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[V4skunk]

Other developers in the same thread disagreed (assumption on having to decode from jpeg to palettised textures for example), but then again it was a staple of how Sony designed consoles: longer lifecycle and versatile HW that could punch way above its weight, but Had a very steep learning curve.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Slow golf clap I guess? That is one example, regardless of the merit of the port or not one would not discuss if the GameCube had strengths over the PS2, just stating what it was:a year and some of extra R&D in those days was an eternity. Hanging around them as a peer speaks well for the console’s design actually .

 

[Fafalada]

4-bit and even 8-bit colour means using a minimal number of hues *per texture* to avoid garish contrast, which explains the PS2 "look"

2x2VQ uses less memory, but quality lands between 4 and 8bit CLUT, especially in terms of color reproduction.

Anyway, PS2 was a polygon monster and spending 16 MB of ram on textures would have starved you of memory for highly detailed meshes.

Worth mentioning here that PS2 had hw-accelerated vertex compression formats, so 8-10MB of geometry stretched pretty far (and I can speak for games existing that didn't sacrifice poly density and used around that ratio for tex/geo).
Also, just to flip this conversation upside down. for DC to run that same content, it'd run out of VRam(and likely main memory as well) before performance was even a consideration.

I dont know if ps2 can indeed use some clever software texture compression algorithms

I know at least one method that shipped in a number of games, that compresses down to 2-4bits per pixel and works best for textures with lots of color&gradient (photographic material, basically). It's not something you'd want to use on everything in a game, but it was useful for things like skybox, which use a ton of memory, and compressing them with CLUT / 2x2VQ tends to work poorly.

 

[V4skunk]

Slow golf clap I guess? That is one example, regardless of the merit of the port or not one would not discuss if the GameCube had strengths over the PS2, just stating what it was:a year and some of extra R&D in those days was an eternity. Hanging around them as a peer speaks well for the console’s design actually .

The GC blew ps2 out of the water with its exclusives and RE4.

 

[polybius80]

I am going to totally disagree here. I have not seen anything on PS2 even coming close to the games I gave as examples.

never liked skyes of arcadia, I played a bit, has good textures in towns but its very inconsistent

early action rpg on on PS2 managed to pull good textures like orphen I was more impresed with this game

shenmue has good textures specially in cutscenes and posters but games like god hand are almost as good with better textures in characters

soul calibur 3 is better texture wise than soul calibur

grandia 2 has relatively good textures but is not consistent

as much as I loved grandia 2 I am not going to put it above final fantasy XII texture wise

I loved phantasy star online it has nice textures in the floor but other things are very low rez

I dont know if its better than phantasy star universe

but there are games with overall better textures and specially consistent

Ps2 even managed to use normal maps like matrix path of neo also has very good textures

on
DC has some support that may help, the only commercial case is a coin in shenmue that uses this effect

 

[Daniel Thomas MacInnes]

It's always tricky to compare videogames on rival platforms as evidence of the system's powers. Such comparisons usually say more about the programmers and software developers than the hardware. As always, there are constraints on time and resources, difference in understanding different hardware platforms, etc. This is doubly so when dealing with third-party software teams who do create a videogame on Console X, then merely dump the code onto Console Y without really taking advantage of Y's unique strengths.

As a Sega Saturn fan, I know this all too well, especially where western developers are concerned (most western devs never even bothered to use half the Saturn's processors or code in assembly). We can also see examples of this with Dreamcast games ported to PS2, where programmers had yet to come to grips with Sony's different and more complicated hardware (an ironic reversal from the PSX-Saturn rivalry).

In any case, these differences are so incredibly minor as to not matter much. Compare PS2/GC or PSX/Saturn to Atari 2600/Intellivision/Colecovision, Atari 800/Apple II/C64/Spectrum, Atari ST/Amiga/IBM PC/Mac, NES/SMS/7800, GameBoy/Lynx/GameGear or TG-16/Genesis/Super NES. The differences between platforms used to be enormous. By Generation 5, however, the gap was nearly erased.

 

[Romulus]

The GC blew ps2 out of the water with its exclusives and RE4.

Blew it out of the water lol.
Better looking? Maybe, but the hyperbole is ridiculous, you act like the Gamecube was a PS3 or 360 compared to PS2. Gamecube games were not that much better looking.

 

[cireza]

...

I don't find that your examples serve your argument, it is rather the opposite. Quick example :

I haven't seen any ground texture as detailed on PS2 as the one you posted in Soul Calibur. And there isn't even 3D backgrounds elements in this Dreamcast screenshot.

Look at the ground textures in PSO, they are way above anything else you posted. And these are random screenshots done you don't know how. I compare games that run on my CRT TVs on original hardware.

Not saying I hold the absolute truth, but overall PS2 textures look blurrier and scenes usually have the same colors used everywhere, everything feels very samey.

 

[Rolling_Start]

Oh indeed, as you say after, having additional HW based texture compression support in the GPU would have been better and made it easier for the developer: 16-256 colors (even with dithering) forced a lot more work on the developer and especially the artist that, especially as other consoles jumped on the horizon, would become more and more of an issue. You can work around limitations with CLUT, optimise you’re streaming around 8 bpp CLUT and uncompressed via various tricks (selective upload of the only mip levels needed... break down textures in smaller unique chunks, break complexity in multiple blended layers, one per pass) would help... but it is yet another thing you need to create, debug, and optimise. Time is a very limited resource.

Indeed! But as the juggernaut it was, it worth it. I'm not sure we've ever seen a powerful but difficult to master machine get the kind of lifespan and software support compred to it's contemporaries as the PS2 did.

The PS2 was insanely well resourced at the HW development level. A completely custom CPU and GPU. Not the DC. GC, or Xbox could make that claim.

The GS is one of the older parts of PS2 afaik and, as narrated in their own papers way back when, was the first item they completed specs wise and the EE had to be engineered to feed it properly: this is where I feel like they landed way past you would have expected given the GS (something clearly aimed to brute force away the problems they saw developers having in the PS2 generation: you got to admire how fast it was at some things it had no business doing... one of the few graphics processors where render state per frame let alone per mesh changes make it laugh ... flush buffers, change primitive type, change texture, etc... It would just keep going, while other GPU’s had to minimise draw falls and state changes a lot more not to lose speed... sorry I get carried away hehe).

No, you make a good point!

Changing textures is a problem. Do you a) make it so you don't need to change textures, or b) make it really fucking fast at swapping them out? Both are legitimate solutions ...

The VU’s are way beyond VS of the time as they are fully programmable (so many moving pieces in PS2, quite amazing to learn about and make use of: DMAC, VU’s and their VIF, tags for the GIF, packets for the GS...) and packed with quite a lot of registers and local instruction and data memory for the time... very powerful and forward looking. It was VS + GS and then some since the GS did no vertex processing at all beyond setup and rasterisation. I still find its ability to render triangle strips of arbitrary length by hiding degenerate geometry with a single bit flag amazing .

I had to Google to remind myself what some of those mean (DMAC, VIF, GIF)!

And I still only have a very crude understanding of how you'd use the EE as a programmer. Like I said a while ago, I only have a small amount of very outdated OGL and D3D experience.

Yeah, it's fair to say I didn't really appreciate the PS2 at the time.

 

[Afro Republican]

By Generation 5, however, the gap was nearly erased.

Jaguar and N64 is like two generations in graphics.

 

[Rolling_Start]

2x2VQ uses less memory, but quality lands between 4 and 8bit CLUT, especially in terms of color reproduction.

Thanks.

The comments I've heard before also suggest something like 2.5 or 3 times the memory needed to roughly match what you'd expect from 2bpp VQ using CLUTs. So that figures.

I think this also, perhaps, fits with an explanation as to why early PS2 ports from DC (early ports were the only ports it ever got) and PC games like Quake 3 commonly had reduced resolution textures. If you're simply porting across what you have, in the form in which it already exists, and 2-bpp VQ is as low as you feel you can go in terms of colour for a lot of textures, they you might have to use 8-bit CLUTs a lot more than you'd like. Obviously, ground up for PS2 would be a different story.

Interestingly (embarrasingly), I'm looking through some old DC dev documents at the moment, and I can't find reference to 4bpp VQ texture support. I may have been confusing something else, and just been talking shit about DC supporting 4bpp VQ (it definitely supports 4 and 8 bit CLUT and RGB).

Worth mentioning here that PS2 had hw-accelerated vertex compression formats, so 8-10MB of geometry stretched pretty far (and I can speak for games existing that didn't sacrifice poly density and used around that ratio for tex/geo).
Also, just to flip this conversation upside down. for DC to run that same content, it'd run out of VRam(and likely main memory as well) before performance was even a consideration.

That's interesting to know about hw accelerated vertex compression formats. I'm not aware of anything similar for DC. And I don't think that SH4 would have had a lot of headroom for doing it all in software.

And yeah, I understand that some of the content the PS2 put on screen (geometry + textures) would be too much for the DC's 8MB of vram, even with VQ compression. You'd have to start cutting back some of the assets to make them fit.

It's certainly worth pointing out, in light of this conversation though!

 

[polybius80]

Look at the ground textures in PSO, they are way above anything else you posted. And these are random screenshots done you don't know how. I compare games that run on my CRT TVs on original hardware.

the problem is that PSO ground texture is beyond everything I posted even DC games and even other PSO textures, there is no point in making a great texture and forget everything else, shenmue can benefit from more resolution, its floor textures in the city and clothes are very low resolution but the nature of the game make it require more different textures so naturally you cannot give more quality compared to a few textures like PSO requires

 

[cireza]

there is no point in making a great texture and forget everything else

What we you talking about ? PSO has great textures pretty much everywhere, the game was very pretty when released and still holds up very well even today. It had great bosses as well, the most impressive and elaborated back then. PSO was a fantastic game on all fronts.

 

[Blitzvogel]

Wii CPU utilized an OoO uarch, which actually yielded a better IPC than in-order PPC CPUs:

Speculatively speaking

This post is part of a series – go here for the index. Welcome back! Today, it’s time to take a closer look at the triangle binning code, which we’ve only seen mentioned briefly s…

fgiesen.wordpress.com

"Unfortunately, due to a number of unfortunate design choices, they sucked at basically everything else. In my experience, it was fairly common for random game code to take about the same (wall-clock!!) amount of time on the 3.2GHz Xenon/PS3 PPEs as it did on the ~730MHz Nintendo Wii (and I do mean Wii, not Wii U), which was also PowerPC, but using a very different core derived from the PowerPC 750CL. I talked to a couple of multi-platform game devs and I’m not the only one with that experience."

People always fall for the MHz myth, don't they? Even Jaguar has a better IPC than in-order PPC CPUs:

In this context I'm still having trouble reconciling the PPC750 being reused twice. Even with it's super short pipeline, clearly something was amiss in bringing 360 and PS3 games to the Wii U where performance suffered despite huge amounts of cache, a better GPU and RAM setup (if used correctly). If it all really came down to Xenon and Cell's outstanding vector potential, then whatever advantages the 750 had were clearly not even good enough when when tripled and upclocked.

Gen7 took all that excess SIMD Vector performance and ran with it. And even in Gen 6, the PPC 750 was lacking in the SIMD department. The Gamecube would've been much better off with the unproduced VXe variant or early PPC 7400 model.

The Wii continuing to use the 750 was the bigger crying shame however. And here is where the merits of later higher clocked PPC 7400s really would've made sense in a small, power efficient, yet decently capable machine that with the right GPU (Radeon X1600?) would've maintained relative feature set parity with the 360 and PS3. In turn this would've simplified development on the Wii and allowed it to cater better to the core gamer audience including new casuals that later graduated up to the 360 and PS3. There were a lot of HD twin and PC releases I would've loved to play with the Wii's controls and ultimately the Wii's last couple years were a long slow death while everything else was thriving. A stronger spec would've kept it relevant for longer.

 

[Panajev2001a]

That's interesting to know about hw accelerated vertex compression formats

I believe that you would be able to use the VU interface units (VIF) to do the unpacking of vertex data as you are streaming in (and on VU1 you had 16 KB of data work ram in addition to 16 KB of instruction memory, and a fat register file... SH-4 simplistic SIMD engine was comparatively much more constrained)... and considering how efficient it handled long triangle strips you would get pretty darn close to 1:1 triangle to vertex ratio as well so making even better use

 

[polybius80]

What we you talking about ? PSO has great textures pretty much everywhere, the game was very pretty when released and still holds up very well even today. It had great bosses as well, the most impressive and elaborated back then. PSO was a fantastic game on all fronts.

not the trees and most objects were very basic in their design and textures like in the items, the dragon boss texture is good but it has problems in the distribution when it move its legs, the enemies also exbit some problems like the plan that spawn hornets and while their textures are ok(256x256) they are not better than other regular enemies in other games that also use the same resolution(it was very common size back then), the player characters and NPC are good but they have fewer textures than other games for example kingdom hearths, dont get me wrong its a good game that I played a lot back in the day but saying its above any other textures in ps2 games is simply wrong, the floor textures are really good above lot of games in different platforms but its not impressive in other textures, its above lot of dreamcast games in textures too

 

[Rolling_Start]

not the trees and most objects were very basic in their design and textures like in the items, the dragon boss texture is good but it has problems in the distribution when it move its legs, the enemies also exbit some problems like the plan that spawn hornets and while their textures are ok(256x256) they are not better than other regular enemies in other games that also use the same resolution(it was very common size back then), the player characters and NPC are good but they have fewer textures than other games for example kingdom hearths, dont get me wrong its a good game that I played a lot back in the day but saying its above any other textures in ps2 games is simply wrong, the floor textures are really good above lot of games in different platforms but its not impressive in other textures, its above lot of dreamcast games in textures too

Be careful to try and compare what the hardware is showing you it can do, rather than the usage in particular games (affected by game type, maturity of tools, experience with a platform and the general industry wide level of experience with certain levels of capability).

 

[Blitzvogel]

You can hack MGS3 to output 480p, at least it will be easier to take high quality screen captures. If your screen capture card has poor deinterlace processing then 480i picture will look way worse than it should.

I have found out 480i vs 480p difference is very small on static picture if you will send both 480i and 480p over component and if TV has good deinterlace processing. On my old samsung tv there is really no difference between 480i vs 480p on static picture, only during motion I could tell 480i looks worse. However on my new panasonic TV 480i looks extremely blurry compared to 480p even when I send 480i over component.

Anyway back to screenshots

Ghost Hunter looks better with higher resolution and in game gamma adjustment (with default gamma settings black was grey). Textures arnt the best (If only PS2 would support S3TC texture compression ) but game looks good overall compared to other PS2 games, and it's actually very fun to play.

Ghost Hunter clearly shows both the PS2's strengths and faults. The simulation aspects are the more interesting, like the interactive 3D water surface, and cloth. Obviously they would need to be done on VU0, and the ghosts themselves are clearly making nice use of the PS2's massive pixel draw and eDRAM bandwidth.

Anyways, how come I feel like the PS2 Ace Combat games never get enough love in the graphics department? From the get-go, Ace Combat 4 had some really nice shading on the player's plane, including a rare case of self shadowing, amazing looking clouds, satellite photogrammetry, and rock solid 60 FPS. Ace Combat 5 built on those features by refining the player plane shading, increased terrain texture resolution and even added ground vegetation. Slow downs did happen, but were rare in AC5 and Zero. The only real detraction for the PS2 AC games was the draw distance being limited to about 10 miles.

 

[Blitzvogel]

lot of games from that generation uses IK, primal ghost hunter and rogue squadron and I think halo too, but just because it use IK doesn't mean it uses everywere, most games only use it to adjust to the floor because its needed the most there

I think for the fireflies what they are using is a mask to tell GPU were "not to draw" shadows or not to shade the floor, the floor its obscured but the fireflies light simply make it not to obscure that part, because its very sharp its probably very simple, 1 bit per pixel probably

there are many trick used that generation to make "impossible" effects



deferred light was used in that generation, very rare, but was used

here is a demo for xbox



and of course, shrek the first game I think to use it




for more information about deferred rendering on xbox and ps2

Deferred Lighting and Shading - ppt video online download

Presenters Rich Geldreich, Ensemble Studios, Matt Pritchard, Ensemble Studios, John Brooks, Blue Shift, Inc.,

slideplayer.com

I keep hearing things about a Deferred Shading "Bunny Demo" for the Playstation 2. Does anyone have video or screenshots of this demo?

 

[polybius80]

I keep hearing things about a Deferred Shading "Bunny Demo" for the Playstation 2. Does anyone have video or screenshots of this demo?

unfortunately is not available I was looking for the video as the presentation mentions it was available but only the xbox demo was uploaded by someone else on youtube, probably is the standard 3d bunny model used for shaders examples

 

[Blitzvogel]

unfortunately is not available I was looking for the video as the presentation mentions it was available but only the xbox demo was uploaded by someone else on youtube, probably is the standard 3d bunny model used for shaders examples

Well that's a shame.

 

[TheAdmiester]

Been playing some OG Xbox racing games lately. PGR2 and RSC2 have aged so, so well (maybe besides the weird FOV in RSC2 lol).

Such a fantastic console for racing games.

 

[Astral Dog]

PS2 was the undisputed king of all but Xbox had best graphics, GameCube and Dreamcast had some cool exclusives they get the try consolation prize

 

[Fafalada]

The comments I've heard before also suggest something like 2.5 or 3 times the memory needed to roughly match what you'd expect from 2bpp VQ using CLUTs.

Yes, 2bpp VQ was unmatched in terms of memory efficiency, even compared to DXTC it held a 2-3x advantage.
I also don't recall 4bpp option existing on DC, but there were PVR mobile-chips later on which introduced another type of 2bpp/4bpp compression that further improved quality over VQ.
Though as a point of interest - sharing a VQ LUT you could interleave two textures to achieve effective 1bpp with 16x4 colors each. Quality was below standard 4bpp CLUT - but if memory was really tight it still had a use.
Same technique worked on PS2 to get 2bpp (split 4bpp CLUT). It wasn't useful for color textures, but it worked well for luminance compression, a sw-technique I mentioned earlier in the thread.

That's interesting to know about hw accelerated vertex compression formats. I'm not aware of anything similar for DC.

It was one of the many under-sold features of the system. VIF units came with hw support for multiple fixed-point formats, delta-compression, memory swizzling/unpacking. And in combination with VUs also allowed for my favorite bit - palette look-up values (allowed for 8bit vertex colors or normals), at no extra cost.

I keep hearing things about a Deferred Shading "Bunny Demo" for the Playstation 2.

I don't think the talk included any media for it. That said the technique was real, it's very much analogous to what BF3 used on PS3 (deferred shading on SPEs), just about 8 years earlier.

 

[Journey]

I'm gonna drop this right here. Let the excuses BEGIN! lol



Wish there was a higher quality video, Wreckless on Xbox was a sight to behold, the game used shaders that GameCube and PS2 just could not replicate in any way shape or form, they were inferior to Xbox, there should be no question lol.

 

[Journey]

This one's not even fair, the Xbox version looks like an early 360/PS3 games, practically a generation leap over GCN and PS2 lmao.

 

[Romulus]

I got to play the exclusive Xbox sim Mech Shooter by Capcom, Steel Battalion.

It was easily the wackiest, most ambitious console games of the generation with that massive controller.

Look at this thing:

It's amazing how cool it felt piloting those mechs with that controller.


But the graphics were also really nice! Some of the explosions and destruction looked like something on the 360. Huge scale too.

 

[Blitzvogel]

This one's not even fair, the Xbox version looks like an early 360/PS3 games, practically a generation leap over GCN and PS2 lmao.

Xbox version does indeed look amazing. The other two consoles could've potentially been much better looking games but it was more important to wow the original audience (Xbox) and therefor pour vast resources into it. Devs could've done a much better job playing to each specific system's strengths. PS2 version probably completely skips using VU0 while the NGC version most certainly doesn't use the TEV.

 

[Romulus]

Xbox version does indeed look amazing. The other two consoles could've potentially been much better looking games but it was more important to wow the original audience (Xbox) and therefor pour vast resources into it. Devs could've done a much better job playing to each specific system's strengths. PS2 version probably completely skips using VU0 while the NGC version most certainly doesn't use the TEV.

Per this thread, what's interesting is they had specific teams working with each console for that game specifically.

 

[pawel86ck]

Xbox version does indeed look amazing. The other two consoles could've potentially been much better looking games but it was more important to wow the original audience (Xbox) and therefor pour vast resources into it. Devs could've done a much better job playing to each specific system's strengths. PS2 version probably completely skips using VU0 while the NGC version most certainly doesn't use the TEV.

PS2 version was build from the ground up just for PS2 and it's a totally different game compared to xbox. Because of that it has some great looking effects compared to other PS2 games like geo-textures, dynamic shadows and very detailed water rendering. If you compare SC3 to other PS2 games it looks very good. It only looks bad if you compare it to Xbox version.

 

[Fafalada]

PS2 version was build from the ground up just for PS2 and it's a totally different game compared to xbox.

TBH that was more promotional messaging than anything - the budgeting differences between work done on different platforms were massive, or to use sports terms, there's one console that got the 'A' team and it starts with an 'X'.

they were inferior to Xbox, there should be no question lol.

This really never was in question, as I pointed out numerically earlier in the thread.
But worth mentioning that's also not even close to 'the best version of Wreckless you could do on PS2/GC" in any shape or form. You could find even worse XB->PS2 ports if you look for them (Mercedes Benz World Racing), cheap port outsourcing usually gives bad results, but when bridging a big performance gap it just magnifies the problems.

 

[Journey]

TBH that was more promotional messaging than anything - the budgeting differences between work done on different platforms were massive, or to use sports terms, there's one console that got the 'A' team and it starts with an 'X'.


This really never was in question, as I pointed out numerically earlier in the thread.
But worth mentioning that's also not even close to 'the best version of Wreckless you could do on PS2/GC" in any shape or form. You could find even worse XB->PS2 ports if you look for them (Mercedes Benz World Racing), cheap port outsourcing usually gives bad results, but when bridging a big performance gap it just magnifies the problems.

Regarding your first point, it sounds like you're basing this on your own assumed conclusion rather than facts, because the developers had a very detailed 4 part development diary on how they used all of the PS2's strengths to create the best possible Splinter Cell they could based on the hardware given.

Wreckless used specific shaders that were an exclusive trait to Xbox's GeForce 3, it the first GPU to introduce programmable shaders. You cannot replicate most of its effects in software without having a serious impact on framerate, you have to accept that the PS2 was simply not capable of handling some effects. It's like trying to claim that the PS4/XB1 can handle real-time Ray-tracing if developers program it correctly... smh.

 

[Fafalada]

Regarding your first point, it sounds like you're basing this on your own assumed conclusion

I'm basing it on being fairly intimately familiar with how the company and many of its internal studios operated at the time.

You cannot replicate most of its effects in software without having a serious impact on framerate

All I said was that the PS2/GC ports were dirt cheap and don't push anything on either platform.

What specifically would be impossible is a separate discussion.
The big differentiator for Wreckless were frame-buffer lens effects(flares, heathaze, dof etc) and film filters(in replay). Both are pretty well suited to PS2/GC hw, the difference is XBox is simply faster at it (ratio of 1.2 : 0.65 : 1.86 in the order of mention).
Then there is the water shading that would be prohibitively expensive on PS2 (so that'd be a clear cut), but should work relatively well on GC (it had hardware acceleration for that specific effect).
Shadows were volumetric which fit great on PS2(this is one place where it might even outperform the XB) and should be fine on GC (shadowmapping would probably work better on it for perf. reasons).
Finally there's the fact that the game was built for a much faster CPU and higher geometry throughput of the XBox - this was something that ports didn't sacrifice too much on - but they shipped with basically no effects instead.

So a simplified geometry version of Wreckless that maybe runs a bit worse and/or lower resolution but maintains the original look? Totally possible.
What we got instead actually ran slightly better (it was 30-60fps unlocked) but was visually a bit of a joke, by standards of any of the platforms of that era.

 

[Rolling_Start]

Yes, 2bpp VQ was unmatched in terms of memory efficiency, even compared to DXTC it held a 2-3x advantage.
I also don't recall 4bpp option existing on DC, but there were PVR mobile-chips later on which introduced another type of 2bpp/4bpp compression that further improved quality over VQ.
Though as a point of interest - sharing a VQ LUT you could interleave two textures to achieve effective 1bpp with 16x4 colors each. Quality was below standard 4bpp CLUT - but if memory was really tight it still had a use.
Same technique worked on PS2 to get 2bpp (split 4bpp CLUT). It wasn't useful for color textures, but it worked well for luminance compression, a sw-technique I mentioned earlier in the thread.

Thanks. It's interesting to learn even many years later that some of my ideas about features and limitations were off.

So would I be correct in thinking that by encoding luminance separately you could potentially get better results than with a straight forward 6-bit palletised texture (which no system even supported afaik) ?

It was one of the many under-sold features of the system. VIF units came with hw support for multiple fixed-point formats, delta-compression, memory swizzling/unpacking. And in combination with VUs also allowed for my favorite bit - palette look-up values (allowed for 8bit vertex colors or normals), at no extra cost.

It makes me wonder about a hypothetical PS2 where both VUs (and their VIFs) were on the same die as the GS, with practically unlimited BW between VUs and GS, and the EE core was replaced with something like a Pentium 2/3 or Power PC 750 derivative.

I'm imagining things like real-time VU decompression of all textures into GS memory without an external bus, running VS (or better) style programs, and still with what I suppose you'd call "GPU compute" to support the CPU where it was weak. And on the CPU side you'd have a single core that was very fast at branchy, integer stuff to run the main game loop, FSMs and game logic, and all the engine's various calls between modules.

It's perhaps because I'm thinking largely from a position of ignorance, but the idea of a conventionally strong CPU with the vector units and GS tied together in the strongest way possible seems really cool.

Could VU1 directly access GS memory to perform operations on framebuffers while in situ?

 

[Quasicat]

I picked up the GCN and Xbox at launch, within a couple of days of each other. I finished Halo right before I went to the GameCube midnight launch. Then spent the weekend playing Luigi’s Mansion and Star Wars. A buddy of mine that went with me thought I was crazy since I spend over $700 on games in that November. Looking back, I’m just impressed that I paid cash for everything and still made my rent for the month.

 

[SantaC]

Anyone remembers this meme: sell all your cubes, it's over.

I had most fun with my GC and PS2 close second. Never owned the Xbox.

 

[Fafalada]

So would I be correct in thinking that by encoding luminance separately you could potentially get better results than with a straight forward 6-bit palletised texture (which no system even supported afaik) ?

It's basically a simplified version of JPEG. You encode luminance at full-resolution but compressed to 2-4bits palette, and color at low-res (1/16th tends to work well) at 24bits - the two textures are then blended at runtime to 'unpack', making it cost-effective, and use only slightly more memory than a single 2/4bit texture would.
It's not suitable for every type of data - but for high-color photographic material, especially with lots of gradients, it noticeably outperformed 8bit or VQ.

It makes me wonder about a hypothetical PS2 where both VUs (and their VIFs) were on the same die as the GS, with practically unlimited BW between VUs and GS, and the EE core was replaced with something like a Pentium 2/3 or Power PC 750 derivative.

There were shades of that in some early PS3 designs, so you're not alone in that thinking.
If VUs were built with direct read/write to eDram you'd have a practical compute-shader capability for rendering - FP pixel shading math 3 years before PC hardware got it. As it stood - the big limiter was no way to read from eDram to VU, and even copying to main-memory required manually reversing the bus, which was quite cumbersome and costly.

Could VU1 directly access GS memory to perform operations on framebuffers while in situ?

Not directly but it could control GS the same way main CPU did. Generating textures procedurally was feasible - and I know some titles had VU assisted texture decompression as well. It has to pass through the bus to GS, but it'd require a very contrived scenario for VU to achieve more than 1.2GB/sec output while actually computing something, so I don't think bandwidth was the main concern. It would help GS utilization some if textures could go direct to eDram though.

 

[Quasicat]

Last night I was looking at my library and didn’t realize how many ports of Dreamcast titles that SEGA made. I knew there was a lot, but between the GameCube and XBLA on 360, I have almost everything available elsewhere. That being said, I need to pick up the plus version of PSO for GameCube to go along with my regular version.

 

[converted]

Something to keep in mind and be aware of (that often gets overlooked when talking about the console hardware wars) is Market Share, User Base, and there for ultimately Money, and how this too effects the end result and quality of the software library.

The PS2 had a MUCH larger install base comapred to the GCN (155 million units for the PS2 as opposed to just 22 million for the GCN). This was something which at the time was blatantly evident even midway through the cycle. Larger Install base and market share, means more money and TIME that can be invested making the software on the platform, as they know they can make the returns.

Those same returns are extremely difficult to justify on a platform like GCN late mid-late cycle, which is why many late cycle GCN games either had the typical "lazy" PS2 ports of the time, or just didn't get the game at all. This isn't because of a hardware defecit as some would have you believe (as some have mentioned with titles like Burnout 3), but because when it comes to ROI (Return on Investment) it just makes little to no sense to put the time/energy/money into.

All consoles - even the "easy" ones to program for, still have a learning curve. More so (curve or not), the developers are always learning new ways even from a programming and software side of things, on how to better achieve results with set hardware. This is nothing new to this gen, and was evident with the N64 (Perfect Dark packs more of a visual punch than Goldeneye purely tech wise), and even back to the SNES (Donkey Kong Country 2 looks light years ahead of the early SNES games, despite NOT using any of the add on chips like SuperFX or one of many of the DSP add on chips). The fact that games that looked as good as Starfox Adventures within the first 12 months plus Rogue Squadron 2 and Wave Race BlueStorm at Laucnh really is a testament to what could have been in regards to end of lifecycle software - had the GCN actually had any form of worthy marketshare.

Unforuantely, even Nintendo themselves were showing signs of getting lazy towards the second half of the GCN's life when it game to the graphics of their games. This was almost a pre-curser of sorts on what to expect with their 7th Gen Entry - the very below average (by 7th gen standards) Wii.

Back to 6th Gen and one needs to Look no further than RE4. At the end of the day - there's a reason why even with the absolutely massive 8x the Market Share, PLUS all the popularity and homage of debuting on the original PS1 with RE1 and RE2 - that they STILL couldn't get RE4 looking as good on the PS2.

I'm a long time lurker - first time poster and have loved sifting through all 18 pages of this thread. It's all good fun, great discussion. Sadly this type of discussion isn't something we can really do for current consoles, as they're all (PS/XBOX anway...) essentialy just AMD Off the Shelf Clone Boxes that are virtual replicas of each other. Powerful? YES! But no fun or originality there!

 

[IbizaPocholo]

 

[the_master]

That Wreckless game was such a launch title marble! I loved that game and wish they'd make a new one in the same style of extreme heat, light and reflection effects but with the full next gen feature set

 

[Esppiral]

That Wreckless game was such a launch title marble! I loved that game and wish they'd make a new one in the same style of extreme heat, light and reflection effects but with the full next gen feature set

Wreckless got a second game, called Double STEAL: The Second Clash on the original Xbox, it supports 720p output and it has some really nice volumetric fog.

 

[Kokoloko85]

Probably the best Gen altogether
Even Though I might prefer This gen more or the PS1, Saturn N64 gen more. Very close

Right Im going down memory lane.

Xbox had amazing games: My favourite Xbox gen by far

Star Wars KOTOR 1 and 2
Halo 1 and 2
Ninja Gaiden
Jet Set Radio Future
Fable
SPlinter Cell
Jade Empire

PS2.... Everything from DMC 1,-3 Onimusha 1-3, MGS 2 and 3, Shadow of Collosus, God of war 1 and 2. Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2. Persona. Final Fantasy 10, 11 and 12. Kingdom Hearts. Bully and GTA games. Gran Turismo etc. Okami.
One of the best lineup of games ever.

Gamecube: This was our multiplayer console along with Dreamcast.
Mario Sunshine. Viewtiful Joe. Luigi Mansion. Eternal Darkness. Smash Bros. RE 4. Pikmin 1 and 2. Animal Crossing. Mario Kart. Nartuo Taisen 4 ( we spent hundreds of hours on this ) ultimate muscle .( same )

And Probably my favourite of the bunch. The Dreamcast.....

Shen Mue 1 and 2.
Jet Set Radio.
Crazy Taxi.
Chu Chu Rocket.
Resident Evil Code Versonica
Skies fo Arcadia
Grandia 2
Dead or Alive 2
Dynamite cop 2
Sonic Adventure 1 and 2
Sega RAlly 2
Metropolic Street Racer
Phantasy Star Online
Powerstone 1 and 2
Virtua Tennis

Youngsters wont know the feelings of playing your first online game with your best friends... Phantasy Star Online

 

[the_master]

Wreckless got a second game, called Double STEAL: The Second Clash on the original Xbox, it supports 720p output and it has some really nice volumetric fog.

Yes although it didn't seem that cool compared to the first one at the time, right? Maybe it was the city.
They should make a next gen one or a new felony game

 

[teezzy]

Xbox for raw power and all the cool features and HDD offered.

Also so many cool exclusives and PC ports I couldn't play elsewhere: KotoR 1+2, Halo, Stranger's Wrath, Deus Ex IW, Morrowind, Doom 3, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Ninja Gaiden, Bloodwake, Crimson Skies, Blinx 1+2, Voodoo Vince,Chronicles of Riddick, Fable, etc.

People sleep so hard on Original Xbox and it legit just blows my mind.

Yes, Gamecube and PS2 absolutely had their gems and I love them both - but I'd be lying if in retrospect I wouldn't pick an Xbox over the other two.

If 360 weren't so damn awesome, I likely would've considered the original Xbox my favorite console ever.

Anyone who disagrees is a jabroni.

 

[Romulus]

Xbox for raw power and all the cool features and HDD offered.

Also so many cool exclusives and PC ports I couldn't play elsewhere: KotoR 1+2, Halo, Stranger's Wrath, Deus Ex IW, Morrowind, Doom 3, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Ninja Gaiden, Bloodwake, Crimson Skies, Blinx 1+2, Voodoo Vince,Chronicles of Riddick, Fable, etc.

People sleep so hard on Original Xbox and it legit just blows my mind.

Yes, Gamecube and PS2 absolutely had their gems and I love them both - but I'd be lying if in retrospect I wouldn't pick an Xbox over the other two.

If 360 weren't so damn awesome, I likely would've considered the original Xbox my favorite console ever.

Anyone who disagrees is a jabroni.

Me too, but I think that year or two that it took Xbox to hit full steam, everyone was already in full distraction mode toward PS2, and the internet wasn't as popular to really turn people on to the different things Xbox could do.

Xbox was this weird combo of playing great PC games not possible on other consoles, hidden gems galore, great first-party lineup, semi Sega Dreamcast successor and the only console I ever owned that felt like a generational graphical jump within its own generation, or close to it. Shame that only 20 something million owned it. Mine is still running on original hardware with tens of thousands of games installed from Atari to N64 and arcade.

 

[JCK75]

All I know is , SNES/Genesis was the last generation of really good looking games until GC/PS2/Xbox.. the PSX/N64 era was basically puberty and while it was fun I have no desire to go back to it.. GC/PS2/Xbox games still hold up find with some resolution bumps.

 

[Breakage]

Chaos Theory on the original Xbox could have passed for an early gen 7 game.
It's one my favourite games on the system.

 

[Thirty7ven]

Obviously Xbox was the more capable. It was big, ugly, cost MS a fortune and was an off the shelf PC that released more than a year and half after PS2.

The GameCube was impressive because it was a tiny unit.

 

[cireza]

Pretty useless comparisons in this video. Comparing ports that had a platform lead is, most of the time, pointless, as improvements can have been made during the extra time.

The only interesting comparisons to be made, in my opinion, are about what games were released on two consoles during the same year, and see how each perform (no need to be the same game on both console obviously).

There is a guy suggesting to compare God of War 2 to Dreamcast games, a game that was released in 2007. That's the most stupid thing possible.