PlayStation's Pitch: Forget The Graphics

Sorry but Killzone 3 already had stunning graphics but Killzone 4 is just off the scale completely. I mean WOW big time. I used to dream since windows 95 games when games would become so real they are life like. Killzone 4 actually for the first time shows me short moments were i can't see the difference. This is really impressive for me and a big moment. And the often highly realistic movement of the characters in the game completely backs that up. If this is what the game really will look like then i must absolutely have it.

Just as everyone loves the retina displays on their iPhones people will appreciate more highly defined game graphics as well. Higher count allows for more detail which allows for a fuller immersion. User experience is always important, but it's mainly a separate concern from graphic quality.

agreed with Greenmatrix

we clearly can see that the game is more life like. I found they did a great job on fire effects, after the explosion i really though it was a filmed cutscene. Its details like 2d grass, perpendicular poligones, crapy lightning etc that ruins the emersiveness. If they finally can get rid of those i say bravo for consols ^^

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No facts, No response...

Those were demo reels, clips meant to look better than what the console is actually capable of. All game companies use higher quality demos for hardware previews. To think that what was seen last night is what you will see when the console is released is to fall into the same trap that is set every time a new console is released.

What is really telling here is that Sony is adding a bunch of features some of their competitors already had. It's really an acknowledgement that they realize simply improved graphics aren't going to sell new systems and that they need to offer something more than that. It's sad they couldn't think of something original.

In what way are "graphics peaking"? That is a ridiculous claim. SUre you can have large beautiful panoramic shots like in this trailer and high definition games, and anyone who uses a PC instead of a console would see this far more often , but when you approach any item or object you can clearly see the obvious polygon count. Go zoom in on the floor and you will see Pong like graphics. The great parts in the ps4 (8 core cpu and mid 7000s HD Radeon card) can help a lot with common issues we see in many games, but I highly expect A LOT of the buildings you saw in the fly over in the distance were 2D. These graphics are nothing new to games and this article is another example of an uneducated approach when writing about graphics.
Euclideon is the way. Unlimited real time rendering will change the gaming industry and make 30,000 polygons look like Minecraft.

I was disappointed that the demo was running at 30 fps, I truly hope that developers aim for 60 fps in their action games next gen, it will make a much larger difference than anti-aliasing filtering and Trilinear filtering at 1080p.

@Greenmatrix i watch the whole thing yesterday and honestly i wasn't really impressed with the graphical power of the ps4. Yes it looks better then today's consoles, but it has the power of a mid range PC.. lmao my PC now is more powerful then the PS4. I'm not saying this to rain down on you haha im just saying it because you seem to think that the PS4 is something amazing. Maybe you are not aware of PC gaming?

"and the number of polygons the games use, whatever that means."

Really? Popular Science purports to be a *science* magazine. Shouldn't the writers *know* what the polygon count means? Shouldn't we, the readers, expect to learn what that means -- without dumbing-down, condescension, or the type of content-free sarcastic comments we might expect in a supermarket tabloid?

Popular Science -- you can do better.

I'm a PC Gamer, sorry playstation.

@GrundelEater. For PC`s as far as i know the best you can buy is a 4 core processor. The Playstation 4 will have 8 cores so your claim of having a better system yourself or even the PS4 being equal to a current mid range PC is just laughable to say the least. In fact that mid range PC claim makes you an absolute liar. Lets be clear of that.

Radeon GPU comprised of 18 computing units capable of cranking out 1.84 Tflops does not come on even the best PC i know off either.

But of course it is a long tradition for certain PC users to always claim they have a better system and that consoles are always inferior. The fact is i have played on both consoles and PC`s all my life and i prefer consoles.

The fact that you can sit around with friends looking at a massive screen not 2 feet away is just relaxing, entertaining and what gaming should be. Well for me it is.

The graphics will become behind on PC`s overtime but certainly not right now. Thanks though for making me laugh.

@GreenMatrix..... no
While I am a Playstation fan and will be buying the PS4, I must tell you to stop making arguments that hurt the image of fanyboys. Basically...do some research.

First is is already possible to get an 8-Core AMD processor, and and Intel 6 Core.

The AMD is is a 4.0 GHZ (per core) Processor. (this is much faster than the PS4 chip.)

Graphics wise, it isn't even close to a high end and actually is around mid range like @grendeleater stated. The computers I use for AutoCAD at work is faster than the PS4.. And my gaming rig is faster than that... But that isn't the point.

The PS4 will be an impressive console, and Xbox will answer with something as well. That is the reason console gaming is so much fun... the competition.

@Paper. Nonsense again. Look at people`s mid range PC`s. Most people don`t even have a quad core processor let alone 8 cores. Your living in fantasy land if you think that. Most people today are buying laptops or ultrabooks to replace their desktops (and of course tablets). These ultrabooks mostly have dual core I5 processors or dual core mobile i7 processors. At best it is quad core. Even the new and expensive Pixel laptop Google just put out has a dual core i5 processor. And this is a brand new and above average priced laptop. Most people buy 400 dollar to 800 dollar laptops not 1200 dollars like the new Pixel.

Even thhe expensive 1500 to 2600 Dollar Apple Macbook Pro`s have processors ranging from a dual core I5 to an quad core I7 for the most expensive.

So the average user just will not have 8 cores by a long shot completely destroying this ridiculous claim.

Also i question your claim that your dedicated AutoCAD work computer is faster then a PS4 since no benchmarks are even shown for the PS4 so no real comparisons can even begin to be made.

And yes i agree consoles will only improve and it will be a fun gaming experience. That`s what it should be about in the first place. Many games being put on the market can be purchased for PS3, XBOX, PC`s, Wii so many of the great games are already made to be played by everyone on every platform and visual differences of these most often turn about to be very minor.

@Greenmatrix LOL
You must not have used a PC in years. 8-Core has been around for a while now. And you can plug a PC directly into your massive HD screen if you want to.
I prefer the finer detail and higher resolution of a huge monitor though.
Consoles are nowhere near the power of a PC and never will be, because we can now put three or four high end graphics processors in one PC. Your console will never do that.
Do you seriously think your $300 console can match a $4000 gaming rig?
Seriously?

The irony of the old man rendering is hilarious. How many people actually have eyes that can actually see that kind of detail? Certainly not nearsighted gamers!

@Greenmatrix Wow, yours is a particularly annoying breed of stupidity - where you think you know everything but actually know nothing.

Firstly - the fact that you enjoy sitting on the sofa and playing games more than you do on a PC bears no relevance to the computing power of each device.

You mention only being able to buy a 4 core processor for a pc, clearly you haven't checked this as it's not true.

Even if it were true, the 4 core i7 actually beats the 8 core AMD in benchmarks, just showing how far behind AMD are in the CPU wars. I think the 8 core AMD runs at 4Ghz, whereas the one in the PS4 is running at half that.

And as for graphics, clearly you haven't ever used a good PC! Sure, they're more expensive, but please don't try to convince anyone that your crappy old 1080p resolution is better than their 2560x1440 triple monitor setup. If you have the money you cannot beat PC graphics.

The latest card coming out is the GTX Titan - retailing for over £800. I think that settles this dispute.

@Greenmatrix

You assume more cores equals better gaming performance. The fact is that performance peaks at 3 to 4 cores on a PC. After that, the law of deminishing returns kicks in. You get less than 1% improvement in performance for a fifth core.

AMD has had a 6 core proccesor out since 2011, however the Intel processors out perform it in games (even the two core i3). In fact, AMD has bowed out of developing future CPUs because the Intel chips are so much faster.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106.html

A Radeon HD 7850 runs at 1.76 Tflops and is a mid-range card. A Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition runs at 4.3 Tflops and is Radeon's flagship from last year. But what really makes a PC superior graphics wise is the fact that new cards constantly become available for the PC, while consoles are always stuck at the level they were when they were first introduced.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/7000/7970/Pages/radeon-7970.aspx#/3

Trying to compare consoles to laptops is just sad and transparent. That is like me trying to compare Desktop PCs to a PSP.

And why would AMD make a super-fast CPU and GPU for PS4 but not for the PC market? That makes no sense.

If you like consoles, that is fine, they are a different animal than a PC. But to say a $400 console can compete with a $1,000 PC performance wise, is just ignorant.

As for the trailer, it is really hard to evaluate the graphics performance when the max resolution available is 720p and there are artifacts from some pretty heavy compression.

On a funny side note, while I was watching 720p version of the PS4 killzone trailer my wife walked by and did a doubletake. She asked me what wrong with my game, why it looked so bad (she thought I was playing it). She uses my old gaming PC when we play co-op, so she is used to much better graphics (on an upgraded 4-year old pc).

Here is a 1080p version of the same video with less compression. It looks much better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDfu1mYQXEg

Videogame graphics are still far from peaking, they are still very crude comparing to reality, when they get indistinguishable from reality then they have peaked. They all look great in screenshots, but when you see them on your tv they have improved, but are still far from reality, mainly the lighting and shadows and many many other details.

@democedes. Please stop. Just stop. Once again the sales numbers do not agree with the nonsense claims some of you are making. As i said before that is not what the average person is buying. You need to start reading sales numbers. Desktop sales are slumping. Even those that do sell are mostly lower end systems. Check the numbers for real desktop sales.

On top of that most people are buying laptops and ultrabooks (besides their tablets) to replace their old desktops. As i explained before these laptops and ultrabooks are what most people are buying. That`s what leads to average numbers. That some people drive a Ferrari does not make them the average. I don`t know how much more clear i need to be about this. Many don`t even have dedicated graphics cards in them. Again this is what most people buy. You can easily see from that that the average person does not have big setups that would even come close to new console systems like PS4 and the new XBOX.

Buying 4000 Dollar gaming set ups is for something less then 1% of the population. Even buying 2000 Dollar gaming set ups can be found in less then 3.7% of total world wide computer sales. Such low numbers are not averages. Again check the real numbers and stop making up claims that the average PC buyer clearly doesn`t match.

So again my claim stands. The average person does not have anywhere near this PS4 computing power. That some have it does not make it the average. That some have a Ferrari does not make it average. And sales of the new XBOX and PS4 will certainly just as before massively surpass the sales of expensive dedicated gaming PC`s.

Been reading all your comments and I pretty much agree with Greenmatrix about average pcs. The average pc is $500-$700. Sure there are PC "Ferrari" but the playstation "Camaro" still out preforms the average PC "Altima"

What is fun to figure out is how long will it take for the 500-700 "NOT CUSTOM BUILT" PC to be faster and better than a PS4 not just screen res but all around.

thoughts? Im not up to date on what a non-custom 700 bucks can get these days.

What does "Robot" have to say about this??

@Greenmatrix

When did I mention anything that had anything to do with sales? Who cares what the average person buys? Why is that even relevant? What matters is what GAMERS can buy for PC gaming. Who cares if my computer at work can't beat a PS4? Or my refrigerator for that matter. My shoes don't run at even one Tflop, but they are comfortable to walk in, and since they were not built to play games on, they are also irrelevant.

But keep avoiding the apples to apples comparison if it makes you feel better about yourself.

Basing an opinion on the decline of graphical innovation in the gaming industry on a boring Sony presentation that didn't even show the actual hardware seems a bit naive.

1) Killzone 4 looks a generation better than Killzone 5 based on that demo vid. The other vids I watched look better than anything on the current generation Playstation which they should since that is over 6 year old technology.

2) The first games of every new gaming platform do not take full advantage of the hardware. Even near the end of a gaming system's life cycle there are still innovations and optimizations in firmware and software that push the hardware further and utilize it more efficiently.

3) Graphics are no where near photo realistic. This is the same argument that comes up on news sites every couple of years. It is all relative. We used to think older technology was so cutting edge and near photo realistic but looking back it looks primitive. When we can get into a virtual environment with graphics that we can not distinguish from our normal lives than that is the day we can all declare we reached our goal and then we will be arguing about hyper-realistic graphics.

I love the PC vs video game argument here that has been an endless debate since the days of the Atari 2600. Some of us just buy both and enjoy them for what they are and then move on to the next gadget.

until I saw the bank draft which said $8121, I be certain that my sister woz like truley taking home money in their spare time on their apple laptop.. there neighbor had bean doing this 4 only about thirteen months and by now took care of the morgage on their villa and bourt Lotus Esprit. this is where I went, ●❤● ℬuzz80.ℂOℳ ●❤●

The PC vs Console argument is always flawed.

PC will always win sure. And that's because if people want to fork over 1000+ on newest tech that just came out, they can.

No console company will survive saying hey guys look at this! It rivals PC graphics and only going to cost you 1500$, oh and we will replace it with new tech in 2 years!

They have to find a price range and a technology range that will sufficiently last them for a good amount of time without breaking the bank on every person in their intended demographics.

We could probably theorycraft an awesome kick ass console capable of playing even the most demanding games on the highest quality and still not suffer from any loading times or fps lag. But no one would buy it, and with no one buying it very little games will develop for it, and of those games most would be probably shit or not able to sufficiently challenge the system.

A 300 dollar computer OC'd will have you gaming on pc with acceptable graphics quality and performance. All consoles ever seem to do anymore are withhold and degrade content that would otherwise be free, look and run better, and probably be more in-depth and complex on computers.

I'd like to take this moment and thank consoles for concepts like charging for DLC, which used to be called FULL GAME, and you expected it to be in there when you bought the game, or released free if not.

Achievements that break immersion and tell you what you already knew to begin with, you're bad ass.

Now don't get me wrong i grew up on consoles, and had some of my most fond memories playing them with or without friends, but they do not give you access to as much content (high quality or otherwise) as a general purpose computer.

You can't make a direct comparison between a console and a PC based on hardware alone. For one thing, you gotta remember that any game you run on your PC is running over an OS, often times that's going to be Windows 7 or Windows 8 - two bloated, resource hogging operating systems. I think, as a rule, consoles make better use of the hardware because more hardware resources are devoted to running the game.

Consoles are more for family entertainment. Gaming-PC's are for serious gamers that want to invest hours, most are over the age of 18 and have a good size budget.

It would be interesting to know what was the specs on a AVG PC vs PS1, AVG PC vs PS2, AVG PC vs PS3, AVG PC vs PS4. To see how over time the change. Also to see the cost of avg PC going down as console went up.

Is there a way for a gamer to run linux or to delete all of windows except for the bare bones and does that help them run games ANY better? or at that point is the game the limitation and not the system??

need more games? watch anime,contact the makers, work together to make anime based game, my tips? sword art online and accel world...gives you glimpse of how much happniness will be brought. WATCH the anime then start making the nervegear,you got that wrist-band movement device created now achieve no body movement(except eyes)

gaming industries come together for the gamer and make the nervegear. Lets do that

@democedes If someone compared the best PC in the world and the best console in the world the PC would win, and I know we're'nt talking about average here but if your gonna compare it has to be average so I agree with GreenMatrix. Don't get mad at me, but if you can afford a $4000 gaming rig, hey, good for you, your doing well and living the life. But for most who can afford $300-$700 PC the console can seem better. Yes, the PC is better OVERALL but on individual PC of average quality the PS4 will perform better overall. I like both consoles and PC. I like playing ArmaA 2 on PC and Call of duty, Battlefield, killzone on Ps3. I also like playing with my friends on PS3 and I look forward to playing on PS4.(The graphics look great in my opinion). BTW no offense but you sound very much like a PC fanboy, can't we just agree to disagree and just enjoy both or not even comment on each other at all and just live in 2 separate worlds?

in order to thank everyone, characteristic, novel style, varieties, low price and good quality, and the low sale price. Thank everyone

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i personally agree with sony's decision in this generation of consoles. think of it like this people. sony up till this point has just been building muscle, pumping iron if you will. now, its ditching xbox behind in the dude sweat, and joining nintendo in the cardio and toning excersizes, because its as strong as it needs to or wants to be at the moment.
if anyone didnt understand that, basically, they are big enough for now, now they are working on their repetoire rather than their size.

this is in turn going to turn into being more and better developed games, a more user friendly experience, and maybe even some real fun.

If you think Ethel`s story is astonishing,, last pay cheque my bro basically brought in $8412 just sitting there twelve hour's a week an their house and they're classmate's sister-in-law`s neighbour has been doing this for 6 months and got a cheque for over $8412 in their spare time at Their laptop. applie the information on this site -- Buzz80.ℂOℳ

It seems this time Sony went for something cheap to produce vs trying to push the envelope in graphics.
I'd even say they might be moving away from selling the consoles as loss leader items.
Yes it has 8 cores but they're Bobcat cores or AMD's answer to the Intel Atom so it's more equivalent to a low end quad core Athlon or maybe even an Intel i3.
The GPU is mid range and must share bandwidth with the X86 cpu cores.
Now the good it has a surprising amount of memory for a console
Being more like an off the shelf PC it will be less locked down then the PS3 so getting linux on it shouldn't be too difficult.

If you want to understand the whole PS4 vs PC argument instead of bickering back and forth. Here is a great article that will answer all your questions.
www.bradfordtaylor.com/insert-blank-press-start/ps4-vs-the-great-discord/

Clearly the PS4 has a few things going for it.

Windows is a hindrance. But how much? Synthetic benchmarks comparing Windows 7 to Linux show a 14.3% decrease in FPS. Sad, but not earth shattering. Certainly not enough to compensate for a PS4 to compete with a PC with twice the raw computing power.

The other thing every console has going for it, performance wise, is that it is much easier to optimize software when you only have one hardware configuration. But what kind of boost are you going to get from that? If you are playing a bad console port, then the difference will be huge. But assuming the developer did a descent job of optimizing the PC code, a 10% FPS hit is generous. That is still not enough to cripple a PC with twice the computing power down to PS3 level.

Much has been made about PS4s 8GB of GDDR5 memory. But does faster RAM give you more FPS? It does if your system is bottlenecked by your RAM. The below article shows that faster memory only impacts FPS in certain games and then only when FPS is over 100, which is beyond human perception.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/memory-bandwidth-latency-gaming,3409.html