Comparison of 6th generation game console hardware

[Black_Tiger]

Tekken 3 looks extremely detailed to me, better than anything I've seen on the Saturn for sure. Higher detail models, better textures, and lightning effects too. Plus, Namco knows how to actually animate characters.

DOA definitely is the best looking 3d fighter on the Saturn, though. The Playstation port had the characters turned into lifeless dolls.

The animation has always stood out most to me as the weakest aspect of the Playstation Tekken games (next to fugly character designs). Tekken 3 looks completely hand-animated and is loaded with bad antics straight out of a low budget anime. I'd have to compare the rest on real hardware, which I can't any time soon.

[sheath]

The biggest deal breaker for me with the Tekken games were the dial-a-combos. Just type in the combination and wait for the game to catch up. Secondarily to that was the telegraphed fighting moves and bad fighting styles. Both Virtua Fighter and Dead or Alive make a much better showing of the fighting styles they simplify into game form. But yeah, how anybody can find the Tekken games artful or great representations of Playstation graphics is beyond me.

For 240p yeah, it is noticeable, especially for a fast paced game (slow scrolling will be less noticeable, particularly since you might not even scroll every frame due to resolution limitations)

Those are all interlaced games though, I'm talking about ones that are 240p but still high res horizontally. (I could have sworn there was a winter sports themed game that did this)

Interlaced rendering is still 60 FIELDS per second, and rendering just as much as 60 frames per second at 240p, but it's still technically 30 frames per second max as far as 704x480 goes.
Same goes for the VDP2 BGs, since they're going to be interlaced too . . . though in those cases, it could actually be 60 FPS 480p screens being interlaced/"combed" down, so more like 480p native games on later systems. (you could also potentially use high res BGs and lower res VDP1 layer scaled up, which might even include the 31 kHz progressive scan support for VGA/hivision -not sure if any games actually supported that though)

My understanding of how SDTVs, or any kind of display, is no doubt rudimentary. As I understood 60FPS on SDTVs is that Field A would show one frame and Field B would show another. Otherwise, at 30FPS, both Fields would show the same frame even though the television is not displaying in progressive scan. At lower than that normal rules applied and either Field A or B would show a unique frame depending on the framerate.

[Black_Tiger]

Decathalete in the arcade looks the same as Model 2 games. Perfectly solid smooth and crisp.

[zyrobs]

Wasn't there an NV1 based card out in '95? If so, right there we had a card that, combined with a good PC CPU and enough RAM, caught up/surpassed what the consoles could do, at least on paper.

The NV1 came out very early in an era where pretty much every card had its own API and games had to be coded for each one. The late 90s were really messy as far as PC graphics card went.

It wasn't until DirectX matured up that 3d hardware were easy to use, viable, and support was widespread enough. And by that time, Nvidia and Ati had near full control of the market.

[Team Andromeda]

Those are all interlaced games though, I'm talking about ones that are 240p but still high res horizontally. (I could have sworn there was a winter sports themed game that did this)

Winter Heat runs does that . Decathlete is a rock soild 60 fps and runs in the Saturn Highest Res mode .

If you compare VF2 arcade to VF2 Saturn, you can see that the Saturn version is extremely poor - it lacked a lot of animations (wind blowing Jackys hair), had zero lightning, the few fluff animations had almost no collision detections, the character models are way less detailed, the textures are practically trash, and the backgrounds are static images. Yeah, it runs in higher resolution

The textures on the floor are spot on maybe even better than the Arcades and the textures on the characters are really well done so I don't agree with you on that and to me having a home system game run at a high res than the Arcade in the 1990's was a big deal given that very few Arcades ports from High end Hardware at the time were able to do that . Sure there's things missing but on this board everyone and their mum loves the Mega Drive/Genesis and I could point out loads of details missing in MD arcade ports , but that's missing the point of the gulf in specs and the huge advantage Arcade games had in memory too .

VF II was a mind blowing achievement in 1995 on the Saturn .

Tekken 3 looks extremely detailed to me, better than anything I've seen on the Saturn for sure. Higher detail models, better textures, and lightning effects too. Plus, Namco knows how to actually animate characters.

Tekken 3 looked great . But it always came out late in the PS life and in 1998 after Namco was well used to the PS . I'm sure if AM#2 were to have made a Saturn VS Fighter in 1998 it would have looked stunning too

No, it is the lightning. The Saturn version doesn't have any, the arcade has flat shading

No its Not . Play both VF 2 and Last Bronx on the Saturn and see that VF 2 has smoother arms and joints. Last Bronx on the Saturn keeps the Model 2 less smooth joints . So for the last time its nothing to do with the Lighting

and it needed extra polygon power to draw more detailed polygonal backgrounds due to the winter setting

No just that, but it added a four player mode and that needed extra polygons too . So the screen res was dropped in-game. The menu screens and training screens are High Res though.


Nobody ever goes on about them, but Zero Divde had some serious stunning High Res visuals and Savaki on the Saturn had lovely 60 fps with some nice shading lighting effects

[stu]

Okay, really, I did not say that the Saturn was better at Model 2 conversions by default. It is evident in the software that Model 2 conversions were a greater priority in Saturn software. How is this so confusing?

Well, thank you for clarifying your point, to be honest your initial remark didn't read that way to me and you didn't really clear up my confusion when you replied to my 1st post, to me it seemed you were making a slightly bizarre comparison of Model 2 conversions on the Saturn and PS1 and concluding that the
Saturn was better at them, even though as I pointed out there really isn't enough data/evidence on the Playstation side to support that. It would also seem others thought the same as me too (Barone also commented on what you posted).

To address your point now, yes it is undeniable that the Saturn has a lot of Model 2 conversions in it's library and on the whole most of them are very good conversions considering the difference in the performance and most importantly the price between the Model 2 and Saturn, Sega converting their latest and greatest arcade games was, without doubt, the Saturn's biggest USP and with VF2 being so huge in Japan it certainly helped Sega initially.
I personally wished they had held back Daytona USA so that it could have been improved some more, but it wasn't to be.

[zyrobs]

Decathalete in the arcade looks the same as Model 2 games. Perfectly solid smooth and crisp.

Yes, but the polygon count is nowhere near Model 2 games and neither is the texture detail. The animation is pretty good though.

The textures on the floor are spot on maybe even better than the Arcades and the textures on the characters are really well done so I don't agree with you on that and to me having a home system game run at a high res than the Arcade in the 1990's was a big deal given that very few Arcades ports from High end Hardware at the time were able to do that . Sure there's things missing but on this board everyone and their mum loves the Mega Drive/Genesis and I could point out loads of details missing in MD arcade ports , but that's missing the point of the gulf in specs and the huge advantage Arcade games had in memory too .

Holy shit no they are not. Not even close. Please check this comparison video; preferably in full screen in HD mode. The ground in the intro looks decent because the two games are both present in small windows head to head, but if you check the individual levels presented in full screen, you can clearly see that the ground on the Saturn is a pixelated mess. But you can also see a lot of detail that the Saturn version is missing - animated hair, almost no polygon collissions, higher texture detail everywhere, Shun Di's stage is an actual raft floating on the river (nevermind the overhead bridges missing - the Saturn version just has a river somewhere in the background).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2uGb...tailpage#t=119

Don't get me wrong, VF2 running on the Saturn in 1995 was a seriously big deal, but it is not graphically equal to or better than the Arcade version in any shape or form.

[kool kitty89]

If you compare VF2 arcade to VF2 Saturn, you can see that the Saturn version is extremely poor - it lacked a lot of animations (wind blowing Jackys hair), had zero lightning, the few fluff animations had almost no collision detections, the character models are way less detailed, the textures are practically trash, and the backgrounds are static images. Yeah, it runs in higher resolution, but the textures are so awful that it doesn't really matter.

The lighting issue is directly related to the high res mode's color limitations. Again, it's 8-bit color, that's 256 palettized colors, and the typical 256 color lighting/shading techniques used by software renderers (namely using lookup tables) aren't possible on the Saturn's VDP1. For solid color polygons, you can just change the color for limited flat-shaded lighting effects, but any textures makes that much more difficult. If 16 color textures are used, it might be possible to remap the palette used for color expansion (change the 16 colors being mapped to the 256 color output pixels), but I'm not sure of the details on the VDP1's 8-bit paletted color rendering limitations.

If, for some reason, you're actually stuck with using 8bpp textures in that mode, then there's no way to do lighting/shading at all, and you're also stuck with using 2x the texture RAM than 16 color textures would use.

This page:
http://cgfm2.emuviews.com/sat/vdp1tech.txt
explains the texture formats avalable in general, but nothing specific about 8-bit framebuffer mode rendering. Again, I assume all those rendering modes would be similarly usable in 8bpp framebuffer mode as 16-bit paletted or RGB mode (sans the 16-bit texture modes, and limit of texture banks to within 256 palette entries), but I'm not positive.

The "bank" texture color modes could technically be useful for lighting too if you limited texure colors to a base 16, 64, or 128 colors and switched banks for lighting with 16, 4, or 2 shades, but the flexibility of 16 color lookup textures would be much more useful. (re-map the 16 color lookup table on a per-polygon basis for lighting effects, with any texture able to use any custimized set of 16 colors of the base 256 color palette)

Then again, there seem to be a number of normal res games without any lighting effects either. (Virtua Fighter Remix doesn't seem to be doing dynamic lighting)

I have to agree with sheath here. It's actually exactly like he describes and the opposite to what you say.
More like:

The left image looks like deinterlacing artifacts to me . . . could be high or low framerate, same problem applies. In actual frame by frame images (with no weird filtering issues), the only difference will be how smooth/choppy the animation is (also note that choppiness is both related to the average framerate and the consistency of the framerate -very inconsistent high high framerates will seem choppier than solid low/mid framerates)

Surely not in terms of jaggy/pixelation, since x480 games look noticeably better than x240 for both Saturn and PS1.

Firstly, that's mostly compared to ~320 wide games (actually ranges from ~256 to ~352 pixels wide), but yes, the higher vertical resolution combined with blurring of interlacing can indeed act as antialiasing by reducing sharpness of the image. (scaling/interlacing a 240p/60 image to 480i will have the same effect in that respect though) Hell, the blur 480i actually acts better for AA in some respects than 480p. (trading sharpness/clarity of screen resolution in motion for a softened blur/blending of interlacing -for static screens, the differences are less dramatic though, particularly on screens of similar quality/sharpness)

I'd like to know what can be said about the PS1 side of things.

The PSX has a programmable resolution which is much more variable than the Saturn and also able to do high res at normal color depth (then again, it can ONLY render in 15-bit RGB anyway), and has much more variable resolution than the Saturn in general. (it can also go lower res than saturn, and do single or tripple buffering)
Since RAM is shared for framebuffer and texture memory, that also means there's a direct trade-offs for resources there and low res games will have more space for textures.

Single buffering saves space too though, which would include single buffering with interlacing similar to VDP2. For example, a game running at 640x448i would need 560 kB for the framebuffer leaving 464 kB (so not much worse than the Saturn's VDP1). But, like Saturn, you'd need to render at the refresh rate to avoid tearing artifacts, so 50 or 60 fields per second. (and either 25/30 or 50/60 frames per second in terms of vertex computation and game logic -the latter would more likely be a limiting factor on the PSX)

Well, they really shouldn't, considering video game home consoles and computers/PCs exist in different product markets. Even if focusing on the game side of things for computer/PC, it and home consoles are still in different markets. User base is somewhat different (PC skews older on average), typical usage scenarios quite different (desk vs. couch, inches away from smaller but higher res monitor vs. feet away from larger but lower resolution TV, and even average play times are different), and basic stock user interface is very different (kb/m vs. gamepad; yes, gamepads can be used on PCs, but the games themselves are designed primarily around the interface devs are sure everyone has in that market: kb/m).

On that same train of thought, it's also odd and silly to directly compare portable game systems with home consoles, and either one with mobile platform devices. So-called "gamers" do it, of course, but more confounding is that analysts and folks within the industry do it as well, and they should really know better. The idea of a "merger" of product markets has never taken hold in the industry, nor has the idea of "one market killing the other" (even the downturn of the arcade market had very little to do with the idea of home consoles becoming powerful enough to make arcades obsolete).

It's interesting for an academic comparison in a number of contexts . . . not so much for an argument of how "good" something is. (albeit some old home computers are more directly comprable to consoles in their tightly engineered sound/graphics-centric low-cost fixed-architectures)

Wasn't there an NV1 based card out in '95? If so, right there we had a card that, combined with a good PC CPU and enough RAM, caught up/surpassed what the consoles could do, at least on paper.

I have some mixed information on the NV-1, both in specs and real-world performance . . . including some things like wiki's 12 Mpix/s fillrate spec (much lower than Saturn or PSX) among other things.

In any case, Rage and ViRGE were both in production in 1995 as well, but the I don't think hit the retail market until 1996. (early shipments were OEM exclusive iirc, something the newcomer Nvidia didn't have the distinction for)
ViRGE was the best by far in terms of "normal" 3D of those 3 cards though.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Don't get me wrong, VF2 running on the Saturn in 1995 was a seriously big deal, but it is not graphically equal to or better than the Arcade version in any shape or form.

Did anyone actually say this? Of course the game isn't as good as the Arcade, the Model 2 board was an absolute beast. But the Saturn port holds up admirably well and looks better than most 3D Fighters that were out on the PS1 at the time and even some of the later ones.

Plus, Namco knows how to actually animate characters.

You do realize that Sega actually used motion capture for their 3D Fighter's animation right?:

No its Not . Play both VF 2 and Last Bronx on the Saturn and see that VF 2 has smoother arms and joints. Last Bronx on the Saturn keeps the Model 2 less smooth joints . So for the last time its nothing to do with the Lighting

Seriously, what on earth are you talking about? Last Bronx on the Saturn doesn't have blocky arms and joints either. It looks rather smooth thanks again to the complete lack of lighting:

[zyrobs]

The lighting issue is directly related to the high res mode's color limitations. Again, it's 8-bit color, that's 256 palettized colors, and the typical 256 color lighting/shading techniques used by software renderers (namely using lookup tables) aren't possible on the Saturn's VDP1. For solid color polygons, you can just change the color for limited flat-shaded lighting effects, but any textures makes that much more difficult. If 16 color textures are used, it might be possible to remap the palette used for color expansion (change the 16 colors being mapped to the 256 color output pixels), but I'm not sure of the details on the VDP1's 8-bit paletted color rendering limitations.

If, for some reason, you're actually stuck with using 8bpp textures in that mode, then there's no way to do lighting/shading at all, and you're also stuck with using 2x the texture RAM than 16 color textures would use.

Lightning on the VDP1 can be done via gouraud shading. This only works out-of-the-box on RGB textures, since gouraud shading on the VDP1 works by taking the RGB value of the texture and decreasing/increasing the luminance with the value in the gouraud shading table. This is done separately for each R, G, B, component, which makes coloured lightning possible. Technically it works on paletted pixels too, but the colour entries are treated as RGB pixel values, so you have to know which palette you jump to post shading. One way described in the bumpmap demo is to have only the red component specified in the gouraud shading table, and set up the palettes as colour gradients, with the texture pixel using the middle entry - the shading will then cycle through the palette entries.

Changing palette entries of the textured polygons, or the colours of non-textured polygons, between each frame during the vblank period could also work.

The VDP1 can set up the framebuffer in 512x256x16, 512x512x8, and 1024x256x8 modes. For high res graphics, 1024x256x8 is the most optimal. This locks you into 8bit textures, which can only use palette (stored in vdp2 cram) or colour lookup tables (stored in vdp1 vram).
I don't know if there is any limitation to using gouraud shading in 8-bit modes, beyond the RGB/palette clash. If there are none, then you could possibly use shading in normal density interlaced modes with RGB textures (for ex. in 320x480), and even in double-density interlaced modes (for ex. 640x480) with clever use of palettes. However I think you would be limited by the amount of palettes to use in this case, since you'd have to set up an entire gradients worth of palettes for every shaded colour.

So hi-res textured lightning might not be impossible with the VDP1. It might not be feasible though.

Did anyone actually say this? Of course the game isn't as good as the Arcade, the Model 2 board was an absolute beast. But the Saturn port holds up admirably well and looks better than most 3D Fighters that were out on the PS1 at the time and even some of the later ones.

Yes, TA insisted that the ground on VF2 Saturn is as good if not better than the Model 2.

[/quote]You do realize that Sega actually used motion capture for their 3D Fighter's animation right?:[/QUOTE]

Tekken 3 still looks smoother than VF2. I think it's because the characters move in a more constant (and slower) speed, while VF has characters moving at fast quick bursts - more realistic, but less visually pleasing. And really, I'm comparing a 1998 game to a 1995 one.

[saturndual32]

So, whats the setback on using the awesome lightning effects that Lobotomy used on Duke Nukem 3D and Powerslave, both of which are superior in that regard, to their Playstation counterparts and many other PS1 fps. I mean, you would think that the engines performance would take a big hit, but even with those killer lightning effect on, Powerslave and Duke 3D, put to shame most Saturn game engines in framerate, detail, polygons counts, etc.

Also, what type of effects were being used on the textures of Duke 3D for the Saturn?, they sparkled, compared to their PS1 counterpart.

Shame that Lobotomy didnt get to work on more Saturn titles.

[Team Andromeda]

Seriously, what on earth are you talking about? Last Bronx on the Saturn doesn't have blocky arms and joints either.

The arms are much smoother in VF II and so is the shading . Characters like Joe, Nagi suffer from this . VF II and DOA used much smoother arms and joints to their Model 2B cousins, where as Last Bonx on the Saturn was virtually spot on to those found in the Arcade version

Yes, TA insisted that the ground on VF2 Saturn is as good if not better than the Model 2

That's becasue they are . Flat texture maps floors was no issue for the Saturn at all . In fact I can barley seen any difference between the two (bar say some slight more pixelation in the Saturn)





And of course no On-Line videos will ever do true justice to Saturn games in High Res mode on a CRT TV through RGB Scart

But you can also see a lot of detail that the Saturn version is missing - animated hair, almost no polygon collissions, higher texture detail everywhere, Shun Di's stage is an actual raft floating on the river (nevermind the overhead bridges missing - the Saturn version just has a river somewhere in the background).

What is this shit ?. I know there's loads of detail missing , but that's overlooking the gulf in specs and memory . Christ the hair and clothing animation isn't as well done on the DC to that of the Model 3 version, but that's nick picking . Everyone and their mum here seems to love the Mega Drive with its amazing fast CPU, but even then there was loads missing in its ports of Strider, Ghost N Ghouls, Golden Axe and so on - But you know to get a conversion of a state of the Art £16,000 Model 2B as close as Saturn VF 2 was in 1995 was a stunning achievement;And yes to many the Saturn High Res mode was big deal at the time (well almost everyone thought the Saturn Top Res was 640X480) and from that day onwards of VF II 1st Running on the Saturn most Saturn title and menu screens would never be the same again , nor would a lot of 3D Vs Fighters

There's hardly any detail on the floor missing at all for Saturn VF 2 and the moves are present and correct ,the texture mapping on the charcters look great and even things like the head and finger movements are in (which a lot in the press didn't think would make it)

[sheath]

So, eh, is this 5th generation discussion going to be yet another official Sega-16 derail of this 6th generation thread? That is all fine and dandy, just don't expect anybody to remember or even know that these discussions have been had.

[zyrobs]

That's becasue they are . Flat texture maps floors was no issue for the Saturn at all . In fact I can barley seen any difference between the two (bar say some slight more pixelation in the Saturn)

And of course no On-Line videos will ever do true justice to Saturn games in High Res mode on a CRT TV through RGB Scart

Try looking at videos which aren't sub-VHS quality. Here's a nice 720p one for example, where you can clearly see that the ground on the Saturn version is much less detailed (check the Chicago stage with Jacky vs Sarah, or Shuns raft, etc).



The cause is simple: the VDP2 can not draw the rotating background in hi-res. It is always drawn in normal res. So it is rendered at 352x224 while the sprites and bitmap wallpapers in the background are packing four times as much detail (and the ground in the arcade version being 2.4x more detailed - not even counting the difference in texture sizes).

[Black_Tiger]

Try looking at videos which aren't sub-VHS quality. Here's a nice 720p one for example, where you can clearly see that the ground on the Saturn version is much less detailed (check the Chicago stage with Jacky vs Sarah, or Shuns raft, etc).



The cause is simple: the VDP2 can not draw the rotating background in hi-res. It is always drawn in normal res. So it is rendered at 352x224 while the sprites and bitmap wallpapers in the background are packing four times as much detail (and the ground in the arcade version being 2.4x more detailed - not even counting the difference in texture sizes).

Wow, that video makes the Saturn version look even better than I remembered it being. For most floors, the Saturn version looks as detailed, only strained through a lower resolution. Even then, it only becomes noticeable at certain angles.

I didn't see anything concrete that the arcade footage was from real Model 2 hardware though. Some of his other Model 2 videos say they are emulation, which doesn't really prove anything as far as floor detail comparisons go.