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[gimymblert]

at kotaku they said it may have the power of the wii








Now that's getting interesting...

[gunmaggot]

Please stop reading Kotaku, thx.

That said - it's been close to six years since the DS was first released.  A Wii or Gamecube-like power increase is a standard generational improvement, which is what this is supposed to be.  The PSP was released close to the DS and that was a generation ahead.  There is nothing surprising about the new DS having that level of power.

[gimymblert]

So basically a modern handheld could be near a xbox360 
Interesting

[Sean A.]

So basically a modern handheld could be near a xbox360 
Interesting

If you think the Wii can handle the same graphical intensity as the 360 then sure.

[gimymblert]

So basically a modern handheld could be near a xbox360 
Interesting

If you think the Wii can handle the same graphical intensity as the 360 then sure.

Well if it's one generation away, as the psp is out, one generation away is Xbox 360 (or PS3). And more, if it was a normal console cycle, it would already been the end of the cycle of the current generation of home console.

[Sean A.]

You think the psp can turn out ps2 graphics?

[gimymblert]

Close to (MGS peacewalker)

By the way, wii game get port to psp and ps2 ALL the time, while the contrary is not true (silent hill shattred memories)

[Sean A.]

I haven't seen any peacewalker videos yet. Also I can't really think of any Wii titles being ported to psp. I think it's graphics are in between ps1 and 2 but I don't think the next step is current gen consoles. Especially not for a nintendo console cause they are usually behind graphically.

[gimymblert]

i was not saying that at all, and for power consumption problem, i thinks it's old console gen + tone down to save power (resolution notably).

SHSM PSP



wii


PS2








Notice the game adapt itself to player profiling, things like lightning, texture or character can subtly change to adapt.


There isn't significant change in term of modeling or even texture between the 3.

[Sean A.]

Wow that looks incredible! The Wii version looks the worst in opinion. I never knew that the psp could handle that, it almost looks prerendered. I was considering games like resistance retribution to be pushing the limits.

[gimymblert]

they are the same, the wii look bad for other reason than rendering technicalities

[Zenorf]

Yeah. The quality of graphics on Wii has very little to do with it's power. It's a misconception.
Companies just don't invest in it looking good or don't have the art work.

The Wii is actually significantly more powerful than a gamecube and if you remember RE4 on the gamecube and specifically it's comparison to the the PS2 version.

The only thing I will say against the Wii Hardware is that the overhead for doing normal mapping is too expensive to be worth while in my oppinion. you can get visually much better result with specular mapping and high quality artwork. Especially on characters.

If you have an engine coder or two that really know what that are doing and a company/publisher willing to invest in visuals you can make something very pretty but that's rare as The publics expectations for visuals on the wii have been lowered very successfully. They don't expect anything pretty at all.

Don't even get me started on developing for PS2 or PSP. Those things are horrendous and kudos to the guys like team Ico who manage to push the system to it's breaking point. The PS2 was my favorite console till I had to develop for it.

Regardless of what system you are though and how good your engine is, the overall visual quality is finally defined by the art direction and quality of the art.

[zacaj]

If you look at all the nintendo consoles/handhelds, they pretty much match up(gameboy-NES,gba-snes,ds-n64), and even have fairly similar capabilities.  So it stands to reason the next handheld will be about as powerful as a gamecube.  Also, I think Ive seen the best graphics of all(gc,ps2,xbox) on gamecube, but there werent many games that looked that good.

[Tumetsu]

@Zenorf
So you are saying that PS2 was pain to develop with and Game Cube was easier? I'm not sure where I read it but I remember someone saying that GC was a bitch to develop with. I don't remember if that statement was connected to why there were relatively few ported games in GC. Again, as the source of this information is little shady I guess you know better as you have developed for both systems(?).

At least it was new information for me that GC actually could outdone PS2 in gfx power as I remember it been constantly stated that it was otherway around.

[gimymblert]

@Zenorf
So you are saying that PS2 was pain to develop with and Game Cube was easier? I'm not sure where I read it but I remember someone saying that GC was a bitch to develop with. I don't remember if that statement was connected to why there were relatively few ported games in GC. Again, as the source of this information is little shady I guess you know better as you have developed for both systems(?).

At least it was new information for me that GC actually could outdone PS2 in gfx power as I remember it been constantly stated that it was otherway around.

Well i had follow the technical battle during the time, technically the GC is the less powerful in term of RAW power, but remember the ps1 was inferior to the saturn in term of raw power (with its dual chip). The fact is the PS2 is not well equip to use that power (especially memory). The GC on contrary was very balance and have a lot of shortcut for developer. The things is that in early development, people where use to first version of shader, when looking at the console characteristic they didn't see shader support and conclude the console could not do it. But the GC had a particulary sophisticate texture blender that can have 8 simple operations in one cycle (16 for the wii), each operation can be on pixel, lighting or UV. With a simple leap of logic it's easy to see each of the operation as an element of an expression. For exemple to do normal map, you could create a DOT3 expression with pixel and affect each unit to a single operation, but that would take exactly the 8 elements and leave no room for further texture operation (by the way it's possible on the wii).

[Richard Kain]

The biggest advantage that the Wii has is that it does NOT support high definition graphics. For anyone with a shiny new 1080p LCD set, this would seem like a disadvantage. But from a developer perspective, it makes things a lot easier. The Wii doesn't have to target multiple different resolutions. If the developer even bothers to add widescreen support in their Wii game, that's considered above and beyond. Being able to target a fixed resolution is a big advantage for a game developer.

This is one of the advantages that handheld systems always enjoy. (since their screens are built in) I wonder if they will stick with the same resolution screens as were on the DS, for the 3DS? Apparently, the thing will be backwards compatible with DS titles. In order for everything to be nice and smooth, they would need to either have the same resolution, or exactly double the resolution. Using the same resolution would be the obvious choice, but I don't know if that would work with a 3D screen.

[[RM8]]

In order for everything to be nice and smooth, they would need to either have the same resolution, or exactly double the resolution

GBA games (240 x 160 pixels) look fine on the DS (256 x 192), but obviously not full-screen. I don't mind black borders around the screen, as long as they're not HUGE (for example, the Gameboy emulator for DS).

[Richard Kain]

GBA games (240 x 160 pixels) look fine on the DS (256 x 192), but obviously not full-screen. I don't mind black borders around the screen, as long as they're not HUGE (for example, the Gameboy emulator for DS).

That's a good point, they could go that route. Of course, if they did, they would need to re-position the rendered graphics. You couldn't have each screen rendered in the center, since that would only increase the distance between the two screens. The bottom screen would have to be rendered up a little higher, and the top screen would need to be rendered a little lower. That's hardly a technical hurdle, of course. They could handle that quite easily, especially if the 3DS has superior processing power to the original DS.

[Zenorf]

@Zenorf
So you are saying that PS2 was pain to develop with and Game Cube was easier? I'm not sure where I read it but I remember someone saying that GC was a bitch to develop with. I don't remember if that statement was connected to why there were relatively few ported games in GC. Again, as the source of this information is little shady I guess you know better as you have developed for both systems(?).

I never worked with a gamecube. Only Wii. I know the architecture is extremely similar but the software tool set would be 4 years old at the time.The documents for Wii developments were the same with a few additional paragraphs for the new features.

At least it was new information for me that GC actually could outdone PS2 in gfx power as I remember it been constantly stated that it was other way around.

That was actually a very clever, very well created Lie on Sony's part. Overall Graphically the system was very poor. It had tiny amounts of texture memory. A tiny texture pipeline also. and rendering lit textured polygons was inefficient... BUT... If you only rendered non lit, no alpha, non textured polygons with no gameplay code running, it could do a huge amount of them. More than the gamecube. So it wasn't technically a lie, just stretching the truth significantly.

Interestingly Sony have done a very similar thing with the PS3. If you follow all the comparisons you'll notice that developers have a much easier time getting smooth performance out of the 360 than the PS3. Hence their investment in the free game engine Fire (which is really more like a set of libraries than an engine).

[dubajj]

Being able to target a fixed resolution is a big advantage for a game developer.

I don't agree with this.  I've worked on a few engines, and in all of them the handling of different resolutions was done in a day or less.  Text alignment and HUD elements and everything else are all based off of percentages of screen size.  We build the game to run at the higher resolution, and then just do test passes at low res to make sure nothing breaks.


We keep seeing all this stuff about 3D coming to gaming, what about all the people that can't go see 3D movies because it makes them nauseous?  When I was at avatar, 3 or 4 people left looking like the were about to vomit.  Will we see the same thing with these games?