Was GC more or less powerful than PS2? *spawn

[Mobius1aic]

All the trees in the background here : http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2003/news/09/23/transformers/transformers_screen015.jpg

Identical clones of some 3 tree images, and you're saying they're not 2D sprites?!

I just noticed what looked like a multi-polygon layer for the white water rapid misting, you know like how Shadow of the Colossus' "volumetric" fur on the colossi themselves?

Back on proper topic, does anyone have any FPU numbers in terms of how many extra raw polygons it could theoretically add in addition to the Flipper in the GC if it's usable as such? Couldn't it be used to handle shadowing like with a theoretical Doom 3 port (though probably at too much cost to other calcs necessary)?

 

[Nesh]

So just because they look identical they are 2D? Have you even play the game yet Shifty? If you did then you would've know that - once you explore the forest in TF - all of the trees are rendered in 3D. Please play the game first

You are right and wrong at the same time but thats because you dont understand what you are looking at.
Yes probably the jungle's trees are 3D once you try to examine them at a certain distance. But that doesnt mean they arent swapped with 2D trees when viewed from a distance.
Its impossible for the PS2 to have every visible tree rendered in 3D at all times. Its a basic application of LOD to save resources.
It is still a good achievement on the PS2 though since vegetation is dense and pretty much thats the same method almost all games have been using at the time to show dense vegetation.
Still I sense some pro PS2 bias in your arguments which I doubt match the facts in terms of performance compared to the GC

 

[Shifty Geezer]

So just because they look identical they are 2D?

Laughing only shows your technical ignorance, I'm afraid. the fact the trees look 3D up close is simply a matter of LOD. They are 2D billboarded sprites in the distance, swapped in to tree models at a suitable distance. It's the same sort of thing as the famous 65535 enemies on screen at once Ikugami:

[gt]7873[/gt]


A thousand trees uses 4000 vertices. through in a few properly modelled trees up front and the illusion works while racing around in your car. If there's anything you want to highlight as impressive in that Transformers vid, the grass is certainly dense; way better than this gen. But that's a matter of a PS2's awesome alpha and overdraw abilities with unshaded polygons. It could layer simple quads of grass til the cows came home (and ate them). Being very strong in one field didn't make the Ps2 the most powerful overall (nor necessarily made it the weakest; hence these eternal comparisons that cannot be resolved despite people still going on with them ).

 

[Mobius1aic]

I noticed the very dense grass too. Very very impressive. All this 3D transition to 2D talk makes me want to play Far Cry

 

[I.S.T.]

Bump-mapping in RE4? The only bump mapping that I notice in RE4 is Leon and Ashley belts and some of the barrels. Its poly count is also lesser when compare to MGS3 due to much smaller, linear, and lifeless environments and a complete lack of any vegetation and foliage.


Transformers for the PS2 is another excellent example of the PS2's capability - it has massive environment, insane poly count, highly detailed textures, awesome particle effect, and smooth frame rate.

Smooth frame rate? Play the first level again. Anytime enemies pop up in the beginning area of it, you lose at least five FPS.

I've noticed this on different PS2s and different copies of the game, brand new, used, etc.

Other levels have slowdown at times too(That artic level's portion where there's a ton of snowstorms for instance).

 

[inlimbo]

RE4 uses pseudo pre-baked lighting whereas MGS3's are largely in real time. Simply look at how the sun light in MGS3 shine through the trees & leaves and then cast their shadow on Snake! This show just how amazing MGS3's lighting is.

At the risk of dragging this out further than it demands, the canopy shadows you see in MGS3 are not real-time. They're a simple seamless texture layer scrolled over individual dynamic objects as they move in areas with heavy tree coverage. It's an efficient trick that has the benefit of looking nice and fairly realistic even when it isn't accurate. That's not to say MGS3 doesn't have its share of real-time lighting, because it does and it even sports true real-time shadows at key points in-game, which RE4 lacks completely from what I remember.

And I'm generally more of a fan of MGS3 visually (even the muddy textures have their appeal to me), but I'd say RE4 and MGS3 are about on par with different tradeoffs playing to different strengths. RE4 has the edge in single moments and straight screenshots, but MGS3 does truly feel alive and interactive, though this has little to do with base graphics tech. It's more that the attention to detail in MGS3 is staggering - aside MGS2/4, it's among the handful of games that model and physically simulate shell casings with fixed number allowed to remain in the environment at all times with no fadeout.

What I always thought was cool about RE4, though, considering its textural inconsistently was brought up earlier, is how it was willing to sacrifice texture resolution for variety and scope of detail. It was basically taking a vaguely "megatexture" approach back in 2005, even if the texture pipeline was still traditional. It got me hyped to think of what more devs could do if they were willing to make the res sacrifices necessary, since I've never cared about resolution for purity's sake. I'll always take the variety over the definition in that regard, because it's the overall look that matters to me more than the individual pieces or the need to look at an HD wall.

Of course, plenty of devs did and do make those sacrifices, just maybe not to the extremes I'd like to see.

 

[Teasy]

He said it wasn't the real number. The important point was that it had pathetic triangle throughput given lighting and clipping considerations. If someone told me they didn't remember the PS2's actual triangle throughput I'd probably believe them - and it wouldn't mean they wrong about the point they actually wanted to make.

As I said its not about not remembering a specific number. Nothing at the time or since has given me the impression that GameCube's poly throughput was pathetic for its time (quite the opposite), I'm not going to leap into believing that now because one person said it. I just take the comments for what they are, one persons experience with the system, nothing definitive.

I think RS probably did play to the strengths of Gamecube though, which only adds to my being happy to entertain the idea that the PS2 may be more powerful. Other developers played to the Gamecube's strengths and didn't make it look like the GC had a strength deficit compared to the PS2.

Are you suggesting that GameCube games only looked as good (or better IMO) as PS2's offerings because some developers played to GameCubes strengths? If so, every system has games designed for its particular architecture, games that play to the strengths and avoid the weaknesses in order to get the best results out of the system. You can'y say that GameCube had these but PS2 didn't..

Multi platform games on the other hand tend not to play to the strengths of any single console, or much less often anyway. Yet despite most multi platform games being focused primarily on PS2 the massive majority still looked better on GameCube.

Barren and ugly environment ---> [Loading new level] ----> On the forest floor, draw distance of 5 trees. At least that's what I remember. I was being made to watch someone else play at the time. My game definitely had some barren and ugly snow bit, some awful on-foot bits, and some barren and ugly dirt bit that was also an awful on-foot bit. Urgh.

[Edit]Been researching (looking at videos on Youtube), and while the on foot sections were every bit as awful as I remember some of the flying bits are rather better than I remember, so I was being unfairly harsh. I still don't see it as one of the best GC games though and all the stuff about rigid models stands.[/Edit]

IMO its a fantastic looking game. Even the ground missions had some excellent effects despite the poor animations. Loads of enemies, good draw distance (Hoth in the snow). Lasers flying everywhere each with its own light being cast on characters/objects/ground, self shadowing, even clouds drifting by and casting shadows on the ground as they went. Also while the ground texture was repeating, it was still a nice looking bump mapped texture which I hadn't seen in many games like that before at the time. The space missions were definitely the best part though.

 

[almighty]

I always thought star fox adventures was one of the best looking game cube games and certainly did things that i never really seen ps2 do.

 

[function]

As I said its not about not remembering a specific number. Nothing at the time or since has given me the impression that GameCube's poly throughput was pathetic for its time (quite the opposite), I'm not going to leap into believing that now because one person said it.

I've never seen anything suggesting he's wrong about what he said. That includes the Factor Five PR stuff about poly counts - rigid boxes over undulating terrain would seem like it's designed to save the CPU from any kind of assistance on T&L while simultaneous making CPU clipping much easier and much faster. Same for a limited number of localised, point light sources (lasers) with a small radius - like it was designed for fixed function T&L hardware.

Nope, seems like ERP was onto something to me.

Multi platform games on the other hand tend not to play to the strengths of any single console, or much less often anyway. Yet despite most multi platform games being focused primarily on PS2 the massive majority still looked better on GameCube.

But not because of the Gamecube handling geometry better. And to stress this point again - I think GC looked better most of the time.

 

[inlimbo]

I always thought star fox adventures was one of the best looking game cube games and certainly did things that i never really seen ps2 do.

I wouldn't go that far. It was flashy and held a smooth 60fps for its time, but that flash relied on a few brute force hardware tricks. Take the water, for instance: you've got it running on a sine wave loop, it's refracting its surroundings a little bit, and there's a shader in fox's wake - but it's left at that. Better games, and this goes for the cube, ps2 and xbox, pushed these details further rather than leave them as tech showcases. I'm very fond of Star Fox Adventures, but unlike its Dinosaur Planet incarnation, it plays safe. It's for that reason it's occasionally bland and lifeless visually.

 

[almighty]

I wouldn't go that far. It was flashy and held a smooth 60fps for its time, but that flash relied on a few brute force hardware tricks. Take the water, for instance: you've got it running on a sine wave loop, it's refracting its surroundings a little bit, and there's a shader in fox's wake - but it's left at that. Better games, and this goes for the cube, ps2 and xbox, pushed these details further rather than leave them as tech showcases. I'm very fond of Star Fox Adventures, but unlike its Dinosaur Planet incarnation, it plays safe. It's for that reason it's occasionally bland and lifeless visually.

Looks quite awesome when emulated

Sure it's missing a few shadows and other little things but I think it holds up quite well.

 

[inlimbo]

Eh, you're right. It does impress me against my better (deficient?) instincts. Wish I had the CPU to emulate it. And wish rare would've had more time to work on it.

 

[powerflower]

Eh, you're right. It does impress me against my better (deficient?) instincts. Wish I had the CPU to emulate it. And wish rare would've had more time to work on it.

Heads up,even on a quite powerful system like CoreI7 with 16GB Ram and a 680 GTX there are some minor slowdowns on F-ZeroGX,because the emulator is still under development.

So you have some time to safe money for a good PC

 

[powerflower]

Hello everybody

I had to sign in right now to get some things straight,haha!

First of all,the PS2 is/was in many many ways the most pathetic console ever released!

And with ever I mean in comparison to all japanese consoles I posess since Sega Master System including PC-Engine and Neo Geo AES/MVS and some JAMMA PCBs (nearly all early adopted and in the japanese version) .Of course with all the AAA+ games,you name it.
So I think I know exactly what I'm talking about

But to fire up this funny (no pun intended) retro "wars"...

...the only good thing about the PS2 is the immense poly amount,and that's it,beside some very good games,but GC and XBox1 had them too.

High poly count alone doesn't make good looking games per se because interlace sucked,4MB VRam without HW compression sucked sooo very hard,programming was very difficult,and the whole arrogance of Sony(especially against Sega)sucked aswell.Oh and the CD/DVD drive (Sony style) was so much unreliable and sloooow omg!

But we're talking here on GC,right?
Oh this beautiful designed console...Even the gamepad was phantastic,loading times were killer(F-Zero) and texturing wonderful( StarFoxAdv.)Besides that no latency because of the lightning fast memory and interlace was flicker free like DC and XBox1. BTW all my consoles were jacked via RGB(SCART) to my CRT.

Now lets run F-Zero on Dolphin @1920x1080,it looks even today OUTSTANDING/RAZORSHARP textured,maybe one of the most perfect games ever created in every way.Now do that with any PS2 Game and see how sh...y the textures look like,the mass of polys doesn't change the picture,not at all.

Or let's look on the phantastic 60fps Sonic2 on DC with it's brilliant texures,no way to realise that on PS2,no way folks. But again it's GC time and I wanted to say that the overall performace was faaaar superior to PS2,period!

Were are the good times when Big N was a real console manufacturer,not to mention the brilliant DC with it's most innovative games/concepts.How dare anyone to consider the PS2 as anything good except quite a lot of good games.

Sorry,but that had to be said

 

[powerflower]

@inlimbo

the only bad thing you probably never can fix even on such a powerful HW is inputlag/delay especially with V-Sync turned on

F-ZeroGX looks killer @FullHD with SSAA and 16xAF,sooo killer unbelievable!!

But I prefer playing it via SCART RGB on my 50" Panny plasma because it's really more responsive.

Only emulator I know that kills nearly perfect inputlag is a special MAME version that had to be taken out of the internet because Cave asked for it.

It's not shmup MAME and it emulates all Cave games including DeathSmiles
But thank god for the 360 and all the Cave shmups on it!

 

[powerflower]

Oops,I meant with RGB GC original.

Why can't I edit my post here?

 

[AlNom]

Why can't I edit my post here?

All in due time.

 

[Mobius1aic]

The DC was a well built machine for it's time with a very diverse and interesting library of titles, which the PS2 ended up matching and exceeding. There is a certain washed out look to many PS2 titles which I certainly don't like, and yes, many DC games texture wise put plenty of PS2 titles to shame, but in the end, the PS2's massive polygon and vector (for it's time) throughput would give it the capability to last 5+ years, and produce games that even with "inferior" but decent texturing, would still have a much better polygon count, and other effects like real stencil shadows and high fidelity game physics. Could the DC have ran titles like Ace Combat series, MGS3, Gran Turismo 3/4, Shadow of the Colossus or the Ratchet & Clanks without any significant downgrade? Absolutely not, and they are incredibly fantastic looking games, and hold up well today.

Gran Turismo 3 was out Spring 2001

Ace Combat 4, Final Fantasy 10, GTA3 and MGS2 were out by Christmas 2001

Relatively early titles.

Naomi 2 titles don't look that great to me to be honest. I'm sure the texturing was good and System16 screenshots don't do the games justice (I'm sure they are all 60 FPS), but they still don't look like anything ground breaking. While I'm sure interesting things could be done with the SH-4s' FPU being freed from geometry duties thanks to the Elan chip, the Emotion Engine had quite of GFLOPS to spare.

 

[powerflower]

Yeah your right on MGS/GT/Ace Combat.But how long did it take to see games like that?Indeed these are games highly optimised for the PS2 no doubt.Just look how modest RidgeRacer 5 looked in the beginning even from gods like Namco

It's a shame that Sega never made an upgrade ala Naomi2,which was unofficially announced by Sega for VirtuaFighter4.This Board (Naomi2) had indeed a T+L Chip and also a second PowerVR2 GPU and a second CPU on it with lots of memory.It had simply blown the PS2 away.BTW this board was capable to link up to 16 boards for multi monitoring OR putting all that power onto ONE monitor,simply an amazing/crazy HW.

Here some yummy details on that PCB:

http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=725

 

[function]

Naomi 2 would never have been cost effective for a home system - it only made sense for arcades because it allowed Sega to use parts they were buying and making in volume for the Dreamcast and Naomi 1. Pity the Elan T&L unit didn't get used more, it was pretty amazing for the time.

There was never a DC upgrade planned either - the DC didn't even have a suitable expansion port to plug one in to. The DC could have scaled up to be a considerably more capable system (the SH4 architecture could scale up to 400 mHz for instance, and 250 ~ 300 mHz is within easy reach of DC overclockers) but Sega didn't have the money to bleed on hardware and they wanted something small and toy-like. Amazing by 1998 standards though, especially when you consider that the N64 came out only two years earlier in 1996.