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[Alexios]

I added a last video embed with a year ~1999 high end PC video with a Pentium III and Voodoo 3 that would have cost ~1000 (CPU + GPU a minimum via super deals ~$650 and the rest for RAM, HDD, Sound Card, mobo, etc.) to show it smoked the ~1998 $199 DC!

Here's some random Dreamcast footage from the interwebs. Real hardware, not emulation. There's next to no good footage of Aero Dancing i, it's a 60fps game but this video is 48 fps and most others are 30. Other than some old school special effects it's beautiful as the series showed tangible improvements with each new iteration despite how fast they were churning these out. Compared to contemporary PC flight sims like IL-2 Sturmovik from many months later, the planes have great detail, the terrain textures are of good resolution and the pop-in for the 3D structures is quite good (granted some Aero games, i included, also released on PC). That Le Mans video isn't the best in image quality but it shows a full 24 car race with changing tod and weather. I can't find great MSR footage that shows off the insane amounts of fully modeled track detail either. I guess people mostly go back to the arcadey Dreamcast games instead of those that demanded quite some time investment when recording and uploading. Also, anyone who says Dreamcast couldn't do sandbox based on Headhunter forgets the Crazy Taxi games with their great vistas and tons of traffic that could easily be halved and still look dense if it was necessary to accomodate different types of gameplay or increase individual polycount. The pedestrians and what not don't look too bad either and yes, there's pop in, but considering all it throws up every second (again 60fps) it's great.


So, ya, of course it was powerful and didn't just have Shenmue to prove it. The polycount of the characters in DOA2L and even the dodgy VF3tb surpassed that of TTT and VF4 on PS2 (which btw halves the arcade's so ya they were still very powerful too even if cheaper than before, Naomi 2 was a beast) and destroy that of SoulCalibur which was a crossgen kind of remaster. As great as it looked due to the great modelers at Namco, it's modest technically for what DC could do, so it could have had more such advanced game ports if it had lived longer. Many lesser DC games push more polys than you'd think but don't look like it due to their very inefficient use from either a lack of talent, budget or time, or simply the era's still evolving know how that meant not all studios were equal in their artistry, hence many early PS2 games not looking better for the most part either.

A Voodoo 3 may beat, but not smoke, the DC despite coming out the following year as the top GPU. When did consoles trash PC 3D to single Dreamcast out for not doing the same? All the PC greats had to be cut down to fit, from Quake 3 DC and UT on that and PS2 to the later Championship titles based on Unreal 2 tech. It was just an era PC didn't get much love from Japanese developers which still dominated in technology and artistry and the ports were shoddy if at all, contemporary-ish PCs were superior to all the consoles of the era. Consoles didn't get true love from PC devs either.


Here's an even better PC with a Pentium III. Grand Prix 3 beats the best of DC in ways (I would say it took 2002's Grand Prix 4, whenever that could perform well with high settings, to beat DC games in every way - the crowd seats etc. are pretty bad in 3 but improved in 4 and similar to how consoles devs did it) with crazy effects like puddle reflections, too bad it's a slideshow even with reduced settings when the best on DC are 60 fps and still look slick, with the same res. Quake III commonly drops to ~20fps with reduced settings.


Who would play Ferrari 355 Challenge in 480p 60fps instead of that, huh?! And ya, as said earlier the Voodoo 3 launched cheap, like up to $50 less than a Dreamcast if you were lucky, or roughly the same as! Huh, you need a CPU too?! Here's Intel's Pentium III launch announcement!
"The Pentium III processor core, with 9.5 million transistors, is based on Intel's advanced P6 microarchitecture and is manufactured on 0.25 micron process technology. The 450 and 500 MHz speeds, with 512 KB L2 cache, are available now. Pricing in 1,000 unit quantities is $696 and $496 respectively."
The 450MHz variant is in the last video, it only cost $496, in bulk! A nice cheap ~$715 CPU adjusted for inflation! Stupid DC, why couldn't you smoke a ~$1000 PC (before adjustment, not counting monitor etc.) for your ridiculously expensive $199?! Here are two GPUs you should compare PS2 to if you're gonna compare a Voodoo 3 to Dreamcast (not the GeForce 4, that's an even later but lower end release). I'd say DC compares more favorably to Voodoo 3 than PS2 does to these that also released the following year from its launch.
https://youtu.be/VCCiCn3y3SI
https://youtu.be/lGLSZAhtZ04
The same goes for the previous line of cards actually with almost the same results: https://youtu.be/Mv5T34ToU24

 

[UnNamed]

if vastly mean 2-3 times .. than it is vastly superior ..

Black .. GP .. 65 535 NPC + alfa .. Transformers .. AmonRA .. Outcast2

Any attempt by DC to run these things (on PS2 many at 60fps) will end in single digit framerate.

But Dreamcast... polygons... Dead or Alive...

 

[BlackTron]

I categorically reject the spirit of this thread and OP's whole agenda with it.

Doing Satan's work.

 

[muteZX]

But Dreamcast... polygons... Dead or Alive...

uff .. that one game .. heh .. /Tekken 5 >> DOA/.

 

[Fafalada]

I'd say DC compares more favorably to Voodoo 3 than PS2 does to these that also released the following year from its launch.​

PS2 ran circles around GF2 series, anything remotely depending on actual GPU throughput wasn't even a contest.
The PC favorable comparisons are those where stress is on the CPU side, but that's the same thing that made DC - and really every other console of that era, look bad relative to contemporary PCs.

(apparently the CPU of the DC was comparable to a 1ghz pentium 3)

Not really (see above). It could do SIMD math about 2-3x faster than equivalently clocked(200mhz) P3. It was slower in pretty much every other respect. Not unlike other console CPUs of that era really, consoles never had great general performance CPUs until this gen.

 

[muteZX]

PS2 ran circles around GF2 series, anything remotely depending on actual GPU throughput wasn't even a contest.
The PC favorable comparisons are those where stress is on the CPU side, but that's the same thing that made DC - and really every other console of that era, look bad relative to contemporary PCs.


Not really (see above). It could do SIMD math about 2-3x faster than equivalently clocked(200mhz) P3. It was slower in pretty much every other respect. Not unlike other console CPUs of that era really, consoles never had great general performance CPUs until this gen.

If the Xbox came to market at the same time as the PS2 .. with a GF2 class GPU, some PII at 333-466Mhz with 32 mega RAM .. its ass would be ugly kicked. CPUs in PS1-PS2-PS3-PS4 are very weak, poor GP performance, decent SIMD /pseudo SIMD integer GT engine PS1, VUs PS2, SPEs PS3 and poor PS4 Jaguar, heh/.

 

[01011001]

PS2 ran circles around GF2 series,

uhm? what? I had a PC with a GeForce 2 which had no issues running stuff like Max Payne 2 at high resolution at 60fps.

now look how the PS2 ran that game.

MGS2 also ran better than on PS2, higher res etc.
same with GTA3, same with Vice City.

I played many games on that PC that were also on PS2 and it ran literally everything better than a PS2

 

[muteZX]

uhm? what? I had a PC with a GeForce 2 which had no issues running stuff like Max Payne 2 at high resolution at 60fps.

now look how the PS2 ran that game.

MGS2 also ran better than on PS2, higher res etc.
same with GTA3, same with Vice City.

I played many games on that PC that were also on PS2 and it ran literally everything better than a PS2

High framerate for games with simple graphics. Simple graphics = low poly, low alpha, low overdraw. Push it and it will colapse.

"The GeForce 2 architecture is quite memory bandwidth constrained. The GPU wastes memory bandwidth and pixel fillrate due to unoptimized z-buffer usage, drawing of hidden surfaces, and a relatively inefficient RAM controller."

 

[Pachi72]

I think the Hitachi CPU held it back. If it would of had a POWERPC CPU it would of went toe to toe with PS2

 

[JackMcGunns]

"SOE on the Xbox actually ran slower than on the PS2. While the PS2 maintained 30 frames-per-second (fps) in nearly every scene, and about 50% of the time could theoretically render at 60fps, on the Xbox SOE maintained 30fps less than half the time, and often dropped down to 15fps, or even 10fps on many occasions."

In the end, the Xbox managed the conversion, but at the cost of considerable simplification of many things / independent animation of all NPCs, etc. /.

It's not hard to find a graphics situation on the PS2 that the Xbox won't be able to keep up with.

You should write "sarcasm" at the end of your post so that we all know you're just joking lol.

But just in case you weren't joking, watch this video and educate yourself outside of your bubble.




Most games ran at 60fps on Xbox vs 30fps on PS2, and not just higher framerate, but higher resolution too. Games like Dragon's Lair 3D and Enter the Matrix ran as high as 1920x1080i on Xbox vs 480i on PS2.

Here's Enter the Matrix resolution and framerate comparison:

It's pretty embarrassing to compare, and we're not even accounting the better models, texture filtering and lighting on Xbox.

PS.

Funny how everyone is focused on I/0 now a days, but fun fact, Xbox had a standard HDD which means games streamed levels as opposed to loading from the slow as DVD drive, this resulted in MASSIVE difference in load times, and in games like Halo CE, sections were instantly loaded. Xbox was practically a generation ahead of the PS2, no question.

 

[Alexios]

You should write "sarcasm" at the end of your post so that we all know you're just joking lol.

But just in case you weren't joking, watch this video and educate yourself outside of your bubble.

There are similar differences for all SC games, I can't imagine playing such titles on PS2 just to claim it has modern games the already dead Dreamcast didn't get when the experience suffers so much from the intended. Screw models etc., it's Splinter Cell without all the shadows ffs.

I dunno why there's such a fixation on PS2 anyway, the poll is just about the DC, it can be powerful in 1998, 1999, 2000+ even if it doesn't beat everything ever on the PS2 in 2004/5 (Transformers/T5) as it can be powerful for its $199 even if it doesn't beat a $1000 PC of the next year.

And it was and has plenty still beautiful, smooth and slick games to enjoy playing in 2021 and be impressed they came out so many years back. Unless you have a huge stick up yours and some kind of long lasting beef with a company that's not been a first party since 2001. Pathetic.

 

[Derktron]

You should write "sarcasm" at the end of your post so that we all know you're just joking lol.

But just in case you weren't joking, watch this video and educate yourself outside of your bubble.




PS.

Funny how everyone is focused on I/0 now a days, but fun fact, Xbox had a standard HDD which means games streamed levels as opposed to loading from the slow as DVD drive, this resulted in MASSIVE difference in load times, and in games like Halo CE, sections were instantly loaded. Xbox was practically a generation ahead of the PS2, no question.

Damn, I did not realize how powerful the original Xbox was.

 

[JackMcGunns]

Damn, I did not realize how powerful the original Xbox was.

Oh you have no idea, today we're discovering these "PARITY CLAUSES" but they definitely existed back in the PS2 days, Sony is a sneaky MoFo. When GTA III was in development, it was first announced that it will be running at a higher resolution on Xbox, but suddenly that was backtracked and the game released at 480p on Xbox, but the Xbox was perfectly capable of outputting the game as is at 720p without breaking a sweat.

Someone used a hex edit to force the output to 720p and here are the results. Smooth framerate, sharp 720p output with the added reflections:

 

[01011001]

Damn, I did not realize how powerful the original Xbox was.

back then seeing games that pushed the Xbox like Chaos Theory, Doom 3 or Riddick was like playing next gen games.

the perceived difference between PS2 and Xbox can be as big as the difference between Switch and PS4, and bigger in some ways because in the case of Chaos Theory, the whole game needed to be changed not only resolution and effects.
rooms were completely changed to be less detailed, levels were chopped up into little bits, features were gone, it was a huge difference.

 

[Mobilemofo]

Most of what I remember about my dreamcast is the bloody Internet. Using the disc. Followed by endless fun on powerstone..

 

[Evil Calvin]

Dreamcast launched in Sept 99 and was amazing. PS2 launched in Oct 2000. I think the nail in the coffin was that the PS2 had a DVD player. DVD's were just coming out and blew up. Especially after movie studios chose the DVD format that Sony had rather than the HD-DVD that Xbox was using. Dreamcast had neither. Game companies moved on to Sony and Xbox and then so did the consumers.

 

[Derktron]

back then seeing games that pushed the Xbox like Chaos Theory, Doom 3 or Riddick was like playing next gen games.

the perceived difference between PS2 and Xbox can be as big as the difference between Switch and PS4, and bigger in some ways because in the case of Chaos Theory, the whole game needed to be changed not only resolution and effects.
rooms were completely changed to be less detailed, levels were chopped up into little bits, features were gone, it was a huge difference.

Damn I'm impressed by that, I honestly did not think of much.

 

[Jaxcellent]

Dreamcast launched in Sept 99 and was amazing. PS2 launched in Oct 2000. I think the nail in the coffin was that the PS2 had a DVD player. DVD's were just coming out and blew up. Especially after movie studios chose the DVD format that Sony had rather than the HD-DVD that Xbox was using. Dreamcast had neither. Game companies moved on to Sony and Xbox and then so did the consumers.

Dreamcast had GD ROMS, PS2 had DVD, OG XBOX had DVD, but you needed a remote and dongle to play... The PS3 had Blu-rays that competed with X360 HD DVD addon.

 

[muteZX]

You should write "sarcasm" at the end of your post so that we all know you're just joking lol.

But just in case you weren't joking, watch this video and educate yourself outside of your bubble.




Most games ran at 60fps on Xbox vs 30fps on PS2, and not just higher framerate, but higher resolution too. Games like Dragon's Lair 3D and Enter the Matrix ran as high as 1920x1080i on Xbox vs 480i on PS2.

Here's Enter the Matrix resolution and framerate comparison:

It's pretty embarrassing to compare, and we're not even accounting the better models, texture filtering and lighting on Xbox.

PS.

Funny how everyone is focused on I/0 now a days, but fun fact, Xbox had a standard HDD which means games streamed levels as opposed to loading from the slow as DVD drive, this resulted in MASSIVE difference in load times, and in games like Halo CE, sections were instantly loaded. Xbox was practically a generation ahead of the PS2, no question.

Splinter is a slow paced game with simple environment geometry, little alpha overdraw, etc. A simple thing where only "per pixel" shaders on surfaces are worth talking about.

I gave here an example of a game / SOE / where the Xbox completely failed to replicate independent animation of all more than 250 NPCs at once. And PS2 can do even better. If the Xbox came to market at the same time as the PS2 it would have a big performance issue, it does have it even though it came 2 years later. When PS2 goes full gas, the Xbox has to pray to do just as well.

 

[JackMcGunns]

Splinter is a slow paced game with simple environment geometry, little alpha overdraw, etc. A simple thing where only "per pixel" shaders on surfaces are worth talking about.

Sadly, PS2 suffered with even that

 

[Little Chicken]

I love this thread! I remember Headhunter looking really good (the interiors, the open world looked unfinished).

 

[Dr. Suchong]

I remember seeing this after thinking Sega had next gen in the bag.
I thought the specs for Ps2 were some sort of joke.
I thought "B..but nothing is more powerful than Dreamcast..."

 

[Alexios]

Too many noobs here pushing what looks aesthetically better to them or what is on their favorite system as well then of course the PR regarding it must be true and it's a true technical achievement with more polygons than anybody else because how else could aesthetics work, what even is art?

I thought the specs for Ps2 were some sort of joke.

They were though. PS2 greats like Ratchet & Clank which pushed ~37% of those polygons per second (if even true) had many sacrifices to achieve that much (like using 2 & 3 bit textures only because everything takes up ram so even if you can technically push more polys they won't fit in ram).

Then you have Grand Prix Challenge's dev claiming 15 million pps without any compromises but that dev also claimed Dreamcast's Le Mans did 5 million pps and that's way off the mark (it's more like 1.5 mpps, lol @ polybius80's remove lighting/stuff in a 24 hour tod game & more effects etc.).

But some people wanna take their word and other such PR as gospel. I guess I'll just claim Dreamcast did 5m pps easy too rather than stick to known receipts like Dead or Alive 2 Limited at ~3m. Not bad for 1998 hardware, whether beat by whatever came much later or not, definitely powerful!

Polybius80, no shit you can push more polys with less effects, textures, game logic, everything that makes a game, hence my comment about the sacrifices games like Ratchet & Clank had to do to achieve their polycount when your "talented dev" claims they did way more without any sacrifice!

As if a dev being talented and making a good game stops them from also spreading bs PR stuff in an attempt to sell it to people. I'm sure you believe everything that comes out of Sony's mouth since they also put out great hardware and software that tons of users enjoy, they'd never lie, dudes!

Then we can just agree PS2 offered Toy Story quality graphics and allowed gamers to jack into the Matrix and was better than literal supercomputers of the era and thus was used for missile guidance or whatever like all the PR of the era. But ALL game devs sucked so didn't do as seen below!

 

[polybius80]

They were though. PS2 greats like Ratchet & Clank which pushed ~37% of those polygons per second (if even true) had many sacrifices to achieve that much (like 2 & 3 bit textures only).

Then you have Grand Prix Challenge's dev claiming 15 million pps without any compromises but that dev also claimed Dreamcast's Le Mans did 5 million pps and that's way off the mark.

But some people wanna take their word and other such PR as gospel. I guess I'll just claim Dreamcast did 5m pps easy too rather than stick to known receipts like Dead or Alive 2 Limited. Not bad for 1998 hardware and whether beat by whatever came much later or not, definitely powerful, lol.

here you can see and understand how 17 million triangle are displayed on PS2 and in particles which its far more impressive

Then you have Grand Prix Challenge's dev claiming 15 million pps without any compromises but that dev also claimed Dreamcast's Le Mans did 5 million pps and that's way off the mark

le mans is one of the most impresive games on DC and melbourne house a very talented studio that made very impressive games like GP: challenge and tranformers: armada, it was so long ago that the kids that played those games now can vote so I am sure you can find for yourself how true or false was the PR

its not so difficult to understand what they did to achieve 5 million triangles, the DC(any console really) can display more polygons with less effects, if you remove lights or alpha for example you can draw more triangles, if you can control where to apply effects you can get that results how they did it? well that is why they are very talented

 

[DeltaPolarBear]

They were though. PS2 greats like Ratchet & Clank which pushed ~37% of those polygons per second (if even true) had many sacrifices to achieve that much (like 2 & 3 bit textures only).

Then you have Grand Prix Challenge's dev claiming 15 million pps without any compromises but that dev also claimed Dreamcast's Le Mans did 5 million pps and that's way off the mark.

But some people wanna take their word and other such PR as gospel. I guess I'll just claim Dreamcast did 5m pps easy too rather than stick to known receipts like Dead or Alive 2 Limited. Not bad for 1998 hardware and whether beat by whatever came much later or not, definitely powerful, lol.

Then we can just agree PS2 offered Toy Story quality graphics and allowed gamers to jack into the Matrix and was better than literal supercomputers of the era and thus was used for missile guidance or whatever like all the PR of the era. But ALL game devs sucked so didn't do as seen below!

One thing I remembered was that Squaresoft expected a much more powerful PS2, and as such planned FFX to be a much bigger game than it ended up being. However once the hardware kits arrived they had to scale everything back. That was why FFX is just one corridor without a functional airship. Saw that in a magazine.

 

[TheWanderingOgre]

Best console ever but thats besides the OPs point.

OP, if you had played Shenmue and Soul Calibur at launch this thread wouldnt exist.

They were simply unbelievable. Overwhelming, truly.

Maybe not the actual biggest technical leap between generations but without a doubt the most impressive, noticeable, visual one.

While we are on it... Fuck all this X blurs and Y depths and shadows this, shadows that, of this day and age. Bring back DC crispness.

 

[Keihart]

 

[Dave_at_Home]

All I know is that the Resident Evil 1 remake on Gamecube still holds up.

 

[Dave_at_Home]

If the Xbox came to market at the same time as the PS2 .. with a GF2 class GPU, some PII at 333-466Mhz with 32 mega RAM .. its ass would be ugly kicked. CPUs in PS1-PS2-PS3-PS4 are very weak, poor GP performance, decent SIMD /pseudo SIMD integer GT engine PS1, VUs PS2, SPEs PS3 and poor PS4 Jaguar, heh/.

PS3 CPU was actually very powerful. It was just god tier esoteric to program for. When they did manage to program well for it, they offloaded whatever they could off the GPU onto the Cell's SPU.

 

[PendekarRajawali]

For me DC was not about power but its character and library. That's what makes DC so special for some people.

 

[muteZX]

PS3 CPU was actually very powerful. It was just god tier esoteric to program for. When they did manage to program well for it, they offloaded whatever they could off the GPU onto the Cell's SPU.

Thats why I wrote - poor GP performance, decent SIMD .. poor GP = singel IBM power core and decent SIMD = 7xSPE.

 

[muteZX]

One thing I remembered was that Squaresoft expected a much more powerful PS2, and as such planned FFX to be a much bigger game than it ended up being. However once the hardware kits arrived they had to scale everything back. That was why FFX is just one corridor without a functional airship. Saw that in a magazine.

Square knows nothing.

This map - the island is a complete and true sandbox and you can choose any strategy of crossing the environment / on your feet, on wheels, on your wings /. It's a much more sandbox than the PC Far Cry 1 and the engine allows you to render the island even if you are more than a 10 kilometres away from it, over the wide sea / real 3D waves, uf /. From sea level you climb to the top of the volcano and from there you can fly away. Its absolutely incredible. Zero chance to run this on DC. Massive polycount, massive alpha transparencies.

PS2 particles emitter /VU unit running independently from the CPU/ - dont try this on DC !!

 

[Romulus]

Splinter is a slow paced game with simple environment geometry, little alpha overdraw, etc. A simple thing where only "per pixel" shaders on surfaces are worth talking about.

I gave here an example of a game / SOE / where the Xbox completely failed to replicate independent animation of all more than 250 NPCs at once. And PS2 can do even better. If the Xbox came to market at the same time as the PS2 it would have a big performance issue, it does have it even though it came 2 years later. When PS2 goes full gas, the Xbox has to pray to do just as well.

Hence why a multiplatform dev said any game ps2 or GC could run at higher resolution and framerate with enough development time on xbox. It's just with 20 million boxes no one really pushed the xbox or GC that hard and ps2 was always lead platform, still lost 98% of comparisons, badly in many cases. Of course it should have though

 

[Romulus]

Splinter is a slow paced game with simple environment geometry, little alpha overdraw, etc. A simple thing where only "per pixel" shaders on surfaces are worth talking about.

I gave here an example of a game / SOE / where the Xbox completely failed to replicate independent animation of all more than 250 NPCs at once. And PS2 can do even better. If the Xbox came to market at the same time as the PS2 it would have a big performance issue, it does have it even though it came 2 years later. When PS2 goes full gas, the Xbox has to pray to do just as well.

You do realize the SOE example you gave runs at 2x the framerate with higher resolution textures and xbox right? And that's considering it was built around ps2.

Literally from the article you posted.

For most of the scenes in SOE Xbox, the game runs at 60fps in the single player mode, and 30fps in the multiplayer split-screen modes. This compares favourably with the single player only PS2 version, which mostly maintains 30fps

So the best example of ps2 prowess runs at half the framerate? Also, the game had less time in development on xbox and part time staff. The engine and code was way different and a nightmare it sounded like. Even still the results speak for themselves.

 

[muteZX]

Hence why a multiplatform dev said any game ps2 or GC could run at higher resolution and framerate with enough development time on xbox. It's just with 20 million boxes no one really pushed the xbox or GC that hard and ps2 was always lead platform, still lost 98% of comparisons, badly in many cases. Of course it should have though

it's very simple. Do it right on the PS2 and competing systems suddenly have huge trouble keeping up with it. In the vast majority of cases, however, the PS2 goes to half throttle and less due to chronic problems with the proper use of overly complex HW. It basically has three core CPUs / EE + 2xVU + 2xVIF + you have to use DMA channels correctly /. The Devs said fuck it and they use the PS2 as a better DC.

 

[muteZX]

You do realize the SOE example you gave runs at 2x the framerate with higher resolution textures and xbox right? And that's considering it was built around ps2.

Literally from the article you posted.



So the best example of ps2 prowess runs at half the framerate? Also, the game had less time in development on xbox and part time staff. The engine and code was way different and a nightmare it sounded like. Even still the results speak for themselves.

yep. Xbox 100% failed a literally can not replicate PS2 animation system /AI/ running independently on VU unit. Xbox CPU is simply not fast enough.

 

[Romulus]

yep. Xbox 100% failed a literally can not replicate PS2 animation system /AI/ running independently on VU unit. Xbox CPU is simply not fast enough.

Try reading the articles you post:

The resulting Xbox engine is capable of displaying the same number of characters as the PS2 version, but at 60 frames-per-second (fps), as opposed to 30fps.

I don't think you understand how unique the PS2 architecture was. It's not a copy and paste situation. The article talks about it in depth. And the result was not only a vastly higher framerate but higher resolution and textures. Who in their right mind would brag about this?

 

[muteZX]

Try reading the articles you post:



I don't think you understand how unique the PS2 architecture was. It's not a copy and paste situation. The article talks about it in depth. And the result was not only a vastly higher framerate but higher resolution and textures. Who in their right mind would brag about this?

English is not my native language and it is embarrassing for me to correct you, but read the article sentence by sentence. You haven't done that yet. The Xbox completely failed to replicate the PS2 animation system. The PS2 can animate 250 NPCs independently, the Xbox can handle just about 1/4 of that number /animation is instanced and faked/. Even with its settings, the PS2 runs in the range of 30-60fps.

 

[FromDuskTillGameOver]

Dreamcast was the last big technological leap forward PERIOD!

 

[Evil Calvin]

Dreamcast had GD ROMS, PS2 had DVD, OG XBOX had DVD, but you needed a remote and dongle to play... The PS3 had Blu-rays that competed with X360 HD DVD addon.

Ah that's right. I had misremembered a bit

 

[nkarafo]

Is that guy really trying to say the PS2 is more powerful than the XBOX?

 

[Alexios]

I can't find any other half decent quality version of the Sakura Wars 4 intro so this will do. Some random spliced together the in game cut scenes. Weirdly none of the actual animation it seems. Plus it's not complete anyway given in-game dialogues without cut scenes are missing alongside all the story in the visual novel-esque sections of course. I guess that's why it's only 12 minutes long though the game was a short homage and not as intended regardless. Anyway, some nice boss intros/destructions and what not are included if you watch more than the first 3 minute intro part.

 

[Romulus]

The PS2 can animate 250 NPCs independently, the Xbox can handle just about 1/4 of that number /animation is instanced and faked/. Even with its settings, the PS2 runs in the range of 30-60fps.

Yeah, you're literally just reading whatever you want in the article. You claim fewer NPCs, yet the article you post disputes you:

The resulting Xbox engine is capable of displaying the same number of characters as the PS2 version, but at 60 frames-per-second (fps), as opposed to 30fps.

Above is a quote from your article and it's literally the opposite of what you're saying. So, you basically pick and choose whatever you like from the article and ignore everything else. The game literally does the same NPCs at double the fps with higher resolution textures with less development time, ported from a crazy unique architecture of the PS2. I wouldn't be surprised if this game could've done 720p on Xbox with more time. Putting you on ignore now.

 

[Alexios]

Yeah, you're literally just reading whatever you want in the article. You claim fewer NPCs, yet the article you post disputes you:



Above is a quote from your article and it's literally the opposite of what you're saying. So, you basically pick and choose whatever you like from the article and ignore everything else. The game literally does the same NPCs at double the fps with higher resolution textures with less development time, ported from a crazy unique architecture of the PS2. I wouldn't be surprised if this game could've done 720p on Xbox with more time. Putting you on ignore now.

I guess his silly point is they had to adopt the engine to Xbox's architecture rather than just use the exact same methodology as on the PS2 = it's weaker than the PS2 in those ways. Never mind that when using its architecture even for a quick port you can do 2x more in all kinds of ways. Idk, lol.

 

[SkylineRKR]

Xbox was very powerful. It was half a gen ahead of PS2 basically. Didn't mean PS2 had its tricks, and its impressive moments like the Konami games, God of War etc. But the likes of Dead or Alive 3, the scale of Halo, I think RalliSport and the sheer beauty of Orta and the absolute chaos of Otogi, they absolutely went a step further than what PS2 could offer. Chaos Theory could've passed on as a launch 360 game. Xbox also had quite a bit of 720p games.

I think the Xbox had issues with RGB output, making it look washed out. But on VGA or component it should've been a leap above PS2.

 

[RoadHazard]

Compared to what was out there when it was released, yes, obviously, but not really objectively. The PS2 was released not long after, and was significantly more powerful.

 

[Romulus]

I guess his silly point is they had to adopt the engine to Xbox's architecture rather than just use the exact same methodology as on the PS2 = it's weaker than the PS2 in those ways. Never mind that when using its architecture even for a quick port you can do 2x more in all kinds of ways. Idk, lol.

Right, I just found it hilarious its supposedly the best example of hard coding to PS2 strengths vs Xbox, but it ends up far less impressive on Ps2 in resolution and fps.

 

[muteZX]

Try reading the articles you post:



I don't think you understand how unique the PS2 architecture was. It's not a copy and paste situation. The article talks about it in depth. And the result was not only a vastly higher framerate but higher resolution and textures. Who in their right mind would brag about this?

The animation system on the PS2 was implemented using VU assembly code, which had a negligible CPU requirement.
However, on the Xbox the animation code is implemented on the CPU, which contributed to the CPU bottleneck.
To optimize the animation code, it was assumed that many characters would be using the same animations, since the majority of the visible NPCs spend their timing running about in a panic!
and allowing the Xbox to maintain 60fps for most of the gameplay.

xbox - same animation /not independent/ phase for bunch of NPCs = optimization .. heh.

.. nor 60 fps, nor animation system ala PS2 .. do you copy now.

 

[MastaKiiLA]

DC came too early. It was nice for the year it came out, but you knew that Sony was going to come out with something more powerful, and they had the momentum on their side.

Sega fans talked the hell out of PSVR, and how it was going to close the gap to the PS2, but that never really happened. The PS2 showed its strength from the get go, and buried the DC.

Sega missed a trick to make the DC as strong as their arcade hardware. That would have been a game-changer for them. However, the DC's inability to faithfully port their arcade hits did not help when you compared to the PS2, which was getting perfect ports of Ridge Racer and Tekken.

 

[Jaxcellent]

DC came too early. It was nice for the year it came out, but you knew that Sony was going to come out with something more powerful, and they had the momentum on their side.

Sega fans talked the hell out of PSVR, and how it was going to close the gap to the PS2, but that never really happened. The PS2 showed its strength from the get go, and buried the DC.

Sega missed a trick to make the DC as strong as their arcade hardware. That would have been a game-changer for them. However, the DC's inability to faithfully port their arcade hits did not help when you compared to the PS2, which was getting perfect ports of Ridge Racer and Tekken.

Dude, your mixing up a few timelines and generations here.

Actually the Dreamcast was the perfect Arcade console, it was the first time in videogame history Sega/capcom/etc NAOMI arcade games could translate 1/1 to a home console, Dreamcast. It was basically the same hardware.

Sega lost because of money, they had the right games, they had the right hardware, but they were losing to much money producing the console.