Ridge Racer 7 - brilliant feature

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tornadotsunamilife

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I recently read that the game RR7 has an option to install the game onto a ps3's hard drive (takes about 5gb) to minimize the game's loading times to virtually zero. Now, I'm not exactly a great fan of Sony or their new console but this idea is brilliant, I hope to see it implemented more often (maybe even see Xbox 360 take a leaf out of the ps3's book)
 
It's funny... I actually see this as a good idea that can turn into a really bad one.

Developers can easily get lazy and when confronted with slow load times can simply reply "well, we gave the option to install to the hard drive". 10 games later, your 60gb drive is full and you're shopping for a new laptop drive. You see, one major disadvantage of blu-ray is that it's not only slower than a 12x DVD but due to the size advantage you have a lot more data to transfer to the game.
 
I agree a downfall is HDD capacity, but that doesn't seem like much of a problem in this day and age when HDD of 500gb can cost £140! (ok maybe not laptop hard drives :()
 
And considering you can just plug in any laptop drive to replace the standard one, or even a USB one, I think the PS3 approach of openness on this field is a major advantage.
 
I think one thing to keep in mind is that if you're not playing a game regularly, why keep the data installed on your HD? In my case I'd just keep the "game of the moment" (or 2-3 of the games I'm playing currently) installed and play everything else off of the disks.
Seems like just a nice option. It COULD be abused if companies start virtually insisting on it or releasing games with horrible load times knowing that people almost HAVE to do it, but I doubt we'll really see that any time soon.
One way or another, by the time that could really become an issue, we'll likely have 100 GB flash drives.
 
I put in a 120gb 2.5" sata in my ps3 the 3rd say i had it. So i just install at will. RR7 does load faster with this option. I didnt time between the non-installed and installed version, but it is noticeable.
 
Since the BluRay drive in the PS3 is significantly slower than a 16x or even 12x DVD drive I think this is a good option to have.

It does make me laugh a little though, just because it solidifies how little separates consoles these days from PCs.
 
quadnad said:
Since the BluRay drive in the PS3 is significantly slower than a 16x or even 12x DVD drive I think this is a good option to have.

It does make me laugh a little though, just because it solidifies how little separates consoles these days from PCs.
Click to expand...


what are the bandwidth on both?

the PS3 blu-ray and a 16x DVD and a 12X DVD?
 
todlerix said:
what are the bandwidth on both?

the PS3 blu-ray and a 16x DVD and a 12X DVD?
Click to expand...

The PS3's 2x Bluray drive does 8.7 MB/s while the 360's 12X DVD-ROM drive does 16.5 MB/s. That was one of the reasons why I don't think Sony should have included Bluray into the system; the cost and the performance.

Here is a chart which shows a comparison. Bluray will scale much better (obviously) at higher speeds, but the PS3 is obviously always going to be a 2x drive. Keep in mind that the 12X drive in the 360 costs only $20.

Anyway, I'll dig up the 16x figure after dinner sometime.
 
Its definitely a good feature. I wish the X360 could do this just so the DVD drive didn't sound like it was in VTEC all the time.
 
2x Blu-ray: 72Mbps / 9.0 MBps
12x DVD: 66 - 132Mbps / 8.2 - 16.5 MBps
16x DVD: 88 - 176Mbps / 11.2 - 22.0 MBps

Blu-ray number is from memory so don't shout at me if it's wrong! DVD numbers should be close enough.
 
Psychotext said:
2x Blu-ray: 72Mbps / 9.0 MBps
12x DVD: 66 - 132Mbps / 8.2 - 16.5 MBps
16x DVD: 88 - 176Mbps / 11.2 - 22.0 MBps

Blu-ray number is from memory so don't shout at me if it's wrong! DVD numbers should be close enough.
Click to expand...

Looks like after dinner was too late to find the 16X number!

The bluray speed should be 8.5MB/s, but otherwise it looks good.
 
Aren't modern DVD drives CLV as opposed to CAV? For the most part, they usually only hit their max speeds on the outsides of the disc to maintain the constant transfer rate, but that might just be for writing, not quite sure.

I just hope that feature isn't abused horribly ("hey I'll rent RR7 and just dump it to HDD"); I assume it just copies over some of the game data but still requires the disc in the PS3 for auth/some stuff.
 
movax said:
Aren't modern DVD drives CLV as opposed to CAV? For the most part, they usually only hit their max speeds on the outsides of the disc to maintain the constant transfer rate, but that might just be for writing, not quite sure.

I just hope that feature isn't abused horribly ("hey I'll rent RR7 and just dump it to HDD"); I assume it just copies over some of the game data but still requires the disc in the PS3 for auth/some stuff.
Click to expand...

I thought DVDs were CAV, and Blu Ray is CLV. Thats why there really isn't a min/max for the Blu Ray disc. You're right though, towards the inside of a DVD disc it reads closer to the min speed and towards the outside it reads towards the max speed.
 
Now that I think more on it, it's not even new for the ridge racer series. The very first RR for ps1 would load the entire game into memory so that you could insert any music cd in and listen to it while playing the game.
 
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