Yep i can confirm that database re-build and quick format arent working for me niether. Old ps3 40gb so wasnt expecting much change.

looks like im going to need to fork out for a ssd - need more than 40gb anyway in this day and age.

Or ID and bethesda can acknowledge this problem and come up with a solution - still cant believe that nothoing has been said about this problem!

Indeed. They switched the HDD Manufacturer several times and there are differences between speed of the drives.
Not a complete list: http://www.edepot.com/playstation3.html#PS3_Harddrive
Unfortunately especially the older 40GB models have comparable slow seek times and small cache. 16ms instead of 11-12ms and only 2MB instead of 8MB. Could be possible that his might affect how well rage runs.

It's like those PSN firmware updates, someone will always make a thread saying the XMB seems to be faster than before. All placebo effect.

Ok, so I did what the poster of this forum told me to do but I have seen absolutely no improvement. it might actually be worse. Here's what I did:

1. put in a USB stick into my ps3 so i could get the data of rage on it. then i got it all on there, and took it out

2. went to system setting and selected the "format utility" option, then selected the hard drive thing. (it was the only option to select)

3. next it did it's little load thing

4. restarted the ps3

5. put the usb back in and copied the rage save files so i didn't loose any progress

6. booted up rage, had to install the 1.01 patch or w/e and it made me completely reinstall the game

7. into the game now, STILL no progress with pop in

PLEASE PEASE let me know if i missed a step in doing this. If i did it wrong i need to know so i can do it right and improve pop in. if i did it right, then this concept does not work at all.

Yeah i didn't format. All I did is rebuild the database. And like I said, you'll still notice texture pop-in but they load up a lot quicker (i.e. entering wellspring from the vehicle select screen, the textures started out all muddy but came into focus in about 2 seconds tops)

Well, as for me, it didn't help. I used quick format and then I installed only Rage data. Well, maybe pop in became a bit faster, but really changes are almost unnoticable.
PS3 fat, 60 GB

:/ im sorry to hear. maybe it has to do with being a ps3 fat? I heard when the slims came out they came equipped with faster hard drives. All I can think to suggest would be to backup, put a new hard drive in, and re-install. And I know that's a craptacular answer. Im sorry bud.

The one and only real solution that works is upgrading your hard drive to a faster one. From what I've seen a SSD is the way to go. Youtube it if you want to see for yourself. Reformatting isn't going to do enough. The texture lag you are experiencing is the loading lag from the hard drive. Will it run perfectly after you upgrade your hard drive? No, but it will be significantly improved. There is no sense in whining about something that isn't going to get fixed through a patch. The game demands more power to run it than a stock PS3 is capable of delivering.

Option 1:
Upgrade HDD of current PS3. Best HDD to upgrade to would be SSD, but even an upgrade to a 7200rpm HDD should improve performance. Get one with more cache on it. Perhaps a HDD/SDD hybrid, as they are available now as well. Don't think of it as an upgrade just for rage, but for all your games as well. If you can't justify spending the money on an SSD use that money instead on Option 2 and a XB360.

Option 2:
Get XB360 version and do a full install.

Option 3:
Get a super computer like the one JC used to develop rage.

Option 4:
Accept rage the way it is.

Option 5:
Sell rage and move on.

If you are still angry about the issues. In the future, don't get games the day they come out. Do a bit of research prior to purchasing.

There is something very right AND very wrong about your way of thinking. In a way people complaining (like me) should just move on, It's just a game, at worst we lost some money, no big deal all things considered. But at the same time there is something very wrong about just giving in. Customers shouldn't be the ones taking the hit because some game developer failed their job. We shouldn't need to dish out ekstra money to be able to play the game correctly or lose money selling the game.

But yeah I guess I will try to stay clear from Bethesta in the future, atleast before the price drops and all the bug testing have been done (by all the unlucky customers who bought it on release).

You can't blame the developers for giving it their best effort. The problems arose from the fact that Rage is the first game to use the new IDtech5 engine. They didn't really know what the engine was capable of. So they let the artists run rampant with few guidelines as to what they were and were not allowed to do. In doing so they really stressed and pushed the engine to its limits. Future games using the IDtech5 engine should be vastly improved, if the developers use Rage as a learning tool and setup better defined guidelines for the artists. Rage was a very ambitious project and IMO a good first effort. I believe that the XB360 is just a better platform for developers to develop on. From what I see and hear, Microsoft gives developers more freedom and assistance in developing for the XB360 than Sony does for the PS3. I'm mildly annoyed that Sony won't allow a full install of Rage. What's up with that? I'm sure a full install of Rage would improve performance of running rage. Perhaps not with the texture popin issues, but at the very least it would cut down on load times.

I understand that all technology can't work 100% from the get go, but as a customer I'm still going to be disappointed and frustrated when it doesn't work. Escpesially when there is zero support and no updates, and escpesially when the developers concretely said this wouldn't be a problem, that the PS3's SPU's should prevent pop ups.

Quote from ID "The extra cores are assigned to work on textures in the background, as there’s tons of visual data on the Blu-ray and on the hard drive… We load compressed JPG data, and assign those extra cores to work on these textures, and uncompress them in the background so there is NO NASTY POP UPS, or blurred textures".... yeah right.

It also feels like they didn't really take the specs they had to work with into consideration when they started development. Kinda like designing a familiy car that is to wide to drive on normal roads, and then blame the road planning when people start to complain.

I agree with you on the matter of feeling misled. I too thought there would be a lot less pop ups. Hopefully they can come up with a miracle patch to address it some, even if only to improve it slightly. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting though. I still believe that any major improvement can only come from upgrading your hardware. I've already maxed out my current HDD and am going to upgrade to a faster one. I think that I would have still gotten the game had I know about the pop ups; however, I would have probably waited till the price dropped as there are plenty of other games to be played.

Just managed to get hold of the pc version and hate to say it but if they dont come up with a resolution by weekend Im taking ps3 version back and sticking with pc - svcks having to go down from 46" and a sofa to 27" and a pc chair but at least it runs smooth - and trust me - feels so good to not have texture popin and also its 1080p opposed to 720p. Still dont agree with lack of communication though. may even hook up mac to my tv!! but fingers crossed wont have to do any of that - was contemplating getting a ssd but screw that!!

Now...time to try and get my money back!!

I'm sorry but I call B.S. to this method of thinking. Maybe a new engine, yes. But I highly doubt it. I have all of these same problems with Fall Out 3 and it was even worse with Fall Out New Vegas(yes the newest Fall Out) These are all know issues from the Fall Out series. It should have not carried over to Rage.
Bethesda has been developing these kinds of games of a long time you think they can get it right. I do expect some minor issues. But Freezing games and major issues ect is just unacceptable. I'm not disputing that Sony is completely innocent either, they need to work with these software companies more.
Xbox is also having alot of these similar issues to so I wouldn't go blaming PS3, and look at the PC's their 10 times worse then PS3 and the PS3 is about 1 times worse than Xbox...
I haven't even started playing Rage yet, it's installed, but I'm afraid to play it...lol( I really haven't had the time yet, I'm knocking on wood)

These 3 games have developerwise very little in common.
Fallout 3 was developed by Bethesda Game Studios, New Vegas was developed by Obsidian and Rage was developed by id. They only share the common publisher Bethesda Softworks.
Fallout 3 and New Vegas share the same engine (the same used in Oblivion) but Bethesda wasn't involved in the actual development of either New Vegas nor Rage.
And Rage has a completely different and self developed engine that has nothing to do with the Fallout/Oblivion engine. id wasn't even bought when they started developing rage instead they were a independent developer with EA as Publisher and only later bought by ZeniMax Media (the parent company to Bethesda), which afterwards bought the publishing rights from EA to publish Rage under Bethesda Softworks.
So problems with the two Fallout games have absolutely nothing to do with the problems of Rage. Different engine and different developer, just the same publisher.

See that you learn something everyday, Thanks for the knowledge. It's weird thou how the problems seem to be the same, guess their using the same codes/programming or whatever the other games used. Maybe PS3 just svcks and I should get an Xbox... Obviously I'm not up to speed on game developing, and don't care to be, just give me a good game to play . Every problem I'm seeing on this forum is the same problems I had with the Fall Out series...

Yes, it's interesting how sometimes the same errors occur with totally different games even from different developers.
With rage and Fallout 3, I think it's not necessarily because of the PS3.
I read a lot how crappy Fallout 3 runs on the PS3 but gave it a try (played it before only on the PC), but for me the game run fine. Not perfect, still had some crashes but the amount was comparable to the crashes on the PC like 1 in 10 hours. While others unfortunately had a pretty bad gaming experience.
But since it runs fine for some some and bad for others it's most likely not a problem with the PS3 per se.

I haven't heard much about crashes and freezes with rage, the top most problem seems to be the texture pop ins. But apparently not everyone is affected or not affected as badly. I have some and in a few areas it's more noticeable like at the start in Dan's House, but most areas run pretty amazing. In the ghost hideout I never noticed it once.
It's difficult to assume, what is likely the reason, why the game behaves differently on different PS3s. The hardware should be the same in every one.
Probably caused by the different drives in it. I have a 80GB Fat PS3 but changed the stock HDD to a new 500GB. Maybe this is why it runs better, but this shouldn't be the solution that everyone with problems needs to buy a different HDD. Hopefully id can patch the game that it runs acceptable for everyone

repetae,

Sorry for the previous remark, suggesting a hard drive format sounded like a word of mouth virus.

The suggestions on the "rebuild database" etc. got me looking into this a bit more. I have an old 160 gig external drive with a USB connection and went to use the PS3's backup utility. However the built in PS3 backup utility will only work on FAT32 hard drives (32 gib max size). The ps3 hard drive is 149 gig. So for the heck of it, I partition the external drive with a 32 gig partition and fat32 format it. The PS3 backup utility sees this drive just fine, but of course errors with no where near the needed storage size.

How can I backup the roughly 60 gigs of data that is on my PS3?

Thanks

FAT32 supports bigger drives than 32GB, it's just a weird restriction by Windows.
But the tool FAT32 Format can format larger drives in FAT32 without a problem.
http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?guiformat.htm
(just click on the picture to download, it's free )

Thanks! I'll give that a try

I tried this and replaced my hd with one that has a 32mb buffer. Load times are shorter and pop up is better but, still noticeable. Thinking about getting it for pc because none of my friends are getting it on ps3 anyway.

sorry about the repost... was trying to update post.

*UPDATE 2*
I've had more of a chance to play RAGE with my new HDD and believe that it is running at a very satisfactory level. As far as things to look for in getting a new HDD, I would recommend high RPM 7200+, a lot of cache 32MB+, and as much storage as you can get... this is all assuming you aren't going to shell over a small fortune for a large SSD. The large cache makes a big difference when you look back and forth. Before getting the new HDD, I could look left and and then right and I would see textures loading. Now, when I see textures pop in, they do so only once. I can look left and look right and they don't pop back in.

I just installed a OCZ Vertex 3 Series SSD 120GB. Paid about 160 Euros. Now the texture pop in is completely gone. Even the loading times have increased drastically.

Heres a direct comparison between the old 5400 rpm HDD and the SSD

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7Wjt1eCs5o&feature=related vs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY15YCcH7XM&feature=related

well its good news that a faster HDD fixes the texture pop but really all that proves to us is that the current standard ps3 hardware is not able to run the game at its full potential and as the devs intended an advertised it to us as it would run/perform( do you see any texture pop in any pre release videos/trailers?? no.), really that means the game should have never been released on this console/platform if it can not run properly on its standard hardware and an upgraded ps3 system is need in order to run the game properly.either that or the devs should have changed the game so that it runs smoothly and as it should run before its release.
really i feel well an truely [censored] over by ID as i pre-ordered the game for ps3 the store actually gave me the xbox version which i also have an xbox console but returned it an exchanged it for ps3 thinking that the ps3 should run better and the fact it had only 1 disc should have been a bonus instead its a complete let down.
i wonder if they cant fix it to run properly on the current ps3's hardware are id software gonna offer everyone who purchased it a free upgrade on their console so they can play the game as ID software intended and advertised it to us, i doubt it. they should at least offer those that want it a refund or part refund or offer all ps3 owners of this game that have to deal with a permanent broken game free dlc( an decent dlc aswell) an also put a clear label on the front of the games box that states a ps3 HDD hardware upgrade is required to run this game at its full potential obviously this should only be the case if the game can not be fixed without the consumer spending out more money. if they can not at least label that the game require upgraded hardware to run to its full potential it should not be allowed to be sold on this platform.


also the reason i believe some people are seeing it worse than others when they also have standard ps3 hdd could be due to their tv an general setup, its much less norticeable on my larger 40" samsung tv that i sit further away than when compared to my 21" samsung led tv that i sit about 1 -2 ft away from. thats not to say its unoticeable and any better as its not its just my eyes dont notice it as much but its still there just as much as ever.
an yea a few areas mainly indoor ones do not have any texture pop at all and are perfect and stunning to look, this gives me hope that it may be fixable in a patch of somesort at some time in the near future.