Killzone 2 Utilized Only 50% Of Killzone 3′s Engine

PSUni writes "However, considering that was leaked last week, it's even more surprising to know that Killzone 2 was running at a fraction of the processing power that Killzone 3 is."

[Joni-Ice]

I KNEW IT.....Sike I didnt know. KZ2 was awesome. Hopefully KZ3 uses all.

[redwolf]

one can dream what 100% of PS3 processor can produce

[NecrumSlavery]

I remember when GG claimed that KZ2 was using 100% of the PS3's Power. Then Uncharted 2 came out and Herman Hulst was like "The guy's at Naughty Dog created such a cinematic experience, that we had to really step it up with Killzone 3."

I wonder what their reaction was at the Uncharted 3 trailer...lol

Killzone 3 is going to be amazing, maybe better than Uncharted 2. I love how Sony devs compete with each other. It's like a family. They don't trash each other and they have the healthiest of competative spirit. That's why Sony games have taken such a leap in quality from 2007 to 2009 on up, and now 2011 is going to really shine.

[P1NKY]

Correct me if I'm wrong but dont the 1st Party Studios also help each other out? Like some of the guys from Naughty Dog went and helped out Guerilla on making/optimising Killzone 3?

[visualb]

@ redwolf

you mean

PS3 + plug to your head:

[darksied]

Yeah, but how's that even possible? It's like Naughty Dog dev's saying they're putting 2 player split screen in uncharted 3. How can you keep the same level of graphical quality in the game? I'll be pretty impressed come feb, me thinks.

[xAlmostPro]

they did claim it used 100% before.. and maybe the engine they used was running at 100%.. and maybe the methods they used were all they knew at the time.. since then they have a better more powerful engine and a bunch of new methods to getting the most out of the console.. if theres a killzone 4 on ps3 they'll know even more by then and be able to utilise more than kz3

[RageAgainstTheMShine]

Killzone 3

Resistance 3

Uncharted 3

All For One

Gaming Spree

on PlayStation3

Oooohwee!

[jack_burt0n]

@ju

thanks for that info.

[tacosRcool]

That dream will become reality very very soon!

[JsonHenry]

However, the GPU was completely taxed.

[divideby0]

^ linky where you got the GPU was maxed out...
SPUs can help the GPU if coded properly...

[GfxPipeline]

It makes no sense talking about the SPUs 'helping' the GPU.

The SPUs+RSX is the PS3's GPU.

[Kleptic]

You are being misleading with regards to this article...They were not talking about whether the cpu or gpu were 'maxed' out...even though thats a useless way to describe rendering...

They are simply pointing out that their killzone 3 engine is more efficient...

killzone 3 'maxed' out the gpu completely, if you try to talk about it in a 'normal' architecture way...but thats not a bad thing, as the game went toe to toe easily with any real time video game when it released (arguably still does)...We all know you are a die hard PC fan, but save it...Crysis easily one the static screen shot comparisons, but even Crysis didn't have as complex of a lighting or animation model...

but tech interviews that are still on gt.com for killzone 2 had guerilla illustrating just how much of a single frame the spu's were rendering completely, where at times nearly 40% of on screen effects were being handled by the them...that is a MAJOR boost to the rsx...

Killzone 3 seems to be doing that type of processing even more...like it or not the game is a beast on a technical level, and killzone 2 still is...

go to the 1up story on killzone 3...This '50% faster' stuff is related to a killzone 2 level being run on the updated engine...its not anything like killzone 2 didn't max out the PS3 at the time...they are simply showing how much more they were able to optimize the engine...

[Sarcasm]

It does seem like the weak link in the PS3 is the GPU.

Then again, it all goes out the window once we see games like Uncharted 3 proving everyone wrong.

The fact is that the PS3's cell is a very fast processor, bottlenecked by the old GPU and RAM. But man, it makes you think of the PS4 and what they'll do with it.

Edit: ^Kleptic, that's correct. It's easy to see what games are optimized or not with PC gaming. Usually if it's optimized, it will use 100% of the GPU or CPU regardless if Vsync is on or not, which usually has 120+ fps. But when you have a insanely fast computer that only utilizes, say 25%, that game is unoptimized. Assassins creed II PC comes to mind.

These PS3 games are just highly optimized for the PS3, hence "100%" usage or "50%" depending on the engine.

[thief]

Just as well that most of the heavy lifting, including the AA, was provided by the Cell.
http://www.slideshare.net/o...

Amazingly, when the PS3 ws launched, the media was full of stories on how the cell was apparently not useful for gaming. Mostly planted by the xbox club, which is ironic because it later emerged that the 360 used a cheap rip-off of the cell based on stolen tech, but not as good as the original - the main reason why year old PS3 exclusives look way superior to any 360 exclusive.

[GfxPipeline]

Sarcasm: "It does seem like the weak link in the PS3 is the GPU."

Boggle.

I don't even know how someone could possibly write something so inane and completely and utterly divorced from reality.

[thief]

"PS3's cell is a very fast processor, bottlenecked by the old GPU and RAM"
GPU bottlenecking, true or not, is irrelevant when the cell can take off so much of the load.

The RAM is not a bottleneck – there is a reason why the PS3 has immensely high bus speeds between the cell and GPU and why it uses the astonishingly fast XDR RAM – 5 times as fast as the one used on the 360

[dabri5]

@thief
"Just as well that most of the heavy lifting, including the AA, was provided by the Cell.
http://www.slideshare.net/o...
Amazingly, when the PS3 ws launched, the media was full of stories on how the cell was apparently not useful for gaming. Mostly planted by the xbox club, which is ironic because it later emerged that the 360 used a cheap rip-off of the cell based on stolen tech, but not as good as the original - the main reason why year old PS3 exclusives look way superior to any 360 exclusive. "

******

both the Cell and Xbox 360's processors were developed by IBM. Now I know we can't steal tech from ourselves so I'm pretty sure your statement is a little off.

[Kleptic]

The campaign to neutralize the cell when the PS3 released was only partly true...and just slightly changing headlines would have made all the difference...

the cell wasn't useful for gaming when developers were coding them the way they did for PCs (and 360)...IT screams at certain processes, but is slower than more common cpu's at general purpose instructions because of its single PPE...

at that point, game rendering would use the cpu only for that normal baseline instruction sets, and all calc intensive processing was handled by the gpu...hence the importance of how fast a gpu was at that time...games, pc or console wise, were never overly taxing a cpu...but were ringing out a gpu for everything it had...

couple that with MS's statements of how slow the rsx of the PS3 was compared to the 360's gpu...and it went from there...even though the RSX to this day has never had its specs officially released; we already knew what chipset it was based on (the Nvidia G78 iirc)...

this made the first wave of PS3 games pretty terrible compared to competition...developers were using the PS3's architecture just like they would a 360...and it wasn't working...this removed ANY advantage the PS3 had power wise, because in most cases none of the spu's were used for anything...it was just a system with a dated gpu, and a fairly slow cpu for telling it what to do...

but as developers started to wrap their head around using the spu's for actual calc rendering processes...we started to see the results...and killzone 2 (and soon 3) were really the crowning achievements of that type of coding...when the ps3 launched parallel processing was a new idea for gaming...and Sony didn't exactly have a great set of tools for developers to work with...it was time consuming, and therefor extremely expensive...but with Sony later releasing the free EDGE toolset for developers, its made a major impact...for the most part only to first party developers, but the ps3 has come a long way with multiplats too...

[Ju]

"both the Cell and Xbox 360's processors were developed by IBM"

Not true. The CELL (!) was developed by STI - on site in the Austin IBM office. Sony payed upfront; they basically bought a whole building. (STI = Sony Toshiba IBM). IBM contributed the G3 PowerPC core (and made into the what we now know as PPU).

MS came late to the party; when the CELL design was already set in place and the PPU core was speced out. They dropped a shitload of money - which made IBM sell the already existing PPU design a second time to MS; behind the backs of ST(noI).

Technically, IBM did not steal their own design, but they certainly behaved a bit, err, selfish.

The reason is why the 360 does not have a CELL is, because only the PPU is owned by IBM, the rest Sony and Toshiba own. The Xenos is a spin-off of the PPU in the CELL (actually identical, but new VMX cores - which the CELL doesn't need because of the superior SPUs).

All docmented here: http://www.amazon.com/Race-...

[Ducky]

@sarcasm
"Usually if it's optimized, it will use 100% of the GPU or CPU regardless if Vsync is on or not, which usually has 120+ fps. But when you have a insanely fast computer that only utilizes, say 25%, that game is unoptimized. "

... wait what? An optimized games only uses the resources it needs. It shouldn't hump the CPU/GPU to a full load.
Optimization is increasing quality while minimizing resources used.

The percentages are pointless anyways. Taxing a system to 100% doesn't mean the software itself is any good.

[dabri5]

Judging by the disagrees in my comment above, you can indeed steal tech knowledge from yourself. This should lead to many interesting law suites where people sue themselves. Logic here amazes me.
IBM started development on the Cell before they started on the 360's processor. We worked with Sony, who provided the standards and Toshiba who worked with them on manufacturing (the sooner the better when designing new processors that will require new/refitted plants to manufacture). Sony specified what they were looking for out of the new processor and based off that, they began working with us so they could begin building an SDK for the hardware. Shortly after starting, Microsoft also started working with us to help them design a processor. They requested similar, but not the same, specifications for their processor. With some of the knowledge gained by the engineers here who worked on designing the Cell, I can only assume they used some of that to help with similar parts of the 360's processor as those parts of the specifications were the same. Really, the processor is based off the PowerPC architecture that was later used in the Xenon processors. To say the tech was stolen is like claiming that anyone who uses math learned from a teacher to solve any problem is stealing that knowledge from the teacher. We literally had some of the same team working on both projects. How are they not supposed to use learned techniques/ skills on future projects? Especially when so similar on certain levels.

[Ju]

So you are working for IBM and you were part of the design team? Someone is lying. Either you or who ever wrote the book since those two opinions don't match up here.

According to Shippy, the author, the exact same (IBM) team worked on both powerpc cores. Actually in the late phase Toshiba and Sony engineers help debugging the chip which finally went into both, the 360 and PS3.

Tell me, that story is made up, and why yours is true.

[Ju]

Actually if KZ2 only needs 50% in KZ3s engine, then KZ3 does 100% (= twice as much) more.

Btw: when are they re-releasing KZ2 with that engine. That would be cool. Technically that new engine should be able to run KZ2 in 1080p or 60fps :)

[dabri5]

Didn't say I was on that dev team, but yes, I work at IBM Software Group in RTP NC and have connections to members who were.

You could ignore my whole post if you like. My point stands. How can someone accuse MS/IBM/whoever for stealing tech that they themselves developed? It just doesn't make sense. That is really all I'm trying to ask/ get across.

I guess it really doesn't matter since you edited your comment to change how you phrased your statement.(I'm not saying this as a bad thing as I just edited this post a few times ;p )

It does surprise me that anyone would think the practice of selling tech owned and developed by a single company to multiple other companies as shady. IBM is a global company and for over 15 years we have filed more patents (for just about anything you can think of) than any other company in the world. We sell off those ideas to pretty much any company you can think of. Things that aren't even related to the technology we develop in house.
This isn't a business model for just IBM either. Sony, MS, Toshiba, and many other companies sell the same tech back and forth between companies.
If this wasn't the case, you would need to redevelop even the most basic parts from scratch every time you started a new project for someone. It just isn't practical/logical.

[BYE]

I hope not! It's too early for 100%, let's save that for the end of this gen.

[P1NKY]

It's 100% on their current Game Engine. Like most Game Engines it can be optimised further or a new Game Engine that is more optimised will replace it.

[dabri5]

too early? It's been 5 years. If you look at any other generation of consoles, this IS the end of this generation. I hope we start seeing announcements for new consoles this E3.

[Matthew94]

well we should expect big things from killzone 3 then

[Karooo]

splitscreen confirmed

[scar20]

Wow only 50%of the processor imagine if they use 100%.

To all ps3 players bu bu bu but i thought the ps3 was dead and had no games :/ sarcasm.

[P1NKY]

Killzone 3 does look alot better than Killzone 2 but from the videos I've seen the biggest improvement is the scale of the levels/environments in Killzone 3 compared to Killzone 2, but the fact that Killzone 2 only used 50% is quite amazing actually.

Looking forward to K3 next year.

[gijsbrecht]

I don't think Hulst meant 50% of what the PS3 is capable of, but that GG managed to to optimize their engine in such a way that they now can do twice as much graphics wise as they were able to two years ago. And I'm sure that with their next IP they can squeeze out even more. Who knows what the PS3 is actually capable of? And @ P1NKY; I really think that KZ3 is also a graphical improvement; not just the scale.

[P1NKY]

That what I said. "Killzone 3 does look ALOT better than Killzone 2"

[gijsbrecht]

Okay, sorry. I misread that part.

[SmokeyMcBear]

I was pretty much going to write the same damn thing, so instead i will just say i agree. This whole thing of 50%, 80%, all that stuff is mumbo jumbo, because its not like in previous game they had all this extra power that they decided not to use. They were using 100% of the power at taht time. Its really just the fact that they optimized their code now, and therefore can utilize the processing power more efficiently and can accomplish 50% more.

[wsoutlaw87]

well technically 100% more

[SnakeMustDie]

I guess that the improvement of KZ3 over KZ2 will be huge. Can't wait to get it.

[Digital-_-Smoke]

The words of Guerilla have been interpreted wrong, What they actually tried to say, is that the pulled a killzone 2 level and integrated it in the killzone 3 engine and it utilized only 50 % capacity !

[mynd]

Aint it funny how people can take a comment and complelty twist it to suit their own purpose.
You are correct GG are basically saying, we optmized our code much better. KZ2 may well have been using 100% of the PS3 power, just it was doing it inefficently.
Non-coders will never understand efficentcy vs "power" I guess.

[dp277407]

well maybe you'll be able to understand how much better this game will look than any thing your companies put out and will... even with what you would probally call cheap programming tricks that killzone use. Now go ahead and make a personal attack.

[mynd]

Sad, one can only laugh at you guys really, GG make great strides in progrmaming, and do what every one hopes of doing, making their game more effcent and allow for more features and dumb arse PS3 boys can only come with ways of insulting people who just handed them a compliment.
.
@dp277407, dedicated developers will contiune to make strides in cell programming if they are allowed to stick at it.

[ApocalypseShadow]

the point everyone BUT units is trying to make,is that ps3 has so much horse power under the hood that if you do not write efficient code,it will not push ps3 to its potential.sort of like third party games.

killzone 2 showed that ps3 had power.killzone 3 with coop,3D,larger areas and better textures will show that ps3 was EVERYTHING ken kutaragi said it was.but the haters didn't listen.

[duplissi]

just imagine what high end pcs could be capable of if those devs could optimize their games the way console devs do........
.
.
.

[coldfoot]

They won't do it, since why bother when your game is going to get pirated to hell and back?
Killzone 3 is pretty much expected to sell at least 3M, so that makes it worth optimizing.

[Mista T]

didn't Catyclysm sell like 3 million in 24 hours? Crysis when it was released sold like 1 million so there's definitely a market

[Kleptic]

optimizing a PC game is always a moving target...thats why it won't happen...Crytek even stated that just before Crysis released in 2007...that it would be over a year before a gpu, available to the public, would be capable of making the game truly sing...

and Crytek is the ONLY PC developer pushing rendering tech...and arguably iD still, although ID TECH 5 is not appearing to be the kind of release iD used to do...where its ahead of the curve for years...

console devs like guerilla and ND though can invest thousands of hours into a single piece of hardware that is not going to change...this is the single reason that on paper specs of consoles never really line up with the visuals they end up producing...PC wise a PS3's specs are pretty much worthless...build a windows equipped PC with 256mb of system memory...and an old g78 with its own 256mb...the fawker won't even run its own operating system, let alone a game that looks like uncharted 2, god of war III, or killzone 2...

PC gaming is, and always was, the most inefficient gaming platform available...It takes gigs of memory and blazing fast gpu's to produce the state of the art graphics some games create...but if developers were able to slow down the hardware side of the industry...they could do the same with a whole lot less...but as long as new hardware is releasing several times a year, developers don't have the time or money to really squeeze what is already available...

[duplissi]

yeah, its pretty sad actually.. oh well one can dream.

[BYE]

You mean like Crysis when it was first released?

[duplissi]

lol crysis wasnt optimized at ALL... its pretty telling when current hardware (at the time) couldnt run the game to its fullest.

[Koolno]

Not everyone has a cell/best intel and a better gpu to use your "kZ3 pc", they can't do a game only for some richs geeks.

[MGRogue2017]

Behold... Teh Power of the PS3's Cell Broadband Engine!!! :D

[killalot100]

GIVE ME 60FPS!!!

[NateCole]

Hemlut confirmed that they put a whole KZ2 level in the KZ3 engine and it was running at 50% capacity.

They attributed this to their tech team and their great work on optimisation.

[damnyouretall]

ive had my ps3 for a year now and just got kz2. im not impressed with the graphics at all. i mean theyre good for current gen, but not amazing like ive heard from fanboys. but kz3 will impress me if this is true.

[Koolno]

Are you blind ?

Even the online has better graphics than anything else in solo, for others consoles.

Play kz2 sometimes, online, then return to cod, battelfield, all that you want, and you will be schocked by the gap.

[WetN00dle69]

Nice.
The mighty KZ3 is almost upon us.

[fistacuff56]

this is only common in game development,killzone 2 used a new engine, with killzone 3 they now have time to optimize it. just like Halo 3 and Halo Reach. engine optimization can be down right incredible some times

[kramun]

*Slightly offtopic*

This is another instance of a gaming site using another sites work to get hits. 1up gets leeched by sites like this to get hits. Someone posted a link to some guy making this point, only just realised how true it is.

EDIT:Here it is, Jack 007 posted it, exactly what this site is doing...

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

[cyclindk]

In case anyone is confused by the percentages being thrown around regarding the PS3 let me clear it up for you:

The PS3 is capable of infinite percentageses...es... so nobody will ever utilize all of em... except for maybe Mark

[sleepy3]

Read somewhere that Megamind the movie only uses 3% of the PS3's power....

You haven't seen anything yet my friend. The PS3's power is limitless. games next year will make KZ2 look like an 8 bit game.

[sleepy3]

....doesn't seem to look twice as better to me. With that kind of power in reserve we should see the jump from KZ1 to KZ2.

[airforcex]

Could this relate to the fact that the game is 3D? (2 images)

[ULTIMATE_REVENGE]

The GPU is very weak so stop coming out with this "Oh but the CELL makes up for it" because that's a dumb argument. If that's the case then games on the PS3 would have looked 50x better if the GPU wasn't weak to begin with.

Imagine what Uncharted 3 would've looked like if Sony used a better GPU.

[Koolno]

YOur arguments are dumb, the gpu work with the cell, and the results : uncharted 3, or even, 2 , or 1, can't be made on others consoles !

xbox fanboyz was crying "600^$ is too much blablabla" and now, they want ps3 to have the last high end pc gpu from the future inside :)

edit@new flesh : gt5 failure, lol, it's a real religion to be a blind fanboy, only some biased reviews, and they are happy, forgetting all the 9 TO 10 scores, and more than 5 millions sells already...."failure" , but better than forza, and can't be done on 360 :)

[ULTIMATE_REVENGE]

I paid full price for a PS3 on launch day here in the UK and I'm a not a 360 fanboy, however you're a Sony loyalists and not a PS3 fan.

You should be grateful that your mum bought you a PS3.

[newflesh]

This is just pure marketing. They are hyping their game and it's OK, but I've been teached not to believe it.. after gt5 failure to live up to the expectations for example.

[sukas]

killzone 2 had the best visuals, but worse story and lame gameplay, no coop, no sci-fi weapons, there weapons were more like from ww2 and the game story plays around 500 years in the future dosent make much sense, was more of an uninspired sci-fi games set in the 1940 ww2, and it had only few diffrent weapons far to less, and i did hate the pistol, no boss fights, no customisible weapons.

if all is that is fixid killzone 3 will be best fps after
reistance 3 !

[PirateThom]

It's set in the future, sure, but why do you automatically assume they'd have laser rifles or something? It actually makes more sense... firearms have been in use for more than 2000 years, it makes perfect sense ballistic weapons would still be the main weapon less than 500 years in the future from now...

[turgore]

Yeah because they had electricity guns in WW2... Killzone 2 was brilliant, just a tad too short.

[Garnett]

Hey GG, we heard this same bullshit a few years ago, how about you stop using the same lame lines to promote your game?

[turgore]

so they optimized so it uses even less resources yet looks better ? wow that is impressive. Guerilla has a really bright future.

[SpinalRemains138]

I can't believe people are still arguing over the weak link in the PS3 which is the GPU.

I thought it was common knowledge by now that the PS3 does not use its GPU like standard gaming machines. It's different because it uses a different approach. The CPU does calculations for it at times. We've known this for 4 years now.

Look at the games which utilize this theory in their coding. The PS3 specifically designed games look amazing. They look and play beautifully. They win awards. Wouldn't saying things like the GPU is weak, be a moot point? How can the machine be graphically inferior when its exclusive games look miles ahead of the competition?

[GiantJedi]

How many times have they said this before...not denying its true just saying i feel like I've seen this stuff all the time.