Ken Kutaragi Interview

He is reponding to my comment:

I do think they were used, but under utlized by many developers.

 

the problem with those vector units is you had to stream it all the time. I bet GT4 and MGS3 used them because those developers are masochist programmers.

 

Exactly most games didn't really use the vector units the way they were meant to be used. But I don't blame the devs, I blame Sony. Super great games that stick out in their graphics show that the PS2 can be one hell of a machine. For example look at this video of RE4 for PS2. Everybody said that it wasn't possible to port the game in its true look due to aging technology. Well I guess they were wrong, because the technology is not aged as in too old it just wasn't totally utilized.

http://streamingmovies.ign.com/ps2/...m/media/013/013887/vid_1129235.html?mu=<URL/>
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THE TOYOTA WAY HISTORY

 

Sony's own Performance Analyser results from back in 2003 showed that vu1 was being pretty heavily utilised, but vu0 was sitting mostly idle. I think one of the PS2 developers here said that the PA figures didn't show all the code that could be executed on the vus, but that it was true that vu0 didn't get used much because it was so much harder to do anything worthwhile on ...

Not sure what you mean by this. How were they meant to be used? How were they used?

All consoles have their share of these though...

No they didn't! Only GC fans said this. I for one have been in a number of discussions saying that GC doesn't stand out as being particulrly more powerful / capable than the PS2. Nintendo's aim was never to significantly outpower the PS2, unlike MS with the Xbox.

 

I quess you are saying now that that video looks as good as the Gamecube version . I have seen the 640x480 version of that movie, and while it appears to be rather good port. The difference in quality is clearly visible.

 

HOnestly if you think the ps2 is under used then the xbox is just scratching the surface of its power and the gc is not even looked at .

The ps2 has had more money dumped into game engines and getting things to render 1/10th of a second faster that its most likely had double the money pumped into it than ms and nintendo combined .

That system has been pushed to the limits and then pushed again from another side .

 

Erm.. :?

The whole point of vector units (whether it be on a CPU, or GPU) in any form is to process gobs of data in streams... Also I'd hardly consider writing VU micro code particularly masochistic...

They don't exactly have a *specific way* to be used though. Outside of doing the bulk of your vertex work on VU1 (By nature of close relation to the GS), the design was intended to be rather open-ended with regards to the VUs to allow a developer to apply them as they saw fit. Obviously there's going to be ways that can deliver more calculations per second than others, but that doesn't necessitate it being more useful to you than a less efficient manner.

 

Not to mention this isn't exclusive to PS3 or PC either.

 

It's not about simple upscaling. It's about image recognition for objects in a movie, and complementing them frame by frame by analyzing its motion.

Toshiba or some other TV manufacturer talked about a future TV where you can zoom even though there are no given information for zooming, "ripening" is very much like that, and requires huge computing power in which stream processing is required.

 

How does one generate information out of nothing?

 

Has this ripening been done on any hardware to date? Is there any evidence it will increase detail instead of the basic detail enhancement features found in TVs and special DVD players?

 

I don't know how ripening works exactly but this is one of the ways for the same purpose I guess.

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/200408/04-042E/

 

Had this debate on a PhotoShop filter group I belong to. You can't. All those films and TV programmes where they zoom in indefinitely, especially into CCTV footage, and find a name engraved on a suitcase which only occupies 3 pixels in the footage...it's laughable.

The best you can do is guesstimate and approximate. eg. A checkered marble hallway floor. If it extends off into the distance, you could zoom on the low detail distance and processing could determine it's a repeated pattern of black and white square tiles, so create data to show that. IF there was say a wine stain on one tile in the distance, this wouldn't be shown in the recreation.

You can improve the quality of upscaled images by approximating details, but you cannot find data that's not recorded..

 

It's interpolation, for sure. But perhaps offline interpolation, or ripening as they're calling it, will look better than the scaling done in real time right now. Perhaps it would even be possible to correct recognizable artifacting. Or maintaining a database on the internet with profiles for DVDs and specific ways to enhance the image quality...

 

Definitely. Look at the number of different enlargement algorithms available as Photoshop plugins. Lots of different approaches all with pros and cons, and some produce better images then simple bilinear/bicubic and other interpolations.

 

I think this is what one wanted to get across. The link that he posted stated that consumers want to enlarge their favorite part of the video image without losing the quality.

Original picture on the left

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ONE VAPORIZER REVIEWS

 

All of this video enhancing is interesting, but i wonder how much of the population would use this. The general population doesn't seem to interested in doing things like this now.

People now don't even try to get the best picture out of a dvd as it is. How many people use the s-video connection on a dvd player now to get a better picture? not many, only the ones that know a s-video connection out of a dvd player yields the better picture. I use my s-video connection on my dvd player, I use my HDMI port on my plasma, I even paid the extra for the HDMI cables so I could use the HDMI port. not many go that distance to get a better picture.

I believe the proposed HD standards that were suppose to be in effect by 2006(if i'm not mistaken) has been pushed back a bit. why, because the general population could care less about a better quality TV picture when they have a big 50" rear projection in the living room with dvd player attached that isnt even using the s-video connection.

I'm not saying these features are useless, i'm just saying that maybe its a bit early to expect the general population to even care...

i think i used my zoom feature on my dvd a couple times, and that was only because i wanted to go through all of the menus to see what my unit could do.

 

Perfect point, but you have to remember this is going into a system that will be used by millions for more than 6 years. The next consoles probably won't come out until 2012, so why not now? Sony might not talk about it until the system is out for 2 or 3 years. But thats what I like about this PS3. It has so much stuff that it will be able to do that options will be always coming out.
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DRIVER MONITORING SYSTEM

 

You mean like cellphone attachment options for PSP?

 

When have "options" ever worked?

When have "accessories" ever sold?

Supposedly the Eye-Toy is a nice seller for the PS2, but I haven't seen the figures and I know there was an issue with developers having to bundle the actual camera with all of their games to insure people who bought the games would have the hardware required. So if you bought two Eye-Toy games, you ended up with two Eye-Toys (and paying for them, while needing only one).

So few people had the expandable HDD for the PS2 that developers simply didn't make games using it.. thus.. very few saw the need to buy it.

How many people bought the internet interface for the PS2? I know I didn't go online with mine until I bought my slimline that had a built in ethernet port.

Did accessories sell for other consoles? Like the CD add'on's or DVD add ons or whatever?

It seems to me the actual point of a console is so that they are all the same. Your's is the same as your neighbors. That makes it easier for the both of you, and easier for the developers. You start adding options, throwing in twenty-five different ports for different devices and you get away from the primary advantage of a console to begin with. You end up with a segmented market.