[Simon82]

For every consoles you've tried which game or tech demo do you think pushed the hardware to the limit?
I think...

Game Gear: Mortal Kombat

Game Boy Advance: ** Name: Yeti3D (tech demo)
** Desc: Portable GameBoy Advanced 3D Engine
** Auth: Derek J. Evans

Saturn: Shenmue (rewritten on Dreamcast)

Playstation: Gran Turismo 2

Playstation 2: Gran Turismo 4

XBOX: PGR or Ninja Gaiden

[london-boy]

Originally Posted by Simon82

For every consoles you've tried which game or tech demo do you think pushed the hardware to the limit?
I think...

Game Gear: Mortal Kombat

Game Boy Advance: ** Name: Yeti3D (tech demo)
** Desc: Portable GameBoy Advanced 3D Engine
** Auth: Derek J. Evans

Saturn: Shenmue (rewritten on Dreamcast)

Playstation: Gran Turismo 2

Playstation 2: Gran Turismo 4

XBOX: PGR or Ninja Gaiden

The Gran Turismo series, especially on PS2 was always about the art and not the technology... Ask nAo, he run the game through the Performance Analyser and saw the game pushed 3M polys PEAK, with the average being much lower...

[rounin]

Did he ever say which game was the most then on the PS2?

[Darkon]

Originally Posted by rounin

Did he ever say which game was the most then on the PS2?

Jak and Daxter 2

[Shifty Geezer]

In metrics, it's between J&D and R&C for PS2 isn't it? They're the ones always talked about.

[22psi]

Zelda TTP on GC?

[Simon82]

Originally Posted by london-boy

The Gran Turismo series, especially on PS2 was always about the art and not the technology... Ask nAo, he run the game through the Performance Analyser and saw the game pushed 3M polys PEAK, with the average being much lower...

This is really interesting... I was thinking that also polygon number would be high to get car models realistic. So Polyphony can make realistic a car with the old PS2 hardware and in others example we can't reach this realism on newer games with any sort of effects existing on next (actual) generation console.

[Phil]

Originally Posted by Simon82

For every consoles you've tried which game or tech demo do you think pushed the hardware to the limit?

All games push the hardware to the limit - just that some do it while getting better results than others, either by looking a.) simply better because of art, b.) being technically more advanced by being more efficiant etc or c.) pushing to the limit while doing nothing in particular impressive.

The answer really isn't an easy one. As one of the most impressive achievements, I would possibly rate the Jak series (part 2 & 3). Even if the Gran Turismo isn't as polygon pushing as other games, it's an impressive achievement in itself with the amount of physics being pushed, the texturing detail (better than most games), large levels and drawing distance and the 60 fps framerate. It's probably also easier to write a game to the distinct advantages of the PS2 hardware (okay texturing, lots of geometry) rather than the exact opposite that Polyphony achieved with the Gran Turismo series.

I would also note ZOE2 / Metal Gear Solid engine as a very impressive achievement. Especially MGS3 has some amazing visuals going on together with the huge amount of freedom that the engine allows.

[-tkf-]

C64 Armalyte:
http://www.zzap64.co.uk/cgi-bin/disp...ap&check=1

Interview:
http://www.lemon64.com/interviews/da...robin_levy.php

Amiga, well one of the best from a technical view was Starglider II i guess:
http://amigareviews.classicgaming.ga...m/stargli2.htm

My best experience was clearly Millennium 2.2 http://amigareviews.classicgaming.ga...m/milleniu.htm i played it more or less for 24 hours straight until i was done

[Simon82]

Originally Posted by Phil

All games push the hardware to the limit - just that some do it while getting better results than others, either by looking a.) simply better because of art, b.) being technically more advanced by being more efficiant etc or c.) pushing to the limit while doing nothing in particular impressive.

The answer really isn't an easy one. As one of the most impressive achievements, I would possibly rate the Jak series (part 2 & 3). Even if the Gran Turismo isn't as polygon pushing as other games, it's an impressive achievement in itself with the amount of physics being pushed, the texturing detail (better than most games), large levels and drawing distance and the 60 fps framerate. It's probably also easier to write a game to the distinct advantages of the PS2 hardware (okay texturing, lots of geometry) rather than the exact opposite that Polyphony achieved with the Gran Turismo series.

I would also note ZOE2 / Metal Gear Solid engine as a very impressive achievement. Especially MGS3 has some amazing visuals going on together with the huge amount of freedom that the engine allows.

Thanx for your opinion. I think that my pov on "pushing to the limit" mean: "looking better being more efficiant" and the second point delete the third.

I think that GT4 achieve an excellent result because can reach realism with right use of right texture, right lights, right reflects, right geometric proportion with right polygons count (for the hw). All this taking out tricks and workaround that make this game not "technically" comparable to a modern complex one.

[Rolf N]

Metroid Prime 2 and the venerable F-Zero GX still amaze me.
Maybe F-Zero doesn't really do much in terms of effects, but the speed and the framerate reliably give me that "Oh shit wow" feeling every time I boot it up. And that forest planet setting is just really nice.
For Prime 2 it's again the framerate, also the texture quality, the subtle lighting and special effects, and how it all fits together so well, you know, without sore thumbs or something seeming out of place.
Prime 1 was IMO a nicer gaming experience and also had advantages in graphical beauty if only because that "dark version of the world" thing was absent, but I do think, between the two, Prime 2 is more impressive technically. I really haven't seen anything on the Cube that goes further.

[Phil]

Originally Posted by Simon82

Thanx for your opinion. I think that my pov on "pushing to the limit" mean: "looking better being more efficiant" and the second point delete the third.

No worries. After spending some more time thinking about this, I've come to the conclusion that even test results by the Performance Analyzer can only tell you so much about how impressive an achievement is.

Some games just work better on a particular system than others - which probably is why a game like ZOE2 is one that is unrivaled on the other competing platforms. It's a game that just works well on the PS2's streamlined architecture: Insane amounts of geometry/effects (burns lots of fillrate) and rather simplistic texturing (which happens to work because the game is cell-shaded and tries to mimick an anime rather than realism). Given this, is ZOE2 more impressive then i.e. another game that tried to fight around the shortcomings of the PS2 hardware to achieve better textures for their more realism aimed art-direction?

The more you move away from what the hardware is good at, the less efficiant the results will be as a result - which from my point of view is the most likely reason why a game like Gran Turismo ends up being less efficient as measured by the Performance Analyzer than other games.

[Simon82]

Originally Posted by Phil

No worries. After spending some more time thinking about this, I've come to the conclusion that even test results by the Performance Analyzer can only tell you so much about how impressive an achievement is.

Some games just work better on a particular system than others - which probably is why a game like ZOE2 is one that is unrivaled on the other competing platforms. It's a game that just works well on the PS2's streamlined architecture: Insane amounts of geometry/effects (burns lots of fillrate) and rather simplistic texturing (which happens to work because the game is cell-shaded and tries to mimick an anime rather than realism). Given this, is ZOE2 more impressive then i.e. another game that tried to fight around the shortcomings of the PS2 hardware to achieve better textures for their more realism aimed art-direction?

The more you move away from what the hardware is good at, the less efficiant the results will be as a result - which from my point of view is the most likely reason why a game like Gran Turismo ends up being less efficient as measured by the Performance Analyzer than other games.

But can you do a performance analysis without being in a devealopment status or is a tool like Vtune used from the devealoper itself?

[DieH@rd]

ps1 - Wipeout 3
ps2 - Shadow of the Colossus, God of War
xbox1 - Riddick, Conquer
xbox360 - Gears
PC - Crysis

[Firewarrior]

For PS2 I would say between the Final Fantasy series or Black.

[assen]

Originally Posted by Firewarrior

For PS2 I would say between the Final Fantasy series or Black.

Final Fantasy XII, while having excellent art direction and being one of my all-time favorite games, was actually quite unimpressive technically. Miniscule areas, constant loading, people in the street fading in right before your nose, damned Japanese tradition of foregoing mipmaps...

[Firewarrior]

Originally Posted by assen

Final Fantasy XII, while having excellent art direction and being one of my all-time favorite games, was actually quite unimpressive technically. Miniscule areas, constant loading, people in the street fading in right before your nose, damned Japanese tradition of foregoing mipmaps...

I actually quite liked the FF series.

The new movie advent children was amazing.

[Mendel]

for ps2: Transformers.
for xbox: doom 3
for gamecube: Starfox adventures

[Acert93]

Originally Posted by Phil

All games push the hardware to the limit - just that some do it while getting better results than others, either by looking a.) simply better because of art, b.) being technically more advanced by being more efficiant etc or c.) pushing to the limit while doing nothing in particular impressive.

I don't think all games push the "limites" of the hardware. e.g. There are current games that do not utilize multiple CPU cores simply due to development time limitations. Yet the hardware sits there, unutilized, not due to a limitation of the hardware but due to $. In such cases they obviously have not pushed the limites of the hardware itself--just the budget These games are design / programmer / resource limited, but not hardware limited. Also, if a game is capped at 60fps, but the hardware can render it at 300fps, the hardware isn't being pushed. And this does happen. XBLA and the BK games are examples of such.

[london-boy]

Originally Posted by Acert93

I don't think all games push the "limites" of the hardware. e.g. There are current games that do not utilize multiple CPU cores simply due to development time limitations. Yet the hardware sits there, unutilized, not due to a limitation of the hardware but due to $. In such cases they obviously have not pushed the limites of the hardware itself--just the budget These games are design / programmer / resource limited, but not hardware limited. Also, if a game is capped at 60fps, but the hardware can render it at 300fps, the hardware isn't being pushed. And this does happen. XBLA and the BK games are examples of such.

Agreed.

Which is why i said that GT4 does not push the hardware. The thread is not about "which game looks best". It's about pushing the hardware, and GT3 and GT4 are all about the art. They look as amazing as they do because Polyphony Digital know how to make things look good, not because the hardware is "being pushed".

[Acert93]

Originally Posted by london-boy

Agreed.

Which is why i said that GT4 does not push the hardware. The thread is not about "which game looks best". It's about pushing the hardware, and GT3 and GT4 are all about the art. They look as amazing as they do because Polyphony Digital know how to make things look good, not because the hardware is "being pushed".

Well... on GT I may agree with Phil in that there are different ways to push hardware Just because the EE vector units were not being taxed to generated polys doesn't mean they were not being taxed, say, for simulating the car physics But I dunno, I have never seen an analysis of the game It could very well be other parts of the hardware were bottlenecked, preventing full utilization. In a modern system it would be like eating up all the bandwidth with framebuffer use and not having any left for texturing, so your TMUs are idle. Or the game could be bottlenecked itself elsewhere and have little use for the vector units (i.e. design/efficiency issue). Ahhh <pulls out hair> there are so many possibilities! It actually gets quite complicated when looking at the systems holistically, especially without seeing what is REALLY happening under the hood. It is probably easier to talk about taxing hardware in terms of memory, processor, GPU, sound, etc limits than the entire system. Ramble ramble... time to shut the PC off!

[Phil]

Originally Posted by Joshua Luna

I don't think all games push the "limites" of the hardware. e.g. There are current games that do not utilize multiple CPU cores simply due to development time limitations. Yet the hardware sits there, unutilized, not due to a limitation of the hardware but due to $. In such cases they obviously have not pushed the limites of the hardware itself--just the budget These games are design / programmer / resource limited, but not hardware limited.

ACERT... errr Joshua??!

I guess I was more refering to past generation software (PS2, Xbox etc), but even then, any slow down occurance in a game can be considered as the game pushing the hardware over the limit - i.e. when any given part is maxed out and fails to process the amount of information in its given time frame can be considered to be reaching the limits - which was the point I was trying to point out: Reaching the limit on a hardware has no bearing on what exactly is being processed - if sloppy code or efficient.

Originally Posted by Joshua Luna

Also, if a game is capped at 60fps, but the hardware can render it at 300fps, the hardware isn't being pushed. And this does happen. XBLA and the BK games are examples of such.

It doesn't matter though at how much the hardware can render the game though if it's not a constant value. Games are complex and players unpredictable - to avoid slow downs, the point in the game that is the most complex should not dip below the target framerate (i.e. 30 or 60 fps). If it does, slow down occurs at that point. To have each and every unit of a console operating under maximum load constantly without slowdown is probably an impossibility.

As for using multiple cores as effectively as possible:
Would you consider reaching the limit if from i.e. 3 cores, two continue to operate most of the time at maximum load and the 3rd one doesn't? Then again, you could also ask yourself it it's possible to have all 3 cores ever produce maximum load for an extended period of time in the first place. I'd say, the more complex games become, the more difficult it is to max out all cores at the same time...

[aselto]

There's a lot of talk about what games pushed PS2 to its limits, but how about Xbox1?
IMO these titles are the most impressive stuff on the platform:
Oddworld Stranger's Wrath - beautiful graphics on both technnical ant artistic level, simply amazing. Load times are also very very short (2 o3 3 seconds). Here's an interesting video if someone didn't see the game (and many probably didin't )
http://youtube.com/watch?v=kafNuUwEnWc
Conker Live and Reloaded - the main character coming out of water was simply the most amazing thing I saw last-gen.
Rallisport Challenge 2 - simply the most beautiful last-gen racing game. It didn't sell well for some reason, but there was no single racer that matched it graphically.
Halo 2 - while graphically not as impressive as titles mentioned above, I still think it deserves to be on the list. The game has amazing AI that is second only to FEAR. I also loved the way loading was done.

[Acert93]

Originally Posted by Phil

To have each and every unit of a console operating under maximum load constantly without slowdown is probably an impossibility.

So is an XBLA game pushing the limits of the system? There are examples where there is never slowdown (e.g. worst case scenario it pushes 20% of the hardware and typically is below 5%).

I guess we agree to disagree. But a game that runs at 60fps all the time due to a cap (and uncapped at 300fps) isn't pushing on the hardware IMO.

And even it at 1 point in the game it drops below 60fps, is the 'game' pushing the hardware to its limits, or did that one scene push it to its limits?

I am not much of a programmer, but in my experience I have seen scenarios where I have compared my code to others and the results we were able to get out of a set time period. A guy sitting next to me in 6 weeks got out a pretty nice card game, mine was a simple numbers-sequence game. It was pretty clear that the hardware was not a limiting factor for either game, and neither of us were pushing the limits in any regards to what the hardware could do. But equally his program was utilizing (pushing) more of the hardware.

Maybe that would make you happy: Change the question to => What games were most hardware limited?

But even that misses the point I think... i.e. what games produced the best end result within the limitations of the hardware. Who used the hardware most impressively, who tapped the most power through good design and effecient coding, etc... everyone has the same CPU, GPU, memory, etc and us using them -- and under utilizing them.

The question is who made the best design decisions and who left the least *potential* performance unused most of the time.

Semantics, the true love of every B3D poster

[Phil]

Originally Posted by Joshua Luna

Semantics, the true love of every B3D poster

That must be it!

I really wasn't arguing that "every game pushes the limit of the hardware" - I was more arguing that pushing the limit is something that is very hard to rate. Certainly not any benchmark to rate the most visually impressive game, but also not the best way to meassure the most impressive achievement. The entire point started when Gran Turismo 4 was brought into the equation that apparently didn't seem to be pushing the hardware on the Performance Analyzer. How efficient a game can utilize the hardware isn't only dependant on the developers talent, effort and budget - it's also dependant on the art-direction of the game and if it actually suits the nature of the hardware. Try doing bump mapping on the PS2 for one or a game that emphasizes on lots of detail textures and low geometry and see efficiency go down - or do a game that goes crazy on framebuffer effects, lots of geometry etc...