Yeah it probably just pushed phong shaded models with textures at 1 or 2 levels of tessellation with spotlights and shadow buffers. I don't really know if there are any actual screenshots on the web about how the images looked like; some were listed somewhere but those were the movie renders and not from the GSCube.
I know which ones you're talking about. Medium sized screenshots with some type of weird gamma. Are these it?
http://i7.minus.com/iuBRwzf0K4o2x.jpg
http://i3.minus.com/iCwK0XQe7xO0T.jpg
http://i6.minus.com/iVrFV5GoQy6T0.jpg
http://i3.minus.com/ivuoBLmnAFXua.jpg
GScube Specs
- CPU 128Bit Emotion Engine x 16
- System Clock Frequency 294.912MHz
- Main Memory Direct RDRAM
- Memory Size 2GB (128MB x 16)
- Memory Bus Bandwidth 50.3GB/s (3.1GB/s x 16)
- Floating Point Performance 97.5GFLOPS (6.1GFLOPS x 16)
- 3D CG Geometric Transformation 1.04Gpolygons/s (65Mpolygons/s x 16)
- Graphics Graphics Synthesizer I-32 x 16
- Clock Frequency 147.456MHz
- VRAM Size 512MB (embedded 32MB x 16)
- VRAM Bandwidth 755GB/s (47.2GB/s x 16)
- Pixel Fill Rate 37.7GB/s (2.36GB/s x 16)
- Maximum Polygon Drawing Rate 1.2 Gpolygons/s (73.7Mpolygons/s x 16)
- Display Color Depth 32bit (RGBA: 8 bits each)
- Z depth 32bit
- Maximum Resolutions 1080/60p (1920x1080, 60fps, Progressive)
- Merging Functions Scissoring
Alpha Test
Z Sorting
Alpha Blending
- Sound: Emotion Engine native audio
- Maximum Output Channel 16
- Sampling Frequency 48KHz
- Output Data Length 16bit
- Output Data Format AES/EBU Digital Audio Format
Other Specifications
Host Interface:
Peak transfer rate 2.4 GB/s (approx.)
Parallel bus 1024 bit for data/32 bit for control
x64 GScube
- CPU 128Bit Emotion Engine x 64
- System Clock Frequency 294.912MHz
- Main Memory Direct RDRAM
- Memory Size 8.1GB (128MB x 64)
- Memory Bus Bandwidth 198.4GB/s (3.1GB/s x 64)
- Floating Point Performance 390.4GFLOPS (6.1GFLOPS x 64)
- 3D CG Geometric Transformation 4.16B Gpolygons/s (65Mpolygons/s x 64)
- Graphics Graphics Synthesizer I-32 x 64
- Clock Frequency 147.456MHz
- VRAM Size 2GB (embedded 32MB x 64)
- VRAM Bandwidth 3TB/s (47.2GB/s x 64)
- Pixel Fill Rate 151GB/s (2.36GB/s x 64)
- Maximum Polygon Drawing Rate 4.7B Gpolygons/s (73.7Mpolygons/s x 64)
- Display Color Depth 32bit (RGBA: 8 bits each)
- Z depth 32bit
- Maximum Resolutions 1080/60p (1920x1080, 60fps, Progressive)
- Merging Functions Scissoring
There were 100x and 1,000x versions as well, so just do the conversions.
"With the feedback from the demonstration at Siggraph, we realized that
the present [16-processor] prototype did not have enough performance for
3-D graphics creation and realistic rendering in real-time," said Ken
Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment.
"We are planning to introduce a system with about 64 parallel-processing
units next year." Sony and one of its collaborators, a film production
company called Square, jointly demonstrated the GScube in Tokyo on
Tuesday (Sept. 12) by synthesizing a footage in real-time from the
computer-graphics movie version of Final Fantasy.
Square is now producing this film, based on a popular computer game, for
release next summer in the United States. (Not done on GScube)
So the Rare Final Fantasy demo was running on the 64x version?
"The 64-board GScube will put Sony ahead of the graphics system road map it announced a year ago, when it promised to develop a system with 10 times the processing clout of Playstation 2 in 2000, followed by a 100-times version in 2002 and a 1,000x version before the end of the decade."
The demo with the current prototype, however, reduced rendering for
textures such as hair to suit the abilities of the system. Where in the movie
a character's hair was rendered as 40,000 lines, for example, the demo
displayed only 4,000. (This would explain the 1000 GSblade version
needed to create ANTZ or The FF movie in realtime.)
Wikipedia from the movie ie not GScube:
Each character's model bears 60,000 hairs, each of which were separately and fully animated and rendered.
FINAL FANTASY MOVIE MYTH AND WIKIPEDIA INACCURACY
The GS cube was not used to render the FF movie. However
Square Hawaii did program software for the unit. As quoted from a resume.
FF the Movie was rendered on a custom render farm using four SGI Origin 2000 series servers,
four Onyx2 systems, and 167 Octane workstations.The basic movie was rendered at a home-made
render farm which consisted of 960 Pentium III-933MHz workstations.
Resident Evil 3D renders were done by Framestore CFC using
dual core NT servers.
Stellar Work by Assembler-
http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?18036-GSCUBE-information
Here are two pictures i saved a while back showing the FF demo on the GScube.
So GScube 1,000x has enough power to render Spirits Within. I know the hair is impossible to replicate this gen, or maybe even next gen. But what about the character models?
