Had development continued, could DC have rivalled PS2?

[London Geezer]

What about that super huge open level in ZoE2 with a couple hundred enemies onscreen at once? The one where you just hold down Phalanax and go to town for 15 minutes That was impressive.. but I think my Emotion Engine tore a hole in quantum-time-space while doing that level

heheheh

 

[megadrive0088]

The DC was launched two years ahead of PSX2, thus a direct comparison is invalid but PSX2 was only twice the machine DC was. In other word, what ever PSX2 does, DC could do it in half frame rate.


Knowing Sega, the DC would most likely have received an upgrade, the modem port had a peak bandwidth of 50 MB/s and this was enough to support a hardware transform engine with local vertex buffer + a new PVR chipset. Think Naomi2

Deadmeat,

Had Dreamcast been based on a Lockheed Martin Real 3D design
(or had Sega selected one of the proposed LM R3D consoles) it would have given PS2 a tougher time. I doubt Dreamcast could have handled an upgrade, but perhaps one using the modem port would have been possible, especially with PowerVR's low bandwidth requirement.

A LM R3D console would have been more upgradable, like how Martin Marietta upgraded the GE designed Sega Model 1 board with texture mapping to make Sega Model 2.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

Well after having spent a lot of time with all four consoles, I've come to the following VERY GENERAL conclusions vis a vis relative performance.

DC: Superior texturing and filtering to PS2, 1/2 the geometry of PS2, poor particle effects, decent vertex lighting, great support for progressive scan.

PS2: Superior particle effects (even somewhat better than Xbox), 1/2 the geometry of Xbox, nice vertex lighting (especially when you add soft shadows into the discussion), poor texturing and filtering result in overall poor IQ, poor support for progressive scan.

GCN: Superior texture filtering (a lot of trilinear), decent per-pixel lighting, 1/2 the geometry of Xbox, great IQ, decent support for progressive scan.

Xbox: Equal to GCN in IQ, Twice the geometry of PS2/GCN, larger textures, great per-pixel lighting, great texture filtering (but I still think the GCN is a little better in this area for some reason), great support for progressive scan.

In short, GCN is close to Xbox with less geometry, PS2 and DC are roughly a trade-off depending on whether you want better texturing and IQ or more particle effects, geometry, and special effects.

If I had to rate them on a graphics scale:

DC = 1
PS2 = 1.5
GCN = 3
Xbox = 3.5

Of course, I think we've seen the best that PS2 has to offer and there's still some time for GCN and Xbox to change my mind about their late cycle potential.

 

[London Geezer]

awwww it feels like 2001 all over again....

 

[Evil_Cloud]

awwww it feels like 2001 all over again....

yeah, looks like it
"Xbox is three times as powerfull as PS2"
"GameCube will have a junkload of Third Party games"

YEAH RIGHT

 

[Rockman]

I think those who say no, focus to much on a technical head to head when you should be comparing pro's and con's and the end result. Example Dc may render less polygons but those polygons can have AA unlike the ps2. Yet the ps2 can make up ground but rendering more polygons to make the model more curved. But the ps2 is harder to program so the DC could have a big advantage having it's game optimized more to run more effieciently.

Technical to technical is as good as comparing a paper spec to a paper spec and that to me isn't as good as comparing visuals to visuals. So a good baseline would be 1 generation games on both systems.

 

[Blade]

Johnny: PS2 = 1.5, GCN/Xbox = 3+? PS2 does have some impressive looking games, like Silent Hill III.. which (apparently) displays exquisite lighting and high-detail character models. Maybe it's closer to 2 on your scale?

Developers have been finding more and more about the PS2's capabilities..

 

[Paul]

I think those who say no, focus to much on a technical head to head when you should be comparing pro's and con's and the end result

Yea, end result if DC development had continued you wouldn't see anything come close to SH3. Your telling me the graphics would have doubled or maybe trippled from shenmue?

Example Dc may render less polygons but those polygons can have AA unlike the ps2.

PS2 cannot use AA? Weird, many of my ps2 games have no jaggies..

But the ps2 is harder to program so the DC could have a big advantage having it's game optimized more to run more effieciently.

Sorry but efficiency can only make more efficient what the system already has, efficiency cannot add more features to the system.

Oh and please, your sig? Your talking about yourself there buddy..

Technical to technical is as good as comparing a paper spec to a paper spec and that to me isn't as good as comparing visuals to visuals.

So than let's compare visuals to visuals.

You seem pretty dead confident that DC could go from this

to this?

I say get real.

 

[notAFanB]

Well after having spent a lot of time with all four consoles, I've come to the following VERY GENERAL conclusions vis a vis relative performance.

PS2: Superior particle effects (even somewhat better than Xbox), 1/2 the geometry of Xbox, nice vertex lighting (especially when you add soft shadows into the discussion), poor texturing and filtering result in overall poor IQ, poor support for progressive scan.

er it's got some pretty flexible VUs and gargatuan fillrates for framebuffer effects as well.

 

[notAFanB]

regarding screenshots keep in mind the post AA applied to that last shot and you can see a margin of difference betweenthe 2 titles.

mostly (lightling+modeling)

 

[Paul]

And your telling me a little aliasing is going to destroy the look of the game visually? Not to mention the game really doesn't have much if any jaggies.. look at the movies.

 

[notAFanB]

And your telling me a little aliasing is going to destroy the look of the game visually? Not to mention the game really doesn't have much if any jaggies.. look at the movies.

no it's not, just pointing it out when doing comparisions. and yes I'm away that the 'jaggies' are not very prevalent (currently playing on my PAL machine)

on a side note is europe the only one to adopt the RGB output standard? seems a shame as it really doees provide best possible IQ outputs for standard tellys.

 

[marconelly!]

on a side note is europe the only one to adopt the RGB output standard? seems a shame as it really doees provide best possible IQ outputs for standard tellys.

US/Canada has component cable which is basically the same thing as RGB signal (just each component is calculated using some coefficients multiplying R, G and B component)

VF4EVO was SUPPOSED to get progressive scan but the final version does not include the option. which is crap, cuz that way it doesnt really look any better than the *normal* version....

It should look better because it runs in full frame buffer - thus it will have natural flicker fixing/deinterlacing that VF4 sorely missed.

Same thing with ZOE2, Konami for whatever reason choose to not include 480p support, but the game is running in full frame buffer and has very nice filtering. Same with MGS2 and other Konami games.

For the record, ZOE2 graphics >> SC2 graphics. I mean really, let's not fool oursevels here.

Now some questions:

Johnny, What Xbox game you have seen that runs at 60FPS and renders 2x as much polygons compared to R&C for example?

Evil_Cloud, VF4 demo - put the screens up, as I have my doubts you are telling the truth here. If there was a VF4 demo (better looking than the PS2 version!), Lazy8 wouldn't stop bragging about it. However, he *never* mentioned it, and he knows pretty much everything there is to know about DC games.

 

[notAFanB]

there was a VF4 preview bundled with Shenmue2 for DC. cantains some preview material if I'm not mistaken.

haven't been able to find Screenshots of said demo yet tho.

 

[marconelly!]

Preview as in preview video, maybe, but I *really* doubt it was anything playable. Lazy would be doing backflips over that...

 

[notAFanB]

we are waiting in anticipation...

 

[Bowie]

I believe that Shenmue 2 for DC came with a preview of VF4 running on Naomi 2.

 

[zurich]

Aye, $20 says it was N2. DC fanbois would have been clammoring the second coming of 'deferred rendering' if it was running on the Dreamcast

 

[zurich]

Technical to technical is as good as comparing a paper spec to a paper spec and that to me isn't as good as comparing visuals to visuals. So a good baseline would be 1 generation games on both systems.

1st gen games? Why first gen games? So the PS2 can be crippled with poor Engrish documentation?

 

[marconelly!]

@ second coming of 'deferred rendering'