IGN: Battlefield 3 console versions both have Install Options for High-Res Textures

Both the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions are confirmed to have installation options for high-resolution textures.

An interesting nugget of news has come out of last night's Battlefield 3 preview event in San Francisco held by EA and DICE. While speaking with GamerZines, DICE's Patrick Liu revealed that the game would allow players to install content from one disc that would let the game stream higher resolution textures.

Additionally, we asked EA whether or not the game would offer the same feature for PS3 owners, and fortunately this seems to be the case. "The PS3 version requires the same install but it's all on the one blu-ray disk," a spokesperson for the company confirmed.

[Gamer3000]

"Additionally, we asked EA whether or not the game would offer the same feature for PS3 owners, and fortunately this seems to be the case. "The PS3 version requires the same install but it's all on the one blu-ray disk," a spokesperson for the company confirmed"

that's what i like to read

[xXtremeHDGamerXx]

BF3 will be epic on every platform

[deadpoole]

DICE ... u r one of the best developer ... thanks for high rez tex pack.

Ill be defi installin this pack for sure on my PS3.

[Echo307]

This makes me feel better about how bad the beta looked. Let's face it, it wasn't pretty. But the idea that we were playing not only an outdated build of the game, but also on low-res textures that will be surpassed by this optional install, makes me feel good.

I can't imagine a Battlefield game not looking stunning.

@Droid: I just want it to look 'as good as' BC2. Give me that with the new sounds and B3 options, and I'm happy.

[gamingdroid]

Now, don't overhype the game to yourself and ruining your own exprience. :D

edit: @@Echo307

Perhaps try the PC version and you are guaranteed better visuals.

[Clarence]

Yep can't go wrong with it. Im hyped about the game

[NewMonday]

I wish their is an option for on stalking the MP fully

[gamingdroid]

That is definitely an interesting feature. Install higher resolution textures?

More and more, the console is becoming more like a PC with patches, installs and so on. Good thing this is optional.

[Tarantino_Life]

You will never let up will you. We get it you love the 360 and Microsoft's 360 is gods gift to gamers. Now enough with your stupid digs at pc and ps3 in every freaking article.

[ThatIrishGamer]

I'd defo be installing the texture patch as the graphics in the beta are worse than Bad Company 2.

[Undeadwolfy]

What @Tarantino_Life said. Every time I see a comment by GamingDroid, I have to take a sigh before I read because I know whats coming next.

[MrBeatdown]

Not sure why you think it's a good thing. If anything, it just highlights the limitations that come with DVD and hard drives not coming standard with all 360s. This "high res" install is mandatory on PS3. That makes it the standard, and only option on PS3.

That pack is the "optional" install on 360, but it's just to put it on par with the PS3 version which uses the high-res pack by default. Without this install, the 360 version has lower resolution textures.

That tells me DICE didn't have enough room for the campaign on one disc, and had to have a base pack with lower resolution to support those without a hard drive. Basically, those without a hard drive are getting an inferior game.

[MrBeatdown]

I would love to hear the reasoning behind the disagrees I'm getting. I'm assuming there actually isn't any logic behind it and that it's just another case of people treating the disagree button like it's a "I don't like this" button. Either that or reading comprehension is lacking around here.

I'm not sure how any logical, unbiased person could think otherwise. The texture pack is standard on PS3. I doubt 360 would have trouble running it from the disc, and DICE aren't throwing in an optional install just for fun. The only option that makes sense is there isn't enough room on the campaign disc. The only reason this install is optional, is because DICE can't make it mandatory, and so they were forced to include less-than-high-res textures to fit on one disc for those without a hard drive.

Really, it's not that hard to figure out...

PS3 = High resolution
360 with install = High resolution
360 without install = ???

If ??? is a mystery to you, you probably aren't very bright.

[gamingdroid]

Because people like options and if you don't want compromises, you can have that with an install. If you don't care about the compromise, but want instant gratification you can have that too. In this case you can have your cake and eat it too.

That said, Digital Foundry just reported on Rage and said the following:

"Another word of warning we should note concerns the way that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 file formats differ. Format a USB drive on your 360, plug it into your PC and make hidden files visible and you can see exactly how Microsoft's system works - it generates a big bunch of large files and stores data within that allocated space. When you download a demo or piece of DLC from Xbox LIVE, it is also stored as a series of large files on the disk - this helps tremendously in terms of keeping fragmentation of the drive low.

The PlayStation 3 doesn't do this: when a game or demo installs to your HDD, there can be thousands of smaller files (in the case of GT5, up to 44,000 files) which does mean that over time your drive can fragment and drive performance will degrade a lot faster. In a recent discussion with a game developer who developed a data-heavy open world game, their extreme stress tests on the PS3 HDD actually reduced performance to lower than that of streaming in the same assets from Blu-ray."

http://www.eurogamer.net/ar...

So it ain't all roses on the other side even with a mandatory install. There will always be compromises.

Furthermore:

"Another element of image quality where there are plain differences between the two consoles is in terms of the texture streaming. To fully understand this, we need to have a bit of a refresher course on how id's virtual texturing works: in short, there are four levels here in the journey from storage to display: the optical drive, the hard drive cache, the memory cache and the on-screen texture. In a worst case scenario, the Xbox 360 will go through all four stages on every piece of art in the game. Installing the game to hard drive cuts out the optical disc completely and thus removes the slowest part of the procedure.

PlayStation 3 only gets a partial install - a weighty 7.1GB that takes around 20 minutes to complete - so some of the texture data is still being drawn from the Blu-ray (which in terms of all-important seek times is slower than the Xbox 360's DVD drive), and this does result in significant differences in the time it takes for the image to fully resolve. Running Rage on an Xbox 360 without the install, but with a hard drive attached for caching purposes, isn't quite as fast as the PS3 - but it's not a million miles away from the overall performance profile."

Take from that what you want.

[MrBeatdown]

I love how you've tried to turn this around and into a discussion of the PS3's problems, which, might I add, is kind of funny, since those "problems" mentioned don't make much of a difference outside of what can be nitpicked by Digital Foundry when played side and side and subjected to an in-depth tech analysis. PS3 added something beneficial in Blu-Ray, while making up for any shortcomings of the format by making the hard drive standard. For five years the PS3 has held it's ground against 360, while still offering devs the space benefit of Blu-Ray.

The only difference between PS3 and 360 now with Battlefield, or even Forza for that matter since we clearly aren't sticking to just Battlefield anymore, is that the 360 requires two discs instead of one. Oh, and that group of people who prefer to skip a brief install in favor of low-res textures throughout the game get that added "benefit".

Consoles already lag behind PC. The last thing consoles need are "options" that allow it to lag even further behind. It was bad enough when the Core 360 didn't have any storage options. Now it's begun dragging down graphics, or even content in the case of Forza, for those who don't have a hard drive. At least in the case of something like Rage, the issues amount to nothing more than an occasional disc swap, which is hardly a problem.

Seriously, at what point does offering "options" become a burden on developers or just plain pointless? "C'mon into Pizza Hut, where you can get a large crust with sauce for just $4.99! Add cheese for just $3 more!"

[gamingdroid]

Let me repeat the pertinent section:

"PlayStation 3 only gets a partial install - a weighty 7.1GB that takes around 20 minutes to complete - so some of the texture data is still being drawn from the Blu-ray (which in terms of all-important seek times is slower than the Xbox 360's DVD drive), and this does result in significant differences in the time it takes for the image to fully resolve. Running Rage on an Xbox 360 without the install, but with a hard drive attached for caching purposes, isn't quite as fast as the PS3 - but it's not a million miles away from the overall performance profile."

If you can't work around the slow read of blu-ray, and you can't compensate with hard drive cache, what happens? Low texture my friend even with an install!

It ain't all daisies. There is always a compromise no matter what platform you are on. In the Xbox 360 situation, it turns out that the fast read speeds of DVD and the option to install it intelligently, makes it superior to any other console version out there.

[Ares90]

sounds like the ps3 version is mandatory

[chriski333]

well thats awesome holy crap i cant wait anymore i want BF3 now!!!!!

[detroitmademe]

sweet

[Gamer3000]

tooth

[TheColbertinator]

Hahaha

[Undeadwolfy]

Win

[M-Easy]

+1 funny bubble

[BattleTorn]

I predict that both with look great.

[MidnytRain]

I predicted that you'd predict that both will look great.

[Ducky]

Then you predicted wrong.

He didn't predict that both will look great.
He predicted that both with look great.

[padz1]

I predict that you predict that he predicted wrong about the other guys prediction.

[OcelotRigz]

@FatOldMan
Brilliant.

[MidnytRain]

Ah, but Fatman, I predicted that you'd discredit my prediction, so I predicted incorrectly so my original prediction would come true.

[llMurcielagoll]

And I predict that you guys are way too bored! LoL

[MGRogue2017]

Good to know that Dice are taking advantage of the hard drives in all PS3s

I can only hope that Infinity Ward are doing the same with MW3.. but I doubt it. Both MW2 & Black Ops ran off of the BR disc.

[Sunhammer]

MW3 doesn't have textures.

[Tarantino_Life]

LMAO! The most sensible comment I have heard all day.

[LordZ]

From the site's comments:

For MW3 you can just reuse the Black Ops file if you have it installed.

lmao

[Ocean]

Great news.....now both PS3 and 360 players can enjoy the game as it was intended...HD space permitting

[ATi_Elite]

Hi res texture pak....NICE!

I cant wait to see a comparison of the game with and without the texture pak.

[qwertyz]

the texture res and quality) will still be low(like all console games compared to pc standards) because textures are streamed to gpu through VRAM the hdd install just makes streaming from hdd to vram faster.

higher res textures take more time to stream(and more vram) and the larger the amount of vram available the more textures you can stream to the gpu at one go.

the pc version will have much better textures(4-6 times the resolution of the console textures is possible) because pc gpus have FAR more vram available.

@Tarantino_Life

this isn't copied from anywhere look at my comments would you ? do some resarch next time before talking out of your arse lol and you're the one calling me an idiot the irony did you even read this comment before replying or was it too long for you to read because thats what it looks like

[cyclonus007]

Where did anyone say the console versions will look identical or better than the PC version?

Everyone already knows the PC version will be the best.

[MysticStrummer]

Oh look, a PC commercial in comments about the console versions of a game. What a surprise.

[theflyindutchman]

lol u beat me to it!
same thing on every article.
getting really old guys, yes the pc version will look the best and so on.
good news btw.

[Tarantino_Life]

Someone throw this idiot of these boards. Copy pastes the same crap in every forum

[RioKing]

PC fanboys trolling an article for consoles to once again reiterate that the PC version will be graphically superior.

Sounds to me like someone's compensating for other "short comings". -_-

[Xalaris]

Nail right on the head.
+1

[Gamer-Z]

@qwertyz

Why do you have to come on here and ruin everyone's buzz man, you need to chill and go play your superior PC that costed you $2,000 xP

[DirtyLary]

Why isn't this just standard? The consoles either can or can't run them.

[Ingram]

that's a good point

[RegorL]

Maybe the textures are a big compressed file that is uncompressed during install to HD. Thus the install might easily be MUCH bigger than 10 GB even on Xbox 360.

As an example the textures on disk might be JPEG2000 or PNG compressed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

So an install might decompress (and maybe recompress) to a format that the GPU likes.

http://www.totalpcgaming.co...

“That’s the whole magic with this. We can have 512 megs every hundred metres if we wanted to, as we can just flush the data out [and replace it] as you move along. I can promise you that the console versions will still look amazing because of the core technology. If you have a 360, we want to use that machine to the maximum.”

So how big is the Great Bazaar?
How many GB of 3D models and textures is used for that map?

[Hufandpuf]

then you'd have pop in textures. ie. Rage on PC.

[RegorL]

Not necessarily, you can actually do it right.
(noticed that I wrote "a big compressed file", I did not intend to mean that resulting textures would be one big texture file. I thought more of a tar file)

I got the impression that RAGEs prebaked models/textures vary on direction.

Problem: you can rotate very fast...

If you instead base of distance.

My understanding of DICE tech is:
* Graphic artists only create the highest polygon count models, and highest resolution textures.
* Level designers place these objects on map.
- due to the underground bug we have seen that stones are solid with texture below them as well.
* Contents Compiler builds the graphic to load for each location.
- you only need the highest resolution model/texture for the object you are closest to (wall, stone, tree)
Objects far away can do with lower polygon and textures
So an object far away to the north will not need to be reloaded when moving east/west.

12x optics
- you can load higher polygon/texture of what is in the center of screen while playing the animation for taking the rifle to your eyes.
- turning around fast while looking into optics is uncommon... (and will be blurry anyway...)

It would be really interesting to get a description of their streaming technology. This is only a qualified guess...

[Hufandpuf]

I think I get what you mean. Since rage has models not objects, thats where pop in comes from, when you turn around and back. Since bf3 has objects (which may or may not be interactive (they probably took out some destruction for the beta)) they stay at a high resolution. At far distances, I have noticed reduced textures (in bfbc2 the bigger maps had poor resolution when seeing through 12x scope at far distances). But in all, you're saying dice's textures Might not need to reload. Am I right? interesting stuff btw.

[idiealot]

say whaa??! thats awesome, now i cant wait to play this!

[turgore]

this is gonna be awesome!

[Honky Kong]

everyone is happy now i see. funny

[Optical_Matrix]

Bring it on. My 120GB Slim has plenty of space. Cannot wait for this game. Addicted to the BETA. Reached rank 31. Played about 20 hours. I can't even imagine how much time I'm going to put into this game when I have Campaign, Co-Op and Multiplayer with the full selection of modes and unlocks. This, will be epic.

[AO1JMM]

Goodjob Dice

[Snowii]

still dont care

sorry but the game is just very slow paced and the campers are basicly bulding tents

[Gamer-Z]

Some of the worst camping i have ever seen has been in COD so what the hell are you talking about?! The game itself promotes camping with killstreaks and claymores, I even saw a video where Tryarch themselves were showing all the good camping spots on a new map they made for BO! "facpalm"

[Mike_Tha_Hero]

Clearly you aren't playing the game correctly.

Don't come from CoD expecting to use the same logic, things don't work like that.

[Mike_Tha_Hero]

Through out this entire process, DICE has managed to be really irritating with the amount of information they let out.

Isnt this something to come out and say from the get-go?

[AO1JMM]

Good news! I have the PC version preordered but I plan on getting the 360 version also to play with friends.

[neogeo]

Then can I install the super mega pack on my PC?

[Scuzzlebutt]

I don't understand, they have a set of down sampled texture in case you have to stream from a slow device like a DVD drive and a set of high res textures for HD installs? But what about the GPU having to move around and render these larger textures? The performance of the high and low cannot be the same, so maybe you can get a more steady 30fps with the low res set?

[SAE]

the beta is fun when you kill , but aloooooooooooooots of issues {bugs} , lag+bugs= unplayable game...

graphics looks good on the multiplayer , the singl player videos looks amazing , so they just need to fix the multiplayer ..

[xX-Jak-Xx]

best game ever

cant wait for 25th

thank you DICE