Yamauchi on the PS3: "...beginning of a new world..."

If you mean motion blur, yes lots of games use it.
AA is just a term for many different ways to basically get rid of aliasing (duh).
"True" AA could mean many things, and the fact that one method is done in software and not in hardware doen't mean that it's less "true".

 

Just an observation.

ERP seems to provide good information wrt PS3/Cell but is working on the XBOX360.

Deano seems to provide good information on Xbox360/C1 but is working on the PS3.

 

FWIW I am currently working on neither and both

 

yea yea you're right. i guess i should get back on track with the subject.

 

OT: Everytime I click into the Console Forum and see this thread title...

The song "A whole New World" by Alladin plays in my head. I think my insanity is getting more prevolent.






o_-

 

My perennial favourite, Champions of Norrath. It's advertised as full screen AA and in playing it the AA is very obvious. I went from playing CON to playing FFX and OW! the jaggies and shimmer hurt.

 

Both that and Baldurs Gate use supersampling to give AA.

Only really practical because of the extreme control you have over visible geometry and overdraw in those types of game.

Baldurs Gate is also the best performing game I've ever run through the PA, but only because the water is procedurally generated and Skew's the final result. Outside the water it's comparable with pretty much everything else.

 

I have a question....

Why is Cell being looked at only in the sense of doing X,Y, or Z in place of RSX?

What I mean to say is why can't Cell be used in a purely additive fashion?

RSX does X, Y, and Z while Cell does more of X, Y, or Z?

This is how I've always thought things would be most beneficial. RSX nor Cell is waiting around anything to happen but rather humming along in parallel to better visuals. My idea is that the relationship between Cell and RSX can be looked as a special form of SLI. This is where Cell does certain things in the scene while RSX does other things.

Why can't Cell selectively tessellate geometry? (NPC's or the environment or both)
Why can't Cell do post processing effects RSX isn't good at?
Why can't Cell generate more particles and/or make them physically interactive?
Why can't Cell procedurally generate textures that could be used to represent damage?
Why can't Cell handle vertex lighting while RSX does HDR? (or other lighting)
Why can't Cell handle the clouds or a whole 3D skybox in a scene?
Why can't Cell take handle all things about particular objects or portions of a scene and leave the rest to RSX?

Of course I've no clue what I'm really asking with those questions but my general feeling is that where things can be parallelized or split up in traditional and/or non-traditional ways why wouldn't it be a win for Cell to do what it can? If AA and HDR can't be split up easily is there nothing else that can be? (not saying this is the case)

I guess a more direct question would be what tasks related to rendering can be done separately, or can be pipelined, and are not bandwith intensive but are rather computationally bound? are there no wins here? I have to think there are at least some and good ones at that or both MS and Sony have gone to great steps to accomplish nothing. I guess I have faith there IS something good to come of these CPU/GPU relations. (I should've mentioned Xenon and Xenos working together more in this post but really the idea is much the same so I'll beg one's forgiveness)

 

Why didn't Sony just put in another Cell instead of the RSX and used Nvidia's IPs for it?

 

Probably a little hard than just that.

 

Wasn't that the original plan? (minus the Nvidia IP)

 

That is most likely where the next Playstation is headed. They have got partway there with the PS3.

 

Yes, you are correct for the most part with your list.

It is silly for people to talk about the PS3 as a CPU and GPU. If one had to label it would proably be best to call it a dual-GPU system with the Cell side being strong in vertex/geometry processing with the ability to rasterize and the RSX side being strong in rasterizing and the ability to do some geomerty processing.

All graphics engines, other than first pass ports of pc graphics engines, will be hybrid rendering systems.

 

Well, you need some extra data, more than the framebuffer itself, to perform AA. Otherwise you've lost the additional information and it cannot be considered AA any longer, only some kind of a fancy blur filter...

 

So this means a sort of a 'deep framebuffer' approach, like the one used in Pixar's new hardware-accelerated lighting tool?

http://www.vidimce.org/publications/lpics/

 

Yep, pretty much. Stalker for instance uses this approach for one of their renderers.
IIRC a year ago at GDC an example of this method was presented also on PS2 (using VUs to shade pixels). Interesting because you get FP pixel precision and very flexible pixel "shaders" on PS2, but unfortunately with GS downstream bandwith being so limited (less then half of upstream) not very practical.

 

Deferred lighting? I seem to recall a similar article.

 

Your points are valid and some certainly doable. In this context we're only talking about Cell doing Y while RSX does X and Z because of concerns RSX can't actually do Y, so if PS3 games are to have Y, it'll have to be done on Cell.

 

Of course it can, that's what we mean when we say that Cell can "help" the RSX. In the end Cell could be doing anything on top of the RSX, it all depends on what performance you get. It could do Cell-specific tasks (put endless list of cool sounding effects here), or it could help the RSX in tasks that the RSX is already doing, but not fast enough, therefore needing a hand from Cell. Vertex shading comes to mind.