Micro-64 Feature: Nintendo 64 Vs. Sega Saturn

^ I'm not sure gameplay is that tight in online fps for a difference in 60 VS 30 to matter or be that noticeable from a gameplay perspective?... But in the end, you could still technically say gameplay is being sacrificed for better graphics in the cases you mentioned. Just the trade doesn't seem that bad in that case...

... but wait, smoother fr is still pleasing graphically too... I know playing ME3mp finally on PC (thanks to fan made gamepad support patch) makes the game feel and look so much better at 60fps then 30frames with BS motion blur strings attached... (Not to mention the nightmare that is aim assist that can't be turned of on the console versions).,

^ Oh wait. ME3mp has a examples of tight timing invincibility frames, which should be easier to time at 60fps then 30, correct? So does Destiny and Halo 5 have such tight timing examples too?

I-frames in other 3D games, like the dodge in Dark Soul series... heck. Lots of timing examples for DS series, especially in PVP.

You don't want 30 fps in an online shooter. Most of the enthusiast PC users like the keep the fps closer to 90-100. Free-Sync and Nvidia G-Sync can provide a better gaming experience at 30 fps, because the each frame is synced with the refresh rate of the monitor.

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

DOA on the PS doesn' run at the same res or look as good, even with its basic lighting effects.

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That's fair, but I was just pointing out how it's not a direct comparison to the Xbone and PS4. The Xbone is drawing the exact same thing at a lower res. Here the PS1 version is lower res and slower but with more graphical effects.

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

I'll go as far to say that Last Bronx looks better on the Saturn than Tekken 3 on the PS.

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Now you're just being silly. Tekken 3 has better models, lighting, true shadows (not a weird circle) and doesn't have the clipping issues of last bronx.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

Not necessarily. GT3 has real-time lighting. The video below will show the car's shadow moving according to the sun's position over the car. You can also see the shadows from the overhead signs running over the car as it passes underneath them.

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The casting of the car's shadow seems to be real-time, in the same vein of what WDC does.
The rest is pre-mapped.
Look at 6:23 in the video you pointed to me. And then look at 6:24. It misses the reflection of the second overhead sign (and it occurs on every lap) and it wouldn't occur if it was real-time reflection. It's pre-mapped, like I had described previously:

http://i.imgur.com/Ky3NLsd.png

http://i.imgur.com/k7lggc3.png


The computational cost (both in terms of processing and implementation) of a true real-time reflection system didn't worth the trouble at the time. It could cause a serious hit in the game's performance and you get a very credible effect by pre-mapping the points of the circuit where it should render a texture over the car's paint.

I don't find technical achievements as impressive or the major factor in most great looking games, as the art and design. It's neat to recognize cool stuff that's happening, but some of the most technically notable games look ugly to me. I really don't like the art style and character design of Tekken and Rare games for example.

Last Bronx is one of those games that looks so bland and with such uninteresting character designs. I thought so about the arcade when it came out and then the Saturn version turned out to be quite the technical achievement... at maintaining the boring aesthetics of the arcade.

Sega Touring Car is kind of the opposite. The arcade looked great and has that Sega 3D arcade style down perfectly (unlike Manx TT). The Saturn version was on track to be a great port but got kicked out before it was polished off and the end result feels like a tainted experience for me. Even though I love the first port of Daytona USA (but I don't like the style of the CCE version).

This whole 30 vs 60fps situation is funny. In consoles, 60fps was always the standard before 3D games took over. I mean, i don't remember any game on the Atari 2600 that wasn't 60fps, look how smoothly those blocky sprites move. This was one of the reasons i loved consoles and hated home computers. There were a few games on 8bit-16bit consoles that weren't 60fps, like Sonic Spinball. Man, i remember not be able to stand this game because of the jerky scrolling. These, thankfully, were exceptions.

The 5th generation of consoles pushed the standards back, because 3D textured graphics in our homes was too awesome to notice any regressions. It was only when we visited the arcades where we could see how bad the new 30 and below fps standard was in comparison. But thankfully 6th gen consoles took a step to the right direction. More 60fps games were released and it was pretty much the standard for racing games.

7th and current gen is almost like 5th gen. Frame rate took a step back again, despite consoles being multiple times more powerful. 90% of racing games are 30fps. You got games like Drive Club where people salivate over because it looks so good... in screenshots and tiny gifs. Yet i don't remember seeing any of that while driving. All i was seeing was a blur. There weren't enough frames to make out all the little details, like the foliage for instance. I had to stop the car completely to see the details, which is like the opposite of what you are supposed to do in a racing game. And then you have Sonic Generations. A SIDE SCROLLING game at 30fps! Yeah, good luck making out the backgrounds while Sonic runs. I stopped playing after 5 minutes to avoid any damage to my eyes and brain. Thankfully, there's a PC version that is playable.

I do agree that 60fps should have been the standard after the 5th gen ended. Low frame rates were somewhat acceptable then, given the fact that proper 3D gaming was something new and exciting. But after that, consoles were powerful enough to deliver plenty of textures and polys at 60fps. But games became mainstream/casual and the average joe only cares about flashy screenshots. And because there are more average joes out there, the industry has to cater on them, while giving excuses to the "hardcore" community of why 30fps gaming isn't bad in this day and age. Plus you have so many people claiming "i can't see the difference". Whenever i see this, i die a little inside.

There is no hope for console games to improve on this so i'm now 100% PC gamer, where 60fps is like the minimum (except for games like The Witcher 3). PC community knows that even 60fps isn't enough for some genres, like fast paced twitch shooters. I remember having a bad time with Quake 3 at 60fps, playing on a LCD monitor that couldn't do more than 60hz. I can only play games like this at 75hz or more.

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Originally Posted by Soulis

And then you have Sonic Generations. A SIDE SCROLLING game at 30fps! Yeah, good luck making out the backgrounds while Sonic runs. I stopped playing after 5 minutes to avoid any damage to my eyes and brain. Thankfully, there's a PC version that is playable.

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You must hate youtube, because 95% of those videos of games are in 30fps.
I understand the whole 60 vs 30fps, but I think you're exaggerating here. As much as I love 60fps, and I do (I'll take a lower res in trade for a better fps figure any day), 30fps is still within the threshold of acceptability.

It really depends on the kind of game. Ruff 'n' Tumble on the Amiga (gotta love Amiga games and abysmal names) runs at 25 fps, and with scrolling as fast as that game has you can really tell and it's pretty bad. Even with an extra 5 fps it would still be bad.

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Originally Posted by tomaitheous

30fps is still within the threshold of acceptability.

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Not in this time and age. Not with the hardware we have today.

I can accept playing 20-30 fps games on the Saturn or N64 because it was a thing of it's time and i can see why it had to be like this. But today there is no excuse. I could probably accept some genres at 30fps. I already mentioned The Witcher 3. Its a huge, open ended game with focus on exploration and the extra detail adds to the immersion, plus you can play it at a slow pace. Turn based RPGs are also OK at 30fps. But racing, fighting, action, FPS, real time strategy, etc, they are much better at 60fps and no extra visual detail should be more important than that. Given the fact that, today or even 10 years ago, we could play awesome looking games at 60fps, any 30fps game of the above genres is unacceptable to me in 2015 (soon 2016).

Also, i never cared for Youtube gaming videos until now that more and more 60fps videos are taking over.

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That's fair, but I was just pointing out how it's not a direct comparison to the Xbone and PS4. The Xbone is drawing the exact same thing at a lower res. Here the PS1 version is lower res and slower but with more graphical effects

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I'm sure DOA on the PS is the same speed its just doesn't look as good or is running at the res of the Saturn . And like it not its asking a lot of any system to run a game at its higest res at 60 fps.

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Now you're just being silly. Tekken 3 has better models, lighting, true shadows (not a weird circle) and doesn't have the clipping issues of last bronx

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And aren't you being a bit silly . Last Bronx is again a port of a Model 2b not a port of a System 12 which is just based on the PS chipset, only some 50% more powerful (nothing compared to the gulf of that of Model 2 and Saturn) . There's that and stuff that unlike Tekken 3 which can only handle one backround , Last Bronx is handling at least 2 scaling layers of bacrounds, a 3D fence backround, some 4 layers of parallax scrolling into the mix, along with a ceiling and then also motion/speed blur on the weapons all at 60 fps and I'm sure a Higher res than Tekken 3.

Tekken 3 has better lighting, but in other aera's its a win for the Saturn imo . There's a game like Zero Divide, where again the Saturn version has the edge; looks and runs in a better res. There again a game like Soul Blade on the PS. That just looked so much better than most games and killed any 3D Saturn game for backrounds and so on and there's no way the Saturn could handle a near perfect port of that game

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And then you have Sonic Generations. A SIDE SCROLLING game at 30fps! Yeah, good luck making out the backgrounds while Sonic runs. I stopped playing after 5 minutes to avoid any damage to my eyes and brain. Thankfully, there's a PC version that is playable.

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Overlooking that Sonic Gen isn't just a side scrolling game .. I think you overplay the 60 fps a little . Give me Halo 1 and III at 30 fps to Halo 5 at 60fps . Give me Orange box on the 360 running at 30 fps to Call Of Duty Black Op's onthe 360 at 60 fps . Gameplay will always win for me .

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Originally Posted by Soulis

Not in this time and age. Not with the hardware we have today.

I can accept playing 20-30 fps games on the Saturn or N64 because it was a thing of it's time and i can see why it had to be like this. But today there is no excuse. I could probably accept some genres at 30fps. I already mentioned The Witcher 3. Its a huge, open ended game with focus on exploration and the extra detail adds to the immersion, plus you can play it at a slow pace. Turn based RPGs are also OK at 30fps. But racing, fighting, action, FPS, real time strategy, etc, they are much better at 60fps and no extra visual detail should be more important than that. Given the fact that, today or even 10 years ago, we could play awesome looking games at 60fps, any 30fps game of the above genres is unacceptable to me in 2015 (soon 2016).

Also, i never cared for Youtube gaming videos until now that more and more 60fps videos are taking over.

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Well that's on you, then. I do agree everything should be at least 60fps, and like I said I'll trade resolution if it helps (on the PC) to get there. But unless the game is a first person shooter, 30fps isn't going to ruin the gaming experience. I'm with you on this, just not to the level you've taken it to.

As far as retro though, my comment about youtube was more specifically about 8bit and 16bit games at 30fps. Most people can't even tell videos of 8 and 16bit games are running at 30fps (frame drop). Sonic Spinball has something else going on besides lower frame rate. That game isn't representative of 30fps 2D stuff.

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

It really depends on the kind of game. Ruff 'n' Tumble on the Amiga (gotta love Amiga games and abysmal names) runs at 25 fps, and with scrolling as fast as that game has you can really tell and it's pretty bad. Even with an extra 5 fps it would still be bad.

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I dunno. I loaded up a longplay with commentary. The guy was a total Brit, so I'm going to assume he was playing it at in PAL mode. I set youtube to playback the game at 1.25 the speed and it looked smooth. That's 31fps, but close enough. The noticeable difference in frame rate as it drops, is definitely non-linear.

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Originally Posted by Barone

The casting of the car's shadow seems to be real-time, in the same vein of what WDC does.
The rest is pre-mapped.
Look at 6:23 in the video you pointed to me. And then look at 6:24. It misses the reflection of the second overhead sign (and it occurs on every lap) and it wouldn't occur if it was real-time reflection. It's pre-mapped, like I had described previously:

http://i.imgur.com/Ky3NLsd.png

http://i.imgur.com/k7lggc3.png


The computational cost (both in terms of processing and implementation) of a true real-time reflection system didn't worth the trouble at the time. It could cause a serious hit in the game's performance and you get a very credible effect by pre-mapping the points of the circuit where it should render a texture over the car's paint.

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The shadow from the hill is longer in the second shot. That is why the sign isn't casting a reflection on the car.

Light sourcing is a built in feature for the PS2. It's not as advanced as that of the Xbox and Gamecube, but it's older hardware.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2001/07/...smo-3-a-spec-2

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Originally Posted by IGN

The PlayStation 2 has proven to be a very powerful system in doing things like realtime lighting and particle effects and this shows through ten-fold in this game. The sun light and the way it strikes your car, comes through the cracks between buildings in the background, or shines through trees hanging over the road simply adds an enormous amount of realism to the title.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlaySt...specifications

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Originally Posted by wiki

VU1(EFU) typically used for polygon transformations, lighting and other visual based calculations (Texture matrix able for 2 coordinates(UV/ST)

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See how the lights moves on the track surface as the viewing angle changes. That would be a lot texture changes being handled on the fly by pre-mapping.

I've taken some pictures of GT3 running on my set. I just haven't got around to moving those to photobucket to show the way reflections are being handled by the game.

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The shadow from the hill is longer in the second shot. That is why the sign isn't casting a reflection on the car.

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No, it's clear it's not the case. SMH.

Hardware support for real-time lighting is one thing. Hardware support for real-time environment mapping and reflections calculation is a completely different thing.

But if you prefer to go with IGN, go ahead.

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Originally Posted by Barone

No, it's clear it's not the case. SMH.

Hardware support for real-time lighting is one thing. Hardware support for real-time environment mapping and reflections calculation is a completely different thing.

But if you prefer to go with IGN, go ahead.

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The reflective lighting on the surface in that video is not pre-mapped. The lighting also moves on the car, per it's position under the overhead lights. It would chew up a lot of system memory to hold all of those pre-mapped textures for the surface and the cars. Digital Polyphony would have spent massive amounts of time putting in all of those pre-mapped textures for the 100s of cars in the game alone.

What's next, Splinter Cell uses pre-mapped textures to simulate light movement?

Why are we using Gran Turismo 3 when there's Gran Turismo 4?:

Here we go again...

http://i.imgur.com/BmQnkrJ.png

http://i.imgur.com/h1XVs3J.png

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Originally Posted by gamevet

The reflective lighting on the surface in that video is not pre-mapped.

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*Points to the screenshots*

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Originally Posted by gamevet

It would chew up a lot of system memory to hold all of those pre-mapped textures for the surface and the cars.

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It doesn't need to hold them all, it's fast enough to load on demand.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

Digital Polyphony would have spent massive amounts of time putting in all of those pre-mapped textures for the 100s of cars in the game alone.

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Have you even thought about what you said?
You don't need to have a different pre-rendered texture for each car; you have one per track object/segment type. For an example: those overhead signs of the previous video; the game is reusing the same one for all the speed/turn advice ones and it's likely to be using one or two for all the bridges you pass under.

And you can render them over 10000000000000 different cars without the need to pre-render 10000000000000 of each one of them.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

What's next, Splinter Cell uses pre-mapped textures to simulate light movement?

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Please, read my previous post again. Real-time light sourcing and shadow casting is something that even 5th gen consoles could pull off to some extent in a good day on the hands of skilled programmers.
And I'd need to look at Splinter Cell to see what's going on in the scenes you have in mind.

GT4 seem to be the same thing.

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

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Yep, just look at from 2:10 to 2:15. Completely fake; pre-mapped too.

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Originally Posted by Barone

Here we go again...

http://i.imgur.com/BmQnkrJ.png

http://i.imgur.com/h1XVs3J.png




*Points to the screenshots*

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Okay, so you have arrows pointing at reflections on the surface.....

Place your car on the far left of that track, and the light will lean much farther to the left. Place your car on the right side of the track, and that light will lean more to that side of the track.

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It doesn't need to hold them all, it's fast enough to load on demand.

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Yeah, it has to hold all of the information. The disc is steaming music directly from the DVD.

Splinter Cell on the PS2 and Gamecube have smaller levels, because those systems have less system memory than the Xbox. There is no loading within the areas.

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Have you even thought about what you said?
You don't need to have a different pre-rendered texture for each car; you have one per track object/segment type. For an example: those overhead signs of the previous video; the game is reusing the same one for all the speed/turn advice ones and it's likely to be using one or two for all the bridges you pass under.

And you can render them over 10000000000000 different cars without the need to pre-render 10000000000000 of each one of them.

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Maybe you should pull out your copy of GT3. You do own that game, right?

Park your car under a light source at different positions. The light reflection will move to different parts of your car, based on where it is under the light source.

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Please, read my previous post again. Real-time light sourcing and shadow casting is something that even 5th gen consoles could pull off to some extent in a good day on the hands of skilled programmers.
And I'd need to look at Splinter Cell to see what's going on in the scenes you have in mind.

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Yes, but it is very simple shadows and reflections. The shadows were usually a black image below your car or character, with no transparency.

When the talk about the Gamecube, Xbox and PS2 hardware was brought up many years ago, the Xbox could have something like 10 light sources on screen at once. Those consoles were doing real time lighting.

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Originally Posted by Barone

Yep, just look at from 2:10 to 2:15. Completely fake; pre-mapped too.

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Um, the car darkens when it goes over those spots and it seems to do it rather accurately...

And while we're on the subject of racers, another one I completely forgot about on the Saturn, Need for Speed:



Are the car polygon counts as good as WDC? No. And it doesn't have the lighting, reflection, and transparency effects. But, it does show that when a game was actually designed around the use of quads with low polygon count numbers, the Saturn actually could put out a good racer with a ridiculously long draw distance, 8 AI cars on screen, a good amount of track side buildings and objects, good textures, at a good frame rate. Oh and look, there's even a real rearview mirror. And that game was made back in 1994 for the 3DO and ported to the Saturn in 1996.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

Okay, so you have arrows pointing at reflections on the surface.....
Place your car on the far left of that track, and the light will lean much farther to the left. Place your car on the right side of the track, and that light will lean more to that side of the track.
Yeah, it has to hold all of the information. The disc is steaming music directly from the DVD.
Splinter Cell on the PS2 and Gamecube have smaller levels, because those systems have less system memory than the Xbox. There is no loading within the areas.
Maybe you should pull out your copy of GT3. You do own that game, right?
Park your car under a light source at different positions. The light reflection will move to different parts of your car, based on where it is under the light source.
Yes, but it is very simple shadows and reflections. The shadows were usually a black image below your car or character, with no transparency.
When the talk about the Gamecube, Xbox and PS2 hardware was brought up many years ago, the Xbox could have something like 10 light sources on screen at once. Those consoles were doing real time lighting.

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Yeah man! The 6th gen consoles have infinite processing power, it's all real-time. IGN told so. And wikipedia confirmed! But they can't read anything from the DVDs while streaming music, they can't use texture compression, etc. It's all raw blast processing.
And I own more official games than you so I know it better.
/badjoke

Moving on...

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Originally Posted by TrekkiesUnite118

Saturn, Need for Speed:

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The engine is not fully 3D though. It has a very limited angle range for the camera; the camera doesn't follow the car if you try to turn around, for an example (it even ejects from the in-car view).
It's less limited than Crash 'N Burn and Road Rash but it's still very limited.

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Originally Posted by Barone

Yeah man! The 6th gen consoles have infinite processing power, it's all real-time. IGN told so. And wikipedia confirmed! But they can't read anything from the DVDs while streaming music, they can't use texture compression, etc. It's all raw blast processing.

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IGN has nothing to do with it. You can find other articles that talk about the real time lighting in GT3 and other games from that generation. I really don't want to drag out my old issues of Next Gen to show what was being said during that era.

No, the 6th gen consoles do not have infinite processing power, but they do have features built into the hardware that enables them to do things that the previous generation consoles couldn't do without a lot of resource heavy code. It's like the Nvidia 400 series graphics cards could do tessellation, while the 200 series cards did not have that available to them. The PS2, Gamecube and Xbox all had built-in light sourcing available through the hardware, while the previous generation did not have anything close to that.

None of the consoles, or PCs of modern day, can stream data while streaming music at the same time from an optical drive, unless they are combined together like FMV. It's pretty much impossible.

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Originally Posted by Barone

The engine is not fully 3D though. It has a very limited angle range for the camera; the camera doesn't follow the car if you try to turn around, for an example (it even ejects from the in-car view).
It's less limited than Crash 'N Burn and Road Rash but it's still very limited.

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I think that might be more of a gameplay design though. I mean it has the rear view mirror so it is still rendering a bit of what's behind the car. It's not like the game isn't able to render anything going the other way or that the models are only finished from one side. They clearly are and the game is clearly able to render going the other direction as the rear-view mirror shows us.

Another good example of a Saturn racer having a good draw distance at a good frame rate and being 1:1 identical to it's PS1 counterpart (short of transparencies obviously) is impact racing:


Granted it's a bit more simple looking, it still shows the Saturn is not incapable of having a good draw distance.

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The engine is not fully 3D though. It has a very limited angle range for the camera; the camera doesn't follow the car if you try to turn around

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Think that's nick picking myself and unlike the 3DO version both the PS and Saturn versions are completely 360 and you're able to drive backwards and there's also a 2 player mode with AI cars on track too (something which you never saw much of back in the day).

On the subject of GT I have to say that PGR on the XBox was the game where environmental mapping really stood out for me .

Aw, this thread is dying....

its not dead yet

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Originally Posted by Thief

Aw, this thread is dying....

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That's because you aren't discussing the article.

Good night, sweet prince.

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Originally Posted by Black_Tiger

That's because you aren't discussing the article.

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...thinking...

Ok, how about this. Everybody says the PS1 can do better 3D then Saturn, but really, the Saturn can do better 3D worlds then PS1 because of the VDP2 background layer help.

ie. if you look at this Mech Warrior comparison video, the PS1 can only draw the floor so far ahead while the rest is the very distant skyline background layer. Meanwhile on the Saturn it's entirely handled via a Mode7 like ground back ground layer.

Go to 3:26 on the PS1 screen to see this affect best;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61HXyYJXIKI


And really, the big kicker for me is that I never really seen that much of a difference between the 3D powers of PS1 & Saturn from back in the day till present. PS1 has advantage in lighting and other things, and Saturn has advantages in VDP2 and other things (ie. how Shining Force 3 was able to hide load times). Yet everybody always acts like Saturn can't do 3D at all and PS1 is far superior in 3D, when it's really not that far apart. This brain dead mentality of the masses really gets to me sometimes. It's just as bad as the Sega VS SNES comparisons that's still at school yard levels, unless you're on forums like this & shmups system 11. But in the Saturn VS PS1 case, it's really hard to find game comparisons to really show these brain dead masses off due to the Saturn's life getting cut short so early, while the PS1 kept going for way longer. Then add the fact the Saturn's last year ended up in mostly rushed games instead of going the distance, and yeah. I hate that Dreamcast with a passion. What are we talking about again? And is this enough to fuel the fire?

Mech Warrior 2 was one of those titles that I wanted to play on the Playstation, or Saturn, but never got around to buying a copy.

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Originally Posted by Thief

...thinking...

Ok, how about this. Everybody says the PS1 can do better 3D then Saturn, but really, the Saturn can do better 3D worlds then PS1 because of the VDP2 background layer help.

ie. if you look at this Mech Warrior comparison video, the PS1 can only draw the floor so far ahead while the rest is the very distant skyline background layer. Meanwhile on the Saturn it's entirely handled via a Mode7 like ground back ground layer.

Go to 3:26 on the PS1 screen to see this affect best;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61HXyYJXIKI

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That's what you see. What I see is the PS1 actively fading the both lines (ground and sky line). Something that takes more effort than simply two flat projections meeting at a dead point. The VDP2 definitely helps with 2D games, especially if they use any sort of "tiles", but where is the evidence that it makes up the difference in polygon power between the two system (polygon performance: pixel fill rate, processing transforms, polygon rasterization)? Simple speculation isn't enough for me.

Maybe Barone knows this, but doesn't the PS1 have hardware tiled texture mode? As in a texture, or whatever size, is tiled across the polygon surface? I thought I remember something about the developer of a Saturn game saying the Saturn didn't have this support, but that PS1 and PC cards at the time did (and they had to make a work around). I thought it was Powerslave on the Saturn, and in this forum.

^ More effort for the PS1 was my point.

And no, the VDP2 definitely helps with 3D games too. What do you think the ground in Sonic Jam is made out of? And that game sure has sweet draw distance because of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRj9snhjjrg

Shining Force 3 on Saturn makes plenty use of this too. Meanwhile Final Fantasy Tactics on PS1 has it's maps take place floating in some time space vortex.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ0EYngkGcI


And if the VDP2 didn't help lesson the 3D polygon load, then why did Last Bronx make such extensive use of it to simulate 3D backgrounds?

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Originally Posted by tomaitheous

but where is the evidence that it makes up the difference in polygon power between the two system (polygon performance: pixel fill rate, processing transforms, polygon rasterization)? Simple speculation isn't enough for me.
.

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Well I hope you will be civil and no bite my head off . But play pretty much any Saturn 3D game that made use of the VDP 2
To see how much it helped out , none more so than the likes of the Panzer Dragoon games with the VPD 2 handling the floors and skies and so helping take the work load off the Saturn VDP 1 . Play level 3 (factory) of Thunder Force V on both the Saturn and PS to see how the VDP 2 draws the floor far better with more effects and when you ascend to the skie a much better draw distance . Also in that Mech Warrior 2 vid thanks to the VDP 2 not only does it take the work load off the VDP 1 it's also allows for scrolling effects and movement of the sky that aren't in the PS version , croc on the Saturn made use of the VDP 2 for the lava and having it move (again not in the PS version) . Plus of course when using the VDP 2 there was no issues with clipping or polygon folding either ...

Videos like this show how the VDP 2 could be used to help with the Saturn 3D


http://youtu.be/Foln_F9ggk8

Sonic R, Mass Destruction (Actually allows the Saturn version to run at 60fps over the 30fps PS1 version), Grandia and Radiant Silvergun are also games that make heavy use of VDP2 for things the PS1 and N64 would need to use Polygons to do:

I had to go back and double check that I was clear in my question, which is basically not how valuable the VDP2 plane(s) can be for the saturn, but does it make up for the difference in polygon power between these two systems (again, assuming the PS1 has the lead here for three reasons I listed). And not, "does it have clever and effective usage depending on the game?" I already understand some the benefits of using the VDP2 layer as a floor (which are visually nice, btw). It was my understanding that the PS1 could do flat planes just fine, but the problem on the PS1 side is 2D games where tiled segments needs to be simulated by piece/patch work. And that it's the cpu that gets bogged down by simulating this. That is a 2D problem, not a 3D one.

In my point of view, it's kinda useless speculative unless you can at least throw some numbers to back this up. And not specifically just game examples. What is it going to take on the PS1 side to equate what the VDP2 is doing in these games (3D, not 2D). Is it advantageous for the PS1 to go about it differently? And does that result in more complex geometry afforded at the same price? Things need to be looked at in context.

I want specifics. For example: what percentage of processing polygons is in the transform phase for this generation? If the VDP2 is simulating a flat floor/ground, what is the savings in transforms? What is the saving in pixel fill rate? Does that advantage over come any disadvantages the Saturn has to the PS1? If not, how much does it close does it come? If we're gonna be speculative about this, at least be speculative by crunching numbers in typical setup scenarios, etc.

Also this; Skip to 4:56 for comparison of stage 2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG7GGHkEZ7U

Yeah, the PS1 version jugs along despite doing less effects and running at lower resolution.

Theif: That's 2D, not 3D.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tomaitheous

I had to go back and double check that I was clear in my question, which is basically not how valuable the VDP2 plane(s) can be for the saturn, but does it make up for the difference in polygon power between these two systems (again, assuming the PS1 has the lead here for three reasons I listed). And not, "does it have clever and effective usage depending on the game?" I already understand some the benefits of using the VDP2 layer as a floor (which are visually nice, btw). It was my understanding that the PS1 could do flat planes just fine, but the problem on the PS1 side is 2D games where tiled segments needs to be simulated by piece/patch work. And that it's the cpu that gets bogged down by simulating this. That is a 2D problem, not a 3D one.

In my point of view, it's kinda useless speculative unless you can at least throw some numbers to back this up. And not specifically just game examples. What is it going to take on the PS1 side to equate what the VDP2 is doing in these games (3D, not 2D). Is it advantageous for the PS1 to go about it differently? And does that result in more complex geometry afforded at the same price? Things need to be looked at in context.

I want specifics. For example: what percentage of processing polygons is in the transform phase for this generation? If the VDP2 is simulating a flat floor/ground, what is the savings in transforms? What is the saving in pixel fill rate? Does that advantage over come any disadvantages the Saturn has to the PS1? If not, how much does it close does it come? If we're gonna be speculative about this, at least be speculative by crunching numbers in typical setup scenarios, etc.

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What the heck did I just read?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tomaitheous

Theif: That's 2D, not 3D.

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Game is 2D and 3D.