A message from the team about the visuals in BioShock PS3 (UPDATED on October 23rd)

[2K Elizabeth]

UPDATE (October 23):
We have a download date for BioShock PS3's patch. It will be out as an automatic update on November 20th. The patch is still in the works, but when it's ready, I'll be posting the change log for you to check out. Thanks!

UPDATE (October 14):

Hey guys,
I have good news from the dev team about a patch for BioShock PS3! They have been working on a patch to address the concerns some of you on the forum have talked about. As work is in progress I do not have a definite date for when this patch will be released as it needs to be tested and clear certification with Sony before it is scheduled and released. I do know this will not be until after the game’s launch, and I will update you with details on that date as I receive them.

I’ll be releasing the entire patch list when it’s all finalized, but for now I’m sure you’ll be happy to see that these two fixes are included:

Big Daddy Bouncer and Elite Bouncer Textures Appeared Pixelated
Fix for an issue where large blocky pixels would show up whenever viewing the Bouncer and Elite Bouncer variants of the Big Daddy.

White Bars
Fix for an issue where white/discolored bars would show up at the right and bottom sides of the screen during the plane crash / water scene at the beginning of the game.

I’m sure many of you are eager to see what Big Daddy looks like after this fix, so here are two screenshots of him in his patched glory!

http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture...addy_fixed.jpg

if you want to see the full-sized image of this, check it out here: http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture..._fixed_big.jpg


http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture...ddy_fixed2.jpg

if you want to see the full-sized image of this, check it out here: http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture...fixed2_big.jpg




ORIGINAL POST:

Hi there,

Last Friday some of you expressed some concerns and asked me some questions about the BioShock demo, and how BioShock would look on the PS3. I promised that the team was looking into all the issues brought up on Friday, and now I am reporting back with the latest news. Everything below is directly from the team – they took the comparison screenshots for me and we talked at length about all of these issues, and those conversations are exactly what I am reporting to you now.

Many of you wondered about BioShock’s graphical performance on the PS3, and whether it was comparable to the 360 version. The team wanted BioShock to be the same experience on the PS3 as on the 360. Of course, the PS3 is a very different machine to code a game on, and so the team used a combination of optimization and filtering to maximize the overall visual experience of the game. These optimizations improved frame rate and added the slight “blur filter” that some of you have pointed out in comparison screenshots. This solution offered the best performance benefit with minimum visual cost or change from the 360 version.

When making the decision on how to balance game performance and visual quality, the team did a lot of research, which included looking at implementation strategies and gamer reactions for other games that had brought a title to the PS3. One of the major goals for the team in creating the PS3 version of BioShock was to match the visual experience of the 360.

Below are a few comparison screenshots of BioShock on both the 360 and PS3, taken by the team. I have included the Big Daddy texture that concerned so many of you on Friday. However, the Big Daddy texture is not a good measure for the entire PS3 experience, and so I have a handful of other comparison shots of the 360 and PS3 version of BioShock.

Another issue people asked about was the appearance of “white bars” when using certain settings on certain TV configurations. This is a legitimate bug, and we are currently working to fix this issue and plan on distributing that fix along with the Additional Content game update. For the short-term, some have recommended changing the TV’s overscan setting as a workaround.

Also, some of you asked about the resolution of BioShock PS3. The team decided to include 1080 support for the game specifically for the benefit of some older-model HDTVs that don’t correctly respond to 720 and force the user to play on 480 instead. Our 1080 implementation is a scaled version of what you see in 720p, so therefore, the discerning gamer may notice the visuals are a bit less sharp when compared to the 720 mode. We did investigate rendering to true 1080 mode, but were not able to support it given the game’s memory demands.

We believe the BioShock PS3 demo fairly represents the performance and user experience of the full BioShock PS3 game, and is an accurate representation of the final product. We will continue reading and looking into any new comments that come up on this forum. I hope this post and the following screenshots help clarify some of the questions asked last week. Again, thank you for your diligence and devotion to the game.



http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture...n/bigdaddy.jpg

http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture...ison/floor.jpg

http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture...rison/gods.jpg

http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture...son/sister.jpg


Note: These images were taken from the final game. There is a slight discrepancy in some shots because for the 360 version the images were taken before the patch was applied, which means they are using the original widescreen format, but the PS3 version ships with the 360 patch's widescreen change.

[Kyburz]

Wow, thanks for taking the time to make a lengthy reply to the community. I think the PS3 version looks great! I am sure the reviewers will agree and that any bugs that exist will be fixed in short order.

[renanbianchi]

So that confirms that there isn't and there will no be a fix for the bad texture on Big Daddy.

It's ok with the Blur if it improves the performance, but with the texture problems, it is unacceptable, and also what about the pop-in on some textures of the game?

As i said before, i don't know it the devs were pressured because of the time schedule, but the game still lacks polishing, and that WILL affect the game Experience unfortunately.

[Hyden]

there will always be nitpickers out there to be sure but I think that 98% of true gamers wont notice any small graphical deficiencies that some are complaining about. No doubt Bioshock on the PS3 will be a great success. The screenshots clearly show that any differences are minor at best & quite likely unnoticeable to most people.

[Picolo Manolo]

Reading the message from the team, you have the impression that there is no difference between the versions. However, they exist and are huge

360
http://yoda.dip.jp/Game/BioShock/Bio...emo_02_360.png
PS3
http://yoda.dip.jp/Game/BioShock/Bio...emo_02_PS3.png

360
http://yoda.dip.jp/Game/BioShock/Bio...emo_03_360.png
PS3
http://yoda.dip.jp/Game/BioShock/Bio...emo_03_PS3.png

360 version is sharper. Of course, you can't see this with those tiny pictures posted by the team. Anyway, we had the confirmation that the PS3 version will be blurry. And I really wanted to buy this game...

[ImNotThereYet]

I think the graphics are fine but in all honesty why do I get the feeling that was a whole lot of talk while, really, not saying anything definitive.

I think you might have just pissed more people off.

Again, I think the graphics are fine and would never think about cancelling my game order over something so minor as a texture screw up. But, still...you guys keep blowing smoke, one day someone's just gonna float off....

[Relight]

Originally Posted by Hyden

The screenshots clearly show that any differences are minor at best & quite likely unnoticeable to most people.

That's not necessarily the most accurate assessment. Especially given Picolo Manolo's excellent screenshot comparisons (whether or not the 1080 vs 720 resolution plays a part in those, I don't know or understand that part of it). Obviously, people have noticed problems. Such as the Big Daddy textures. The screenshots don't highlight the problem areas already identified by demo players. You don't try to improve a running team performance by looking at the time of your fastest runner. You improve your running team performance by looking at the time of your slowest runner. I hope that analogy works! So in answering the fans, 2K should look at, and directly address, the problems already identified, such as those Big Daddy textures.

Oh, and I think, if anything, the amount of reaction should be taken as a good thing. Obviously people really care a lot about this game and want to enjoy it on the PS3. If it wasn't such a great game in the first place, people wouldn't be making such a fuss. So while the negative comments can be disheartening, I hope 2K can take them in stride while analyzing improvements that can be made at this stage.

[Royal_Bear]

Cancels Pre-Order ASAP!

I dont get it,didnt like almost 200 posters replied that the PS3 version suffers from two visuals problems..Its NOT the entire game that looks bad we see....the texture is there on the levels,we see less pop in than the 360 we see better water,color and lighting effects.

BUT

The 2KGames dev team doesnt see that we dont like or want a option for the blur filter effect?

lastly and a BIG PROBLEM the Big Daddys the star of the game,sticks out so much that his texture is soooo pixelated? I know the PS3 is a different coding but I highly doubt its hard to smooth and properly code the texture right for just one model.

The PS3 version looks so much improved but its going to be hard to ignore a character with PS1 textures...running around in the game!

[Neiteio]

Is there a second part to the response coming? Because while it addresses several issues (1080p upscaling, blur filter, white bars), it unfortunately failed to address one of the most pressing issues: Will the Big Daddy's texture be fixed? That question has been repeated over and over and we still haven't got a response. In fact, all that's been said of it is that it's not commonplace outside the instances in the demo, and yet the strength of that claim was weakened with direct-feed screenshots of other Big Daddies suffering from the same 10-year-old textures.

I appreciate that a fix for the white bar glitch will be patched in with the first wave of DLC content, but what of the texture problems? A technical explanation of whether a fix by patching is feasible would be appreciated. Other tech-heads seem to think so, and thus I suspect 2K could fix the Big Daddy textures. And fix, they must; Big Daddy is the face of the franchise, and the face shouldn't look like this:

http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x...3/P1000762.jpg

A user at this thread claimed to have worked on the PS3 version of BioShock. His name is Disc, and he deleted all of his posts, but they still live on in the quotes of others. Now there's no way to prove he's telling the truth, BUT I can't help but suspect the situation he's describing is what happened here. Some quotes:

The port is stable now, no more random crashes from third party libraries and they are about wrapping up the port development over here.

But if this is all we're doing I regret I have to inform you that this isn't good enough, various parts of the game that could have been optimized for SPUs haven't been and because of that the port will end up with a lower framerate than the 360 version.

But it's still the same game.

Sitting next to some of the PS3 devs *****ing that they aren't optimizing enough I'm busy on another project which these guys should have been working on.

Problem was a lack of time and some problems with the people who previously worked on the port. There were too many bugs in the game that they had to clean up while porting so they didn't have all the time needed to optimize.

But we'll see, maybe the company politics will give them some more coding time.

Sony provides a bit of support, they give tips on how to do the rendering quicker and so on. They sent a couple of guys over to one of our offices to talk about solutions. They are also improving their OS and SDK to help you out, virtual memory and reducing their OS footprint... it's a shame they have to.

Transferring code over to the SPUs is a diverse task and in my opinion it is something that Epic should do with more of their core systems (since this is an Unreal Engine Game). It's a shame.

Insomniac (with Resistance and Ninja Theory with Heavenly Sword and other exclusives) has a lot of their AI processing on the SPUs, which is something they obviously haven't been able to do on this port as that's quite a major task. If they had more time maybe.

Again, I cannot prove Disc really worked on the game (or near it), but I think this is what happened. Essentially, more time was needed to optimize the PS3's SPUs. With more time, it would've turned out better, but I suppose it was important for 2K to get out BioShock PS3 in 2008 so that BioShock 2 will have 2009 all to itself. And that's understandable from a marketing perspective. I just hope the big problems -- Big Daddy especially -- get fixed.

So, back to waiting for the original question to be answered. Apparently we didn't ask enough times.

- Neiteio

[BioSoldier]

EDIT: Is it possible this post can be deleted somehow? It's no longer necessary. I shouldn't really discuss things I didn't know about. It was a rant on the Big Daddy's but seeing as the Rosie also suffers from texture problems, it's no longer necessary.

Oh and the Big Daddy's may be the face of the franchise, but Rapture is the star of the show.