WiiGeePeeYou (Hollywood) what IS it ?

[Teasy]

How do you know that though? Just because any new engine couldn't be Unreal Engine 3 in all its glory doesn't mean it couldn't be better then the current Unreal Engine 2 on GC/Wii

Incidentally I was going to post this in the Unreal Engine 3 on Wii thread, but its closed so I'll post it here instead:

Wired: It's also tough to ignore the success of the Wii at this point. Do you guys have any plans to be in that space?

Mark Rien: Hey, we're in that space! Red Steel, Splinter Cell -- those use our previous engine technology. There's a Brothers in Arms game as well. there will be quite a few games on the Wii that we get a little involvement from us. But it's not in our plans to bring Unreal Engine 3 to the Wii. It's really designed for next-gen, high-definition. One of our licensees has been porting it, and they might be successful at that, and that would be great if they do it. It's doable, but not something that we're going to focus on.

So it looks like we might end up seeing once and for all wether this can be done and what advantages it may bring.

 

[swaaye]

When I see fabulous screenshots of a released game that show me wowz0rs super FX flowing forth from that micro GPU inside Wii that's forced to house retro GC hardware, then I'll be all impressed. I don't think it's possible, especially compared to the juggernauts that are Xenos and RSX. The current selection and prebaked-alarm prerelease screenshots certainly doesn't show promise in a shader-heavy direction.

 

[Teasy]

You don't think what's possible compared to Xenos and RSX? I don't understand what your point is Swaaye? If its that Hollywood isn't as powerful as Xenos/RSX then that's so obvious its not worth saying... If your going to expect XBox 360 or even worse PS3 visuals from Wii then of course you'll never be impressed..

Incidentally the Driver shots posted on the previous page impress me a great deal.

 

[sfried]

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."

I guess what the Epic licensee really needs to do is to retool 2 or some assets of 3 (scripts) for Wii from the ground up (which is essentially the same as building an entirely new engine), but you're right. Seeing as how developers can benefit from such a toolset (much like Criterion and Renderware), I don't see why they can't create a sort of TEV-specific modules or shader-to-TEV converters for their engine, as TEV isn't really much outclassed as it is "different". They just need to spend some time researching on indirect-texturing...

 

[fearsomepirate]

Well, it apparently doesn't have vertex shaders, meaning fixed function T&L, meaning per-vertex lighting and gouraud shading, also meaning you can't get the data necessary for interesting pixel shader effects.

Cool things have been done with UE2. Look at UC2 on Xbox. I'd say just don't expect more than that.

 

[swaaye]

You don't think what's possible compared to Xenos and RSX? I don't understand what your point is Swaaye? If its that Hollywood isn't as powerful as Xenos/RSX then that's so obvious its not worth saying... If your going to expect XBox 360 or even worse PS3 visuals from Wii then of course you'll never be impressed..

Incidentally the Driver shots posted on the previous page impress me a great deal.

I just think it's unrealistic to expect much from a GPU that is an awful lot like its predecessor for backward compatibility reasons. IMO it's really too bad they had to go with backwards compat. It's obviously a huge limiter on what they could do with such a small GPU for enhancements. It's basically a value-line GPU junked up with ancient technology. It's like if X1600 had to be constrained in design cuz it also has a Radeon 7500 onboard lol.

 

[pc999]

How do you know that though? Just because any new engine couldn't be Unreal Engine 3 in all its glory doesn't mean it couldn't be better then the current Unreal Engine 2 on GC/Wii

Incidentally I was going to post this in the Unreal Engine 3 on Wii thread, but its closed so I'll post it here instead:



So it looks like we might end up seeing once and for all wether this can be done and what advantages it may bring.

Can you post the link, plese , or say if there is anything else interesting on the article.

Anyway this still problematic because none of the engines is a good fit to Wii HW, if they have so many games for Wii they should just made a UEWii, like they did in the past.

Well, it apparently doesn't have vertex shaders, meaning fixed function T&L, meaning per-vertex lighting and gouraud shading, also meaning you can't get the data necessary for interesting pixel shader effects.

Cool things have been done with UE2. Look at UC2 on Xbox. I'd say just don't expect more than that.

Well it can be the case of whatever is new it is taking off the vertex shaders.

Anyway I think that if we will see more than UC2 or not it just depends on raw power, RS E3 trailer or the rebirth demo proves that and most of the fxs done on UC2 had also been made on GC/Wii (depth of field, bloom...).

 

[sfried]

Well, it apparently doesn't have vertex shaders, meaning fixed function T&L, meaning per-vertex lighting and gouraud shading, also meaning you can't get the data necessary for interesting pixel shader effects.

Cool things have been done with UE2. Look at UC2 on Xbox. I'd say just don't expect more than that.

But that's the thing: TEV/Flipper/Hollywood/Wii doesn't have the same architechture as the XBox. It has its own instructions and its way of handling effects like those. People are assuming they could simply slap XBox code on Wii and it'll work fine. It doesn't work like that.

I just think it's unrealistic to expect much from a GPU that is an awful lot like its predecessor for backward compatibility reasons. IMO it's really too bad they had to go with backwards compat. It's obviously a huge limiter on what they could do with such a small GPU for enhancements. It's basically a value-line GPU junked up with ancient technology. It's like if X1600 had to be constrained in design cuz it also has a Radeon 7500 onboard lol.

This is normally the type of ignorant post we want to avoid. I'm not even sure if Wii is completely void of vertext shading seeing as how GameCube games had vertext shading. Perhaps it uses some other method which doesn't use CPU.

 

[fearsomepirate]

But that's the thing: TEV/Flipper/Hollywood/Wii doesn't have the same architechture as the XBox. It has its own instructions and its way of handling effects like those.

No. It completely lacks a hardware vertex shader, period. The T&L of Flipper is entirely fixed-function and even less powerful than the one on Geforce 2, according to ERP. And it completely lacks dedicated single-operation dot product hardware, period. It doesn't have anything that compensates or does it another way just as well. What Flipper had (and I'm assuming Hollywood) is a very, very nice texturing unit, which could do some fancy stuff with pixels and texels. Unfortunately, a TMU can't do anything with vertices. That's left to the fixed-function T&L unit and the CPU. You should talk to ERP about the limitations of Flipper. They are manifold.

GameCube games had vertext shading.

No, they didn't, not in the sense of hardware vertex shaders. Anything interesting done with vertices beyond what the T&L was hardwired to do was done on the CPU. The Gamecube doesn't even have a stencil buffer for stenciled shadows; they all have to be done with shadow maps.

 

[swaaye]

This is normally the type of ignorant post we want to avoid.

Oh do we now.

I'm not even sure if Wii is completely void of vertext shading seeing as how GameCube games had vertext shading. Perhaps it uses some other method which doesn't use CPU.

I don't recall mentioning whether it had vertex shading or not. Just that it's loaded with legacy hardware for the wonderous backwards compatibility that the console fanatics demand these days. Seems rather relevant to how capable it could be. At least to ignorant me.

There's so much wonderful wishful thinking here.

 

[pc999]

No. It completely lacks a hardware vertex shader, period. The T&L of Flipper is entirely fixed-function and even less powerful than the one on Geforce 2, according to ERP. And it completely lacks dedicated single-operation dot product hardware, period. It doesn't have anything that compensates or does it another way just as well. What Flipper had (and I'm assuming Hollywood) is a very, very nice texturing unit, which could do some fancy stuff with pixels and texels. Unfortunately, a TMU can't do anything with vertices. That's left to the fixed-function T&L unit and the CPU. You should talk to ERP about the limitations of Flipper. They are manifold.



No, they didn't, not in the sense of hardware vertex shaders. Anything interesting done with vertices beyond what the T&L was hardwired to do was done on the CPU. The Gamecube doesn't even have a stencil buffer for stenciled shadows; they all have to be done with shadow maps.

Althought it is true that there isnt Vertex shaders, it may be the case that there is new HW that can make for it, or even also hardwire the most important/wanted parts of a vertex shaders, at this point we dont have any way to know. Althought I wouldnt have high hopes

 

[Fox5]

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.

Halflife 2 with HDR? Even halflife 2 with HDR can't require that much when downgraded to 640x480 @30fps and altered to only use fixed function T&L.

 

[The_legend_of_drtre]

Fearsome, it's not entirely fixed. According to ATI flipper had quite a bit of custumization to it.

 

[StefanS]

Fearsome, it's not entirely fixed. According to ATI flipper had quite a bit of custumization to it.

The T&L is fixed. Period. There're no vertex shaders. The TEV are texture combiners and thus only "flexible" part of flipper. Use the search function and dig up some of ERP's old posts, that'll explain a few things.

 

[pc999]

Fearsome, it's not entirely fixed. According to ATI flipper had quite a bit of custumization to it.

Then I guess that you can give the source of such info.

 

[Teasy]

I just think it's unrealistic to expect much from a GPU that is an awful lot like its predecessor for backward compatibility reasons. IMO it's really too bad they had to go with backwards compat. It's obviously a huge limiter on what they could do with such a small GPU for enhancements. It's basically a value-line GPU junked up with ancient technology. It's like if X1600 had to be constrained in design cuz it also has a Radeon 7500 onboard lol.

Of course people shouldn't expect much if by much you mean 360/PS3 level visuals. Nobody is expecting that though...

By the way, are you seriously not impressed by those Driver screens? If those are in engine on Wii (the dev claims they are on Wii and the aliasing suggests in engine) then they looks fantastic to me, considering its rendering a big city (its a GTA style game AFAIK).

The T&L of Flipper is entirely fixed-function and even less powerful than the one on Geforce 2

Just FYI I think ERP said Flippers T&L unit had slightly less features then Geforce 2's unit, its not less powerful though, quite the opposite I think.

Fearsome, it's not entirely fixed. According to ATI flipper had quite a bit of custumization to it.

He's talking strictly about the T&L portion of Flipper which was fixed function, you're thinking of the texture unit which was programmable.

 

[wsippel]

The T&L is fixed. Period. There're no vertex shaders. The TEV are texture combiners and thus only "flexible" part of flipper. Use the search function and dig up some of ERP's old posts, that'll explain a few things.

ERP talked about Flipper back then, not Hollywood, no? A vertex unit could be the reason Hollywood is bigger than expected.

 

[StefanS]

ERP talked about Flipper back then, not Hollywood, no? A vertex unit could be the reason Hollywood is bigger than expected.

Yep, which tre's post was about. But from all we've heard until now Hollywood hasn't either. Goto's said the same, so given his usually good sources, I'd say it's pretty much confirmed.

 

[swaaye]

By the way, are you seriously not impressed by those Driver screens? If those are in engine on Wii (the dev claims they are on Wii and the aliasing suggests in engine) then they looks fantastic to me, considering its rendering a big city (its a GTA style game AFAIK).

It looks like a refined Cube-level game. It looks like what you'd get with the legendary Cube + 50%.

The depth of field blurring hides the background detail/texturing well. The bike and character are fairly detailed, but the textures are still a bit iffy. It looks ok though. Cars look decent. I don't think it has anything on Burnout Revenge on Xbox, say, really. The game looks like it may have some sort of shadowing going on, in some shots.

 

[djdev]

Unity is looking to hire an Nintendo GC/Wii programming expert to port the engine over:

http://unity3d.com/company/jobs.html

I wonder if this can be for Wii what the Unreal Engine 3 will be for PC, Xbox360, and PS3.