Well Flipper's 1 MB texture cache is actually a monster in comparison to other GPUs. But I believe it uses its texture cache much differently than most other chips too. NV2A has a very small texture cache, not much larger than N64's from what I've read, but again texture caches don't all work the same.
WiiGeePeeYou (Hollywood) what IS it ?
- Thread starter Megadrive1988
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If you spent more time looking at the shots and watching the movies than lashing out trying to be actually funny (haha), you'd notice distortion effects, depth of field, and of course that nice glow the characters have on the surfaces hit by direct light. Notice, for example, on the edges girl's green hat. The Pokemon XD had very flat, dull lighting, and the only game I can think of that had a similar effect as the new game was Resident Evil 4, and that game ran in Cube's 6:6:6:6 color mode. Perhaps you're just not technically aware enough to realize that there's more to lighting than whether or not you have normal mapping.
Nope, it's technical. Pokemon XD had one of the simplest lighting models I've seen on the Gamecube. It was nothing more than at most 2 or 3 infinite light sources, and Gouraud shading with absolute jack squat applied in the way of enhancements.
The new game clearly has a much more complex lighting model. I can't say how they're doing it, and I can't say if a 50% overclocked Flipper could do it (some people say Gouraud + environment mapping would work, both of which are in Flipper's feature set), but I can say with complete competence that the graphics engine for the new Pokemon game is significantly more advanced than the old one.
A lot of signs point to an enhanced TEV. It already was competent at distortion effects, but nothing it did was even close to the scale of what we saw in Red Steel (glass in the Dojo) and in Pokemon Battle Arena (green flame attack from that one little guy). The latter in particular I think would have obliterated the Gamecube's framerate, just judging by what the proton bombs in Rebel Strike did (and that effects is much more complex).
As for color depth issues, I don't think the dithering you're seeing is the result of 6:6:6:6 color mode. The Cube games that don't run in full 8-bit channel RGB have far more color issues than a little dithering on a flame, and there were games that ran in 8:8:8 that had zero dithering problems (Metroid Prime 2, for example). Throw in your copy of Sands of Time to see what I mean...6:6:6:6 color does not look like what you see in Mario Strikers.
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I dunno, those pokemon shots look on par with rebel strike, but with much better IQ (even minus the devshot AA) than rebel strike or any of the "technically advanced" gamecube games did.
I don't know if we should bother comparing it to Pokemon XD, considering it's one of the worst displays of the GC's power I've seen. Hell, it honestly looks like a DC game.
Seems Genius Sonority is just finally getting a handle on the GC power that they never utilized those past 5 years.
Seems Genius Sonority is just finally getting a handle on the GC power that they never utilized those past 5 years.
Precisely my point. For comparing technical performance, you need technically comparable games. Now if no GC games show the sorts of things in Pokemon Wii, we can see new features above and beyond TEV. However, I think there are better uses of GC's hardware then that Pokemon GC that show a closer relation between the two platforms. eg. Look at LOZ:TP on GC, or Eternal Darkness, and you see much better graphics then Pokemon. If the people that created those games instead created Pokemon with only having to worry about fairly static situations and a few characters on screen, what they would manage would be much better then what's being shown.
BTW - that GC Pokemon's dire use of lighting (lighter under the chin then on the face!) shows the team that created it weren't fantastic in the art department, if nothing else!
More than 2MB frame buffer is not just useful, I think - it's required for non-crap PAL support:
At a minimum of 5 bytes per pixel (24 bit framebuffer in either 6:6:6:6 or 8:8:8 format plus 16 bit Z buffer), widescreen progressive PAL with square pixels (approx 1024x576 = 589824 pixels) requires well over 2MB (2949120 bytes).
Hence, If the Wii has only 2MB embedded frame buffer, this is not big enough for PAL without tiling - which I can't imagine would be practical would it? Wii hardly has vertex transforming power to burn for early Z pass? Or perhaps Europe is just going to get shafted again, and titles will all render at 480 lines and/or non square pixels and upscaled output?
But if the new pokemon game is being developed by the same guys that made the old one wouldn't that make the comparision more valid than you guys seem to be implying?
No, for a number of reasons. There could be new talent in the company; they've got more experience; they have better tools; they have more investment; they have had more time.
If I write a program on the PC, chances are when I write the next version it's much better, because I take everything I learnt from the first attempt and can better plan for and solve the issues.
In this case, the results between Wii and GC are likely more indicative of differences in the developer than the hardware, barring obvious improvements as a result of more memory and faster processors. It's hard to compare lighting as platform-level performance, as we don't know whether either of these titles are the best their platform can do, or the worst, or somewhere in the middle. Thus we could be comparing a worst case vs. a best, or best vs. a worst. Pokemon was cited as one example of where Wii lighting appears to be better. To consider if the platform as a whole is better in that respect because of better hardware features (of course it will be better just being an OC'd GC with more RAM. What we're trying to find is evidence of more then just the same architecture at a higher speed) we need to see the best GC had to offer to compare GV's maximum lighting abilities, and compare them to Wii. If GC never used these techniques, they may be something new to Wii.
Thats true but it'll be the same what if for every company, but at the same time the company could also have less talent than made the previous games
very true, so what kind of improvements did we see between pokemon games on gc?? There was more than one right? I think thats the only way you can validate your argument.
I understand what your saying, but in this case where we have a 1st/2nd party developer the fair test is to take their games on each platform and compare them, especially since the games are from the same series and are pretty much in the same style. You can't elimnate the titles eligibilty just because the developer has had previous GC experience, and may or may not have new talent. If that was the case then where else are you going to find 2 comparable games to measure?? Especially when if your aiming to compare best vs best, your going to to end up with something very subjective. Will your arguments also be the same when it comes time to compare RE4 to umbrella chronicles??
DuckThor Evil
Legend
You can't say your getting shafted, if you're getting the same as others.
No, but unlike parts of the world where NTSC is standard, we'd be getting output that wasn't the correct resolution for our TVs - worse still, we'll probably end up with 50Hz (instead of 60) but content upscaled from NTSC to PAL resolution - i.e. the worst of both the NTSC and PAL worlds
Um - anywhere PAL is supported?
So far, widescreen NTSC Wii screen captures seem to go up to around 850x480 but I've no idea whether they're genuine captures or if the Wii is anamorphic widescreen in NTSC and the screen captures have been resized to correct the aspect ratio. If they're original sizegenuine then equivilent PAL resolution should be approximately 1024x576 pixels.
Non-anamorphic widescreen NTSC looks like it would fit in a 2MB frame buffer (e.g. approx 850x480 at 5 bytes per pixel gives just under 2MB).
FWIW, PAL DVD's are generally 720x576 anamorphic, which is not ideal but sure beats upscaling from 480 lines and would just about fit 2MB at 5 bytes per pixel, so perhaps that's what they'll do for PAL.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
PAL/NTSC doesnt matter with HD anymore. Besides, almost all PAL tv's also support NTSC. But why change pal to ntsc? why not the other way around? didnt pal have better IQ?
Yes, but Wii only supports SD and I've only got a regular PAL TV. It doesn't completely support NTSC - it'll do NTSC resolution and refresh rate but it won't do NTSC color. I think this is quite common in PAL TVs, especially cheaper and/or older ones.
There's been no change from PAL to NTSC here in the UK, so I'm not sure what the previous poster meant - was that a typo? There's some movement to HD here - at least many HD TVs are on sale - but not much HD content outside of Sky via Satellite.
Ideally there'd be no scaling of content either way - I'm really not keen on playing games upscaled from NTSC. I occasionally watch NTSC DVDs and the scaling done by my DVD player is quite noticable and distracting (resizing artifacts and jerky framerate)
The HD standards being utilized worldwides are the ones put forth by the American group (maybe the FCC?) in charge of such things. 720p and 1080i are the same everywhere. I'm not sure if 480p is the same everywhere or if it even exists everywhere, the EDTV resolution may vary by country depending on whatever the native res was there, for compatibility with old film.
You know, just going by clockspeeds, the discrepency between the Wii GPU and 360 (And now PS3 apparantly) GPU(s) aren't nearly as wide as they are for CPUs and RAM. Yes, yes I know I'm not counting pixel pipelines and built in shaders and all that other stuff. But just thought it was interesting to note.
But anyway, just looking at the numbers, I'd say it's a shame since although the GPU could be pretty good, it's being held back by that ridiculously paltry amount of RAM. Goddamn, 512 MB at LEAST next time around Nintendo. Please!
But anyway, just looking at the numbers, I'd say it's a shame since although the GPU could be pretty good, it's being held back by that ridiculously paltry amount of RAM. Goddamn, 512 MB at LEAST next time around Nintendo. Please!
Why that 512 mb is so important?
Mainly you have to use that for store same hi-def texture,so in a normal tv that totaly useles.
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