Let's talk... PSP graphics + Design

[Paul]

The graphics obviously are going to be quite nice.. for a handheld.

Going by the specs, it can rival GC in a area or two, but I wouldn't expect GC quality visuals. Most likely the average game will have first gen DC game type visuals or a higher than bleemcast quality visuals. But the games will look MUCH better than psone quality as the system totally runs over psone in every area.

Some screenshots, and I'll try to get them as close to PSP resolution as I can.

Maybe a metal gear solid game that looks somewhat better than this

Maybe something like this could be done.

Now the Design... Sony products usually look really high-tech and snazzy. Just look at their Sony CLIE's. They look really great.

I don't expect PSP to look like a piece of crap, I really imagine the thing to be sleek as hell and maybe of a silver color. Obviously PSP has alot going on for it, the UMD, huge 4.5 inch screen, and a analog stick and all the playstation buttons. Even with all this I still don't see PSP to be a huge bulky affair, and I also see it having a clam-shell design not unlike a Sony CLIE.

This is also what I see psp sorta looking like closed.

Here's another, shows how a PSP could sorta look like. Although not these exact dimentions.

What do you guys think about what type of color schemes and or symbol PSP will use?

I'm thinking maybe MAYBE a black color, although I'm more in toon of the thing being a silvery. The symbol? I don't see why they couldn't use the PS2 symbol and switch the 2 with a P. They seem to like this symbol as much as to keep it with PSX.. so we will see.[/img]

 

[jvd]

Paul why isn't this in the offical psp thread ?

 

[Paul]

Because it isn't official.

 

[Grall]

I don't understand why people keep bringing up Bleem and first-gen DC games when speaking about PSP graphics. Just polycount is like 3-4x higher than DC *THEORETICAL MAXIMUM*, much less ingame where the CPU has to share transform burden with everything else. PSP has a separate CPU for all that + geometry engine for chrissakes.

This thing will beat the ass off a DC in every respect other than pure screen size and resolution.

 

[Paul]

Expect little come away shocked.

I'm employing this with PSP, but yes Grall in the back of my head I do know what your saying is true.

 

[jvd]

Because it isn't official.

Hmm so in your plans for the forum that you posted in the other thread. Things like this would be able to stay outside of the offical psp thread and ps3 thread? Trying to figure out your reasoning.

 

[jvd]

I don't understand why people keep bringing up Bleem and first-gen DC games when speaking about PSP graphics. Just polycount is like 3-4x higher than DC *THEORETICAL MAXIMUM*, much less ingame where the CPU has to share transform burden with everything else. PSP has a separate CPU for all that + geometry engine for chrissakes.

This thing will beat the ass off a DC in every respect other than pure screen size and resolution.

I fail to understand when polygon counts are the only thing that matter ? What effects can the psp do in hardware that the dc can't ?

 

[Paul]

You know I'm still trying to figure out why your even in this thread, but I guess while I don't agree with what you say, I'll defend to the death your right to say it.


The stay in one topic thing was for PS3 stuff only as PSP information doesn't cloud the boards. The plan was for PS3 stuff only as there is too many ps3 topics on the board, not PSP.

But if you had the PSP topic stickied and had the rule up before hand? Sure I would have posted this in there.

Now do you have anything on-topic to say? Any ideas about the topic?

 

[Paul]

JVD hits it on the head with the Polygon count thing.

Sure PSP can rape the hell out of the DC in polygon counts, however we will just have to see. This is why I am expecting first gen DC visuals/bleemcast out of the thing.

We get this and I'll be happy.

 

[phed]

I've learned at tad on polygoncount. On >NV2x-arch it is the MIPS on the GPU that counts, which makes polygoncount hard to talk about on PC (especially when pixelshaders are used).

On the PSP there will not be that many kinds of shader effects, hell, then they'll need a fourth or something PU. The CPU is a lot faster than on the PSOne, and in addition relieves the CPU for such stupid tasks as sorting and so on (z-buffering this time, perhaps). I think this time (as with the PS2) theyll focus on procedural objects but with focus on the most used VU-programs for the PS2.

I just hope they leave room for image postprocessing of the image as they did on the PS2. (Which is what NV sucks at).

Offtopic insight: Like they had in mind when they designed the PS2, they analyzed the portfolio on how the programs were written, and found they were mostly procedural, and _tried_ to implement a "ideal PSOne" arch.

 

[PC-Engine]

How much RAM is PSP supposed to have? Wasn't it 8MB of main RAM?? With that amount of RAM I don't think the PSP games would look much better than low resolution DC games. I see better lighting than DC but not much else.

BTW jvd you should merge this thread into the official PSP thread.

 

[V3]

8 + 2 + 2 MB

 

[PC-Engine]

How much main RAM? Who cares about audio RAM and frame buffer/texture cache?

 

[Megadrive1988]

compared to Dreamcast, the PSP should make up for having less raw memory by having 2 MB of high bandwidth eDRAM. needing to produce a lower resolution image, having a different architecture overall.

PSP beats DC in the amount of geometry / lighting it can produce and PSP also has a MUCH higher fillrate. 664 Mpixels compared to 100 (200)
Mpixels for DC.

 

[jvd]

You know I'm still trying to figure out why your even in this thread, but I guess while I don't agree with what you say, I'll defend to the death your right to say it.


The stay in one topic thing was for PS3 stuff only as PSP information doesn't cloud the boards. The plan was for PS3 stuff only as there is too many ps3 topics on the board, not PSP.

But if you had the PSP topic stickied and had the rule up before hand? Sure I would have posted this in there.

Now do you have anything on-topic to say? Any ideas about the topic?

I'm asking because you also wanted an offical thread for all the consoles. There was one for other consoles but of course there is very little to talk about except for the little we know about cell and that ati is in xbox2. Psp doesn't need to be sticky it is allways on the first page. It was actually 3 topics under this when you first started. You want something one way. You believe it to be right. So I was wondering why you yourself don't follow your ideas. After all if the most vocal supporter of this idea doesn't comply why would anyone else ? And if you want to prove that it works why aren't you trying to make it work in other threads besides the ps3 thread to prove your right ? just asking questions. I believe I'm allowed to on a forum.

 

[V3]

How much main RAM? Who cares about audio RAM and frame buffer/texture cache?

Fire is hot, ice is cold ?

 

[jvd]

How much RAM is PSP supposed to have? Wasn't it 8MB of main RAM?? With that amount of RAM I don't think the PSP games would look much better than low resolution DC games. I see better lighting than DC but not much else.

BTW jvd you should merge this thread into the official PSP thread.

Yes i know. To bad I can only delete , edit , move , split threads.

 

[PC-Engine]

Sure but the DC uses slow SDRAM because its design doesn't NEED high bandwidth memory. Again on that tiny little screen you're going to be hard pressed to see a significant difference from downscaled DC games

The DC was a very balanced design for its time and bandwidth wasn't a bottleneck. It's the amount of RAM. PSP has 1/2 the amount of main RAM of DC and 1/4 the amount of texture/frame buffer.

 

[jvd]

compared to Dreamcast, the PSP should make up for having less raw memory by having 2 MB of high bandwidth eDRAM. needing to produce a lower resolution image, having a different architecture overall.

PSP beats DC in the amount of geometry / lighting it can produce and PSP also has a MUCH higher fillrate. 664 Mpixels compared to 100 (200)
Mpixels for DC.

Don't forget its a tile base renderer. So the dc with overdraw will kick that 664mpixel fillrate around . Not only that but it has a ton of features it can do in hardware that i'm just not sure the psp can do. The only thing that can help the psp is that its running in much lower res. Of course that also hurts image quality .

 

[Bowie]

Don't forget its a tile base renderer. So the dc with overdraw will kick that 664mpixel fillrate around .

That's not really true. It would take an overdraw of over 6x for the DC to outperform the PSPs fillrate. Real games average around 2-3x overdraw. Take a look at these benchmarks on this PowerVR Neon250 review:

http://www3.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/reviews/video/neon250/9.shtml

The Neon250 has a fillrate of 125 Mpixels/sec and the TNT2 has a fillrate of 300 Mpixel/s. The Neon250 slightly outperforms the TNT2. The PSP has more than double the fillrate of the TNT2, so the PSP should clearly outperform the Neon250's 125 Mpixel/sec fillrate.

It's a common misconception that the DC's TBDR architecture can outperform an IMR with much higher fillrate. It isn't a miracle solution. Eventually more fillrate wins over the efficiency of TBDR.


As for effects of the PSP, one of the slides from the PSP presentation said that it has pixel shading, so it might even be better than the Dreamcast in that area. We'll just have to wait and see.