Metal Gear Solid 2 Graphics

[king_iron_fist]

How many of you have played/seen metal gear solid 2 in action?

IMHO it is by far the most advanced example of real time graphics so far. This seems mainly due to the brilliant use or motion blur and depth of field/focusing effects (admittedly mainly in cutscenes but rendered real time)

Why is it that a PS2 can do these effects but there is nothing really comparable on the PC?

The difference it makes to making the game feel 'real' is astounding. The animation just feels more fluid than anything else I've ever seen.

Now no one ever tell me again that motion blur is not yet feasible for graphics hardware, this game proves it can be done and done well.

 

[Rodéric]

First, KONAMI is a very famous firm with exceptionnaly good engineers (at least IMO)

Second the PS2 is a console = fixed hardware = can code 'to the metal'

Third I'm Hideo Kojima wanted to make the best PS2 game.


The main reason still is that it's a console so you're sure that if it works on one it'll run on all...


NGC and XBox games should provide the same image quality.

All IMO.

 

[.PGN.iNERTiA.]

I've been a PC-games player from Digger and Space Invaders. I bought an XBOX and I must say that apart from the horrendous resolution (yeah, I know, no 1080i HDTV here...) the graphics are the best I've seen yet. Especially on HALO (ice effects) and DOA3, and I have to agree on Ingenu when he says it all looks better on a console (apart from that resolution then).

I've seen MSG2, but to me it looks a bit gray and blueish.

Now all I'm waiting for is a GT3 equivalent...

Avé...
.PGN.iNERTiA.

 

[Pete]

Sega GT is probably your best bet. Hopefully Sega will spend some more time on the handling.

 

[Tygrus_Artesiaoa]

Hmm...on MGS2...I have a ps2 and mgs2...

MGS2...is animated insanely well-it's very fluidic...unfortunately like most playstation 2 games...it needs better filtering...but the polygonal use makes everything seem amazing...as for the colors...that's pretty much the colors of every Solid Snake game...the whole dirty gritty environment...grim instrospectful gameplay...
Want glitter...FF10 which looks awesome as well
Or Devil May Cry, Onimusha

 

[Bambers]

Well I've not seen it in action but from screen shots its obvious it suffers from the PS2s lack of memory, the textures are quite blurry.

 

[µße®LørÃ￾]

Well I've not seen it in action but from screen shots its obvious it suffers from the PS2s lack of memory, the textures are quite blurry.

I'd say that the screen shots were blurry then as it looks ace for the resolution on my 28" widescreen

 

[Entropy]

PC graphics and console graphics are totally different beasts.

Console graphics are geared towards looking as good as possible on 50Hz interlaced TV screens that can barely do 640x480. And the current crop seems to do that well.
PC games require 5-10 times the fillrate from the gfx-hardware, but has the potential of looking much, much better, and completely avoid the problems associated with display on a TV-screen.

Oh, and btw. Motion blur and DOF only makes sense as a cinematic effects. Lets not rehash why again. But it's nice to hear that they are used for cut scenes, and well too.

Entropy

 

[V3]

You know for cut scenes like in MGS2, I still prefer them to pre-rendered if they can achieve better result, rather than using their real time engine.

 

[Bambers]

Putting a game on a TV also makes it look far better than on a monitor too.

Play RTCW on a tv at 1024x768 and the jaggies are gone and the trees in the nature scene of 3dmark2k1 look much more realistic.

The use of a TV alone has a significant effect on the IQ of games.

 

[Althornin]

Mostly because you sit far enough back from the TV that your eyes do their own "anti-aliasing"...
You cant see pixel popping at 10 feet as eaily as at 18 inches.
Besides, most TV's can display at 1024x768, so the image is "downsampled", and hence is already AA'd.

 

[Foodman]

MGS's graphics are ok. The animation is excellent, and it certainly throws around quite a few polygons, but the main problem is, like with all playstaion 2 games:

Its JAGGY AS HELL. Aliasing runs rampant. For someone who is used to running at 800x600 (more recently 1024x768) for years now, looking at almost any PS2 title is horrid.

TV does some AA through simple distance and imprecision, but IMO, most Dreamcast titles seemed to have much less of an aliasing problem. Same holds true to the X-Box and Gamecube.

Maybe the rendering system of the PS2 is just "dirty" or something.

 

[Simon F]

MGS's graphics are ok. The animation is excellent, and it certainly throws around quite a few polygons, but the main problem is, like with all playstaion 2 games:

Its JAGGY AS HELL. Aliasing runs rampant. For someone who is used to running at 800x600 (more recently 1024x768) for years now, looking at almost any PS2 title is horrid.

TV does some AA through simple distance and imprecision, but IMO, most Dreamcast titles seemed to have much less of an aliasing problem. Same holds true to the X-Box and Gamecube.

Maybe the rendering system of the PS2 is just "dirty" or something.

The main reason DC's display looks so good is that in most games, each "field" is rendered at 640x480 and then down-filtered to 640x240 to produce the corresponding even or odd sets of lines. This effectively means that the source image is often double the resolution of many of the PS2 games.

I suspect that the X-Box and Gamecube are doing similar processing.

 

[king_iron_fist]

It seems that I'm the only one who's excited about the superb application of motion blur and depth of field .

The very reason that the animations are so fluid and 'real' is because motion blur is used.

I also like the game because of its use of a largely limited pallette (in the tanker section anyway). Giving everything a slightly green hue actually adds to the graphics imho and gives it a sense of style.