PS2 question

[marconelly!]

It is usually the same group accusing me. Hmm, the PS2 groupies?

I wouldn't say so. There's only few people here that could be sorted in that group, yet the number of votes you received in that ban thread was a lot bigger.

 

[Paul]

Here you go chap

"Sony Playstation shall die."

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2957&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=40

 

[chaphack]

I wouldn't say so. There's only few people here that could be sorted in that group, yet the number of votes you received in that ban thread was a lot bigger

Last i remember the poll was split around 50-50. You have to know that those who voted might not post regularly. We dont know which group are they in. But regarding the posted accusations, you should realise that the usual group are ... ya know.

AFAIK, i have toned down considerably, as advised by several nicer posters. Maybe, its my use of words(am still learning), but i speak frankly imho. Like it or not, i will stick to my words.

 

[chaphack]

Here you go chap

"Sony Playstation shall die."

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2957&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=40

Guessed that was too much of an adrenaline rush back then.

As i said, i have toned down considerably. My posts for the last few months are pretty down to earth AFAIK.

 

[Paul]

Look Chap, i'll try to reason to you, since that's the only way anything is going to be done.

EVERYONE here agree's, PS2 IS weaker than Xbox in every way possible. Yes, Xbox does have alot of better looking games because it's younger than PS2.

But you must admit, PS2 can still put out some good graphics even for an old system.

Now on the basis of Xbox2/PS3. I'm sure you can agree that if they are both released at the same time they will both be better thane ach other in certain areas. But if one is released later, it WILL have the better specs. You agree?

People don't like you around here because you continue to be the Xbox fan-boy. Xbox is a great system, I agree, and I plan to buy many games for mine in the future.

And im sure you can agree that next gen system games will look similar to each other, as it's going to rely more on artistic talent than system power.

Just try and cool it down man, look at both sides. Im sure everyone can accept you if you do that.

 

[chaphack]

Now you are talking Paul.

But you must admit, PS2 can still put out some good graphics even for an old system.

Of course i admit, I have always said the new games are doing nice PS2 level graphics.

It is just when others like to say they are holding up to newer consoles or untapped powers or trying to bypass PS2 IQ/textures problems, that gets me riled up.

It is the same with PS2 people vs DC + Shenmue talk. You have to look at a non hardcore PS2er POV.

Now on the basis of Xbox2/PS3. I'm sure you can agree that if they are both released at the same time they will both be better thane ach other in certain areas. But if one is released later, it WILL have the better specs. You agree?

Yes.

Again, i always maintained that you have to look at the software side too, the API support. IF Sony does not have a nice middleware/API for multi CELL, and Xbox2 uses the familiar PC/DX, then the early Xbox2 games will look better than early PS3 games.
Agree?

People don't like you around here because you continue to be the Xbox .

Precisely. Think i need to show more Sony love here.

Just try and cool it down man,

I have. My newer posts are definitely less "explosive" than b4.

 

[Paul]

Yes, the thing is if it doesn't have good middleware. Which IS possible, although I'm thinking Sony is learning their lesson after PS3 and this won't be a problem.

Although the possibility is always there just like Xbox2 being a dreamcast, slim happening but it's possible.

 

[chaphack]

although I'm thinking Sony is learning their lesson after PS3 and this won't be a problem.

Yes. I also made a point on that too. Quoting how Nintendo/Sega learned from their 32/64bit hardware chinks, and gave us/developers the cool DC and GC. Sony needs to do that with PS3.

Development costs are rising with newer powerful hardware. It should not be made more difficult with a "crazy" architecture, at least not initially.

 

[marconelly!]

Last i remember the poll was split around 50-50

It was actually more like 60/40 in favor of the ban. It would be bad enough even if it was 50/50, considering that I can't think of anyone else here who could possibly have half of the forum longing for him to be baned :\

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4136

 

[chaphack]

It was actually more like 60/40 in favor of the ban. It would be bad enough even if it was 50/50, considering that I can't think of anyone else here who could possibly have half of the forum longing for him to be baned :\

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4136

60/50. Doesnt matter. Cant please everyone. If the mods think i should go, i go. Simple.

I have tone down much this year. I stick with my Xbox, while you with PS2 and others with GC. Preferance, preferance.

 

[wazoo]

I have tone down much this year. I stick with my Xbox, while you with PS2 and others with GC. Preferance, preferance.

Everybody in this forum has preferance, that is not the question.

 

[Magnum PI]

you are defending yourself against accusations that happened not once, and not from one person.

It is usually the same group accusing me. Hmm, the PS2 groupies?

i'm a nintendork and i voted for your ban.

 

[Squeak]

OK let me try and phrase this another way.
There are a number of other bottlenecks you need to overcome before you get anywhere near needing to worry about the bus to the GS being a bottleneck.
You can throw a very large portion of your main memory over that bus every frame before you start to see it become a limitation.
IMO the PS2's biggest weeknesses from a texturing standpoint are the lack of some obviously useful destination blend modes on the GS, and the difficulty involved in implementing decent filtering.

Poor blending would seem like a really stupid oversight on a system that relies so heavily on multipass texturing, is it really true? How many blend modes are there anyway, isn’t alpha more or less just alpha?
The filtering I don’t know about, mip banding never bothered me much and the other two consoles can’t really effort to do anisotropic filtering, so is the PS2 lacking that much?
Finally, what exactly is destination blend modes?

 

[Simon F]

I've sometimes wondered if I should use the VQ compressor to just generate palettes to see if the algorithm I used could do a better job.

VQ compressors are OK for that (I mean the IPU does it on the fly to generate IDXT8 CLUTs from I-pictures if you want) but there's too many pathological cases where they fall apart... Plus once you start banging down into obscenely small palettes, controlling diffusion becomes the most critical aspect and can become rather voodoo-ish.

"IPU does it on the fly to generate IDXT8". Forgive me for not being au fait with all the PS2 acronyms but, at a guess, that sounds like MPEG HW.

Certainly the aim with quantisers (that I've seen) is to reduce the overall error of each individual pixel. Dithering i.e. taking advantage of the fact that when the pixels are close together the eye/crt behaves like a low-pass filter, OTOH, tends to increase that error, even though the image tends to look a bit better.
Perhaps, when quantising to very small sets of colours, the system should try to pick values from the convex hull of the image set.

I'd rather have an artist comb over the image with a fine tooth pick

"That's a strange expression, Bruce..."

Seriously, that fact that DC developers used VQ over CLUT when both were available speaks volumes for which is generally more useful.

It does? Sounds more like to they just wanted to simplify their production pipeline by sticking to a uniform format. I don't think about it too much but most of my experiences (plus me also being an artist as well as programmer) are with large art staffs so it's no real biggy. Sega's houses (at least according to my old Uni roommate) tend to have smaller staffs so it'd make sense to streamline that as much as possible.

Whether your roommate is correct or not, I don't think the size of SW development teams has much to do with whether an advanced feature is in the HW. <shrug> It ceertainly wasn't an issue when considering whether to include VQ in PVR2.

Edit:Quote error. Why does this silly board need a slash to close a quote block? Stupid idea... Grr.

So you can have nested quotes. Perhaps you'd also like to remove the closing "}" from C code?

I mean, here we have disscussion here, about CLUT vs VQ vs S3TC and the winner is like S3TC -> VQ -> CLUT.

I don't think that's necessarily the order if you take the the data storage costs into consideration.


BTW: Who let all the idiots, who are just slagging each other off comparing the sizes of their delusions, into the forum? I would say, "you know who your are" but you probably don't.

 

[Tagrineth]

Certainly the aim with quantisers (that I've seen) is to reduce the overall error of each individual pixel. Dithering i.e. taking advantage of the fact that when the pixels are close together the eye/crt behaves like a low-pass filter, OTOH, tends to increase that error, even though the image tends to look a bit better.
Perhaps, when quantising to very small sets of colours, the system should try to pick values from the convex hull of the image set.

On a related note, why is it that one is never given a choice of whether one would rather see dithering or banding?

Dithering is EXTREMELY aggravating to me, especially in most PSX games. N64's banding, by comparison, barely bothers me at all...

 

[Simon F]

On a related note, why is it that one is never given a choice of whether one would rather see dithering or banding?

Dithering is EXTREMELY aggravating to me, especially in most PSX games. N64's banding, by comparison, barely bothers me at all...

Do you mean a choice of dithering/banding in the source texture OR dithering/banding when writing to the framebuffer?

 

[Tagrineth]

On a related note, why is it that one is never given a choice of whether one would rather see dithering or banding?

Dithering is EXTREMELY aggravating to me, especially in most PSX games. N64's banding, by comparison, barely bothers me at all...

Do you mean a choice of dithering/banding in the source texture OR dithering/banding when writing to the framebuffer?

Framebuffer. If it's in the source texture, generally the artists will clean it up so it's hard to notice.

But I really HATE the 'speckled explosion' PSX effect.

 

[chaphack]

Dithering is EXTREMELY aggravating to me, especially in most PSX games

Me 2!~
FF8/9 dithered textures look horrid compared to the gourad smoothed FF7.

 

[Simon F]

But I really HATE the 'speckled explosion' PSX effect.

By the sound of it, I'm guessing you mean 'screen door' transparency. That's the sort of thing you get with HW that doesn't support alpha blending and/or when you really can't afford to sort transparent objects.

 

[marconelly!]

Those games were probably meant to be played using the composite cable which could blur dithering dots enough for them to be not annoying. It's really obvious when you play PSX games on PS2 with component cable, though.