WiiGeePeeYou (Hollywood) what IS it ?

[darkblu]

Just want to know the potential of the console, plus good HW helps the devs too

yep, but just what is good hw? : ) for what it's worth, i personally have one requirement for the hardware i work on (be that in the pc hw zoo): whatever (little) it does, it should do it reasonably well. i.e. it should have some prominent strong sides and the rest it has needs just be reasonable. so that devs (and artists alike) can focus their efforts on the strong sides rather than waste time and effort trying to teach a cow to waltz.

BTW which is that PS2 game?

gt3/4 by polyphony digital. this is how fake light transfer should be done. no wonder that the game's HD mockup looked so good and up-to-date at last e3.

 

[Guden Oden]

i just _think_ that flipper allows you to copy an arbitrary region out of the edram videobuffer and into the shared mem, and subsequently re-introduce that as a texture source.

Yes, that is how you do render-to-texture on both the cube and 360. Metroid Prime did render-to-texture in the form of the scanning visor for example.

 

[fearsomepirate]

I think that is depending on how many polys you have?

Well, for whatever reason, games with per-pixel lighting tend to have a much, much lower vertex count. For one thing, things like phong shading require all your typical vertex lighting calculations just as a baseline, at least as I read the algorithm. There's no way mathematically to avoid computations involving the facing angle of the polygon and the direction of the light vector and still end up with realistic lighting.

 

[Megadrive1988]

well, it is beyond mid-July now. developers should have in their hands, final Wii dev kits with final Broadway and the actual Hollywood GPU.

*waits for something credible to leak*

 

[StefanS]

well, it is beyond mid-July now. developers should have in their hands, final Wii dev kits with final Broadway and the actual Hollywood GPU.

*waits for something credible to leak*

We could pm ERP and ask if they've already received their final kits for Wii. Maybe he'll spill something.

 

[Megadrive1988]

We could pm ERP and ask if they've already received their final kits for Wii. Maybe he'll spill something.

yeah hopefully



update (no details) from new Nintendo Power

UPDATE 6: Xavier Poix on Rayman Raving Rabbids and Wii: “The more we heard about the Wii, the more interested we became. Then when we got our development kits, we knew that everything we dreamed of doing on this was possible. That’s why we changed our minds. We decided, ‘Ok let’s just focus on Wii’. That’s it. The other (versions) can come later.”

hope that bodes well for Hollywood ^__^


edit more:

UPDATE 11: Ubisoft’s Ancel on Wii’s Graphics: “In terms of visuals, if it’s fluid, if you can understand the picture, that’s enough. The number of polygons does not make you laugh or cry. We did a lot of good looking games on this generation of graphics processors. The Wii hardware is more powerful than those, so that’s good enough for us. We’re using our energy on gameplay and new ideas more than on shaders and things like that…The hardware capabilities aren’t a limitation. It’s more a question of coming up with new ideas than worring about technical specifications. With the Wii, it’s all about having fun.”

UPDATE 12: Ubisoft’s Xavier Poix speaks on Wii’s Graphics: “When it comes to graphics, we’re more focused on the artistic side. You know, when you see the last generation of games on Gamecube-Resident Evil 4, for instance-it’s beautiful. When you look at what they’re doing on Xbox 360, they have many great-looking games, but usually it’s more focused on the number of polygons than on the real artistic side. And we here focus on the artisitic side. We like it.”

 

[Guden Oden]

Well, for whatever reason, games with per-pixel lighting tend to have a much, much lower vertex count.

This due to the majority of such titles use stencil shadows, and those have certain performance issues with high-poly models...

It's not an inherent limit of the tech that causes this, just that games would run too slow on current hardware using current rendering tech with higher density meshes.

 

[fearsomepirate]

“The more we heard about the Wii, the more interested we became. Then when we got our development kits, we knew that everything we dreamed of doing on this was possible. That’s why we changed our minds. We decided, ‘Ok let’s just focus on Wii’. That’s it. The other (versions) can come later.â€￾

Nintendo is doomed. Wii is only going to get sloppy ports of PS3 games. Time to go software-only.

 

[pc999]

yep, but just what is good hw? : ) for what it's worth, i personally have one requirement for the hardware i work on (be that in the pc hw zoo): whatever (little) it does, it should do it reasonably well. i.e. it should have some prominent strong sides and the rest it has needs just be reasonable. so that devs (and artists alike) can focus their efforts on the strong sides rather than waste time and effort trying to teach a cow to waltz.

Fair enought, still that can always happen it more powerfull HW (from what we hear Xenus is a good example of that).

BTW, if you dont mind, is this lighting per vertex too? (if so it is very good)

http://media.wii.ign.com/media/818/818481/img_3660523.html

http://media.wii.ign.com/media/748/748588/img_3593656.html

http://media.wii.ign.com/media/748/748588/img_3593656.html

PS sorry the late reply.

I hope there is some leak soon, or at least something better than IGN ones.

 

[pc999]

It seems there is no microphone in wii (remote at least).

Anyway nice article about the remote.

http://wii.ign.com/articles/720/720121p1.html

 

[Ty]

It seems there is no microphone in wii (remote at least).

Anyway nice article about the remote.

http://wii.ign.com/articles/720/720121p1.html

Skimmed through it but I didn't see confirmation that it does lack a microphone.....

I see the phrase about including EITHER but just curious if there was something more clear cut.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Yes, that is how you do render-to-texture on both the cube and 360. Metroid Prime did render-to-texture in the form of the scanning visor for example.

Is render-to-texture how they put the image of the scene on your scope lens in Timesplitters: Future Perfect (Sci-Fi Pistol) and Halo 2 (sniper rifle)?

 

[darkblu]

Fair enought, still that can always happen it more powerfull HW (from what we hear Xenus is a good example of that).

BTW, if you dont mind, is this lighting per vertex too? (if so it is very good)

http://media.wii.ign.com/media/818/818481/img_3660523.html

http://media.wii.ign.com/media/748/748588/img_3593656.html

http://media.wii.ign.com/media/748/748588/img_3593656.html

PS sorry the late reply.

I hope there is some leak soon, or at least something better than IGN ones.

seems that mario game puts embm to good use - it was noticeable in the first video of it which showed bumped surfaces under dynamic illumination. and despite the very low quality that shot that you double-linked to and the one right above it show the black creature is embm-ed. although to see the displacement patterns over it you may have to bump up the brightens of your monitor (i keep the brightness of mine higher than normal).

re that pokemon game - i'm still not convinced that's realtime footage. i'll refrain from commenting on it before i know that for sure.

ps: i hope there's some leak too ; )

 

[pc999]

Thanks.

Nice info, the other shot is this one (sorry) but the lighting is very similar I suposse it is the same.

I like this fx as it add some dinamic fell to the game, I hope it is flexible/powerfull enought to be well used in a wide range of materials (ie, from metal to trees to rock...) althought reading this it does not seems to be very efficiente on that.

 

[Megadrive1988]

reflecting a bit on older graphics from non-Nintendo systems.....
MODEL 3 Step 2.1 and NAOMI 2


you know, to me, those systems provide graphics that I can be satisified with. now, I know that even the Gamecube is more powerful, in most areas, than either MODEL 3 Step 2.1 or NAOMI 2, however, Gamecube had a smaller amount of RAM for textures than either of those two old arcade systems. the Wii rectifies this for the most part with 3.6x the amount of fast memory (88 / 24). combined that with whatever effects Hollywood brings to the table, and we're going to have a very nice system, especially since it doesn't have to deal with HDTV resolutions. I can see why SEGA is happy with Wii. it has adaquate graphics, a decent amount of memory, without super multi-core CPU or a 300+ million transistor GPU. it's all about the gameplay. Hollywood, with a substantial boost in the amount of RAM, will be capable of "awesome" graphics even at 60fps, if you set your mind back to 1996-2002, while forgetting HDTV resolutions and massive shader performance.


just some thoughts I had last night, that i got around to putting into text

 

[pc999]

Shouldnt be 2,6x once it is 104/40? (16MGs from edram on the GPU for God Know why, like said on last IGN article).

 

[pc999]

About MP3

“Demo was impressive, intense, and once we became used to the mechanics, a blast to play”
“New Corruption mechanic having to do with ‘phasons’”
“Implimenting a ‘Weapon stacking’ system similar to that in ‘Super metroid’, you will be able to ’stack’ beams on top of each other in a way that you will continue to have the same power as the previous beam, but the new beam will be will be added on top”
“Context sensitive events like in RE4″
“No (or very little) scanning, more focus on interaction with motion controls” (this art is sort of vague)
“Can’t discuss plans for speaker at this time”
“No multiplayer freatures planned, but very excited about Wiiconnect possibilities”
“New costumes for samus (not functional but just for looks)”
“set ‘a few months’ after the events of Prime 2″
“no hunters from ds version in the game but ‘plenty of new hunters’ in prime 3″
“Graphics have been updated since E3, more memory has been added ‘a very noticable improvment in the quaitys of the visuals”

http://gonintendo.com/?p=3940

They mean more memory than the dev kits (how much they had anyway?) or than originaly expected (LiMuBai had said they are considering updating the specs to 128MGs, I hope so that and some more CPU power would be great).

Anyway it is very good news, the game need some good upgrades to the gfx IMO.

 

[Megadrive1988]

Shouldnt be 2,6x once it is 104/40? (16MGs from edram on the GPU for God Know why, like said on last IGN article).

yes you're right in that sense, but i was just comparing main 1T-SRAM memory in Gamecube compared to main 1T-SRAM memory in Wii.

I was not taking into account the embedded 1T-SRAM in Flipper, or Hollywood, or the slower A-RAM (DRAM) in Gamecube.


hey, if Wii got 128 MB of 1T-SRAM main memory, that would give Wii more RAM than NAOMI 2 and an equal amount of RAM to what is in the standard Chihiro boards (512 MB OutRun2 / SP not counted)

 

[darkblu]

btw, in case you guys have not seen all the e3 mario galaxies footage, i strongly encourage you to do so (i just discovered some that was new for me here) - the game _does_ put embm to some pretty good use. i personally find the title looks overall spectacular - i've never been a mario fan, damn, i've never even played a game featuring mario, but this i might play just for the art direction and technically cool visuals : )

 

[fearsomepirate]

Sorry to rain on your parade, but it sounds like these bloggers just plain can't parse grammar. This was found in the comments:

Actually. That’s not what was found in the magazine, regarding the “more memoryâ€￾ part. This is what I found:

HGM: In terms of graphics, I know the Wii isn’t trying
to push the boundaries of the next generation
with visuals, but how would you compare it to the
previous titles on GameCube. Are you guys adding
new technical bells and whistles?

MP: The graphics have been upgraded considerably.
We have more memory, and with the new CPU/GPU
architecture, you’re going to see a very noticeable
improvement in the quality of the visuals.â€￾

So it's not "more memory since E3 06." It's "more memory since 2001." F@nboys read what they want to hear.