PS3 network + back-compat news

[Dave Baumann]

But with regards to your specific example of PCF, I don't think it's much of a problem as PCF is either a sampler-state or encoded in the tex-instruction (don't know how it is accessed on the Xbox), both of which can easily be found out and suffixed by the additional sampling and averaging instructions.

NVIDIA support PCF natively in the texture sampler - i.e. the averaged result will pop out of the texture unit and fed directly into the shader program that may be using it; ATI do not support this and the values need to be sampled then avraged in some shader code which then neds to be fed into the calling shader programme. In this instance its not just a case of replacing one with another because there is nothing directly mappable, probably the entire shader needs to be written - for instance, ATI can't won't atempt to emulate PCF filtering via Fetch4 through their drivers because of this reason. I didn't realise that MS were producing exe's for BC games, so what it appears they are doing is actually changing the game rendering for the engine, akin to a developer coding an ATI and NVIDIA path for dfferent shadowing mechanisms.

I think a bigger problem might be the floating point nature of the pixel-shader pipeline, you could do some clever bit-fiddling with the 12bit (IIRC) fixed-point values, although this (luckily) isn't common on the PC platform (as otherwise every floating-point pipeline emulating PS1.X would be in trouble).

Well, NV2A is Fixed, whereas Xenos is float. However, with R300 ATI took the decision to remove all fixed function point ALU's and move to Float, but most if its tasks would still have been DX7/DX8 style rendering (and all hardware since uses Float ALU's but still has to render pre-DX9 shader content).

 

[Dave Baumann]

Presumably Sony wanted BC, designed their in house (or Toshiba) GPU with BC in mind, decided to go with nVidia instead and for that year or whatever in development have been putting some degree of BC features into RSX, which is where the idea of losing the useless transistors and filling up with hardware BC idea fits in. I don't know enough about where they'd target such hardware to give any examples myself, but just going from Maven's example, adding hardware support for low bit textures to the TMUs would be one change adding a bit of hardware BC.

Honestly, I don't think you'll find anything in RSX that isn't already available through NVIDIA's G70/G71 OpenGL extensions.

 

[nAo]

Honestly, I don't think you'll find anything in RSX that isn't already available through NVIDIA's G70/G71 OpenGL extensions.

Who knows..

 

[Hardknock]

Is it true that they are only aiming for 480p enhancement of PS1/PS2 titles with PS3 BC??? No AA?

480p still looks pretty bad on an HDTV

 

[London Geezer]

Is it true that they are only aiming for 480p enhancement of PS1/PS2 titles with PS3 BC??? No AA?

480p still looks pretty bad on an HDTV

They're actually "aiming" for 720p. The rest is all gravy... We'll see what happens...

 

[Titanio]

They're actually "aiming" for 720p.

HD more specifically. If they're just talking about upscaling, I'm sure it'll be up to 1080p.

Side note, but I just found out that the lady presenter for Sony's E3 coverage was Fook Mi in Austin Powers (asides from her Memoirs jaunt)

 

[London Geezer]

HD more specifically. If they're just talking about upscaling, I'm sure it'll be up to 1080p.

Side note, but I just found out that the lady presenter for Sony's E3 coverage was Fook Mi in Austin Powers (asides from her Memoirs jaunt)

HAH! Now that's an interesting way to attract people...

 

[[maven]]

ATI can't won't atempt to emulate PCF filtering via Fetch4 through their drivers because of this reason.

I was under the impression this was due to patents Nvidia owned.

Well, NV2A is Fixed, whereas Xenos is float. However, with R300 ATI took the decision to remove all fixed function point ALU's and move to Float, but most if its tasks would still have been DX7/DX8 style rendering (and all hardware since uses Float ALU's but still has to render pre-DX9 shader content).

And that's exactly what I was preempting with my mention of bit-fiddling not being common in the PC space...

 

[Hardknock]

They're actually "aiming" for 720p. The rest is all gravy... We'll see what happens...

From the Official PS2 UK mag:

As well as offering the backwards compatibility, the PS3 will be able to upscale all games- be it PS1 or PS2 games to the lowest form of HD- 480p which is a quality definition superior to that of normal SDTV output making your existing library super sharp. Another news snippet is that the PS3 is completely region free- following in the footsteps of the 360 which will enable you to play import games.

 

[Titanio]

From the Official PS2 UK mag:

OPS2 says a number of things in this report, as it is relayed, that are not consistent with what Sony themselves has said. I'm more inclined to believe word from the horse's mouth rather than a jounalist's potential misunderstanding. As I understand it, Sony has said that PSone and PS2 games will be playable in HD (be that via upscaling or whatever - one way or another, anything coming out of your PS3 will be upscaled if you have a HDTV, if the PS3 doesn't do it itself, although it might be preferable for the PS3 to do it from a quality POV, I don't know.).

I guess we'll have to wait and see. I thought the comments on this out of the business briefing and/or GDC were fairly clear, but my recollection is somewhat hazy.

edit - looking back, I can't see a clear quote on this. There's talk of "legacy" support up to HD, but that could probably mean anything. I'd take it as unannounced for now.

 

[Guden Oden]

Is it true that they are only aiming for 480p enhancement of PS1/PS2 titles with PS3 BC??? No AA?

Whatever gave you that impression? They've not said anything of the sort.

Anyway, I'd not expect any substantial differences. PS BC on PS2 didn't force perspective correction on texturemaps, so I'm rather doubtful they'll force (optional) HDTV rez, AA and stuff like that in PS3.

I would think Sony wants BC titles to look as close to PS2 gfx as possible, for obvious reasons (such as peoples' familiarity of how things are supposed to look, ease of implementation/risk of things getting screwed up in certain titles, as well as performance concerns amongst others).

480p still looks pretty bad on an HDTV

So hook up a SDTV then to the standard video out jack.

 

[Dave Baumann]

I was under the impression this was due to patents Nvidia owned.

AFAIK this specific functionality in the texture sampler is an SGI patent. However, that doesn't stop ATI producing the average result in the shaders - this is what they will be telling developer to do, it shouldn't step on the patent because its achieving the result via a different method.

 

[Hardknock]

one way or another, anything coming out of your PS3 will be upscaled if you have a HDTV, if the PS3 doesn't do it itself, although it might be preferable for the PS3 to do it from a quality POV, I don't know

My HDTV has been upscaling PS2, GC and Xbox games from 480p for years now. They do not look that good on an HDTV. In contrast the first time I popped in Halo 2 and Ninja Gaiden into the 360 I was really shocked with how much better they looked at 720p then 480p. I was hoping Sony would follow in MS's footsteps in this area.

Whatever gave you that impression? They've not said anything of the sort.

Check my post 3 posts up

Anyway, I'd not expect any substantial differences. PS BC on PS2 didn't force perspective correction on texturemaps, so I'm rather doubtful they'll force (optional) HDTV rez, AA and stuff like that in PS3.

I would think Sony wants BC titles to look as close to PS2 gfx as possible, for obvious reasons (such as peoples' familiarity of how things are supposed to look, ease of implementation/risk of things getting screwed up in certain titles, as well as performance concerns amongst others).


So hook up a SDTV then to the standard video out jack.

Well MS is adding 4xAA and 720p to BC Xbox titles, so going back to 480p is a step back for me.

 

[Dave Baumann]

AFAIK they have been adding 4x AA to 480 rendering then upscaling.

 

[Titanio]

My HDTV has been upscaling PS2, GC and Xbox games from 480p for years now. They do not look that good on an HDTV. In contrast the first time I popped in Halo 2 and Ninja Gaiden into the 360 I was really shocked with how much better they looked at 720p then 480p. I was hoping Sony would follow in MS's footsteps in this area.

See Dave's post. But all I'd ever expect PS3 to do would be to upscale the picture. If it doesn't, your TV will do it. But hopefully PS3 will, and will do it a bit better (TVs often don't upscale very well).

 

[Farid]

actually I was referring to the possibility that there would be something like .exe files on the hard drive for each game to add emulation, no?

if not, why did MS have to go that way if they are both using some hardware and some software emulation (a layer in between as Dave mentioned)

The MS solution for the Xbox emulation in X360 requires a recompiled .xbe (the Xbox executable). It's actually quite semblable to the methode CXBX, the PC Xbox emulator, uses, when the emulator starts a .xbe it creates an .exe, this exe is then excuted by the emulator.
This type of "emulation", which is more transcodage than emulation, in the fact, is quite rare.

Most of the time, good emulation is obtain by the dynamic recompilation of the code, on the fly, by the emulateur. This doesn't require any new executable.
And for the graphics, in the PS2 case, they might opt for a High Level emulation, which would permit to enhance the graphics.

extremely close to the one seen in the PC Xbox emulator CXbX

Well MS is adding 4xAA and 720p to BC Xbox titles, so going back to 480p is a step back for me.

Xbox games on X360 are rendered in 480p + AA and then upscaled by the video scaler to the desired resolution.

 

[Titanio]

A little more info from the new OPS2 - apparently the magazine is going hands-on with MGS4 for the next issue. Hideo Kojima, in fact, will be guest editor on the next issue.

If they're allowing some press to go "hands-on" with MGS4 before the show, it seems to suggest we may have a live demonstration of the game at E3, probably from Kojima himself. Which would be more than I would have expected!

Of course, OPS2 may be being creative with words and what a hands-on actually means, but it seems Konami is prepping for significant post-E3 magazine coverage (the next issue is out May 18th, I think).

 

[Carl B]

There's really only two possibilities. Either:

a) Gamesindustry got it wrong and indeed there will be something on the order of a full EE+GS included

or

b) Sony's got this going in software via the assistance of some hardware considerations which we are simply not aware of yet. Perhaps the oft-theorized RSX 'bonus' transistors.

Anyway I'll highlight this quote of nAo's, as in my mind the 'wink' may not explicitly be there, but it's certainly implied...

Who knows..

 

[Shogmaster]

AFAIK they have been adding 4x AA to 480 rendering then upscaling.

Yeah, I read that it was due to the EDRAM only being 10MB, and to take advantage of tiling, the software had to be written from the start to do so. Obviously, no XBox titles would be doing that...

 

[Fox5]

Exactly. In fact, I'm quite confused by this information. How would one go about software emulating the crazy FB bandwidth of PS2? It will be very interesting to see how they do it once we finally gain solid facts.

1. Isn't the framebuffer bandwidth of RSX still slightly higher? It probably has better latency too.
2. It may not be a 1:1 emulation, for instance they could use pixel shaders in place of some framebuffer effects. Also, maybe all the bandwidth conserving techniques that PS2 lacked will come into play here. PS2 ports to the PC didn't need video cards with 20GB/s of bandwidth to play them.

Shouldn't the GS of the PS2 be easy to emulate? Wasn't it barely more than just a rasterizer? Then VU0 and the EE can be emulated by the far more powerful Cell (though I wonder if Cell has enough power to emulate the entire PS2 system on its own, including the GS), and VU1 can probably be picked up by Cell or RSX. It's not like this is blind emulation either, since they have all the specifications of the PS2 hardware, performance should be much higher than a typical homebrew emu running on much more powerful hardware.