Dual Layer DVD Max Capacity actually 6.5GB? Please

[bochen74656]

Hi all, for purely academic reasons I would like to know first if the GTAIV for Xbox 360 is actually 6.5GB in size?

(that is the general consensus on the web, but I want to find out for sure..if not 6.5, then how large IS the game?)

 

Second, I have read somewhere that Rockstar basically packed the Dual Layer DVD 100% and virtually left no empty space

on the disk. (is this true? can anyone confirm this as fact?)

 

 

If so, then that means the actual effective storage capacity of a Dual Layer DVD (corrected: DVD9) formatted for Xbox360 console for one reason or another is actually only about 6.5GB??? Where did the other 1.5GB+ or so go? And what is it being used for then??

 

Please someone help shed light on these questions. I am just curios to know and not here to rant or whatever. I own the Xbox360 and played the GTAIV on 360, don't have a PS3 and am not fanboy of Sony, etc... (personally I prefer PC.. not like it should matter.. I just want to get to the bottom of this..)

 

If the rumors I have read are true, then maybe that would also help to explain why most of the buildings in GTA4 were not "enterable".. I mean not like it would have slowed down the game to have even ALL buildings enterable, (as made all too obvious by the texture and scenery pop-ins, the game only render the players "field of view" at any one point in time and basically what you can't see isn't even there.. so racing down a busy street at 120mph with all buildings having "interiors" would not slow down the game any more than it is now because as far as the game engine is concerned nothing is enterable until you approach and enters it and then it is rendered, etc... ) so the only possible conclusion is there wasn't enough storage space?

 

 

 

It would make GTAIV orders of magnitude more "immersive" if all the buildings, especially the skyscrapers and those located at Star Junction were enterable and had unique interiors... And I would also imagine since the NaturalMotion Euphoria Engine was originally coded for Table Tennis game it would not have been too much for R* to make the basketball courts in Liberty City interactive (meaning Niko can play outside basketball with his pals or random NPCs on the streets).. or to make the Golf course interactive ... or to have actually baseball play (since there is a golf and baseball field in LC already...)

 

And of course along those lines more storage space would mean more room for extra "safehouses" that we could eventually purchase (most likely the DLC will address this I hope?) and have something use to do with all that monnies at the end of the game... I mean 6 safe houses in GTAIV is great I am not complain, but imagine how wonderful experience it would be to be able to buy houses, apartments, or even entire business buildings and then dress them up interiorly to suit our style, (kind of like the sims?)... Of course all of this and more are limited by storage space and not processing power...

 

After all why do you think the Stripe Club has a double door entrace? The 2-3 seconds it take for the player to transition from outside world LC to indoor strip club through the two sets of doors is enough for the game engine to seemlessly unload all the outside world and replace it with the interior of the club building...

 

When you are playing pool with a friend, the rest of Liberty City DOES NOT EXISTS, its just the pool table, you, your friend, and the room as the backdrop... So it is not a issue that "too much interactive stuff" within LC would "slow it down" because you can only be at one play at one time... so it seems to be a storage issue more than anything else to me...

 

 

 

 

Edited May 26, 2008 by bochen74656

[Gouveia]

How can a Dual Layer DVD be 6.5GB if the normal one is 4.7GB? Just think, 4.7 X 2 = 9.4GB.

 

Also, the 360's DVD isn't dual layer, but it is a DVD-9 (that's how we call it here), and it totalizes the space of a Regular Dual-Layered DVD.

 

EDIT: Answering to that edited part, it's imposible. You can't just model all the floors from the Rotterdam Tower in the game, and if you had all the interiors, would you really want, or need, to enter them all? Also, the speed is determined by DVD reader, and if you have the BenQ one, yes, you're cursed (like me, but mine isn't bad, it's better than the Hitachi's)

Edited May 26, 2008 by VinnyGouveia

[bochen74656]

How can a Dual Layer DVD be 6.5GB if the normal one is 4.7GB? Just think, 4.7 X 2 = 9.4GB.

 

Also, the 360's DVD isn't dual layer, but it is a DVD-9 (that's how we call it here), and it totalizes the space of a Regular Dual-Layered DVD.

 

EDIT: Answering to that edited part, it's imposible. You can't just model all the floors from the Rotterdam Tower in the game, and if you had all the interiors, would you really want, or need, to enter them all? Also, the speed is determined by DVD reader, and if you have the BenQ one, yes, you're cursed (like me, but mine isn't bad, it's better than the Hitachi's)

So can you confirm that GTAIV is 6.5GB? The torrents are that size... So it would seem so...

 

Rockstar (I Think) have said the basically maxed out on the DVD-9 and could have put more content if the

physical limitations were not there (maybe also why the PS3 version has full screen ingame TV... it has

the storage capacity for higher resolution, etc..) so if the GTAIV disk is 6.5GB and maxed out,

how can you say the DVD-9 is 9.4GB????

 

 

[bochen74656]

 

 

EDIT: Answering to that edited part, it's imposible. You can't just model all the floors from the Rotterdam Tower in the game, and if you had all the interiors, would you really want, or need, to enter them all? Also, the speed is determined by DVD reader, and if you have the BenQ one, yes, you're cursed (like me, but mine isn't bad, it's better than the Hitachi's)

Well maybe not ALL the floors in the Rotterdam Tower but just the floors that count the most (basically apply the 80/20 rule to achieve maximum illusion of immersitivity with minumun actual effort)

 

Just think of it this way: make the first 2-3 floors of any said skyscraper enterable with realistic interiors (even if we get overlapping instances (like how all the bowling rooms in LC are all the same) not totally 'unique') and then from that on higher

give user the option of elevator or stairs to "climb" to the roof...

 

So this gives the illusion of a fully enterable building without having to actualize or implement it totally. If the player takes the elevator the game just "transports" them magically to the top anyway.. (nothing technically challenging about that) and if they climb the stairs it would merely be just one "set of chairs" repeating itself over and over again (like the magic stairway to heaven example) until the game "calculates" that the player should be "at the top" and then you gets out at the roof level...

 

This would be useful for immersion, but also for evading police! Imagine you get chased on foot and enter a building and take the stairs to the top and go to the roof! Or you emergency land a heli on roof of tall building and take elevators down to ground level! It would certainly increase the dynamics of being pursued by cops and increase the variety of creative getaways!

 

Now imagine R* puts swimming pools on top of certain buildings, and the player can jump from roof top to roof top on a motorbike while being chased by cops that can do the same! So player jumps from taller building to rooftop of another building straight into the swimming pool and escapes by taking the stairs or elevators down to ground level and crawls into a porthole into the ground and finally exits at a local river/dam plunging hundreds of feet below and swimming to shore safely? Then he makes his way to the local hospital and finds some antibacterial vials and takes a needle to the rear end, goes into one of the emergency patient rooms, steals some food from the sleeping patients bed to boost his health, shaves himself to lose his identity using the patient bathroom, leaves by jacking an ambulance parked at the hospital etc...

 

 

 

 

Edited May 26, 2008 by bochen74656

[sc-yoda]

A dual layer disk is actually 8.5gb.

 

My college lecturer who is an absolute computer genius says that you can get disks that are 16gb now??? I wouls well believe him.

[bochen74656]

A dual layer disk is actually 8.5gb.

 

My college lecturer who is an absolute computer genius says that you can get disks that are 16gb now??? I wouls well believe him.

Well I read somewhere that the DVD9 used for Xbox360 console actually can hold only 6.5GB because of the way it is formatted?and because some 1.5GB is used for security, anti-piracy or some special encryption/copy protection scheme?

 

Anyone confirm this?

[tarquin biscuitbarrel]

try playing elder scrolls oblivion.

[bochen74656]

try playing elder scrolls oblivion.

Ohmm... what is that supposed to mean?

 

How big is the game size for elder scrolls oblivion? Is it one disc or multiple disc?

 

If it is multiple disc then the comparison is mute, you can't have a free roam game

like GTAIV and be switching discs all the time would totally kill the mood of gameplay

 

 

[bochen74656]

 

try playing elder scrolls oblivion.

Ohmm... what is that supposed to mean?

 

How big is the game size for elder scrolls oblivion? Is it one disc or multiple disc?

 

If it is multiple disc then the comparison is mute, you can't have a free roam game

like GTAIV and be switching discs all the time would totally kill the mood of gameplay

Okay answering my own questions I found it.

 

Elder Scrolls Oblivion - For Xbox 360 on bittorrent is 7.1GB file size....

 

So should seem 6.5GB is not the cap....

 

So maybe GTAIV was not capped or limited by Xbox360 storage capacity limitations after all?

 

Or perhaps one of the more underhanded "deals" written in that $50 mil DLC contract is MOFT

telling R* to set an aritifically lower capping of the final game file size to make it appear as

if it truly wasn't the Xbox360 size that limited the game?????? Just a thought... After all if R* packed

the DVD full with not a megabyte to spare it would seem TOO obvious...

 

Maybe so it was one of those "mutual understandings" with Microsoft?

[scubakid]

How can a Dual Layer DVD be 6.5GB if the normal one is 4.7GB? Just think, 4.7 X 2 = 9.4GB.

 

Also, the 360's DVD isn't dual layer, but it is a DVD-9 (that's how we call it here), and it totalizes the space of a Regular Dual-Layered DVD.

 

EDIT: Answering to that edited part, it's imposible. You can't just model all the floors from the Rotterdam Tower in the game, and if you had all the interiors, would you really want, or need, to enter them all? Also, the speed is determined by DVD reader, and if you have the BenQ one, yes, you're cursed (like me, but mine isn't bad, it's better than the Hitachi's)

So can you confirm that GTAIV is 6.5GB? The torrents are that size... So it would seem so...

 

Rockstar (I Think) have said the basically maxed out on the DVD-9 and could have put more content if the

physical limitations were not there (maybe also why the PS3 version has full screen ingame TV... it has

the storage capacity for higher resolution, etc..) so if the GTAIV disk is 6.5GB and maxed out,

how can you say the DVD-9 is 9.4GB????

Can someone explain the difference between PS3 and 360 version then? Doe the 360 one have just one view or something?

[Xenus]

The xbox360 discs are capable of holding 8.54gb of data ( Being dual layer DVD-9 discs )

 

The blu ray discs used on the PS3 hold 25gb of data I think ( 50gb if its dual layer discs the ps3 uses ), but I'm sure I read somewhere that the Blu ray discs have to have the data stored relatively un-compressed due to read speeds being slower than normal DVD discs, but don't quote me on that.

 

Thats only from memory though, and its been a while since I read anything about it.

 

http://www.gamesfirst.com/?id=1132 is a rather interesting read about the growing size on games being limited by the DVD-9 capacity.

 

There must be a valid reason somewhere for not using up the whole 8.5gb space available ( security features or something along those lines. )

[bochen74656]

The xbox360 discs are capable of holding 8.54gb of data ( Being dual layer DVD-9 discs )

 

The blu ray discs used on the PS3 hold 25gb of data I think ( 50gb if its dual layer discs the ps3 uses ), but I'm sure I read somewhere that the Blu ray discs have to have the data stored relatively un-compressed due to read speeds being slower than normal DVD discs, but don't quote me on that.

 

Thats only from memory though, and its been a while since I read anything about it.

 

http://www.gamesfirst.com/?id=1132 is a rather interesting read about the growing size on games being limited by the DVD-9 capacity.

 

There must be a valid reason somewhere for not using up the whole 8.5gb space available ( security features or something along those lines. )

Thanks for sharing that link... Procedural Synthesis seems interesting.. I am def suprised to find out they could fit a game with graphics on bar with Quake II under 100 KILOBYTES!!! Now that is some major compression!

 

So perhaps its not all about storage capacity 100%. I still fail to understand why metal gear solid 4 developer for the PS3 thinks his game deserves more than 50GB to be played at its full glory... I can imagine how interactive and Matrix-like GTAIV Liberty City would be like if it could be 50GB in size!!!!

 

 

 

[Kylethemestupfile]

ok, that makes no sense at all because supposedt the HDDVD format (xbx 360) stores 25GB of space and the Blu - ray (PS3) stores 50 GB so there is no way they filled the whold disk with 6.5GB of space

[Crazy Asian]

HDDVD format (xbx 360)

The 360 does not use HDDVDs for their games.