(A little unconfirmed but taken to be true information)  I've seen that the reason that PS3 games sometimes require an install is because the Blu-ray drive is slower than a DVD drive, so when loading game assets it's more convenient to put some resources on the hard drive.  Makes sense, right?  
 
Taking this into account (or somebody inform me otherwise and I'll shutup), why is it that a very pretty game like Uncharted 2 doesn't need an install?  I just realized it when looking at my PS3 game data when deleting some demos.  The game only loads once while playing the single player mode, and that's just the initial load.  Anybody able to glean any info as to why so many other (and let's face it, less hardware-intensive) games require an install while U2 does not?        Thanks!

it depends on the engine and how it's set up to stream textures, geometry, etc. For Uncharted 2 not to have an install (finished the game), it means that the engine is highly effective at streaming textures and assets in and out of the PS3's limited and split memory (256+256 MB), as well as the offloading of post processing and graphics instructions onto the Cell cores and not the RSX uniquely. It's so effective that sometimes the visuals suffer from it, as I've seen a whole lot of texture mipmapping and popping (aka Unreal Engine 3 syndrome), which is nit-picky stuff. Most of the time, it doesn't take much for an object's texture LODs to load, but some particular cases stood out, for example a metallic crate that i took cover behind which took something like a full minute to stream its textures, so i was in cover behind this blurry object for all that time until it loaded the full resolution texture. again, nitpicky stuff.

Hmmm... I think it does make an install the first time you put it in, it just doesn't tell you what its doing, but I'll have to check.
 
@warxsnake:  I haven't seen any texture pop-in in Uncharted 2, but I saw tons in 1.
 
edit - just checked, Uncharted 2 only creates a 27MB file, probably for online data / patches.

Ahh, see I'm playing on a pretty crappy tv and haven't noticed any pop-in, while when I play Gears 2 I see entire blocks of white when I turn around.   So pretty much, Uncharted 2 is just running on a badass engine - with the occasional hiccup?  Thanks for the info, good to know!

" Hmmm... I think it does make an install the first time you put it in, it just doesn't tell you what its doing, but I'll have to check.
 
@warxsnake:  I haven't seen any texture pop-in in Uncharted 2, but I saw tons in 1. "

weird, I saw and noticed it everywhere, especially in key areas where the player has a huge FOV over a huge set-piece. (which is why you don't see that amount of set-pieces in most other games, they tend to avoid that and constraint you to corridors as much as possible so you don't look at a ton of assets at the same time). I'm guessing (no idea) but probably Uncharted 2 engine has dynamically loaded assets based on field of view and visual obstruction/culling, which is one of Cryengine 2's main features as well.

I have yet to see texture popping. I saw it once in the multiplayer beta, but have not seen it in the game and I am currently on my second play through (holy cow crushing is just brutal).

I'm guessing the envoiroments don't stream. Although that could be wrong, i dont know how big the envoiroments are in the game
 
also i dont get people complaining about texture popping in ue3. ive never had that problem in any ue3 game (note that i play them all on the pc)

I'm almost done with the game, and haven't had any textures popping what so ever. Add that to the no-installation thingy, makes this game's engine one of the most efficient and well polished engine I've experienced, in like, ever.

" @warxsnake:  Your disk drive might need cleaning, I only had it happen once at the very end of the game (and a long day of spinning the drive) - clothing texture went flat for about 20 seconds and that actually made me realize how little pop-in I was seeing.  Maybe you skipped a bunch of cut-scenes? I think there is a lot of streaming happening underneath them. As for the lack of an install, I wish all games at least had an optional install.  If I could give U2 like two gigs to get rid of the initial load I would do it.  I've got a ton of space. "

" @warxsnake: I know you work in the game industry so do you have any idea why the Unreal Engine 3  laggy with texture popping and why it took that long to solve that problem? "

On the back of the box it says it installs 1GB. I as waiting for it, but no. Weird.

There's no install? Weird, considering that this game looks fucking amazing compared to other titles that do involve an install (I'm looking at you inFamous).

As far as i can tell there is no install going on, if so the game places it in a weird location on the drive. Normally when a game installs data its showed in the "Game Data Utility". But uncharted file in there is only 311Kb which is next to nothing compared to some games that install around 2-4GB of data.

It streams textures directly from blue ray therefore there is no real need for installs. Ps3 games rarely texture streams because decoding textures on the fly is sort of difficult with a slow drive and a 356mb gpu. I've seen a few pop ins like once or twice from the mountains for texture streaming. Also loading a level from your last save takes about 30 seconds. Really more ps3 exclusives should texture stream and not use installions imo.

" On the back of the box it says it installs 1GB. I as waiting for it, but no. Weird. "

only texture pop-ins i noticed were when i brought up Drakes journal and even that only happened occasionally.

It's the way it is developed I assume. Naughty Dog have a seperate team who just work on getting the most out of the Playstation 3's hardware.

It really is an amazingly impressive game graphically. I played through the first again last week and it was full of texture pop in and other weird graphical glitches. I've noticed texture pop in one or two spots in the U2 and a few other tiny things (Chloe and Elena climbing a ladder simultaneously and clipping into each other) but other than that its incredibly nice to look at and play.

The "install" is a cache that deletes itself when you turn the game off.  Also, Uncharted 2, like Uncharted before it runs on quite possibly the best engine on the PS3.  That being said, I'd really like if Naughty Dog would allow for an optional install on their future releases, and if possible a patch for Uncharted 2, because it'd make my disc drive work less.

Because Naughty Dog is very good at optimizing hardware. They also have the benefit of only having to develop for one platform. They're a great developer, and although they can be a little over-congratulatory of both themselves and the PS3, they really do make good use of hardware. They manage to offload a lot of the processing that is generally done by the gpc (or whatever the term is for consoles), allowing it to deal with the insane levels detail that was layered over and over itself. I'm no tech guru, but that's the general gist of what I got. Still, feel free to correct me someone who knows more about this. I tend not to know much about the console pipeline.

Uncharted 1 used the same techinques a highly comprehensive cache *in the original game i believe verged on 2 gigs* is loaded and continuely loaded throughout the game.
There is a near 30 second load time at the at, and during the beginning  of the game, this is where a majority of the major most common used assets in the games are loaded onto the hard drive.
The game loads information from the disc and hard drive at all times regardless of place in the game, often cacheing data 5 minutes in the future that would be needed.
 
Uncharted 2 uses the same technique the hard drive and disc are constantly being used even when the game is just sitting there, information being loaded, The cache can swell quite large, I dont have the article but one source ill look for in a bit says that the cache can grow to around 4 gigs on uncharted 1, one would have to assume the same can be said of uncharted 2.

if you notice though, the game takes forever to load up in the beginning, but after that you never really see a loading screen. its seamless

" @Diamond said:

" Hmmm... I think it does make an install the first time you put it in, it just doesn't tell you what its doing, but I'll have to check.
 
@warxsnake:  I haven't seen any texture pop-in in Uncharted 2, but I saw tons in 1. "

weird, I saw and noticed it everywhere, especially in key areas where the player has a huge FOV over a huge set-piece. (which is why you don't see that amount of set-pieces in most other games, they tend to avoid that and constrain you to corridors as much as possible so you don't look at a ton of assets at the same time). I'm guessing (no idea) but probably Uncharted 2 engine has dynamically loaded assets based on field of view and visual obstruction/culling, which is one of Cryengine 2's main features as well.  
 
edit: yeah maybe the fact that i play ps3 games way up close on a 24" monitor helps in seeing pop-ins and other "bad" visual effects" 
 

"