Any progress on PS3 development?
All of what you say is true Gooberius. The 360 layer is thinner, and the toolchain is definitely more advanced. And I guess you can call me biased as well because I have been with Sony since day one. :D
libGCM is the "Graphics Command Management" library. Maybe CTM is some marketing name for it.
Quote:Original post by GooberiusI looked it up again, and the CTM reference only came from here, in a post that I read ages ago. It was wrong. CTM was an ATI API for general purpose access to the GPU, which was replaced with a newer API.
libGCM is the "Graphics Command Management" library. Maybe CTM is some marketing name for it.
Quote:Original post by Gooberius
Finally, I see a lot of people complaining that Sony won't open up the RSX to home developers, but it's possibly not Sony's call. Remember that the RSX is licensed from nVidia, so it's entirely possible that nVidia don't want register specs of their hardware (even slightly older hardware) released to the general public. IIRC, the RSX also does other stuff besides graphics (relating to security/copy protection), so there's a chance they can't easily expose just the graphics stuff without leaving themselves wide open to piracy attacks.
I'm sure if they did allow access to it they would do so through OpenGL (maybe through Linux?), so that the NDA'ed bits of RSX wouldn't be exposed to hobby programmers. But still, I don't see much point in allowing use this late in the game. MS already has a big community going behind XNA and there's absolutely no way Sony can get that kind of following or produce the kind of API's/tools/infrastructure needed to create a comparable environment. Really the only reason to mess with PS3 homebrew would be to get down and dirty with Cell, but you can do that already.
The Sony SDK makes available the PSGL source code, which is a layer built on top of GCM. There was no reason why the OpenGL interface had to be GLES. You can add any OpenGL functionality you want as long as you are willing to modify the PSGL code. Gooberius' description is spot on. It is convenient to hit the ground running with OpenGL-like code, but in the end you need more. I rewrote portions of the SDK_180 PSGL to eliminate some undesirable memory management (and to fix a few bugs). The changes were sufficient to ship a game, but to do it again, I'd write my own graphics layer on top of GCM.
The tool chain has improved, and Sony's support people are very responsive. GCM Hud is a good tool, and SN Tuner is quite useful for profiling.
Regarding games that shipped using unmodified PSGL: I will speculate that the developers had to reduce content significantly. For the game I worked on, the rewrite of memory management was essential for us to ship the same content on PS3 and XBox360.
The tool chain has improved, and Sony's support people are very responsive. GCM Hud is a good tool, and SN Tuner is quite useful for profiling.
Regarding games that shipped using unmodified PSGL: I will speculate that the developers had to reduce content significantly. For the game I worked on, the rewrite of memory management was essential for us to ship the same content on PS3 and XBox360.
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