[Retro] Playstation pushed to the limit

[Simon82]

So if the psx could do graphics without all the texture problems, how come no games ever did graphics without texture warping?

Maybe because that model has only one texture at "big" resolution on a big amount of little polygons at that time for this hardware. In a complete game you couldn't have all this sized "detailed" texture to reduce pixellation problem of all not-bilinear filtered ones.
I also think that this kind of texture is obviously detailed a little noisy to reduce the fact that there is not prospective correction on hardware.

Someone remember the sprite tech demo in which you could see something like 4000 sprite moving around? I remember that editors was talking about it..

 

[ban25]

Was the Playstation really that powerful? We got a 100 MHz Pentium-powered PC right around the time the Playstation came out, and I seem to recall it doing a pretty good job with Quake 2 and Tomb Raider.

You're probably thinking of Quake 1, certainly not Quake 2.

 

[-tkf-]

I forgot to add that the sound was good to but dont remember if the 3D sound effects where on (I had a SB live installed in the comp)!

Sound?

This official Bleem demo is designed to show you just how Bleem will run PlayStation games on your system; specifically, how it would deal with your particular hardware and games. Please note that your performance can vary according to the complexity of the PlayStation game you're playing and the hardware you own. This demo does not include support for color MDEC movies, sound (except CD music), 3D hardware accelerators, enhanced support for MMX and AMD 3DNow processors, or memory cards.

 

[-tkf-]

But compare PSX in the 1994 with the 1998 Voodoo2 card don't make sense.

Or just the Voodoo "1" 1996 vs Playstation 1994.

 

[Polygon Crusher]

Sound?

Now I was shure it allowed sound to be played but it may have been from another emulator I tested. It was such a long time ago I cant really remeber about the sound becouse back in thoose days it was all about graphics and speed!

 

[Polygon Crusher]

But compare PSX in the 1994 with the 1998 Voodoo2 card don't make sense.

If you really read my post you would have noticed that I said that 3D acceleration was off which means that the Voodoo2 card was not used at all. The whole retail version of BLEEM! (65$) did support the GLIDE API and thus 3D acceleration but the BLEEM! demo did NOT!
So then what is unfair Simon becouse it is a P166 CPU vs the whole PSX?

EDIT: I forgot to say that the full version of BLEEM! allowed options such as bilinear filtering (makes a massive difference between point and bilinear filtering) amongst other visual enhancement options!

 

[swaaye]

I do kinda wonder if that TRex demo is baked on a SGI workstation, honestly. I can hardly see any pixelization in that demo video, and that's a sign right there that it might not be PS1 hardware at all. That video also looks to have some model skin animation going on. Did PS1 really do that, especially early on? That there is absolutely no detail other than the dino though could mean it is some ultra-tweaked code pulling that off.

I don't remember those years as really being "defined" by PS1 hype, honestly. Sony was totally unknown and not really respected before PS1 established itself. I was firmly entrenched in PC and some N64 hype, along with SNES still. And honestly, once I was used to playing N64 and having Voodoo Graphics on PC, PS1 was just painful to look at with its horrible perspective errors and pixelization. Nowadays, IMO, PS1 has lots of overly rozy warm fuzzy memories associated with it.

But I don't think PS1 was any kind of grand super overachiever in moving the industry forward. PC and 3DO were doing that just fine. Doom and Wolf3D were obviously massively popular, even if they weren't true 3D. They built up the buzz. FMV too was just building up its years of grand popularity. FMV 3D too was still mis-understood in comparison with realtime 3D.

3DO, while an expensive failure, was seen as a sort of weird luxury console with mysterious 3D capabilities (lots of it FMV too, obviously). Even SNES and Genesis took a swing at 3D imagery with games like Donkey Kong Country, StarFox, using the carts with 3D processors. Donkey Kong Country basically defined consoles for 1994. Nintendo called it "the year of the cartridge", I believe, snubbing the goofy "32-bit" machines. And Sega was just pumping out 3D hardware like crazy and had tons of Saturn/Neptune/etc hype flying around.

I always felt that PS1 was a sort of a combo "light" 3D device with a major focus on FMV as well. I was more fascinated by N64 and M2, by far.

 

[Nesh]

I do kinda wonder if that TRex demo is baked on a SGI workstation, honestly. I can hardly see any pixelization in that demo video, and that's a sign right there that it might not be PS1 hardware at all. That video also looks to have some model skin animation going on. Did PS1 really do that, especially early on? That there is absolutely no detail other than the dino though could mean it is some ultra-tweaked code pulling that off.

I don't remember those years as really being "defined" by PS1 hype, honestly. Sony was totally unknown and not really respected before PS1 established itself. I was firmly entrenched in PC and some N64 hype, along with SNES still. And honestly, once I was used to playing N64 and having Voodoo Graphics on PC, PS1 was just painful to look at with its horrible perspective errors and pixelization. Nowadays, IMO, PS1 has lots of overly rozy warm fuzzy memories associated with it.

But I don't think PS1 was any kind of grand super overachiever in moving the industry forward. PC and 3DO were doing that just fine. Doom and Wolf3D were obviously massively popular, even if they weren't true 3D. They built up the buzz. FMV too was just building up its years of grand popularity. FMV 3D too was still mis-understood in comparison with realtime 3D.

3DO, while an expensive failure, was seen as a sort of weird luxury console with mysterious 3D capabilities (lots of it FMV too, obviously). Even SNES and Genesis took a swing at 3D imagery with games like Donkey Kong Country, StarFox, using the carts with 3D processors. Donkey Kong Country basically defined consoles for 1994. Nintendo called it "the year of the cartridge", I believe, snubbing the goofy "32-bit" machines. And Sega was just pumping out 3D hardware like crazy and had tons of Saturn/Neptune/etc hype flying around.

I always felt that PS1 was a sort of a combo "light" 3D device with a major focus on FMV as well. I was more fascinated by N64 and M2, by far.

I have it on my PSX. That Trex demo

I d also disagree with many points

 

[Simon82]

I do kinda wonder if that TRex demo is baked on a SGI workstation, honestly. I can hardly see any pixelization in that demo video, and that's a sign right there that it might not be PS1 hardware at all. That video also looks to have some model skin animation going on. Did PS1 really do that, especially early on? That there is absolutely no detail other than the dino though could mean it is some ultra-tweaked code pulling that off.

I don't remember those years as really being "defined" by PS1 hype, honestly. Sony was totally unknown and not really respected before PS1 established itself. I was firmly entrenched in PC and some N64 hype, along with SNES still. And honestly, once I was used to playing N64 and having Voodoo Graphics on PC, PS1 was just painful to look at with its horrible perspective errors and pixelization. Nowadays, IMO, PS1 has lots of overly rozy warm fuzzy memories associated with it.

But I don't think PS1 was any kind of grand super overachiever in moving the industry forward. PC and 3DO were doing that just fine. Doom and Wolf3D were obviously massively popular, even if they weren't true 3D. They built up the buzz. FMV too was just building up its years of grand popularity. FMV 3D too was still mis-understood in comparison with realtime 3D.

3DO, while an expensive failure, was seen as a sort of weird luxury console with mysterious 3D capabilities (lots of it FMV too, obviously). Even SNES and Genesis took a swing at 3D imagery with games like Donkey Kong Country, StarFox, using the carts with 3D processors. Donkey Kong Country basically defined consoles for 1994. Nintendo called it "the year of the cartridge", I believe, snubbing the goofy "32-bit" machines. And Sega was just pumping out 3D hardware like crazy and had tons of Saturn/Neptune/etc hype flying around.

I always felt that PS1 was a sort of a combo "light" 3D device with a major focus on FMV as well. I was more fascinated by N64 and M2, by far.

Well I think that PS1 must thank Sony itself for its excellent marketing strategy that take all the developers around the world to write code for this console. Surely the fact they has reached the objective to build a console powerful enough to have excellent 3D texture mapped games when there was not comparable alternatives in the JAP/US launch, was the real goal.
I remember that this console has been sold in JAP in the 1994.

 

[swaaye]

Oh I definitely think Sony did an awesome job marketing the machine. But, I don't think it was all that huge initially. They hit the ground running big time, throwing huge amounts of cash no doubt at getting devs onboard. That is their most distinctive advantage I think. They had the muscle to really push the machine. Tons of money and experience in consumer electronics, and Ken Kutaragi was really on top of how to make a game machine work.

I don't really think the hardware was all that stunning though. If it had arrived in the US in '94, I'd think differently. But, N64 was certainly way more impressive and not that far behind in release date. Too bad it was limited by the carts. Saturn did some things basically as well as PS1, IMO.

I really had a hard time stomaching PS1's texture mapping issues and pixelization. I was spoiled by Voodoo1 and N64 though. I didn't get into PS1 at all until probably '97, when I wanted Gran Turismo.

I have it on my PSX. That Trex demo

Well, there you go! Cool.

 

[phat]

When PS1 arrived in North America in 1995, there were no mainstream 3D graphics cards. I remember just getting an ATI Graphics Ultra Pro, with state-of-the-art 2D acceleration for Win95. So the $400 PS1 was indeed very impressive compared to a $3000 PC that was still texturing polygons very poorly in software.

By the time everybody had a PS1, mainstream PCs had of course surpassed it.

Phat

 

[archie4oz]

Definitely. PS1 really was something special and I wasn't suggesting otherwise - merely correcting BordBonobo on the idea the Amiga was the most powerful computer competition to PS1. Amiga's 3D was extra sucky. When PCs were running DOOM or Duke Nukem 3D, the Amiga had it's incredible thumbnail-sized 3D games likes Alien Breed 3D, with resolution akin to a ZX81!

Actually I'd even argue the Sharp X68K machines were even better (than the associated Amigas), at least hardware wise. That being said, you're comparing Doom (a game that debuted in '93 and required a 386 and 4MB of RAM (and typically had VGA cards that offered anywhere from 256K to 1MB of frame-buffer storage) to games that were targeted to be able to be run on an A500 (which shipped in '87 and had 512K of RAM and a 7MHz 68K), which was discontinued by '92. If you were doing stuff for say the A4000 then it was an entirely different ball game.

Did you rememebr when it was showed and in what conference? Any videos of this conference?

My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I believe it was around Nov. 1993. The hardware was pretty much done by late summer/early fall, and Sony first showed it off to Namco (my roommate's older brother worked for Namco), then after a few weeks showed it off to several other studios. Actually at the time, nobody was interested in supporting the Playstation (Sony was going around pretty much begging every developer they could to dev for it, and nobody would give them the time of day). It was pretty much Sony coming in and showing off the T-rex demo on a piece of hardware that blew away their current System21 board (remember Namco was fierce battle in the arcades with Sega) in which Sony was claiming they were going to be selling for around $400. That pretty much caused Namco to do a 180° and get on board with the Playstation. Once Namco was on board, a lot of other studios followed suit.

Was the Playstation really that powerful? We got a 100 MHz Pentium-powered PC right around the time the Playstation came out,

And what did that cost? My bro' bought a Pentium pretty new for £1000+.

Just for frame of reference, in March 1995 I picked up a Pentium 100 system with 16MB of RAM, an ATI Mach64 GDI accelerator w/2MB VRAM (along with the annoying COM4 whoring legacy behavior), an Ensoniq SoundscapeELITE sound card, a 14.4 modem, a 1GB Western Digital IDE HDD, a Mitsumi FX-004 4x CD-ROM drive, the requisite 3.5" floppy, and a 17" Mag DX-17F monitor, PS/2 mouse, and a rather dandy 124-key PS/2 keyboard... All for the bargain base price of $4100 USD.

Also with its R3000 33Mhz it was really powerful I think. I think that SDK was at low level programmability too, wasn't it?

It wasn't so much the R3000 being powerful (it was roughly comparable to a 486DX2-50 (sans an FPU). What really made the difference was the GTE and MDEC.

I was just responding to claims like "It threw around polys like no other home hardware at the time." No one was talking about price/performance, so I wasn't, either.

"At the time..." At the time (when the system launched), you could get was a 100MHz Pentium with a Matrox Impression Plus (that could move around 190K gouraud shaded triangles/sec.). When the hardware was completed, you couldn't even get that at the time.

 

[swaaye]

In March 1995 I had a Am5x86 160 MHz, 32 MB RAM, 1.2 GB HDD, VLB Number Nine Motion 771 (S3 968). I was way more into PC games at the time. TIE Fighter, Wing Commander III, Dark Forces, etc. Actually, March 1995 was when Dark Forces arrived. I remember seeing PS1's premier at Best Buy and being rather un-fascinated. I also remember wanting the 32X Star Wars arcade. Heh heh.

Consoles were barely on the radar. I didn't truly appreciate the new 3D console experience until Goldeneye, honestly. Super Mario 64 was super cool for a Mario platformer though. I played a good bit of Waverace 64 and Pilotwings 64 too though.

Archie, I still have my Ensoniq Soundscape ELITE in the drawer on my left here. (Don't tell anyone, but I built a DX2/66 a few days ago too)

 

[archie4oz]

You sure that's not March 1996? AMD didn't start shipping Am5x86's until November 1995...

 

[Fox5]

Oh I definitely think Sony did an awesome job marketing the machine. But, I don't think it was all that huge initially. They hit the ground running big time, throwing huge amounts of cash no doubt at getting devs onboard. That is their most distinctive advantage I think. They had the muscle to really push the machine. Tons of money and experience in consumer electronics, and Ken Kutaragi was really on top of how to make a game machine work.

I don't really think the hardware was all that stunning though. If it had arrived in the US in '94, I'd think differently. But, N64 was certainly way more impressive and not that far behind in release date. Too bad it was limited by the carts. Saturn did some things basically as well as PS1, IMO.

I really had a hard time stomaching PS1's texture mapping issues and pixelization. I was spoiled by Voodoo1 and N64 though. I didn't get into PS1 at all until probably '97, when I wanted Gran Turismo.


Well, there you go! Cool.

At the time, I thought N64 kind of blew PSX away, but both are pretty gawdawful in retrospec. Though n64 games cleaned up on the wii's VC aren't too bad once hi res and proper filtering is thrown in, but texture quality and polygon counts are still horrible.

 

[Simon82]

It wasn't so much the R3000 being powerful (it was roughly comparable to a 486DX2-50 (sans an FPU). What really made the difference was the GTE and MDEC.

.

Thanx for the Namco story..

For the CPU, I was thinking it had good raw power. The GTE is indeed a sort of FPU 3D customized unit, isn't? And from what I remember does it was included INSIDE the central processor?

 

[Sdw]

Cool to see the video of the T-Rex demo, must have been quite impressive back in '94!
Anyone know approx. what resolution it ran at?

 

[Phil]

I'm not sure when I got my Pentium 133 MHz, but I do know that the games I played on it were a far cry from what was coming out on the PlayStation at the time. Ridge Racer made quite an impression. Still, I decided to stay on the PC and simply gave the nod to games like Crash Bandicoot, yet didn't really interest me. It was when Tomb Raider came out and the PlayStation not only had the better version, it ran a lot smoother than on my PC that changed everything. Then in 1997, I joined the PlayStation club...

 

[PARANOiA]

I had this Some good memories there... going from the Megadrive to that T-rex rocked. Wasn't there another demo on that disc of similar quality? A whale or something?

Keep in mind it was just one model against a black background that just did the same canned animation over and over. Don't expect that on a game with a background, AI, and additional models, etc.

Funny seeing people now claiming it's fake though

 

[Darkon]

I had this Some good memories there... going from the Megadrive to that T-rex rocked. Wasn't there another demo on that disc of similar quality? A whale or something?

A manta ray