. Hope that helps, but let's try to keep things civil, everybody."

(RANT)
Not to go offtopic, but I don't think it's the fanboy comments that are so troublesome on these boards. It's the trolls.

You know. The ones who enters a thread and contributes nothing but flamebait. I can't seem to come on these boards and actually discuss a game that I happen to like without someone saying I'm an idiot to believe that this is real time, or that PS3 sucks I should by an Xbox. You know what I mean? I know, I should just ignore them. But how can you ignore something that quickly overwhelms the thread.

I'm not saying you should delete everything that is flamebait, I don't believe in that type of censorship, but I think the moderators should be more active in the discussion.

Just look at joysticks latest poll.

http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000480054841/

It's obvious that Xbox and nintendo users outnumber the PS users. I know, it's an intentions of purchase poll, but it shows where we are now. It goes to show that I can't post anything remotely positive that has anythig to do with the Playstation game console, without being pounced on by rabid fans telling me otherwise. And not only that, they're so persistent. This past threads involving Konami is a testament to this behaviour.

I'm not telling anyone how to do their job, nor suggesting to change policy. I'm merely pointing out what I have observed over the past couple of weeks leading up to TGS, and now soon the release date of the Xbox 360. Emotions are running high and I guess it's expected that things can get out of hand.

(END OF RANT)

BUT! You guys have no idea what "degredation of civility" means until you experience the Ottawa Senators vs Toronto Maple Leafs playoff battle royale. I don't think the moderators of the hockey forums even bother sticking their necks in.

Anyways, Leafs suck!

"I'm not saying you should delete everything that is flamebait, I don't believe in that type of censorship, but I think the moderators should be more active in the discussion."

That can be a tough balance to maintain, but we try. Feel free to let me know in what ways I can be more active in terms of addressing flame bait beyond giving warnings and locking/deleting posts. Wait, did you mean something else? Hope I understood you correctly.

Nono you had it nailed, I think the mere presence of the moderators will be enough to deter anyone from posting jibberish (like a bouncer at a bar). As with any boards, it's always interesting to hear views from everybody, whether it be acclamations or criticisms. And I think it's really cool that there are some developers even posting here. But hoards of people yelling out "flamebait" is just annoying. And this goes for everybody. I find it equally annoying when someone goes to a thread relating to Revolution/X360 and does the same thing.

I think so far what you guys are doing is great, only intervening when it gets too dicey. I understand it's a tough balance to maintain, and i'm not asking the mods to go above and beyond what they're doing now. But by merely posting on threads, even if they have to be warnings, should be sufficient to steer a thread back on track.

That way we can hopefully eliminate people from yelling out (it's fake, it's not real time!, Sony has once again lied to us), despite evidence to the contrary.

These are the statements that pretty much get a ball rolling into a flame war.

Anyways, that's all i have to say about this. I shouldn't make a big deal out of this. As this is one of the best gaming blogs out there.

And I know, I am just as guilty as some of these posters, but I've learned my lesson.

this demo was pretty nice, considering it was real time and not renderd! awesome i cant wait for the ps3 and the xbox360! both these consoles will do great, but im predicting the ps3 will pull it out around the holiday 2006 area

I was just wondering, how do current PS3 development kit specifications/hardware configurations compare to the final PS3 specifications/hardware configurations? This would help in determining the validity of this real-time demonstration. Thank you.

To xbair:

I think the current PS3 kit only has the nvidia Geforce 7800 GTX in it with a Cell processor(I can't remember the speed) . I am not very sure though...but I remember I read it somewhere before. I can't remember exactly where. Sorry I don't have the URL.

At the TGS they said that the screens and the trailer weren't prerendered, I hope that is true and that we see these graphics during the gameplay

http://www.psxextreme.com/scripts/ps3-scrs/scr.asp?scrID=32

xbair: From what I've read and other stuff I've heard from a friend who's a project manager for a software dev. the minimum specs should be now be pretty much set, as a few select larger devs. and some who have potential launch titles have received or are just now getting their second dev. kits. The second kits, called beta kits, can be used for a lot of real development, as the minimum specs/features for the system are pretty much set in the beta kit.

There weren't a lot of the first kits around, most of the smaller developers only ordered 3-4 units to start and were waiting for the second kit. This is kind of normal, as far as I was told, partly because the alpha kits were not really close to the specs, and partly because they were somwhere in the neighborhood of the cost of an automobile.

They expect to have the third kit, a "near-final" or "final specs" beta kit, in their offices in mid-late December. From this kit they will know exactly how far they can push it beyond where they were with the minimum specs of the first beta kit kit. They almost always get a significant, (but not huge) performance boost in the transition from the first beta and "near-final" kit.

If Sony cut a feature or significantly lowered a performance spec during this transition they would be seen as totally screwing their developers. So the last chance to see if performance/features get cut should be mid-late December, but I doubt Sony would want to do that and face the anger.

If they lowered the specs or cut a feature as many Sony-haters suggest they will, we'll probably know really soon, with these beta kits that developers are getting right now. Kojima Studios were one of only a few developers to get these beta kits early, and they didn't say anything negative from what I've read. EA also got some early betas. They were praising the power of the PS3 at TGS to the Japanese developers at their MoH presentation, and they are more well-known for publicly expressing displeasure with hardware than Kojima, to be sure.

Strangely enough this "near-final" or "final specs" kit isn't usually what they actually call the "final" kit, but that's how they do it apparently. (I always thought it went 'alpha,' 'beta,' and then 'final,' but apparently not.) The "final" kits are just streamlined versions of these previous kits with any extra stuff taken out, and they are more of a mass-produced item using mostly the actual parts from the consumer version of the console, which is quite a bit less expensive. My buddy said the PS3 alpha kits were incredibly expensive, which is why only like 700-800 were built for the whole world.

After all this bullshit,here's what I say,and if you don't like it,then you can suck it.

1. Who gives a shit if anything on the PS3/Xbox360/Revolution is real-time,the novelty of "omg GRAFIX!" has passed,all the shit looks the same.

2. Don't hate/love a company name/logo,play the console that has the games on it that YOU like to play.

3. I'm sick of hearing negativity when all these new consoles are coming out for US GAMERS.Be happy already,you're getting tons of new games that you can play and enjoy on a new console that will do amazing new things.

4. Quit bickering about who's fucking Hess Truck is better,they're all equally as good,it's what you like on it that matters to you and only you.

Thank you,and enjoy your day.

It would be interesting to compare the developement kit used with this demonstration's strengths and weaknesses to the final PS3's strengths and weaknesses. I have a feeling they might be different beasts.

I don't what "in-game" or "real-time" means...sony says that the UnrealTournament3 demo was "in-game"...I thought that was when you actually had the controller playing the acutall game for everyone to see...Im not a fanboy,im gettin all 3 consoles but I do lean more to Microsoft and Nintendo than Sony...Sony is just ALOT of lies.How can you beleive that the MGS4 demo was real-time after they said that the Killzone2 trailers was real-time...which everyone found out it wasnt.The owner of Sony said it wasnt but an employee said it was,finally the people who made the pre-rendered video said so.I really think that the actual PS3 will not look anything like Killzone2,MGS4,or URT3.Remember,these are the same people that said the PS2 will have photo-like graphics and alot more...I wont go into detail,they also said the PS3 will be 2x more powerful than the Xbox360...i doubt it,if you want to debate about that then IM me at Burgessjkkb@AIM chicken_n_gritz05@yahoo.So when I see any of these so called "in-game" and "real-time" demos actually being played with a PS3 controller on the PS3...ill beleive what I see.PEACE

I hate fanboys. It doesn't even matter which system is more powerful. The Xbox was more powerful than the ps2, yet didn't have as many good games so it wasn't as popular. All that matters is the games. Why not just get all 3 systems?

I know you 15 year olds don't have jobs so you can probably only get one system for christmas, but the rest of us will just buy any or all the systems, i owned a ps2, xbox, and gamecube, and all were good in different ways.

Thats why fanboys are all so stupid, they can only afford one system since their 15 and so they have to do everything they can to try and convince themselves that their system is the best.

Every Metal Gear game has used real time graphics for their cut scenes, every E3 and TGS preview has been in real time, even MGS2 which at the time looked impossible. Honestly even though MGS4 looks great, its not so much greater than MGS2 that it looks fake.

So based on that, do you really think they would go to all the trouble of making a prerendered cut scene for this game only, then scrap it and remake everything for the actual console.

Also, even though changing camera angles and lighting isn't the same as playing the game, it does prove that it is real time.

The point is it doesn't matter, the gamecube was more powerful than the ps2, but look what happened to it (even though personally i like it a lot), it didn't sell because it didn't have as many good games.

This game is real time, and it will probably be ported to xbox360 just like mgs2 was, so stop whining.

here are my views(MY views);
*xbox has better games than ps2. all it hasn't got at the moment is MGS3 and Grand Turismo.
*sony are amazingly good at advertising
*sony will most likely win the so called "console wars" again, because of thier great advertising skills.
*dunno if it was real time or not, but that MGS4 trailer pwns. Especially the attention to detail is great.
*I hope Halo 3 will have graphics like that, or if not at least alot bigger maps.

Alright folks, being a CS major, I have some idea of what I'm talking about. First take a look at any demo of any 2yr old graphics card that is interactive. Its amazing how realistic they are in facial lighting/stucture, texture detail, etc. Have you seen any games that look exactly like that? NO. It's easy as f&*%in pie to render a chars face and nothing else. I could take a 2yr old computer and put all its processing power into rendering a 3D face with dynamic lighting and such with nothing else using the processors (cpu/gpu) and it would look photo-realistic too. ALL ITS POWER IS GOING INTO RENDERING THAT ONE OBJECT. Lets have Phony give us a complete, playable demo of MGS4 that has everything the "interactive" demo says it does. And for those of you that say the PS3 has better, faster hardware than the xbox360, think again. If you know anything about vector math, which is HEAVILY used in games, in fact CS in general, you would know that the architecture of the 3 core power-pc cpu is far more capable of vector math than the Cell proc. Secondly, integer math is primarily used in games as well, due to the fact that games are simulated and do not reflect what actually happens in the real world, although its close. integer math is far faster than floating-point which makes the game more efficient and run faster, allowing for higher FPS. Just what the hell is the PS3 made for if Kutaragi says its not for gaming? Im not gonna hide the fact that i'm an Xbox fanboy for one (MS first console was stellar and made from crap pc components), and that US made games are better than Jap games (is every asian a 2yr old, cuz the games sure make em seem that way). Phony needs to kick Kutagari and hire someone whos not an arrogant bastard (any1 else remember the psp incident?). Kudos to Konami for making a serious, semi-fps, kick-ass looking game (in CGI), but until they show a true, real-time demo in which every aspect of gaming is included, ie physics, ai, etc, Phony just shows they're making another strike for the Cell's lackluster performance in regards to true general-purpose computing. 3 words ppl...ok...six: Gears of War demo true gameplay. All that needs saying for soon to be xbox 360

oh yeah, any1 else think that snake has turned into an old neo-assasin, shinto master?