Media Manipulation: the "Bullshot" phenomenon

tigersnake86 - 117 days 1 hour ago

very informative article

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Voozi - 117 days 1 hour ago

Yea pretty good article

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Redempteur - 117 days 1 hour ago

nice article ..everyone does it except nintendo since there are not even in the HD area yet ..

i guess more and more people cheated and then cheating became the norm .. that's sad

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C_SoL - 117 days ago

how people trip over this sh!t (I'm talking about the people down below)........Is the trailer supposed to look sh!tty? Honestly these trailers get me hyped up about the product that I want.

People are so delusional these days. Watch tv people it happens everyday.....Media Manipulation. So Boo-Hoo

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FamilyGuy - 116 days 23 hours ago

As long as it looks similar to what you're really going to be seeing in-game. I prefer game play videos to trailers anyway as trailer are supposed to be enhanced, just like movie trailers showing the best, most exciting or funniest parts of a movie. Trailers are made to sell the idea of what you're getting so there's no point in calling "bullshot" when you're looking at a trailer anyway.

Good read, and good info on how these things really work.

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ShiftyLookingCow - 116 days 12 hours ago

agreed. Whats worse? Fanboys love them, they would rather be deceived than see what the actual game looks like.

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Soda Popinsky - 117 days 2 hours ago

They also "missed" the Killzone 2 and Motorstorm trailers from E3 2005.

Here's a bullshot as well: http://media.photobucket.co...

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Fishy Fingers - 117 days 2 hours ago

I believe pretty much every promotional screen has had some sort of "work" on it. Especially ones released early. Epic certainly take the biscuit though.

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PirateThom - 117 days 2 hours ago

Of course promotional shots have work done, Epic are just worse than anyone else.

1080p? Massive improvements to anti-aliasing and textures?

This isn't even rendered via a 360, it's a high end PC.

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NaiNaiNai - 117 days 1 hour ago

PirateThom Open zone is over there -------->

BTW how did you get so many bubbles you were down to 4 like a week ago..

*on topic*

I don't see the problem with bullshots. Gives you a general Idea of what the game "should, could" look like. Most of the time its not to far off.

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tigersnake86 - 117 days 1 hour ago

As long as it ends up looking relatively close, I see no problem with bullshots.

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PirateThom - 117 days 1 hour ago

NaiNaiNai
Open zone is over there, not sure how it relates to my post though.

And I've never had 4 bubbles.

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wxer - 117 days 1 hour ago

@ soda

that's killzone2 gameplay

im pretty sure it is

i paly the game evryday and thats what i see

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Brutallyhonest - 117 days 1 hour ago

First of all you are the last person that should be telling people to head to the open zone.

2nd Pirate Thom has been riding 10 bubbles for as long as I can remember. I know because I bubble him every time N4G allows.

Now on topic:
Nearly every dev and publisher are guilty of bullshots. I don't know why it's a big deal. It's just part of the whole hype machine and a good (no doubt deceiving) PR tool. I never fall for them. I take everything I see and read from the gaming media with a grain of salt until I play the game for myself.

This was actually a good read.

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crillyconlig - 117 days 1 hour ago

gears was the worst offenders, cant compare kz and motorstorm, those where target renders

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crillyconlig - 117 days 1 hour ago

thats actual in game screen of killzone

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Voozi - 117 days 1 hour ago

wxer that one screenshot, they admitted to doing minor touchups to it

http://www.monstersandcriti...

"Guerilla Games’ Seb Downie, while conceding that some slight adjustments have indeed been applied to the images in question, has insisted that nothing was changed in terms of content or composition, with only slight aesthetic detailing being subjected to Photoshop-like enhancements.

"They are only the tiniest bit touched up," wrote Downie on the official PlayStation 3 forum, before adding that "a little bit of colour-correction [was] done and some minor polish, but nothing major. Still very close to reality and it looks better in motion in my opinion.""

But I mean, nothing compared to this lol http://dlb-network.com/wp-c...

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KnaveX - 117 days 1 hour ago

i lold at nai sending people to the open zone, its like hey join me at my home, its lonely there.

On topic, its an ok article, and its not an offense to me if thats what im seeing while i play, and in GT5P, it is.

Now, gears that bullshot is extreme, very extreme. The killzone 2 i think is touched up also, but with a couple of filters, and these were filters that were later added to the game before release, so i see it more as a target render touch.

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Shbzshar - 117 days 1 hour ago

i think epic was hyping up its unreal engine 3 at the time with some cool screens... who could forget they even said they used a 100 percent of the 360's processing power for their first UE 3 game gears 2... real question is who actually believed them through all of this ?

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Saaking - 117 days 1 hour ago

Soda, Killzone 2 actually looks like that picture. Gears 2, not even close.

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Noob - 117 days ago

You haven't played the game. It looks so much better, especially in motion.

This would of been a much better example.

http://images.gamersyde.com...

That compressed picture looks like it is from the final build of the game which has more color and is at a higher resolution. The older builds looks more grayish. Nice fail.

@ Xiphos

I agree. Other games like MGS4 use it too but they don't abuse like Gears and Halo does.

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Xiphos - 117 days ago

Yeah I'd say Epic is the biggest offender. They make Gears look better than CGI sometimes, then the game comes out running standard UE3 graphics. I've noticed that with many games that run on UE3, though. I guess that engine just works well for bullshotting.

lol @ Soda's Killzone image. That's how the game actually looks, you should try it sometime, you might like it.

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DonCorneo - 117 days ago

no upcoming xbox game (odst and forza are not good-looking in motion).

plus, there are no screenshots for GT5, as far as I know. how can you bullshot an actual moving trailer? it's either a cgi movie or it's using the in-game engine. of course, pre-rendered will look better than actual gameplay.. if you want to judge, wait for actual gameplay footage (the videos has the phrase actual gameplay footage in it)

the kz2 trailer was cgi, same with ms. the actual engine for them aren't even at 10% during that time. nobody said it was in-game.

having played the beta, we already know uncharted 2 looks good.

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Information Minister - 116 days 21 hours ago

Of course this is biased. What did you expect? These are the same guys who already decided months ago that FF XIII looks better on the 360. No word of praise towards the PS3 ever came out from Digital Foundry's staff. Quite the opposite.

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wxer - 117 days 1 hour ago

agree
actually
thats a gameplay pic

and i don't thin GT needs this
GT always deliver

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Soda Popinsky - 116 days 14 hours ago

I never said it did. I just thought it was annoying that PirateThom had to focus on flaming instead of writing something constructive for once. The article already mentioned Halo 3, Mass Effect 2 and Star Ocean 4 but NO, that wasn't enough for him. He had to take it one step further.

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aldesko - 117 days ago

Yeah, the anti-aliasing gives it away most of the time.

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Saaking - 117 days ago

like halo wars?

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Xi - 117 days ago

Halo wars cutscenes were cgi and no one ever tried to pass it off as gameplay, unlike the original motorstorm and killzone 2 trailer.

maybe try playing the game first before making claims like that. It was an rts, why would people think an RTS would look like that?

that was one of the dumbest comments I've ever read.

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KnaveX - 117 days ago

cutscenes are not trailers.

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GiantEnemyCrab - 116 days 22 hours ago

It is no different when they use the cut-scenes as trailers. Xi is right you are FOS if you think the cut-scenes/trailers were ever trying to be passed off as game play.

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JBaby343 - 116 days 21 hours ago

That was a misquote when he was talking about a different game but people still love to use it.

@ crab: What if it's an in-game, in-engine cutscene?

For the record I wish developers would show their games for what they are.

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Xi - 117 days 1 hour ago

what are you talking about?

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Pandamobile - 117 days ago

The PS3 and 360 GPU's aren't that far off the mark from each other.

Saying the 360 can output 2x more triangles in a frame seems pretty wrong.

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na2ru1 - 117 days ago

GT5P having some of the most detailed car modelling ever on consoles you believe PS3 is unable to outnumber 360's polygon count? And Forza3 looking pretty good, you call Turn 10 lazy?

You know what? STFU!

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kaveti6616 - 117 days ago

Yeah, dumbass, I am saying that the Xenos is more powerful than the RSX you ignorant twit. The Xenos can output 500 million polygons per second. The RSX can output 275 million polygons per second. GT5 looks better than Forza 3 because Polyphony Digital is more talented than Turn 10 and knows how to leverage the resources of the PS3 hardware. If you idiots just stopped being biased for one fricking second, you could have searched the internet and found out that what I said was true.

@Pandamobile.

If something "seems" wrong to you then you search the net and find out. You don't just say that it seems wrong and leave it at that. The theoretical polygon performance of the Xenos GPU is twice as good as the theoretical polygon performance of the RSX. Keep in mind we are talking about the GPUs. The artistic excellence of PD and Naughty Dog is reflected in their work. They are able to pull off better details with less polygons because of hand-drawn textures.

Telling me to STFU is probably the most amusing comment. Consider the fact that I am one of the least biased people on this site, that I appreciate the strengths of both consoles and that I don't ever go around trolling articles. Consider that, dumbass Na2ru. If I say something you don't want to hear, go elsewhere.

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JBaby343 - 116 days 22 hours ago

I disagree with you. Xenos may be more powerful than the RSX but it's not all about the GPUs. That's why the CELL is there. It takes a huge load off the GPU to render scenes and even handles some shader ops. Up to 40% of the scene in Killzone 2 is done by the CELL. If it was only RSX doing all the processing it wouldn't look nearly as good. Theoretically the PS3 actually produces higher poly counts thanks to the CELL. It more than makes up for the differences in power between the GPUs.

I do think Sony 1st party devs are some of the best out there but with the 360 being much easier to code for and thus easier to get more out of than the PS3 there must be some other reason besides "dev talent" that PS3 games consistently have more going on on-screen, better effects, and higher poly counts (among other things) all at the same time.

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kaveti6616 - 116 days 20 hours ago

The Cell doesn't render polygons. So your argument went right out the window.

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shadow2797 - 116 days 14 hours ago

Now I don't know much about computers or how the architecture in any of the next gen systems work, but doesn't the RAM make the theoretical polygon counts irrelevant?

I'm sorry, but there's just no way the 360 (not Xenos) is capable of rendering twice the number of polygons as the PS3 (not RSX). You simply can't just take one part of the whole architecture to prove a point. The architecture in both machines works together to create what we see. And surprisingly the results are pretty darn close. Nowhere near as big as the differences between the Xbox and PS2.

But, again, I have pretty limited computer knowledge. However, MS's devs aren't that bad at what they do. If they were capable of that kind of power, we would have seen it.

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kaveti6616 - 116 days 11 hours ago

I didn't say the PS3 wasn't more powerful than the 360 overall. The PS3 is on a whole more powerful than the 360. But in the area of polygon pushing power, the 360 can indeed push out theoretically twice as many polygons per second as the PS3's GPU can. It's hard to to believe because fanboys from the PS3 side have been brainwashed into believing that the PS3 is more powerful in every single aspect of the hardware. I personally don't care enough to be biased. I know the PS3 is more powerful in every other way and the developers on Sony's end have truly displayed that power with their artistic skill. The 360s developers are used to obtaining all of the resources of the 360 up front, so they never optimize the hardware enough to run the code efficiently. Using the Unreal Engine 3 for exclusives is not going to cut it.

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callahan09 - 116 days 3 hours ago

@ kaveti:

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

Not the best example, but the entire scene is rendered by a cluster of cell microprocessors and nothing else. So the cells are capable of triangle rendering and ray-tracing.

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JBaby343 - 115 days 17 hours ago

I've seen a video of the city of Rome rendered on nothing but the CELL. Maybe youtube or somewhere but other videos exist also. More than one developer has already said the CELL helps out a lot with geometry processing. It's not just isolated to the RSX. The hardware works as a whole which is different from the 360.

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DonCorneo - 117 days ago

because we already played the beta.. LOL.. xbots, do you remember back in 2007, xbots playing the gaylo 3 beta and cannot accept that the graphics were fugly -- saying that it's just the beta version and the screenshot (bullshots) show it's gonna be good?

denial mode up until the actual release.. and then xbots said, gaylo 3 is not about graphics, it's about having fun.. LMAO

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frnkyl - 116 days 22 hours ago

Don't forget Gears of War 2 XD

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Saaking - 117 days ago

it's just jealous bots angry because Guerrilla delivered and Epic didn't.

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The-Warranty - 117 days ago

.

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Saaking - 117 days ago

wow, poor bots. Those kind of graphics are only possible on a High-end PC and they thought their failbox could handle it. Haha.

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dem0n - 117 days ago

Dude that was a target render for Gears of War 1, I remember the magazine that featured it. Notice how Marcus looks, well, not like Marcus.

Dumb droid. Try harder.

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kingdavid - 116 days 12 hours ago

@dem0n

LOL at the disagrees you're getting. PS3 fans in denial. You are 100 % correct. Ive still got a mag with that pic in it.

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Saaking - 117 days ago

Wow, flopza doesn't even come close to GT5p let alone the actual GT5. Bots, MS has lied enough about the sh!tbox's capabilities don't you think.

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WaitStation 3 - 117 days ago

That is an "off-screen" cam view, ya douche. A few things Forza 3 will have over GT5...

1. Will not be boring

2. Endless custimizations

3. A real community/people actually playing online

4. 1 million polygon count

5. Better crash/driving physics

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dem0n - 117 days ago

Dude, go back to your cave. If you think Forza 3 looks bad, you need to get some glasses.

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wxer - 117 days ago

@ WaitStation 3

you really are one big fanboy

1- GT has never been boring
ive been playing it Since ps1
and its still fun

2- customization is not every thing in a driving sim
actually in GT you can heavily customize your car mechanics more than you can do in forza

the GT series really makes you go deep in customizing your car engine
and almost every small thing in it
but not the visuals of that car

3- i think 16 can on track in the same time are better that just 8

4- talking about polygon
GT wins in this one no question

5- GT is having great physics long time a go
and in GT5 it well be better and it well have crashing now

so i dont know what you got on GT
forza is good
but GT is epic

i know cus i got them all

and you just keep proven that you are one big fanboy

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rareairtone - 114 days 23 hours ago

gt5 may look really good, but it has less polygons than forza! Polyphony for the longest time has been saying their game's cars each have about 200,000 polygons. http://propergraphics.com/3...

Why would these people render the car to PD's standards and use under 200,000 polygons if the gt 5's cars have more polygons?

you're just a punk fanboy who doesn't understand how graphics work. GT 5 looks good because of their texture work and they know how to make those cars looks shapely even though the polygons are limited. Don't think it's because the polygon count is higher than forza 3

Forza 3 had a shorter development time. to make up for having to make a whole new game in 2 years instead of the 6 or so years GT 5 has been in development, they use 1 million polygons per car.

GT 5 may fundamentally look better than forza 3, but it's not because of freakin polygons

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