View Full Version : 3DO M2 dev kit on eBay
Look what I stumbled on. Panasonic 3DO M2 Development Core System (http://cgi.ebay.com/RARE-PANASONIC-3DO-M2-DEVELOPMENT-CORE-SYSTEM-POWER-MAC_W0QQitemZ8286480654QQcategoryZ62054QQssPageNam eZWD1VQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem) on ebay.
boatload of photos. Any of you devs use one of these before? :)
GwymWeepa
16-Jun-2006, 22:33
How powerful was the M2 regarded as being?
archie4oz
16-Jun-2006, 23:12
I've seen one in person before. Never did anything with one though. IIRC ERP may have though...
How powerful was the M2 regarded as being?
It would've been faster than a N64 but slower than Dreamcast. It was pretty beefy.
Megadrive1988
16-Jun-2006, 23:39
How powerful was the M2 regarded as being?
circa 1994-1995 - 3DO said the M2 was more powerful than SEGA MODEL-2 arcade board that powered
Daytona USA and Virtua Fighter 2. in some ways, this was true, I suppose.
circa 1995 - 3DO claimed M2 was 5 times more powerful than Saturn or Playstation,
then extended that to 7 times more powerful than either Saturn or Playstation.
circa 1996 - Matsushita at times claimed that M2 was about as powerful as SEGA's MODEL-3 arcade board. this was not true.
Next Generation magazine correctly said that, what Matsushita was saying, was an exaggeration, and that the truth was closer to.... M2 was more like, 2 to 3 times more powerful than the Nintendo 64, well below Sega Model 3, but still, that 2~3x N64 was pretty damn good.
some developers said M2 was about twice as powerful as Nintendo 64.
Next Generation Online, in their impressions of IMSA Racing, said M2 was somewhat more impressive than
PCs with 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics cards.
http://www.xent.com/may97/0112.html
While Next Generation Online had a pretty good idea of what should be
expected from the M2 in terms of graphics, the editors were somewhat
surprised when the system actually delivered something near what was
promised.
Based upon the demo of 3DO's IMSA Racing the M2 hardware graphically
eclipses any currently available consoles and even manages to do a slightly
more impressive job than even 3Dfx powered PCs. Textures were
extraordinarily clean, there was no discernible pop-in but this wasn't by
virtue of fogging. There simply was no discernible horizon on the game.
This is partially due to track design (with turns) but even on straight-aways one
couldn't see any pop-in. Framerate of the game was consistently high and was claimed to be
locked at 30 fps by the game's director. The entire game runs at 640x480 which
even made the menu screens look better than typical console games through
the use of anti-aliased text.
I'm not going to judge the M2 hardware by the Konami arcade games that came out (i.e. Polystars, Battle Tryst ) which kinda look like Namco System12 (re Playstation1+) games.
maybe those M2 arcade used the single-PowerPC version. or Konami just rushed those games, not really taking advantage of the hardware. (maybe PS1-arcade port jobs? )
D2 developer Warp said in 1998 that the Dreamcast was 3 to 4 times more powerful than M2. that might've been an understatement since Dreamcast turned out to be very powerful -- DC could do *well* over 3 million textured, lit, fully featured polys/sec. somewhere between 3 and 5 million polygons for Dreamcast. the M2 could manage 500,000 such polys at the very most. but perhaps, only 300,000 fully featured polys/sec, which is about twice that of N64. thus, M2 had more or less, 1/10th the polygon rendering performance of Dreamcast.
(300K vs 3M or 500k vs 5M) which sits nicely with Nintendo64's ~160,000 fully featured polygons/sec which is about 1/20th Dreamcast's polygon rendering performance. on the other hand, if 3DO was to be believed, M2 could handle 700,000 textured triangles/sec without other features on. that's pretty damn impressive.
so M2, when all rendering features are turned on, was inbetween the Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast, yes -- but much closer to N64 than Dreamcast in raw performance. Still, the M2 was a much better architecture/chipset, a better machine overall (CD-ROM!) with a better OS than the N64.
that's my best recap on M2's power.
now, I'd like to know how powerful the 3DO MX was (M2.5 or M3 ?) a chipset that Nintendo almost used in the successor to the Nintendo 64, before going with ArtX who designed the much more powerful Flipper.
The MX chipset and team that designed it eventually ended up in Microsoft's hands.
It would be very interesting to compare the 3DO MX to the Dreamcast.
I've seen one in person before. Never did anything with one though. IIRC ERP may have though...
We did some prelim work with it, for it's time it was extremly impressive.
It was really quite impressive even before they added the second processor. One of the better designed OS's aswell, well ahead of what Sony and Nintendo were offering at the time, some what behind what Dreamcast offered later. No one could really see how they could put it in a box at a reasonable price and in the end they didn't.
I hated having to work on a Mac though, I threw one of these away a few years ago.....
pakotlar
17-Jun-2006, 03:46
I remember seeing pictures of the M2 racing game, and it had round wheels :D. This was pretty cool, considering we were dealing with Virtua Racer on Genesis 32X at the time (first 3d racing game I ever played).
kyetech
17-Jun-2006, 11:35
I remember seeing pictures of the M2 racing game, and it had round wheels :D. This was pretty cool, considering we were dealing with Virtua Racer on Genesis 32X at the time (first 3d racing game I ever played).
Iremember seeing a demo from what I could remember it was a red coloured prototype sports car on a road that accelarated off.
But I could have sworn it was pre-rendered and was claimed by the games mags to be a target / concept render, of what to expect. Somwthing we are getting all to familiar with nowadays !
Megadrive1988
17-Jun-2006, 23:52
Iremember seeing a demo from what I could remember it was a red coloured prototype sports car on a road that accelarated off.
But I could have sworn it was pre-rendered and was claimed by the games mags to be a target / concept render, of what to expect. Somwthing we are getting all to familiar with nowadays !
yes, the "Car Demo" of 1995.
(thanks & credit to zappenduster on assemblergames.com for these images)
http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/2175/m2cardemo18ug.jpg
http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/8646/m2cardemo37cr.jpg
http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/3590/m2cardemo49ki.jpg
http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/541/m2cardemo67yh.jpg
Megadrive1988
17-Jun-2006, 23:52
http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/3014/m2cardemo57lt.jpg
29.9 MB video of it here (http://dairoku.free.fr/M2%20car%20demo.avi)
(the guy presenting the video is a little TOO enthused, lol)
okay, so, the M2 Car Demo was either:
a.) completely pre-rendered, and what is now commenly called a "render target".
same difference I think.
b.) or it was a realtime sequence running on a highend SGI workstation costing tens of thousands of dollors or an SGI visualization system costing a hundred thousand dollars or more. either with much more performance than M2 would ever have.
It would've taken at least a Dreamcast to pull that Car Demo off in realtime, if not a Gamecube or Xbox.
Thus, to become realtime & gameplay, it would've needed a console generation beyond M2.
It was a render, based on supposed real polygon count targets.
Megadrive1988
18-Jun-2006, 01:13
It was a render, based on supposed real polygon count targets.
and those supposed real polygon count figures were between 300,000 and 500,000 /sec fully featured with texture, lighting, effects.
still, IMO, there's no way M2 could've done that in realtime, at least not at that complexity, at that quality, and at that framerate.
maybe MX could've, though, aye? if not, the then-nextgen consoles, would've.
quest55720
18-Jun-2006, 07:41
A little off topic I always heard sega was in talks to buy the M2 tech and that would of been the saturn but lost out last second. If that was true do you think that would of changed history with sega having the m2 hardware?
Megadrive1988
18-Jun-2006, 09:23
A little off topic I always heard sega was in talks to buy the M2 tech and that would of been the saturn but lost out last second. If that was true do you think that would of changed history with sega having the m2 hardware?
Sega was indeed in talks with Matsushita regarding the M2 chipset / technology console.
this was in mid-late 1995 I guess, perhaps upto early 1996. well after the Saturn had launched. the M2 was never going to *be* the Saturn. since Saturn had been in development from 1990-1992, until 1994. which *almost* parallaled the development timeframe of the original 3DO (1989-1990 to 1993). the M2 was developed from around 1992-1993 until around 1996 before being canceled as a game console official in 1997.
anyway, one proposal was to make M2 an upgrade for the Saturn, and/or to have a combined Saturn-M2 standalone console that could run both formats, including original 3DO games. I guess Sega might've been a 2nd or 3rd party to Matsushita, with sega being the main provider of top-quality games.
Sega ultimately decided that the M2, while good, was not the technology it wanted, being that M2 was only 2 to 3 times stronger than Nintendo 64.
http://tinyurl.com/c5rk7
3DO began shopping around its 64bit M2 system. According to informed sources, Sega's Japanese bankers had brokered an unwritten deal whereby Matsushita would manufacture M2 units, while Sega would concentrate on the software. M2 devkits were supplied to
Sega in early 1996, with initial work reputedly concentrating on a Virtua Fighter 3 conversion for M2's launch.
Sega's M2 project soon fell apart however. 3DO's Trip Hawkins blamed corporate ‘egos' for the collapse, while Sega insisted its engineers were unconvinced M2 was the breakthrough technology they needed.
after concidering some other options (Nvidia and Lockheed Real3D) Sega turned to Videologic and 3Dfx , for each of their 2nd generation technolgies (3Dfx Banshee or Voodoo2 and Videologic's Highlander/PowerVR2) which were both well beyond M2.
I would say though, that the M2 would've been an exellent system for Sega to quickly replace the Saturn with in 1996. Sega with M2 could've gone head to head against Nintendo 64 launch (and Sony) with a more powerful machine than either. the M2 could've handled Sega Model2 arcade games pretty well (with some upgrades even) plus, the M2 could've even handled, downgraded (but reasonable) Model3 arcade translations. the Saturn and M2 were both dual-CPU machines, but the M2 implemented dual CPUs far, far, far better than Saturn did. programming for M2 would've been, not easy, but infinitally better than on Saturn. especially since M2 had a proper 3D polygon graphics rendering system, unlike the Saturn.
however, Sega decided to strike back, not in 1996 with M2, but in 1998-1999 with a next-gen system, the PowerVR2-based Dreamcast.
Sega turned to Videologic and 3Dfx , for each of their 2nd generation technolgies (3Dfx Banshee or Voodoo2 and Videologic's Highlander/PowerVR2) which were both well beyond M2.
Was 3dfx's proposed tech just a banshee or voodoo2? I remember hearing it would be about performance of a banshee, but with a more advanced feature set (I remember hearing rumors that put it at rampage's feature set but minus its t&l chip, the sage), but was scrapped/pushed back when the deal fell through and 3dfx just kept reworking the voodoo architecture instead.
I would say though, that the M2 would've been an exellent system for Sega to quickly replace the Saturn with in 1996. Sega with M2 could've gone head to head against Nintendo 64 launch (and Sony) with a more powerful machine than either.
Seems like it would have been a bit too soon. 32x was 1994, Saturn was 1995, I don't think rushing out another system would have done sega well. Even dreamcast was only accepted on the market because saturn had been stone dead for quite a while, a dreamcast in 1998 in America may have been deemed too early by the public. (the saturn was still too much in the public eye in 1998, sega was somewhat disassociated with its failure by 1999) At the very least, if they were going to bring out systems that close together (where they'd be competing with each other!) they'd at least have to include backwards compatibility. I think a 2 year console cycle could work in that case, but it would take away the standardization benefits of consoles.
Megadrive1988
19-Jun-2006, 02:31
Was 3dfx's proposed tech just a banshee or voodoo2? I remember hearing it would be about performance of a banshee, but with a more advanced feature set (I remember hearing rumors that put it at rampage's feature set but minus its t&l chip, the sage), but was scrapped/pushed back when the deal fell through and 3dfx just kept reworking the voodoo architecture instead.
initial reports in spring/summer 1997 said the 3Dfx chip for Sega would be a Banshee derivative. years later, it was sort of semi concluded that the chip was some sort of Banshee2 which would essentially be a Voodoo3, or pre-Voodoo3, or lower end Voodoo3. whatever the case, Voodoo 1, 2, Banshee and Banshee2/Voodoo3 all shared the same architecture, just used different configurations of PixelFX and TexelFX units, plus a few features here an there added to each new chip.
Seems like it would have been a bit too soon. 32x was 1994, Saturn was 1995, I don't think rushing out another system would have done sega well. Even dreamcast was only accepted on the market because saturn had been stone dead for quite a while, a dreamcast in 1998 in America may have been deemed too early by the public. (the saturn was still too much in the public eye in 1998, sega was somewhat disassociated with its failure by 1999) At the very least, if they were going to bring out systems that close together (where they'd be competing with each other!) they'd at least have to include backwards compatibility. I think a 2 year console cycle could work in that case, but it would take away the standardization benefits of consoles.
if you read the Next Generation magazine and TotalGames.net web articles, there was division within Sega about launching Saturn altogether. and/or replacing it quickly with a competent machine such as one based around Lockheed Real3D or 3DO M2 graphics, both of which would've also used PowerPC CPU(s).
Next Generation
http://img122.imageshack.us/img122/258/saturn2lmc2crop1033x13522rk.th.jpg
TotalGames.net
The Saturn debacle would cost the jobs of Sega’s American and Japanese bosses, beside reducing its US empire to a ruin running up losses of $167 million in 1997. For any replacement machine the lessons were clear: a single format, complete user-friendliness for developers and a new brand -- so low had sunk the once mighty Sega name.
As soon as any console is launched, work is usually underway on a replacement but the Saturn’s troubles gave this process an unusual urgency for Sega. By 1995, rumours surfaced that US defence contractors Lockheed Martin Corp. were already deep into the development of a replacement, possibly even with a view to releasing it as a Saturn upgrade. There were even claims that during Saturn’s pre-launch panic a group of managers argued the machine should simply be scrapped in favour of an all-new LMC design.
Mars / 32X should NEVER have been released. Saturn's release is questionable, but lets go with it. Saturn came out in late 1994 (Japan) and early 1995 (U.S.)... by late 1996 Sega could have and should have come out with either an upgrade for the Saturn, or a complete replacement, using either 3DO M2 or Lockheed Martin Real3D graphics and PowerPC. a low-cost machine using either could've been made with greater than Model2 arcade performance/quality, and allowing for reasonable translations of Model3 games. it would've been as I said, superior in every way to the PlayStation, Nintendo64 and if Atari dared launch it, the Midsummer/Jaguar2. Sega could've used such a console from 1996 until 2001 when it would then release a next-gen console more powerful than Dreamcast, closer to what the Xbox and Gamecube were, staying technically competitive with PS2.
all just "what ifs", sure, but reasonable ones IMO.
OtakingGX
19-Jun-2006, 05:27
Sega could've used such a console from 1996 until 2001 when it would then release a next-gen console more powerful than Dreamcast, closer to what the Xbox and Gamecube were, staying technically competitive with PS2.
all just "what ifs", sure, but reasonable ones IMO.
Are you saying that Dreamcast was not technically competitive with PS2? I think it was in the ballpark, and Dreamcast's 2nd gen games definitely looked better than PS2's early games (just compare DOA on both).
Not keeping up technically was not Sega's downfall, it was their internal management. Oh, and Sony's marketing blitz on PS2 that vastly overshadowed the Dreamcast.
Megadrive1988
19-Jun-2006, 10:05
Are you saying that Dreamcast was not technically competitive with PS2? I think it was in the ballpark, and Dreamcast's 2nd gen games definitely looked better than PS2's early games (just compare DOA on both).
Not keeping up technically was not Sega's downfall, it was their internal management. Oh, and Sony's marketing blitz on PS2 that vastly overshadowed the Dreamcast.
Dreamcast had better visual quality than PS2 for sure, but lets be honest, the Dreamcast did not have nearly the performance than PS2 had (rendering rates, bandwidth). so no, Dreamcast was not exactly technically competitive with PS2. although the best Dreamcast games could hold their own against PS2 games that did not push PS2. this is coming from a long-time Sega fan. but this is getting off topic from the M2.
There was also another demo, also prerendered, showing an FPS, IIRC, in a detailed green room (detailed for that time frame, of course).
They also showed a video rendered to texture demo too, which was extremely impressive at that time, I reckon.
Anyway, the M2 had always this dead on arrival sticker to it, nobody did believe in 3DO anymore by that time. Well, nobody other than Matsushita, that is... And the only reason for this trust was maybe the fact that some Matsushita execs were still trying to emulate, their archenemy Sony, success on this videogaming market. Obvioulsy buying the M2 technology wasn't maybe the best solution for them at that time.
Some images taken from a french magazine :
http://hardwired.free.fr/M2p1.jpg
http://hardwired.free.fr/M2p2.jpg
http://hardwired.free.fr/M2p3.jpg
http://hardwired.free.fr/M2p4.jpg
http://hardwired.free.fr/M2p5.jpg
Sorry for the quality I haven't got a scanner so I took theses images with my camera. I know that "Scans of magazines/publications NOT allowed in this forum" but this magazine is 10 year old or more so I'm sure that no harm is done ;)
You could see on the 4th page some pictures of the prerendered FPS that Vysez is talking about, no way the M2 could manage such a level of detail. The funny thing is that the name of the demo was "Dungeon Keeper" it seems :D
Megadrive1988
19-Jun-2006, 20:27
those are really sweet magazine pics, Zeross, thank you for sharing those.
man I've love to know what the article is saying.
I see they've got a part on Sega MODEL2 and MODEL3. probably something to do with how Sega would use 3DO M2 to port Model2 and reasonably translate Model3 games.
well, anyway, at least you can see, what were pre-rendered demos in 1995, as been reached and surpassed by realtime game graphics years later.
btw, if I am not mistaken, the raptor dinosaur and the dinosaur vs the woman, was not pre-rendered, but realtime.
I saw footage of the FPS on television back in 1995 or 1996. it looked to me that it was running 60fps and with detailed textures. IMO it would've taken a Gamecube or Xbox or 2000-2001 PC to pull that off in realtime. especialy since the pre-rendered footage used anti-aliasing.
What exactly is a PowerPC 602? I never knew there was so little info about it out there. Apparently it's some sort of derivative designed for comsumer apps (meaning it's probably crippled somehow, like R4300i with its 32-bit buses).
BTW I have all of Next Generation mag from 1995 thru 1997 I believe, and sporadically after that too. I will have to dig up the M2 issue and read up again. I loved that mag. The quality of the mag is so high. Their crazy photography of interviewees and the weird, thick plastic-ish covers. I liked how each issue had a mission too. Heh their premier issue is an in-depth look at 3DO with a big Trip Hawkins interview. The whole mag is like an embodiment of the level of buzz in the arcade and console markets of the day.
Megadrive1988
19-Jun-2006, 21:06
Swaaye, since you have Next Generation magazines from 1995 thru 1997, do you think you could do me a favor an look at issue 16, 17 or 18. there is a one-page article that mentions the failed SEGA-Matsushita M2 deal. I think it was said that Sega was impressed with M2, but not enough to adopt it, and also, it says something like, M2 is just going to be another polygonal game machine, not something that looks like a million-dollar flight simulator.
if you have the time to scan that page, or type out that part, it would be appreciated, but if not, I understand.
I'll see if I have the issue when I get home. Will do some scanning if I find a good M2 article too. I know they had an issue with lots of coverage on it.
Megadrive1988
19-Jun-2006, 22:32
yup. there's another good Next Generation article (2 pages i think) in 1997 about the cancelation of M2. They noted that M2 spec is getting old, in the face of new consoles in development from Sony and Sega.
this (may issue?) was an issue or two before news of Sega's Black Belt surfaced, in the magazine that is, as web articles already reported on Black Belt due to the time lead websites naturally have,
Heh, I remember this issue of Console +, according to the article the M2 was the center of the developer talks, that it motivated developers houses to sign partnerships (in order to develop for the M2...), that publishers were interested in the M2, it also precises that the latest hearsay from Matsushita the M2 should have been on Japanese shelves by december 96 and released in the US in the late 97...
And that's indeed the FPS demo I talked about earlier. Even back in the days already the thing did scream prerendered as soon as you did take a look at the pictures, as much as the Jumping Flash and the dungeon crawler "demos" for the Playstation.
Sorry for the quality I haven't got a scanner so I took theses images with my camera. I know that "Scans of magazines/publications NOT allowed in this forum" but this magazine is 10 year old or more so I'm sure that no harm is done ;)
Scans of vintage magazines are more or less allowed, no problems with that.
I looked thru all of my ancient Next Generation mags to find some juicy M2 info. There are scans of some system info, a few games, and some predictions. Cool stuff. 1995-97.
http://www.harpgallery.com/assets/images/swaaye/ng/
http://www.harpgallery.com/assets/images/swaaye/ng/ng-m2breaksilence-1sm.jpghttp://www.harpgallery.com/assets/images/swaaye/ng/ng-m2ironblood-1sm.jpg
(http://www.harpgallery.com/assets/images/swaaye/ng/)
Megadrive1988
20-Jun-2006, 05:54
Swaaye, wow, just wow. thank you very much for the effort.
these are the nuggets that I was after:
And yet another developer questioned the value of the system: "It's good, but in comparison other next-generation systems it's nothing special. It's going to look like you are playing on another polygon-based next-gen system.
Not a $4 million flight simulator."
First of all, Next Generation has learned that Sega wanted to be the sole M2 brand, which would have contravened Matsushita's hopes of setting up M2 as a standad with several other hardware companies on board. Second, although Sega technicians were reported impressed with the M2, they were not sufficiently awestuck to warrant its immediate implementation into their plans.
and this is what i remember seeing on television at (IIRC) 60 frame per second that really blew me away, even though it was pre-rendered.
http://img106.imageshack.us/img106/2324/m2monstercrop9yw.jpg
part of the FPS / Doom / Dungeon demo
another picture of it
http://zappenduster.7sky.de/3do-m2/software/demo/3do-dungeon-demo/3do-dungeon-demo-006.jpg
at 60fps with anti-aliasing, the amount of texture detail and polygon count, it would've been impossible on M2.
Maybe MX could've handled it. if not, then certainly last gen consoles, specially GCN and Xbox.
Heh it looks like they were trying to say the console could do per-pixel lighting and lots of bump mapping! :)
Yeah these were definitely the days before people started to really complain about them advertising pre-rendered shots as the actual gameplay. Of course, FMV was all the rage back then, and as such it wasn't totally evil to use pre-rendered shots.
I wish I had the issue with the look at D2 and Power Crystal. I know I had the issue at one point, but not anymore. Those really hyped the console up.
There are some shots of D2 over here: http://assembler.roarvgm.com/Panasonic_m2/panasonic_m2.html.
And of Power Crystal (these remind me somewhat of what I remember from the NG issue):
http://m2-x.hp.infoseek.co.jp/images/crystal.htm
Megadrive1988
20-Jun-2006, 07:06
I used to have all the 1995-1998 issues, but no more.
btw the article on (IMSA) World Championship Racing have the best shots of the game that I've seen.
the M2 version of D2 looked WAY more interesting than the graphically superior but completely different Dreamcast game.
oh and Power Crystal, the description of it in Intelligent Gamer (or IG Fusion) magazine, truly got me hyped for M2.
One exceptional title under development off site is what is being described by IG sources as the first-ever virtual reality RPG, Power Crystal. According to those who have witnessed the game in motion, the early version of the graphics engine is blazingly fast despite its use of beautiful visual effects: You can walk up to the shore line of a river or lake and see glimmering translucent water splashing the shoreline without polygon breakup, and you can then look
into the water and see pebbles and sedimentary rocks in the basin. Early versions allow the player to fully walk around and explore a village.
Next Generation said Power Crystal was running at 60fps, and IIRC, that was on a non-final iteration of M2 with a single PowerPC 602 processor.
back to the pre-rendered stuff for second...
http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/1552/m2carcrop6sz.jpg
noticing the sharpness of the textures, the lighting, 640x480, and assuming a 60fps framerate, that's Gamecube or Xbox territory right there.
mboeller
20-Jun-2006, 07:07
Mars / 32X should NEVER have been released. Saturn's release is questionable, but lets go with it. Saturn came out in late 1994 (Japan) and early 1995 (U.S.)... by late 1996 Sega could have and should have come out with either an upgrade for the Saturn, or a complete replacement,
IMHO; Sega should have scrapped the Saturn and instead should have sticked with the MARS/32X upgrade for three years (1993-1996). Well the 32X as it was would not have been competitive but a "small" memory upgrade from 512KB to 1,5MB + a faster VDP1 should have allowed nice games until 1996. Then Sega should have released a highend nextgen console. All in all with such a strategy Sega would have been in a far better position 1996 then with the 32X and Saturn.
[edit]:
IMHO the BIGGEST mistake of Sega was, that they released the X32 only as an Addon at first and the MARS console only as a afterthought 1/2 or even 1 year later. If they would have released the MARS-console and the X32-upgrade at the same time (end of 1993) then the X32 would have had a far better standing. Together with the mentioned upgrades, the X32 would have been a real nextgen system suitable for up to 3 years. Afterwards when a "sort of Saturn" would have benn released the X32 would have been sold as the lowcost system for maybe 1-2 years till 1998 ( a highend Saturn, as taked here would have been very expensive at first, so without a cheaper companion system Sega would have lost a lot of consumers from 1996-98 ).
"would have" seems to be _the_ words in my post here :)
Manfred
I went digging thru the mags again. I just knew I had to have that Power Crystal preview, and I found it. I also scanned another preview of the machine (hit or myth) and the announcement of M2's end (theend).
http://www.harpgallery.com/assets/images/swaaye/ng/
http://www.harpgallery.com/assets/images/swaaye/ng/ng-powercrystal-01sm.jpghttp://www.harpgallery.com/assets/images/swaaye/ng/ng-m2theend-01sm.jpg
Megadrive1988
20-Jun-2006, 07:30
once again, big time kudos, Swaaye
from the Power Crystal article
Power Crystal was running at 60fps -- and the current development kit only has one PowerPC chip.
see, my memory is pretty good ;)
Thanks for the scans, I love reading these old articles.
Btw am I dreaming or is there a quote by of one of our famous developers in one article ? ;)
Shifty Geezer
20-Jun-2006, 09:29
http://www.harpgallery.com/assets/images/swaaye/ng/ng-powercrystal-01sm.jpgSome things never change...
"The whole thing takes place in a full 3D environment, in real time, and the player can walk around and interact with other characters - the idea being to simulate a rea,l living world."
Even nowadays games that toot real, living worlds aren't realy getting close to that concept! I think all these companies just plain underestimate what that actually needs, and a decade ago they thought the tech was up to the job.
HAHAHAHA
read this page http://www.harpgallery.com/assets/images/swaaye/ng/ng-m2article1-1.jpg
from the part : OBSTACLES facing the introduction of the DVD format
hilarious.. does it remind you guys of something?
hehe, i love this part, "whats wrong with VCR ? " hahaha
OtakingGX
20-Jun-2006, 18:48
HAHAHAHA
read this page http://www.harpgallery.com/assets/images/swaaye/ng/ng-m2article1-1.jpg
Is that lady fist-fighting a dinosaur?
Well it took forever for DVD to catch on. Actually, many games are still CDROM today when they would be better served by a DVD release. Instead we get the ridiculous "collectors editions" to get DVD for $10. At least some devs are a bit more down to earth and just release on DVD. I bought my first DVD-ROM in '99 for $70. I still have it actually, a Toshiba 6X IDE.
You know I think Power Crystal probably was going to be awful and hence why it never showed up. The graphics in the one or two shots of actual gameplay aren't exactly overhwhelming, even compared to N64. Zelda Ocarina may look better IMO. I sure wish I had the issue with D2. That game was just totally out there.
Looking over the specs I keep seeing it almost feels as if the machine was designed to primarily use the PPC 602s as the renderer. There is very little mention of any sort of GPU.
Swaaye, wow, just wow. thank you very much for the effort.
these are the nuggets that I was after:
and this is what i remember seeing on television at (IIRC) 60 frame per second that really blew me away, even though it was pre-rendered.
http://img106.imageshack.us/img106/2324/m2monstercrop9yw.jpg
part of the FPS / Doom / Dungeon demo
another picture of it
http://zappenduster.7sky.de/3do-m2/software/demo/3do-dungeon-demo/3do-dungeon-demo-006.jpg
at 60fps with anti-aliasing, the amount of texture detail and polygon count, it would've been impossible on M2.
Maybe MX could've handled it. if not, then certainly last gen consoles, specially GCN and Xbox.
Eh, up the resolution and you're nearly at oblivion quality there. I don't know if it could have been done at 60fps on last gen consoles, though its limited scope may have made it possible at a lower framerate.
the M2 version of D2 looked WAY more interesting than the graphically superior but completely different Dreamcast game.
Based on those pictures, it was an RE/Alone in the Dark clone. D2 on Dreamcast had tentacle porn. Which would you prefer?
noticing the sharpness of the textures, the lighting, 640x480, and assuming a 60fps framerate, that's Gamecube or Xbox territory right there.
I dunno, it looks like it may have even higher quality textures and a higher polygon count than F-zero GX, though F-Zero GX has a lot more cars on screen at once.
hehe, i love this part,
Quote:
"whats wrong with VCR ? "
hahaha
Except DVDs ended up being cheaper and more convenient than VCRs, and it didn't take long to get TVs that could showcase the better quality. Trying to make DVD mass market in 1996 would have been like trying to make Blu-ray mass market now, it's just a few years too early. Too expensive, and not enough people have the TVs to take advantage of it yet. (blu-ray will likely take even a little longer to take over, since its format doesn't give it any advantage over DVD besides size, whereas the disk format is superior to the tape format in several ways)
I found some info about PowerPC 602. http://www.microprocessor.sscc.ru/powerpc-faq/ (use browser Find for 602).
PowerPC 602
A processor aimed at consumer electronics (set-top boxes, game consoles, etc.), PDAs, and embedded controller applications.
Data Bus Func units Si Ship
Proc width width (I/FP/BP/LS) Cache Trans Process date date
-------- ----- ----- ------------ ------ ----- ----------- ------- ------
MPC601 32 64 1/1/1/0 32 2.8 0.6u CMOS Oct 92 Apr 93
MPC601+ 32 64 1/1/1/0 32 2.8 0.5u CMOS 2Q 94 Nov 94
MPC602 32 64 1/1/0/1 4/4 1.0 0.5u CMOS Feb 95 2H 95
MPC603 32 32/64 1/1/1/1 8/8 1.6 0.5u CMOS Oct 93 Nov 94
MPC603e 32 32/64 1/1/1/1 16/16 2.6 0.5u CMOS Feb 95 2H 95
MPC603ev 32 32/64 1/1/1/1 16/16 2.6 0.35u CMOS ? ?
MPC604 32 64 3/1/1/1 16/16 3.6 0.5u CMOS Apr 94 Dec 94
MPC604e 32 64 3/1/1/1 32/32 5.1 0.5u CMOS ? ?
MPC620 64 64/128 3/1/1/1 32/32 7 0.5u CMOS Apr 96 ?
It looks like it has half the L1 cache of a 603, and the SpecInt92 scores are lower than N64's 94 MHz VR4300 (R4300i) scores. SpecFP92 seems to be unrecorded anywhere. It has less than 1/3 the transistors of a 601, and is missing the branch processing unit but gains a load store unit.
Megadrive1988
20-Jun-2006, 20:50
Looking over the specs I keep seeing it almost feels as if the machine was designed to primarily use the PPC 602s as the renderer. There is very little mention of any sort of GPU.
well, the M2 did not contain a full GPU like Gamecube or Xbox. but it did contain rendering hardware.
the M2's main custom chip, the BDA (BullDog ASIC) contained the graphics rendering hardware, including triangle setup engine, the pixel pipeline, z-buffering, texture-mapping, lighting, gouraud shading, perspective correction, filtering, alpha-blending, mip mapping, etc. stuff.
one of the PPC 602s would have been the geometry processor / geometry engine / T&L unit, in the same capacity as the Vector Units in Emotion Engine or the SH4 CPU in Dreamcast.
one PPC 602 would feed the BDA 3D matrix data (im not comfortable using the term) just polygon transform calculations, then the BDA renders the graphics. it also did audio and MPEG1 decoding (later upgraded to MPEG2 after M2 console was canned).
the custom BDA chip contained something like, 10 co-processors (give or take). as of 1994, the custom chip, which I assume meant the BDA, contained 2.5 million transistors.
~circa 1997
"The real strength of 3DO lies in multimedia architecture/design talent" a
Hugh Martin quote.
"Over the past several years, 3DO engineers have significantly advanced
hardware system designs and software drivers, in addition to developing
software modems, MPEG codecs, and encryption systems. Much of that
knowledge was stitched into the ASIC at the heart of the M2 system-the BDA
chip, short for Bulldog ASIC, derived from the original project name. The
BDA integrates an audio DSP as well as an MPEG1 video decoder--soon to be
upgraded to MPEG2 for DVD-compatible systems--and advanced audio/video
graphics capability with a 3D graphics engine capable of offering 500,000
triangles per second, in addition to a separate 3D setup engine to free
the processing power of the two PowerPC's. The ASIC is also capable of
decoding multiple video streams simultaeneously, while its video stream
can be mapped onto an object as texture. " [Note MPEG2/DVD connection
confirmed. Software modem is a new thing.]
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.video.3do/msg/183bfa311df6de34?dmode=source&hl=en
here's a nice quote by just some person:
The dual CPU's is not where the M2's power is at. The power of the M2 is in the BDA (Bulldog ASIC).
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.video.3do/msg/4276a3f588fa3412?dmode=source&hl=en
Fox 5: I don't think Dreamcast or PS2 could've handled that at 60fps. but Gamecube and Xbox would've been the starting point, in terms of any possibility of doing it realtime. PCs by 2001-2002 certainly had the performance to do that. the quality of the rendering was pretty high, the complexity moderatly high. the framerate, at least at that part in the cave was 60fps. i dunno if it's using per pixel lighting or per-vertex lighting. definitally looked bump-mapped, though. Well i guess, hell, with the anti-aliasing it used, maybe it would've taken Xbox360 to handle it.
Heh heh heh.... what if they were planning on using sprites? Think Doom64.
Uh oh, there's a quote from a Rob Povey of Boss Game Studios here (http://www.harpgallery.com/assets/images/swaaye/ng/ng-m2theend-01.jpg). ERP? :cool:
Megadrive1988
20-Jun-2006, 23:29
unless I missed it in your large collection of NG articles, there was another one, either late 1996 or somewhere in 1997, where NG is skeptical of Matsushita claims that M2 has SEGA Model3 arcade performance. NG says M2 is closer to 2-3 times faster/more powerful than N64.
maybe that's in one of the issues you don't have.
note: I *did* see the late 1996 article you have, where Hiroyuki Sakai of Matsushita says:
"The M2 offers the same capabilities as Sega's Model 3 arcade board"
http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/5363/m2sameasmodel37jz.jpg
edit: actually going back to the November 1995 Next Generation magazine, someone at Sega or Lockheed Real3D (one of NG's contacts) already debunked the idea that 3DO M2 could compete with the Model 3 arcade board.
http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/281/segamodel3vs3dom29lq.jpg
to be fair, the M2 would've been a $300~$400 console in 1996-1997, the Model 3 board cost, AT LEAST $6,000 alone. the M2 was sitting in a nice place between the Model 2 board and the Model 3 board. Also, it would've been very interesting to see comparisons of the beefier 3DO MX hardware vs the Model 3 board, vs the Dreamcast.
I was looking for some info on the M2 and I found this, I think it's interesting :
The game we were making was Distrupor which is/was out for Playstation. The M2 version was planned to have 10 times the polygons and full 3d characters around 600 to 1500 polygons each but otherwise would have been about the same. We got the enemy 3d animation system working as well as our first level in memory but that's about as far as we got before the project was cancelled.
I'm sure there are many reasons the M2 never saw the light of day. From my personal point of view the people at 3DO just didn't have a clue. Instead of giving us a machine with a minimal OS and docs on the hardware they wanted to not give out hardware documentation and have programmers do all things through their OS routines. We showed them that this sucked. For example at the time you could display the famous COW model at a reasonably good frame rate but if you just tried to display 10 cubes with 6 polygons each it would run at only 10 frames a second. Instead of giving us hardware docs they wanted to add more features to the OS to try to make it work around some of it's slowness. note: they didn't want to make it faster they wanted to work around it's slowness by programming kludges and other useless things.
Because they spent so much time trying to write a really fancy OS they neglected what game programmers really needed. A fast C compiler, assembler and debugger. Compiling our game took 8 minutes. If you changed 1 line of code you had to wait 3 minutes to see the changes on the screen because of how poor the tools were. As a comparison on CTR to compile the entire game at the end of the project took 4 minutes. Changing 1 line of code and seeing the results probably took less than 30 seconds.
I'm sure there were lots of other reasons it failed but I tend to believe that had it been easy to write software for it then cool software would have appeared and driven the rest of the platform. It would have excited people. As it was all anybody ever saw was the COW.
ERP you already said that the OS was very advanced but is it true that the hardware was so abstracted that it was harmful for performance and that you didn't have low level access to the hardware ?
MegaDrive1988>The quote you're looking for is on this page : http://www.harpgallery.com/assets/images/swaaye/ng/ng-m2hitormyth-02.jpg
Matsushita itself claims the console is capable of (Model 3 levels of performance) and the rather less spirited comparisons from third parties of two to three times Nintendo 64's polygon horsepower
unless I missed it in your large collection of NG articles, there was another one, either late 1996 or somewhere in 1997, where NG is skeptical of Matsushita claims that M2 has SEGA Model3 arcade performance. NG says M2 is closer to 2-3 times faster/more powerful than N64.
Actually the "Matsushita Breaks Its Silence" developer interview talks about how it's equal in capability to Model 3.
http://www.harpgallery.com/assets/images/swaaye/ng/ng-m2breaksilence-1.jpg
http://www.harpgallery.com/assets/images/swaaye/ng/ng-m2breaksilence-2.jpg
http://www.harpgallery.com/assets/images/swaaye/ng/ng-m2breaksilence-3.jpg
http://www.harpgallery.com/assets/images/swaaye/ng/ng-m2breaksilence-4.jpg
Heh heh I have the issue of NG which covers the first Model 3 racer, Super GT. :)
Megadrive1988
21-Jun-2006, 00:15
I was looking for some info on the M2 and I found this, I think it's interesting :
ERP you already said that the OS was very advanced but is it true that the hardware was so abstracted that it was harmful for performance and that you didn't have low level access to the hardware ?
MegaDrive1988>The quote you're looking for is on this page : http://www.harpgallery.com/assets/images/swaaye/ng/ng-m2hitormyth-02.jpg
thanks Zeross! that's it, and thanks again Swaaye for having scanned all this stuff ^__^
btw, that other information about the OS and the slow nature of the way 3DO wanted games to be programmed, their unwillingness to give developers what they wanted, is indeed very interesting.
ERP you already said that the OS was very advanced but is it true that the hardware was so abstracted that it was harmful for performance and that you didn't have low level access to the hardware ?
As I said one of the better designed Console OS's I've seenm Sony could probably still learn something from it :P
Back then people were more used to being able to directly attach to interupts, and the M2 OS was much more in line with the original 3DO OS where you use messages and threads to accomplish the same thing. The N64 OS was in a similar veign.
3DO did provide more documentation than any other Console OS I have ever seen, it was multiple large volumes, but that was more to do with documentation quality than OS complexity.
Prior to the Matsushita buyout they also had the best tech support I have ever experienced.
There was very little abstraction of the useful hardware, you could do all the vertex work yourself in assembler and just build a commond queue for the hardware if you wanted. You had to explicitly manage the Texture Cache ala N64 aswell.
Megadrive1988
21-Jun-2006, 00:27
You had to explicitly manage the Texture Cache ala N64 aswell.
that reminds me, the M2 had 16K texture cache, right? thats four times the amount N64 had.
on another note, gawd what I would give to be playing on the 3DO M4 right now, had it been developed. the M4 would've been an Xbox360/PS3 generation machine, I believe.
the MX was basicly the M3, actually.
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.video.3do/msg/fef7d59332c430cf?dmode=source&hl=en
There is no such project as "M3"...publicly, we refer to it as
MX...just though you would want to know ;)
Neal
Director, 3DO Customer & Production Services
thus, I guess MX was a DC-PS2-GCN-Xbox generation machine. MX started out I think with maybe just twice the performance of M2, but as M2 was delayed, the MX had more development time it seems. some version(s) of the MX had, or were to have embedded memory, with claims of 15-20 million polys/sec performance, according to Intelligent Gamer Fusion magazine in 1996. a different and later report, from Next Generation Online, in 1997 or 1998 said MX was in the 4 million pps range.
regardless of edram or no edram, the MX feature-set added hardware anti-aliasing (which was missing in M2 yet present in N64), clipping and maybe, anisotropic filtering. MX CPU was supposedly a PowerPC 604, or maybe twin 604s. that was before Nintendo almost got ahold of MX and tried to monkey around with it by having MX re-built around a MIPs CPU for the N2000 project.
I found some info about PowerPC 602. http://www.microprocessor.sscc.ru/powerpc-faq/ (use browser Find for 602).
It looks like it has half the L1 cache of a 603, and the SpecInt92 scores are lower than N64's 94 MHz VR4300 (R4300i) scores. SpecFP92 seems to be unrecorded anywhere. It has less than 1/3 the transistors of a 601, and is missing the branch processing unit but gains a load store unit.
PowerPC 602 was a non-superscalar PowerPC (only 1 instruction per cycle) that was created for embedded products. Today version is the PowerPC 405 or 440.
PowerPC 602 was a non-superscalar PowerPC (only 1 instruction per cycle) that was created for embedded products. Today version is the PowerPC 405 or 440.
Thanks for the info. That's what I was thinking after seeing the wonderful MIPS ratings in the mag. 1 MIPS per clock cycle.
I scanned the Model 3 Super GT article and that issue had another M2 game preview. Some more D2 screens, albeit tiny.
http://www.harpgallery.com/assets/images/swaaye/ng/model3-supergt-1sm.jpghttp://www.harpgallery.com/assets/images/swaaye/ng/ng-m2getsgames-1sm.jpg
Megadrive1988
21-Jun-2006, 01:48
I scanned the Model 3 Super GT article and that issue had another M2 game preview. Some more D2 screens, albeit tiny.
you rock. way above & beyond the call of duty :D
Jabjabs
22-Jun-2006, 07:08
I love this quote from the "World Champion Racing" article in the link.
One of the things you'll notice is that out tires are round. I mean they are round! We don't screw around with any other stuff. That are round!
Appartently they are round!
Megadrive1988
22-Jun-2006, 21:51
I love this quote from the "World Champion Racing" article in the link.
Appartently they are round!
yes they were!
http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/8528/m2wheels9ew.jpg
Megadrive1988
23-Jun-2006, 05:34
interesting post from 1999 about WHY M2 never came out
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.video.3do/msg/e44a0abde83a5f60?dmode=source
First of all, never believe anything you read in any videogame magazines
without some kind of confirmation (and other videogame magazines don't
count!). Most of the times, the people who write for these things:
1) Don't know what they are talking about and are just repeating specs they
THINK they heard. For example, multiple game magazines referred to the N64
as having a revolutionary rendering technique called MIT-mapping. It was
supposed to be MIP-mapping and it is a standard technique that has been
around for over a decade but somewhere it was misspelled and then every
magazine misspelled it after that (because the writers had no clue what it
was). They thought it was some new technology (invented by M.I.T.
perhaps?) and ran with it like so many media whores. The myth that was
"SGI graphics" is another one of these.
2) Repeat stuff they heard on the Internet and call it news. It was funny
watching magazines making up stuff about the internals of 3DO and the M2
when working there, because I knew they were wrong and had to wonder how
they came up with such bogus information. It made me wonder how much stuff
they got wrong about other companies.
3) When they don't know the answer to the reader's question, they will
make something up rather than say they don't know. My favorite example of
this was when a reader asked (I think it was in GameFan magazine) how Super
Metroid could be a 24Mbit cart when the SNES was a 16-bit system. The
"answer" the editor gave was "Well 16-bit systems can only address 16Mbit
of memory at a time but you can use bank-switching to address 24 Mbit or
more." If the editor had taken a basic computer course in High School, he
should have known the correct answer.
I'll admit magazines have gotten better over the past few years in terms of
technical info (probably due to getting swamped with email when they make
mistakes), but I still don't think they are quite as "connected" to the
inside of the industry as they claim to be. Experience has shown me
otherwise.
>
> I found most of an old game club newsletter that also contained the
> specs. However, part of these pages were aparently drowned in coffee a
> while back, and are difficult to read.
>
Since these didn't come from 3DO or Panasonic, what makes you think they
are accurate?
>
> CPU speed : 88 Mhz
> 1.4 Million Polygons Per second
>
Okay. The original 3DO specs were for a 66 Mhz PPC 602, the final M2 specs
were for two 66Mhz 602s. I don't know if Motorola/IBM ever made a faster
602.
>
> Memory : 16 Megs SDRAM. Plus internal NV RAM & Removable External Cards
> for game data.
>
The original 3DO specs were for 4MB of RAM, the final Panasonic specs were
for 8MB of SDRAM. The system could take up to 128MB RAM but that was never
going into a consumer unit (they were going up against a $150 N64,
remember?). Developer units had two times the final RAM (so that games can
be developed freely and then scaled back to the RAM footprint more
easily). So a final M2 developer unit would have had 16 MB of RAM but not
a consumer unit.
>
> Graphic : 640x480 resolution. Supports
> MPEG-1 & JPEG decompression.
>
> Sound: 66 Mhz DsP 32 channel.
> Supports MPEG audio
>
> Graphic Effects:
> Texture mapping
> MIP mapping at multiple levels.
> 3D Perspective Correction.
> Alpha Special Effects
> Multi level MIP Mapping
> Gourad Shading
> Other data is here, but it's really illegible.
>
These have never changed.
>
> DVD Rom Drive
> (editors note says : DVD Rom Drive proposed.
> Probably will not make final unit)
Not in the original consumer unit. Panasonic added this for the business
unit.
>
> Thats about all thats legible. Along with a list of about 10 games that
> were coming to the machine.
>
> 2 titles from Capcom (all I can read of that is (CAPCOM) at the end of
> it.)
> D2
> Madden
> Iron & Blood
> Clayfighter
> Rocket Sled (?? best I can make out)
>
> Sorry, but thats all I have at the moment. My Next Gens must be in
> storage. I rarely through a game mag away, even a bad one. Or in the
> case of this newsletter, a REALLY messed up one
>
The M2 did end up in two arcade machines by Konami. Fly Polystars (sort of
like Panzer Dragoon) and Battle Tryst (a fighting game).
>
> Certainly from what I've read though, the present M2 is watered down
> from what it was (or at least what it was touted to be).
>
Not at all. If anything the added the DVD-ROM (which wouldn't have been
available for the original M2 game console launch).
>
> Frankly though, I thought the processor was even faster (100 mhz+).
> Perhaps I need a memory upgrade. ha!
>
Yep. Maybe you saw 2x 66Mhz and turned that into 132Mhz?
>
> I'd still rather have seen the original M2 make the scene as a game
> machine.
Me too. BTW, the M2 didn't launch because it was too expensive. It was
very competitive price wise (the thing was made up of three chips plus RAM
plus glue so it wasn't expensive at all) but Panasonic got cold feet. They
believed Nintendo was going to dominate the market and they thought
bringing out a unit that was twice as powerful as the N64 (and a lot easier
to develop for) wasn't good enough. They didn't anticipate that cartridges
were going to really stunt the N64's growth. In hindsight, I can safely
say the M2 would have buried the N64 if Panasonic actually launched it.
The reasons are pretty simple. The dev system was dirt cheap and easy to
use (Sony released the Net Yarouze because it got some early info on the
M2's dev system which was essentially an M2 unit with an extra ROM and a
parallel port cable for the PC). A developer familiar with an API like
Glide would be right at home so ports of 3DFX games would be easy. The OS
made streaming a dream. Today I have trouble getting Windoze with a
PII-450 and a TNT card to do what I could on an M2 four years ago. Every
developer that used the final M2 system preferred it to any other console
for ease of development. Unfortunately, everything in the universe (or so
it seemed) conspired to keep the unit off the shelf. The main causes were:
1. Panasonic was overly worried about Nintendo. They couldn't see that
cartridges were going to doom that system to being a (relative) niche
market.
2. Trip Hawkins had a mid-life crisis and wanted to get out of the console
hardware business. He wanted to go back to what he believes he knows best-
games. Of course looking at some of the stinkers coming out of Studio (New
World and Cyclone excluded) you have to wonder. He basically told
Panasonic they would have to pay for any help with M2 (in addition to the
$100 million). Trip wouldn't be evangelizing the system anymore and 3DO
could theoretically nickel-and-dime Panasonic to death. After all, the
braintrust for the M2 was still at 3DO (before being amputated into
Cagent). Panasonic would have to put their faith in something they didn't
invent nor knew all that much about. For all they knew, there could have
been a fatal flaw in the system that wouldn't reveal itself until after
they spent a billion dollars on a launch.
3. The guy who was head of the Interactive Media division of Panasonic
(actually MEI) was retiring shortly after the time M2 was originally to
have launched. Only he could authorize the money (500 million to a billion
dollars) needed to launch the unit. He didn't want to commit his company
to such an expensive venture and then leave. So he didn't do it. His
successor inherited M2 and was reluctant to commit to it since it wasn't
"his baby". He was interested in MX but apparently he couldn't work out a
deal with Cagent (the M2 hardware group) for it. This was probably due to
an arrogant individual at Cagent who shall remain nameless who said "I
don't like MEI's table manners, so I don't want to deal with them." I
swear to God that I'm not making the last sentence up!
These are, I feel, the main reasons we never saw the M2. Scary isn't it?
It wasn't technology or costs or the market. It was key individuals that
deprived the world of a great game console. We often hear how an
individual can have a profound impact for good on the rest of the world (or
at least a large chunk of it). If it weren't for John Carmack, game
developers be doomed to using an inferior version of Direct3D for game
development instead of having a choice (Thanks, John!). Unfortunately, an
individual can bring an equally negative effect on the world. An
individual can undo the work of thousands of man-years with the stroke of
pen. Remember that when you work on a project. Don't let a few
individuals (if you can) undo what you and your fellow workers have slaved
months and years for.
Don't even get me started on how the M2/Sega deal fell through.
Thanks for the quote. I read the entire thing. Absolutely nuts how everything can go wrong like that when parts of the project are totally in the green. Would be a good case study! lol. Truly a bummer that the console never was given a chance.
BTW I never saw more in the "Mit mapping" thing than just a phonetical mis-spelling. Next Gen was dead on with the hardware of the other systems. Especially N64. I should post an early Ultra 64 look-at, the specs are higher than were finally released but very similar.
Megadrive1988
23-Jun-2006, 21:38
BTW I never saw more in the "Mit mapping" thing than just a phonetical mis-spelling. Next Gen was dead on with the hardware of the other systems. Especially N64. I should post an early Ultra 64 look-at, the specs are higher than were finally released but very similar.
I agree. I think Next Generation was dead on accurate with their articles on the M2. they noted all of the hype and balanced that with the reality of what the machine was mostly likely capable of.
it was magazine like GameFan that had overblown (IMO) their own hype of M2.
BTW I never saw more in the "Mit mapping" thing than just a phonetical mis-spelling. Next Gen was dead on with the hardware of the other systems. Especially N64. I should post an early Ultra 64 look-at, the specs are higher than were finally released but very similar.
Are you talking about the 105Mhz version?
Megadrive1988
26-Jun-2006, 20:31
Thanks for the quote. I read the entire thing. Absolutely nuts how everything can go wrong like that when parts of the project are totally in the green. Would be a good case study! lol. Truly a bummer that the console never was given a chance.
welcome, I read that some years ago but had forgotten about it.
there's a ton of golden nuggets on the M2 and every gaming platform, released or unreleased, on usenet.
Are you talking about the 105Mhz version?
In May 1995, Next Generation published these specs for Ultra 64:
64-bit R4200 or R4300 @ 105.8 MHz
500 MB/s bandwidth
64-bit RCP @ 80 MHz in "enhanced" mode
320x224 - 1200x1200 res (up to HDTV std) in 24-bit color
64-bit sound DSP @ 44.1 KHz - 64 channels (referring to the RSP as if it's a separate chip I imagine)
100,000 realtime texture mapped poly/s
AA, ray tracing (LOL!!!), tri-linear mitt-mapped interpolation (heh heh), load managementObviously Nintendo decided that yields at those clocks weren't going to get them their profit margin, so they cut it down a little. R4200 is way faster than NEC VR4300 though. I think.
OtakingGX
28-Jun-2006, 06:14
In May 1995, Next Generation published these specs for Ultra 64:
64-bit R4200 or R4300 @ 105.8 MHz
500 MB/s bandwidth
64-bit RCP @ 80 MHz in "enhanced" mode
320x224 - 1200x1200 res (up to HDTV std) in 24-bit color
64-bit sound DSP @ 44.1 KHz - 64 channels (referring to the RSP as if it's a separate chip I imagine)
100,000 realtime texture mapped poly/s
AA, ray tracing (LOL!!!), tri-linear mitt-mapped interpolation (heh heh), load management
Did they mean LOD management?
Megadrive1988
28-Jun-2006, 06:51
Did they mean LOD management?
yes definitally, lol. i think!
something most people forget is that, when Project Reality was announced in August or September of 1993, they announced having 100,000 polygons per second performance.
they certainly hit that target and more, since N64 could do well over 100,000 textured, fully featured polys/sec.
what was not understood then, is that N64 would never be delivering Jurassic Park or T2 graphics to games. there was a lot of confusion over that. even SGI's highest-end, most expensive visualization systems that cost $100,000 (and up) could not produce Jurassic Park or T2 graphics in realtime. the difference between pre-rendered and real-time graphics was not understood by most gamers at the time.
N64 would've been a killer machine if it had 8k or 16k texture cache, 8 MB of RAM and a 4x CD-ROM drive, in additon to the cartridges. could that have been priced at $299 in 1996 ?
one could also say that the M2 was basicly the what the N64 should've been, cept M2 didn't have cartridges or anti-aliasing.
In May 1995, Next Generation published these specs for Ultra 64:
64-bit R4200 or R4300 @ 105.8 MHz
500 MB/s bandwidth
64-bit RCP @ 80 MHz in "enhanced" mode
320x224 - 1200x1200 res (up to HDTV std) in 24-bit color
64-bit sound DSP @ 44.1 KHz - 64 channels (referring to the RSP as if it's a separate chip I imagine)
100,000 realtime texture mapped poly/s
AA, ray tracing (LOL!!!), tri-linear mitt-mapped interpolation (heh heh), load managementObviously Nintendo decided that yields at those clocks weren't going to get them their profit margin, so they cut it down a little. R4200 is way faster than NEC VR4300 though. I think.
The 105-80Mhz hardware was pure vaporware, it never materialized into a real thing and when Nintendo launched the N64 SDK they were normal PCs with an attached ISA card with the final N64 hardware.
N64 would've been a killer machine if it had 8k or 16k texture cache, 8 MB of RAM and a 4x CD-ROM drive, in additon to the cartridges. could that have been priced at $299 in 1996 ?
one could also say that the M2 was basicly the what the N64 should've been, cept M2 didn't have cartridges or anti-aliasing.
Well ya know they really REALLY like to keep their machines cheap. They definitely aren't known for pushing the envelope in potentially expensive tech. It always amazes me that they couldn't even put a real sound chip into N64. Sound on N64 is usually so awful (partly the wonderful cartridge tech there too).
That AA is certainly neato in the games that use it. Too bad about the textures! :)
The 105-80Mhz hardware was pure vaporware, it never materialized into a real thing and when Nintendo launched the N64 SDK they were normal PCs with an attached ISA card with the final N64 hardware.
The first N64 devkits were an add in board for an SGI IRIX and these were the only ones available for a long time.
Later there was a PC hosted devkit, and infact you could only use the expansion pack with the PC devkits, although Nintendo did offer to try and modify our SGI kits at one point.
N64 should have had a better texturecache, not necessarily a larger one (Playstations was the same size).
It should have launched with the DD drive instead of cartridge port.
That would have meant cheaper games with the less size restrictions.
Nintendo could even have done what they did in Japan with the Famicon discdrive and set up vending machines in stores, where you could reuse old discs and maybe download demos and small games.
It would also have opened the possibility of very large savegames.
The console would have been more expensive, and maybe if they weren't careful (like Sega wasn't with DC), have had a higher risk of piracy.
But overall launching with the DD in build in would have made the N64 much better suited for competing in the areas where CD based consoles were strong.
OtakingGX
28-Jun-2006, 21:32
N64 should have had a better texturecache, not necessarily a larger one (Playstations was the same size).
It should have launched with the DD drive instead of cartridge port.
That would have meant cheaper games with the less size restrictions.
Nintendo could even have done what they did in Japan with the Famicon discdrive and set up vending machines in stores, where you could reuse old discs and maybe download demos and small games.
It would also have opened the possibility of very large savegames.
The console would have been more expensive, and maybe if they weren't careful (like Sega wasn't with DC), have had a higher risk of piracy.
But overall launching with the DD in build in would have made the N64 much better suited for competing in the areas where CD based consoles were strong.I recall when the word on the street was that N64 would use MO (magneto-optical) discs. Essentially, mini-discs. This would have allowed for much greater capacity (MDs can hold 160 MB) but still maintained writeability.
I recall when the word on the street was that N64 would use MO (magneto-optical) discs. Essentially, mini-discs. This would have allowed for much greater capacity (MDs can hold 160 MB) but still maintained writeability.
Was that when Sony was still involved with it then?
I believe Nintendo went with the cartridges for cost reasons. There are few reasons to go with it instead of CD-ROM, IMO. Especially when they probably could've gone with a 4X drive at that point and reduced loading delays a lot. 600 KB/s isn't far behind what those ROMs transferred at I believe (1 MB/s or so?).
The actual console was significantly simplified in general. Compared to PS1 I imagine it was a lot cheaper to build, and a lot more reliable (very few returns). Nintendo likes to make the game devs foot a chunk of the bill, and you can see that with SNES and its anemic CPU (and all of the resulting cartridge processors/DSPs.
They minimized the cost of the console itself, while still making it arguably superior to the competition. They certainly should have made more money than their competition. But they sure never had the volume that Sony managed. When you compare Saturn, PS1, and N64 it becomes extremely obvious that Nintendo wanted to keep things cheap.
The texture cache may have been designed around the assumption of games with a maximum storage space of 32 MB or so. How, exactly, were devs going to use high-def textures with space like that to fit the entire game into? :)
OtakingGX
28-Jun-2006, 22:31
Was that when Sony was still involved with it then?
As far as I can tell, the rumor came about in 1995. I know I remember reading about it in a gaming magazine, but I have long since thrown all of my old magazines away. It came back when news of the 64DD came out, that it would use magneto-optical discs. It was an entirely magnetic media, though, more like a Zip drive.
The texture cache may have been designed around the assumption of games with a maximum storage space of 32 MB or so.Don't be silly, cartridges were more than big enough for the kind of textures used back then.
A 128x128x4 texture only takes up 8Kb for example. Let's say half of Mario 64s cartridge was used for textures, that's 512 textures of the aforementioned size.
Clearly the game is not even close to that.
The first N64 devkits were an add in board for an SGI IRIX and these were the only ones available for a long time.
Later there was a PC hosted devkit, and infact you could only use the expansion pack with the PC devkits, although Nintendo did offer to try and modify our SGI kits at one point.
Thanks, now I know that the documentation that I have are from second development kit.
Don't be silly, cartridges were more than big enough for the kind of textures used back then.
A 128x128x4 texture only takes up 8Kb for example. Let's say half of Mario 64s cartridge was used for textures, that's 512 textures of the aforementioned size.
Clearly the game is not even close to that.
Heh maybe, but don't try to tell me that the 8 MB cart that SM64 is on is a nice comfortable size to build a 3D world with, along with all audio, etc. LOL. It is more than a little hard to believe that the production values of the entire package couldn't have been noticeably boosted by going with CDs.
Mario uses the simplest "textures" I think I've ever seen, and also uses a substantial amount of simple gouraud shading.
Heh maybe, but don't try to tell me that the 8 MB cart that SM64 is on is a nice comfortable size to build a 3D world with, along with all audio, etc. LOL. It is more than a little hard to believe that the production values of the entire package couldn't have been noticeably boosted by going with CDs.
You forget that everything had to fit into the RAM of the console. Streaming and advanced LOD techniques was barely possible with N64, much less with the 128Kbs from the 2x CD drive in PS and Saturn.
What a CD or DD drive would have allowed the N64 to do to a degree, was more sampled audio and FMV sequences. It would have allowed for more varied textures but not more and higher res textures per area or portal of a game.
You forget that everything had to fit into the RAM of the console. Streaming and advanced LOD techniques was barely possible with N64, much less with the 128Kbs from the 2x CD drive in PS and Saturn.
What a CD or DD drive would have allowed the N64 to do to a degree, was more sampled audio and FMV sequences. It would have allowed for more varied textures but not more and higher res textures per area or portal of a game.
Yeah I had thought about the RAM, and that it was probably a limitation. One of many. However, with the 8 MB RAM that the expansion pack brought the machine up to, RAM should've been a lot less of an issue.
I seem to recall devs saying the machine's fillrate limitations were more of an issue than the RAM though, especially after the expansion pack. I consider World Driver Championship as a good example of that, where they put a high-res mode into the game but didn't even support the expansion pack, and the game had some of the best texturing on N64. Some reviewers claimed it looked like a Dreamcast game.
2X CD-ROMs pushed 300 KB/s data. Not sure what you meant by 128kbs. A 4X CD-ROM, which probably would have been a realistic addition to a machine developed a year later than PS1, would push double that. That's not far off from carts in bandwidth, but I'm sure it's horribly off in latency. Some devs liked to stream data off the carts as if it was RAM (just slow RAM).
Still, I think CDs would've kept Nintendo far more popular with devs for many reasons, and that N would be far better off today than they are. N64 was such a failure after their SNES days. They lost so many developers cuz of costs and constraints, and a lot of consumer mind share without the ability to run the FMV games of the day.
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