Why are handhelds so.......weak?

[Almasy]

You know the world is indeed a sad place when people can´t recognize a joke anymore.

 

[Fafalada]

As rough as last-gen game graphics are, a bump in definition makes a noticeable improvement for that gen comparatively.

Against low resolutions maybe, not between two. I will grant you that on digital display with no overscan it'd be a more notable difference - but that's irellevant for the topic I think.

And two, I can't comment on PS2 FMV because I don't think I've ever seen any. I only play the system when someone else has it set up, and it's already into the gameplay sections by then.

Either way the difference is next to non existant short of seeing two same displays running 720 and 640 side by side. I am pretty sure even most people in my company have no idea we use 720 there.

 

[chaphack]

Isnt 720x480 consider widescreen?

 

[Crazyace]

Just checked my docs ( very dusty )

Hi Lazy8s,

Actually checking my docs for NTSC ( which is what you are using ) the screen modes for the Saturn are as follows:

320x224 : 352x224 : 320x240 : 352x240
320x448i : 352x448i : 320x480i : 352x480i
640x224 : 704x224 : 640x240 : 704x240
640x448i : 704x448i : 640x480i : 704x480i

For PAL only resolutions of 512i are supported for VDP2 only ( VDP1 is still only 480i, but can be centred on the screen )

It was only for PAL that the 704x576i full overscan numbers came from - as you can see the difference is only the display format..

For your NTSC display the difference tween PS1 and Saturn is only the horizontal resolution ( Still 10% but not the huge leap you claim.. )

( It's been so long since I played with this - It was almost the first piece of coding, to set up a stable screen mode, and the really annoying japanese register list for VDP2 made it quite annoying )

 

[maskrider]

I'd never mistake those two resolutions modes - it's like night and day to me.

Uh...
Our game (and afaik many, probably most other PS2 titles) runs FMV in 720x480 and frankly, I might as well never know about it if I didn't write the playback code and known about resolution of the movies.

And I seriously doubt most of you here realized this until just now either - about FMV in PS2 games in general (people that ripped PSS movies before don't apply).

I suppose one might be able to tell difference between 720 and 640 on close observation having them run side by side...
but...
night and day...?

Didn't touch this thread until this moment that I was indeed going to turn off my PC. I will provide some data here as I have to resampled all of them to 720x480 in order to create my FMV DVD.

FF-X FMVs are in 704x480
FF-XI FMV is in 640x320
FF-X-2 FMVs are in 640x416
Almost all Onimusha/Onimusha2 FMVs are in 640x360
Zero in 597x448
Ape Escape 2 in 597x448

DVD MPEG2 resolutions are 720x480 (NTSC) and 720x576 (PAL). That 720 pixels can be widescreen or standard screen (4:3), depends on the flags in the MPEG2 header. But movies will normally not use full width.

edit: and the difference between 640 and 720 is definitely not night and day to your usual TV or small computer monitors. Difference in effective vertical resolution will be a lot more apparent.

 

[Lazy8s]

Sorry for the lateness.

The screen displays from which I'm drawing reference have always been NTSC. NTSC game experience only.

Many PS and Saturn games on my TV show small borders on the top/bottom and more prominent ones on the sides. VF2 and Decathlete, though, cover the screen from side to side while remaining centered. It's not so much the change in the screen space I notice... the picture just looks more defined.

Yes, I know the difference in practice isn't the full spec I implied - certainly not the whole PAL display. Though between resolution modes, the difference is visible to me; I was just referencing the disparity in numbers to set some grounding for tangibility. Because with overscan and viewing area of display devices, there's no set standard for what you'll be getting.

I think I was accidentally saying Fighting Vipers in place of Last Bronx up there a few times. Last Bronx does have some kind of edge of sharpness, yet it still looks like they chose a res mode just a notch down from VF2. The definition doesn't appear quite as high, and it benefits from a lot more background structural geometry and not such stark brightness (though the street environments are grittier and feature night-time).

Crazyace:

Historically the reason that Sega promised full screen PAL conversions actually had more to do with the limitations of the VDP1 chip than anything else... On the PS1 the frame buffer positions were fully programmable, so they were often packed as close to eachover as possible, with textures and CLUTs filling the rest of the vram. On the saturn VDP1 the 1MB was segmented, with 512k for textures and polylists, and 2 seperate 256k video buffers which were switched by hardware, and inaccessable for other uses. So Japanese games often wasted memory which was then available to increase the frame buffer sizes for PAL conversions. If games companies had spent the effort full frame PAL versions were technically possible for PS1 - but PAL was considered a smaller market, so quick ports were made.

Interesting. Like a parallel of this generation - Sony provides the programmability without the structure for uniformity, so there's not a set of consistent standards for all games in territories and for features akin to Dreamcast's/Xbox's progressive scan library.

 

[Crazyace]

Further explanation...

Lazy8s,

What you are probally noticing more is the change from 224(448i) to 240(480i) vertically ( giving an overscanned area top and bottom ) and the change from 640 to 704 ( giving an overscanned area left and right )

For the 8 and 16 bit consoles the common screen res was 224, with 240 for PAL... ( and the Atari 400/800 commonly supported 192 lines as standard with 224 considered overscan.. )
When you play DC games on the TV how do the borders compared with the Saturn games as the DC is uniformly 480i - or PS2 games which are very often 448i.
The main difference between last bronx and VF2 for me is the extra solidity in Last bronx - In VF2 the ring seems to be completely disconnected from the scrolling background, whereas in last bronx everything is much more solid ( apart from the odd drop in framerate. )

 

[Lazy8s]

Crazyace:

When you play DC games on the TV how do the borders compared with the Saturn games

My order for a VGA Box shipped even before I first got a Dreamcast system, so I've used it on a monitor almost exclusively since Day 1. From the short, begrudging stints of when I did try it on my TV, I played some Rez and vaguely recall not being too aware of screen size/resolution. Not unexpected considering Rez's picture is wireframes over black backgrounds many times. That doesn't create clear boundaries of where the picture ends against the screen area - dark space transitioning into itself. With other games I recall, I guess it felt pretty sharp for TV display (probably from the sharper-than-last-gen textures), but I believe, regarding borders, I mainly noticed that the borders on the top/bottom of the TV were at least minimized if not unnoticeable.

The system I do play on my TV a lot is Xbox, and I can't say I notice much in the way of borders on most games. They seem to set overscan more/further - a game like DOA3 fills the viewing area quite well.

 

[Lazy8s]

Crazyace:

The main difference between last bronx and VF2 for me is the extra solidity in Last bronx - In VF2 the ring seems to be completely disconnected from the scrolling background, whereas in last bronx everything is much more solid ( apart from the odd drop in framerate. )

Yeah, VF2 had some high flicker, too, in its mode with its bright colors.

 

[Fox5]

Wow, this topic went on for quite a while after I left. And I've now learned that the saturn and the psx are the most powerful pieces of hardware ever, and a small increase in res is worth more than anything else, even on a tv that can't display a res that high.(well, at least I wouldn't expect it to, as using the screen resize option in confidential mission on dreamcast, my tv over s video was only able to display like 600x440, however that could be because the screen is curved and maybe on a flat screen I'd get a full picture, but I doubt a tv from 5 years ago could do any better)

http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid70/p362ffe347856e719d394d18ab68ed132/fb9f3b45.jpg.orig.jpg

Now, does that hi res saturn virtua fighter 2 look better than either of these?(not sure what res these are at, but I think 640x480) I'd like to know how they compare to the saturn vf2, but I couldn't find any large pictures from the saturn. BTW, these are from the pc version, the left one running at a quality that no pc at the time would have been able to run, and the right one probably would have run at a low speed. Well, with a 3d accelerator card, the left one could have been done except for the hires background.(I think it defaults to low res if you run it 3d accelerated) On the left side, the floor and character models are 3d acclerated, and the models are model 2 models, and the res is...well, higher than model 2 res. The right one I think is the same, except for with standard vf2 models, and no 3d acceleration.(I believe the ground is still high quality though) Of course, I don't expect there to be any comparision between the left one and the saturn version, as that would mean the saturn version looked better than the arcade version.(though with the res difference they had....it may have)

Edit: Eh...should work just by copying and pasting the link.

 

[zurich]

Picture was blocked :?

 

[Tagrineth]

fox, the Saturn version has slightly nicer looking models and/or shading, it seems.

 

[Fox5]

Than the picture on the right I assume. Well, shouldn't surprise me too much as the picture on the right would probably run on a pentium 133 with 16 MB of ram, and many people consider VF2 one of the saturn's best looking games. Wish I could see a hi res saturn shot though. BTW, the PC and saturn versions seem to handle transparency the same, if you look at the checkered/transparent background behind the names, and in the ending of virtua fighter 2.(at least, I think that is how the saturn's transparency looked)

 

[Tagrineth]

Than the picture on the right I assume.

No, I meant in general. The models themselves look very poorly shaded on both of those screens. Quad boundaries are extremely visible. They're very nicely shaded on the Saturn... I'll take a photograph later and pray that it looks OK.

Well, shouldn't surprise me too much as the picture on the right would probably run on a pentium 133 with 16 MB of ram, and many people consider VF2 one of the saturn's best looking games. Wish I could see a hi res saturn shot though. BTW, the PC and saturn versions seem to handle transparency the same, if you look at the checkered/transparent background behind the names, and in the ending of virtua fighter 2.(at least, I think that is how the saturn's transparency looked)

Saturn has two 28.6MHz SH-2's, and one former employee from AM2 said they got about 80% more work out of the twin terrors than they would have from a single 53.2MHz SH-2.

 

[Fox5]

Well, I still doubt that the polygon count is higher on the saturn than in the leftt picture, as they are supposed to be model 2 models. Now then, as for the shading....well, maybe that's a limit of directx 3, a bad port, looks better in motion than still, or some combination there of.

 

[Tagrineth]

http://steelkiel.tripod.com/vf2flash.jpg
http://steelkiel.tripod.com/vf2noflash.jpg
http://steelkiel.tripod.com/vf2sarah.jpg
http://steelkiel.tripod.com/vf2kage.jpg

First two are an attempt at reproducing your screens as closely as possible.

Third and fourth are close-ups of Sarah and Kage.

Admittedly, the TV's quality isn't very good (and it's over an RF signal), but you can see the shading is much more even.

I'll take pictures from my reverse-projection TV when I can (parents are watching something).

I wonder... with ATi's CATALYST drivers, if I put this All-in-Wonder Rage 128 Pro in my system, would there be any hassles? It'd be nice if I could use that to get some direct screen captures...

 

[Fox5]

Shading looks better, but I wouldn't say models do. I'd say the models look the same as the ones on the right, but with good shading.(the model 2 models have semi free flowing hair on sarah, which I doubt the saturn had)

 

[Tagrineth]

It does

 

[Fox5]

Well then AM2 did a very very good job.

 

[Tagrineth]

A former AM2 employee who worked on VF2 Saturn said they got about 80% more work out of the dual 28.6MHz SH-2's than they would have if they'd only had one 53.2MHz SH-2. Not sure if that's true but that's what I heard.