I recently came across this article, "Could Bubsy 3D on Sony Playstation been a better looking game?" (http://mgarcia.org/2018/06/05/could-bubsy-3d-on-sony-playstation-been-a-better-looking-game/) from the website blog by Mike MGarcia (http://mgarcia.org/?blog=1).
It's an interesting analysis of Bubsy 3D and the Playstation's early development library woes. One of the intriguing points that the author illustrates is that Bubsy 3D is a single-buffered open-world PS1 game running at one of its highest resolutions of 512x480. From the research that I've done, Bubsy 3D may well be the only 3D Playstation game running at a full 480 line frame buffer, albeit only single-buffered. Heck, this was a feat that even PS2 would have trouble with in its early life! From my experience, Bubsy 3D has a very sharp/clean image and runs at a mostly locked 30 fps. See VRAM viewer image below:
http://mgarcia.org/2018/06/05/could...me/Sony_Playstation_files/DfQEqNUVAAA0jwF.jpg
This is fairly intriguing to me as I assumed that modern 3D console games were almost required to run a double-buffer setup to prevent serious screen artifacts and display glitches. Understandably, Bubsy's flat-shaded aesthetic is extremely primitive which likely explains Eidetic's leeway, but I'm curious if anyone has any insight on the other drawbacks, limitations, or advantages to going with a simple single-buffer setup. Did the developer have to really hold back the polygon budget to insure that there were plentiful triangles to spare for the next frame cycle? Perhaps restrict textures to a certain minimal size to preserve any and all fill-rate? Thoughts?
It's an interesting analysis of Bubsy 3D and the Playstation's early development library woes. One of the intriguing points that the author illustrates is that Bubsy 3D is a single-buffered open-world PS1 game running at one of its highest resolutions of 512x480. From the research that I've done, Bubsy 3D may well be the only 3D Playstation game running at a full 480 line frame buffer, albeit only single-buffered. Heck, this was a feat that even PS2 would have trouble with in its early life! From my experience, Bubsy 3D has a very sharp/clean image and runs at a mostly locked 30 fps. See VRAM viewer image below:
http://mgarcia.org/2018/06/05/could...me/Sony_Playstation_files/DfQEqNUVAAA0jwF.jpg
This is fairly intriguing to me as I assumed that modern 3D console games were almost required to run a double-buffer setup to prevent serious screen artifacts and display glitches. Understandably, Bubsy's flat-shaded aesthetic is extremely primitive which likely explains Eidetic's leeway, but I'm curious if anyone has any insight on the other drawbacks, limitations, or advantages to going with a simple single-buffer setup. Did the developer have to really hold back the polygon budget to insure that there were plentiful triangles to spare for the next frame cycle? Perhaps restrict textures to a certain minimal size to preserve any and all fill-rate? Thoughts?