X-Box hacker interview
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FAF i have to disagree with you. How are you judging this? If you want to rule out the benchmarks how are you capable of making a comparison? I find it hard to believe that the PS2 could even come near the xbox in a multitexturing test. Honestly i would like to see you provide some kind of information to back this up. This also depends on what you consider to be close and no the ps2 is no where the xbox is texturing. it is irrelevant what people think FAF. Simply because the vast majority think the xbox, ps2 and gc are about the same says nothing about their real performance. How can you say honestly that the ps2 could perform just as well in DOT3 bump mapping (using the developers convoluted methods) as the Xbox. I am sure you will say "well it can't -but it could use another method." Sorry you have already admitted the xbox has a performance feature that enables it to win out over the PS2. Granted their may be situations for the converse can you honestly say the xbox wouldn't be the leader in the end? I Believe you are mentally comparing titles that use limited graphics features anyway. Wouldn't that be a tad disingenuous?
marconelly!
Veteran
Legion, I think he's more talking about the visual perception of the games in the eyes of the majority of the people who purchase them.
You would be surprised just how much casual gamers are incapable to percieve the finer points of the game graphics, and how prone they are to phase out the image problems we find so distracting (framerate issues, shimmering, aliasing)
You would be surprised just how much casual gamers are incapable to percieve the finer points of the game graphics, and how prone they are to phase out the image problems we find so distracting (framerate issues, shimmering, aliasing)
marconelly!
Veteran
Even in the traditional 'tech-head' sense I think GC and PS2 hold their own pretty good when it comes to games.
GC can do normal maps, just like Xbox is using in Halo 2, for example. PS2 is very good in rendering the volume shadows (just look at Silent Hill 3)
Sure, Xbox is the most advanced feature wise and has the most memory which allows for the best textures, but I think the best looking games on each console are, and will be comparably great looking. Technology can only get things so far before artistry starts making much bigger impression on you.
GC can do normal maps, just like Xbox is using in Halo 2, for example. PS2 is very good in rendering the volume shadows (just look at Silent Hill 3)
Sure, Xbox is the most advanced feature wise and has the most memory which allows for the best textures, but I think the best looking games on each console are, and will be comparably great looking. Technology can only get things so far before artistry starts making much bigger impression on you.
Thats a pretty relative statement. Compared the xbox? Whats "hold their own"? Is 2/3 the performance holding their own?
hmmm i have a Geforce 2 that can render DOT3 bump maps. I guess because it can it MUST be just as powerful as a geforce 4.
The PS2 has a great deal of bandwidth to its 4 meg vram/cache. Yep it could render a some nice fog....but not textures (in comparison to the xbox). How many games actually use volumetric fog to the point of bandwidth saturation? The PS2 falls far behind in texturing tests (in comparison to the xbox) which is in fact a more widely used feature.
OK...hmmmm now you are telling me because YOU think they look good they ALL most be about equal....well i have seen some good looking games on the n64. So because i have it must mean that it is ALSO on the same level. Neogeo has some nice looking 2d games so it must be just as good as the PS2 as far as 2d games are considered....
marconelly!
Veteran
GC has demonstrated done very good DOT3 bumpmaps in 60FPS games (like Rogue Leader) so it's not like it's a theoretical gimmick of the hardware.
I was talking about volume shadows. Take a look at Silent Hill 3 trailer and tell me you don't think it's impressive. Texturing has never been the strongest point of PS2 hardware, but that doesn't mean that the games can't look good with what is available.
Btw, by 'comparable', I mean that every now and then, there will be a game on each console that will make me say "WOW! This looks nice!" So far that has been the case. Sure, different people have different criteria for their WOW factor, that's perfectly understandable.
The last Dreamcast game that made me feel like that was Ikaruga. Truly a beautiful game, IMO.
What i have been trying to tell you is simply because it can do something doesn't make it as powerful as something else that can do that thing (ie geforce 2 and geforce 4).
ALL volumetric forms of graphics use a lot of bandwidth. that is what i am refering to. You didn't read what i wrote.
marconelly!
Veteran
Legion said:
This is the first time you said that all volumetric forms of graphics use a lot of bandwidth. Maybe you consider it a common knowledge, but I really didn't know it...
Earlier, you wrote
now you are taking me out of context. Yes they all use more bandwidth then simple texturing or lighting however i said TO THE POINT OF BANDWIDTH SATURATION. I suppose you could make a texture so large it could saturate the bandwid. You could do the same thing theoretically with lighting and volumetric effects. Again just because the pS2 has more bandwidth in certain areas doesn't mean that it will ultimately outperform the other two in game conditions. There are many factors. I am sure the PS2 (in the process of running a game) would be more fillrate and ram limited then bandwidth limited.
How so? They wouldn't be using such bit rate of audio for anything but perhaps a prescripted scene, movies, or bg music. Why would they sample all the sounds in 5.1? That it wouldn't make sense at all. The SFX would be more accurately portrayed if they were positional in respect to a certain point. In other words mono sound files that are interpolated by their distance from a certain point. Furthermore just because it has 5.1 channels doesn't mean each channel is encoded at 384 k/s. The 384 is divided by 5 as it is 384 k/s for 5 channels. Remember the standard was setup for a 2x DVD drive. The speed of a 2x drive IS the limiting factor. To my knowledge the audio device in the xbox has hardware support for AC3 so there isn't a need to decode anything. It would probably modulate the SPDIF on its own independant bandwidth. Even if it it needed to convert something couldn't it do it internally rather then across the bus? This is rather off the topic though. Even with raw 16 or 24 bit mono packets sampled at 48khz you'd end up using all of the sound cards channels before you'd even reach 100 MB/s (or 40 megs for that matter).
Legion said:
Yes it is. Next generation, the gap will be a double digit jump looking back to the current consoles. Comparing the xbox to the ps2 is like comparing the megadrive to the SNES (or even the 3do). In 2 years time, nobody will care about the differences between those machines.
Thats are rather interesting futuristic point of view. I suppose, by that reasoning, its pointless to debate the about the power of any device as its follow ups will be considerably more powerful.....so in otherwords it defeats the purpose of the difference between any of the systems as someday there will come a system which is better. that is a rather defeatist way of looking at it.
On a lighter note your philosophy depends on the future and doesn't take into account for the present. In the FUTURE they will say this (of course i can say that sky is red that doesn't make it so) but in the PRESENT they won't as they will recognize the difference in power. The reason why they would say there is no difference is merely because the power of the newer systems is so vastly out of proportion to their predescors. This is not to say the extra power doesn't make a difference
.In the PRESENT the PS2 is the lead development system for the marjoity of cross platform games (which make up roughly 75% of MS and Sonys systems), thus any extra power in the Xbox simply goes to a giant memory card, possibly better frame rate, and slightly sharper textures.
So rather than saying that the Xbox and PS2 are like the 3D0 and Mega Drive, for cross platform games its more like a PAL and NTSC Mega Drive (depending on the scenario).
MS is depending on exclusive/first party titles to demonstrate the NV2A, with the hopes of 3rd parties seeing the potential of the machine as a selling point for software.
Whats unfortunately happening, so that given the larger installed base of the PS2, these exclusives are 'making a name' on the Xbox, then being ported, like Wreckless and Enclave.
zurich
So rather than saying that the Xbox and PS2 are like the 3D0 and Mega Drive, for cross platform games its more like a PAL and NTSC Mega Drive (depending on the scenario
).MS is depending on exclusive/first party titles to demonstrate the NV2A, with the hopes of 3rd parties seeing the potential of the machine as a selling point for software.
Whats unfortunately happening, so that given the larger installed base of the PS2, these exclusives are 'making a name' on the Xbox, then being ported, like Wreckless and Enclave.
zurich
picture clarity only. This doesn't take into account for anything made native on the xbox or geforce 3 architecture.
Well they have Mech Warrior: Assault, Fable, Ninja Gaiden, PDO, Halo 2, Steel Battalions, NUDE, Wreckless Sega and Gt 2002 among others to show for it. Not bad looking games at all. I have yet to see anything on the ps2 that directly compares.
Lets not forget the GC/PS2 version of wreckless looks like a$$ compared to the xbox version.
Did you happen to see my reply to your audio bandwidth post?
I said CROSSPLATFORM games. Most of the time, picture clarity is the only benefit to the Xbox version (aside from DD).
I know, thanks for providing examples
And Sega GT is ass (graphically). GT3 is arguably better.Casuals may not care. They'll hear about either game on their friends Xbox and pick it up. Remember, not all gamers are graphics whores!
Nope. Still curious to hear from Archie what he meant about the hundreds of megs/sec of audio!
zurich
ps: replying line by line is irritating, i have no idea how Qroach and Teasy do it
Legion said:
It depends of what you call "pointless". It is pointless in the sens that 99% of the gamer population does not care. It is pointless in the sens that we are ne even able to have a discussion on the merits of fairly simple dead platforms like ps1 and N64. it is pointless in the sens that we will talk about this during 3 years and it will not change the fate of both platforms (and then jump on the discussion of xbox2/ps3 platforms).
It is not pointless because there is still hope to learn something interesting among all the debate/quote wars of Teasy and Qroach
It is not pointless because this is fun too
On a lighter note your philosophy depends on the future and doesn't take into account for the present. In the FUTURE they will say this (of course i can say that sky is red that doesn't make it so) but in the PRESENT they won't as they will recognize the difference in power. The reason why they would say there is no difference is merely because the power of the newer systems is so vastly out of proportion to their predescors. This is not to say the extra power doesn't make a difference
Looking at the past, we could say that the power difference between the N64 and the ps1 (quite comparable to the GC/ps2 gap ?) did not matter at all during the 32 bit generation (and not only now like you presume).
it is all about brand, marketing an hype, not specs. Nintendo learnt it the hard way last gen, Microsoft has still to learn it (IMO).
