"Turn every pixel into a polgyon"-renderer

"Our belief is Sony [PS3]] won't go with pixel shading, but will make every pixel a polygon and throw polygons at the problem. It's a different philosophy," Orton said.

http://www.planetanalog.com/news/OEG20030304S0007

I have no doubt that the PS3 will have a buttload of poly power, but enough to replace texturing all together? I quite
doubt it.

Even if it does, is this the best way to approach the problem?
3D simulation is all about finding the best 'hacks'. It would seem competitor products using polys+textures will be more efficient for some time to come.

Is this rendering everything with polys idea realistic or is Orton mistaken?
 
One point to remember is that we are talking TV resolutions here. 720x576-ish is only about 400k pixels - so if you can achieve 250M polys/sec that's enough for 10x overdraw of 1-pixel-polys...
 
Dio said:
One point to remember is that we are talking TV resolutions here. 720x576-ish is only about 400k pixels - so if you can achieve 250M polys/sec that's enough for 10x overdraw of 1-pixel-polys...


Most believe all next gen systems will run at HDTV resolutions; 720p or 1080i/p.
 
Rendering with polygons without textures is possible. However, you need adaptive tessellation and decent anti-aliasing to avoid excessive aliasing. On the other hand, if every pixel is covered by exactly one polygon, that would be very similar to pixel shading.
 
I'll believe HDTV when I see it. Because Euro TV standards are so much better than the NTSC it's a non-issue over here - there's no interest and no hardware.

OT rant: The move to all-MPEG by Sky and now Freeview... they need to get their act together. After watching the absolutely dreadful quality of encoding on BBC1's transmission of the FA cup semi-final on Sunday (because they were doing interactive; as with Sky, they don't seem to have worked out that if you're streaming 4 channels you need more bandwidth!) they need to sort themselves out. It was so bad even t'other half noticed the JPEG artifacts...
 
Dio said:
I'll believe HDTV when I see it. Because Euro TV standards are so much better than the NTSC it's a non-issue over here - there's no interest and no hardware.


There are a couple handfuls of Xbox games that are at 720p and I believe there is one at 1080i.
 
OT rant: The move to all-MPEG by Sky and now Freeview... they need to get their act together. After watching the absolutely dreadful quality of encoding on BBC1's transmission of the FA cup semi-final on Sunday (because they were doing interactive; as with Sky, they don't seem to have worked out that if you're streaming 4 channels you need more bandwidth!) they need to sort themselves out. It was so bad even t'other half noticed the JPEG artifacts...

I'll agree with you here. I wonder if some of the reason for the poor quality is the fact that most games in the UK are broadcast in widescreen as well? I'm pretty sure the vertical resolution is the same in the widescreen broadcasts but there will be an extra 33% horizontal resolution. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the quality isn't so hot?
 
Mariner said:
I'll agree with you here. I wonder if some of the reason for the poor quality is the fact that most games in the UK are broadcast in widescreen as well? I'm pretty sure the vertical resolution is the same in the widescreen broadcasts but there will be an extra 33% horizontal resolution. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the quality isn't so hot?

Yeah - that is what I was thinking. We have a large CRT (36") hooked up to an NTL box and use it letterbox mode pretty much all the time. Artifacting is very visible otherwise.

MuFu.
 
I find you can clearly see what are the 'high bitrate' channels and what's the low. On the skybox the 'premium' channels are all pretty good, plus the BBC, but as soon as anything has 'interactive' on it the quality goes to crap. Or if it's channel 5 :) I run widescreen all the time and don't find any problems.

Freeview is much more variable, because of the lower bandwidth. The cable boxes I've seen have all been pretty poor for picture quality.
 
Dio said:
I'll believe HDTV when I see it. Because Euro TV standards are so much better than the NTSC it's a non-issue over here - there's no interest and no hardware.
What - no interest!?!? Okay, PAL might be better than NTSC, but nevertheless I'm eagerly awaiting the DVD successor and HDTV. After all I'm a move junkie. The DVD quality is nice, but definately not nice enough.
 
madshi said:
Dio said:
I'll believe HDTV when I see it. Because Euro TV standards are so much better than the NTSC it's a non-issue over here - there's no interest and no hardware.
What - no interest!?!? Okay, PAL might be better than NTSC, but nevertheless I'm eagerly awaiting the DVD successor and HDTV. After all I'm a move junkie. The DVD quality is nice, but definately not nice enough.

Yeah I'd like one too. The problem is that the EU won't standardize on something until European industry (only Philips actually)is up to snuff. I'd like to adopt HDTV right now.

PAL TV is a flickering mess, if it's anti-flicker filtered it's a blurry mess. If you scan double it you're have a de-interlace mess. PAL just doesn't cut it, period.

Cheers
Gubbi
 
100Hz sorts it out on everything except h-scroll credits on mine...

My comment on 'no interest' wasn't necessarily 'nobody will buy it' but far more 'nobody will broadcast it'.
 
I don't think the quote is implying that they will replace texturing with vertex coloring only that they won't have per pixel shading capabilities. Movie quality animation often has more than one polygon per pixel. I think I remember reading that Pixar used the short Geri's Game to test subdivision surfaces that tessellated to about 4 triangles per pixel. Even in this case you still need multitexturing for some effects.
 
Sony is steadily building a reputation of having their Heads shoved all the way up their A$$. Like far.. past the neckline...

At least as far as hardware design goes. The PS2 design is one of the most in efficient, poorly concieved designes of all time. Which they have taken a butload of heat over. Yet now.. those brilliant people at Sony are about to even one up their last hardware fiasco. Sure times in PS2 developer land are ok now. After a couple years of the really brilliant developers making libraries, and rethinking the entire game making process for everyone else.

I predict that Sony has already forgotten the PS2's first couple years and is now going to launch the single most ill concieved, hard to develope for Aliased to Beyond hell mess anyone has ever seen. The writting is on the wall. There is no need at all for these guys to be taking the steps they are. How is it that they have not learned any lessons at all? Massive ammounts of pollygons do not make better graphics. Much greater depth and realism can be achieved with reasonable levels of pollygons coupled with High res textures, per pixel lighting and shadows, and of course Pixel shading routines for details.

I simply do not understand what is wrong with those guys at Sony. Dont they even talk to their developers fisrt? dont they care? Do they want every developer on earth to reinvent the wheel yet again? Why? It makes no sense at all.
 
In defense of Sony...

. The PS2 design is one of the most in efficient, poorly concieved designes of all time.

It's also doing the best (quite significantly, I believe) in sales for current gen consoles, and costs significantly less than the next-best selling X-Box that is a type of the platform you praise.

Sure times in PS2 developer land are ok now. After a couple years of the really brilliant developers making libraries, and rethinking the entire game making process for everyone else.

Well, that's the balancing act.

Obviously developers WILL take time to learn to develop on new console to some extent...mostly depending on the outlook for popularity of that console. The trick is not to "cross the line" so to speak. Every console IHV has some line past which developers will say "nah...not worth it." For Sony...the line is pushed furhter away than most: because they can. The circumstances for this round of consoles (Sony's Band and success of PS-One, and one year head start on X-Box), is what really allowed Sony to do what they did.

Microsoft, having no console brand and coming one year later, really had NO CHOICE but to have an easier development platform, otherwise they would have surely been doomed to failure.

And in terms of Brand, it's not looking to be much different for the PS3 - X-Box 2 war. Sony Playstation is still a helluva brand worldwide. X-Box has established itself as a good brand in the U.S. though. (I think in Europe too, though not in Japan at all IIRC.)

How is it that they have not learned any lessons at all?

What lesson? Making money hand over fist?

Much greater depth and realism can be achieved with reasonable levels of pollygons coupled with High res textures, per pixel lighting and shadows, and of course Pixel shading routines for details.

I would agree that perhaps better "still screen shot" realism can be achieved with the "pixle shading" approach....but there's also good reason to believe that "better animation" is soon to be approaching as the main differentiator in visual quality.

Do they want every developer on earth to reinvent the wheel yet again? Why?

Presumably, because it's cheaper. And if it's cheaper, and developers ARE willing to re-invent the wheel again, the question is, why not?

It makes no sense at all.

I disagree, it makes some sense, though for Sony in particular. It would make no sense for someone like Microsoft or any other "newcomer" in the console area who needs to establish a presense and brand.

And to be clear, if MS can get X-Box 2 on the market at roughly the same time (or even earlier than PS-3), and having comparable visuals, that will indeed make it tougher for developers to justify reinventing the wheel for PS-3 again. However, I'm just saying that based on the past, there's no reason to call what Sony is doing as stupid and not making sense.

Note: I own an X-Box and do not own a PS-2. ;)
 
Mariner said:
I'll agree with you here. I wonder if some of the reason for the poor quality is the fact that most games in the UK are broadcast in widescreen as well? I'm pretty sure the vertical resolution is the same in the widescreen broadcasts but there will be an extra 33% horizontal resolution. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the quality isn't so hot?

I don't think this should affect things. Widescreen PAL simply has wider pixels. The horizontal resolution (in terms of pixels across the screen) should be the same.

Does anyone know how the signals are transmitted from the sports stadium to the transmitter? Is there an extra compression/decompression stage or anything like that?

Either that or the codec they use simply doesn't handle sports partricularly well.
 
Let's not turn this into a Betamax versus VHS argument. Or an Amiga versus Mac/PC argument.

Sure, one company is marketing their product very successfully... and the kids of today eat those PS2 commercials like candy. That doesn't imply better hardware or better technical elegance, and it certainly doesn't imply that it is easier to write games for.

Let's just face the fact that the original playstation became an icon of youth culture, and that Sony would have to seriously screw up in order for that legacy to be lost.
 
I've got a great idea people - let's complain super loudly about how much the current PS3 design is complete crap, then maybe Sony will rethink it and nVidia will actually get a deal with them :devilish: j/k

But well, if Sony actually released some serious librairies and stuff to developers in order to get them started, it might actually be quite good, you know. But if they don't... :(


Uttar
 
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