Why the bad PS2 filtering?

[CosmoKramer]

I bought a PS2 two days ago along with the following games; FFX, MGS2 , GT3, DMC and BGA. My impressions so far:

FFX: 3 hours into the game. At first underwhelmed with the graphics but it's getting better all the time and the superb art direction makes up for much. The first time I've ever played a japanese RPG. Very engrossing story.

MGS2: Haven't really played much, but one thing is for certain - I hate the controls. As this is 2003 I find the graphics pretty lackluster, but like FFX art direction makes up for much. Probably looked great when it was released.

GT3: Very addictive which is all that matters really. Still, very unimpressed with the graphics. I guess Rallisport Challenge (PC) has spoiled me.

DMC: Very fun game. I really appreciate the way the PS2 makes up for it's relatively low-res textures with geometry in this game (and others). I wish PC games had went that path long ago instead of (imo) over-emphasizing texture quality.

BGA: Have played too little to have an opinion on gameplay. So far the game that looks the best of those I have. Everybody talks about the water and I can certainly see why...

Now my question for the PS2 game developers here (or other PS2 experts). The PS2 clearly suffers from severe texture aliasing (which I don't really mind - I was aware of it before I bought the console). What is the technical reason why? It can't just be aggressive mip-map LOD, can it? I mean it affects all the games I have and it seems to me that the PS2 game developers would have fine-tuned the LOD to find a better balance between aliasing and "sharpness" if they could...

 

[Grall]

Aliasing on PS2 generally comes from the fact many games do not mipmap stuff AT ALL.

It's not that the hardware can't do it, it's that devs choose not to, for whatever reasons.

*G*

 

[CosmoKramer]

Aliasing on PS2 generally comes from the fact many games do not mipmap stuff AT ALL.

It's not that the hardware can't do it, it's that devs choose not to, for whatever reasons.

*G*

I see...

Thanks

 

[marconelly!]

From the games you mentioned, I think only MGS2 and BGA have mip-mapping, and in those two games (especially BGDA) I doubt you will find any texture aliasing. As grall said, for whatever reason, games rarely use mip-mapping on PS2. That especially goes for the Japanese games which seem to prefer the non-mipmapped or low-mipmapped look even on Xbox (see DOA3)

MGS2 - I love it's graphics, and think they look very good even for today's standards. Very few games have realtime cut scenes like those, or particle effects like those used to make the rain or the underwater scenes) I just think you have to be a different type of connoseur to appreciate the MGS2 visuals.

As for GT3, I dare you to play night/wet track and say that you are disappointed by the look of it

If you want to see some of the best PS2 has to offer in graphics department, you should try Silent Hill 3, Zone of the Enders 2, Burnout 2, Jak & Daxter, or the upcoming Jak 2.

If you want some really fun games that are made very much unlike those that you could play on PC, try Frequency, Amplitude and Rez.

If you want the best game ever made - play Ico

 

[CosmoKramer]

From the games you mentioned, I think only MGS2 and BGA have mip-mapping, and in those two games (especially BGDA) I doubt you will find any texture aliasing.

That's true - I was too rash when I said all my games had severe aliasing. I agree that MGS2 has more aliasing than BGA.

That especially goes for the Japanese games which seem to prefer the non-mipmapped or low-mipmapped look even on Xbox (see DOA3)

Does anyone know why this is so?

MGS2 - I love it's graphics, and think they look very good even for today's standards. Very few games have realtime cut scenes like those, or particle effects like those used to make the rain or the underwater scenes) I just think you have to be a different type of connoseur to appreciate the MGS2 visuals.

True. I just wished they used a little more diverse colour palette. As it is, it looks very unnatural to me, although I guess some might say it looks original for the same reason.

As for GT3, I dare you to play night/wet track and say that you are disappointed by the look of it

From my little time with the PS2 it seems that it does some things extremely well and others...not so good. That sounds logical perhaps but what I'm trying to say is that I find the extremes on both ends much further apart than on most PC-games.

If you want the best game ever made - play Ico

I've ordered it - in fact that game is the reason I bought the damn thing (PS2) . Ico is very hard to get a hold of here in Sweden. Don't know why.

 

[marconelly!]

Does anyone know why this is so?

I have no idea :\

True. I just wished they used a little more diverse colour palette.

I think with that game they went for half natural - half stylized animeish look. That's why it has the look it does. All games made by Kojima's team are very stylized that way, and I think that's because of Yoji Shinkawa's art direction. You can see that his artworks always have that ink/watercolour look to them, and that's probably mirrored in the games he's doing art direction for.

I'll tell you one thing about MGS2, though - it has level of minute detail unmatched by any other game. Just one of the hundreds such examples: When the game starts, stand on the middle of the tanker area where you begin the game, go to first person view and watch the smoke coming from the toweres on the tanker. When the wind direction changes, you will see that that not only smoke direction and rain directions changes with it, but that rain fogging your first person view will also start fogging it from the other direction (according to where the rain falls now) or stops fogging it completely, if the wind blows to your back. Accordingly, Snake's bandana will start flapping in the appropriate direction, and if the wind starts blowing from the north to the south, you will be able to see how it pushes the water accumulated on the top deck so that the water falls down on the lower deck, AND there will be more water falling down if the time between the two north winds was longer. I realized all this by accident way after I finished the game for the first time, and it still gives me hibbie-jibbies that someone actually went through the pain of making such thing that maybe 1% of people will find out and know to appreciate. And that's as I've said, just one of hundreds such things in the game.

As for the controls, I don't know why you hate them, as a matter of fact I think they are some of the best in any game I've played. Extremely tight, responsive and intuitive. They ARE totally different than in any PC game I've ever played, but I think 3rd person PC games have horrible controls, bar none. I'd say, stick with it a bit and it might grow on you.

 

[_phil_]

agreed ,mgs2 pushes the world detail to an unmatched hight.Kojima said they decided to balance more on the physics side and less on geometry and 3d rendering ,it still pretty heavy multipass (very nice depth-masked reflexions in wet masks,pretty hight rez shadowmaps).

I also love how the digital camera and the googles behave (focus de-focus),and the underwater effects.If they could just filter/trick the frame buffer on mgs4 to spin perceptions a little,they could provide the most immesive stuff .

 

[nAo]

What is the technical reason why? It can't just be aggressive mip-map LOD, can it? I mean it affects all the games I have and it seems to me that the PS2 game developers would have fine-tuned the LOD to find a better balance between aliasing and "sharpness" if they could...

As a PS2 developer I would say bad filtering is due to the way the GS calcs LOD. The hw implements a very simplified formula that doesn't depend on how fast are changing texture mapping coordinates from pixel to pixel but just on how far is a pixel from the camera :/

ciao,
Marco

 

[chaphack]

Cosmo,
Shut your eyes when you reach Kalm Planes(iirc) in FFX. Thats one big nasty aliasing spot.

nAo,
Is the nasty PS2 aliasing is due to more primitive(vs other systems) hardware + selective camera angles rather than developers' choice?

 

[Simon F]

As a PS2 developer I would say bad filtering is due to the way the GS calcs LOD. The hw implements a very simplified formula that doesn't depend on how fast are changing texture mapping coordinates from pixel to pixel but just on how far is a pixel from the camera :/

The world is not fair! How the hell did it ever defeat DC? :? (It's a rhetorical question)

Next you'll be telling me it can't do back-face culling or that multiplication isn't commutative

 

[cthellis42]

I think the Dreamcast doomed itself the moment they came out with those confusing-ass controllers, Simon.

 

[nAo]

Next you'll be telling me it can't do back-face culling or that multiplication isn't commutative

emh..it can't do back face culling. if you want to cull back facing triangles you have to code it in microcode on the VUs..
(In our engine we don't back face cull...)
And in the shading stage..well..multiplication is quasi-commutative..
When the hw modulates (per fragment) vertex color and texture it assumes one overbright bit, so A*B = (A*B)>>7, not >>8.

ciao,
Marco

 

[nAo]

Is the nasty PS2 aliasing is due to more primitive(vs other systems) hardware + selective camera angles rather than developers' choice?

Yeah..more or less.
Most of the time a PC/NGC/XBOX developer doesn't have to mess with basic texture filtering issues.

ciao,
Marco

 

[marconelly!]

As a PS2 developer I would say bad filtering is due to the way the GS calcs LOD. The hw implements a very simplified formula that doesn't depend on how fast are changing texture mapping coordinates from pixel to pixel but just on how far is a pixel from the camera :/

Is that related to mip-mapping? If so, how come some games can do it (much) better than others?

 

[London Geezer]

Mip-maps levels require more memory to store those lower res textures. that is why it is not often used on Ps2.i guess the devs choose to have a sharper although more aliased look in order to fit more stuff into memory. they could use mip-maps but that would cut something else (e.g different varieties of textures).

still, some games (mainly the half-field rendered ones) look worse than others (rendered at full resolution) when mip-mapping is not used. GT3 is one of those games.

also, for a half-field rendered game, BGA does look mighty fine....

anyway, could u not have chosen newer games?? gosh those ones are just ancient....

 

[Grall]

BGA is not half-field rendered, and I don't think GT3 is either.

*G*

 

[London Geezer]

BGA is not half-field rendered, and I don't think GT3 is either.

*G*

oh yes they are. very much so.

 

[chaphack]

hmm, so there are some issues with ps2 filtering. guess that explains why shimmers are more abundant in Sony's system(especially in full 3D games) and BGDA esque cam can help alleviate that problems.

 

[London Geezer]

hmm, so there are some issues with ps2 filtering. guess that explains why shimmers are more abundant in Sony's system(especially in full 3D games) and BGDA esque cam can help alleviate that problems.

2)yeah there are "issues" with PS2, i thought we went through this countless times... the "issues" stem from the fact that 1) it's ancient architecture, 2) what is there can be very "simplistic", relying on brute power to achieve a next-gen (which is now current-gen) look...




Stop insulting other forum members. This is your first warning.

 

[nAo]

Is that related to mip-mapping? If so, how come some games can do it (much) better than others?

Cause a developer can address the issue in some ways..
And the 30% increease in textures storage due to mip mapping it's a no-issue. It obviously depends on the game but there is plenty of bandwith to upload even 2/3 megs of (compressed) textures each frame without hitting performance. The hw can easily interleave texture uploads with transformed geometry transfers..it's just a matter of good scheduling of the rendering process.

ciao,
Marco