On his webpage, Josh Robinson writes, “I am a 27 year old 3D artist with 9 years of professional experience. I have been very busy this last year trying to make a name for myself within the industry.” Well Josh, looks like you’ve done that.

The rumor mill churned out this doozy of a quote from Josh. It goes:

I’ve spent some time the past year developing for the PS3. Actually it was a cinematic demo to be shown at e3 in 2005 at a closed door viewing. I was one of the few artists selected to work on it for the demo. My job was primarily asset creation. I was creating assets to populate the path where our camera would be flying during the demo. The company I work for is also working on a launch title that I am quite familiar with. In short, I’ve spent some time around the PS3 and or the teams developing for it.
Now I’ve spoken with people who are on the technical side of the PS3. I’ve also talked with people on the technical side of the XBOX 360. The consistent comment I am hearing from people on my end is, “The XBOX 360 is better”. They are saying that it is capable of just doing more.



Last night, I dashed off an email to Josh in an attempt to clarify his quote and pretty much find out who the heck he is, but haven’t heard back. Word to the wise, folks: don’t use your real name when badmouthing your company’s gear.



http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/rumor/the-xbo...tter-147569.php

ha...someone is in some deep shit....
its funny that guys on the inside of sony are like "psst...it really sucks over here"

You pasted the text twice.

I respect artists and they are closely involved with the fine details of optimizing and targeting their models and textures for specific numbers in a scene (polygon numbers, pixel shader performance etc) but they are not the ones that have to deal with the impossibly difficult multicore mess that is the next generation. Where specificly the PS3 must be a nightmare.

But I also ASSUME that we will se the most taken out of the 360 far sooner than will be the case with the PS3, where it will take years for developers to master the hardware.

yeah, how could you not notice you pasted that twice yo?

i think is a little to early for anyone to judge....

Thanks, I just fixed it.

That's a server error. It happens on occasion.

Re the ps3/360 talk, I think it is pretty commonly held belief that the 360 is an easier machine for which to develop games, especially at this early stage of next-gen gaming. 6 asymmetrical cores are going to be a bitch.

Since the forum upgrade it's got a new feature that keeps out dupe posts,, if you make two posts in the same topic in rapid succession they will appear in the same post

similarly if you make two topics with the same title in rapid succession they will appear in the same post.

When that happens it's usually because the user: submitted, received a server error, went back, and submitted again.

A good rule of thumb 95% of the time if you get a server error that DOES NOT include the "post text saved" message, it went through even though you got the server error.

for the moment lets us all enjoy our mediacenter witch cant play or stream shit,and its 10 games,and not make stupid comparisons with something that doesnt exist.
though i dont think that sony will make such a mess with ps3,like m$ did

This comment is really gonna juice up the Xbox fanboys. Too bad he hasn't dealt with both systems himself, because then he would actually be able to compare them himself. As opposed to repeating what people working on the Xbox 360 have said. I hope it's true though, because I have a 360, but I'd still like the PS3 someday.

Well this is another one of the ps3 vs 360 topics. Why not make a ps3 vs 360vs revolution topic oh nvm ill go make one myself right now...

Most people you know are going to say xbox 360 on this forum. After all it is an xbox forum.....

can i say revolution just as a joke?????

What ever helps you sleep at night...

I have been very busy this last year trying to make a name for myself within the industry.

i dont think this is how you go making a name for your self. i think josh is going to be a joke now. all he is saying is he heard someone say 360 is better to program for. that means anothing. this is stupid. i dont think it really matters. if it did when the xbox came out everyone would have jumped to the xbox.

This is another post from Josh Robinson.







After reading the PS3 console review, a disgruntled Sony fan wanted answers, so he questioned the said reviewer himself, and this is the response he got below:

HELLO DP489!

Well lets see here. I'm not sure if your ACTUALLY curious about my answer. But I'll certainly answer any questions you have to the best of my abilities.

Why should anyone believe a word that I say? Well i guess no one has to believe me. I guess anyone can flat out LIE about anything. For what its worth however, I am qualified to have an opinion. ( Unlike MOST the rumor mongering journalists your talking about). I have been in the gaming business as a professional 3D artist for the better part of 10 years. I am a published author on a major 3D package due out in the next 8 weeks. I have developed on the PS1, PS2, PS3, PSP, and PC. I currently work for SONY and have spent almost my entire career developing on their platforms. I was one of the very very few artists in the United States lucky enough to work on a demo to be shown at a closed door viewing for e32005. Mr. Ken Kutaragi (founder of the Playstation and the president of Sony Computer Entertainment) Was the one giving the initial speach and tech specs for the demos at the viewing. It was almost 2 hours in length. The video may still be out there somewhere. I think you could actually watch the whole demo via gamespot at one time. i have copy of the demo on my pc. You could probably find it if you searched for it.

Sony Online Entertainment (the company i work for) is also creating a launch title for the PS3. We are also doing the Network Code that doesnt exist for the system yet. Also I've played the game that will be launching on the PS3. I see it every single day of my life. All these reasons (hopefully) add up to me being able to give a pretty accurate opinion of the PS3. I mean i just sat down and played it not 5 hours ago.

Im VERY excited aobut the ps3. dont get me wrong. But the delays that we have experienced during the production have been substantial. What most developers are doing are just making a PC game. Then when they get the final system they'll put it on the ps3. Thats it. No big crazy secrets there. ALSO, let me just say that this is very normal for a system launch. I am not bashing it by saying this. It was the same when the PS2 came out. You make a game then port it when you get the final hardware. There is no other way to do it because there is no system yet. Imagine the launch titles for the ps2 and compare them NOW to games like Metal Gear Solid 3! Its astonishing that it was done on the SAME system! It looks light years ahead of anything that was done 3 years earlier on the exact same hardware. This is all normal for a system launch. XBOX 360 doesnt have any crazy game out. i mean they look good but, they are all basically ports or sequals. the CRAZY games like gears of war will be out later when they have time to customize the shaders/network code specifically for the hardware.

I expect the first wave to be pretty standard PC quality games. (high quality, but nothing weve never seen). This is why i said that the REALLY good games will come out a year or so after the final launch of the title. It'll give the developers the time they need to properly use the cells for the betterment of the system. Then we'll start to see some crazy stuff. (crosses fingers)

But for now all im seeing on the system is the pretty standard 8000 poly characters with normal maps. (or faking normal maps doing paralax mapping). Im not really seeing good soft shadows yet. No sub surface scattering, etc... you'll definately get some games using HDR lighting, not much else is going on however that we've never seen.

Half Life 2 still looks better than anything ive EVER seen before. On the xbox 360 or the ps3. Especially their new lost coast level using HDR lighting entirely. And that game came out a year ago.

I expect a pretty late ship now. They will also most likely time it with e3 2006 and christmas. Thats where they will most likely make their big push. Shipping BEFORE e3 doesnt make any sense and shipping AFTER christmas would be...well something really bad would have to happen for them to intentionally miss the christmas sales.

I hope that answers any of your questions. WELCOME to DIF. I hope you stick around and check back from time to time when looking for game/movie reviews.

if you have any questions i'd be happy to answer any of them.

Josh

Well, he's fired. He may have said some good things about PS3 now, but that original about the 360 being better shouldn't go over to well with his higher-ups.

Plus, why would someone working on the PS3 believe some people working on the Xbox 360 that the 360 is better? You'd probably think whatever system you work on is better because you've got pride tied to it and just know it better. I guess it could be that he's complaining about what a bitch the PS3 is to develop for, and these 360 guys are exclaiming not to have the same problems.

in development pride is a monkey you carry for only a couple of years; there is always something better.

This guy just ruined his credibility. I am also a 3D artist and can pick a few major holes in his story. First off, he mentions HDR lighting and subsurface scattering. Let me define those terms for those who don't know. HDR lighting is a more accurate way of lighting in CG. Typical lighting will only brighten the texture that it hits, while raytrace lighting will trace the ray of light's path enabling real time shadows and reflections. HDRI lighting actually emits light particles that in turn bounce off objects/shaders based on their color, reflectivity and specularity. This is the basic concept behind ambient lighting, like how a room can still be fully lit with no lights on an overcast day purely by reflected ambient light from the outdoors. Subsurface scattering uses the same concept of HDRI lighting, except the objects and shaders actually let the particles pass through the surface and bounce around underneath. A good example of this would be holding your handup to a flashlight. The edges of your fingers will glow pink because the light is actually penetrating your skin and bouncing around in your tissue, illuminating your flesh from the inside.

HDRI lighting and especially subsurface scattering are cutting edge lighting technologies. For this guy to be claiming that these will be incorporated into nextgen systems tells me that he has no F'in clue. He is most likely a student that just learned about this stuff and decided to use his newfound technical terminology to impress some people on the internet. Subsurface scattering was only just used in a full length film for the first time recently (the candy boat in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and it will be a LONG time before any hardware in existance can achieve it realtime. Even using a high end silicon graphics rendering farm takes me an entire day to process 10 seconds of HD lighting.

Also, this kid is talking about working on the camera tracking for a fully rendered CG demo. Not only is that cheesy intern work, but he has no real experience working with the PS3, as it wasn't even in existance at the time (is it even yet?) He wasn't working with the hardware or the devtools. This is some kid tooling around with a camera track in Maya or 3D Studio, and we're supposed to believe him like he's the authority on PS3?

This is the feeble attempt of a struggling CG artist trying to get his name out in the world by making fantastic and fictional claims. If I met him in person I would punch him in his throat and show him a thing or two about HDRI lighting.

/end rant

lol, exactly. xbox 1 modded owns xbox 360. the xbox 1 was is still capable of making great games it had the power but ms rushed out a new one that turned out to be an over hyped box of crap. I can't wait for those mod chips with out xbmc 360 the x360 just won't be worth it unless of course there is a huge price drop.

as for that 'artist's' opinion... it has no fact in it whatsoever, probably just another xbox360 owner trying to justify his purchase.

He actually said the systems are NOT using subsurface scattering. Also, he states that one of his hobbies is no holds barred fighting.

I'm curious because you seem to know your stuff, what do you think about the PS3 and 360 from a hardware perspective? Which one is better, what can we expect? How do they compare to say an X2 4800, 7800 GTX 512 high end PC?

Please write a lot in your response. I love to read techincal stuff.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce_7800.html
Read the two words right next to CineFX 4.0 under "Technical Showcase"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_7_Series


P.S. The 7800 already can do subsurface scattering in realtime, its called the Luna demo



http://www.ati.com/developer/demos/rx800.html
What is the name of the realtime demo at the bottom of this page?

I take it you havent seen those old real time ATI demos that do HDR?
I think they were for the 9700.

I should interject here

HDRI in its academic form WILL NOT BE IN GAMES.... however a fudged HDRI Technique WILL hit games, looks almost the same but has issues and so requires a large amount of control on the programming and art side.

in short both artists are correct, one is simply using high end implementation of HDRI whilst the other is seeing his work through a fudged ( quick and dirty) HDRI.

same with subsurface scattering, it can be done for real or fudged... games will almost always use the fudge.

/$0.02

In reply to those saying that current cards can do real time subsurface scattering, I would argue that you've been sold on a gimmick. The Geforce 7800 can NOT perform actual HDR lighting, it can only imitate it and therefore can most definatly not perform subsurface scattering. In the world of CG, there are at least 20 different ways to achieve the same affect. While the subsurface scattering demo is impressive, it's not true subsurface scattering and is clearly visible in the demo by those who know what true subsurface looks like. They do a decent job of faking it, enough so that still shots looks convincing, but when in motion the surface depth doesn't match appropriatly with the amount of subsurface illumination which is a dead givaway of it being faked.

The demo of HDR lighting on the 7800 completely missed it's mark however. Nvidia seems to be pushing the aspect of colored reflections and contrasts as the major reason for HDR lighting, but in reality it's more about the ability of light to be subtly and accuratly reflected off of what would typically be described as a non-reflective surface, in turn creating realistic shoft shading, not only on the ground but on the character's features as well. A good example of how to properly fake HD lighting would be the new Fight Night Round 3 demo featured in the marketplace. Take a moment away from slugging Hopkins to notice to beautifully soft and realistic shading in the background. 90% of the shadows you see aren't actually there. The process of faking them involves modeling the room and lighting it with HDR techniques, rendering the image and then using the rendered image to create the textures for the actual game. These textures will have all the shading and subtleties of the HDR lit image, but without the taxing shading calculations. This is standard in most games (actually the only real shadows needed are animated shadows) but I though FNR3 was a good example.

Sorry but I stand by my original statement, realistic HDR lighting (10,000+ particles) is currently IMPOSSIBLE in real time. I mean, hell, raytracing is old technology and has been around since the days of Luxo Jr., but we are just now for the first time seeing it implemented in real time with the Xbox360. Before now it was all faked with reflection mapping. Don't take me the wrong way, I hope we get to see some similar effects to those shown in the 7800 demo as I'm a whore for eye candy, but as someone who understands image based HDR lighting and subsurface scattering I won't be fooled by big words and a flashy demo.

One other thing to consider here is that the actual statement about which system was better came from one of the developers not the person "leaking" the info. I also know a good few people in the gaming industry and I know how a stray statement can be taken the wrong way.
No one likes things to get more difficult, and the xbox 360 is an awkward bugger to program, developers are really struggling to get advantages from multithreading their code. And due to the huge amount of time and attention to detail required on environments to keep the modern gamers happy, these new consoles are a nightmare for the developers.
So a simple statement such as The xbox 360 is better and can do more, may in fact just be referring to the development tools available for the 360. The 360 is a pain to code, but the PS3 is far worse. The PS3 relies more heavily on multithreading and the development tools are far from final.
If I was a developer and was given the option to code for the PS3 or xbox 360, I'd definitely pick the 360. Not because it's more powerful, but because from a development point of view it's "better".

Note this
HDRR - High Dynamic Range Rendering (3D image rendering)
HDRI - High Dynamic Range Imaging (digital imaging)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_rendering
This clearly states that we do have hardware that supports HDR in real-time, but there is only one reason why we don't really see it, the monitors.

http://download.nvidia.com/developer/prese...Leagues_HDR.pdf

Well said lowendfrequency...Can you recommend any books on the matter?

well either way we can assume he meant faked HDR, and that it wont be in launch titles, but later titles will have HDR in one form or another

i dont think this has been suggested yet and it may be a crazy idea but he claims to be working for 10 years and is currently sony online dev team, well cant someone pull up credits from one of their recent games and see if the name is even on the staff list? atleast then we could see if he is even working in the industry. and he wouldnt lose his job for downplaying sony's product, you could work for BP and say their gas sucks, or burger king and say their burgers suck, but they wont fire you for it (usually).

he worked on everquest, planetside, NBA Street and March Madness.

Based on those games he's been in the industry for a while, I have no reason to doubt what he says... as I stated earlier the two artists are in different fields, one is in realtime game graphics (fudge city) the other is in CGI ... more academic than an academics academic party.

You're right he did say that they weren't using subsurface scattering, but he did say they were using HDR lighting and it seemed implied that these were things we should be expecting, which is completely false. Didn't know he was a crazy fighting man though... perhaps I'll throw something at him from a distance.

I'm really not the right guy to comment on the hardware perspectives of the 360 and PS3 though. My knowledge of 3D design is on the software end of the spectrum. I'm fairly good at modeling, texturing, rigging and animating but my area of expertise is lighting. Because the newer lighting techniques (HDRI based, subsurface, global illumination) are so taxing when it comes to computing power I've learned alot about the limitations of hardware, but not the technical aspects of how it operates. With that being said, I think that all the hardware in the world is a waste without the proper software. The 360 and the ps3 seem to be fairly evenly matched on the hardware level, but noone can say for sure since we don't really know how to compare a three core powerpc to the cell and vice versa. It is my prediciton that the software will win this battle. Development tools like XNA and game engines will determine the outcome this time around.



It is a good idea to point out the differences in terminology here, so we don't confuse everyone. However, neither of those terms are what we're talking about. The so-called "PS3 developer" clearly said HDR lighting, which is different that rendering and imaging. Those basically deal with the ability of textures to react to specific types of light, and the ability of the software/hardware to render an image with a full dynamic range from absolute black to absolute white. This can emulate the way human eyes react to light by washing out bright sources of light like windows and deepening the shading of darkened areas when a bright light is visible. This is old technology and has been capable in real time since the days of the dreamcast and 3dfx voodoo cards, since it is basically a form of selective contrasting. HDR lighting is based on the same principle of the high dynamic range, but to achieve this realistically through lighting it has to be handled on a particle by particle basis. Light particles are emitted with a specific intensity associated with it and a specified die-off range, but based on the shaders and surfaces the particle is bounced off of can determine how it's intesity, color and range will change and react. Furthermore, image based HDRI lighting maps a 360 degree images to a sphere and uses each individual pixel as a reference for color and intensity. The image itself emits the light particles and is the most accurate way to realistically light a scene, especially when using a corresponding image.

Here is a good tutorial that explains HDR lighitng: http://www.splutterfish.com/sf/contrib/tut..._tut/_contents/



Thanks I personally found "Matters of Light & Depth" by Ross Lowell to be an excellent book on lighting, although much of it deals with the basic principles of lighting and very little is about HDR lighting. I've heard of this book, but haven't had the chance to look it over yet. I know there is also a book out there called "Real-time Rendering" that details all the ways to achieve (fake) HDR lighting and other high-cost effects in realtime, but unfortunatly I haven't read that one either.




I apologize to everyone for letting this conversation get so off topic. The point of my original post was that I thought the "PS3 dev" was talking out his ass... and I still think that. He isn't developing aa PS3 game or demo, he's only tracking a camera for a pre-rendered CG video. The team was most likely given pre-requisites like to use X amount of surfaces, Y amount of lights, and Z amount of shadows to emulate what the PS3 should be able to do. That's a crappy method IMO and it's lying to the public.

well then what is your opinion of his claims? we have heard lowend's and he has made some good comments from a different perspective. but you have both ps3 and 360 dev kits unlike this dev who works for sony so i find it interesting how he can make comments on hardware which he doesnt even have. as much as i would like to believe him in that you can "just do more" with the 360 then the ps3 but from developers around the globe it seems that the two are pretty much even in the end.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_rendering


Do me another favor, type "High Dynamic Range Lighting" into the search function of wikipedia, then note that it takes you straight to the HDRR page. HDR lighting in video games is HDRR............

Hell, type "High Dynamic Range Lighting" into any search page and almost every result will have to do with HDRR or HDRI. Why? Because HDR Lighting is just a part of both HDRR and HDRI.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1745058,00.asp

David Kirk even called it HDR lighting and I'm pretty sure he knows what he is talking about.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/bio_kirk.html

http://www.hdrsoft.com/resources/dri.html


P.S. Your HDR Lighting tutorial is nothing more than a HDRI tutorial.

I don't want to get in the middle of this arguement because I know jack shit about computer animation... but I thought I'd lighten the mood with some laughs about a quick critique of Wikipedia use (courtesy of Penny-Arcade):

You're one of those people who can't stand to be corrected aren't you? I never even said you were wrong, just that we were nitpicking over terms. Bottom line is HDR lighting is both HDRI and HDRR.... but HDRI and HDRR don't have to be used in the sense of lighting. They are also rendering techniques. HDR lighting has NOT been featured in videogames as of yet. Only HDRR rendering has been applied to traditional lighting techniques which give the impression of overexposure and washing. True HDR lighting (as in the lights emitting HDR particles and radiosity) has yet to be implemented in real time and I doubt we'll even see it with this gen of systems.

We are arguing over silly terminology. You say that a scene rendered with HDR means that we can achieve HDR lighting in real time, while my arguement is that it isn't HDR lighting without particle emission. It's honestly pointless, will get us nowhere, and has already served it's purpose as it pertains to this thread.

And please don't quote me David Kirk, he is a hardware specialist, not a graphical designer. I've sat through Paul Debevec's HDRI and HDRTM lectures as well as his global illumination lectures at Siggraph in 2001. I'd take his word over David Kirk's... I mean, he is the godfather of high dynamic range imaging.

Why don't we all just take a visit here instead of arguing.
Paul Debevec
http://www.debevec.org/

This is the most truthful thing ever. I did an essasy a few month ago (don't want to get into it too much) and half the stuff I pulled on Wikepedia was wrong. Since then I never trust that site and never will, and this pic is a good reason why.

i went to the link and i didnt find any link to his web site on the forum. i didnt even see the reply that was later posted by wedding.

can anyone post the link to this dev's web site?

Your statements are misleading. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/...ll/438900a.html
"Jimmy Wales' Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries, a Nature investigation finds."

Wikipedia is not perfect but very accurate. Inaccurate information added is usually quickly reverted to known good versions of the article. When compared to equivalent sources wikipedia is nearly as accurate as Britannica.

"The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three."

Josh?

Isn't that Master Shake's manager?

Where you at?

http://planetside.station.sony.com/communi...eam_profiles.vm