Silent hill 3 WTF!!!

Yeah, it sure stopped all those great looking console games to, well, look great

 

Well obviously the art isn't going to change

 

Eh? How'm I wrong?

You can't move the camera at all. You can zoom in, and THEN you can move the camera, but only because you're looking at exactly the same stuff, zoomed in.

Because the engine knows where you've going to be looking at all times, it doesn't even need to do T&L on the fly - I read on here a while back the GS is just fed data sets that were pre-compiled.

Have you played MGS2 Teasy? Have you seen the ending?

The cut-scenes are visually MUCH more impressive than the gameplay stuff. There are scenes with 30+ characters, each looking as detailed as Snake.

 

What you suggest would give you a Flash movie effect (all zooming or panning would be nice and 2d), not to mention the data size for a reasonably large scene would make it pretty much impossible to do without a SCSI HDD to stream the data fast enough.

Which isn't really the case in MGS. From what I understand it's using 'pre-compiled' display lists in cutscenes (so everything can be boiled down to a DMA send into VU1&GS without any other work from rest of the system), not pre-transformed vertices.

And running at ~20 fps.

 

"You can't move the camera at all. You can zoom in, and THEN you can move the camera, but only because you're looking at exactly the same stuff, zoomed in. "

In the upcoming 'making of MGS2' DVD, they have a section where you can edit and freely move camera around in every MGS2 cutscene.

 

Regardless, my original point still stands. The graphics in the cut-scenes are a significant amount better than gameplay graphics.

Faf: 20+fps? Locked 30fps minimum, much like the rest of the game.

And what's the difference between a display list, and transformed vertices?

 

"Locked 30fps minimum, much like the rest of the game."

Cut scenes in MGS2: 30FPS
Gameplay: 60FPS

 

Well I don't really know for sure, I just remember slowdown in some cutscenes and since a number of cutscenes are also 30fps to begin with, it might drop lower every now and then. But I couldn't say for sure, I didn't really pay that much attention.

Well the way I understand the term "display list", it can basically be described as a list of data&commands fed to a graphics subsystem.
In case of say, PowerVR, it does include transformed vertices, since the chip is a rasterizer.

But newer graphics subsystems are designed to do much more then just rasterization, so you'll rarely include any transformed geometry into their display lists at all.
And much like you have texture state commands that reference textures that will be used, on some of the newer systems you can reference vertex data the same way, not having to physically include it in the list.

On PS2, VU1&GS usually operate as an independant subsystem that can be entirely controlled by such a list. (leaving the rest of the system free to do whatever, as is the general idea behind "GPU"s )

 

Right. Well it's the same deal though right - it means you can maximise the system's polygon pushing potential yeah?

 

New wonderful movies! The graphics are sublime, especially the faces! The textures are good en de light and shadowaffects are well done! The most beautiful game on PS2 tot date?

http://ps2movies.ign.com/ps2/video/sh3_0116_1.mov
http://ps2movies.ign.com/ps2/video/sh3_0116_2.mov --> man that dog is scary! :?
http://ps2movies.ign.com/ps2/video/sh3_0116_3.mov
http://ps2movies.ign.com/ps2/video/sh3_0116_4.mov
http://ps2movies.ign.com/ps2/video/sh3_0116_5.mov
http://ps2movies.ign.com/ps2/video/sh3_0116_6.mov --> beautiful and realtime!
http://ps2movies.ign.com/ps2/video/sh3_0116_7.mov
http://ps2movies.ign.com/ps2/video/sh3_0116_8.mov --> is that bumpmapping on the walls?? wow!
http://ps2movies.ign.com/ps2/video/sh3_0116_9.mov
http://ps2movies.ign.com/ps2/video/sh3_0116_10.mov

 

About 2.mov, kind of an extreme measure just because a dog is humping your leg.

I think they could open up the potential audience more if they have a mode (a war monger mode, if you will) where you get to use some cool weaponary instead of just a feeble, sharp object in your hand.

 

Randy, in some of the older SH3 trailers, you could see your character using a machine gun, causing some serious damage on enemies So worry not, heavier weaponry is in game this time.

I have just watched those videos, and holly crap... this game is definitely going to be one of the best looking games, regardless of platform, when it gets released later this year.

 

Machine guns?! Ya can't battle native evil with just bullets! (Though a grenade launcher certainly would be cool 8) ) Might as well just hold up a holy cross at it and hope that kills it!

 

I saw a high-res screenshot of Silent Hill 3 today, and all of a sudden I was a lot less impressed.

It's good looking, but nothing that's going to murder the competition..

 

Haven't we been through this shit before? PR shots are always high res for promotional purposes, but that doesn't change the fact that the game looks great. FFS.

 

Some of the new high res screens. Obviously the game is designed to work in 640x resolution, not in something this high, where every polygon edge can become visible (problem with all PC games in my humble opinion)

 

That is some mad Kah-razy scenery!

 

Nex gorEgeous screens!

 

Pretty conlusive exemple of what talent and design can do to an obsolete hardware.
I think ICo team has been the first to design 'with' the hardware ,and not against. I hope to see more of that phenomen later in ps2 's life span.

edit: *keyboard dislexy*

 

Nod, the lighting in the videos is almost as good as the Xbox SH2's perpixel flashlight.