Sony Secret Weapon revealed...? (Great Article)

[jae_hoon_MOTW]

The latest issue of Edge Magazine unveiled Sony's secret weapon, with interview from developers regarding the "Performance Analyser."

Article quoted below
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Sony's 'Performance Analyser' was first unveiled on the PSOne when Yamauchi let slip the Gran Turismo had been developed using it.
Now, finally, the performance analyzer has been unveiled for the PS2 -a piece of machinery which can measure just how much of each processor is being used. The performance anaylzer can let developers understand how they can optimize their games and this can lead to a massive increase in speed.

From EDGE: "Simply described, the Performance Analyzer gives developers a window into the inner working of games running on the PS2 hardware. There are three probes, one which deals with the emotion engine, and two on the graphics synthesizer chip. The probes tag all the inputs and outputs into those pieces of silicon."

Free Radical (developers of Timesplitters 2, Goldeneye and ex-members of RARE) were interviewed by EDGE about the PS2 version (the lead version) and they had this to say:

"So far, we've doubled our polygon throughput in Timesplitters2, but there's still some way to go" reckons Free Radical Design's Steve Ellis. "We're probably using under 70% of the PS2's power. It's a complex machine and it's not always obvious where the bottlenecks are. It's early days at the moment, and developers still have to go to Sony's office to use the Performance Analyzer, which is a little restrictive"

"On Playstation2, we know it's possible to get over 20 million polys a second out of the machine." said Attention to Details lead programmer, Tim Swan.


Also, Jak & Daxter did not use the Performance Analyzer at all for development as it was not available at the time.

Fred Williams from BLITZ games says "There's a vast amount of scope for some giant leaps performance-wise on the Playstation2. On the more straightforward next-gen hardware (xbox, gc), you'll see less of a polygon performance jump..."


Soon the Performance Analyzer will be included as standard as part of the new dev-kit, and I can see it making a massive improvement on games as it will be easier for developers to see out to optimise their games. It made massive improvements on the PSOne, and I can see the PS2 going in a similar direction.

PROJECT GOTHAM RACING Roger Perkins, senoir programmer said "I'd hope to get another 10-20 percent out of the console [xbox]" Bearing in mind GT3 only using 25% of the PS2's power, we could be looking at a 70-75% improvement over GT3 - which looks almost if not AS good as Project Gotham.

Finally, Free Radical had this to say about Microsoft's DirectX-based XBOX:

"The best thing Microsoft could do to help developers acheieve maximum performance from XBOX is to allow them to ditch DirectX", he fumes. "Like Sony, Microsoft should provide full low-level details of the hardware and let the developers create their own libraries which are optimised for the game being developed."

[Despair]

Hmm, Interesting article.

Maybe they will be able to use this Performance Analyzer, to get more of the little black box .

[Shin Johnpv]

Originally posted by jae_hoon_MOTW


"The best thing Microsoft could do to help developers acheieve maximum performance from XBOX is to allow them to ditch DirectX", he fumes. "Like Sony, Microsoft should provide full low-level details of the hardware and let the developers create their own libraries which are optimised for the game being developed."

thats probably the most interesting thing ive read today

[xS]

Didnt the psone have a similar performance enhancer?

[Mzo]

Didnt the psone have a similar performance enhancer?

...

Sony's 'Performance Analyser' was first unveiled on the PSOne when Yamauchi...

[Werewolf]

Well if Sony didn't try and rush it the developers would have had this already, would have been nice to include this for all the game developers right off the bat... I am sure they would have agreed too

[kabuki]

Good news !!

[Clash!]

Well then, me thinks that Graphics are going to take a next gen system like jump, but on the same system, maybe.

[stormy]

GT3 using 20% of the PS2s power is either bullcrap, or a prime example of just how poorly designed the PS2 is. Anfd how long was that in development? 2 years or more? Just because you can see how much of the system's resources you are using doesn't mean you'll just be able to go write more code and make the game look/play better. You have to know how to use the resources, and that's where the PS2s problems are in the first place.

On paper Saturn was more powerful than PS1, but never really gave it a run for its money graphics wise. I wouldn't be expecting any substantial improvements in graphics beyond the typical improvement curve due to this analyser. It certainly will not be able to compete with the box and cube.

-stormy

[seen]

Originally posted by stormy
GT3 using 20% of the PS2s power is either bullcrap, or a prime example of just how poorly designed the PS2 is. Anfd how long was that in development? 2 years or more? Just because you can see how much of the system's resources you are using doesn't mean you'll just be able to go write more code and make the game look/play better. You have to know how to use the resources, and that's where the PS2s problems are in the first place.

On paper Saturn was more powerful than PS1, but never really gave it a run for its money graphics wise. I wouldn't be expecting any substantial improvements in graphics beyond the typical improvement curve due to this analyser. It certainly will not be able to compete with the box and cube.

-stormy

Profilers are always great. Also, this profiler seems to analyze the graphics chips which is where most bottlenecks occur. You can unwrap as many loops as you want in your cpu code, but if you're using the GS a certain way and it causes a bottleneck, it might prompt you to redesign your algorithm altogether. Whats more is that you can create code that is based on scene complexity, in other words: you rasterize a given scene and then profile it's pipeline process, then you realize that you can push more polygons or that you must push less to get rid of slowdown, but you'll know exactly how many using this tool. You may also want to do some dramatic effects with hardware lighting and are unable because there are instances where your scene is affected by too many lights at once and the action slows down. You can then disable the light(s) as necessary.

I for one am surprised that they didn't have it before.


seen