News Game file sizes could soon be 70% smaller

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/10/04/Game_file_sizes_could_soon_be_70_smaller/

 

If this works, they can easily whack it onto consoles, I'll be veeery happy.

 

finally {if news == 'not hoax' then content:=content*10; endif; }
forget this spellng, I'm not sure of the exact way of typing it.

 

Smaller on my hard drive, quicker to install from DVD... I was thinking this would be perfect for next-gen consoles but then again, I imagine all the extra capacity of Blu-ray is for video files.

Then again, smaller textures on the disc would presumably use less VRAM, which is ALWAYS a good thing in a console (as any PS2 owner can attest)

 

Smaller textures = less RAM requirements for PC games?

If so then ill hold on upgrading to 2Gb

WEll game installs are obscenely huge for someone who cant keep splashing out on HDD's and if it were to speed up load times then all the better!

 

so a 50gb blu ray disk is no longer needed, im sure with 70% reduction most even next gen games can fit on dvds

nice one sony

 

The company name in the link is misspelled.

Interesting news. If the textures' file sizes are smaller, would that mean that uber-video cards wouldn't be necessary to play the new games with higher detail? Or do I have that completely wrong?

-monkey

 

I very much doubt that there sizes will be reduced 70%, more like 40%-50% reduction over the next few years, but even so its going to be a great tool, if it is implemented correctly and taken up by a large enough sector of the gaming industry...

 

i hope the industry uses this.

 

any details on how it works?

 

yah I'm curious to the mechanics of this compression or storage algorithem. Would this add significant overhead in terms of processing the images, will current graphics cards be able to render them? (seems to be the case). I'm still a little bit confused so this is a compression format, can the compression be carried through the render process? or is it just for saving disk space

if it can be carried through the whole rendering process than either A) games could run on less hardware or have smaller footprints etc, or B) games could have much higher quality textures and more textures for the same hardware.


I'm still a tad bit confused

 

If some sort of lossless compression is used, wouldn't this mean that more CPU power is required? Or is there some other techique used where no extra processing power is requried?

Basically, how does it work

 

This seems to use procedural texturing, like with .kkreiger. Small file size but it demanded a top notch machine (at it's release).

- H.

 

And this is based on your experience from the PhD you did in image compression, I presume?

Maybe it works in the same way as this 96KiB game? Just a thought.
Edit: Damn, beaten to it!


ch424

 

I'm going to have to tell them to get a new name, allegorithmic doesn't really roll off the tongue.

 

LOL. Yeah, I had to read that name 5 or 6 times because it looks so confusing.

-monkey

 

To me this sounds a lot like when mpeg4 / divx / xvid came out: smaller file sizes, faster transfer, BUT more CPU power needed (though in this case it may be more GPU power needed). I wonder how long before Intel buys / clones this - They have the CPU power but not the bandwidth of AMD.

 

If it's pronoucned al-le-gor-ith-mic then personally I reckon it's quite a cool name, don't imagine that'd be an issue for 'em.

 

not hard to pronounce at all. Just an extra syllable to algorthimic

 

Yeah I was gonna mention that, the textures in that game are excellent, nevermind the fact the exe is tiny!!