Oh dear. Now you ARE being very subjective. MGS2 + 3 both ran at 60fps. I know this because we measured it on a PS2 performance analyzer, which gave me some really nice insights into their model rendering stuff.
I don't know about your tool but MGS3 ran at 30fps with blending, MGS2 was 60fps, but they cut that down in half (kinda like a lot of games this gen, especially racing games) to get more graphical detail. The MGS3 tech demo was 60fps, but that was using a modified version of the MGS2 engine.
That was one of the big positives about the HD Collection (as well as a complaint) that MGS3 was finally playable in 60fps, but MGS2 didn't look improved that much as it already ran at 60fps.
Oh dear. Now you ARE being very subjective. MGS2 + 3 both ran at 60fps. I know this because we measured it on a PS2 performance analyzer, which gave me some really nice insights into their model rendering stuff.
And Farcry? Really? Oh, it looks GREAT, doesn't it?
It doesn't. High texture detail on the landscapes, perhaps, but no more than MGS3...it just has very high contrast and very simple light setup. Shame about the rest of it. MGS2 and 3 beats the crap out of that in terms of textures and models in my view.
Path Of Neo on the PS2. Riddick uses 1d bump mapping, while Neo uses proper dot3 normal mapping (the sort of thing that Doom 3 pioneered).
I spent a lot of time looking at Riddick and thought "that's a bit simple". Bump mapping is something even the PS1 could do...it's just using a gey-scale image to modulate the texture values.
Oh wow...ever so complicated. Not.
No, you have eyes and a brain that give you a subjective point of view. Not to mention a very flawed memory, looking through rose tinted glasses.
I've spent the weekend setting up a PS2 tool-chain, which has been fun. Let's see how much of what I've said holds water, shall we?
As Ash mentioned MGS3 on PS2 did not run at 60 fps it aimed for 30 but frequently dipped well below that, down to around 15/20 fps during cutscenes with regular dips and tearing during gameplay..
I love the way you cherry picked an interior picture from Far Cry Instinct to try and prove a point which really says it all. I don't need you to do that as I own both MGS 3 on PS2 and Far Cry on Xbox so I know full well what they look like and that picture is not representative of it. I could easily find a picture of MGS 3 on PS2 looking equally rough but what's the point?
Same deal with Riddick, bringing the PS1 into it is ridiculous. Seriously my point is no game on PS2 looks as technically impressive as Riddick on Xbox (particularly the lighting as I stated), I've played Matrix Path of Neo and that sure as hell doesn't.
It look primitive to later games, especially in still images. But at speed, and with the use of high order prims (that's geometry generated on the fly) it does pretty well.
As I said, it's a good game for so early in the consoles life time.
So why not just say that then instead of using terms such as "high order prims"? well, I think we both know the answer to that.
I own Fusion so I know what it looks like moving and while it is a very smooth running game detail is sparse and overall not impressive to me, even when it first came out. Your original statement was that Studio Liverpool pushed the PS2 more so than anyone else, but you've seemed to of changed your stance on that.
I'm not really interested in carrying on this conversation now as it's gone beyond absurd levels, I'm afraid to say you haven't convinced me that the PS2 was the more powerful system but we are all entitled to our opinion.
I don't know about your tool but MGS3 ran at 30fps with blending.
I remember it running at 60fps quite clearly, and looking at the activity graph. There was tonnes of ee and vu activity, as well as GS activity which stopped while waiting for the vsynch.
And all that happened in the 16.66666ms time frame, which is 1.60th of a second.
The blending would have been because they used a normal size back buffer, to try and minimize the artifacts caused by the lack of anti-aliasing.
As Ash mentioned MGS3 on PS2 did not run at 60 fps it aimed for 30 but frequently dipped well below that, down to around 15/20 fps during cutscenes with regular dips and tearing during gameplay..
Given that not waiting for the vertical sync (which would cause tearing) was against the technical requirements checklist that your game had to pass at the time, I'm not sure that you're remembering this clearly.
Sony didn't relax that until the PS3 came out, because they messed up massively with the design.
I love the way you cherry picked an interior picture from Far Cry Instinct to try and prove a point which really says it all. I don't need you to do that as I own both MGS 3 on PS2 and Far Cry on Xbox so I know full well what they look like and that picture is not representative of it. I could easily find a picture of MGS 3 on PS2 looking equally rough but what's the point?
Meaning; you can't.
So here's the thing; you get nice, high contrast landscape textures but at the cost of detail to non-player characters. You can't use the environments as some sort of benchmark and then ignore the cost of other parts of the game.
But then, you're sort of used to ignoring the stuff you don't know how to answer, aren't you?
Same deal with Riddick, bringing the PS1 into it is ridiculous. Seriously my point is no game on PS2 looks as technically impressive as Riddick on Xbox (particularly the lighting as I stated), I've played Matrix Path of Neo and that sure as hell doesn't.
So Riddick had better art direction. Personally, I thought Riddick looked awful and garish. The blew up the contrast on the textures to make up for the inability to control the ambient level properly because of the way the bump mapping darkens everything.
Neo had awful art, this is true, but this was more down to art direction than the technical capabilities of the hardware. It was nice tech though....just used badly.
So why not just say that then instead of using terms such as "high order prims"? well, I think we both know the answer to that.
Because it's easier to type?
I own Fusion so I know what it looks like moving and while it is a very smooth running game detail is sparse and overall not impressive to me, even when it first came out. Your original statement was that Studio Liverpool pushed the PS2 more so than anyone else, but you've seemed to of changed your stance on that.
No; I said that out of the Sony 1st party studios, they did a good job of using the hardware. The others; not so much.
I remember it running at 60fps quite clearly, and looking at the activity graph. There was tonnes of ee and vu activity, as well as GS activity which stopped while waiting for the vsynch.
And all that happened in the 16.66666ms time frame, which is 1.60th of a second.
The blending would have been because they used a normal size back buffer, to try and minimize the artifacts caused by the lack of anti-aliasing.
There's something odd about this, I clearly know MGS3 runs at 30fps and MGS2 ran at 60fps, I mean it's clear to see when you compare the game side by side with the HD versions, use set cutscenes (Demo Theater works great for this) and compare scenes. MGS2 has near identical frame smoothness since both Original and HD version run at 60fps, where as if you compare original MGS3 and HD version, the HD version is a lot smoother in motion as it's now running native 60fps.
I will be honest, i thought it was common knowledge that MGS3 ran at half the framerate, even Kojima Productions themselves said so in a documentary they did for the game. It was done to push a lot more foliage, tree's, etc, and that the dark murky pallet of the game helped hide it somewhat.
Given that not waiting for the vertical sync (which would cause tearing) was against the technical requirements checklist that your game had to pass at the time, I'm not sure that you're remembering this clearly.
Sony didn't relax that until the PS3 came out, because they messed up massively with the design.
Oh really, I must of been imagining all that screen tear while playing Jak 2/3 on PS2. I suppose just like I imagined playing MGS3 at 25 fps. Its evident you don't actually know what you're talking about when it comes down to it, you just like to pretend you do.
So here's the thing; you get nice, high contrast landscape textures but at the cost of detail to non-player characters. You can't use the environments as some sort of benchmark and then ignore the cost of other parts of the game.
But then, you're sort of used to ignoring the stuff you don't know how to answer, aren't you?
So Riddick had better art direction. Personally, I thought Riddick looked awful and garish. The blew up the contrast on the textures to make up for the inability to control the ambient level properly because of the way the bump mapping darkens everything.
Neo had awful art, this is true, but this was more down to art direction than the technical capabilities of the hardware. It was nice tech though....just used badly.
No I said technically not artistically. Riddick has more advanced graphics than any equivalent FPS on PS2.
No, because you'd rather I didn't know what you are talking about making your irrational claims easier to maintain. When I had already previously asked you to be clearer with your words so I could understand what you mean you continue to try and confuse me with pointless programming terms.
Generally from my experience people who work in the industry and who're programmers are able to convey themselves in such a manner that someone less qualified can understand them, you on the other hand would rather confuse people with programming lingo and as such, fail on every level to make yourself understood. So don't complain that I can't hold a debate with you when you intentionally convolute your reasoning.
No; I said that out of the Sony 1st party studios, they did a good job of using the hardware. The others; not so much.
I haven't changed anything.
Yes and I don't agree with you at all, in fact I don't agree with any of your claims. Any chance there was that I would simply take your word for it due to your position and experince within the industry flew out of the window when you claimed MGS 3 ran 60 fps on PS2 (not least the fact the PAL version didn't even feature a 60hz mode) and that no games on the system feature screen tear. I think it's probably best we leave it there lol.
Oh really, I must of been imagining all that screen tear while playing Jak 2/3 on PS2. I suppose just like I imagined playing MGS3 at 25 fps. Its evident you don't actually know what you're talking about when it comes down to it, you just like to pretend you do.
You must have been. All I can say is that having to keep to the vertical sync was a real problem on my last PS2 title, and every time I asked if it was something we could get around, I got a resounding no.
Given that CRT TV's were still ubiquitous at this time, it's plain to see WHY tearing would not be allowed. It would be much, much more obvious than on a LCD or LED set.
That's a very odd resolution to take a screen grab at, and it shows in the aliasing. Looks to me as if they has to step down from the usual res so the xbox could render that scene.
Textures do look nice though, Reminds me of Polar Express for the PS2 in terms of texture quality. You CAN get that quality on textures on the PS2, but it's a bit of work to do it. You need to compress them, and then do decompression using 4-passes (rendering a quad 4 times to produce the uncompressed texture off-screen).
We did something similar on my last PS2 title to try and get textures that matched the PC. It sounds like a lot of work, but we were never close to running the graphics chip at full load and it wasn't really that expensive. It saved space too, because you didn't have to worry about using MIP maps(using progressively smaller copies of textures for far away objects).
If you were working on Xbox, it just did the decompression natively.
No I said technically not artistically. Riddick has more advanced graphics than any equivalent FPS on PS2.
Wait. You said that you can't do the technical talk. That it's way above your head. But yet, here you are talking about how something is technically more advanced...a bit conflicting, don't you think?
So if it's technically more advanced, in your opinion, I don't suppose you'd mind explaining to me WHY this is the case? Since you are after all, making a technical argument here.
No, because you'd rather I didn't know what you are talking about making your irrational claims easier to maintain. When I had already previously asked you to be clearer with your words so I could understand what you mean you continue to try and confuse me with pointless programming terms.
No, because it's just easier to type. I've explained one or twice in our exchanges what I mean by that particular term. And if you want clarity, just ask. I'm not against explaining stuff.
Generally from my experience people who work in the industry and who're programmers are able to convey themselves in such a manner that someone less qualified can understand them, you on the other hand would rather confuse people with programming lingo and as such, fail on every level to make yourself understood. So don't complain that I can't hold a debate with you when you intentionally convolute your reasoning.
I would rather people made an effort to understand the discussion, instead of resorting to personal attacks and accusations. As I've said; if I have no problems with somebody asking to be more clear and explain what I mean. In fact, it does a person credit because it shows they're genuinely interested in a proper discussion.
I won't do anything to make you feel bad or ridicule you for not knowing anything. You however, will lampoon people for pretty much any reason it would seem.
Yes and I don't agree with you at all, in fact I don't agree with any of your claims.
But you have. You agreed with my original statement that, the PS2 was limited by cross-platform development practices. But then you turned around and didn't want to hear about how the PS2's hardware could be used to do something better than the xbox, remember?
Any chance there was that I would simply take your word for it due to your position and experince within the industry flew out of the window when you claimed MGS 3 ran 60 fps on PS2 (not least the fact the PAL version didn't even feature a 60hz mode) and that no games on the system feature screen tear. I think it's probably best we leave it there lol.
Sure, PAL builds ran at 50Hz but then, I had a NTSC console which was a birthday gift from my ex, who is American.
I just don't get your problem. I try to explain how things work to back up my reasoning, and you use it as an argument against me, saying I over complicate to confuse you. That's not my intention at all.
If I had at any point ridiculed you for not knowing something when asked, your opinion would be totally valid.
I provided my credentials as sort of an explanation as to why I can't always go into details about certain things, so it's just not a "because I said so argument". But still, you use it in a personal attack against me. I'm honestly not trying to impress anybody. I just want to have a nice debate.
It seems to me that you're not interested in an in-depth discussion, you're all about winning a debate and being top dog.
There's something odd about this, I clearly know MGS3 runs at 30fps and MGS2 ran at 60fps, I mean it's clear to see when you compare the game side by side with the HD versions, use set cutscenes (Demo Theater works great for this) and compare scenes. MGS2 has near identical frame smoothness since both Original and HD version run at 60fps, where as if you compare original MGS3 and HD version, the HD version is a lot smoother in motion as it's now running native 60fps.
I will be honest, i thought it was common knowledge that MGS3 ran at half the framerate, even Kojima Productions themselves said so in a documentary they did for the game. It was done to push a lot more foliage, tree's, etc, and that the dark murky pallet of the game helped hide it somewhat.
If Kojima says so, then I'm mistaken.
I'm pretty dammed sure that this is what I saw on the performance analyser. I mean, I ran both MGS2 and MGS3 through it, and they used the same tricks for getting great performance on rendering character models.
I did this great big breakdown for the art guys, because I wanted us to do something similar. I showed them how our performance was being killed by Unreal Engines default way of handling stuff, and how it differed what compared to MGS2+3. I needed the art director to get on board with the idea, to get the team to modify the art a little, but I just couldn't convince him.
"We don't need technical specs for art, we know what we're doing" was his response.
Funny thing is MGS2 was ported to the Xbox and yet I've not heard of one person who regards it as one of the best looking games on the system. It's a lovely looking game and one of my favourites on PS2 by far but there were significantly more impressive visuals on offer during that generation imho, that goes for MGS3 too, which never had quite the same appeal for me since it's frame rate was so heavily compromised.
You must have been. All I can say is that having to keep to the vertical sync was a real problem on my last PS2 title, and every time I asked if it was something we could get around, I got a resounding no.
Given that CRT TV's were still ubiquitous at this time, it's plain to see WHY tearing would not be allowed. It would be much, much more obvious than on a LCD or LED set.
Watch it and tell me you can't see the tearing (not to mention the awful aliasing which so many PS2 games suffered with). Evidently I wasn't imagining it as you imply.
Also check out this analysis on PS2 God of War 2 [here]. Both GOW games were the same in this respect and clearly shows that PS2 games featured HEAVY tearing.
Perhaps you would like some high resolution shots of Far Cry on Xbox? [1][2][3][4][5]
Now while these shots are obviously high resolution it does allow us to see how high detail some of these textures are and I can assure you these are way more representative of what this game looks like on my 22" CRT monitor in 480p via VGA rather than the picture you posted.
I already explained the lighting effects on Riddick was far beyond anything I saw on PS2. Not only this but the overall look of the whole game. Doom 3 and Half Life 2 was similarly impressive. Yes the art design is very ugly but that's obviously intentional in much the same way a game like Killzone 2 is ugly but technically impressive at the same time.
Here's video of it running on the original Xbox hardware, not the best quality but it illustrates the point well enough I think [link]
It's weird to see people arguing and using modern day problems such as AA and screen tearing and applying them to last gen consoles.
None of this crap mattered much back then! Hell, especially in Europe we were lucky if we even got a PAL 60 Option or Progressive Scan! People forget that now, thanks to HD, all of us can at least enjoy games at their proper speed with PAL Slowdown being a thing of the past!
It's weird to see people arguing and using modern day problems such as AA and screen tearing and applying them to last gen consoles.
None of this crap mattered much back then! Hell, especially in Europe we were lucky if we even got a PAL 60 Option or Progressive Scan! People forget that now, thanks to HD, all of us can at least enjoy games at their proper speed with PAL Slowdown being a thing of the past!
I disagree with that, the PS2 jaggy issue was a pretty big concern for a lot of people back then. I remember Digitizer writing an article on it, I believe Burnout was the game that prompted the discussion due to it's complete lack of AA. It was fugly. Perhaps the tearing issue wasn't as common I'll agree and many more games last gen were v-synced compared to today's games on PS3/360.
Again, only with the PS2 were you "lucky" to receive a PAL 60 option (*even then I don't think it supported anything other than NTSC for 60hz signals). Even the biggest Sony fan can't fail to admit it was a big step backwards for PAL gamers since the arrival of the Dreamcast, which thanks to Sega, was the first console to provide us with full speed games over here. Many of the Capcom games were a complete abortion since not only did they feature huge borders but also failed to optmise the speed. I remember how disappointed I was when I bought Devil May Cry. Didn't even want to go anywhere near any of the 2D fighters after that. The GC offered a very high percentage of 60hz games.
All Xbox titles featured PAL 60 since it was toggled from the hardware itself and 99% of games were all 480p compatible.
The PS2 could do PAL 60, off the top of my head there was Tekken 4, all the Jak games, I think Driv3r has it to.
But I do agree, the Dreamcast holds up MUCH better on a HDTV because of that "gimmick" of connecting a PC Monitor via VGA to get true 640x480@60Hz, I doubt even SEGA knew back then just how much they future proofed the console! Connecting a Dreamcast to a HDTV via VGA is super easy and many games look great because of it and doesn't look as much dated, games like Soul Calibur, Shenmue, etc, still look pretty damn good for their time!
A lot of the time it was just down to developers to include it (ring any bells Custom Soundtracks on PS3, etc), and hell, thanks to Action Replay/Gameshark, sometimes we could even FORCE games into 60Hz, a case of if the developers wern't going to include, then we'll boot the game with altered code so it will!
What's amazing though is that the PS3 can't do PAL 60! So, if you're stuck with a SDTV, the best you're going to get is PAL50, the games don't have the slowdown anymore since it's adjusted on the fly by the hardware, but, yeah, weird to point that out, the PS3 with an SDTV you only have PAL or NTSC, no PAL 60.
But yeah, back then many Japanese Dev's just didn't give a crap, hell, Final Fantasy X was one game that i had to boot via Action Replay just to enable the Widescreen Fix and 60Hz mode, otherwise the game was just slow!
Just glad those days are behind us! But my one regret for the PS2 was that i wished more games were PAL60 or had Progressive Scan support because it does make a difference today.
The PS2 could do PAL 60, off the top of my head there was Tekken 4, all the Jak games, I think Driv3r has it to.
But I do agree, the Dreamcast holds up MUCH better on a HDTV because of that "gimmick" of connecting a PC Monitor via VGA to get true 640x480@60Hz, I doubt even SEGA knew back then just how much they future proofed the console! Connecting a Dreamcast to a HDTV via VGA is super easy and many games look great because of it and doesn't look as much dated, games like Soul Calibur, Shenmue, etc, still look pretty damn good for their time!
A lot of the time it was just down to developers to include it (ring any bells Custom Soundtracks on PS3, etc), and hell, thanks to Action Replay/Gameshark, sometimes we could even FORCE games into 60Hz, a case of if the developers wern't going to include, then we'll boot the game with altered code so it will!
What's amazing though is that the PS3 can't do PAL 60! So, if you're stuck with a SDTV, the best you're going to get is PAL50, the games don't have the slowdown anymore since it's adjusted on the fly by the hardware, but, yeah, weird to point that out, the PS3 with an SDTV you only have PAL or NTSC, no PAL 60.
But yeah, back then many Japanese Dev's just didn't give a crap, hell, Final Fantasy X was one game that i had to boot via Action Replay just to enable the Widescreen Fix and 60Hz mode, otherwise the game was just slow!
Just glad those days are behind us! But my one regret for the PS2 was that i wished more games were PAL60 or had Progressive Scan support because it does make a difference today.
I know the PS2 featured a fair few 60hz games but I don't think they were PAL60 hence a lot of TV's at the time needing a RGB cable to see the picture in colour. Quite sure it was NSTC but I could be wrong.
Yeah the PAL PS3 50hz only issue is pretty ridiculous, it simply doesn't support 480i but obviously most people won't be affected since they have a HDTV. It causes all manner of problems online. I tried it using my PS2 RGB cable and it looked nice and all the games I tried were full screen but the speed difference was noticeable.
I own a chipped PS2 and can force PAL PS2 games into 60hz easy, but what made me laugh was that even the NTSC original of FFX had borders which explains just how awful they were in the PAL version. Biggest borders seen a game EVER.
480p makes all the difference but you can understand why it wasn't supported much over here since we didn't own HDTV's back then and we completely skipped past EDTV's. Which is such a shame imo since there's nothing nicer than a 480p image on a CRT TV!
If you want to hear something even more insane about the PS3, it STILL has that crappy Green Screen Copyright Protection over RGB Scart when playing back DVD's and Blu-rays!
I mean, ...Sony, who's going to want to make a VCR copy of a Blu-ray film??? Seriously.
Watch it and tell me you can't see the tearing (not to mention the awful aliasing which so many PS2 games suffered with). Evidently I wasn't imagining it as you imply.
You'll have to point out the tearing, because it looks to me as if the issue is that the game is dropping the frame rate rather than tearing. Admittedly, I might not just be seeing it, as it's a tad more difficult to see on an LCD display.
The aliasing issue on PS2 is something that I'm all to aware of. But the PS2 did support ant-aliasing (if you give me enough time, I'll even dig out the bit in the GS manual about it) but it was broken. Broken in a way that would crash the GS.
So it had to be turned off. As I said before, you had ways of working around that, but you took a hit in terms of video memory.
Also check out this analysis on PS2 God of War 2 [here]. Both GOW games were the same in this respect and clearly shows that PS2 games featured HEAVY tearing.
All I can say is that tearing was not pervasive on PS2 titles. It wasn't allowed to happen as there was a technical guideline that you had to stick to. And if you failed it, Sony wouldn't allow your game to be mastered.
Perhaps you would like some high resolution shots of Far Cry on Xbox? [1][2][3][4][5]
Now while these shots are obviously high resolution it does allow us to see how high detail some of these textures are and I can assure you these are way more representative of what this game looks like on my 22" CRT monitor in 480p via VGA rather than the picture you posted.
The thing about the high res images, for me a least, is that it highlights a lot of the compromises. Any game makes compromises to run on fixed hardware, but Far Cary is a good example of how it can be done in a really unbalanced way.
[1] Foliage textures. The simple on/off alpha channel makes the leaf edges very aliased. They're also a pretty low colour depth, maybe 15 colours (assuming 1-bit alpha mask).
The look okay at a distance, but close up, you can really see how little of the budget has been spent on them.
Compare this to generating the shape of the foliage on the fly, using geometry on the MGS3.
[2] Low-poly characters. Since most of the detail is on the player hands and weapons, it looks as if the character poly-budgets are pretty low. The normal mapping makes up for it to a certain degree, but I think that they've also reduced the number of bones that influence the mesh vertices.
Umm....that last bit is a hard to boil down into a simpler term.
But the way the mesh vertices at places like the elblows flair ourwards, tells me that each vertex on the character mesh is influenced by only one bone
There are a few things, but these are the biggest ones that stand out for me.
I'm not saying that it looks bad, but I think you could have just as vibrant looking textures on the PS2, if handled properly.
I already explained the lighting effects on Riddick was far beyond anything I saw on PS2. Not only this but the overall look of the whole game. Doom 3 and Half Life 2 was similarly impressive. Yes the art design is very ugly but that's obviously intentional in much the same way a game like Killzone 2 is ugly but technically impressive at the same time.
No, you've said that it's technically impressive. If it "looks" impressive, that's something different and not a technical view point. I can tell you how it manages the lighting effects...1d bump mapping, where you use a grey scale image to modulate the texture detail based on the vertex lighting.
If you get close up (and I remember doing this a lot), you'll see how bump-mapped objects look flat.
I still argue that it's good art direction, making sure that the light setup is as good as it can be, and achieving the desired effect. A lot of the time, that's the most important thing in game development; good art direction and design. It'll do far more than any great tech will do for you.
Look at Path Of Neo; much superior tech, but used in an awful, awful way. You could even turn the normal mapping on and off to see that the game wasn't being limited by the rendering side of things. The frame rate stayed the same, it's just that things like Havok (I remember using the same version of Havok on the PS2. Horrible.) were probably killing the CPU load.
If you want to hear something even more insane about the PS3, it STILL has that crappy Green Screen Copyright Protection over RGB Scart when playing back DVD's and Blu-rays!
I mean, ...Sony, who's going to want to make a VCR copy of a Blu-ray film??? Seriously.
Just to show how far we've come. This is a launch PS2 Game called Dynasty Warriors 2. It was praised as a next gen graphics game with weather effects + Large battlefields/draw distance and having over 15 or something characters fighting on screen at the same time.
Getting bored of my Xbox 360 with it's HD graphics, might get the old Acorn Electron out and play Eddie Kidd's Stunt Challenge. Much better graphics wise.
Getting bored of my Xbox 360 with it's HD graphics, might get the old Acorn Electron out and play Eddie Kidd's Stunt Challenge. Much better graphics wise.
Don't joke, anyone who has played the Uncharted series might believe you:D
Comments
and they look ok
but the ps3 tries to make them hd ....they look worse if u play without 'hd' turned on(think its called sd upscaling in options)
I don't know about your tool but MGS3 ran at 30fps with blending, MGS2 was 60fps, but they cut that down in half (kinda like a lot of games this gen, especially racing games) to get more graphical detail. The MGS3 tech demo was 60fps, but that was using a modified version of the MGS2 engine.
That was one of the big positives about the HD Collection (as well as a complaint) that MGS3 was finally playable in 60fps, but MGS2 didn't look improved that much as it already ran at 60fps.
As Ash mentioned MGS3 on PS2 did not run at 60 fps it aimed for 30 but frequently dipped well below that, down to around 15/20 fps during cutscenes with regular dips and tearing during gameplay..
I love the way you cherry picked an interior picture from Far Cry Instinct to try and prove a point which really says it all. I don't need you to do that as I own both MGS 3 on PS2 and Far Cry on Xbox so I know full well what they look like and that picture is not representative of it. I could easily find a picture of MGS 3 on PS2 looking equally rough but what's the point?
Same deal with Riddick, bringing the PS1 into it is ridiculous. Seriously my point is no game on PS2 looks as technically impressive as Riddick on Xbox (particularly the lighting as I stated), I've played Matrix Path of Neo and that sure as hell doesn't.
So why not just say that then instead of using terms such as "high order prims"? well, I think we both know the answer to that.
I own Fusion so I know what it looks like moving and while it is a very smooth running game detail is sparse and overall not impressive to me, even when it first came out. Your original statement was that Studio Liverpool pushed the PS2 more so than anyone else, but you've seemed to of changed your stance on that.
I'm not really interested in carrying on this conversation now as it's gone beyond absurd levels, I'm afraid to say you haven't convinced me that the PS2 was the more powerful system but we are all entitled to our opinion.
I remember it running at 60fps quite clearly, and looking at the activity graph. There was tonnes of ee and vu activity, as well as GS activity which stopped while waiting for the vsynch.
And all that happened in the 16.66666ms time frame, which is 1.60th of a second.
The blending would have been because they used a normal size back buffer, to try and minimize the artifacts caused by the lack of anti-aliasing.
Given that not waiting for the vertical sync (which would cause tearing) was against the technical requirements checklist that your game had to pass at the time, I'm not sure that you're remembering this clearly.
Sony didn't relax that until the PS3 came out, because they messed up massively with the design.
Meaning; you can't.
So here's the thing; you get nice, high contrast landscape textures but at the cost of detail to non-player characters. You can't use the environments as some sort of benchmark and then ignore the cost of other parts of the game.
But then, you're sort of used to ignoring the stuff you don't know how to answer, aren't you?
So Riddick had better art direction. Personally, I thought Riddick looked awful and garish. The blew up the contrast on the textures to make up for the inability to control the ambient level properly because of the way the bump mapping darkens everything.
Neo had awful art, this is true, but this was more down to art direction than the technical capabilities of the hardware. It was nice tech though....just used badly.
Because it's easier to type?
No; I said that out of the Sony 1st party studios, they did a good job of using the hardware. The others; not so much.
I haven't changed anything.
There's something odd about this, I clearly know MGS3 runs at 30fps and MGS2 ran at 60fps, I mean it's clear to see when you compare the game side by side with the HD versions, use set cutscenes (Demo Theater works great for this) and compare scenes. MGS2 has near identical frame smoothness since both Original and HD version run at 60fps, where as if you compare original MGS3 and HD version, the HD version is a lot smoother in motion as it's now running native 60fps.
I will be honest, i thought it was common knowledge that MGS3 ran at half the framerate, even Kojima Productions themselves said so in a documentary they did for the game.
Oh really, I must of been imagining all that screen tear while playing Jak 2/3 on PS2. I suppose just like I imagined playing MGS3 at 25 fps. Its evident you don't actually know what you're talking about when it comes down to it, you just like to pretend you do.
http://media.lunch.com/d/d7/450815.jpg ...rough
http://shaggy4dog.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/img_6354_farcry_instincts_450x360.jpg ...not rough
No I said technically not artistically. Riddick has more advanced graphics than any equivalent FPS on PS2.
No, because you'd rather I didn't know what you are talking about making your irrational claims easier to maintain. When I had already previously asked you to be clearer with your words so I could understand what you mean you continue to try and confuse me with pointless programming terms.
Generally from my experience people who work in the industry and who're programmers are able to convey themselves in such a manner that someone less qualified can understand them, you on the other hand would rather confuse people with programming lingo and as such, fail on every level to make yourself understood. So don't complain that I can't hold a debate with you when you intentionally convolute your reasoning.
Yes and I don't agree with you at all, in fact I don't agree with any of your claims. Any chance there was that I would simply take your word for it due to your position and experince within the industry flew out of the window when you claimed MGS 3 ran 60 fps on PS2 (not least the fact the PAL version didn't even feature a 60hz mode) and that no games on the system feature screen tear. I think it's probably best we leave it there lol.
You must have been. All I can say is that having to keep to the vertical sync was a real problem on my last PS2 title, and every time I asked if it was something we could get around, I got a resounding no.
Given that CRT TV's were still ubiquitous at this time, it's plain to see WHY tearing would not be allowed. It would be much, much more obvious than on a LCD or LED set.
Oh come on....that's not rough at all.
That's a very odd resolution to take a screen grab at, and it shows in the aliasing. Looks to me as if they has to step down from the usual res so the xbox could render that scene.
Textures do look nice though, Reminds me of Polar Express for the PS2 in terms of texture quality. You CAN get that quality on textures on the PS2, but it's a bit of work to do it. You need to compress them, and then do decompression using 4-passes (rendering a quad 4 times to produce the uncompressed texture off-screen).
We did something similar on my last PS2 title to try and get textures that matched the PC. It sounds like a lot of work, but we were never close to running the graphics chip at full load and it wasn't really that expensive. It saved space too, because you didn't have to worry about using MIP maps(using progressively smaller copies of textures for far away objects).
If you were working on Xbox, it just did the decompression natively.
Wait. You said that you can't do the technical talk. That it's way above your head. But yet, here you are talking about how something is technically more advanced...a bit conflicting, don't you think?
So if it's technically more advanced, in your opinion, I don't suppose you'd mind explaining to me WHY this is the case? Since you are after all, making a technical argument here.
No, because it's just easier to type. I've explained one or twice in our exchanges what I mean by that particular term. And if you want clarity, just ask. I'm not against explaining stuff.
I would rather people made an effort to understand the discussion, instead of resorting to personal attacks and accusations. As I've said; if I have no problems with somebody asking to be more clear and explain what I mean. In fact, it does a person credit because it shows they're genuinely interested in a proper discussion.
I won't do anything to make you feel bad or ridicule you for not knowing anything. You however, will lampoon people for pretty much any reason it would seem.
But you have. You agreed with my original statement that, the PS2 was limited by cross-platform development practices. But then you turned around and didn't want to hear about how the PS2's hardware could be used to do something better than the xbox, remember?
Sure, PAL builds ran at 50Hz but then, I had a NTSC console which was a birthday gift from my ex, who is American.
I just don't get your problem. I try to explain how things work to back up my reasoning, and you use it as an argument against me, saying I over complicate to confuse you. That's not my intention at all.
If I had at any point ridiculed you for not knowing something when asked, your opinion would be totally valid.
I provided my credentials as sort of an explanation as to why I can't always go into details about certain things, so it's just not a "because I said so argument". But still, you use it in a personal attack against me. I'm honestly not trying to impress anybody. I just want to have a nice debate.
It seems to me that you're not interested in an in-depth discussion, you're all about winning a debate and being top dog.
If Kojima says so, then I'm mistaken.
I'm pretty dammed sure that this is what I saw on the performance analyser. I mean, I ran both MGS2 and MGS3 through it, and they used the same tricks for getting great performance on rendering character models.
I did this great big breakdown for the art guys, because I wanted us to do something similar. I showed them how our performance was being killed by Unreal Engines default way of handling stuff, and how it differed what compared to MGS2+3. I needed the art director to get on board with the idea, to get the team to modify the art a little, but I just couldn't convince him.
"We don't need technical specs for art, we know what we're doing" was his response.
It kills me, even 8 years later.
Perhaps you'd like to explain this then:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJW03ledxYY
Watch it and tell me you can't see the tearing (not to mention the awful aliasing which so many PS2 games suffered with). Evidently I wasn't imagining it as you imply.
Also check out this analysis on PS2 God of War 2 [here]. Both GOW games were the same in this respect and clearly shows that PS2 games featured HEAVY tearing.
Perhaps you would like some high resolution shots of Far Cry on Xbox? [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
Now while these shots are obviously high resolution it does allow us to see how high detail some of these textures are and I can assure you these are way more representative of what this game looks like on my 22" CRT monitor in 480p via VGA rather than the picture you posted.
I already explained the lighting effects on Riddick was far beyond anything I saw on PS2. Not only this but the overall look of the whole game. Doom 3 and Half Life 2 was similarly impressive. Yes the art design is very ugly but that's obviously intentional in much the same way a game like Killzone 2 is ugly but technically impressive at the same time.
Here's video of it running on the original Xbox hardware, not the best quality but it illustrates the point well enough I think [link]
None of this crap mattered much back then! Hell, especially in Europe we were lucky if we even got a PAL 60 Option or Progressive Scan! People forget that now, thanks to HD, all of us can at least enjoy games at their proper speed with PAL Slowdown being a thing of the past!
I disagree with that, the PS2 jaggy issue was a pretty big concern for a lot of people back then. I remember Digitizer writing an article on it, I believe Burnout was the game that prompted the discussion due to it's complete lack of AA. It was fugly. Perhaps the tearing issue wasn't as common I'll agree and many more games last gen were v-synced compared to today's games on PS3/360.
Again, only with the PS2 were you "lucky" to receive a PAL 60 option (*even then I don't think it supported anything other than NTSC for 60hz signals). Even the biggest Sony fan can't fail to admit it was a big step backwards for PAL gamers since the arrival of the Dreamcast, which thanks to Sega, was the first console to provide us with full speed games over here. Many of the Capcom games were a complete abortion since not only did they feature huge borders but also failed to optmise the speed. I remember how disappointed I was when I bought Devil May Cry. Didn't even want to go anywhere near any of the 2D fighters after that. The GC offered a very high percentage of 60hz games.
All Xbox titles featured PAL 60 since it was toggled from the hardware itself and 99% of games were all 480p compatible.
But I do agree, the Dreamcast holds up MUCH better on a HDTV because of that "gimmick" of connecting a PC Monitor via VGA to get true 640x480@60Hz, I doubt even SEGA knew back then just how much they future proofed the console! Connecting a Dreamcast to a HDTV via VGA is super easy and many games look great because of it and doesn't look as much dated, games like Soul Calibur, Shenmue, etc, still look pretty damn good for their time!
A lot of the time it was just down to developers to include it (ring any bells Custom Soundtracks on PS3, etc), and hell, thanks to Action Replay/Gameshark, sometimes we could even FORCE games into 60Hz, a case of if the developers wern't going to include, then we'll boot the game with altered code so it will!
What's amazing though is that the PS3 can't do PAL 60! So, if you're stuck with a SDTV, the best you're going to get is PAL50, the games don't have the slowdown anymore since it's adjusted on the fly by the hardware, but, yeah, weird to point that out, the PS3 with an SDTV you only have PAL or NTSC, no PAL 60.
But yeah, back then many Japanese Dev's just didn't give a crap, hell, Final Fantasy X was one game that i had to boot via Action Replay just to enable the Widescreen Fix and 60Hz mode, otherwise the game was just slow!
Just glad those days are behind us! But my one regret for the PS2 was that i wished more games were PAL60 or had Progressive Scan support because it does make a difference today.
I know the PS2 featured a fair few 60hz games but I don't think they were PAL60 hence a lot of TV's at the time needing a RGB cable to see the picture in colour. Quite sure it was NSTC but I could be wrong.
Yeah the PAL PS3 50hz only issue is pretty ridiculous, it simply doesn't support 480i but obviously most people won't be affected since they have a HDTV. It causes all manner of problems online. I tried it using my PS2 RGB cable and it looked nice and all the games I tried were full screen but the speed difference was noticeable.
I own a chipped PS2 and can force PAL PS2 games into 60hz easy, but what made me laugh was that even the NTSC original of FFX had borders which explains just how awful they were in the PAL version. Biggest borders seen a game EVER.
480p makes all the difference but you can understand why it wasn't supported much over here since we didn't own HDTV's back then and we completely skipped past EDTV's. Which is such a shame imo since there's nothing nicer than a 480p image on a CRT TV!
I mean, ...Sony, who's going to want to make a VCR copy of a Blu-ray film??? Seriously.
You'll have to point out the tearing, because it looks to me as if the issue is that the game is dropping the frame rate rather than tearing. Admittedly, I might not just be seeing it, as it's a tad more difficult to see on an LCD display.
The aliasing issue on PS2 is something that I'm all to aware of. But the PS2 did support ant-aliasing (if you give me enough time, I'll even dig out the bit in the GS manual about it) but it was broken. Broken in a way that would crash the GS.
So it had to be turned off. As I said before, you had ways of working around that, but you took a hit in terms of video memory.
All I can say is that tearing was not pervasive on PS2 titles. It wasn't allowed to happen as there was a technical guideline that you had to stick to. And if you failed it, Sony wouldn't allow your game to be mastered.
Legal reasons
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uOsX-R1WoY
And this is The Last Of Us 12 years on...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=kbLOokeC3VU#t=72s
Don't joke, anyone who has played the Uncharted series might believe you:D
Now, it takes me a while to adjust to how "bad" the graphics for Driver 2 are - still love it though
The really shocking thing is that you're still playing Driver. True Crime: Streets of LA and The Getaway are the hot franchises right now.