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[KAGE360]

QUOTE

One of the most interesting talks at London’s GDC (Games Developers Conference) this week came form one of the lesser known companies called Allegorithmic, who claim they will be able to reduce texture file sizes in games by up to 70%.

Their new programs, that they hope development artists will soon be using as an industry standard, are called ProFX and MaP Zone 2. Their ambition is to keep the graphical quality of game textures at the same standards as current games, whilst dramatically reducing the amount of data required for the game to work.

QUOTE

Confused by the fact that I hadn’t heard about this technology before, I spoke to one of the men behind it directly - Dr Sébastien Deguy. He assured me that there were no catches with his system, that if a game contained 1GB of textures he would be able to reduce that to 300MB and lose no quality. When I asked why everyone wasn’t using the program at the moment he explained it was due to people needing to be retrained in learning a new system. He was optimistic however, that soon all games companies will be using their new texture tools.

So what are the implications for you and I? In terms of traditionally packaged games that come in boxes, there probably won’t be much difference. Dr Deguy argues that if textures are smaller in file size and easier to create, then next-generation companies will be able to create even more textures for the games. We may then see a big leap forward in how richly detailed games are in the future as they triple the variety of textures the game includes.

http://www.bit-tech...._be_70_smaller/

i really hope this catches on for many reasons.  Not only should this help anyone's concern about DVD-9 being enough, it could also support more detailed textures and a bigger veriaty of them

[JustDanMI]

I like the fact that they can make the arcade games look even better now that they can get better graphics in less space.

[KAGE360]

QUOTE(JustDanMI @ Oct 5 2006, 11:38 AM)

I like the fact that they can make the arcade games look even better now that they can get better graphics in less space.

yup.  like it was mentioned in the article these techniques are already being used in Roboblitz while also using precederal synthesis, they are able to get an unreal engine 3 game on the live arcade

[twistedsymphony]

Awesome...

It looks like compression techniques on all fronts has taken giant leaps forward since last gen

-the VC-1 codec is capable of putting HD videos in the same space as SD videos in MPEG2
-Improved real time rendering reduces the need for videos to almost nothing
-Audio compression has almost doubled in ability since last gen
-And now Textures...

I'd be curious to see how much they estimate existing titles (both current and last gen) would shrink using these techniques...

[KAGE360]

QUOTE(twistedsymphony @ Oct 5 2006, 12:03 PM)

Awesome...

It looks like compression techniques on all fronts has taken giant leaps forward since last gen

-the VC-1 codec is capable of putting HD videos in the same space as SD videos in MPEG2
-Improved real time rendering reduces the need for videos to almost nothing
-Audio compression has almost doubled in ability since last gen
-And now Textures...

I'd be curious to see how much they estimate existing titles (both current and last gen) would shrink using these techniques...

also it should be mentioned that XNA compresses and stores content on the game disk to drop the size of golden games by at least 15% from last gen

[sidewinder33]

This is going to piss off a lot of ps3 early adopters when they start putting regular dvd drives in the second gen Ps3's bc they no longer need the extra space. I wonder if it increased read times, or what there has to be a catch somewhere it just can't be this good for us.

[KAGE360]

QUOTE(sidewinder33 @ Oct 5 2006, 12:56 PM)

This is going to piss off a lot of ps3 early adopters when they start putting regular dvd drives in the second gen Ps3's bc they no longer need the extra space. I wonder if it increased read times, or what there has to be a catch somewhere it just can't be this good for us.

there is a reason i included this quote:

QUOTE

Confused by the fact that I hadn’t heard about this technology before, I spoke to one of the men behind it directly - Dr Sébastien Deguy. He assured me that there were no catches with his system, that if a game contained 1GB of textures he would be able to reduce that to 300MB and lose no quality. When I asked why everyone wasn’t using the program at the moment he explained it was due to people needing to be retrained in learning a new system. He was optimistic however, that soon all games companies will be using their new texture tools.

 

[JustDanMI]

QUOTE(sidewinder33 @ Oct 5 2006, 12:56 PM)

This is going to piss off a lot of ps3 early adopters when they start putting regular dvd drives in the second gen Ps3's bc they no longer need the extra space. I wonder if it increased read times, or what there has to be a catch somewhere it just can't be this good for us.

PS3 will NEVER replace the Blue ray drive with a DVD drive, NEVER.  They're counting to heavily on the PS3 to push their blue ray media upon everyone.  Whether the games need the space or not, they're still going to be pushing it for HD movies.

[Havok]

Any there is protection to the games because of the media format.  I don't have a BLU-Ray writer and the blank discs are very expensive..

[BCfosheezy]

This has been needed for some time now. Rather than consuming more, it's always a good idea to figure out how to use less. This does not mean that the new formats are not needed yet. By that way of thinking they would never be needed. With the possibilities that this compression offers, coupled with the new formats, it gives devs the ability to bring any idea they have to life no matter how elaborate. We don't want to limit ourselves with current technology. Our industry thrives by taking advantage of the new technology as it becomes available whether it is NEEDED yet or not. We can always take advantage of it. I could site examples on a small scale so it is comprehendable. In Oblivion you are in a vast world. It looks spectacular, but like any game it is plagued with same texture issues. This means one texture for a cobble stone path is used for ALL cobblestone paths. With added compression AND larger space one could possibly create higher-res textures and unique textures. We don't want to be too narrow-minded.

 

Certainly this technology will help. It will help piracy as well. I'm sure that will be a controversial argument if someone chooses to take it up. I would just like to point out that if you decreased the size of today's games 70% you make them a lot easier to download. I am sure I'm not the only one that thought of this.

[sidewinder33]

QUOTE(KAGE360 @ Oct 5 2006, 11:05 AM)

there is a reason i included this quote:
 

It just says no lose in quality, it doesn't say anything about how long it would take to access and then decompress this tightly packed data. I am by no means saying that its stupid or that a few extra seconds of read time isnt worth the exchange I'm just saying you can't have something be perfect, something has to be sacrificed in order to make this work. With current technology yes the drawbacks are smaller, but there still have to be drawbacks. If there wasnt then everyone would jump on this and start using it as fast as they could, I mean a 2.5 gig game could be put on a regular cd.

QUOTE(JustDanMI @ Oct 5 2006, 12:28 PM)

PS3 will NEVER replace the Blue ray drive with a DVD drive, NEVER.  They're counting to heavily on the PS3 to push their blue ray media upon everyone.  Whether the games need the space or not, they're still going to be pushing it for HD movies.

What about when blu ray fails miserably and it is a huge loss to keep producing the ps3's with BR drives? This might be adapter to work for hd movies which would negate the need for 1000$ BR players.

[KAGE360]

QUOTE(sidewinder33 @ Oct 5 2006, 06:54 PM)

It just says no lose in quality, it doesn't say anything about how long it would take to access and then decompress this tightly packed data. I am by no means saying that its stupid or that a few extra seconds of read time isnt worth the exchange I'm just saying you can't have something be perfect, something has to be sacrificed in order to make this work. With current technology yes the drawbacks are smaller, but there still have to be drawbacks. If there wasnt then everyone would jump on this and start using it as fast as they could, I mean a 2.5 gig game could be put on a regular cd.

i think that when he said there are no catches he meant in every respect.  it is entirely new technology that just got introduced the other day and is already making shockwaves on the net.  the only drawback is the developers have to learn the new technique, because its a new technique may mean that developers will run into snaggs but this doesnt have to mean that in the end there has to be any performance cost.  of course im not a developer, but from how i read it, by having a chance to become the industry standard would mean that its an improvement in all respects.  

look at how character models are rendered now.  before it was models covered with textures, now its the standard to render a low poly mesh covered in a high rez. texture/normal mapping.  new technique to render a character and a  performance increase because of it.  all it took was for the industry to adapt to the new technique

[alsybub]

Check this out:

http://www.theproduct.de/

It's an FPS squeezed into 96kb using some extreme compression techniques.

Here's a direct link to the file:

http://kk.kema.at/fi...rieger-beta.zip

Mind blowing stuff.

[Altima NEO]

QUOTE(alsybub @ Oct 5 2006, 05:25 PM)

Check this out:

http://www.theproduct.de/

It's an FPS squeezed into 96kb using some extreme compression techniques.

Here's a direct link to the file:

http://kk.kema.at/fi...rieger-beta.zip

Mind blowing stuff.

This has been around a while, but its very amazing. This doesnt rely on compression techniques to attain such a small file size. It relies on procedurally generated textures. True testament of what procedural textures can really do. They also have links to "demos" made by others with the same goal in mind, to make a cool demo with lots of stuff, but an extremely small file size.

Oh and according to the devs, if .kkreiger were to be done traditionally (standard bitmap textures, rather than procedurals) the 96kb demo would be more like 200-300 MB. Quite impressive what procedruals can do.

[hamwbone]

i posted a link to http://www.scene.org/ in the other thread, (which was started before this one) has lots of very similar stuff there, check out the 64k demos!