Questions about Sega Saturn

[TapamN]

Speaking of the Naomi having twice the RAM... I've seen this in a couple of instances where the arcade variant of hardware has more memory than the home version (i.e. Namco System 11 has 2MB VRAM to the Playstation's 1MB). Is there a specific reason for beefing up the arcade memory, or does it just make development easier on the get-go. Are there examples of Naomi games that have better textures/assets over the Dreamcast conversion?

Arcade hardware is low volume, where development costs are a big part of the budget, while console hardware is high volume and production costs are more important. Once you factor in the cost of cabinet design and shipping, throwing in some extra RAM isn't a big deal, it helps reduce development costs, and the improvement to textures helps attract players.

Several Naomi games have noticeably higher resolution textures. It's really noticeable on Crazy Taxi, where the environment texture are all half width/height on the DC compare to Naomi. I remember looking at screenshots of DC Crazy Taxi back in the day, and thinking about how low res the textures were.

On DOA2, some textures are better, but it's not as noticeable. What is noticeable are the cross dissolves between some camera cuts. On the Naomi a full 640x480 copy of the previous cut is used, while the DC version uses a bilinear filtered 320x240 copy.

 

[atomic837]

Arcade hardware is low volume, where development costs are a big part of the budget, while console hardware is high volume and production costs are more important. Once you factor in the cost of cabinet design and shipping, throwing in some extra RAM isn't a big deal, it helps reduce development costs, and the improvement to textures helps attract players.

Several Naomi games have noticeably higher resolution textures. It's really noticeable on Crazy Taxi, where the environment texture are all half width/height on the DC compare to Naomi. I remember looking at screenshots of DC Crazy Taxi back in the day, and thinking about how low res the textures were.

On DOA2, some textures are better, but it's not as noticeable. What is noticeable are the cross dissolves between some camera cuts. On the Naomi a full 640x480 copy of the previous cut is used, while the DC version uses a bilinear filtered 320x240 copy.

Interesting. I'll have to take a look - I do recall thinking that the home ports of Crazy Taxi had somewhat blurry road textures, but I just assumed that was par for the course with the arcade version. For the longest time I believed that the System 11/Naomi arcade translations were easy ports with minimal differences, but it's enlightening to see that some intelligent cuts/changes had to be made to fit the home hardware.

Does anyone know of major differences between the Saturn and Titan (arcade) variations of titles? I recall somewhere that Golden Axe : The Duel had reduced animation frames on the home port.

 

[see colon]

Interesting. I'll have to take a look - I do recall thinking that the home ports of Crazy Taxi had somewhat blurry road textures, but I just assumed that was par for the course with the arcade version. For the longest time I believed that the System 11/Naomi arcade translations were easy ports with minimal differences, but it's enlightening to see that some intelligent cuts/changes had to be made to fit the home hardware.

Does anyone know of major differences between the Saturn and Titan (arcade) variations of titles? I recall somewhere that Golden Axe : The Duel had reduced animation frames on the home port.

I've never played GA:TD in the arcade. The only STV-Titan games I've played in the arcade were Die Hard Arcade, Decathlete, and VF: Kids. The only one I noticed any real downgrades on Saturn was the loading/stutter in Die Hard. And those only happen during cut scenes. I'm sure VF Kids and Decathlete have loading that isn't there in the arcade version, but I didn't see any graphical downgrades when I played them. But I haven't played them back to back or anything either.

 

[Nesh]

I've never played GA:TD in the arcade. The only STV-Titan games I've played in the arcade were Die Hard Arcade, Decathlete, and VF: Kids. The only one I noticed any real downgrades on Saturn was the loading/stutter in Die Hard. And those only happen during cut scenes. I'm sure VF Kids and Decathlete have loading that isn't there in the arcade version, but I didn't see any graphical downgrades when I played them. But I haven't played them back to back or anything either.

For whatever reason when I was playing Die Hard at the arcade and at a friend's house, I had the impression that the Arcade version was smoother/high res.

 

[see colon]

For whatever reason when I was playing Die Hard at the arcade and at a friend's house, I had the impression that the Arcade version was smoother/high res.

I believe the resolution is the same, but the monitor would be better than a consumer grade CRT. The main difference is the pause between camera cuts in the real time cinematics and loading time between stages. I could be wrong, though. I never pixel counted it or anything.

 

[Nesh]

I believe the resolution is the same, but the monitor would be better than a consumer grade CRT. The main difference is the pause between camera cuts in the real time cinematics and loading time between stages. I could be wrong, though. I never pixel counted it or anything.

There is a high chance you might be right. It was the quality of the Arcade monitor probably.

 

[see colon]

There is a high chance you might be right. It was the quality of the Arcade monitor probably.

As a side note, I love Die Hard Arcade, but those coin mechs are terrible on that machine. They would jam all the time.

 

[eastmen]

Arcade hardware is low volume, where development costs are a big part of the budget, while console hardware is high volume and production costs are more important. Once you factor in the cost of cabinet design and shipping, throwing in some extra RAM isn't a big deal, it helps reduce development costs, and the improvement to textures helps attract players.

Several Naomi games have noticeably higher resolution textures. It's really noticeable on Crazy Taxi, where the environment texture are all half width/height on the DC compare to Naomi. I remember looking at screenshots of DC Crazy Taxi back in the day, and thinking about how low res the textures were.

On DOA2, some textures are better, but it's not as noticeable. What is noticeable are the cross dissolves between some camera cuts. On the Naomi a full 640x480 copy of the previous cut is used, while the DC version uses a bilinear filtered 320x240 copy.

Yea arcade machines are thousands of dollars , what is twice the ram in comparison when you think about it

 

[atomic837]

So I've recently been dabbling with my new Steam Deck and getting some of my Saturn stuff on there. Something that I can't quite put my finger on is the texture clarity/pixelation of Saturn stuff that differs from comparable Playstation games. For whatever reason, Saturn games in their native resolution look chunkier/messier than the same assets in Playstation. Two examples that strike me are Resident Evil and Tomb Raider. Even though the Saturn resolution/pixel count appear to be the same, the textures just don't resolve themselves cleanly. Resident Evil on Saturn is a good example where the face texture of Jill/Chris always look like a garbled mess, even at the same distance or camera angle. The Playstation faces, while not pristine by any means, look relatively clean and discernable. What is happening that the Saturn has trouble resolving those kinds of details in textures? Is there something in the rendering engines between the two systems that causes such a difference? Is it just a factor of texture resolution, or something else?

 

[atomic837]

So I've recently been dabbling with my new Steam Deck and getting some of my Saturn stuff on there. Something that I can't quite put my finger on is the texture clarity/pixelation of Saturn stuff that differs from comparable Playstation games. For whatever reason, Saturn games in their native resolution look chunkier/messier than the same assets in Playstation. Two examples that strike me are Resident Evil and Tomb Raider. Even though the Saturn resolution/pixel count appear to be the same, the textures just don't resolve themselves cleanly. Resident Evil on Saturn is a good example where the face texture of Jill/Chris always look like a garbled mess, even at the same distance or camera angle. The Playstation faces, while not pristine by any means, look relatively clean and discernable. What is happening that the Saturn has trouble resolving those kinds of details in textures? Is there something in the rendering engines between the two systems that causes such a difference? Is it just a factor of texture resolution, or something else?

Thinking about it further, it almost feels like the Playstation hardware better approximates sub-pixel texture map values better than the Saturn. Which is odd to me since the lack of sub-pixel precision on polygon models is what gives Playstation graphics that jittery/wobbly appearance. Curious.

 

[Nesh]

Images taken from this video.

@atomic837 You are probably right
But I notice two more things. The latter is probably related to your suspicion.
In 2D visuals the color palette of Sega Saturn was on par with the PS1. But here is the strange thing. In polygon models, the color palette looked like it was more limited, and colors were crashed on the Saturn. It is probably a limitation that was never raised. Also the pixels are not properly resolved on 3D models and I am not sure if it has anything to do with how it scaled the image differently from the PS1.
Check how the pixels are resolved on Chris' hand on idle position on the Saturn and how they are on the PS1. Its a very strange uneven pattern

 

[see colon]

Because, as I understand it (and I could be completely wrong), the way textures work on PSX is more akin to mapping an image to a geometric surface, and on Saturn it's more distorting a sprite and using it like a polygon. I do think there is a color limit to the textures in 3d modes on Saturn, though I fully admit to not being schooled on the subject completely.

 

[atomic837]

Because, as I understand it (and I could be completely wrong), the way textures work on PSX is more akin to mapping an image to a geometric surface, and on Saturn it's more distorting a sprite and using it like a polygon. I do think there is a color limit to the textures in 3d modes on Saturn, though I fully admit to not being schooled on the subject completely.

It probably has something to do with that. I read somewhere that the Saturn uses "forward texture mapping" versus the Playstation's simple affine texture mapping.... but then, it is my understanding that the former is actually a superior method, so it still wouldn't answer the quality difference.

Looking at the side-by-side comparisons, it does seem that the Saturn's textures, while more detailed in some ways, have a smaller color palette (8-bit?) and thus don't have the same benefit of the more natural blending/anti-aliasing of the Playstation version. This might be explained by needing to lower the sprite/texture bit depth to 8-bit for whatever reason.

Also, of interest - I was always of the assumption that the Saturn's backgrounds were slightly more colorful/detailed. However, the screenshots seem to favor the Playstation version. Look at the second to last close-up of Chris with his hand on his face. The floor behind him exhibits distinct banding on the Saturn but is more natural/dithered on the Playstation. Also look at the wall color variation on the left. Then again, the lit wall behind him looks better on Saturn. Perhaps it's an overall draw?

 

[milk]

Images taken from this video.

@atomic837 You are probably right
But I notice two more things. The latter is probably related to your suspicion.
In 2D visuals the color palette of Sega Saturn was on par with the PS1. But here is the strange thing. In polygon models, the color palette looked like it was more limited, and colors were crashed on the Saturn. It is probably a limitation that was never raised. Also the pixels are not properly resolved on 3D models and I am not sure if it has anything to do with how it scaled the image differently from the PS1.
Check how the pixels are resolved on Chris' hand on idle position on the Saturn and how they are on the PS1. Its a very strange uneven pattern


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Its hard to tell what is bothering you about the saturn rendering, but from a cursory look each version seems to have completely different 3D meshes and textures, so the differences might simply be artistic.

Playstation supported UV mapping, which gave devs A LOT more freedom over how they distribute texture density across a model. If PS1 was the main target platform, its very likely that the saturn models/textures would have to be re-invented from scratch.

Another possible source of extra "pixalization" on saturn is that it allowed different elements to be rendered in separate buffers to be combined only at the end of the pipeline with different scaling factors for each. So it could be the case that despite the BG on saturn being equal to the ones on PS1, the dynamic 3D character might be rendered in a slightly lower-res, which is then scaled with ugly nearest-neighbour (mode-7 style) over the BG buffer.

So you are compounding:

ugly un-AA low res polygons + unfiltered texture projection + low bit-depth source textures + low color depth rendering math + final unfiltered buffer scaling.

Yikes!

All of this is hypothetical, of course.

 

[atomic837]

Thanks - and yes, the different 3D meshes (triangles vs. quads), as well as the UV mapping surely all play a role. Looking at it very closely, I think the biggest piece of the puzzle is the lower color depth of the textures on Saturn. Comparing the arms and pants of Chris in the last picture really demonstrates how the increased number of colors on the Playstation allowed the devs to more evenly blend the texture details together, whereas the Saturn version has a much harsher/crushed look.

Does anyone know if this might be related more to texture memory limitations or actual rendering ability? My understanding is that while in aggregate, the Saturn had more VRAM (1.5 MB across all pools), VDP1 texture space was actually smaller than in a typical Playstation game.

 

[see colon]

I know PS1 doesn't support texture filtering, per say, but I always thought Playstation textures had a more interpolated look to them. It might just be related to the way UV mapping works on PS1, or maybe just a hardware limitation like memory space or color limits per polygon when using certain effects.

 

[milk]

I know PS1 doesn't support texture filtering, per say, but I always thought Playstation textures had a more interpolated look to them. It might just be related to the way UV mapping works on PS1, or maybe just a hardware limitation like memory space or color limits per polygon when using certain effects.

Yeah, ironically, the gouraud shading at lower bit-depth can help hide some of the obvious pixelusation (one artifact hiding another) and even more-so when dithering is at play.

 

[Mobius1aic]

Disported sprites sounds right. DF showed that off via emulator in their look at Tomb Raider across it's various release platforms, including the Saturn.
Check 4:17

I always wondered how different the PS1 could've been with a proper FPU.

 

[Nesh]

The overly dark tones on 3D saturn games was very common. Yeah they are distorted sprites but, what was going on internally that produced darker and muddier textures?
In theory the textures on the PS and the srpites on the Saturn should have retained some parity in color and detauk. But nope. They do appear limited in the color spectrum and the pixel allocation of polygins on screen is blockier.
It kind of reminds me of this from 4:50 but manifested differently in 3D:

 

[see colon]

I theorize that it has to do with some specific limitation required to get good performance while doing lots of polygons. If you look at games like Astal, it's clear Saturn can warp and use 3d effects on high color sprites, but I can't think of a single 3d game that doesn't have what appears to be low color polygons. This includes games that are though of as the better looking 3d titles on Saturn, like Virtua Fighter 2. It looks great, and the textures are clean, but if you look close, there aren't that many colors per polygon. And I think that's it right there. Because the polygons are distorted sprites, not polygons with UV mapped textures, you aren't wrapping a model in a texture, you are, in a way, manipulating the texture itself as if it were a polygon. You can see in Tomb Raider that some of the rocks have faces with the same texture on 2 sides, but one side is stretched in a way, or scaled or something that displays as a very low res sample of that texture. Like it is only using part of the texture and not mapping the entire texture to the face of the polygon.

Here's another example.

It's visible throughout, but especially at 6:46, the inside of the holes have textures on Saturn that are noticeably lower quality that the outsides, which is a feat considering how low res the outsides are. But also, because there is no UV mapping, you can see how the rock faces on PSX have a rock texture that wraps around the surface giving it a consistent look, while on Saturn you can see each polygon has a simple speckled brown texture.