Possble issue with PGR3 Disk

davetherave2 · 25 Apr 2006 at 09:11

Hi all just a quick query. I have been battering my pgr3 disk to try and get all the hardcore trophies and making some headway on it but the problem is the disk sounds as if it is ready to take off.

I know that the dvd drive gets loud on loading up but this is beyond a joke. There is no physical damage to the disk and none of my other disks sound this bad. Has anyone else had this issue?

I'm going to get it tested on another xbox360 to see if it does the same thing and if it does its going back and getting exchanged.

norm · 25 Apr 2006 at 09:27

Why are you trying to invent problems that don't exist?

For the disc to have any untoward accoustic effect it would have be split in two for you to notice it, ignoring the fact it would no longer work.

Have you considered maybe the console is required to spin the disc that fast, in order to get the necessary data read rates the game requires, thus producing the added noise?

Nismo · 25 Apr 2006 at 09:36

Think it's just how PGR needs to be spun up in order to stream/load everything. Happens occasionally with mine anyway, although it could be a combination of the disc plus earlier revisions of the DVD drive.

I think it's a very unoptimised game in most areas, and if was coming out around now I guess you might not get the problem.

NokkonWud · 25 Apr 2006 at 10:28

Nismo said:
Think it's just how PGR needs to be spun up in order to stream/load everything. Happens occasionally with mine anyway, although it could be a combination of the disc plus earlier revisions of the DVD drive.

I think it's a very unoptimised game in most areas, and if was coming out around now I guess you might not get the problem.

Nail on the head. The game is very unoptimised and it takes everything from the disc. It struggles to load huge normal maps in time (as you often see, especially in New York) and as a result it spins the disc at full speed in order to achieve this.

Matblack · 25 Apr 2006 at 13:50

You think thats bad? Oblivion on my machine sounds like a helicopter about to take off :eek:

MB

Caustic · 25 Apr 2006 at 16:59

LOL @ people thinking the game is unoptimised. The way it loads things in asynchronously is by design. It is probably the same idea behind Halo 2's similar effect. The problem is, DVD drives are really slow. Loading in loads of files is not quick. Hard luck, but there is nothing you can do about it.

Nismo · 25 Apr 2006 at 17:42

Caustic said:
LOL @ people thinking the game is unoptimised. The way it loads things in asynchronously is by design.

Surely given more time they would have optimised it to take into account the drive speed though? As it is, the loading of menus etc is far from perfect, so it strikes me as an area which could have been improved.

NokkonWud · 25 Apr 2006 at 18:16

Caustic said:
LOL @ people thinking the game is unoptimised.

The game certainly is unoptimised, whilst there are Optimisations (as in all games) it's certainly far from what was wanted, this is even by the PGR3 teams own admission.

davetherave2 · 25 Apr 2006 at 19:36

yeah there is noise which i expect but this sound is not normal I will try and record a sample so you can hear it. Hopefully you will agree that this is not natural. I can hear some sound from my other games when it is under heavy access but this sounds like the disk is not sitting correctly.

Boogle · 25 Apr 2006 at 21:32

I listened carefully during a PGR3 race at great risk to my sense of hearing. The console is actually loading entire chunks of the track as you race. If the drive slowed down, you would have either physical pauses or even more unloaded textures.

Bizarre really needed to implement some aggressive texture compression throughout. I'm wondering if they accidentally loaded the source texture, sent it to the GPU and didn't unload the original source texture. Its easy to do, and if this feature was exploited without realising what they were doing, very difficult to remove.