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PS2 EE question
- Thread starter vipa899
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Well, they had a very cool LODing system that would smoothly morph geometry between different lods, which I assume was highly optimised for the VUs. I don't now how easy it would be to port the same functionality to OG XB geometry shaders or simply the CPU, but I'm confident they didn't waste much time trying it as they were already Sony owned by then. Its mostly marketing talk, but might have some minimal precedence ar least.
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Makes sense, sure then xb could do it but the game wasnt there. Jak 2 still is a nice game today, aged very well considering it came 15 years ago. Theres so much going on in the citys, feels very alive and never drops from its 60fps. Sony/ps2 really had the best devs/games that gen, missed out on many titles, there was so many and buying them all was abit expemsive back then 
Naughty Dog never fails to impress. They are the sort of perfectionists that push a hardware with lots of limitations to boundaries nobody thought possible through genius use of hardware and software.Makes sense, sure then xb could do it but the game wasnt there. Jak 2 still is a nice game today, aged very well considering it came 15 years ago. Theres so much going on in the citys, feels very alive and never drops from its 60fps. Sony/ps2 really had the best devs/games that gen, missed out on many titles, there was so many and buying them all was abit expemsive back then
They are the developers that put the Playstation in a unique position as a console, and help Sony market the playstation as a "powerhouse" every generation.
Great for it's time in totality. I was always jealous of the Xbox Far Cry's having shadows for major vegetation, even if they were so blocky. Really wish the PC version had such extensive outdoor shadowing available outside of messing with the editor to enable it. But even in the editor, it had issues, like there was a finite memory limit for shadow maps built into the engine.
Yeah its not bad graphics even now, its just that some portions of the game look awfull. But thats to be expected, game is 14 years old on even older hardware. Its like this for most games though, thought of playing some MGS3 but the graphics arent that nice anymore after all those years. ZOE2 on PS2 i think still looks cool, as does JSRF, some games have a different style that ages better.
ZOE2 is coming to PC/PS4 Pro, looks nice in 4K/enhanced graphics
https://www.videogamer.com/news/zone-of-the-enders-2-is-coming-to-ps4-and-pc-in-4k
ZOE2 is coming to PC/PS4 Pro, looks nice in 4K/enhanced graphics
https://www.videogamer.com/news/zone-of-the-enders-2-is-coming-to-ps4-and-pc-in-4k
Insert half-joke here about Konami including a coin slot connected via USB for purchasing extra lives...ZOE2 is coming to PC/PS4 Pro, looks nice in 4K/enhanced graphics
I played ZOE2 and MGS3 so much on the original PS2, I never felt the need to return to it last gen.
It would be nice to get some hard numbers from the creators about how much average VU1 and 0 usage was involved in running both games. MGS3 had some pretty high levels of geometry for a PS2 game, and probably the best visual representation of a forest of it's gen. What's neat is reflecting back on games like MGS3 and realizing how impressive they were for the time. I knew it look great back then, but when you know a decent bit about the hardware and it's limitations, you can appreciate it even more.
It would be nice to get some hard numbers from the creators about how much average VU1 and 0 usage was involved in running both games. MGS3 had some pretty high levels of geometry for a PS2 game, and probably the best visual representation of a forest of it's gen. What's neat is reflecting back on games like MGS3 and realizing how impressive they were for the time. I knew it look great back then, but when you know a decent bit about the hardware and it's limitations, you can appreciate it even more.
Sorry for double post!
I remember playing the game on the PS2 at launch and being very impressed by the character models too. I never played the game past the first couple hours (so sue me) but was very impressed by what I saw.
FF12 makes it really hard to decide what was the PS2's biggest hardware liability. There's more detail in the characters than the PS2 can reasonably display, so I tend to look at the GS as the system's biggest flaw, regardless of the high raw pixel rate. Functionally, perhaps the EE is still the biggest problem (weak CPU core, and difficulty in using the VUs) but the lack of single pass multi-texturing, and separate ROPS really sticks out. We would've seen many more true 480p games, and subsequently cleaner renders. FF12 was 512 x 448 *throws up*
I remember playing the game on the PS2 at launch and being very impressed by the character models too. I never played the game past the first couple hours (so sue me) but was very impressed by what I saw.
FF12 makes it really hard to decide what was the PS2's biggest hardware liability. There's more detail in the characters than the PS2 can reasonably display, so I tend to look at the GS as the system's biggest flaw, regardless of the high raw pixel rate. Functionally, perhaps the EE is still the biggest problem (weak CPU core, and difficulty in using the VUs) but the lack of single pass multi-texturing, and separate ROPS really sticks out. We would've seen many more true 480p games, and subsequently cleaner renders. FF12 was 512 x 448 *throws up*
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While MGS3 certainly was/is impressive considering the hardware/time it came, i allways thought MGS2 was graphically the better game. MGS3 is running on 30fps opposed to 60 for MGS2? Dont know why but MGS2 felt like a more polished game. The jungle levels didnt really impress me either, the jungles where big and you can go almost anywhere, but theres loading between areas between very small areas. The grass was nice done as it moved when going through it.
As a game i think MGS3 was better cause of the setting, but MGS2 is very close too. Actually dont know which i would choose
As for VU usage, try looking into PCSX2, i think you can disable/enable VU's and find out on performance hits. MGS3 runs almost perfectly, even on older builds or older hardware. Doesnt seem like a taxing game like some others.
From just about all fronts, I prefer MGS3. MGS2 was a bigger deal though because of it's critical timing as an early PS2 showcase game. Can't forget alot of the socio-technological predictions the game had too.
MGS2 was a technical showcase in all fronts though I believe, I think the geometry and texture complexity in 3 took away from other areas that made MGS2 a state of the art game.
Dynamic shadows, physics, huge amounts of particles, reflections, weather effects, complex water effects all at 60fps. MGS2 almost made all the PS2 tech demos come true in a single title.
Thinking that MGS2 came 2001 and the PS2 being hard to program for, Konami must have som real skills coming with a game early in the PS2's life time. MGS2 is up there with the best looking PS2 titles, even Konami themselfs couldnt top it with MGS3 in 2005, half the framerate and certainly not better in case of particle effects (PS2's best). MGS3 might do some things better but some worse too.
Anyone got a link to a video showcasing these particle effects being raved about?