WiiGeePeeYou (Hollywood) what IS it ?

[DeadlyNinja]

Yes, but you can only see it at different angles when you actually play the game. When you're looking at a screen shot, you can't really expect to rotate it in different angles to see if there's still a bump. Although sometimes the screen shot is at an angle and you can sort of see the bump illusion fading a little bit with regular bump maps. The Godzilla screens I posted show a perfect example of this.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Bump mapping only looks good at a certain angle. Normal mapping keeps the same effect of bump mapping at every viewable angle.

No, that's not right at all, but that's what you get for taking information from Nintendo fan forums instead of reliable sources. The fact that he can't spell hard words like "model" and "rendered" should have been a clue. Normal mapping is a type of bump mapping, aka "DOT3" bump mapping. Your forum friend has confused emboss mapping with bump mapping. Both normal and emboss mapping look flat at angles. There are many other limitations of emboss mapping, however.

Here's an excellent layman's explanation of the two methods:
http://www.delphi3d.net/articles/viewarticle.php?article=bumpmapping.htm

Here is a demonstration of the limitations of emboss bump mapping. The two biggest limitations are that you can't have extreme light angles, and the bumps need to all be approximately the same size.
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~simonnihal/bumpcomp/bumpcomp.html

 

[pc999]

Question: Is that normal mapping used in the picture below? That game is Rampage on the Wii.

Hard to tell but it I would bet on bump mapping, anyway what amazes me is the shadowing, in some parts it even make me think there is selfshadowing (which make me fear if the final game will not be any close to that).

Problem with it on a PS2 is that the CPU is very low so the game chugs. Wii has more than a suffecent CPU/GPU to run Normal Mapping, so in the future if Devs are not lazy you will see more of it.[/I]

The problem is not the CPU being slow, the problem is that it shouldnt be done in a CPU at all, unless you really want it so you will make any sacrifice and/or most or your CPU time is being wasted anyway and things like better AI/physics/animation/... havent any interest in this game (like it seems to happens in Dew´s). Basically it mean that you pay the normal mapping in somethingh else and it isnt a small price, unlike the XB here isntead of normal mapping it could only have others shading fxs.

 

[see colon]

normal mapping is a type of bump mapping, so you realy can't say "bump mapping looks like XXX while normal mapping looks like YYY". what really makes normal maps good is that they are a way of pre-baking your lighting to fake slopes/angles of a surface.

can Wii use normal maps? hell yes. there's even an ngage game that has normal maps. the question should be "How many passes does it take Wii to render a normal mapped character entirely on the GPU, if that's possible?"

-edit- damn you FSP for beating me to the semantics punch!

 

[DeadlyNinja]

Hard to tell but it I would bet on bump mapping, anyway what amazes me is the shadowing, in some parts it even make me think there is selfshadowing (which make me fear if the final game will not be any close to that).

pc999, that Rampage game came out around the Wii launch. I don't have the game so I can't tell you whether the final product has selfshadows. You could go rent the game and see for yourself.

Just so you know, that Godzilla game I posted a few pages back is being made by the same people who made Rampage on Wii. I went to the Godzilla forums where one of the staff from Pipeworks (makers of the game) visits and asked for self shadows. Whether they'll listen is another story, but at least we he told us to post our ideas for what we'd like to see in the game. Look at it this way, at so far, this little company is putting out more impressive looking games than some of the other big 3rd parties. If anyone's willing to push the Wii a little more, then it'll probably be these guys. Godzilla will be shown playable later this month so maybe I can go check it out to see if there's any self shadows in the game.

 

[Turok]

Yup.

Despite your confidence, we don't know what it is. The gloss map hints at being EMBM, but without some dynamic light sources, we cant tell.

 

[RocketMBA]

All the games are definitely upscaled to 640x480, with perhaps some minor filtering applied.

http://222b.livejournal.com/144560.html

I'm not saying you're wrong or anything, but... Well, I'm not the only one to have seen this sort of resolution-y goings on. Donkey Kong really does look like Donkey Kong.

 

[see colon]

http://222b.livejournal.com/144560.html

I'm not saying you're wrong or anything, but... Well, I'm not the only one to have seen this sort of resolution-y goings on. Donkey Kong really does look like Donkey Kong.

i skimmed through that blog... is he tryinmg to say that the Wii changes it's output resolution when it plays VC games? 'cause that would be silly.

 

[Fox5]

http://222b.livejournal.com/144560.html

I'm not saying you're wrong or anything, but... Well, I'm not the only one to have seen this sort of resolution-y goings on. Donkey Kong really does look like Donkey Kong.

Well, let's go on some basic logic then...

480p is the minimum HDTV resolution.
If the Wii output a lower resolution, it would get an outside of signal range error on the TV.
Thus, the output of the wii must still be 640x480. That means the only options for a VC game are:
1. Scale to the output resolution.
2. Don't scale, and output in essentially a window with a border.

Anyhow, the wii OS is still fully active in VC games, and since the OS graphics don't look any worse, it makes sense the resolution hasn't lowered.

What likely is happening though is that nintendo is only doing whole multiple scaling. For instance, 320x240 scales up to 640x480 with no losses, 640x480 is twice the vertical and horizontal resolution, so each pixel now becomes a quad pixel as the higher resolution, upscaled with no scaling artifacts. No problem at all.

Additionally, I don't notice scanlines on the VC, which any classic console outputting at a lower res would have. My SNES definitely has them still.

 

[sfried]

So...does this mean we have yet to see if Wii can handled a completely optimized version of UE3?

I mean, most PR speak from graphics people comes from their initial assesments of pulling off shader codes, not from scripting/rewriting on TEV platform (or at least, not extensively).

 

[Dr_Lazarus]

Sorry to butt in to the conversation... I actually spent a good portion of this weekend reading this entire thread, and would like to start off by saying that I have 20 years of computer experience, but very little of it involves games/graphics so most of the terms here fly right past me (I wouldn't know a bump map from a Google map). At any rate I just wanted to make sure every one knows that I'm not claiming any expertise or knowledge in this area. I just like to know what's inside things that I buy, and the Wii's mysteries are making me crazy.

So, what I wanted to mention is something that came to me this weekend while searching through threads and sites trying to find anything about the Wii's insides that I could. I have been one of those strongly denying that the Hollywood could be nothing less than a completely new GPU... Mostly basing this on what you guys have seen that there is no way a flipper shrunk on a 90nm process would be as big as the Hollywood's chip is.

After this weekend I'm changing my tune... What is making my opinion sway was the patent that was shown many pages back. I can't get a working link but the patent is # 7,075,545 searchable at http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html

I was (i believe with others) speculating that this was the patent for Hollywood. After scouring through this confusing document I realized that this patent was originall filed in 1999 with 1998 overseas patents. Considering that the Hollywood wasn't even finished until last year I have doubts that they were working on it in '98. It "is" however the correct timeframe to be the patent for the Flipper.

Now... The patent was updated in 2006... Not unusual as patents have to be renewed after a certain number of years (10 I think???), but... when going through the images I noticed there were updates and block diagrams that were dated 2006... Well... If this was the Flipper's patent why would they be updating figures 8 years later after it's been replaced??? I let this go and tried to forget all the strange language I'd exposed myself to, but late last night something clicked in my mind. I went back and searched through all the Nintendo patents and found no other similar patent for a GPU which strengthened what my mind was telling me.

That this patent "is" for the Flipper... But... It is "also" for the Hollywood. Which leads me to think that the Hollywood is close enough in architecture that it was able to share the patent as an update rather than requiring it's own separate patent.

What this is telling me is that as many here have speculated is that the Hollywood is based on the Flipper with substantial updated features taking up the extra chip space.

Of course this is still not hard evidence, but I thought I'd toss it into the pot to stir with everything else. I call it hard circumstantial speculation.

Sorry for the long post, and I've enjoyed reading the thread so far. I'm used to browsing forums like Nintendo's where every other post is arguing, so it's nice to actually be able to read a thread with some interesting content.

BTW... Not that it necessarily means anything but in the last part of the document where it is talking about emulation the terms: Mac, PC, Direct X 7.0, and OpenGL were used. The language is too confusing for me to decide whether it was actually stating a feature or simply using these terms as examples, but it did make my eyebrow rise.

 

[The_legend_of_drtre]

Hard to tell but it I would bet on bump mapping, anyway what amazes me is the shadowing, in some parts it even make me think there is selfshadowing (which make me fear if the final game will not be any close to that).

Ummm the game is already out and those are gameplay shots.

 

[pc999]

Thank you both for the info from the game.

And welcome Dr.

There is new ss from Driver which seems to indicate that Wii does have a lot of fillrate.

Driver

Also new SSX ss.

BTW (OT): meybe it is a new Red Faction game that Matt said to be the FPS sequel from the ground up to Wii.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

But are those SS ingame? At first I doubt it, but I must say that ubi also had some Red Steel sceenshots wich kinda looked like this and everybody said that aint wii ingame gfx. But I finished red steel yesterday and the last few levels really do look good, especially the last one with the rain and thunder.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

There is new ss from Driver which seems to indicate that Wii does have a lot of fillrate.

Can you explain why those Driver screens indicate the Wii have a lot of fillrate? I'm still a newbie so I can't really figure out what's the big deal with those screens. I think I see some depth of field, but that's about it.

Slightly offtopic: Can bump mapps be generated on the fly in realtime? Like bump mapped footprints in the snow wherever/whenever you walk on it.

 

[swaaye]

1. I don't think it's 800x600, as my PC on a TV at that resolution looks sharper.
2. If it was 800x600, then the system is downscaling it to 480p.
3. Not letterboxed, that's compensation for overscan. Looks like Nintendo went a bit on the extreme side, but considering the Wii is targetted at SDTVs, it's quite possibly some will have that much overscan.

Well, that's definitely some serious overscan compensation if so. I am using a SDTV and it is throwing away probably 25%+ of the screen area.

 

[Kalin]

Well, that's definitely some serious overscan compensation if so. I am using a SDTV and it is throwing away probably 25%+ of the screen area.

Fox5 is right about that, here's Opera's word on the matter.

 

[swaaye]

Fox5 is right about that, here's Opera's word on the matter.

Well they'd be wise to look at how Xbox Media Center manages screen calibration.

 

[sfried]

Thank you both for the info from the game.

And welcome Dr.

There is new ss from Driver which seems to indicate that Wii does have a lot of fillrate.

There sure is alot of ailiasing. But by the looks of those, maybe Wii has the ability to produce something like...Half-Life 2 visuals with HDR?

But I guess with even more optimization, it could handle (a very Wii-specific version of) UE3.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Everyone really needs to give up on "UE3 for Wii" as though we're going to see some awesome next-gen visuals on Wii. The most "UE3 for Wii" will or could ever be will be "UE2 with a toolset that allows easy conversion of UE3 assets."