Fafalada:
DC kinda needs to have textures local to use them with any reasonable efficiency.
If DC and PS2 texturing abilities can be competitive with one another, then they're both using their own methodology to get to nearly the same point visually. However, the Dreamcast having them available locally then becomes an advantage because they're already there in display memory, whereas the PS2 has to call upon the textures from another source on a continuous basis to have them available and achieve its level. The PS2 performance is contingent upon whether the developer's engine is balancing the performance load at any one time to make those textures available, and I think it's unreasonable to assume it'll always be done with great efficiency.
"Lots" being 500 or more, "large" kinda doesn't go along with it too well on any current console.
No... "lots" being relative to texture size. If we're talking large texture sizes here, then scale down the number used from 500 to something these systems could reasonably handle. From what developers like Visual Concepts (who make some of the most impressive looking PS2 sports games) have said about the difference in developing on PS2 hardware, they found the need to break the texture sizes down into smaller chunks from how they did it on DC. Now, I'm not sure all the reasons that would lead them to this, but there seems to be strong opinion all around that the optimal approach for texturing something on PS2 would be to break textures into separate smaller pieces that might normally be one larger texture on another console. Maybe it doesn't support sizes as large or has less room to work with and store textures of those sizes at once.
mech:
The engine sustains character shadows for over 30+ separate character models simultaneously within massive environments. At times when Ryo is within multiple light sources, he can cast and sustain multiple correctly-placed shadows simultaneously. The shadows also bend and deform naturally over surfaces and with respect to the constantly changing time of day. In the cave sequence at Guilin where Ryo is collecting firewood, the flickering light he uses to illuminate the caves is very dynamic and impressive.
You took exception to Johnny's opinion that Shenmue II on Xbox looked better than Metal Gear Solid 2 on PS2, so the implication of your argument is that Shenmue II on Xbox must have crappy lighting compared with Metal Gear Solid 2 on PS2. I'm not sure if you've played through Shenmue II on Xbox, but a lighting upgrade was one of the larger improvements they made to the revision. Not sure which games you've been playing, but the subtle lighting in Shenmue IIx is anything but crappy. I mean, it's not like this game has the benefit of running at the scale of a Silent Hill game or anything, with smaller environments and less characters/objects.
When travelling to Guilin, Ryo arrives at a small port village name Longishuan or something like that. The textures here and when you're travelling up the river or anything but blurry. If the textures were blurry, you wouldn't be able to see the gravel so sharply, or the straited surfaces of the rock face. The Xbox port also improved texture quality over the Dreamcast version as you can most immediately see on Ryo's jacket and pants.
And again, you took exception here to Johnny's opinion that Shenmue II on Xbox looked better than Metal Gear Solid 2 on PS2, so the implication of your argument is that Shenmue II on Xbox must have blurry textures when compared with Metal Gear Solid 2 on PS2. In my playtime through MGS2, I seem to recall a very shaded look to the game, with smooth surfacing all around for the most part. I certainly don't recall sharp texturing being a noteable feature, but it's possible I missed it or am not remembering correctly. Perhaps you could remind me of some parts or point me to some screenshots for examples?
or the incredibly low-poly models for starters.
In a game that supports dozens of on-screen characters simultaneously, there's a tradeoff of less detail per model. Show me a PS2 game whose engine was built for showing up to fifty characters at once among heavily detailed environments like Shenmue's, and I'll show you some more "incredibly low-poly models". How about the Dynasty Warriors series? Scale is the biggest factor here.
But, I'm getting the distinct impression that Shenmue II looks low-poly to you. To me, the environments are packed with oodles of geometry, from grocer's stands lining the streets to towering skyscrapers enveloping the Hong Kong and Kowloon quarters. Doorways and windows modeled, trash cans and debris scattered about, staircases running up corridors, passages boarded up with modeled plywood, teahouses with chairs and tables, butchers with slabs of meat hanging on display, etc. I'd hazard a guess that Shenmue's environments feature more geometric complexity than MGS2's, which has far fewer but very well modeled objects in view. Still, MGS2 PS2 ouputs at 60 half-frames per second and Shenmue II runs at 30 full frames, so I'd say its obvious that MGS2 is pushing more polygons per second in the finl analysis.
And as for the geometry on Shenmue's characters, I'd say the game fairs very well when you bring the scale down to something more comparable to MGS2. Take the opening scene from the first Shenmue, for example. During that prologue sequence, we see a river running below the craggy bluffs of a canyon, bordered by a vast forest stretching into the distance. An eagle soars a great distance over the hilly landscape which approaches the canyon, and we can see Shenhua's character model fully fleshed out standing atop a cliff. When the camera zooms all the way in on her face, the game shows absolutely phenomenal detail. It's probably one of the most detailed character models I've seen in any game for any system bar none, and the detail on her head is certainly comparable to the old man Final Fantasy head demo Squaresoft had for the PS2.
If you've played through Shenmue II, also note the character detail in the climactic battle in Kowloon. You have a view of a massive landscape, an entire city in view at once, and just about every major character in the whole series being displayed all together. Ryo's character model is detailed as is Joy's, Zhu's, Wong's, Ren's, Xianghua's, Dou Niu's, and of course one other which I won't spoil here. There are several men in black suits who are well modeled there as well. The scene plays without a hitch, so I certainly wouldn't classify anything in that scene as "incredibly low-poly".
I'm curious as to how much geometry you think MGS2 PS2 is pushing to come up with such an analysis, anyway. Yu Suzuki claimed to be getting in excess of 3.5 million polygons per second from Dreamcast/Naomi back from his early rendering engine in the summer of '98, on incomplete hardware dev kits. They were using footage from an early engine in the Tower of Babel demos, and his first console game was still going under the title of Project Berkeley. It's only reasonable to assume that the engine's performance increased by the time the first game was released, and obviously increased again as the even-more-detailed sequel was subsequently released.
Now, to sport just an equal amount of geometric detail per frame as Shenmue II, MGS2 would have to be outputting over 8 million polygons per second... seeing as how it updates at twice the frequency - 60hz. It may even need to be higher for MGS2 depending on how much performance AM2 was getting on DC, as even a smaller dev like Melbourne House said they approached 5 million polys per sec on Test Drive LeMans for Dreamcast. So, if MGS2 is "ripping the shit out" (your words) of Shenmue II from a geometry complexity standpoint, let's assume that should translate into at least around 50% more modeled complexity. I'd still say 50% more would hardly be the call for such hyperbole, but I'll give the benefit of the doubt here. So, basically what you're saying is that MGS2 is safely pushing over 13-14 million polygons per second...
Fafalada:
Fact 3 : on a purely unrelated note, DOA2 PS2 loads visibly faster then DOA2 DC
DOA2 DC doesn't pause to load at all during the game, and only a short time before the very first match. Maybe the PS2 version (which one?) loads visibly faster than the DC version (which one?), but it also has downgraded graphics... purely unrelated?
