Output resolution, or internal rendered resolution? We need examples and evidence of games rendering internally on a 640x480 buffer to disprove sheathx013's reference to the official documentation. Actually we only need evidence that PS2 can render above 640x448
It is both, I have the Linux PS2 kit, and the maximum output is 1024*768p 59.9999 fps, that is what my monitor told me at least and the pixels were individually lit
It wasn't just vertically antialiased, but antialiased in all directions, so 900 x 340 downsampling a 640x240 framebuffer.
One exception disproves the rules. You said PS2 is incapable of anything higher than 480i and you named an official sounding document as source. The existence of one game would show that limitation doesn't actually exist.
Maybe though (sorry I cannot edit my post it seems), this loads like a hacked display mode that would not work with regular games or something. So it could be that the limit for games internally is still far below the 1280x1024 that Linux for PS2 could use
is that rendering at 480p though, or outputting a lower resolution FB upscaled ot 480p?
This discussion isn't so much about 480p games, but whether the DC might be able to render GTA at a higher resolution than PS2. Into that discussion, @sheathx013 contributed there was some sort of upper limit on the rendering resolution on the PS2 at 480i without explaining what caused that. If so, it's much more possible DC could render GTA at a higher resolution than PS2. If not true, it's an unknown.
The good thing with the DC was that many (most?) games of I recall offered the choice between 50hz and 60Hz progressive and had cables available to connect your console directly to a PC monitor.
There was an adapter called vga box that allowed you to connect the dreamcast to computer monitors. The definition of the games improved radically, it looked incredible. I think that at that time everyone had a monitor at home and played the dreamcast like that to get 480p. I'm sorry
I can see that! 640P monitors were probably cheap or already in a house and to have better image quality than a tv must be out of this world, great that you were able to experience it.
IQ also. Lower res with decent AA would likely trump a bit higher res with pixel crawl in most people's opinions. But metrics give people an immediate objective (if misguided) comparison. That's why we saw digital cameras push megapixels with no-one ever talking about lens quality and resolving power. You ended up with people buying cameras with more megapixels but worse image quality than other cameras that beefed up other aspects of the photography process.
You should look at this topic from a PS2 homebrew forum. They got it rendering 720p by basically gendering the screen in sections. Even used it to render 3d at 1080p.
It was literally designed for it! Where other machines focussed on doing more in a single draw such as multitexturing, PS2 was designed to draw one simple triangle really quickly and then layer these drawn triangles to make more complex images.
What do you mean by streaming polygons? You have a buffer and draw triangles on it. Then you draw more triangles over the top, a few times. This gives you a buffer. You combine buffers to make other buffers and present one as the screen.
Indeed which is why comparing them is so interesting, versus the current snorefest consoles. However, are you saying that there isn't a particular hard limit on PS2's rendering as it appeared you were saying? Can we put that to bed, accept PS2 could produce higher resolution games somehow, and start looking in particular at GTA's res on the two machines?
I had it straight from the horse's mouth back in the day. Talking with the devs about how clean the game looked, I was told it's using 2xSSAA. That pans out with a look at the screenshots and pixel-counting techniques developed since then. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a TAA solution as there's a constant full-screen motion blur in effect.