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[Fafalada]

It is much slower at handling 2D this way, instead of having proper tilemaps.

Much slower relative to 'what'?
PS1 had enough throughput for 18 full-screen layers, each rendered as 16x16 'tiles'. Irrespective of how that compares to something like Saturn (the max there is a bit harder to come by), it's a very large jump from previous gen hardware - which in the end - is 'the' point behind console generations. And in the end it's like shaders vs. fixed-function T&L debate - sure the latter could extract more performance from the same amount of chip-silicon - but in the end both are subject to bandwidth limitations, amount of available memory, clock-speeds they run at etc, and the extra silicon also gets you flexibility of covering many other use-cases. There's no absolute wins on either side, just a question of which trade-offs fit better at a given time.
PS1 was the first of its kind there - but the writing was on the wall for fixed-function 2d, and even N64 with relatively lower fillrate operated the same way.

Besides - if the only contention is 'was it fast enough' - that says little about things being less straightforward.
Eg. XBox was substantially faster than GC in every measurable way (irrespective of what fans on internet think) but that didn't make GC any less straightforward to develop for. In fact it was the easiest console of that gen to work with - by considerable margin.

A good example is X-Men COTA, which made it early on Saturn but was pushed back to 1998 on PS1 by Probe, admitting it was challenging running the game on the console.

I gotta wonder how much of that was just juggling memory limitations - which - while they do matter, aren't something PS1 had particularly added complexity around. Sure if you had unified 3 MB it would make things easier - but nothing really behaved that back then anyway, including Saturn.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

I don't think I ever said dominating, but Saturn had a lead of a million units and had FF 7 come out to Japan it would have ensured the Saturn won. I seem to remember even the Panzer Dragoon team saying that SEGA had thought they won Japan until FF7 when at the GDC on the making of Panzer Dragon
ALPS gave SEGA Saturn a market share of 42% to the PS 36% or maybe 38% in July of 1996 I seem to recall

And as for SEGA Rally breaking records for the ever best selling CD game that was the case in the UK at the time.
I'm see to remember SEGA Japan holding the record in Japan for the most pre-ordered game over there with VF2 with over a million Pre orders. Those were the days

There was so much positivity around the Saturn in 1996 and while PlayStation was having a drought Sega were releasing the likes of VF2, Sega Rally, Panzer Zwei, Nights etc. PlayStation didn’t get a big title in 1996 until Resident Evil.

After 1996 it all just fizzled out very quickly.

In the west I’d say the highlights for Saturn in 1997 were Lobotomy’s excellent ports of Quake and Duke Nukem, at least in the west anyway. As we now know, internally Sega’s interest had already shifted towards the next generation.

 

[Team Andromeda]

There was so much positivity around the Saturn in 1996 and while PlayStation was having a drought Sega were releasing the likes of VF2, Sega Rally, Panzer Zwei, Nights etc. PlayStation didn’t get a big title in 1996 until Resident Evil.

After 1996 it all just fizzled out very quickly.

In the West, it was clear the PS1 was winning by miles despite what the tools at SEGA Europe or America would say.

In Japan, it was different with SEGA in the lead for a year but then SONY got right back up close and then SEGA takes a lead again with the White Saturn
Had FF7 come out on the Saturn it would have been an easy win for the system in Japan IMO

And had SEGA America/Europe dropped the Mega Drive in 1994 and gone all in on Saturn, I felt and still feel the Saturn would have been a strong number 2 (still miles off the PS1) but would have beat the N64

 

[RetroGamingUK]

And had SEGA America/Europe dropped the Mega Drive in 1994 and gone all in on Saturn, I felt and still feel the Saturn would have been a strong number 2 (still miles off the PS1) but would have beat the N64

It’s a difficult one even in hindsight.

A lot of Sony’s success comes from their long term support for consoles, if you buy any PlayStation at launch you can expect new games and support a decade later.

Looking back I didn’t have any 1995 titles in my MegaDrive collection back in the day, but plenty of 1994 ones. Regardless, dropping the MegaDrive early wouldn’t have won over any fans, 32X was the big mistake for me.

It was price and line up that put me off getting a Saturn in 1995, had it been more like £249-£299 with Virtua Fighter 2 and Sega Rally available I’d have definitely had one for Christmas 95.

 

[Panajev2001a]

A lot of Sony’s success comes from their long term support for consoles, if you buy any PlayStation at launch you can expect new games and support a decade later.

This is an often underrated truth. The support for a current gen console when launching their next gen successor has always been a guaranteed and it is definitely one of their keys to success as a global brand.

 

[PaintTinJr]

I mentioned this earlier on. According to the Sega Europe tutorial, the time it takes to render a quad is directly related to its size. At the most ridiculous end of the scale, and I'm not sure what the point of doing this would be, drawing the maximum sized quad the Saturn can draw (504x255) would leave you doing one per frame at 60fps with not a lot of rendering time left over.

So yeah, there's a trade-off between polygon size and the number you can draw. Really though, isn't that just the fillrate limitation? It's just that the VDP1's fillrate is a bit shit and ideally needs VDP2 to take some of the load off.

I had wanted to reply to that earlier comment you made as it seemed consistent with Saturn performance, but having not seen or read Sega technical docs about Saturn - just getting the info third hand from the internet through the likes Copilot or through this thread - until the likes of Fafalada confirmed it, I was on the fence.

What I would say is that it seems more like the colour depth of the textures on large quads with large angles after projection causes a slowdown from heavy texture filtering, because as Sega Rally shows, the game is good fps, good draw distance, good geometry density and typical good resolution (356x224 pixels same as Tomb Raider) and clearly gets a benefit from VDP2 doing 2D backgrounds, but unlike other games doesn't seem to use more than 4 colours per texture anywhere in a single quad, and could easily be using flat shaded colour quads for a lot of the geometry which has the same fillrate as texturing, has simplified maths for geometry colour filling, and has just a state change rather than minification memory filtered access - which gets worse the further a quads is angled and projected into the screen - and copies from a texture.

That also seems consistent with some of the other other games that won out on Saturn, where the image looked very ala-mode7 like 3D from 2D sprites, but when John showed the wireframes the game/s were in fact doing heavy geometry on Saturn too - despite VDP2 background and floor gains - just that the quads looked very much aligned to the camera with fake 2D draw distance and blocky sprites, meaning no minification filtering on sprite/texturing was in play for that rendering because they could be rendered as is, with just a memory copy.

Another possibility is that the SCU DSP was used expertly with Sega Rally. On asking CoPilot about what it was used for, it seems one of its main tasks was to provide DMA for the VDP chips to transfer directly to RAM without disrupting the inflight batch tasks on the CPUs, so maybe in a lot of the games VDP1 and VDP2 use was costing CPU time and bottlenecking each other's access to RAM if the SCU DSP wasn't setup to latency hide the 4 processors(CPUs+VDPs) access to RAM. In addition the SCU DSP was supposedly able to do the Projection division instead of the VDP1(CoPilot said the chip could do this and some general purpose tasks, and the DMA/Interrupts).

Either way, from what John showed in the video, I don't think it was as simple as just fillrate usage.

 

[PeteBull]

This is an often underrated truth. The support for a current gen console when launching their next gen successor has always been a guaranteed and it is definitely one of their keys to success as a global brand.

Lack of support aka 0 trust in sega console brand was biggest factor for dreamcast's fall, not piracy, psx had so much more piracy yet it was fine, ppl forget that sega cd, 32x and saturn had so lil support that customers knew sega gonna drop dreamcast like hot potato as soon as its not amazing success.

 

[Panajev2001a]

I had wanted to reply to that earlier comment you made as it seemed consistent with Saturn performance, but having not seen or read Sega technical docs about Saturn - just getting the info third hand from the internet through the likes Copilot or through this thread - until the likes of Fafalada confirmed it, I was on the fence.

What I would say is that it seems more like the colour depth of the textures on large quads with large angles after projection causes a slowdown from heavy texture filtering, because as Sega Rally shows, the game is good fps, good draw distance, good geometry density and typical good resolution (356x224 pixels same as Tomb Raider) and clearly gets a benefit from VDP2 doing 2D backgrounds, but unlike other games doesn't seem to use more than 4 colours per texture anywhere in a single quad, and could easily be using flat shaded colour quads for a lot of the geometry which has the same fillrate as texturing, has simplified maths for geometry colour filling, and has just a state change rather than minification memory filtered access - which gets worse the further a quads is angled and projected into the screen - and copies from a texture.

That also seems consistent with some of the other other games that won out on Saturn, where the image looked very ala-mode7 like 3D from 2D sprites, but when John showed the wireframes the game/s were in fact doing heavy geometry on Saturn too - despite VDP2 background and floor gains - just that the quads looked very much aligned to the camera with fake 2D draw distance and blocky sprites, meaning no minification filtering on sprite/texturing was in play for that rendering because they could be rendered as is, with just a memory copy.

Another possibility is that the SCU DSP was used expertly with Sega Rally. On asking CoPilot about what it was used for, it seems one of its main tasks was to provide DMA for the VDP chips to transfer directly to RAM without disrupting the inflight batch tasks on the CPUs, so maybe in a lot of the games VDP1 and VDP2 use was costing CPU time and bottlenecking each other's access to RAM if the SCU DSP wasn't setup to latency hide the 4 processors(CPUs+VDPs) access to RAM. In addition the SCU DSP was supposedly able to do the Projection division instead of the VDP1(CoPilot said the chip could do this and some general purpose tasks, and the DMA/Interrupts).

Either way, from what John showed in the video, I don't think it was as simple as just fillrate usage.

SCU doing perspective division? I did not think it had a divider unit at all…

 

[PaintTinJr]

It accelerated clipping - but that process is never exactly - cheap (as the algorithm also involves generating triangles in traditional GPUs). But someone would have to test out the different costs for what you suggest.
Matrix was one of the inputs into transforms - as long as it's not changed for every vertex I don't think there was much cost to doing so.

Thanks, that's what I'd hoped was the case, so it would have used an ASIC much like today to do a task that's considered an essential part of the rendering process as efficiently as possible. Probably meaning the major consideration for doing it as cascade set would be the increased camera culling cost of testing multiple frusta and the increased chance of overdraw multiply by the number of frusta a primitive traversed because of the painter's algorithm in effect,

That would probably mean an accompanying advanced hidden surface removal solution would be needed cost processing/memory or the ability to store the furthest frusta result as a render to texture to allow rendering the furthest frusta once every three frames to offset the triple overdraw.

But what exactly does the projection matrix switching entail?

...

More memory to store the model -> world transforms as an intermediary, and then an additional matrix multiplication for that intermediary with a composite of the Projection and viewport scaling matrix, meaning more 128byte memory reads and writes per frusta change and state changes to push and pop matrices - using OpenGL classic parlance.

 

[Lysandros]

Conclusion basically is that... We don't know exactly how much more advanced or how good looking games would have been developed for the Saturn if 6 years down the line (let's say by mid 2000) the console would be in the position Ps1 was, that's being the best selling leading console of the whole industry, receiving tons of games and being top priority for all developers.

In 'conclusion', we can not exactly know the amount evolution any particular system could have had with additional support. In the same time, we can safely state that Saturn would never have been able to catch PS1 in 3D graphics even if it lasted as long. Its hardware simply wasn't up to par. It wasn't as capable, as well architected for 3D regardless of the amount of revanchist revisionism thrown around. Playstation already delivered convincingly superior results by the years 1994 to 1996 when the machines were close popularity/sells wise. But just like in the case of Dreamcast "justice for Sega crack suicide squad" is in dire need to regularly bring up the same matter to feed the bitter sensibilities.

 

[Team Andromeda]

I

It’s a difficult one even in hindsight.

A lot of Sony’s success comes from their long term support for consoles, if you buy any PlayStation at launch you can expect new games and support a decade later.

Looking back I didn’t have any 1995 titles in my MegaDrive collection back in the day, but plenty of 1994 ones. Regardless, dropping the MegaDrive early wouldn’t have won over any fans, 32X was the big mistake for me.

It was price and line up that put me off getting a Saturn in 1995, had it been more like £249-£299 with Virtua Fighter 2 and Sega Rally available I’d have definitely had one for Christmas 95.

That's also with the benefit of hindsight. Not everyone thought SONY would stick with the PS1 in the market, in what even SONY high ups consider the 'toy market' If the PS1 didn't sell well SONY would have moved on like it did with Vita especially back then when SONY income was coming in from other tech sectors

Also dropping the Mega Drive in 1994 was In-House support was not dropping it early. People forget that the system was 1998 tech and it came out 2 years before the Snes. Even SONY looked to drop the PS1 after 6 years and move on with the PS2 and left it to 3rd parties to take up the flack, if not for a year delay with hardware and software Nintendo would have gone in 1995 just some 5 years after the SNES.

So why people expected SEGA to support the Mega Drive for longer I do not know, more so when it was clear that the 16-bit market was in decline and oversaturated with games that looked and played much the same and so many gamers bored and ready to move on, what Tom at SEGA America couldn't work out many of those gamers were no longer kids either, but young adults with disposable income ready to spend it on the next gen, not a 16-bit add-on.

 

[PaintTinJr]

SCU doing perspective division? I did not think it had a divider unit at all…

Yeah I pressed CoPilot on that point when it suggested that the SCU did that in its first response and it gave me a inverted response, saying it couldn't find proof that it couldn't do projection, and that was its position after I asked it specifically if any of the processors in the Saturn had an FPU.

So you're probably right, but for whatever reason it suggested the SCU could do it.

 

[RoboFu]

I have to question this one - what exactly wasn't straightforward about it?
PS1 handled 2d the way every console handles 2d for the past 25 years - you literally just paint the scene.
The old-school acceleration practices around sprites, planes rasters and what not were only adding complexity when it comes to putting it all together - if your entire scene is just a list of sorted polygonal primitive draw-calls, things are ultimately much simpler to manage.
To put it another way - Saturn still required manipulating all the moving pieces either way - 2d or not, so nothing got more straightforward about it.
The one silver lining was that hardware actually did things to improve quality when manipulating sprites on Saturn (distortions, rotations etc had some pixel filtering treatment) but that didn't change complexity any.


There's affine warping all over the scene in that game, especially in background objects. I guess it goes to show people are too used to it (maybe thanks to the PS1 being so dominant) in that era - but it's far from isolated to near-camera.

But there's a simple reason it's less noticeable in common genres when rasterizing quads:

Ground polygons are the case where a rectangle will avoid the diagonal introducing that extra distortion - most of the time.
It won't look like the 'correct' image (saturn was still using affine interpolation) - but it won't have that line down the middle, which reduces the visible distortion. The moment you rotate the polygon or look at non-flat objects - that advantage is less obvious - bust large majority of genres especially in the 90ies have you facing a lot of flat ground texture ... most of the time. It's also what's usually closest to the camera, amplifying the problem.
Hell it wouldn't be until PS4 era that grounds stopped being mostly flat in 'some' genres (looking at JRPGs in particular).

The Saturn never had the zig zag pattern issue. That's a direct triangle / integer / no depth ps1 issue.

The Saturn used skewed sprites for texturing being rectangles it didn't produce the zig zag pattern.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

My understanding of the PlayStation warping was due to the the Z axis using whole numbers meaning it couldn’t draw lines at any angle stretching into the background.

Imagine trying to draw a 20 degree line on graph paper, but you have to make the line touch 2 corners on each square it goes through.

It’s the equivalent of uneven staircases on low-res 2D games.

Saturn’s warping in racing games is down to something completely different.

 

[Lysandros]

My understanding of the PlayStation warping was due to the the Z axis using whole numbers meaning it couldn’t draw lines at any angle stretching into the background.

Imagine trying to draw a 20 degree line on graph paper, but you have to make the line touch 2 corners on each square it goes through.

It’s the equivalent of uneven staircases on low-res 2D games.

Saturn’s warping in racing games is down to something completely different.

Ridge racer series had virtually no warping in my experience or maybe too minimal to the point of being imperceptible. Almost felt Z-buffered.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

Ridge racer series had virtually no warping in my experience or maybe too minimal to the point of being imperceptible. Almost felt Z-buffered.

I believe a lot of later PlayStation games used software to mitigate it.

Ridge Racer 4 is incredible for the hardware, gorgeous game.

 

[Parazels]

Ridge racer series had virtually no warping in my experience or maybe too minimal to the point of being imperceptible. Almost felt Z-buffered.

 

[Parazels]

I believe a lot of later PlayStation games used software to mitigate it

Or increased density of textured polygons.

 

[Fafalada]

The Saturn used skewed sprites for texturing being rectangles it didn't produce the zig zag pattern.

Not 'inside' the rectangle - but environment was built out of more than one rectangle. Saturn was still doing affine transform on the texture ('no depth, integer issue' is still very much part of the operation) - the same math as PS1, just different shape of polygons. Depending on the topology of the meshes (which is - a content question - not a hardware one) zigzag swimming still occurs on rectangles. It's just not 1:1 with triangle meshes - but we've established that 11 pages ago.

My understanding of the PlayStation warping was due to the the Z axis using whole numbers.

Rasterization on these consoles was using whole numbers in all of them (Geometry transforms were fixed point - but fractions only existed until you sent it to the GPU - where only round numbers were accepted). Basically - we didn't get subpixel rasterization until the N64 (fixed point fractions), and raster with non-integer operations in a console was a much longer wait - the XBox360.
But also - there was no Z axis in the rasterization process - pixel math happened in 2d space for these machines(notable exception was Saturn's 3d scrolling planes which actually did handle perspective).

Saturn’s warping in racing games is down to something completely different.

Depends where you're looking. When buildings have a swimming patterns on Saturn - it's the same problem PS1 had. When ground is warping - it's usually the clipping. For PS1 it was reverse - more rarely the latter, though both were also possible.

 

[RoboFu]

I believe a lot of later PlayStation games used software to mitigate it.

Ridge Racer 4 is incredible for the hardware, gorgeous game.

Yes plus higher polygon counts also helps.


You also have to be careful when using screen shots from emulators as they have texture warping fixes.


Btw. RRType 4 is one of the best looking games on the console. Devs had more access to the ps1 hardware at that point. Sony was very strict for most devs to use the given for half of the consoles life.

 

[RoboFu]

Not 'inside' the rectangle - but environment was built out of more than one rectangle. Saturn was still doing affine transform on the texture ('no depth, integer issue' is still very much part of the operation) - the same math as PS1, just different shape of polygons. Depending on the topology of the meshes (which is - a content question - not a hardware one) zigzag swimming still occurs on rectangles. It's just not 1:1 with triangle meshes - but we've established that 11 pages ago.


Rasterization on these consoles was using whole numbers in all of them (Geometry transforms were fixed point - but fractions only existed until you sent it to the GPU - where only round numbers were accepted). Basically - we didn't get subpixel rasterization until the N64 (fixed point fractions), and raster with non-integer operations in a console was a much longer wait - the XBox360.
But also - there was no Z axis in the rasterization process - pixel math happened in 2d space for these machines(notable exception was Saturn's 3d scrolling planes which actually did handle perspective).


Depends where you're looking. When buildings have a swimming patterns on Saturn - it's the same problem PS1 had. When ground is warping - it's usually the clipping. For PS1 it was reverse - more rarely the latter, though both were also possible.

None of my testing making 3d demos on the Saturn hardware have produced any zig zag. The Saturn uses a bilinear interpolation on all four vertices. It's not a affine texture like the ps1 drawing on triangles. It's not the same.

 

[RoboFu]

Going a bit further. Any type of vertex texture coordinates are purely virtual " faked " on the Saturn . That's why you never saw much environmental mapping except for games who had super genius programmers like sonic r and most games saw one texture drawn to one quad as the hardware only mapped one sprite texture to one quad. that's why Dural in VF2 didn't have shiny environmental mapping. The ps1 had real vertex texturing even if just the x and y coordinates and could tile and clamp textures which means it could stretch textures across polygon groups.

Again though those Saturn tricks started appearing in the last year or two as devs began to learn more which is the concept of this thread really. The Saturn never got its fully optimized / hardware tricks time to shine end of life where the ps1 did.

Would it have created better looking games than the ps1? No I seriously doubt it ,but it would have been cool to see.

 

[Fafalada]

The Saturn uses a bilinear interpolation on all four vertices. It's not a affine texture like the ps1 drawing on triangles. It's not the same.

Affine is operating on texture coordinates. Bilinear is filtering colors - the two are computationally entirely orthogonal.
To keep in themes with the thread:

Speaking of - my understanding is bilinear is only used to fill in the gaps that happen when deforming 'sprites' - ie. it's not operating on most pixels (but it is another difference you can observe to PS1 - Saturn does not have the same gaps that occasionally become visible between textured pixels). Also supported by on-screen since we just don't get filtered pixels in view, visuals are still primarily point sampled.

 

[diffusionx]

There was so much positivity around the Saturn in 1996 and while PlayStation was having a drought Sega were releasing the likes of VF2, Sega Rally, Panzer Zwei, Nights etc. PlayStation didn’t get a big title in 1996 until Resident Evil.

After 1996 it all just fizzled out very quickly.

In the west I’d say the highlights for Saturn in 1997 were Lobotomy’s excellent ports of Quake and Duke Nukem, at least in the west anyway. As we now know, internally Sega’s interest had already shifted towards the next generation.

Resident Evil came out in March 1996 lol. We also got WipeOut XL, Destruction Derby 2, Parappa, NFL Gameday 97, Tekken 2, Crash Bandicoot, Twisted Metal 2, Disruptor, there was no shortage of games to play. VF2 and Sega Rally also came out in 1995.

This narrative you are pushing about the 1996 PSX drought with the Saturn riding high is just totally retarded. It’s not true and the PSX was outselling the Saturn from the jump and that dynamic never ever changed.

 

[RetroGamingUK]

Resident Evil came out in March 1996 lol. We also got WipeOut XL, Destruction Derby 2, Parappa, NFL Gameday 97, Tekken 2, Crash Bandicoot, Twisted Metal 2, Disruptor, there was no shortage of games to play. VF2 and Sega Rally also came out in 1995.

This narrative you are pushing about the 1996 PSX drought with the Saturn riding high is just totally retarded. It’s not true and the PSX was outselling the Saturn from the jump and that dynamic never ever changed.

In Europe we used to get games released way after Japan and America, so that’s my point of reference.

 

[TGO]

In Europe we used to get games released way after Japan and America, so that’s my point of reference.

Tomb Raider
Resident Evil
WipEout 2097
Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars
Crash Bandicoot
Tekken 2
Ridge Racer Revolution
Die Hard Trilogy
Was all released in 1996 in the UK.

 

[RoboFu]

Affine is operating on texture coordinates. Bilinear is filtering colors - the two are computationally entirely orthogonal.
To keep in themes with the thread:

Speaking of - my understanding is bilinear is only used to fill in the gaps that happen when deforming 'sprites' - ie. it's not operating on most pixels (but it is another difference you can observe to PS1 - Saturn does not have the same gaps that occasionally become visible between textured pixels). Also supported by on-screen since we just don't get filtered pixels in view, visuals are still primarily point sampled.

What you outlined in those buildings are corners not a straight line . One side is skewed one direction the other is going another. the pixels " snap " to the next integer along the line so yes at a distance you will get some of that stair stepping.

But It's still not the same, the textures are not drawn the same as ps1 which will zig zag all the way down the line. You don't have to zoom into the background to see. The Saturn mainly warps when at angles close to the camera because the texture sprite can either be on screen or off not partially ,but some devs and current home brew devs have figured out how to clip the textures to solve that issue.

Ps1 zig zag texture draw. Because the triangles x and y coordinates do not produce straight lines across polygons with out depth correction like the emulator fix below.

now lets look at burning rangers I took just now on a real Saturn since the beginning has grids. You can clearly see the difference. clean straight lines, but yes because the texture lines snap to the nearest integer you get some stair stepping.

edit: added screen shot from wipeout 3 on my own PS1. you can clearly see the texture warble.

 

[Team Andromeda]

Resident Evil came out in March 1996 lol. We also got WipeOut XL, Destruction Derby 2, Parappa, NFL Gameday 97, Tekken 2, Crash Bandicoot, Twisted Metal 2, Disruptor, there was no shortage of games to play. VF2 and Sega Rally also came out in 1995.

This narrative you are pushing about the 1996 PSX drought with the Saturn riding high is just totally retarded. It’s not true and the PSX was outselling the Saturn from the jump and that dynamic never ever changed.

VF2 only came out in Japan in 95 and SEGA Rally only came out in the USA in 1995 and in Japan, Saturn was outselling the PS1 from the start and the 1st system to hit the 1 million millstone.

Both system had really good software in 1996 , it was a great time

 

[diffusionx]

VF2 only came out in Japan in 95 and SEGA Rally only came out in the USA in 1995 and in Japan, Saturn was outselling the PS1 from the start and the 1st system to hit the 1 million millstone.

Both system had really good software in 1996 , it was a great time

VF2 came out in 1995 in the USA as well. Sega marketed the VC, Sega Rally, and VF2 trio very heavily that Christmas season. And understandably it was a very good trio.

Maybe worldwide because Saturn was very successful in Japan… but in the USA the PSX massively outsold the Saturn right from the start and never let up.

 

[Fafalada]

What you outlined in those buildings are corners not a straight line . One side is skewed one direct the other is going another. the pixels " snap " to the next integer along the line so yes at a distance you will get some of that stair stepping.

1) What I outlined it's not stair-stepping not is it corners(unless you think the flat side of the building has multiple 'corners' inside a single polygon) - but yes the corner just happens to be perspective incorrect as well in some parts of the image - the affine issues aren't exclusive to any one polygon.
2) we're now in flat-earth levels of 'math-rationalisation' - so this will be my last response on the matter.
3) Also let's not call it 'zig-zag' - that's just one type of artifact - the point is affine doesn't match perspective, period, deviations come in all shapes and sizes (and are always most obvious in motion).

now lets look at burning rangers I took just now on a real Saturn since the beginning has grids.

Nothing projection related - but I will say this is a good example showcasing the filtering that Saturn does when filling pixel-gaps. This at least illustrates how it looks in practice (not exactly bilinear like - but it is better than raw point samples of normal hardware).

 

[TGO]

VF2 came out in 1995 in the USA as well. Sega marketed the VC, Sega Rally, and VF2 trio very heavily that Christmas season. And understandably it was a very good trio.

Maybe worldwide because Saturn was very successful in Japan… but in the USA the PSX massively outsold the Saturn right from the start and never let up.

Same here in the UK, in fact PSX dominated the shelves and the Saturn was like the redheaded stepchild.
Imagine walking into a store and the whole right wall is Playstation and in the mid of that aisle in a 5 feet wide hip high display with Sega Saturn games and accessories.
I did like the Saturn, hell I wanted one until I saw the PSX in action.
But it was sad to see, on top of that it was way more expensive.
And by November 1995, the PlayStation had already outsold the Saturn in the UK by a factor of three.

 

[Team Andromeda]

VF2 came out in 1995 in the USA as well. Sega marketed the VC, Sega Rally, and VF2 trio very heavily that Christmas season. And understandably it was a very good trio.

Maybe worldwide because Saturn was very successful in Japan… but in the USA the PSX massively outsold the Saturn right from the start and never let up.

My mistake and yeah SEGA was right to push them hard and I'm not even trying to make out that the Saturn sold well in the USA, and we can all thank the muppets at SEGA America for that, even in the UK Saturn sales weren't great, but were doing ok until the N64 came along and that's when most shops put Saturn stuff right to the back of the shops

Japan was a whole different ball game, but that was the case back then with systems doing well in one region while crap in another. Systems like the Master System and PC-Engine show this. It's a little sad irony that SEGA America did so well to see the Dreamcast but you had SEGA Japan cocking up and you had that clueless French tosser making SEGA Europe even more of a laughing stock with the DC in Europe.

I seem to remember reading that Xbox was outselling all other consoles in New Zeland I wonder if that was true LOL

 

[RoboFu]

not the same.. not the same rendering.

 

[Daniel Thomas MacInnes]

Somebody brought up hardware stats and polygon counts, and it’s very important to understand that nearly all such claims by the hardware companies is total horse$&@! Neither Sony, Sega nor Nintendo could crunch nearly those many polys that they were claiming.

This is why hardware specs pretty much went away in Gen 6. Dreamcast was the final console to sell its hardware stats, and even then, it was mostly BS. “128-bit” for example.

Personally, I say you shouldn’t worry about it. Unless you’re a computer engineer, you have no idea how any of these magic boxes work. Just wnjoy the videogames and save yourself the stress. And if hardware power really is that important, go check out the PS5 Pro.

 

[cireza]

Is this a "try not to vomit" challenge ?

Straight lines on Saturn. As they should be.

 

[cireza]

Somebody brought up hardware stats and polygon counts, and it’s very important to understand that nearly all such claims by the hardware companies is total horse$&@! Neither Sony, Sega nor Nintendo could crunch nearly those many polys that they were claiming.

These numbers are mostly irrelevant anyway. Saturn doesn't have to push as many polygons as PS1 to display the same amount of things in most cases. First if the game uses a flat floor, you can basically use VDP2 and the polygon numbers you save is enormous. Second because quads are replaced by two triangles. So these numbers don't matter much.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Dunno if someone else has already posted this here (probably did), but even so just posting again because I found it enjoyable.

Sounds like John is going to do a full series of this focused on various genres. Really the DF Retro stuff is the only DF content I can get behind these days, so it's interesting to see him using modern technical analysis techniques for these older titles.

FWIW I hope NXGamer resumes their PC retro stuff some day; I enjoyed that stuff too and late '80s/'90s PC gaming is a very foreign world to me, having played few PC games during that era (outside of edutainment games at computer labs in elementary & middle school in the '90s).

Gotta catch up on the rest of the thread later today.

 

[Alexios]

Somebody brought up hardware stats and polygon counts, and it’s very important to understand that nearly all such claims by the hardware companies is total horse$&@! Neither Sony, Sega nor Nintendo could crunch nearly those many polys that they were claiming.

This is why hardware specs pretty much went away in Gen 6. Dreamcast was the final console to sell its hardware stats, and even then, it was mostly BS. “128-bit” for example.

Personally, I say you shouldn’t worry about it. Unless you’re a computer engineer, you have no idea how any of these magic boxes work. Just wnjoy the videogames and save yourself the stress. And if hardware power really is that important, go check out the PS5 Pro.

These numbers are mostly irrelevant anyway. Saturn doesn't have to push as many polygons as PS1 to display the same amount of things in most cases. First if the game uses a flat floor, you can basically use VDP2 and the polygon numbers you save is enormous. Second because quads are replaced by two triangles. So these numbers don't matter much.

We're at a point folks are unironically posting what AI assistant bots tell them like it's gospel, as if they aren't also simply looking up what is the prevalent result/opinion in online searches (guess what's the more popular/more praised system, duh) or whatever, official numbers are less egregious

 

[cireza]

We're at a point folks are unironically posting what AI assistant bots tell them like it's gospel, as if they aren't also simply looking up what is the prevalent result/opinion in online searches (guess what's the more popular/more praised system, duh) or whatever, official numbers are less egregious

Never underestimate AIs.




My favorite question for ChatGPT is binary operations. I love his answers. As long as he can't make proper answers to them, I will never use for anything deterministic.

And now, think about all the devs that ask Copolit and copy paste the results in the algorithms that will drive your cars and planes in the near future.

 

[Dorago]

Saturn had much more horsepower technically, but it's multi co-processor setup, use of quads instead of triangles, and lack of hardware features like transparency really hurt it.

The rushed launch by Sega, lack of second and third party support, and surprising success of the PS1 put the nails in the coffin.

 

[s_mirage]

not the same.. not the same rendering.

If you want to compare like to like, compare 2097 to 2097 in the same spot, not to part of the background of Wipeout 3. The 2097 ground textures literally appear to be wobbling in that gif by the way.

I really don't know why some of you are so fixated about this particular issue. Of course the distortions are going to look different. In the worst case, a square texture on the Saturn becomes a distorted quadrilateral. On the Playstation it's split into two distorted triangles which are each interpolated independently, causing a significant discontinuity at the point where the two triangles meet when viewed at angles. The Saturn's quad rendering is going to look better when rendering your standard four sided textures as single quads as opposed to two triangles, but it's still distorting the textures; it's still performing linear interpolation with no perspective correction, basically the same as the Playstation but with a different shaped primitive.

Sky Target in motion amply demonstrates just how badly the Saturn will warp textures if the developers don't/can't adopt strategies to counter it.

 

[Parazels]

I really don't know why some of you are so fixated about this particular issue. Of course the distortions are going to look different.

Because this "issue" is very annoying on PSX and literally non-existent on Saturn.

This is like a wart on someone's nose. You are trying to avoid staring on it, but still spot it.

 

[RoboFu]

If you want to compare like to like, compare 2097 to 2097 in the same spot, not to part of the background of Wipeout 3. The 2097 ground textures literally appear to be wobbling in that gif by the way.

I really don't know why some of you are so fixated about this particular issue. Of course the distortions are going to look different. In the worst case, a square texture on the Saturn becomes a distorted quadrilateral. On the Playstation it's split into two distorted triangles which are each interpolated independently, causing a significant discontinuity at the point where the two triangles meet when viewed at angles. The Saturn's quad rendering is going to look better when rendering your standard four sided textures as single quads as opposed to two triangles, but it's still distorting the textures; it's still performing linear interpolation with no perspective correction, basically the same as the Playstation but with a different shaped primitive.

Sky Target in motion amply demonstrates just how badly the Saturn will warp textures if the developers don't/can't adopt strategies to counter it.

I don't have wipe out 2097 on ps1 . Wipe out 3 is the newer game anyway it's better, but that doesn't matter here you can clearly see massive warping on the building and track were as the Saturn does not nearly have the same amount with mostly clean lines . It's really the best evidence you can get. it's not the same rendering technique. Burning rangers has no warping at all with near camera clipping which is as good as it gets on Saturn as far as at the time commercial products go.

And 2 I see people spouting BS when it looks like none of you have touch either machine in a dev environment. You just post something off some other forum somewhere.

The funny thing is I actually been agreeing that the ps1 will always beat out the Saturn overall. but that not what I've been talking about.

And really I just find both very interesting at a hardware level.

 

[TGO]

This is why hardware specs pretty much went away in Gen 6. Dreamcast was the final console to sell its hardware stats, and even then, it was mostly BS. “128-bit” for example.

I'd say Gen 7
Everyone knows the PS2 was toting 75 million polygons per second( real world figures would put it below 30 million though)
PS5 is around 11 billion polygons per second.
They did stop focusing on the bit spec part mostly because the consoles going forward were 64-bit which sounded worse then the previous 128-bit 6th Gen (although they were actually 64-bit too)

 

[s_mirage]

I don't have wipe out 2097 on ps1 . Wipe out 3 is the newer game anyway it's better, but that doesn't matter here you can clearly see massive warping on the building and track were as the Saturn does not nearly have the same amount with mostly clean lines . It's really the best evidence you can get. it's not the same rendering technique. Burning rangers has no warping at all with near camera clipping which is as good as it gets on Saturn as far as at the time commercial products go.

Okay, please detail exactly how the Saturn interpolates its textured quads compared to how the Playstation handles its triangles. References would be appreciated. Incidentally, I'm not saying that the exact method is identical, it can't be, what I am saying is that they are both similar forms of linear interpolation without perspective correction. Both distort with regard to perspective even if it is more obvious on one system than the other.

And 2 I see people spouting BS when it looks like none of you have touch either machine in a dev environment. You just something of some other forum somewhere.

Which is ironic considering at least one of your earlier posts appears to be directly lifting from Segaretro rather than referencing anything like hardware documentation.

 

[Fat Frog]

I don't Sonic Adv started life as Saturn projects, even Skies of Arcade started life out on the Saturn but I think it was about tanks on the ground, rather than airships It just would have been nice to see the Saturn hold out until late 1999

It seems that Skies of Arcadia's real creator, Shuntaro Tanaka, didn't ditch completely that idea years later...

 

[Wolzard]

It wasn't . Capcom made it clear the Saturn version didn't need it make use of the 4MEG cart and it was canned because of Dreamcast



I've always had John down more as a PS2 fan above any other console .


I don't think I ever said dominating, but Saturn had a lead of a million units and had FF 7 come out to Japan it would have ensured the Saturn won. I seem to remember even the Panzer Dragoon team saying that SEGA had thought they won Japan until FF7 when at the GDC on the making of Panzer Dragon
ALPS gave SEGA Saturn a market share of 42% to the PS 36% or maybe 38% in July of 1996 I seem to recall

And as for SEGA Rally breaking records for the ever best selling CD game that was the case in the UK at the time.
I'm see to remember SEGA Japan holding the record in Japan for the most pre-ordered game over there with VF2 with over a million Pre orders. Those were the days

Stories about the Sega Saturn emerge every time that make me imagine a different timeline.

FFVII entered Sega's negotiating table after Square Enix broke away from Nintendo. The deal wasn't closed because Sony offered something better: helping with marketing and distribution in the West.

Final Fantasy 7 Could Have Been A Saturn Game

A new document from a longtime SEGA employee details the company's attempts to have Square release Final Fantasy 7 on the Saturn hardware.

gamerant.com

Sega made a secret demo of Dragon Quest to demonstrate the console to Enix. The Japanese Sega wanted more RPGs on the console.

Ex-Sega Staffer Confirms "Secret" Dragon Quest Demo For Saturn

"It was said to be a top secret within the company"

www.timeextension.com

 

[RoboFu]

Okay, please detail exactly how the Saturn interpolates its textured quads compared to how the Playstation handles its triangles. References would be appreciated.



Which is ironic considering at least one of your earlier posts appears to be directly lifting from Segaretro rather than referencing anything like hardware documentation.

Oh you mean from here?

Saturn official documentation - Sega Retro

segaretro.org

lol well yeah where do you think I am getting the technical information to program for the Saturn? Sega of America themselves ?


and I have already said the biggest difference is that PS1 use real UV texture coordinates for its polygon faces. meaning you can " lay" your polygon triangle on any part of the texture. You can easily repeat textures across any model if you want and stretch a single texture across a 3d model.

Saturn does not use UV mapping. it is one bitmap stretched between four rectangle vertices. its always one texture to one quad. To make a textured model you split your model texture into individual textures. Some devs have found ways to fake UV to make environmental map effects though. to repeat textures you need just as many quads as texture repeats.

anywho.. so again PS1 interpolates its textures using triangles in a affine manner. we all understand that, but because its a triangle it will never be straight at an angle because a rectangular texture goes across two triangles that are interpolated differently where as on the saturn it uses a rectangle texture for a rectangle quad and the way it skews that rectangle to calculate the texture interpolations is more akin to a bilinear interpolation so you do not get as much distortion.. it is as simple as I can put it.

it all really makes sense if you think about it.

 

[Parazels]

Did Sega 32x also use rectangular polygons? I see no warping textures on the walls. Only when they are close to sides of the display.

 

[cireza]

RoboFu I have a question for you, as you seem to be the most knowledgeable around here about Saturn dev.

I have read the entire dev documentation back then about VDP1 and VDP2 and how graphics were built on the console. My understanding is that VDP2 receives anything generated by VDP1 as a single layer, and can then prioritize this layer against the several other layers it manages directly. Another thing I understand is that pixels coming from VDP1 can be set to either display other VDP1 pixels behind, either VDP2 pixels. But not both. This limits transparency use-cases.

What I currently don't really understand is how Team Andromeda achieved full transparency from a VDP2 layer that cuts 3D models in half. Example here :

You can clearly see the rocks, in 3D, being cut at their base by the transparent VDP2 water layer, and the rocks below being shown through the transparent water. They did it too in Panzer Zwei (underground boss). Obviously something is happening here, and it is in no way the cheap trick they did in the first level of Panzer 1.

Edit : might be possible if you get the 3D objects in two passes, and then display the picture. This would work at 30fps.