Micro-64 Feature: Nintendo 64 Vs. Sega Saturn

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

You're using modern examples when talking about 5th gen hardware. You don't see the flaw in that?

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I quite intentionally chose to use modern examples, so yes. The point is to show you that this fictional difference you are creating between "pixelated" and "low resolution" does not exist to anyone other than you; 'pixelated' refers to both. It doesn't matter which generation is being referred to, terms don't change like that based on what console you are talking about.

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So you'd rather have red and white smudges than clearly distinguishable letters and symbols?

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I would, in general, rather have smooth-looking, filtered 'red and white smudges' than aliased but more legible letters, yes. I agree with mid-'90s Nintendo on that one. Those edges of those letters and pixelated low-rez textures bother me quite a bit more than blurry N64 textures do.

Of course it's better to have both things, both higher-res textures AND filtering and anti-aliasing, as you get by the late '90s on the PC and then on 6th-gen consoles, but for 5th-gen consoles you have to choose, one or the other.

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You do realize the backgrounds are still 2D in Fighting Vipers and Fighter's Megamix right?

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The background is, of course, but those fences, walls, etc. around the arenas sure aren't, and they look pretty bad. They flicker constantly when the camera moves, too. I like FV more than VF2 despite this because I find it more fun to play, but the walls do not look great.

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The Dictionary disagrees with you:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pixelated

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That's just the same uses as the ones described Wikipedia page. Neither refers to videogames, only movies, censorship, and the like. How the term is used in videogames is different.

ABF is the disgrace to any 5th gen discussion in this forum. The same for TA and 4th gen stuff.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

I quite intentionally chose to use modern examples, so yes. The point is to show you that this fictional difference you are creating between "pixelated" and "low resolution" does not exist to anyone other than you; 'pixelated' refers to both. It doesn't matter which generation is being referred to, terms don't change like that based on what console you are talking about.

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So you chose to compare apples to oranges. Thanks for verifying.

I didn't say the term changed based on generation either. Again you fail at actually comprehending what's being written. What changes from generation to generation are our expectations out of the hardware. A Saturn/PS1 quality texture on a 1080p game stretched across a large amount of polygons would look laughably pixelated. However on a 480i game across a small amount of small polygons, they look fine.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

I would, in general, rather have smooth-looking, filtered 'red and white smudges' than aliased but more legible letters, yes. I agree with mid-'90s Nintendo on that one. Those edges of those letters and pixelated low-rez textures bother me quite a bit more than blurry N64 textures do.

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And I'd rather be able to read what something says. Silly Sega and Sony sure were crazy for wanting image clarity and higher level of detail over vaseline filters.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Of course it's better to have both things, both higher-res textures AND filtering and anti-aliasing, as you get by the late '90s on the PC and then on 6th-gen consoles, but for 5th-gen consoles you have to choose, one or the other.

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And I'd rather have higher quality textures at the cost of losing filtering. Higher quality textures can still look good and passable without filtering if they're high enough quality like what we have on the Saturn and PS1. Low quality + Heavy Filtering obliterates any chance of having any kind of detail.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

The background is, of course, but those fences, walls, etc. around the arenas sure aren't, and they look pretty bad. They flicker constantly when the camera moves, too. I like FV more than VF2 despite this because I find it more fun to play, but the walls do not look great.

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They don't flicker. The polygons get culled when they reach the edge of the screen to try and reduce overdraw. Since the polygons are huge though that takes away a large portion of the wall. Again though, on older TVs that would probably be in the overscan region and not nearly as noticeable. Other than that minor issue they look fine.

You really need to learn what is actually going on graphically in the games you're criticizing.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

That's just the same uses as the ones described Wikipedia page. Neither refers to videogames, only movies, censorship, and the like. How the term is used in videogames is different.

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It is referring to a graphical issue/effect that can happen with Raster Graphics when the resolution is poor. It applies to anything using Raster Graphics, including Video Games.

yeah, i don't play many wrestling games either, but N64 felt like the GOAT for that scene, in my mind

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Originally Posted by Soulis

Check Doom 64 if you haven't already. Most impressive Doom engine game to date.

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i wanna say it was panned in the day? should've played that one, but ended up having fun with Duke Nukem instead...looking forward to finally giving it a proper go soon though!

also, gonna try out your alternate control schemes, i got used to default 007 but it's been a while

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Originally Posted by Black_Tiger

I think that arcade racing games should be considered an independent genre. Many people like myself only really enjoy arcadey racing games. Just as the authenticity and sim-like features of licensed sports games only make them less enjoyable for me or not worth playing at all.

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+1, i am absolutely in this camp as well

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Originally Posted by IrishNinja

yeah, i don't play many wrestling games either, but N64 felt like the GOAT for that scene, in my mind

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Not just your mind; that seems to be the consensus opinion among a lot of wrestling-game fans. I don't play wrestling games myself so I have no real opinion on it, though.

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i wanna say it was panned in the day? should've played that one, but ended up having fun with Duke Nukem instead...looking forward to finally giving it a proper go soon though!

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It was overlooked at the time because it's "just another Doom game". People were tired of Doom, so its greatness was not appreciated until many years later when people went back and realized that it's actually a really GOOD Doom game.

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

I didn't say the term changed based on generation either. Again you fail at actually comprehending what's being written. What changes from generation to generation are our expectations out of the hardware. A Saturn/PS1 quality texture on a 1080p game stretched across a large amount of polygons would look laughably pixelated. However on a 480i game across a small amount of small polygons, they look fine.

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What you are saying is that you want to create a difference between two identical things: when a game has a low-rez texture you are okay with, and when it has a low-rez texture you dislike. There is no difference between pixelization and low-rez textures, they are simply two different terms for the same exact thing. And what generation we are talking about doesn't matter because the term pixelization refers to visible pixel objects, period.

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And I'd rather be able to read what something says. Silly Sega and Sony sure were crazy for wanting image clarity and higher level of detail over vaseline filters.

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It's not that they didn't want filtering and all those other features, we have no idea if they did or didn't. It's that both of them locked down their hardware in '94 when such things would have been too expensive for a console. Nintendo waited, so they were able to put more powerful hardware in their machines.

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And I'd rather have higher quality textures at the cost of losing filtering. Higher quality textures can still look good and passable without filtering if they're high enough quality like what we have on the Saturn and PS1. Low quality + Heavy Filtering obliterates any chance of having any kind of detail.

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You may not mind aliasing, texture warping, jaggies within textures as you see in those screenshots there, unfiltered polygons with blocky textures, etc., but I entirely disagree. Getting rid of all that stuff is the best thing about the N64's hardware, and if the downside is blurry textures, oh well; it's far, FAR less bad than the alternative. And it took a lot of hardware power too, of course -- the PS1 and Saturn could not do those features, they aren't powerful enough. And stuff like PS1 texture warping is VERY distracting.

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They don't flicker. The polygons get culled when they reach the edge of the screen to try and reduce overdraw. Since the polygons are huge though that takes away a large portion of the wall. Again though, on older TVs that would probably be in the overscan region and not nearly as noticeable. Other than that minor issue they look fine.

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The wall parts appear and disappear as the camera turns. It looks like flickering and looks terrible. And no, it's not just overscan. They reduce the framerate too, I think -- Fighters Megamix doesn't run nearly as smoothly as VF2 did...

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It is referring to a graphical issue/effect that can happen with Raster Graphics when the resolution is poor. It applies to anything using Raster Graphics, including Video Games.

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Except that nobody discussing the issue sticks to that definition with regards to videogames, and I don't even know if you do, considering that you admit that a few textures are pixelated in games. If you read those definitions, they all say that something is pixelated once it breaks into visible pixels. Something which has visible pixels like that from the part is obviously also pixelated. I don't think I've ever seen someone trying to divide pixelization in half like you are. Arguing about details is fine, I do that too of course, but your case just doesn't make sense. Whether a low-rez, pixelated texture is close to the camera or far away, the texture is the same! And if the texture is the same, it's pixelated regardless of location on the screen so long as you can tell that its resolution is what it is. The closer one is just more obviously pixelated, but both are.

http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m...ps4lrjq2ah.png

Trekkies, i know you reply to ABF but more people in this forum read you. Using a 2D sprite from a game that already exists on PS1/Sat can be misleading, because Ruy does look like the original detailed image on these machines but wall textures on most 3D games don't. And someone will assume that 2D N64 games that use 2D art look as bad as the photoshoped image above but they don't look as shitty obviously.


http://www.okemu.com/uploadfiles/200...152511_836.jpg

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/5YTMuql2rq8/hqdefault.jpg

http://images.nintendolife.com/scree...5041/large.jpg

http://www.gametronik.com/site/rubri...8Europe%29.png

http://images.starpulse.com/news/media/i_15098.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...d_Cruising.png

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/media/19379/1/1.jpg

http://static4.gamespot.com/uploads/...tetris_001.jpg


Even the low res Doom 64 monsters look better than that.

http://www.theisozone.com/images/scr...1328128770.jpg


And this is MK Trilogy which was a mediocre N64 port and got bashed in most reviews

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/EGXlwsop1FY/hqdefault.jpg

Still looks better than your pic.


And here is KI Gold. In all it's ugly 90's CGI glory.

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http://www.mobygames.com/images/shot...nful-choke.jpg

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http://www.consoleclone.com/wp-conte...t_Gold_ss1.jpg

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Still better.


So your example isn't even close to the worst looking N64 game when it comes to 2D games. I'm not saying it's as good as Saturn in 2D, because it's not, but you don't have to make it look even worse to make your point. Because we both know that if Capcom wanted to release this on the N64, it would not look like this.

If you are talking about wall textures only then you are wrong again because PS1/Sat wall textures don't look as detailed as the original Ryu picture. They look like something between that and the picture you call as a "pixellated mess", closer to the later. Sure textures look better on PS1/Sat most of the time (from afar) but it's not like all N64 games have as bad textures as your example.

http://s29.postimg.org/vejmxfy93/Gli...Kazooie_01.jpg

http://s4.postimg.org/z9ktz1a65/Untitled.jpg

Seriously, some N64 games don't have bad texturing... Like Chameleon Twist bad or something (damn this game looks like ass). But from up close anything looks bad in 5th generation, whatever the system.

Those screenshots are not what N64 games look like on real hardware.

Soulis, most if not all of your screenshots seem to be emulator shots, they look much cleaner/better than real hardware.

About Trekkies Ryu pics. He didnt use them as an example of how 2d games look on N64, but he used them to explain how the N64 filters affect a texture on 3d games.

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Originally Posted by Black_Tiger

Those screenshots are not what N64 games look like on real hardware.

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I was about to say I don't remember my N64 outputting those screenshots like that.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

What you are saying is that you want to create a difference between two identical things: when a game has a low-rez texture you are okay with, and when it has a low-rez texture you dislike. There is no difference between pixelization and low-rez textures, they are simply two different terms for the same exact thing. And what generation we are talking about doesn't matter because the term pixelization refers to visible pixel objects, period.

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No, I'm saying context is important. You can keep saying pixelization refers to seeing pixels, but that's not going to make the official definition of the word change. Again if just being able to see pixels meant something was pixelized, it would mean every freaking 2D game is pixelated. Which no one in their right mind would take that stance. Pixelization in this case means something very simple. An extremely low res texture trying to cover more screen/polygon real estate than it can reasonably handle. So as a result it comes off looking like a mess of pixels and you can't tell what it is you're looking at. The official dictionary definitions of the word coincide with this.

A low resolution texture can look pixelated when it's stretched across too much real estate. However when it's used properly like we see in those Saturn shots, we don't see any bad pixelization going on. Things look clean, crisp, with reasonable detail.

The only one trying to redefine something here is you. You want Pixelated to mean that you can simply see pixels. That way you can stick your fingers in your ears more easily and keep screaming "NO EVERY SATURN AND PS1 GAME IS PIXELATED LALALALALALALALA!" regardless of how clean and crisp the screenshots really are.

Again I'll bring up this example from Barone:

PS1/N64
http://i.imgur.com/RyolCDV.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/nYt45PP.png

Does the PS1 shot look pixelated? No.
Can we see pixels in the PS1 Shot? Maybe
Does the N64 shot look pixelated? No.
Can we see any texture detail in the N64 shot? No.
Which shot looks crisper and more appealing? PS1.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

It's not that they didn't want filtering and all those other features, we have no idea if they did or didn't. It's that both of them locked down their hardware in '94 when such things would have been too expensive for a console. Nintendo waited, so they were able to put more powerful hardware in their machines.

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Yet it still came at a major cost. Texture cache was puny and pathetic so you ended up with shit quality textures. Sega and Sony probably saw similar issues when they looked into possibly adding that. Sega's 1993 Model 2 Hardware had Texture Filtering. They knew what benefits it had and how much it cost. They decided the cost would be too much and would require them to cut costs somewhere else to put it in. They chose not to. And by the fact Nintendo still had to cut costs by cutting things like texture cache down, it still was clearly too expensive and a bad move.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

You may not mind aliasing, texture warping, jaggies within textures as you see in those screenshots there, unfiltered polygons with blocky textures, etc., but I entirely disagree. Getting rid of all that stuff is the best thing about the N64's hardware, and if the downside is blurry textures, oh well; it's far, FAR less bad than the alternative. And it took a lot of hardware power too, of course -- the PS1 and Saturn could not do those features, they aren't powerful enough. And stuff like PS1 texture warping is VERY distracting.

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Jaggies within textures? What the hell is that supposed to mean. Jaggies is a term used to refer to the jagged edges along polygons due to low resolution rendering. If you mean seeing pixels in a texture, again we're getting into your stupid "OMG I SEE PIXEL IT BAD!" mindset.

I'd rather have a clean crisp image that I can see good detail in with a slight chance of texture warping and some minor aliasing than a completely blurred image that obliterates what little texture detail was there to begin with.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

The wall parts appear and disappear as the camera turns. It looks like flickering and looks terrible. And no, it's not just overscan. They reduce the framerate too, I think -- Fighters Megamix doesn't run nearly as smoothly as VF2 did...

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I did not say that was caused by Overscan. I said where it happens would probably fall into the overscan area on most older TVs. Yes, parts of the wall disappear as they get near the edge of the frame and are about to go out of frame. This is clearly intentional and appears to be an early form of polygon culling. Culling is a technique where polygons that are not visible stop being drawn to reduce rendering load and increase performance. And last I checked, Fighter's Megamix ran at a solid 60fps with minimal slowdowns.

In Fighter's Megamix that technique can be bad on levels where the walls are made up of huge polygons resulting in large portions being culled. However on levels with walls made of smaller polygons, or in games like Last Bronx you can see the effect is a lot less noticeable and does fit into what would be the overscan region:

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Except that nobody discussing the issue sticks to that definition with regards to videogames, and I don't even know if you do, considering that you admit that a few textures are pixelated in games. If you read those definitions, they all say that something is pixelated once it breaks into visible pixels. Something which has visible pixels like that from the part is obviously also pixelated. I don't think I've ever seen someone trying to divide pixelization in half like you are. Arguing about details is fine, I do that too of course, but your case just doesn't make sense. Whether a low-rez, pixelated texture is close to the camera or far away, the texture is the same! And if the texture is the same, it's pixelated regardless of location on the screen so long as you can tell that its resolution is what it is. The closer one is just more obviously pixelated, but both are.

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And I don't think I've ever seen someone so desperate to justify his N64 boner that he'd say Saturn High-Res mode games are horribly pixelated with tons of jaggies. Again I'll point to the Ryu Example from earlier. Yes you can see the pixels in the raw image, but we wouldn't consider this pixelated. We'd consider it a low resolution image with good detail. That is what most of those Saturn textures you're calling pixelated look like. They are low resolution, but they are also clean and crisp with a good amount of detail. They're not being overly stretched or distorted to the point where all you see are pixels and no details or clues as to what the image actually is. That's the point you're not grasping. Pixelization is not just being able to see pixels. It's when the image hits a point where all you see are pixels and all details have been lost.

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Originally Posted by Soulis

http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m...ps4lrjq2ah.png

Trekkies, i know you reply to ABF but more people in this forum read you. Using a 2D sprite from a game that already exists on PS1/Sat can be misleading, because Ruy does look like the original detailed image on these machines but wall textures on most 3D games don't. And someone will assume that 2D N64 games that use 2D art look as bad as the photoshoped image above but they don't look as shitty obviously.

So your example isn't even close to the worst looking N64 game when it comes to 2D games. I'm not saying it's as good as Saturn in 2D, because it's not, but you don't have to make it look even worse to make your point. Because we both know that if Capcom wanted to release this on the N64, it would not look like this.

If you are talking about wall textures only then you are wrong again because PS1/Sat wall textures don't look as detailed as the original Ryu picture. They look like something between that and the picture you call as a "pixellated mess", closer to the later. Sure textures look better on PS1/Sat most of the time (from afar) but it's not like all N64 games have as bad textures as your example.

http://s29.postimg.org/vejmxfy93/Gli...Kazooie_01.jpg

http://s4.postimg.org/z9ktz1a65/Untitled.jpg

Seriously, some N64 games don't have bad texturing... Like Chameleon Twist bad or something (damn this game looks like ass). But from up close anything looks bad in 5th generation, whatever the system.

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Not talking about 2D games. Talking about Textures on polygons. But don't worry, we too have had this conversation so we can just repost your previous reply:

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Originally Posted by Soulis

We understand what you are saying and i agree but i don't like how you exaggerate the effect way too much to make the console look even worse than it really is. In reality it would look like the original sprite filtered.

That's just way too blurry even for N64 standards. The few 2D games the console have don't look that bad.

Edit: Oh you meant textures, not sprites. In that case yeah this is how most N64 textures look. But not all games look like that. For instance, Banjo Kazooie uses many tiny textures that are placed together like puzzle pieces. Its inconvenient but its the correct way for the developer to overcome the tiny cache issue, without stretching a low res texture. I think many other RARE games did that. Probably Factor-5 games too but i'm not sure. And later Boss studios releases i assume. Dunno, some N64 games seem to have much better textures that others.

Unfortunately, Nintendo themselves seem that they stretched small textures. Although Majora's Mask has better texture quality than their previous releases.

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Also those all look like emulator shots. Some of those pictures you posted seem to refer to a plugin called Glide64. What is Glide64? Well it's a rendering plugin for most N64 emulators known for cleaning up the texture filtering using newer GPU features as well as supporting High-Res texture packs:

https://code.google.com/p/glidehqplusglitch64/

So that eliminates quite a few of your screenshots. Get some real hardware shots and it's all going to go downhill fast. Even with S-Video. Here's a game known for having good textures through a good S-Video cable:

http://www.micro-64.com/features/svi.../CBFD1Good.png

And it still looks pretty damn blurry.

I've been following this back and forth for some time now, very interesting points being made. There's not a lot for me to add as Trekkies, Barone, etc have covered everything that needs to be said - and I absolutely agree with them regarding the N64's blurry appraisal. PSX texture warping admittedly looks bad, but I always thought it was only an issue on early/cheaply made software, the quality stuff seemed to be mindful of not letting the effect get out of hand.

But I never considered the PSX's display to be hideously pixelated or anything (I assume we're talking about textured polygons because if it's being insinuated that 240p pixel art through a high quality connection is 'pixelated' then I'm not sure what to say. The only time an issue related to this appeared was around the turn of the millennium - mid '00s when both SNK and Capcom started using hardware like Naomi, Atomiswave etc for their 2D fighters. Admittedly the old sprites against hi-res backdrops looked kinda jarring, and obviously worse the better the connection used.

Anyway, please carry on, I always learn a lot from these debates!

Blurry output and low-res/shitty textures are two different things. Textures themselves aren't always bad (like the output). And the pics i posted are not "high res pack" textures. It's what you would see if the output was better.

Dunno if the output of the console itself would be improved with some kind of a mod.

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Originally Posted by Soulis

Blurry output and low-res/shitty textures are two different things. Textures themselves aren't always bad (like the output). And the pics i posted are not "high res pack" textures. It's what you would see if the output was better.

Dunno if the output of the console itself would be improved with some kind of a mod.

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Those shots were using a plugin designed for enhancing the textures of N64 games in emulators. From the Plugin's project page:

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Glide64 is a graphics plugin for N64 emulators such as Project64, 1964 and Mupen64. The project was started on December 29th, 2001. It is built on the Glide3X API and is extremely compatible, emulating many game's graphics flawlessly and faithfully.

GlideHQ is a realtime texture enhancer library with hi-resolution texture pack support for Glide64 (http://glide64.emuxhaven.net).

Traditional and non-traditional techniques have been used to achieve speed and high image quality even on a 9 year old 3Dfx Voodoo2. Although the 3Dfx Glide3x texture format naming conventions are used, the library can be expanded for generic use. The library supports 6 enhancers and 6 image filters. FXT1 and S3TC texture compression are supported.

Glitch64 is the recommended Glide3x wrapper for Glide64, the Glide video plugin for N64 emulators. It currently supports S3TC texture compression, anisotropic filtering, widescreen resolutions and simulates almost all the Glide3x hardware capabilities used by the plugin, included texture buffer capability (needed for render to texture). It is coded using the OpenGL API and uses GLSL shaders.

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Basically it allows N64 games to take advantage of more advanced filtering capabilities that the real system doesn't have.

Glide 64 doesn't look any different than any other plugin i ever used, except it's higher compatibility and less glitches. I also never use "enhancements" like 2X Sal, etc. I only use anisotropic filtering but that only makes texture that are further to look clearer when in angle. It also supports "N64 filtering" which doesn't look too different than the regular PC filtering at all. And Glide HQ exists for the high resolution packs that are completely different than what you see in these pictures.

This is how a high-res pack looks:

http://textures.emulation64.com/data...etextured-.png

or this

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http://orig00.deviantart.net/39a9/f/...nd-d5xct69.png

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The textures in the pics i posted are not high res and they are not "enchanted" by the plugin. These are the textures that are stored inside the carts. It only allows you to see them more clearly because of the raw output and slightly higher screen resolution in some of these pics.

Also, how do you know all the pics are made with Glide 64 anyway? Oh, you don't?

Also, are you even into the N64 emulation scene at all?


Edit: Here is the same scene in Doom 64, but this time using a pixel accurate graphics plugin that does not allow enchantments or higher internal resolution.

http://s29.postimg.org/4hpp57abb/dfgdggf.jpg


And here is the scene from Conker you posted. through the same plugin:

http://s4.postimg.org/gpliafosd/Untitled.png

As you can see it's slightly better than your pic, but still not as good looking as Doom. Which shows that not all N64 games have the same blurriness. So maybe with an RGB mod, you could see textures in some games better.


And here is the same scene in B-K, using the accuracy based plugin.

http://s29.postimg.org/fkmsxgtmf/ghghhfghhg.png

This time it looks blurrier than the Glide plugin but still, not too bad.

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Originally Posted by Soulis

Glide 64 doesn't look any different than any other plugin i ever used, except it's higher compatibility and less glitches. I also never use "enhancements" like 2X Sal, etc. I only use anisotropic filtering but that only makes texture that are further to look clearer when in angle. It also supports "N64 filtering" which doesn't look too different than the regular PC filtering at all. And Glide HQ exists for the high resolution packs that are completely different than what you see in these pictures.

This is how a high-res pack looks:

or this



The textures in the pics i posted are not high res and they are not "enchanted" by the plugin in any way. These are the textures that are stored inside the carts. It only allows you to see them more clearly because of the raw output and slightly higher screen resolution in some of these pics.

Also, how do you know all the pics are made with Glide 64 anyway? Oh, you don't?

Also, are you even into the N64 emulation scene at all?


Edit: Here is the same scene in Doom 64, but this time using a pixel accurate graphics plugin.



And here is the scene from Conker you posted. through the same plugin:

As you can see it's slightly better than your pic, but still not as good looking as Doom. Which shows that not all N64 games have the same blurriness. So maybe with an RGB mod, you could see textures in some games better.


And here is the same scene in B-K, using the accuracy based plugin.


This time it looks blurrier than the Glide plugin but still, not too bad.

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Some of them had Glide64 in their file name or metadata. That's how I knew they used Glide64. Regardless of if you were using high-res texture packs or not, the Plugin still uses rendering filters that the N64 doesn't have, thus painting an inaccurate picture. Basically, don't bring in emulator shots when we're discussing what the actual hardware output looks like. They're completely useless.

As for the Conker shot, the shot I posted was S-Video, the best you can get out of a stock N64. Compare that to Saturn S-Video shots and it's a night and day difference in clarity. Doom 64 does look nicer than most N64 games, but I think when we look at other games, even what Rare put out like Goldeneye, we can see that it's not the norm for the system or the genre.

Youtube videos will always look worse no matter what. Very bad reference. Also, funny that you posted Quake... as far as i remember this game had an option to remove filtering all together. The textures were pixelly as a result but it looked sharper. And Goldeneye only looks good on certain levels like Bunker, Silo or the second half in Control. Caverns is one of the ugliest. But thanks for not posting Jungle, that was the worst thing ever.

Here are a couple of shots from more games.

http://s8.postimg.org/kldw110it/dgggdg.png

Earthworm Jim looks good at parts but overall it's pretty average looking.


http://s14.postimg.org/gjcwlpeoh/fghgfhh.png

Goemon's Adventure looks sharp enough and has a nice variety of textures at any given time that also look good.


If you are interested, i can cherry pick more good looking N64 images, to balance things out a bit. As for the Saturn vs N64 image clarity, i never said the N64 is as good or even close to it. But it's not as bad as some of the pics posted in this thread suggest. At least not for all games as you can see.

Goemon's Great Adventure is the best 2.5d platformer that generation. Incredible game! And yeah, it looks nice too.

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

No, I'm saying context is important. You can keep saying pixelization refers to seeing pixels, but that's not going to make the official definition of the word change. Again if just being able to see pixels meant something was pixelized, it would mean every freaking 2D game is pixelated. Which no one in their right mind would take that stance. Pixelization in this case means something very simple. An extremely low res texture trying to cover more screen/polygon real estate than it can reasonably handle. So as a result it comes off looking like a mess of pixels and you can't tell what it is you're looking at. The official dictionary definitions of the word coincide with this.

A low resolution texture can look pixelated when it's stretched across too much real estate. However when it's used properly like we see in those Saturn shots, we don't see any bad pixelization going on. Things look clean, crisp, with reasonable detail.

The only one trying to redefine something here is you. You want Pixelated to mean that you can simply see pixels. That way you can stick your fingers in your ears more easily and keep screaming "NO EVERY SATURN AND PS1 GAME IS PIXELATED LALALALALALALALA!" regardless of how clean and crisp the screenshots really are.

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I see what you're doing here, trying to reverse the obvious and pretending that you're defending a definition that you are in fact warping, but fortunately I've already proven you wrong with my post of links last page, so there's really not much more to say than that. You are wrong. You are the only person who actually thinks that "low-rez" and "pixelated" are different things. Your entire arguemnt here is a really bad semantic argument which makes no sense and goes directly against the way the term you are redefining is used.

And no, the dictionary definition is entirely irrelevant. Nothing in it refers to how the word is used in the videogame industry.

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Again if just being able to see pixels meant something was pixelized, it would mean every freaking 2D game is pixelated.

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Well, most. Sprite art high enough resolution so that the pixels are very small probably wouldn't be called "pixelated", and yes, such things do exist. You do know that using the term "pixelated" to refer to sprite art low enough resolution to clearly see individual pixels is commonplace these days? You are arguing directly against the current way the term is used.

Pixel art. This is the common term for (modern) art made up of visible pixels; pixel art is probably the more common term now, versus sprite art. Pixel art is, obviously, pixelated. And that's how it's meant to be! One thing you're missing is that "pixelated" is only bad if you dislike the look. There's nothing inherently good or bad about an art style. Saying "2d games are often pixelated" is not saying they look bad, of course; I like 2d graphics a lot. So do the many people who like modern pixel-art games, which are, of course, popular in recent years.

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Does the PS1 shot look pixelated? No.
Can we see pixels in the PS1 Shot? Maybe
Does the N64 shot look pixelated? No.
Can we see any texture detail in the N64 shot? No.
Which shot looks crisper and more appealing? PS1.

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That N64 shot looks far blurrier than actual N64 games look like... probably a pretty bad screenshot, and if course it's of a bad port of a mediocre game. That's not a fair comparison at all. Yes, the PS1 shot of those two looks better, but the N64 shot is probably worse looking than the actual game looks, and the game itself is a PS1 original that was ported (badly) over to the N64. But despite that, you CAN see more pixels in the PS1 shot. Everything's too small and far away to look pixelated, but Gex himself does have sharper edges than you'd see on the N64 -- compare the Gex model to Earthworm Jim in EWJ3d there, for example.

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Yet it still came at a major cost. Texture cache was puny and pathetic so you ended up with shit quality textures. Sega and Sony probably saw similar issues when they looked into possibly adding that. Sega's 1993 Model 2 Hardware had Texture Filtering. They knew what benefits it had and how much it cost. They decided the cost would be too much and would require them to cut costs somewhere else to put it in. They chose not to. And by the fact Nintendo still had to cut costs by cutting things like texture cache down, it still was clearly too expensive and a bad move.

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What you say here about why Nintendo put in the texture cache they did is 100% pure speculation and almost certainly has nothing to do with their actual reasoning. I'm sure they were not cutting the texture cache to save money. Never heard that even hinted at in N64 tech articles.

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Jaggies within textures? What the hell is that supposed to mean.

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The edges of that "WOLF" text on his pants are really jaggy. That's what I referred to there.

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I'd rather have a clean crisp image that I can see good detail in with a slight chance of texture warping and some minor aliasing than a completely blurred image that obliterates what little texture detail was there to begin with.

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What you call "crisp" and "clean" very rarely are actually either of those things. They're usually far too low-resolution to actually be clean or crisp. PS1, Saturn, and N64 3d is not clean or crisp, excepting maybe, MAYBE, some of the higher-resolution titles like Wipeout 3 (and Wipeout 3 still has the usual texture-warping and polygon seam issues that the PS1 cannot escape, though it's a very good looking game for the generation). I know you mean 'in the context of the time', but still... PC games which actually HAVE clean and crisp graphics existed by '96 or '97. Consoles wouldn't reach that level until the Dreamcast.

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I did not say that was caused by Overscan. I said where it happens would probably fall into the overscan area on most older TVs. Yes, parts of the wall disappear as they get near the edge of the frame and are about to go out of frame. This is clearly intentional and appears to be an early form of polygon culling. Culling is a technique where polygons that are not visible stop being drawn to reduce rendering load and increase performance. And last I checked, Fighter's Megamix ran at a solid 60fps with minimal slowdowns.

In Fighter's Megamix that technique can be bad on levels where the walls are made up of huge polygons resulting in large portions being culled. However on levels with walls made of smaller polygons, or in games like Last Bronx you can see the effect is a lot less noticeable and does fit into what would be the overscan region:

[YOUTUBE]nKpypMvLTSg

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I'm sure the vanishing-polygons thing is intentional, but it looks bad, and again has to be one of the reasons why those games have much lower framerates than VF2...

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And I don't think I've ever seen someone so desperate to justify his N64 boner that he'd say Saturn High-Res mode games are horribly pixelated with tons of jaggies. Again I'll point to the Ryu Example from earlier. Yes you can see the pixels in the raw image, but we wouldn't consider this pixelated. We'd consider it a low resolution image with good detail. That is what most of those Saturn textures you're calling pixelated look like. They are low resolution, but they are also clean and crisp with a good amount of detail. They're not being overly stretched or distorted to the point where all you see are pixels and no details or clues as to what the image actually is. That's the point you're not grasping. Pixelization is not just being able to see pixels. It's when the image hits a point where all you see are pixels and all details have been lost.

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N64? What I said about aliasing and resolutions has little to do with the N64. It's actually about computer games. I've played huge numbers of PC games, including lots in the '90s. You're seriously saying that just because a game is running at 740xwhatever it doesn't have jaggies? What? You have jaggies on computer games running at very high resolutions, if you disable anti-aliasing for example! Raising the screen resolution does not necessarily lower the number of jaggies, the two things are separate issues.

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Not talking about 2D games. Talking about Textures on polygons. But don't worry, we too have had this conversation so we can just repost your previous reply:

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Also those all look like emulator shots. Some of those pictures you posted seem to refer to a plugin called Glide64. What is Glide64? Well it's a rendering plugin for most N64 emulators known for cleaning up the texture filtering using newer GPU features as well as supporting High-Res texture packs:

https://code.google.com/p/glidehqplusglitch64/

So that eliminates quite a few of your screenshots. Get some real hardware shots and it's all going to go downhill fast. Even with S-Video. Here's a game known for having good textures through a good S-Video cable:

And it still looks pretty damn blurry.[/QUOTE]
The actual textures look like what you see in Soulis's screenshots. He's done a great job disassembling your overdone photoshopping and showing the quality of textrures N64 actually does.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

I quite intentionally chose to use modern examples, so yes. The point is to show you that this fictional difference you are creating between "pixelated" and "low resolution" does not exist to anyone other than you; 'pixelated' refers to both.

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Pixellation isn't synonymous with low resolution. If it was, there'd be no distinction to make with the N64, since it uses the same resolution apart from a few high-rez games. Texture filtering and anti-aliasing do not increase resolution.

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Originally Posted by Soulis

http://s14.postimg.org/gjcwlpeoh/fghgfhh.png

Goemon's Adventure looks sharp enough and has a nice variety of textures at any given time that also look good.

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Sorry to go off on a tangent but can I just say... This is definitely better than average for N64, but it still falls back on the same typical N64 look for the ground -- a tan or green randomly polka-dotted with a darker shade of the same color. I don't like how damn near every N64 game does this. I get an annoying sense of sameness throughout the N64 library in terms of graphics, and this is the #1 reason why. It really put me off the N64, aesthetically speaking.

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Originally Posted by j_factor

Pixellation isn't synonymous with low resolution.

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Not low screen resolution, low texture resolution. It's not about screen resolutions, all three systems are quite similar there. It's about textures.

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If it was, there'd be no distinction to make with the N64, since it uses the same resolution apart from a few high-rez games. Texture filtering and anti-aliasing do not increase resolution.

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Texture filtering and anti-aliasing do not increase screen resolution, but they do sort of increase texture resolution. That is, what you look at on the screen is not the texture as it was originally drawn. It is a filtered, anti-aliased, z-buffered, etc. version of the texture, often stretched to fit. Those graphical effects and filters add a lot of pixels of detail, or "blur" if you will, that did not exist in the original art. A straight, unfiltered N64 texture would be very pixelated, but those filters make it look smooth.

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Sorry to go off on a tangent but can I just say... This is definitely better than average for N64, but it still falls back on the same typical N64 look for the ground -- a tan or green randomly polka-dotted with a darker shade of the same color. I don't like how damn near every N64 game does this. I get an annoying sense of sameness throughout the N64 library in terms of graphics, and this is the #1 reason why. It really put me off the N64, aesthetically speaking.

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What are you talking about here, the ground or something? I'm not sure. The buildings are the impressive thing in that screenshot though, not the path and rocks... and those buildings look quite nice. Great texture work on things such as the kanji on the hanging cloths that mark doorways, the wooden walls of the other building, etc.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

I see what you're doing here, trying to reverse the obvious and pretending that you're defending a definition that you are in fact warping, but fortunately I've already proven you wrong with my post of links last page, so there's really not much more to say than that. You are wrong. You are the only person who actually thinks that "low-rez" and "pixelated" are different things. Your entire arguemnt here is a really bad semantic argument which makes no sense and goes directly against the way the term you are redefining is used.

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Yet others in this topic, and the many others before it, have not only agreed with me, they've stepped up and thrown more facts in your face. You are a delusional fanboy who refuses to even admit just once, that the textures in a Saturn or PS1 game look cleaner and more detailed than your blurry N64 games.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

And no, the dictionary definition is entirely irrelevant. Nothing in it refers to how the word is used in the videogame industry.

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Translation:

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

The Dictionary is unfair because it hurts my feelings! Only my definition that aligns with my fanboy views counts!

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The dictionary definition is relevant when talking about computer graphics, especially Raster Graphics. Which is what these systems use.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Well, most. Sprite art high enough resolution so that the pixels are very small probably wouldn't be called "pixelated", and yes, such things do exist. You do know that using the term "pixelated" to refer to sprite art low enough resolution to clearly see individual pixels is commonplace these days? You are arguing directly against the current way the term is used.

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And you're trying to twist the definition to mean seeing any pixels means something is completely pixelated and lacking detail or clarity. No one in their right mind would call Genesis or SNES style sprites pixelated. Same goes for Saturn and PS1 sprites and the textures in the screenshots I posted.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Pixel art. This is the common term for (modern) art made up of visible pixels; pixel art is probably the more common term now, versus sprite art. Pixel art is, obviously, pixelated. And that's how it's meant to be! One thing you're missing is that "pixelated" is only bad if you dislike the look. There's nothing inherently good or bad about an art style. Saying "2d games are often pixelated" is not saying they look bad, of course; I like 2d graphics a lot. So do the many people who like modern pixel-art games, which are, of course, popular in recent years.

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You are now trying to conflate Pixel Art with Pixelated. Good job, you've just insulted all the 2D game artists in the entire industry.

Visible Pixels != Pixelated. Pixelated refers to a specific point/effect where an image loses detail, clarity, and form. It is the point where it becomes hard to indentify what it is. Without this distinction, the term becomes meaningless as it can be used for anything pertaining to Raster graphics.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

That N64 shot looks far blurrier than actual N64 games look like... probably a pretty bad screenshot, and if course it's of a bad port of a mediocre game. That's not a fair comparison at all. Yes, the PS1 shot of those two looks better, but the N64 shot is probably worse looking than the actual game looks, and the game itself is a PS1 original that was ported (badly) over to the N64. But despite that, you CAN see more pixels in the PS1 shot. Everything's too small and far away to look pixelated, but Gex himself does have sharper edges than you'd see on the N64 -- compare the Gex model to Earthworm Jim in EWJ3d there, for example.

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Sharp Edges are not a bad thing. It's actually quite helpful in this case. Gex is very easy to spot in that shot. Meanwhile in the Earthworm Jim 3D shot Jim blends into the background a bit too easily for my tastes. He's not that distinguishable.

As for the quality of the game, that's irrelevant here. If anything that would mean the PS1 game should be showing the worst of it's system's flaws as well. But it's not. The simple point here is that the N64 is blurry, the PS1 and Saturn are not. And with good quality textures, the PS1 and Saturn the majority of the time will produce a cleaner and crisper looking image that is visually more appealing.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

What you say here about why Nintendo put in the texture cache they did is 100% pure speculation and almost certainly has nothing to do with their actual reasoning. I'm sure they were not cutting the texture cache to save money. Never heard that even hinted at in N64 tech articles.

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Why else would they cut it that low when it cripples the system in such a horrendous way? You honestly think someone at Nintendo went "Gee let's give this thing a pathetic amount of texture cache because this will result in really good quality textures that will look lovely!"?

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

The edges of that "WOLF" text on his pants are really jaggy. That's what I referred to there.

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Those aren't jaggies, they are simply the edges of the letters on a low resolution texture.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

What you call "crisp" and "clean" very rarely are actually either of those things. They're usually far too low-resolution to actually be clean or crisp. PS1, Saturn, and N64 3d is not clean or crisp, excepting maybe, MAYBE, some of the higher-resolution titles like Wipeout 3 (and Wipeout 3 still has the usual texture-warping and polygon seam issues that the PS1 cannot escape, though it's a very good looking game for the generation). I know you mean 'in the context of the time', but still... PC games which actually HAVE clean and crisp graphics existed by '96 or '97. Consoles wouldn't reach that level until the Dreamcast.

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Can I see the edges of the character models? Yep
Are those edges clear? Yep
Are they crisp? Yep
Can I clearly see good detail in the textures? Yep
Are the details clean and crisp? Yep
Does any of it look blurry? Smudged? Unclear? Undefined? Nope.

Seems clean and crisp to me.

Dreamcast is definitely on a level of it's own and was a big jump for consoles. But it's not the first time we saw crisp and clean visuals on a console. That honor would go to games on the Saturn and PS1 that used those systems High Res modes with good quality textures. You know, Virtua Fighter Remix, Virtua Fighter 2, Digital Dance Mix, Last Bronx, Dead or Alive, Wipeout 3, etc.

What Dreamcast actually showed us, as what the actual benefits of texture filtering, anti-aliasing, etc. brought to 3D. The N64 could have gotten that honor, if it wasn't so crippled with a poor texture cache and cartridges.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

I'm sure the vanishing-polygons thing is intentional, but it looks bad, and again has to be one of the reasons why those games have much lower framerates than VF2...

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Fighters Megamix, Fighting Vipers, Last Bronx, and Virtua Fighter all run at 60fps. Last Bronx even does it in High Res mode.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

N64? What I said about aliasing and resolutions has little to do with the N64. It's actually about computer games. I've played huge numbers of PC games, including lots in the '90s. You're seriously saying that just because a game is running at 740xwhatever it doesn't have jaggies? What? You have jaggies on computer games running at very high resolutions, if you disable anti-aliasing for example! Raising the screen resolution does not necessarily lower the number of jaggies, the two things are separate issues.

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You know why the Dreamcast has such few jaggies over the PS2? It's not just because it has good AA, it's also because more of it's games are running at 480p, which looks a lot cleaner in comparison to the PS2's lower resolution.

Jaggies are an end result of low resolution rendering. How visible they are can be more pronounced by a lack of AA. Higher resolution rendering can help reduce how bad and noticeable they are which can be a good way to eliminate them on systems that lack AA. Saturn games running in High-Res mode generally don't have visible jaggies. Compare Virtua Fighter 2 to Fighter's Megamix. Megamix has jaggies out the wazoo because it's rendering in a lower resolution. Virtua Fighter 2 on the other hand looks clean crisp, and for the most part is jaggie free.

Take a look at this video:


Look around the edges of the character models. Around their legs, arms, heads, backs, etc. Do you see any jaggies? No. You see clean, straight lines.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

The actual textures look like what you see in Soulis's screenshots. He's done a great job disassembling your overdone photoshopping and showing the quality of textrures N64 actually does.

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Yes, from two cherry picked titles that we've already established are beyond the norm you see on the N64. What the Ryu example illustrated was more of what you see in your typical N64 game. Not what you see in the few exceptional cases/late releases.

Go look at titles like Quake, Goldeneye, Zelda, etc. You'll see low res textures that are filtered to the point of being blurry messes. If you were to dig into the roms and extract the textures, you'd probably see textures on par with that Ryu example I posted.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Not low screen resolution, low texture resolution. It's not about screen resolutions, all three systems are quite similar there. It's about textures.

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And low resolution textures in a low screen resolution does not necessarily look bad. On those Saturn games, the textures are low resolution by todays standards and PC game standards of the time. However for console standards of the time they're pretty high resolution, and higher resolution than the N64 textures. Hence why they look better and hence why they don't look pixelated when rendered on those smaller polygons at those lower rendering resolutions.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Texture filtering and anti-aliasing do not increase screen resolution, but they do sort of increase texture resolution. That is, what you look at on the screen is not the texture as it was originally drawn. It is a filtered, anti-aliased, z-buffered, etc. version of the texture, often stretched to fit. Those graphical effects and filters add a lot of pixels of detail, or "blur" if you will, that did not exist in the original art. A straight, unfiltered N64 texture would be very pixelated, but those filters make it look smooth.

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No they don't increase resolution. They simply smear the image to try and hide the resolution it is. On newer systems where you actually have really good quality textures this isn't a bad thing, as it makes it scale nicely. On the N64 though it's used as a crutch to try and hide just how bad the textures really are. It results in very blurry looking games.

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

You are now trying to conflate Pixel Art with Pixelated. Good job, you've just insulted all the 2D game artists in the entire industry.

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I'll probably answer the rest later, but I need to address this now. The only person here insulting pixel artists is you, since even though I just said it in my last post you still are insisting that 'pixelated' is an insult that it is not. Pixelated as it is used today is simply a word referring to visible pixels. Sometimes it's used as a criticism of games with overly-pixelated textures or effects or something, and other times as a way to refer to pixel art. I could link you innumerable more examples of the latter like those I linked earlier. And "they're all wrong, I'm right" is not a good answer. When someone says "I want a pixelated-hat avatar", they are just saying that they want an avatar with a hat drawn at a resolution low enough to have visible pixels. That's it. Or in 3d games, look at Minecraft, a game with incredibly pixelated textures and people love it for it! "Pixelated" is only an insult or criticism if the person using the term is using it negatively. As often as not it's not one.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

I'll probably answer the rest later, but I need to address this now. The only person here insulting pixel artists is you, since even though I just said it in my last post you still are insisting that 'pixelated' is an insult that it is not. Pixelated as it is used today is simply a word referring to visible pixels. Sometimes it's used as a criticism of games with overly-pixelated textures or effects or something, and other times as a way to refer to pixel art. I could link you innumerable more examples of the latter like those I linked earlier. And "they're all wrong, I'm right" is not a good answer. When someone says "I want a pixelated-hat avatar", they are just saying that they want an avatar with a hat drawn at a resolution low enough to have visible pixels. That's it. Or in 3d games, look at Minecraft, a game with incredibly pixelated textures and people love it for it! "Pixelated" is only an insult or criticism if the person using the term is using it negatively. As often as not it's not one.

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You are the one who started this all by using Pixelated as a negative term to describe Saturn and PS1 textures. You constantly complain about how bad it looks and how it's such an awful thing that only the N64 can fix.

In the case of these 5th generation systems, Pixelated means exactly what myself and others in this very thread are calling it. A texture so low resolution that any and all detail is lost, resulting in nothing but a mess of large pixels.

I don't give a shit about what hipster indie devs think Pixelated means. I don't care what the posters on NeoGAF think it means. And I don't care if Digital Foundry uses it in that context when addressing idiots. In this conversation right here and now, the term pixelated means what it's dictionary definition says it is. Because that is what the term meant when these systems were having games made for them. When people refer to pixelated textures when referring to 5th Generation systems, they mean so pixelated that all detail is lost.

Go right ahead, post the S-Video Saturn shots I took of Virtual Fighter Remix on NeoGAF and ask "Are these textures pixelated?" It will probably spark an interesting conversation that might surprise you.

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

Yes, from two cherry picked titles that we've already established are beyond the norm you see on the N64. What the Ryu example illustrated was more of what you see in your typical N64 game. Not what you see in the few exceptional cases/late releases.

Go look at titles like Quake, Goldeneye, Zelda, etc. You'll see low res textures that are filtered to the point of being blurry messes. If you were to dig into the roms and extract the textures, you'd probably see textures on par with that Ryu example I posted.

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Why look at them only? Look at others that don't have this problem.

The problem is that you generalize a lot. It's like you want to prove that every single N64 game has worst textures/graphics than every single Saturn game. Which is not the case. Maybe on average this is true but there are enough N64 games out there that look better and more than enough Saturn games that look like shit. And when i say shit i don't mean blurriness, i mean pop up that is worse than Turok, unstable polygons that warp and bend all over the place, polygon seams, heavy pixellation and a general feel that everything looks like it's made out of thin paper. Like the graphics have no weight or solidness on them. That's exactly what i think of when i see most Saturn games.

But yeah there are exceptions though just like on the N64. Some Saturn games do look great, same happens on the N64. Virtua Fighter 2 looks great but it's not your average Saturn looking game. It's an exception. But for some reason you and others in this forum seem to ignore the N64 equivalents that i bring up. And i don't mean Goldeneye or Zelda. I never claimed these look great, at least not in some particular aspects. They are just popular. I bring up some other games and you pass them off as "late releases"? Well, GEX was also a late release, why should we care about it then (one of the worst looking platforms on the N64 btw). I guess we shouldn't care about Shadowman either... now that's a game that looks like an impossible feat for the Saturn (and very hard for the PS1 as the port suggests).

But i tried to compare another platform game once when we were talking about draw distances specifically. N64 version of Silicon Valley VS the PS1 version.

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http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/spa...ley/n64-11.png

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/spa...lley/evo49.png

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Both emulator shots, both look cleaner than normal. But they do the job comparing this particular aspect.

Now, guess what one of the more popular members here said: "Nobody cares about Silicon Valley". Welp. Something tells me that if Sillicon Valley was the superior version, then he would care. Just like how you care about GEX. With all those great 3D platform games on N64, why would anyone care about this shitty game that also got shitty reviews back then anyway? I mean i can accept shitty looking pics about Conker or Banjo Kazooie. But believe me, no N64 user cares about GEX. Just because this port has crappy textures, doesn't mean that every game is like that. In the same way not all PS1 games have bad draw distances like that, even though the average games do.

The N64 games are usually the ones that look lifeless and paper thin. Just look at how Nuclear Strike turned out on the N64. The explosions have been minimalized and the textures smeared to hide how horrible they look. The Playstation version has decent textures, nice looking explosions that light up the area around them and the ground beneath the water is visible.

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Originally Posted by Soulis

Why look at them only? Look at others that don't have this problem.

The problem is that you generalize a lot. It's like you want to prove that every single N64 game has worst textures/graphics than every single Saturn game. Which is not the case. Maybe on average this is true but there are enough N64 games out there that look better and more than enough Saturn games that look like shit. And when i say shit i don't mean blurriness, i mean pop up that is worse than Turok, unstable polygons that warp and bend all over the place, polygon seams, heavy pixellation and a general feel that everything looks like it's made out of thin paper. Like the graphics have no weight or solidness on them. That's exactly what i think of when i see most Saturn games.

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See that bolded part? That's the point that's being made and discussed here.

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Originally Posted by Soulis

But yeah there are exceptions though just like on the N64. Some Saturn games do look great, same happens on the N64. Virtua Fighter 2 looks great but it's not your average Saturn looking game. It's an exception. But for some reason you and others in this forum seem to ignore the N64 equivalents that i bring up. And i don't mean Goldeneye or Zelda. I never claimed these look great, at least not in some particular aspects. They are just popular. I bring up some other games and you pass them off as "late releases"? Well, GEX was also a late release, why should we care about it then (one of the worst looking platforms on the N64 btw). I guess we shouldn't care about Shadowman either... now that's a game that looks like an impossible feat for the Saturn (and very hard for the PS1 as the port suggests).

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From what you've brought up, the only ones that actually seem to have good textures are Banjo and Doom. The rest are all your typical poor quality, blurry N64 textures. Shadowman looks nice with the expansion pak. Without it though it's a blurry mess.

As for only a handful of Saturn and PS1 games looking good, not sure how to respond to that. I've been bringing up quite large variety of Saturn titles from various points in it's lifetime. We have Virtua Fighter 2, Virtua Cop1 & 2, Sega Rally, Dead or Alive, Daytona USA Circuit Edition, Grandia, Sonic R, Sonic Jam, Sonic 3D Blast, Burning Rangers, NiGHTS, Shining Force 3, Shining the Holy Ark, Virtual On, Mass Destruction, Bulk Slash, Stellar Assault SS, Radiant Silvergun, Layer Section 2, Die Hard Arcade, Croc, Bug Too!, Sonic Xtreme, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Powerslave, Panzer Dragoon II Zwei, etc. All of which have good solid looking 3D with good quality textures.

That's quite a bit of variety and it spans pretty much the entire life of the system. And that's just for the Saturn. We open that up to the PS1 and the list is going to expand.

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Originally Posted by Soulis

But i tried to compare another platform game once when we were talking about draw distances specifically. N64 version of Silicon Valley VS the PS1 version.


Both emulator shots, both look cleaner than normal. But they do the job comparing this particular aspect.

Now, guess what one of the more popular members here said: "Nobody cares about Silicon Valley". Welp. Something tells me that if Sillicon Valley was the superior version, then he would care. Just like how you care about GEX. With all those great 3D platform games on N64, why would anyone care about this shitty game that also got shitty reviews back then anyway? I mean i can accept shitty looking pics about Conker or Banjo Kazooie. But believe me, no N64 user cares about GEX. Just because this port has crappy textures, doesn't mean that every game is like that. In the same way not all PS1 games have bad draw distances like that, even though the average games do.

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Emulator shots are bullshit. As for Silicon Valley, some of the textures look ok, but others are very blurry. The game makes due though by not using a lot of complex textures to avoid the issue. Similar to what Mario 64 does.

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Originally Posted by Soulis

Now, guess what one of the more popular members here said: "Nobody cares about Silicon Valley". Welp. Something tells me that if Sillicon Valley was the superior version, then he would care. Just like how you care about GEX. With all those great 3D platform games on N64, why would anyone care about this shitty game that also got shitty reviews back then anyway? I mean i can accept shitty looking pics about Conker or Banjo Kazooie. But believe me, no N64 user cares about GEX. Just because this port has crappy textures, doesn't mean that every game is like that. In the same way not all PS1 games have bad draw distances like that, even though the average games do.

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Some much vitriol in your posts...

But let's bring some light to your post:
- In real world, Gex was a much more well-known character than either Banjo or Conker.
- Silicon Valley isn't a well known game by any stretch of imagination; it isn't a system seller either.
- To say that the average PS1 game has the draw distance of its version of Silicon Valley is absurd and just shows how biased or ignorant you're about the PS1's library.
- Gex 3 is a good example to be brought up against N64 's hardware overhype due to technical reasons. It shows most of the products of the hardware advantages of the PS1 over the N64: better reflections, better explosion effects, better smoke effects, better quality textures, higher contrast lighting variation, proper transparency levels for things beneath water, etc. And it occurs due to hardware limitations on the N64 side of things, not due to the developer not willing to do them on the N64.

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Originally Posted by Barone

And it occurs due to hardware limitations on the N64 side of things, not due to the developer not willing to do them on the N64.

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Huh.

I thought other developers could do better than those who made the mediocre GEX port. I guess these are the only ones that exist. My bad.

Lol. No developer was able to pull off additive alpha blending on the N64 AFAIK, it's a hardware feature required to produce almost all those things I cited above.
I can cite countless examples of games using it on the PS1.

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Originally Posted by Barone

Lol. No developer was able to pull off additive alpha blending on the N64 AFAIK, it's a hardware feature required to produce almost all those things I cited above.
I can cite countless examples of games using it on the PS1.

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We could just bring up Final Fantasy VIII:





Seriously, when it comes to alpha blending and transparencies, the PS1 is the 5th Generation champion. N64 is probably better than the Saturn though simply because it can do it without all the bugs and limitations the Saturn has on it.

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Originally Posted by Barone

I can cite countless examples of games using it on the PS1.

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I can cite countless N64 games that look better than GEX. Oh wait, i already did. You just don't care that much.

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Originally Posted by Barone

To say that the average PS1 game has the draw distance of its version of Silicon Valley is absurd and just shows how biased or ignorant you're about the PS1's library.

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About as absurd as to say that GEX is representative of what the N64 can do. It was actually one of the worst reviewed 3D platform games for the console. Just like Bubsy 3D for the PS1, doesn't mean i'm going to bring it up to represent the PS1.

Or as absurd as to say that "N64 games" have bad draw distances and "N64 Fog" (trademark) because of Turok. Because other consoles didn't have games with bad draw distances. It was only Turok and it probably affects all N64 games too, am i rite?

Generalizations are bad.

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

As for Silicon Valley, some of the textures look ok, but others are very blurry. The game makes due though by not using a lot of complex textures to avoid the issue. Similar to what Mario 64 does.

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I was comparing the draw distance.

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

We have Virtua Fighter 2, Virtua Cop1 & 2, Sega Rally, Dead or Alive, Daytona USA Circuit Edition, Grandia, Sonic R, Sonic Jam, Sonic 3D Blast, Burning Rangers, NiGHTS, Shining Force 3, Shining the Holy Ark, Virtual On, Mass Destruction, Bulk Slash, Stellar Assault SS, Radiant Silvergun, Layer Section 2, Die Hard Arcade, Croc, Bug Too!, Sonic Xtreme, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Powerslave, Panzer Dragoon II Zwei, etc. All of which have good solid looking 3D with good quality textures.

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They may have good textures and look clean etc but some games suffer from other issues. Daytona, for instance suffers from horrible popup, one of the worst i've seen in racing games, including the championship edition. Or Nights. And many others in that list. I'm not going to go into detail for each game. My point is that no console has the perfect looking games. Something may have amazing textures but bad frame rate or draw distance, others may have great draw distance but low geometry, etc, etc. There are very few games on each console that combine all the good stuff. And even then you can find flaws if you really want to.

Super Mario 64 (for 1996 at least)
Waverace
BlastCorps
Diddy Kong Racing
Doom 64
ISS 64
Mace The Dark Age
Mischief Makers
1080 Snowboarding
Banjo - Kazooie
F1 World Grand Prix II
F-Zero X
Star Wars: Rogue Squadron
Yoshi's Story
Beetle Adventure Racing
Donkey Kong 64
Rayman 2
Shadow Man
Star Wars Episode I - Racer
World Driver Championship
Goemon's Great Adventure
Banjo-Tooie
Excitebike 64
Legend of Zelda, The - Majora's Mask
Perfect Dark
RR64 - Ridge Racer 64
San Francisco Rush 2049
Star Wars Episode I - Battle for Naboo
Turok 3 - Shadow of Oblivion
Conker's Bad Fur Day
Paper Mario

And these are the games i consider to be the good looking ones for the N64. Each one with it's own issues. If anyone cares.

Beautiful how you just dodged the point and went back to your nonsense.
You have no clue what you're talking about, that's the problem here. You want to talk about technical stuff but you can't handle it without recurring to utter fanboyism shit.

Go read something about the hardware of these systems prior calling out people on stuff you don't understand.

Crystal Dynamics had some of the best western developers back in the 90s... It's sad to see how clueless you are.

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Originally Posted by Barone

Go read something about the hardware of these systems prior calling out people on stuff you don't understand.
Crystal Dynamics had some of the best western developers back in the 90s... It's sad to see how clueless you are.

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Who gives a crap. They made a shitty port on the N64. Even good developers do shitty jobs sometimes. What are you a Crystal Dynamics fanboy? They can't do wrong? Go read reviews about those GEX ports if you want. Capcom was great too. They did Mickey's Magical Tetris for the N64. So what, does it mean it was the best N64 game they could do?

Also, who said anything about "technical stuff"? I never commented on anything technical related you said. N64 can't do Alpha Blending hocus pocus? That's great. GEX is still an ugly N64 game though and most 3D platforms look much better.

Yeah, that's your shallow minded approach. Good luck with it.
I have no good reason to continue on this subject with you since you are completely uneducated on it and, better yet, it feels like you have no will to change it for the better. So I'll stop here.
But, please, let us know when you find a single N64 game doing additive alpha blending.

None does.

And?

Saturn also doesn't, you don't bash it though.

And GEX still is a bad looking N64 game and most other platforms look better than it. With or without alpha blending. Maybe it's magic.

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Originally Posted by Soulis

I was comparing the draw distance.

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Looks about on par wtih Sonic Jam:

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Originally Posted by Soulis

They may have good textures and look clean etc but some games suffer from other issues. Daytona, for instance suffers from horrible popup, one of the worst i've seen in racing games, including the championship edition. Or Nights. And many others in that list. I'm not going to go into detail for each game. My point is that no console has the perfect looking games. Something may have amazing textures but bad frame rate or draw distance, others may have great draw distance but low geometry, etc, etc. There are very few games on each console that combine all the good stuff. And even then you can find flaws if you really want to.

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And we are talking about texture quality here. Draw distance is nice too, but again it's not worth the cost of losing image clarity. The draw distance in Daytona USA Circuit Edition seems fine to me. Throw some fog at the end and it would be on par with most N64 racers. And it runs at a constant 30fps, which is more than I can say for racers like Rush on the N64. But let's go down your list.

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Originally Posted by Soulis

Super Mario 64 -What few textures there are are low res and blurry. Completely avoids the texture issue by not using them.
Waverace -Blurry, Not full screen, choppy.
BlastCorps -Blurry low res textures. Bad explosions
Diddy Kong Racing -Blurry textures, blurry presentation, choppy frame rate
Doom 64 - This one actually looks good.
ISS 64 -Blurry overall, but not too bad. But I think the Soccer games on the Saturn and PS1 look better.
Mace The Dark Age -Blurry Textures, Blurry presentation, awful game. Saturn 3D Fighters blow this out of the water.
Mischief Makers -Nice 2D game, but is a bit fuzzy when compared to what we see on the Saturn and PS1.
1080 Snowboarding -Blurry awful textures
Banjo - Kazooie - Better than most, but still a tad too blurry for my tastes.
F1 World Grand Prix II -Blurry textures, blurry presentation, choppy frame rate.
F-Zero X -Looks good, still a tad blurry. But again it gets around this issue by avoiding the use of textures.
Star Wars: Rogue Squadron - No complaints, this is a good example
Yoshi's Story Nice 2D Game, but still not as crisp as what we see on the Saturn and PS1
Beetle Adventure Racing -Blurry textures and blurry presentation. Though it does have a nice draw distance
Donkey Kong 64 -Better than your average N64 game, but still pretty blurry.
Rayman 2 -Pretty blurry. PS1 looks a lot cleaner. Not to mention the Dreamcast version.
Shadow Man While the Frame rate is nice, it's pretty blurry looking, especially without the Expansion pak
Star Wars Episode I - Racer -Still pretty blurry and foggy. Frame rate isn't that good either. Though the textures aren't too bad.
World Driver Championship An actual clean looking game. The textures could still be better in parts, but not bad.
Goemon's Great Adventure -Still pretty blurry, especially if we compare it to similar games like Bug, Taromaru, etc.
Banjo-Tooie -Better than your usual N64 game, but still a tad too blurry.
Excitebike 64 -Not bad. Still a tad blurry at times. But overall it's good. Few complains.
Kirby 64 - The Crystal Shards -A tad blurry, and again it's avoiding the issue by using simple textures.
Legend of Zelda, The - Majora's Mask -Blurry Mess
Perfect Dark -Better than Goldeneye, but still blurry. And god that frame rate is awful.
RR64 - Ridge Racer 64 -Pretty blurry. The later Ridge Racers on the PS1 look better.
San Francisco Rush 2049 -Choppy and Blurry
Star Wars Episode I - Battle for Naboo -Again nothing to complain about here. This one is fine.
Turok 3 - Shadow of Oblivion -Overall not bad. Still has some cases of blurriness, but much better than your average N64 game. Another one I have few complaints about.
Conker's Bad Fur Day Better than most N64 games, still can be a bit blurry though.
Paper Mario -Not bad, but again 2D games look better on the Saturn and PS1.

And these are the games i consider to be the good looking ones for the N64. If anyone cares.

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Out of that list I'd count 5 or so as actually being exceptional and looking good. There's maybe about 5 more that are better than your average N64 game. The rest are all blurry messes.

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

The draw distance in Daytona USA Circuit Edition seems fine to me. Throw some fog at the end and it would be on par with most N64 racers. And it runs at a constant 30fps, which is more than I can say for racers like Rush on the N64.

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Then you haven't played many N64 racers. From very early in N64's life Top Gear Rally eliminated the pop up in racing games for me altogether. Later racing games like TG Overdrive (i forgot to mention this in my list), WDC, Bettle A Racing, were pretty much pop up free and smooth. Dunno why you bring up Rush. Or maybe i know why. Because it looks crap. Or because ABF brings it up. But for me it's just an ugly looking game, like Cruisin USA and not a representative of good looking N64 racers.

But thanks for going through my list (Top Gear Overdrive should be there). I respect your opinions and agree in some parts. At least these are games that are worth to be criticized. Not GEX. I would go through your list too but i have less than 10 games on my Saturn atm. Rest will be on Emulators so i'm not sure how accurate my view will be.

Edit: Paper Mario isn't a 2D game, it just has flat, paper thin, characters. It's still a 3D game.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Not low screen resolution, low texture resolution. It's not about screen resolutions, all three systems are quite similar there. It's about textures.

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Textures aren't the only thing that can be pixellated, and the resolution itself isn't what makes a texture pixellated.

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Texture filtering and anti-aliasing do not increase screen resolution, but they do sort of increase texture resolution. That is, what you look at on the screen is not the texture as it was originally drawn. It is a filtered, anti-aliased, z-buffered, etc. version of the texture, often stretched to fit. Those graphical effects and filters add a lot of pixels of detail, or "blur" if you will, that did not exist in the original art. A straight, unfiltered N64 texture would be very pixelated, but those filters make it look smooth.

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What the hell are you talking about? Filtering doesn't add detail or increase texture resolution.

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What are you talking about here, the ground or something? I'm not sure.

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What in the actual fuck? This, in response to:

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... the same typical N64 look for the ground ...

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Jesus this discussion is giving me a headache. lol

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Originally Posted by Soulis

Then you haven't played many N64 racers. From very early in N64's life Top Gear Rally eliminated the pop up in racing games for me altogether. Later racing games like TG Overdrive (i forgot to mention this in my list), WDC, Bettle A Racing, were pretty much pop up free and smooth. Dunno why you bring up Rush. Or maybe i know why. Because it looks crap. Or because ABF brings it up. But for me it's just an ugly looking game, like Cruisin USA and not a representative of good looking N64 racers.

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In terms of graphics the first Rush isn't one of the system's standout games visually, no. Rush 2049, however, absolutely is. That game is amazing looking, and I have always put it very high on my list of the best-looking N64 games. It's not the system's best-looking game, but it is one of the best looking racing games, right up there with stuff like Excitebike 64. Excitebike 64's outdoor levels are maybe the best-looking visuals in any N64 racing game. Not sure what else is close; maybe F-Zero X for its smoothness and speed, or Wave Race 64 for its water effects, though the player and land-environment models in that game don't hold up quite as well. Games like Top Gear Rally and Overdrive are worth mentioning on the second tier as well, and others.

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Originally Posted by j_factor

Textures aren't the only thing that can be pixellated, and the resolution itself isn't what makes a texture pixellated.

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I'm not sure what you're talking about here. Sure, yes, things other than textures can be pixelated, but in 3d games they are probably the most visible thing that can be pixelated. As for resolution, resolution absolutely affects pixelization. A lower-rez game is going to look more pixelated simply because the pixels are larger. Compare Croc for Saturn and PS1 for example, the Saturn version is noticeably chunkier due to the lower resolution. There are plenty of other similar cases, since multiplatform PS1/Saturn games often run at lower resolutions on the Saturn than PS1 (due to it being harder to program for, etc.)

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What the hell are you talking about? Filtering doesn't add detail or increase texture resolution.

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I just explained what I was talking about there, and yes, in effect it does. On the N64, the pixels in the base texture you can't see are MUCH larger and much more visible than the pixels in the textures as you see them with full effects on in the game. So, those filtering effects are a form of detail which does not exist in the base texture. If you look at the base texture, areas which are shaded in what you see on screen are actually made up of large, blocky pixels. The filtering smooths that out, adding (blur) detail to what is seen. The Playstation and Saturn just display the texture as drawn, but on N64 the texture that was drawn is not what you see; you see a filtered version of it.

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What in the actual fuck? This, in response to:

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Oh, missed that somehow. But seriously, why focus on the ground when it's not the focal point of the shot?

ABF: The resolution that a game is running in sets the limit of how detailed anything can appear on screen. 32-bit games don't use textures so detailed that the resolution obscures some of the detail from every angle. If Croc for PSX has the exact same assets and hardware, but an option to run in a lower resolution, then the lower resolution would affect the detail you see. But there are so many factors involved with that generation's hardware and software, as far as how textures appear.

Playstation game textures are more detailed before being fed through the PSX hardware, this is why they can look better through emulation.

A port running in a lower resolution than another version can still have much more detailed textures. The biggest factor is: the detail of the actual textures.