PS2, AI and physic calculation
- Thread starter AbbA
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I'm no expert in this but the VPU's are generally limited to the graphics side of the machine and the general CPU isn't exactly that powerful to start with.
Unless the code was split onto the vector units as well it's not likely the PS2 could handle HL2 kind of physics and AI without a reduction in some area.
Unless the code was split onto the vector units as well it's not likely the PS2 could handle HL2 kind of physics and AI without a reduction in some area.
DeadmeatGA
Banned
...
Its no better than AltiVec; probably a lot worse.
WELL, the problem is, if u start using the VU's to calculate physics, then the resources for graphics will be cut down... i'm sure a version of HL2 built around the architecture of every platform would be pretty cool, of course there would be MAJOR cuts, but still..
having all the things going on in HL2 at the same time replicated flawlessly would be impossible. however i'm sure that the physics and AI would be pretty decent, although graphically the PS2 and GC versions would be severely behind. on Xbox i fear the situation could be the opposite, since it might be able to replicate the shaders and have hi res textures, but not have enough CPU power to handle the physics. at the end of the day it would be like playing an optimised version of the game on a Celeron 733MHz and Geforce4. decent enough if u ask me, considering the optimised version should run a lot better than the PC version for the same system. still that CPU is and will always be BLEAH... i mean, i have a better CPU at work...
having all the things going on in HL2 at the same time replicated flawlessly would be impossible. however i'm sure that the physics and AI would be pretty decent, although graphically the PS2 and GC versions would be severely behind. on Xbox i fear the situation could be the opposite, since it might be able to replicate the shaders and have hi res textures, but not have enough CPU power to handle the physics. at the end of the day it would be like playing an optimised version of the game on a Celeron 733MHz and Geforce4. decent enough if u ask me, considering the optimised version should run a lot better than the PC version for the same system. still that CPU is and will always be BLEAH... i mean, i have a better CPU at work...
Bohdy said:I think HL2 would run nicely on the power of the Gekko
The ram might be a bit of a prob though, but a tight streaming engine would help a lot in that respect.
yes, streaming would be the saving grace for current gen consoles, unless u want a loading screen every room ala SH3...
hell, ps2 has been doing it since J&D, it cant be THAT hard to implement.
of course, then HL2 wouldnt run on the same engine, so...
randycat99
Veteran
london-boy said:
How can it cut down on graphics, if the VU0 is being barely used as it is now? The whole point of the VU0 is to be used closely with the core CPU. Granted, the MIPs core isn't any powerhouse in of itself, but that is why you have the VU0 there (assuming the duties can be expressed in a vector manner). Whether or not physics and AI can be done on a vector processor, I have no idea, but it strikes me as the original intent all along.
MonkeyLicker
Newcomer
london-boy said:WELL, the problem is, if u start using the VU's to calculate physics, then the resources for graphics will be cut down... i'm sure a version of HL2 built around the architecture of every platform would be pretty cool, of course there would be MAJOR cuts, but still..
having all the things going on in HL2 at the same time replicated flawlessly would be impossible. however i'm sure that the physics and AI would be pretty decent, although graphically the PS2 and GC versions would be severely behind. on Xbox i fear the situation could be the opposite, since it might be able to replicate the shaders and have hi res textures, but not have enough CPU power to handle the physics. at the end of the day it would be like playing an optimized version of the game on a Celeron 733MHz and Geforce4. decent enough if u ask me, considering the optimized version should run a lot better than the PC version for the same system. still that CPU is and will always be BLEAH... i mean, i have a better CPU at work...
I'm sure that with a talented developer and enough work that the GC version would fare far better than you give it credit for.
RAM on the other hand might be more of a problem, although streaming might be possible with some work.
IO processor handles the DVD drive, memory cards, USB and firewire ports and reads joypads. It also interfaces with the sound chip.
CPU runs game code, of course (it's a MIPS R5500 or something like that, a 64-bit chip with a slew of 128-bit integer SIMD instructions added along with two vector floating-point execution units, one for multiply-adds and one for divisions in addition to standard MIPS FPU.
Vector Unit 0 is meant to do stuff like artificial intelligence and physics calculations, but can also do pretty much anything else, including stuff like DTS or Dolby Digital encoding, generating procedural textures or 3D transformations too, but isn't as good at that as VU1 for various reasons (one being no direct path to the graphics synth, another being less RAM and fewer vector execution units). VU0 is kinda awkward to use efficiently and sees little use in real-life situations in most games.
VU1 is the main workhorse, it is the equivalent of a vertex shader in XBox, though much more flexible. It generally does lightning, skinning, 3D transformations and clipping operations and then sends a display list of polygons to be rendered to the graphics synth.
The MPEG decoder accelerates image decompression for movies or textures (if cleverly used by programmers), and the DMAC (DMA Controller) copies data around inbetween the various processors in the system.
Fairly condensed and simplified of course, but I don't think I got much wrong either.
*G*
CPU runs game code, of course (it's a MIPS R5500 or something like that, a 64-bit chip with a slew of 128-bit integer SIMD instructions added along with two vector floating-point execution units, one for multiply-adds and one for divisions in addition to standard MIPS FPU.
Vector Unit 0 is meant to do stuff like artificial intelligence and physics calculations, but can also do pretty much anything else, including stuff like DTS or Dolby Digital encoding, generating procedural textures or 3D transformations too, but isn't as good at that as VU1 for various reasons (one being no direct path to the graphics synth, another being less RAM and fewer vector execution units). VU0 is kinda awkward to use efficiently and sees little use in real-life situations in most games.
VU1 is the main workhorse, it is the equivalent of a vertex shader in XBox, though much more flexible. It generally does lightning, skinning, 3D transformations and clipping operations and then sends a display list of polygons to be rendered to the graphics synth.
The MPEG decoder accelerates image decompression for movies or textures (if cleverly used by programmers), and the DMAC (DMA Controller) copies data around inbetween the various processors in the system.
Fairly condensed and simplified of course, but I don't think I got much wrong either.
*G*
Steve Dave Part Deux
Newcomer
The Cpu core only has one 32-bit fpu. There are no special vector processors or anything else attached to it(besides the VUO). The VU0 and core were designed to have a high degree of flexibility that would allow them to perform complex irregular geometry processing including physical simulation. VU1 was designed to be used for simple, repetitive geometry processing like background objects. Display lists from each geometry engine have a special context that contains status data such as texture page and drawing mode. Both contexts are maintained in the GS, which reduces or eliminates setup time of the renderer. If I'm wrong about any the above, feel free to correct me.
Relative to what?AbbA said:
If it were possible to quantify what "level of HL2" means, then it might be possible to give a reasonable answer.
Anyway I'm not too familiar with AI in HL2 to begin with, as for physics I can tell you that things Havoc does can be performed at good speeds but you need to be willing to go through hoops of platform specific code rearchitecting. It's debatable how often that's a reasonable solution though.
I sincerely doubt that. If the movies shown of HL2 so far are any indication you are looking at mostly CPU heavy stuff, more so then any of the current consoles can reasonably work with - and that's before you even try drawing anything.Bohdy said:
Well, i guess we'll never know, even IF HL2 comes out on PS2 and GC, it will NEVER use the platforms' strengths.
multiplatform games originally made for PC usually tend to be rather crappy apart from xbox versions, which arent exactly great either most of the time.
multiplatform games originally made for PC usually tend to be rather crappy apart from xbox versions, which arent exactly great either most of the time.
Yes and PSP will bake blueberry waffles too.Bohdy said:
On the other hand, "core" physics could very well exclude 99% of world interaction (like the destructable stuff for instance), and facial animation system is neither all that complicated nor would it be having much activity during action intensive parts of the game.
Outside situations where P3 is memory access bound, I wouldn't see that happening either.
Mostly for two reasons - one that I already outlined above (CPU usage) and the other being memory usage. And usually short of rearchitecting large parts of the codebase (something ports don't usually do) there's no way to efficiently circumvent these issues.london-boy said:
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