Hype or realworld advantage...PS2 related.

[PC-Engine]

Back when the PS2 launched, there were all these buzzwords like bezier curves and procedural modeling thrown around by PS2 f*nboys everywhere. 2+ years later, I don't here these words being mentioned anymore. Why is that?

Specifically, was bezier curve and procedural modeling support on PS2 just hype or were there realworld advantages to these features used in PS2 game(s)? Which PS2 game(s) used these features? Did it really help? If it's an advantage why weren't these features included in the Xbox or GC or are they?

 

[Tagrineth]

NV2x supports surface tesselation, but nVidia kinda buried all evidence of that when TRUFORM was revealed cos nVidia's implementation of N-patches was/is embarrassingly slow...

Don't know about GCN though.

 

[wazoo]

Back when the PS2 launched, there were all these buzzwords like bezier curves and procedural modeling thrown around by PS2 f*nboys everywhere. 2+ years later, I don't here these words being mentioned anymore. Why is that?

Specifically, was bezier curve and procedural modeling support on PS2 just hype or were there realworld advantages to these features used in PS2 game(s)? Which PS2 game(s) used these features? Did it really help? If it's an advantage why weren't these features included in the Xbox or GC or are they?

WRC uses Bezier

 

[Berserk]

Yeah there was a lot of these fancy words like the Emotion Engine can display real metal, wood, water... and show better emotion through the "Emotion" Engine and Toy Story graphcs. When are we going to see that?

I am very happy with my PS2 just because of all the rpgs and very good games and still the best line-up IMO. But Sony created a huge hype with those fancy words and the graphics aren't what they said it would be.

 

[iscariot]

Toy Story graphcs

FFX CG Did they ever say real time? Cause if not, CG could technically qualify

 

[PC-Engine]

Back when the PS2 launched, there were all these buzzwords like bezier curves and procedural modeling thrown around by PS2 f*nboys everywhere. 2+ years later, I don't here these words being mentioned anymore. Why is that?

Specifically, was bezier curve and procedural modeling support on PS2 just hype or were there realworld advantages to these features used in PS2 game(s)? Which PS2 game(s) used these features? Did it really help? If it's an advantage why weren't these features included in the Xbox or GC or are they?

WRC uses Bezier

Do you know where it's used in the game. Also what benefit was gained from using it? Does it make it easier for the developer to use bezier curves? Or is it just a way of making the roads more curved?

My guess is that it's used for modeling the road surface.

 

[iscariot]

btw PC, Quake3 uses it as well on the system iirc

 

[wazoo]

WRC uses Bezier

Do you know where it's used in the game. Also what benefit was gained from using it? Does it make it easier for the developer to use bezier curves? Or is it just a way of making the roads more curved?

My guess is that it's used for modeling the road surface.

you guess right.

 

[Fafalada]

I don't here these words being mentioned anymore. Why is that?

Various HOS tesselations had been used by a number of PS2 games including at least one launch title. Whether that's supposed to be headline news by the fan community or not is another question.

 

[bukima]

A few of the PS2 games actually do deliver in-game graphics of CG quality. Back then, when PS2 was first unveiled, the claim was that it would deliver graphics on par with PSone intro graphics. And if you put in some of the old games, you'll see that PS2 game graphics from the top games (MGS2, GT3 class) actually look better than the CG intros from PSone.

what some people forget is that not only do we have much better in-game graphics in this gen, we also have much better intro and CG graphics.

And I don't think Toy Story graphics are impossible this gen - but someone has to sit down and do the programming and design, whilst finding someone to pay the bill! All Sony did was say that it would be possible - not that it would be easy or cheap!

 

[Johnny Awesome]

That's not what Sony said.

PS2 graphics overall have been a let down. There's some nice stuff in:

ICO
MGS2
GT3
Baldur's Gate

And upcoming games like:

Devil May Cry 2
Shinobi
Tekken 4
The Getaway

Look pretty good as well.

 

[Vince]

HOS was used in SSX series for the course geometry, no? IIRC they had a pretty sweet LOD system that was quite good at dynamically lowering the tesselation levels of the HOS in relation to vis/distance.

GT3 uses HOS, AFAIK.


Johnney, pay attention too...

Yeah there was a lot of these fancy words like the Emotion Engine can display real metal, wood, water... and show better emotion through the "Emotion" Engine and Toy Story graphcs. When are we going to see that?

read this:

http://psx.ign.com/articles/067/067138p1.html

Notice how Sony's Official Specs never mention Toy Story or CG? It's the 3rd party website who states "With the amount of polygons and textures that the system can crank out a second with all of the system's effects in place, we could see worlds that could equal what was in use in the movie Toy Story. SCE gave you the specs, so if you believe what some idiot said on a 3rd party website because you, yourself aren't competient enough to understand the numbers given out then it's your own fault.

And for those who say realistic specs weren't given out

http://psx.ign.com/articles/066/066932p1.html

Emotion Engine can display real metal, wood, water...

And it can create procedural effects.

 

[PC-Engine]

What happened to that game that used extensive procedural effects..Outcast 2?

 

[Vince]

What happened to that game that used extensive procedural effects..Outcast 2?

It's been put on hold while the team uses the TLP engine on a game for a 3rd part AFAIK.

 

[iscariot]

Appeal is over with I believe

 

[wazoo]

Appeal is over with I believe

there are strong rumors they went out of money

The european software business is very bad now. Not a week without some software group going dead

 

[Berserk]

Well Yeah according to an article on the German site Adelpha.de ( http://www.adelpha.de/home/news.php ), Appeal, the Belgian developer of Outcast and the suspended sequel is no more.

Well I can't read German that good but what I can also make from it is that there never was a pc version of Outcast 2. Also the game was very far from complete, only the models were redy and some landscapes. The screenshots were taken from these.

Well I was a big fan of the first Outcast and this news (if it's true) comes as a big shock for me! But I still can't believe it for 100% this is true. On the official site of Appeal, http://www.appeal.be/ they don't mention this.

 

[fresh]

The PS2 has the advantage that the VU1 is WAY more flexible than the vertex shader on the Xbox. The VU1 can generate any kind of data. You could for example say : "I want 10,000 random snow particles, please generate for me" and the VU1 will go off and do it. The VS on the Xbox can't do that! 1 vertex in = 1 vertex out. So to generate 10,000 snow flakes, I'd actually have to send all that info to the VS. In one of our games we used this (for snow) and the PS2 version is a lot faster. You could just as easily use the VU1 to generate any kind of HOS. If you can do the math, then you can generate the data procedurally on the VU1. The main problem with HOS is that it's difficult to work with for artists.

 

[ERP]

Just being a bit pedantic here, while fresh is essentially correct, his snowflake example isn't very good. Since there is no requirement for the input data to be related to the output data, you can literally point the DMA Channel at garbage (or a list of integers) set the size to the minimum 4 bytes and have the Vertex shader generate all the coordinates.

We actually only store a single position for our particles and use a vertex shader tp expand that into 4 coordinates, This uses a trick where 4 overlapped DMA streams reference the same data and a 5th stream to flag which data source is valid.

Although you can't create a vertex in a shader with some thought you can do a lot more than most people initially think. The only requirement is that you read something for everything you write.

You can even tesselate a HOS inside a vertex shader, you just pass in S and T coordinates as the inputs. You can't however control the level of tesselation inside the shader.

 

[fresh]

Sure, you can just send it garbage but it still takes up bandwidth. On the PS2 I can just send a single byte GENERATE_10000_FLAKES and it'll do it.

Hey, it's the only thing the PS2 has going for it so I'm gonna defend it till the day I die . Life is easy for an Xbox programmer.