A Summary of the Huge Wii Thread

[fearsomepirate]

GC very rarely used AA. I'm not sure I've ever seen it do AA, actually. It has some nasty drawbacks when used on that hardware. Really hurts performance.

I've heard it did in the first Splinter Cell. Maybe they're not actually using FSAA, but the games sure look a lot smoother than their PS2 counterparts. For example, bad guys in Spartan: Total Warrior don't flicker and jag in the distance the way they things often do in PS2 games, even though you can sometimes spot an edge that shows aliasing. It might just be the deflicker filter, which I don't think works for 480p images.

 

[Corwin_B]

I've heard it did in the first Splinter Cell. Maybe they're not actually using FSAA, but the games sure look a lot smoother than their PS2 counterparts. For example, bad guys in Spartan: Total Warrior don't flicker and jag in the distance the way they things often do in PS2 games, even though you can sometimes spot an edge that shows aliasing. It might just be the deflicker filter, which I don't think works for 480p images.

IIRC, the horrible IQ in many early PS2 games could be attributed to devs using a half-buffer in order to save some EDRAM for textures. Basically, instead of using a 640x480 buffer (and letting the interlacing process provide some sort of jaggies reduction), they went for a 640x240 buffer which gave eye-bleeding aliasing... Later in the PS2 life, most devs managed to use texture streaming that allowed them to use a full framebuffer, though.

 

[The_legend_of_drtre]

We don't know that Wii can do AA any better than Cube. I'd hope they would've improved that aspect but, from what we've heard from a few devs, it has a lot of Cube like limitations already.

Such as? The GC's limitations were memory related.

The disk format was too tiny...

They fixed that with Wii.

The GC didn't have enough ram...

Now the Wii has more than enough ram for an SD only system.

Which other limitations are you speaking of?

 

[StefanS]

Such as? The GC's limitations were memory related.

Sorry, but that is just plainly wrong. For all we know, the Wii has the same colour depth problems like the GCN for starters. It lacks vertex shaders completely and the TEV are a rather limited PS replacement compared to new architectures. ...

 

[[maven]]

The TEV are a rather limited PS replacement compared to new architectures. ...

Stefan is of course right, but as an aside I found it quite interesting how the PS 1.1 profile was actually implemented hardware-wise as Register Combiners, instead of "proper" programmability...

 

[fearsomepirate]

"Proper" is the one of the most overused words in the history of internet video game discussions, to the point of pretty much being meaningless.

Here is a video of the new One Piece game coming to Wii in Japan:
http://dory.mncast.com/mncHMovie.swf?movieID=10017941220070403155001&skinNum=1

It's looking quite good. Other screenshots have shown off some pretty expressive faces. ;-)

 

[Blazkowicz]

tried the Wii a bit, I sure can notice aliasing (21" CRT, 480i, default cables) but I was more shocked by the texture filtering, Wii Golf doesn't even seem to use mip-mapping and textures are crawling all over the place. This really is what makes it last gen. I grew used to using 2x AF or higher on my well outdated vid card (ti4200), the Wii GPU should have either done that or angle dependent 8x/16x.

 

[Fox5]

I just got through playing the final boss in sonic and the secret rings.. the real final boss after you get the 7 world rings. That part of the game looks about up there with Galaxy. It looks that damn good.:smile:

I played Sonic for about an hour....ugh, what a horrible game, took it back to blockbuster in disgust.

As far as I know, Gamecube and Wii have a certain filter to reduce jaggies, an effect very similar to 2xAA - basically for free. This effect is not visible on screenshots (more precisely framebuffer grabs), though...

It definitely blurred the graphics, it seemed to take out half the detail in any given frame. It was really only noticeable if you tried to turn it on with progressive scan, but with component cables and a decent enough TV it was also noticeable with interlaced.

 

[theafu]

I played Sonic for about an hour....ugh, what a horrible game, took it back to blockbuster in disgust.



It definitely blurred the graphics, it seemed to take out half the detail in any given frame. It was really only noticeable if you tried to turn it on with progressive scan, but with component cables and a decent enough TV it was also noticeable with interlaced.

Fox if you play SOTR for an hour you get crap out of it due to the way sega setup the game. If you don't get an upgrade and play for a few hours in it, it will not feel like a sonic game at all after that most who do play seem to like it.

 

[Fox5]

Fox if you play SOTR for an hour you get crap out of it due to the way sega setup the game. If you don't get an upgrade and play for a few hours in it, it will not feel like a sonic game at all after that most who do play seem to like it.

Eh, got a few upgrades and played through a few levels and it wasn't seeming to get any better. The game was pretty much painful to play through, and giving the past few sonic games, I didn't feel like giving it a chance to get better. Even if it does, I don't know if it would have been worth going through the crap.

 

[The_legend_of_drtre]

Things just got a little more interesting.

Check out these sceens of the Wii version of Siper man 3:

http://www.gamespot.com/wii/action/spiderman3/news.html?sid=6168556

Impressive.

 

[StefanS]

OK, this is the last Nintendo refuge I left open that long (other will be closed on sight). The thread is hugely off topic and not even related to technology at all (anymore). Fact of the matter is we don't want subfora for each individual console maker and we don't want to create a B3D version of such forum. We people to interact and to exchange opinions across multiple divides. This thread is just diametrically opposed to that intention.

If you want to talk about games, use the game forum. If you want to talk about technology use the tech forum. Rest is Console Talk.