New compression technology shrinks files 70%
While I’m still not keen on the idea of disc-less games (for reasons I’ve mentioned before), this new compression technology would make it a lot easier. It would also enable a lot more game to be put on one disc. The compression programs are called ProFX and MaP Zone 2, and are by a company named Allegorithmic. They claim that the programs shrink texture files by 70% while not decreasing their graphical quality. Apparently, Allegorithmic showed an XBL game called Roboblitz running on the Unreal Engine 3, and the 50MB game’s texture files were a mere 280kb. (Since I don’t know a lot about texture files, I’ll take PS3 Fanboy’s word that that’s impressive.)
There’s no definite answer on when we could be seeing this technology – the company indicates that people are being retrained to use the new techniques. I’m also not certain that this technology means that game developers will go to the cost or trouble to add in three times as many textures either, but we’ll see.
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josh
