Normal mapping is a cute little trick to fake geometric detail. Nothing more.
It's basically a crutch you are forced to resort to if your hardware isn't powerful enough to push the actual geometry. That is why it is so appealing for the 360 with its massive graphical power disadvantage compared to the PS3. You use your high poly models for the fake marketing screenshots and then massively reduce your model/world geometry counts and fake the detail in...
Back when the 360 was being called the Xbox 1.5 by everyone the ease of putting out absurdly fake bullshots with the Unreal Engine was exactly what the 360 needed.
You had:
1. Epic who enjoyed a free pass from the gaming media and 360 owners to put out their stupidly fake marketing renders to market their crappy engine
2. The gaming media who so desperately wanted the PS3 to fail and tell the story of how the 360 was equal to it in graphical power ...
"Ghostbusters fansite Proton Charging reports that PS3 users will be getting some Ghostbusters-themed content on PlayStation Home. The official press release isn't out yet, but Sony has apparently confirmed it.
The content will range from Ghostbusters jumpsuits for Home avatars to an Ecto-1 that can actually be driven aro...
Really happy for Sucker Punch. They are such fantastic developers. Completely love the three Sly Cooper games on the PS2. Never doubted they would come up with something amazing for their first PS3 effort.
Highly recommend the Sly games on the PS2 for anyone with a 60 gig or other BC PS3 model. They are cheap, not very hard or long games, and incredibly well done. Sly Cooper, The Murray, and Bently are an awesome trio of main character...
"Why do Xbox dipshíts talk as if neither Resistance nor Motorstorm surpassed 3 million, or Uncharted 2 million, or MGS4 4.5 million, or Resistance 2 1.5 million and selling faster than R2, KZ2 1.5 million faster than R2, LBP more than 2 million, Heavenly sword neared 2 million, Ratchet surpassed 1.5 million, and so on and so forth?"
Most likely because most Xbox fans let themselves believe the absurdly fake vgchartz sales figures. Everyone laughs at the site's fake...
"Crytek's Mark Atkinson says "If the game's shader-heavy it runs a bit faster on 360; if it's compute-heavy with physics and particles, the the SPUs take over and it's a bit quicker on PS3."
Translation:
We PC engineers at Crytek dumped our PC based engine on the PS3 and our engine runs just as poorly as it does on the 360.
Shocking news!
And wow! They even did some 'crazy' additions like doing particle transforms on the SPUs!...
And, like everyone already knew. He said no such thing.
What he did say:
"I'm a guy who doesn't see anything good having come from the Internet...(The Internet) created this notion that anyone can have whatever they want at any given time. It's as if the stores on Madison Avenue were open 24 hours a day. They feel entitled. They say, 'Give it to me now,' and if you don't give it to them for free, they'll steal it."
And every other CEO or president of media companies feels the same way.
There is a classic story of a commercial against digital piracy running in a movie theater essentially saying "You wouldn't steal a car..."
and someone yelled out "I would if I could F-ing download it!"
That is the sense of entitlement talked about in the interview. People who would never shoplift or steal physical items out of stores now are perfectly happy to in...
