PS2 vs Dreamcast Graphics

[stu]

Well, I tried running Killzone on the PS2 emulator but it caused the emulator to slow to a crawl on my PC, so I wasn't able to do any analysis on it.

Next I tried Burnout - Revenge, from 2005 and WOW this has some very impressive performance for the PS2.

Below I've taken a 3 snapshots of the action from one of the first "Traffic Check" races on the game, with screenshots from PCSX2.




139,461 tri per frame @ 60fps = 8.4* million polys/sec




138,675 tris per frame @ 60 fps* = 8.3 million polys/sec


And finally.....




182,250 tris per frame @ 60 fps* = 10.9 million polys/sec


Nearly 11 million polys per second *on a PS2 game ..WOW.
The PS2 is a polygon monster considering how old it was compared to the GC and OG Xbox.


(* assuming the game is running at 60fps,I have no idea if it is 60 or slower, anyone know for sure?)

[SegaAMD]

(* assuming the game is running at 60fps,I have no idea if it is 60 or slower, anyone know for sure?)

yeah 60fps. I am about to post many games at the same time and by date, I am using dolphin and the results are amazing, the GC F1 2002 (Aka ps2 F1 2001) in start 123,483.

I never imagined that burnout 3 could do 180k per frame, this breaks the limit that we imagined (a maximum of 150k per frame).

[EPSYLON EAGLE]

11 million polygons is a number definitely wow for PS2!

I would love for someone to try to count the polygons of this Transformers Armata stage, the game engine renders an entire rainforest with incredible draw distance and no apparent pop in.

[SegaAMD]

I think games like that can be run on the DC( wack races runs nearly 80k tris per frame with cell shading but simplistic lighting). Keep it 30 fps one or two directional light sources just to make sure to push as many polygons as possible. Sure they won't look the same but it's better than nothing. Just look at Virtua fighter 32x compared to arcade.

Honestly i'm in doubt, for example Dreamcast could run a soul calibur 2, it would have to change some stages, but nothing that affects the experience, VF4 (IMHO) with 2d bitmaps in the background would be a good conversion similar to Saturn's VF2 , the gameplay would be intact. (better than VF1 arcade VF1 32x no doubt).

Now, action games, it's more complicated to make the reductions, for example I know Dreamcast can make X textures, Y polygons, Z effects, Pi audio channels, but as the games get complex some of these parts need to give way. a particular game for example can have 3GB, and the DC team thinks it is good to use only 1 disk for business reasons, so even if polygonal counting or game logic is possible, they will be reduced because the hardware needs to be analyzed as a whole. Skies of Arcadia GC, 2x GD-rom to 1 mini disk with audio losses.

[stu]

Well of the 4 games I pulled from my collection, I was only able to get BurnOut-Revenge to run. So I've selected another 4 to look at:

God Of War
God of War 2
Tekken 4
Tekken Tag Tournament

11 million polygons is a number definitely wow for PS2!

I would love for someone to try to count the polygons of this Transformers Armata stage, the game engine renders an entire rainforest with incredible draw distance and no apparent pop in.

I'll try to grab an ISO of it. Yes Melbourne House were freaking PS2 GODS, their Formula One game looks incredible. Here's an interview with Melbourne House detailing why the Transformers game remained exclusive to the PS2

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/i_transformers_ps2

Quote: "Eurogamer: Why did the game endup being a PS2 exclusive?Andrew Carter: When developing formore than one platform there is inevitably compromise on the quality of thefinal game on all versions. You find that you build the game in a way thatcopes with the collective weaknesses of all the consoles.
We wanted to make the game at the highest quality we could whichmeant specialising to one platform and developing the game to that machine'sstrengths. Melbourne House has the most experience with developing PS2 games,it has the biggest install base and we still like the hardware, so the choicewas an easy one once we had resolved to develop for one platform only.
Eurogamer: The key question is:how the hell did you manage to get the game looking so good on a format thatmost developers moan about getting results on?
Andrew Carter: Thanks! Well, yaknow, it's all right, we'll survive! Really there are three things though. Wehave a vision and a firm opinion about what should be possible, what isacceptable and how to approach it on PS2. Play to its strengths. I'm not surewhy developers moan today about PS2. It's a hard platform to get started on,but only because it is unique and requires special approaches compared to otherplatforms. But that pays off later and actually, although industry hype mightargue with this, no other console, even Xbox, can match PS2's flexibility,Vector Unit power or polygon drawing speed. We design everything to exploitthose strengths.
Lots of people will say they have great PS2 technology, butother than [Gran Turismo developer] Polyphony Digital, I usually don't thinkso! Our PS2 technology today is really great though, especially the visual andrendering systems, which I believe are the fastest and most powerful on PS2 -no one can display as many polygons at 60fps. Finally we have great artists thatreally work with the technical constraints and we try to balance art,technology and entertainment in equal measure.

[Yharnamresident]

How do you know that this figure is not accurate? The way the PS2 does multipass effects is by effectively drawing the same geometry multiple times - in effect utilizing overdraw, adding effects for each pass.
The other thing is that the PS2 does not have Hidden Surface Removal so what you might be interpreting as duplicates might actually be how the PS2 is processing the scene.
The final point is that we're relying on graphics plug ins that are not made by Sony and might not be entirely accurate in the 1st place.

After a while of doing this stuff, you kinda develop a trained eye which you use to determine if the polycounts are accurate. Does it look like 34,000 polygons? Not at all. Also I've tried Harvest Moon in a different version emulator, the game seemed to be 1.2 million PPS which literally looks much more accurate. The only way the game would hit 2 million PPS is if the screen has a ton of horses and characters.

Another thing, with some games the developers or journalists have stated the polycounts, which you can use to determine if your results are accurate. Like the NFL 2K creator said the game runs at 1.2 million PPS, not much different from what I've seen from my captures. Also IGN said Ridge Racer V runs at 2.1 million PPS, thats what you see from emulation.

How many Polygons does World Series Baseball 2k2 handled? At the time that game came out, I think it was and still is the best looking DC sports game

Its on my list, I got you eventually covered.

Or cart flag to flag credits where the cars have a whole duplicate mesh just for environment map.

Please don't mention that game, I just ate lentil soup and I want it to remain in my stomach.

I never imagined that burnout 3 could do 180k per frame, this breaks the limit that we imagined (a maximum of 150k per frame).

Yes there should be a couple odd games that break past 9 million PPS. Similar to how Triggerheart Excelica can hit 4 million PPS, even though the Dreamcast limit is 3 million PPS.

Also that game is Burnout Revenge, it came out in 2005 which is when the Dreamcast would've been dead if it didn't already die in 2001.

Now, action games, it's more complicated to make the reductions, for example I know Dreamcast can make X textures, Y polygons, Z effects, Pi audio channels, but as the games get complex some of these parts need to give way. a particular game for example can have 3GB, and the DC team thinks it is good to use only 1 disk for business reasons, so even if polygonal counting or game logic is possible, they will be reduced because the hardware needs to be analyzed as a whole. Skies of Arcadia GC, 2x GD-rom to 1 mini disk with audio losses.

Yes I've been saying for years that the main advantage the PS2 has over the Dreamcast is disc space. The PS2 is the only 6th gen console without major flaws.

[SegaAMD]

Yes there should be a couple odd games that break past 9 million PPS. Similar to how Triggerheart Excelica can hit 4 million PPS, even though the Dreamcast limit is 3 million PPS.

Also that game is Burnout Revenge, it came out in 2005 which is when the Dreamcast would've been dead if it didn't already die in 2001.

Yes I've been saying for years that the main advantage the PS2 has over the Dreamcast is disc space. The PS2 is the only 6th gen console without major flaws.

by the way, unless Dolphin is lying, I found the biggest polygon killer of the generation. I'll leave it here for you to check out the ps2 version (probably do less because the ps2 version is much more complex).

Need For Speed ​​Hot Possuit 2: 250k 300k per frame, assuming the game runs at 60fps, 15kk / 18kk but I suspect it has a frame drop whenever the numbers reach that level, staying in the 12kk range.

[Leynos]

I don't imagine it's super high but I'm curious. Does anyone have numbers on Frame Gride?

[Cloofoofoo]

I don't imagine it's super high but I'm curious. Does anyone have numbers on Frame Gride?

I don't have an emulator figure on that but I did go through the model files on the disc a while back.

The mech models fully assembled are around 3000 polygons and the stages are around 2000 to 5000 triangles. The helper mechs are from 500 to 1500 polygons. The final boss is 3000 polygons.

IAM guessing it probably doesnt push more than 500k polygons per second @ 30fps. But who knows I haven't checked on the emulator.

[Leynos]

Thank you. I figured it wasn't a lot.

[Yharnamresident]

by the way, unless Dolphin is lying, I found the biggest polygon killer of the generation. I'll leave it here for you to check out the ps2 version (probably do less because the ps2 version is much more complex).

Need For Speed ​​Hot Possuit 2: 250k 300k per frame, assuming the game runs at 60fps, 15kk / 18kk but I suspect it has a frame drop whenever the numbers reach that level, staying in the 12kk range.

You just gotta make your own judgement. Like I was looking at F1 Championship Season 2000, the emulator was saying 100,000 polygons, I knew that wasn't accurate, so I changed the plugins and got 40,000 polygons(still a hell of a lot).

I don't imagine it's super high but I'm curious. Does anyone have numbers on Frame Gride?

I got you covered. My captures said 16,000 to 18,000 polygons, the game runs at an unlocked 60 FPS and really never drops down to 40-50 FPS. So this means 1 million PPS. Very typical performance for a mid-1999 game.

[Cloofoofoo]

You just gotta make your own judgement. Like I was looking at F1 Championship Season 2000, the emulator was saying 100,000 polygons, I knew that wasn't accurate, so I changed the plugins and got 40,000 polygons(still a hell of a lot).


I got you covered. My captures said 16,000 to 18,000 polygons, the game runs at an unlocked 60 FPS and really never drops down to 40-50 FPS. So this means 1 million PPS. Very typical performance for a mid-1999 game.

IAM pretty sure that game was 30 fps locked. Looked it up. The game actually requires a codebreaker code to run 60 fpa, and even then its running double speed. The polygon count is right but that frame rate is not 60fps.30 fps locked.

[Yharnamresident]

IAM pretty sure that game was 30 fps locked. Looked it up. The game actually requires a codebreaker code to run 60 fpa, and even then its running double speed. The polygon count is right but that frame rate is not 60fps.30 fps locked.

I just tried the game in Demul 7, its an unlocked framerate. You kinda got a habit of trying to downplay the Dreamcast, I also noticed it in our private conversations.

[Cloofoofoo]

I just tried the game in Demul 7, its an unlocked framerate. You kinda got a habit of trying to downplay the Dreamcast, I also noticed it in our private conversations.

Sigh I assure you that isn't the case. I don't actually understand how are you getting those framerate. Ran it through the last demul and it's locked to 30fps.Here I'll provide a link to a page specifically aimed at unlocking 30 fps locked games. Frame grides name appears on it. I love the Dreamcast but IAM not gonna shut my ears on facts. The game wouldn't require a 60 fps if it was unlocked and a 60 fps code wouldnt make it run twice the speed. If ya don't believe me you could just run it on real hardware see for your self it's not 60 fps. Alot of the games u claim are unlocked are not.

I just like being more factual.

https://www.obscuregamers.com/thread...0fps-codes.61/

[Yharnamresident]

Sigh I assure you that isn't the case. I don't actually understand how are you getting those framerate. Ran it through the last demul and it's locked to 30fps.Here I'll provide a link to a page specifically aimed at unlocking 30 fps locked games. Frame grides name appears on it. I love the Dreamcast but IAM not gonna shut my ears on facts. The game wouldn't require a 60 fps if it was unlocked and a 60 fps code wouldnt make it run twice the speed. If ya don't believe me you could just run it on real hardware see for your self it's not 60 fps. Alot of the games u claim are unlocked are not.

I just like being more factual.

https://www.obscuregamers.com/thread...0fps-codes.61/

Its not just about framerates, you were also trying to tell me that the Dreamcast 2K2 games don't hit more than 1.5 million PPS. I see NFL 2K2 hit 2.4 million vertices on a regular basis, which would translate to like 2.7 million PPS.

You were also saying the reason shoot-em-ups have high performance is because they don't require much hardware resources. Theres tons of chaos and individually moving objects with shoot-em-ups. This is just basic downplaying.


Regarding that framerate situation. That code is likely to get the game locked at 60 FPS, which is much better than unlocked. Also everyone says POD Speedzone runs at 60 FPS, that game is unlocked yet no one claims its not 60 FPS.