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[Foe-hammer]

They are offering an xbox without an hdd, so the hdd will not be standard.  Many casual gamers that will not be using live will get the core x360.

[Carlo210]

About games that cache, can't the game just realize that your harddrive either ran out of space or isn't connected, therefore it jsut runs the data off of the disc? I mean, if you don't have an Xbox360 harddrive, then if a game normally caches a map, but can't due to no hdd, can't it just run it off the disc instead?

[Foe-hammer]

QUOTE(mikeandbandit @ Aug 18 2005, 01:04 AM)

If you have ever played the Vice City on PC then you can see how  drive space, or lack of it can be inplemented. Right now, if your computer has the drive space, you vice city game will strem seemlessly in the back ground, which is part of the "no load times" mentioned. When you drive spaqce drops below a certian point a load screen automatically initates between sections of the city. IF you are talking in terms of using it for addition ram then it is for the most part pointless as any connection from HDD for use in either AI, physics, or graphics would be MUCH too slow.

[Carlo210]

Have you guys seen the Kameo vid? With just 4-5 seconds of loading, everything was ready to go. Everything, within a mile radius, was there. It doesn't equal cache-ing, but the word on cache-ing isn't final yet either. If there won't be any done by the dev's, I'd still be happy with the short and complete loading times.

[Carlo210]

Well the Xbox360 can clearly load entire maps and files in a snap, instead of loading the basic starting point and streaming everything as is becomes visible.

[Carlo210]

Um, Kameo is that advanced game engine with alot of so called 'required streaming', yet it loads a full level and npc speech, along with cinematics, in 5 seconds off the dvd. Also, streaming music off of the DVD is fine, you don't need a HDD for that.

[Carlo210]

Then we will see 8 second loading times. If you think that in 3 years, the 3 cores won't be used, along with the quick 12x dvd drive occumpanied by compression technology, then that is your mind on technology growth, not mine.

[Carlo210]

I agree that everything will run a bit differently, but cacheing won't be the hit or miss deal. Game loading times can overtake cacheing, but in a year or so, games will most likely learn how to cache off of the harddrive if a harddrive is detected, resulting in loading times if no harddrive is detected.

[mikeandbandit]

umm that was my exact point

[Foe-hammer]

QUOTE(mikeandbandit @ Aug 18 2005, 02:48 AM)

HDD cache is almost strickly used for "seemless world" play similar to recent GTA games. ITs entirely TOO slow to do anything worth wild

[Foe-hammer]

I see.

But, computer games have been using the hdd to cache high res textures for a while now.  Probably higher then what the x360 will offer, or atleast the same.

[ZildjianKX]

This reminds me of the news story that the Xbox was the most expensive platform to develop for, now that the 360 is requiring developers to make games to run with and without the hard drive, I can see that the 360 is going to be expensive to develop for as well...

Wasn't MS just bragging how easy the 360 is to develop for?

[twistedsymphony]

I think the 360 was the most expensive to develop for because it had the best performance so it required larger teams to tap into that...

Here's a good question... How many PS2 games that were released after the PS2 hard drive take advantage of it? We all know that FFXI uses it...

Did you know that the Madden games use it for caching? Think about that. EA's Madden team (the group of people that tends to get labeled as "lazy developers" more than anyone else) makes use of the PS2 hard drive when it's available.

I'd be willing to bet many more PS2 games make use of the HDD than we expect.

M_hael, can you tell us if you use the PS2 hard drive when available in the THPS/THUG games?

You've talked about how coding for it to be there/not be there is relatively easy so I assume you have some experience with it.

[m_hael]

12x DVD - hmmm.... you realise that the ACTUAL average read speed is more like 10MB/s provided its ALL on one layer, given that most data in games is already compressed (DXT textures) we get around a 50% average compression ratio meaning that number bumps up to around 20MB/s.

512MB / 20MB = ~26 seconds

most games don't actually load ALL of the 512MB so lets say half.. thats STILL 13 seconds WITH compression.

just thought I'd put some REAL numbers out there.

[KAGE360]

whats so hard to understand? why is this topic even being discussed any further??  the same things keep being repeated but some people arent learning.  as for the developer support, M_hael has cleared up how its not that hard to implement.  so i doubt it would be too much of a burden for developers to write some code to recognize the HD. so thats done.

about load times and caching.  they will be shorter then this generation and will be even better with the HD in the system.  M_hael has cleared up that the main use of the HD will be for storage not improving performance.  

and i believe halo would be possible on the xbox without the HD just with more load times.  MS may have bent the truth with its PR talk but that doesnt change the fact that the 360 will be a great console and worth every penny.