@Lemon: like the dual-layer discs you can flip over? Quickly! Patent the idea!

This is bullshit, if they used decent enough compression, they could fit everything on a single dual-layer DVD. Sorry, but the Xbox 360 isn't the PlayStation 3 with it's Blu-Ray and 30 GB of space for uncompressed textures. That may be easier, but you can compress anything down to a fraction of its original size. Stop being lazy Bizarre Creations.

ditto lord sartorious. also, they've never heard of procedural textures?

haha - "Whilst"

SCORE TWO POINTS FOR KAZ AND THE CRABS

@ DarkKnight

But not all Xbox360 owners have hard drives. Developers are very cautious about excluding people that bought the basic system.

Microsoft catches flak for supporting DVD, but what was the alternative? If they waited for HD-DVD they'd have come out a year later and at least $100-$150 more expensive. Microsoft would not be in the lead position they are in now if that was how they played it.

In 3-4 years when it's time for the next Xbox, Blu-ray will be much cheaper, HD-DVD will be ancient history, and 50GB discs (if not larger) will be standard. They'll be able to put together a system where the most expensive component isn't the disc drive, as is the case with the PS3.

I love Blu-ray but it was a huge mistake for Sony to force it down people's throats by including it in the PS3 and they're paying for it.

sounds weird to me....
it almost sounds as if instead od doing proper lighting and level design they are relying on just textures to change the atmosphere...
I know for a fact you can use the same texture of day and night...you just change the lighting....now i am sure their engine is different than what i have experiance with but i don't see them needing multiple versions of each texture on the disc

Score yet another for Sony! I'm sorry but we all knew it was coming.. BD is faster (then dual layer DVD9) and we knew it had more storage capacity 50GB. Killzone 2 has roughly 2GB levels.. we've all seen what GT5P looks like. It's a great time to own both consoles, but clearly the PS3 is much more future proof.

Did I mention is plays Blu-ray movies!?! :P

Is it the right place to say to those 360 fanboys who still bashing the PS3 all the time ... yeah but we have blu-ray on our PS3 :)

Anyway ... you still have your HD-DVD to read your games .... Oh i forgot ... it's only for movies .... sry me bad :)))

@hexix. Yes, it is true that cities do look drastically different at night. But it is all about the lighting. It isn't whether light is on or off, it is about the color of teh light, and angle of the light, the intesity of the light.

Do you think buildings and cars change their surfaces at night in real life? If they want to get a night effect in the game, they should completely rely on a good lighting system, not redoing the entire set of textures.

Yea blame the lazy developers!

they prob want to introduce a live night with street signs glowing, kinda like "Las Vegas" oh but wait, they should just scratch that cuz Las Vegas looks the same in the day as in the night.

Were are moving on People; from old to new, we don't just want a couple of boxed buildings with a light(sun) that makes it day & night.

btw, I bought today 300 the movie on blue ray... it was 7$ cheaper than HD-DVD ;[

Hmmm Bizarre lets see if I can solve your problem. *Deletes motorcycles from PGR4* "Hey look I found more room!"

Btw, I in no way mean that last comment towards Destructoid...it's my sulking towards Bizarre :p

@ HawtPawkitHero i'm think the same when i see 360 fanboys on a PS3 news bashing for no reason .... wich is every fucking day ... so welcome to my world ;)))

Umm okay so your telling me everygame i play has seperate textures for day and night? I guess thats what happens when you start to rush a title so it gets out for the holiday. Maybe if they had created a dynamic world instead of just lowering the lighting and changing some textures they wouldnt have that proble. Do they really think we are dumb?

It has not been Microsoft's week. Will be interesting to see if this is indeed a balance of power beginning to appear.

I'm not making this sound good or the PS3 sound bad, just stating the truth. Are features like this worth the $200 price difference? It's a good question and a matter of opinion, and I'm sure we'll hear from supporters of both sides.

Crunshii, like I said, I'm not saying bad or good about one or the other. I'm just glad there is an affordable next-gen console for the masses and a high end next-gen console for the elites.

Can you imagine if we had two $600 consoles? Ugh.

Crunshii, don't even get fucking started with all this bullshit that if you buy a 360, and LIVE, and the HD-DVD play and blah blah fucking blah. NOBODY WANTS TO HEAR IT. First of all, the Sony Network stuff is completely shit compared to XBL, no argument. Secondly, all of that stuff is optional to buy, NOT REQUIRED. I will NEVER use a wireless adapter to play online games with, so i am not going to pay for it.

And besides, it is completely off of the subject. This discussion is about the fact that they claim that they can't fit day and night levels into PGR4. I find it as a huge excuse, they are blaming their shortcomings on the capacity of a disc, and its pathetic. If they developed a proper engine with a proper dynamic lighting system they would never have to make a whole new texture set for night and day. I understand that some games won't be able to fit on one disc, Blue Dragon uses 3, and there are legitimate reasons so to blame the 9GB DVD for not havign enough capacity, but saying that you have to make double textures as the reason it won't fit on a disc is just a pathetic excuse for shitty development and no forsight in the development of an engine.

Damn, BuckF1tches beat me to the DVD-9 vs. BD-ROM speed retort. All I can do now is add some prettay numbarz. 2x BD-ROM reading pulls 9MB/s sustained transfer rate, 12x DVD-ROM (as is used in the 360) pulls 16.2MB/s.

As for the actual topic. I can understand not doing real-time lighting for every single light source. It would be fairly processing-intensive, to the detriment of the more important physics of racing. But duplicate textures for nighttime just sounds lazy. I've done a bit of programming; a "hardcoded" solution like that is never ideal.

I'm no expert. They are the professionals. However, while I'm armchair critiquing, I'll just go ahead and blame it on them being British.

@Lord_Satorious, you don't have the slightest clue. Compression is not some magic wand that compresses anything down to some arbitrary size. There is a point where data will not fit and the game must start toss features, content or go multi disc. People who claim they should "use compression" are wholly ignorant of development.

Personally I really don't care if 360 games are chopped to fit a DVD-9. Just leave the content in the PS3 version though.

Compression is bad people, even if the graphics are the bombers, it's going to lose all of that detail when it gets compressed. Sucks for M$, this shouldn't happen before the console is 2 years old.

You all are idiots if you think that they just need to compress it more. In your argument, they should be putting games on CDs still.

BTW the reason they need a second set of textures is because they have to turn the lights on at night, and that required putting different skins on the lighted surfaces.