Ratchet & Clank 2 Screens !

[DeathKnight]

and the fact it wasn't all that much fun?

When did that become part of the discussion? If you must go there I had fun with the game. You see, I actually played through the whole game in its entirety (read: over 100 hours.. average is probably 70-80). I found it rather satisfying to say the least. The people who dogged it played for a few hours and tossed it aside.

Azurik was 30FPS

So? It was still pushing a very large amount of polygons with the whordes of stuff it was drawing on screen. Part of the reason it was 30FPS also was because of the AA (and the lack of further optimization on the developers part which was admitted and inevitable for a launch title).

 

[notAFanB]

sarcasm my bad.

and yes I didn't have much fun in those few hours. if are satisfied with game then great.

 

[marconelly!]

So? It was still pushing a very large amount of polygons with the whordes of stuff it was drawing on screen. Part of the reason it was 30FPS also was because of the AA

Well, at 60FPS you basically need to draw twice as much polys/sec to make as detailed environments as the 30FPS game. I didn't played Azurik much, but from what I've seen, it's environments weren't really as complex as those in R&C. If you have some videos or screens that show otherwise, I'd love to see them.

Consider that this or this is the level of detail you often see in R&C.

 

[Phil]

cool, I'm looking forward to this game. And I find the comments about 'no textures' ludricous. Ratchet and Clank was a nice looking game, despite the ackward controls. This looks to be no different, but rather an improvement which is always a good thing. Though, between Jak II and this, I'd have to give the edge to Jak II.

 

[chaphack]

AS i said in the past, drop some of the polygons, improve the textures and get rid of the "blur" output. Why the so many needless background polys when most of them look fulgy as shite! :?

 

[marconelly!]

I agree with chap, I didn't like the look of R&C all that much... well on some planets I did, but not in general. R&C 2 will support pro-scan though, so hopefully the 'blur filter' will be gone. Jak 2 demo I've played already has immaculate image quality so no problems there.

 

[hey69]

why can't it all look like BLINX ?

 

[akira888]

As I said in the past, drop some of the polygons, improve the textures and get rid of the "blur" output.

Chap, it's not as anywhere easy as that. One can't simply reallocate resources from one process-type (transform) to another (texture filtering). Every unit has its own purpose on relatively fixed older hardware such as PS2. And as for the blurry look, that's actually the PS2's worst problem by far. Their dig-analog convertor in 480-interlace mode is absolutely horrible.

 

[marconelly!]

Every unit has its own purpose on relatively fixed older hardware such as PS2

I think texture 'filtering' has little to do with what he's suggesting. His suggestion was more like 'allocate more memory for larger textures and less for geometry'. Btw, I thought VU units on PS2 are anything but 'fixed (feature) hardware' :\

And as for the blurry look, that's actually the PS2's worst problem by far. Their dig-analog convertor in 480-interlace mode is absolutely horrible.

What exactly do you mean by 480-interlace mode? Games that use half frame front buffer, or any 480i output (full front buffer included) There is a huge difference in image quality among PS2 games. Some indeed look horrendous, and some are excellent in that regard. I don't know if there's some secret that some developers know and others don't, but it's evident that even those that didn't 'get it right' before like EA, are getting it right now (as evidenced by their NBA Street 2 which looks razorsharp) I hope the trend continues, as it seems to me there's no real hardware-bound reson for ugly output.

 

[akira888]

True marconelly, I was speaking more from my own distaste of the PS2 texture filtering capabilities (or lack thereof). Although I still doubt removing even considerable amounts of vertex data will clear up that much room for textures.

I think the difference in output among PS2 titles is due to creative line filtering on scan-out. For example, check out the clarity difference between Tekken Tag and Virtua Fighter 4. I remember reading an article about Summoner's dev on their filtering process, can't find it now. :? While some games are certainly better in the scanout IQ department than others, the Xbox is for some reason much, much more consistent.

 

[ChryZ]

Their dig-analog convertor in 480-interlace mode is absolutely horrible.

Calling out to Beyond3D's DAC expert, I would love to hear maskrider's opinion to this claim. How does the interlaced output of Soul Calibur 2 compare on all next gen machines?

 

[marconelly!]

How does the interlaced output of Soul Calibur 2 compare on all next gen machines?

Or pro-scan output, for that matter?

think the difference in output among PS2 titles is due to creative line filtering on scan-out. For example, check out the clarity difference between Tekken Tag and Virtua Fighter 4.

Yeah, but that's because VF4 uses completely unfiltered half frame front buffer, white TTT I think uses full front buffer (which allows for pro-scan output, same with Tekken 4) In general, games that use full front buffer tend to have a lot better image quality. It requires a really clever approach to make half frame buffer game look good (as evidenced by BGA)

Btw. good news is VF4:Evo uses full buffer and looks much better than old VF4.

 

[London Geezer]

Yeah, but that's because VF4 uses completely unfiltered half frame front buffer, white TTT I think uses full front buffer (which allows for pro-scan output, same with Tekken 4) In general, games that use full front buffer tend to have a lot better image quality. It requires a really clever approach to make half frame buffer game look good (as evidenced by BGA)

Btw. good news is VF4:Evo uses full buffer and looks much better than old VF4.

both TTT and VF4EVO use half frame front buffer, i'm pretty sure about this. i was playing the demo of VF4EVO and i tried it with the Blaze VGA adapter and it gave me the effects i usually get from every other half fram buffered games, which is a half screen sized picture, or a full frame half resolution picture....

 

[Tagrineth]

Nintendo's flicker filter owns all. Period. I don't know what they did, but it's perfect.

I've always wondered, though... N64 had *great* AA, why didn't ArtX include the same AA algo in Flipper?

 

[Squeak]

Maybe the trouble of sorting polygons for edge-antialiasing grows exponentially with the number of polygons displayed?

 

[Squeak]

True marconelly, I was speaking more from my own distaste of the PS2 texture filtering capabilities (or lack thereof). Although I still doubt removing even considerable amounts of vertex data will clear up that much room for textures.

On numerous occasions on this board, PS2 programmers (or at least people who claim to be ), has stated that the main trouble with PS2s texturing, is the CPU taking to much bandwidth away from texture transfers, because of lack of large L1 cache in the R59k core.
Sony/Toshiba on the other side claims that if handled right, streaming media applications shouldn’t need a very large cache because of very little unpredictable reuse of data.

 

[London Geezer]

Nintendo's flicker filter owns all. Period. I don't know what they did, but it's perfect.

I've always wondered, though... N64 had *great* AA, why didn't ArtX include the same AA algo in Flipper?

YEAH but Soul Calibur 2 for GC is so blurry it loses detail.. i mean those mip maps are a bit too aggressive... i personally like the detail seen on the PS2 version.
and the flicker filter loses any advantage once u play the game in pro-scan...
i'm still angry there is no pro-scan support in PAL xbox and GC. i would have bought a Xbox just to play this game in 720p.