Was the Sony Emotion Engine used in the Playstation 2 a good piece of technology (for its time)?
pls respond
>>44194008
If you didn't mind programming on a vendor-specific hardware platform...
Ah fukkit, EmotionEngine made pretty pictures but sucked ass.
No. It was weak. The only reason the PS2 could hold a candle to the gamecube was because of its coprocessors. That meant it was much, much harder to optimize games for it, though.
The gamecube had a more familiar CPU and a better GPU. But developers who could figure out how to program for the PS2 properly could realize games on it that wouldn't work like that on the GC.
TL;DR The EE itself was a piece of shit.
>>44194496
then how come we never got GTA for gamecube if it was better?
>>44194520
Licenses. And Nintendo is for kids, they'd never feature games with gang violence on their consoles.
>>44194496
>coprocessors
what coprocessors?
>>44194543
Processors that could parallelize matrix operations.
>>44194496
>TL;DR The EE itself was a piece of shit.
If PS2 was so shit then why did Saddam buy 4000 of them for missile guidance?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/12/19/iraq_buys_4000_playstation_2s/
Checkmate atheists.
You're asking a question that was pretty much already settled in 2000.
Here's a good read from back when IGN didn't suck.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2000/11/04/gamecube-versus-playstation-2
>>44194532
I had GTA on my GBA
>>44194577
Because they're cheap and missile guidance computers don't need to be powerful, at all. Don't forget that even the moon lander was computer guided in 1969.
>>44194008
Hell no. It got its ass handed to it by the gamecube because the 'cube wasnt riddled with bottlenecks and memory limitations.
>>44194577
I'm not sure if the article you posted is legitimate because I didn't read it. But the Playstation 2 uses MIPS architecture which makes it a very secure computing system to protect against spying and other security threats. For example the Lemote Stallman uses has the same architecture.
Why sony deliberatly makes its hardware obscure and hard to program for?
>>44194771
yoshida said the goal was to attract developers with how exotic the chip was, it's different and has tons of potential and basically if your game ran on this you were awesome or something
>>44194496
>coprocessors
that explains everything
some ps2 games have really amazing graphics for a 300mhz chip
>>44194771
To weed out shit devs
>>44194826
Gran Turismo 4 could do 1080i on that thing which is impressive.
>>44194532
Except Resident Evil 4 was exclusive to GC for a long time.
>>44194698
>mips
>having anything to do with security
what the fuck did i just read
>>44194832
No. There are enough games produced for their consoles that are horribly optimized. Sony doesn't seem to have a problem with that.
I think they just want the theoretical peak performance in optimized benchmarks or tech demos to look impressive and they don't really care how well the actual games end up looking.
>try playing Vice City on friend's PS2
>fucking short render distance compared to huegbox and PC
>can't find hookers
>>44194865
He probably thought like MIPS -> Havard architecture -> code injection impossible (forgot that most are modified Havard architecture to enable JIT compilation) -> secure.
>>44194869
As long as Ratchet and Clank works.
>>44194889
kek
>>44194853
You could do 1080p on an S3 Virge probably.
>>44194927
I think the Ratchet and Clank series were hyper-optimized as fuck for the PS2, which is why they ran so good on native hardware and why their texturing and special effects go fucking bonkers during emulation.
Every console has that one game that is so goddamn optimized for it it might as well be done entirely in assembly it runs that good.
>>44194853
It wasn't actually 1080i. It's rescaled low res graphics. You can get the same effect playing on a Wii with component cables and upscaling to 720p or 1080p.
Dreamcast offered easiest and most well documented developing platform, came first, but still plundered.
Whats with irony and Sega?
i thought it was pretty nice at the time
it took the "tightly-coupled, designed specifically for games" route, over the brute force with off the shelf hardware route of the gcn/xbox
gcn had a 485mhz cpu, xbox 733MHz, and the ps2 was 298mhz, yet for the most part the games looked and ran quite similar
the xbox did have an edge over the ps2 power-wise, but at the same time, it was 2 years newer
>>44195196
they seem to constantly come in a little too early, so by the time the competitors tech is out and most people are deciding between them, segas' tech is already a little bit out of date
like between the dreamcast and ps2
dreamcast had 1G cd's, which was cool, but dvd's were already emerging, and the ps2 got them, meaning 4.7 to 8.5G discs, and also the ability to play cutting edge dvd movies
also technology was moving pretty fast during that time, especially with 3D, even between the dc and ps2, which are only 2 years apart, there's a pretty noticable gap in graphics fidelity (moreso imo than between ps2 and xbox, which were also 2 years apart)
>>44194978
>I think the Ratchet and Clank series were hyper-optimized as fuck for the PS2, which is why they ran so good on native hardware and why their texturing and special effects go fucking bonkers during emulation.
I was going to post exactly this. Also, same company different series; Jak and Daxter. Looked absolutely brilliant and is a pain to get working on any emulator. Thankfully that series has been allowed to die but not before butchering it thoroughly with two spin off PSP games.
>>44194771
Man, I love how the Cell processor looks. It's so sexy. To be honest I wish Sony had kept it for the PS4 and just stacked a couple of them together.
the shit they could pull off with the ps2 hardware later in its life still blows my mind
don't forget this only has 32M ram, too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0gs5Er3gMU
>>44195196
the dreamcast depreciated way too fast in terms of power
also the fact that it didn't have very attractive titles imo, I mean sure the usual sport ones but other than that you didn't think at the time "oh boy, I'd sure kill for a dreamcast"
>>44195201
games look and ran similar simply because of dev laziness, multiplats are always shit in looks because they are developed for the less powerful console and then ported over to others, usually.
I like both the PS2 and GC, I feel both of them were really good gaming platforms and the last big serious machines of gaming.
The generation after was weird as it's when all the internet thing began to become way more mainstream and injected into gaming.
PS3 with weird architecture that promissed a lot but suffered because ports from 360 at first.
360 with their annoying live thing, faulty machines.
Wii which had a good idea but was too foreign and didn't attract many developers at first.
If only 360 didn't bring cancer like enviroments to gaming, if only the PS3 had the upper hand with devs preference, if only the wii aimed for a bit more power and more familiar platform.
>PS2 thread, nobody posts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44KZ0neSz7E
>>44194978
Ratchet and Clank games ran on the same Naughty Dog developed engine as the Jak & Daxter series, and that was an engine written specifically for the PS2.
Naughty Dog have since the original Crash Bandicoot been really good at optimizing the shit out of their games. With the original Crash Bandicoot people thought Sony had given them exclusive access to some hyper optimized libraries. However they later revealed that the game looked so good because most of the stuff on screen was actually pre-rendered, specially the levels which were just streamed off the disc one camera position at a time. This was the reason why all the levels were so linear, the game simply couldn't do open levels like Super Mario 64.
>>44195344
Some of the Jak and Daxter games actually used a hack to get access to the PS1 chip onboard the PS2 that was used for backwards compatibility, and used it as a co-processor.
>>44195409
>games look and ran similar simply because of dev laziness, multiplats are always shit in looks because they are developed for the less powerful console and then ported over to others, usually.
i do understand that, but i don't just mean multiplats
even the optimised single platform games looks quite similar between ps2/gc/xbox
Every time I think of the crazy shit that devs were able to pull off on old consoles it pisses me off that my dual core 1.2GHz Shitdragon smartphone can't even scroll through a webpage at a framerate anywhere near fluid.
>>44195437
the ps1 cpu was used as a coprocessor in ps2 mode anyway
maybe they just used it more than usual
>>44194620
>Moon was computer guided
False. The lunar lander was guided optically. the computer onboard was to help with this optical guidance.
>>44195432
the crash levels weren't prerendered, what they did was they ran through the stages and optimised what was visible and what was not, so they could max out the console at all times, while avoiding rendering invisible elements
the game doesn't contain any video
>>44195429
Wow, why isn't there a modern version of this game?
>>44194520
1.4GB discs.
>>44195481
that's not really comparable
>>44195481
That's Java.
That's the reason Android is shit.
ART will help, but nothing would help Android better than simply ditching Java altogether.
>>44195543
Exactly. Rasterising a bunch of text/shapes/gradients shouldn't be anywhere near as hard as rendering a dynamically lit 3d scene.
>>44195486
IIRC it was always used as the sound processor...
Nintendo has done something similar for quite a while.
>GBA ran GBC games because it had a GBC CPU as a DSP for audio
>DS ran GBA games because it had an a GBA CPU as a DSP for audio
>3DS runs DS games because it has a DS CPU as a DSP for audio
As for the GBC, the original Gameboy used a CPU that was basically a license built Intel 8080, and the GBC used a Zilog Z80, which is an upgraded 8080 with the same instruction set plus some new ones.
>>44195558
Not Java, Java on ARM. Java on x86 is just fine.
>>44195367
Processor interconnects and communication would fuck it up in a hurry. Plus i think the Cell used some variant of RDRAM which is laggy as shit.
Switching everything to x86 means devs which are familiar with coding on a normal computer can code for a console as well. That, and when porting is done the code requires a minimum of recompilation, which in turn keeps bugs introduced from porting down.
>>44195577
Java on x86 is still slow as shit comparative to other languages.
The only reason it's used anywhere is the ease in debugging code.
It's much cheaper to throw more hardware at a problem than to throw more or better (or both) programmers at it.
Efficiency-wise though, Java is fucking terrible on every platform.
>>44195564
Rendering text is actually not a thing to take lightly.
And in games, you can put lot of stuff on the GPU, where in browsers, you can't.
Also, in games, especially in that era, objects floating around in memory causing cache misses aren't that much of a problem.
And then there is less scriptery in the typical PS2 game.
>>44195611
Why, it's 1/2 of well optimized C.
>>44195526
The levels weren't pre-rendered as video, but as still images that were swapped out based on the position of the character. Sure, they mixed prerendered and non-prerendered elements, but the levels themselves were stills streamed off the disc.
They even did the same thing as Donkey Kong Country with all the wompa fruits, they were all pre-rendered 2D sprites.
>>44195564
try rendering and scrolling a modern site as-is on an old console
>Rasterising a bunch of text/shapes/gradients shouldn't be anywhere near as hard as rendering a dynamically lit 3d scene.
why? the console has a chip specifically designed to quickly render a dynamically lit 3d scene, which itself is specifically designed to stay within the limits of said chip
>>44195611
>>44195409
>also the fact that it didn't have very attractive titles imo
Launch titles on the US include Soulcalibur and House of the Dead 2, what more can you ask?
Shenmue, Jet Set Radio, Grandia 2, Samba De Amigo, BH/RE Code Veronica, Skies Of Arcadia...
Hell, for me arcade perfect port of Soulcalibur was enough.
Quite literally it has the best 3D console games ever made.
>>44195630
no, i mean, the levels were actual 3D, rendered in real time on the playstation, they weren't image sequences
>>44195611
>Java on x86 is still slow as shit comparative to other languages.
You must know some shit programmers. My Java code works fine in Lignux and Windows.
>>44195635
Do you not think that phone GPUs would be optimized for things like rendering of CSS and HTML?
>>44195616
>Rendering text is actually not a thing to take lightly.
What? Are you kidding me? Generate bitmaps for each character in the page at the current zoom levels, place them wherever they should go.
>>44195609
Yeah, it used Rambus XDR RAM that operated at a clock speed of like 3.2GHz with a freakin 64-bit memory interface. It ended up having a lot of memory bandwidth but latency was probably shit because of the high frequency.
>>44195201
>ps2 was 298mhz
The Emotion Engine wasn't "just" a 298mhz processor. It also had two powerful vector units inside of it.
It could beat lower clocked Pentium 4 (~2Ghz) in MFLOPS easily.
>>44195648
Oh wow, I had no idea.
Where I lived back then the launch was shit, overpriced as fuck and had nogaems.
I never bothered to investigate about it after that.
>>44195645
>citation needed
Probably some shitty self made implementations put up agains a super optimized built in function...
Is there really any point in dedicated hardware in the future of consoles with technology such as APUs?
>>44195690
well yea, that kind of thing is what i mean by "tightly coupled, specifically designed for games"
it's not just one big ass general purpose cpu, it was made for the express purpose of running games
>>44195676
>Generate bitmaps for each character in the page at the current zoom levels, place them wherever they should go.
where i live i call that rendering text
>>44195688
A stacked Cell chip proposed though would still have interconnect and communication issues. Hell, intel with their recently released 18c Xeons have had to resort to an internal NUMA-like architecture to get them to work right.
>>44195772
Yeah, and it's fucking easy.
>>44195777
not as easy as what old games did: fonts that were prerendered (at all sizes/styles as is used in the game) and simply drawn as-is
far, far easier than rendering vector fonts
>>44195775
I'm glad they ditched the Cell, it was dumb. I just wish Sony had gone x86 sooner for the sake of backwards compatibility.
>>44195804
You render them once per page-load, if they aren't already in RAM. It's not that much of a task.
>>44195716
Well, cpus and gpu are getting cheap enough that producing a very powerful console that's easy to program for is not a mindfuck anymore.
We're still not quite yet there, hence why ps4 and xbone are still running custom-ish (but not quite as before) stuff instead of straight up pc parts.
I'd say for consoles to survive they need to go back to simple gaming machines with custom hardware that can be optimized for. Otherwise pc is going to be more and more attractive to console gamers since a low tier gpus are on par or above consoles.
>>44195663
Well then you're probably not doing something very heavy or the code is running on something seriously overpowered for the task.
>>44195836
The PS4 is still pretty custom, it's got a massive memory interface compared to AMD's desktop and laptop APUs and a lot more GPU resources than AMD's desktop and laptop APUs.
Plus with the custom APIs they're using (GNM and GNMX) it's quite different than a PC DirectX environment.
>>44195470
>even the optimised single platform games looks quite similar between ps2/gc/xbox
most of the time, but i'd say the best looking gamecube games looked better than any ps2 game, and the best looking xbox games looked even better.
>>44195831
Considering we're talking about mobile devices zooming is going to be something used quite a lot. Rendering for one zoom level is going to leave them awfully blocky when you zoom in, so rendering them from vector form based on what you're doing right now makes sense.
>>44195676
>What? Are you kidding me? Generate bitmaps for each character in the page at the current zoom levels, place them wherever they should go.
>rendering easily ten thousands characters in a Unicode compliant manner as described by bytecode with conditionals.
>>44195811
The reason why no one did it before was because there literally was no choice for a low power chip other than Atom or Geode, and both sucked. On top of that they would have been forced to find someone to give them a decent GPU.
Then AMD comes along with a decent all in one x86 solution and the console makers are all over that like white on rice. All the console makers had to do at that point is get the memory set up, wire up the interconnects between the APU and the rest of the board, and slap it in a package useable to the masses. As a bonus the coders would be forced to optimize for multiple cores as both of them have 8 cores.
>>44195906
Also, calculating boundaries and applying all CSS effects and JS.
>>44195886
i agree the xbox had an edge over the ps2, though it was also 2 years newer
with the gamecube i'm not so certain, i think super mario sunshine looks amazing, but i couldn't say with certainty that the ps2 couldn't handle it
Feature-wise? No. It didn't support per-pixel lighting, so things like normal mapping and accurate specular lighting weren't going to happen. The Xbox did have those features, and in games designed to use them, the difference was massive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=std9wKplilE
Not many PS2 games supported 480p, either, unlike the Xbox or even the Dreamcast.
On the bright side, I've heard that it had an above average fill rate, to the point where small objects in Gran Turismo 4 had to be taken out when those tracks were added to GT5.
>>44195470
I'd like to disagree on that, the Gamecube had plenty of stunning looking games that looked better than just about anything on the PS2.
>>44195941
With the money they spent developing the Cell (more than a billion) they could have helped subsidize a custom chip from AMD or Intel years ago. Instead they waited years as a nearly bankrupt AMD finally made something they could use on their own. In the meantime the PS3 practically bankrupted Sony.
>>44196018
Nevermind, it was more like $400,000,000
still though, with $400,000,000 they could have found an appropriate custom x86 alternative in 2006.
>>44194532
>chinatown wars on ds
>shit tier shooting game on release with wii
The only real problem with the PS2 was the god awful image quality. It would either be jaggy, blurry or full of screen tearing. Absolutely no exceptions.
I have it on good information that the machine has more power under the hood than the Gamecube but a lot of it is squandered on some silly memory design and the buggy somewhat incomplete rasterizer. It's part of the reason textures look so bad despite the PS2 actually having a really good on-paper fill rate.
Nintendo really were geniuses with the Gamecube. Don't make it more powerful than the PS2 so you can save money, but design it so well that you can actually take advantage of every inch of power it has to offer.
>>44196018
Intel wouldnt have done it, or if they did they would have fleeced the fuck out of Sony for a custom chip.
AMD couldnt do it, they had just purchased ATI and were flopping around with the dying days of Athlon 64.
Via sure as hell couldnt do it, they havent been relevant since pentium 4.
>>44195989
maybe i haven't played them
i never really owned a gamecube, so i haven't played a huge selection of titles
among exclusives i've played ssb:melee, the RE1 remake, sm:sunshine, pikmin (briefly), loz: twilight princess/wind waker
i don't think the difference goes much past a few extra graphics effects though, the ps2's GPU is probably the part that aged the fastest, couldn't keep up with 2 year newer ATi/nVidia tech (not all that surprising)
>>44195941
When using a 250W PSU I'd hardly call the PS4 "low power" in comparison to anything but high end PC's. When it came out, the PS3 used a 380W PSU.
In comparison my (Prescott core) Pentium 4 and Radeon 9800 Pro machine that I got a couple of years earlier ran just fine on a 350W PSU. The thermal budget for the PS3 could have easily fit an Athlon 64 x2 and a mid range GPU from around the same time.
>>44195974
i was talking about rogue leader and rebel strike mostly. Those not only look better than almost anything on the ps2, but they run at around 60 fps most of the time.
Panzer dragoon orta blows both of them out of the water though.
>>44195976
Actually some ps2 games did have normal mapping. Look at path of neo and hitman blood money. They did it on one of the vector units.
>>44196102
It didn't need to be an APU, the PS3 and 360 didn't have APUs until a few years ago as a cost cutting measure. AMD could have supplied a discrete CPU and GPU for less than the development cost of the Cell and it would have ensured backwards compatibility, and it could have stopped the PS3 from getting spanked by the 360 for years.
>>44194686
0/10
>>44196156
i haven't played those 3 games, though i really ought to play panzer dragoon orta, i enjoyed playing panzer dragoon saga on the sega saturn
>>44196119
Under load a launch PS4 only uses about 140-150W. The Xbox One under load is like 110-120W.
>>44194978
i miss old naughty dog
>we will never see a revival of the 90s gaming scene
>>44196115
I owned both a PS2 and Gamecube, but I don't remember anything on the PS2 really impressing me. The image always felt incredibly blurry for some reason even after I got a SCART (common standard here in Europe) cable and that transfers the picture in pure RGB, so it wasn't the cable's fault. Gamecube games on the other hand were always crisp as hell even before I got an RGB cable for it as well.
I don't remember the PS2 ever having anything as great looking as the Metroid Prime series and Wind Waker still looks fantastic even without the WiiU HD upgrade. The PS2 GTA games always looked like crap in my opinion and they didn't play that well ether with awful gun play and cars handling like shopping carts full of rocks.
>>44196248
Its because the image WAS blurry as shit on a PS2. Even emulated you can see that it is blurry as fuck, and turning up the internal res in the emulator doesnt help it much.
>>44195941
>On top of that they would have been forced to find someone to give them a decent GPU.
But they were "forced" to do that anyway. The PS3 is running a modified GTX 7800, whereas the 360 was running a modified Radeon x1800.
The cell broadband engine wasn't exactly low power either. It was power efficient, sure. It was also ridiculously difficult to program for, which resulted in the technically inferior 360 actually performing better in some multiplatform games.
>>44196248
>The image always felt incredibly blurry for some reason
a fair number of ps2 games abuse a motion blur effect that was pretty basic, i'm not a big fan of it unless it was only used at appropriate places (aka, not everywhere)
>The PS2 GTA games always looked like crap in my opinion and they didn't play that well ether with awful gun play and cars handling like shopping carts full of rocks.
i played gta3 engine games on ps2, pc, and xbox all quite a bit, and i never noticed a difference between them graphics and gameplay wise, i don't think they changed much if anything between ports
>>44196312
The Xbox 360 GPU was related to ATi/AMD's x1XXX-series, but it was actually a custom built chip the same way as the one in the WiiU.
Performance wise it was apparently something like the Radeon X1950, not the x1800 (which was something of a failure performance wise).
>>44196312
>360 was running a modified Radeon x1800
not really though, it had 48 unified shaders capable of pixel / vertex shading, had 10MB of eDRAM on a daughter die that could also perform other ROP functions, and had a programmable hardware tessellation unit.
The Xbox 360 GPU was a truly custom chip that is in many ways more closely related to the 2900XT than the X1900.
>>44196159
Remember the original xbox? Remember how it was essentially a semi-custom desktop PC using a Pentium III and something nvidia came up with?
Remember how both nvidia and Intel assraped them with a rusty pitchfork simultaneously?
I wonder why no one was eager to go back to them.
>>44196376
>Remember how both nvidia and Intel assraped them with a rusty pitchfork simultaneously?
what did they do?
>>44196318
>a fair number of ps2 games abuse a motion blur effect that was pretty basic, i'm not a big fan of it unless it was only used at appropriate places (aka, not everywhere)
The problem with the blur was that it was present in games that didn't even use blur effects. The PS2 seems to have followed the PS1's haphazard policy of number of polygons over precision with haphazard rasterization.
>i played gta3 engine games on ps2, pc, and xbox all quite a bit, and i never noticed a difference between them graphics and gameplay wise, i don't think they changed much if anything between ports
Considering those games were built for the PS2 and then ported over there's no wonder the Xbox versions don't look much better.
>>44196350
>>44196367
Yes, I was oversimplifying it to make my main point, which still stands. They were still "forced" to get a GPU from someone, somewhere. The underlying CPU architecture had no impact on that.
>>44195409
>not getting a Dreamcast to play Chu Chu Rocket
u dun goof'd m80
>>44196386
Nvidia at least basically price gouged Microsoft and refused to lower the price of the chips down the road when production costs had obviously gone down.
The original Xbox hardware was actually incredibly generic. The CPU was an off-the-shelf Pentium III (later replaced with an equivalent Celeron) and the GPU was also a mostly off-the-shelf GeForce 4.
>>44196386
They wanted more jewgolds from Microsoft, making the console uncompetitive as the costs were passed on to the consumers. Messy affair.
>>44195432
>Ratchet and Clank games ran on the same Naughty Dog developed engine as the Jak & Daxter series, and that was an engine written specifically for the PS2.
Semi true, the two companies shared certain things, but the engine was not one of them, infact the companies worked together far less than people think
Source: R&C dev commentaries
But regardless, you're right in that it was optimized as fuck, some of the tricks they used to keep it running at 60 locked are witch craft.
>>44196431
>The original Xbox hardware was actually incredibly generic.
Made it incredibly easy to hack. XBMC, the hard drive change process, modding the controller port to take USB and so on.
The xbox was incredibly fun from a hacker point of view. As a game console it was thoroughly "meh".
>>44196403
Actually the reason why they had to dump a regular GPU in there was twofold and nether of those reasons had to do with difficulty of development.
The first reason was performance, the original configuration was supposed to have two CELL's and no dedicated GPU, but the performance of the chips simply fell short and they just had to botch a Nvidia GPU in there as fast as possible. One of the Nvidia engineers who was tasked to work on the project was so disgusted he just quit and wrote to a number of videgame news sites about how awful the PS3 is going to be.
The second was price, because as a big custom piece of silicon the CELL was very expensive to produce and you remember the outcry over the $600 launch price? Did you know that they even sold each $600 console at a loss?
>>44196481
It has some really great games, though. They were all from before it defined itself as the go to dudebro console.
Voodoo Vince stands out as one of my faves.
>>44196416
i have a dreamcast and have never played chu chu rocket
sh-should i get it?
>>44196376
Yes lol, custom Coppermine P3.
>>44196386
>>44196431
No die shrinks, no price reductions, etc. There was never an original Xbox hardware revision because of this. I'm pretty sure an Xbox purchased in 2001 has the same power consumption as one purchased in 2004-2005.
>>44196511
Just pirate it and burn it.
>>44196464
Well that's odd... I remember reading from the UK Official Playstation Magazine (yes, I am ashamed at supporting Future Publishing) at around the time of the launch of the original Ratchet and Clank that it was a modified version of the Jak and Daxter engine.
>>44196525
>There was never an original Xbox hardware revision because of this.
There were hardware revisions, the only things changed were the mobo, optical drive and HDD.
>>44196431
If it was so generic then how come emulating Xbox games is a bitch and a half?
Or does that not matter when you need documentation because the retards who designed the system thought a capacitor was needed for timekeeping instead of a battery and you're screwed if said capacitor leaks?
>>44196525
The only things that changed between Xbox revisions were the PSU connector, the CPU fan being taken out, a video chip change in 1.4 and a final video chip change in 1.6 coupled with a different BIOS arrangement with the Xcalibur chip.
Most pieces are 100% interchangeable, which is handy.
>>44196545
Here's the link to the developer commentary. I think it's in the ratchet and clank 1 commentary somewhere. I think I've got it right though, if I can find the exact video I'll post it here.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNSvmpQDiy_QIFrqpDw9tBA
>>44196525
Die shrinks are not the only way to reduce production costs. As times goes on you generally pay up the costs of setting up production facilities as well as learn to apply techniques that give you better yields. At some point your manufacturing costs are basically just going to be maintenance, staff and raw materials.
>>44196545
>>44196590
Found the video, only saw it the other day
http://youtu.be/dDpdcv8rG9Q?t=13m40s
>>44196416
>
>>44196557
Well right, I meant more like a redesign like most game consoles.
>>44196598
Die shrinks reduce TDP so cases can be reduced in size, heatsinks can be reduced in size, power supplies can be reduced in size. All of these save money.
>>44196387
>The problem with the blur was that it was present in games that didn't even use blur effects. The PS2 seems to have followed the PS1's haphazard policy of number of polygons over precision with haphazard rasterization.
yea, you're right, though the softness of the image wasn't always a bad thing, it also helps reduce flicker from interlacing, in addition to reducing the appearance of jaggies
i think i can agree the ps2's gpu wasn't as good as the gc/xbox gpus
the cpu (along with its VU's) competed quite well though (which is what the thread is focussed on)
as for the ps1, while i'd say anyone would prefer if it had a z-buffer and with it proper perspective, the lack of a texture filter didn't universally result in a worse image
>>44196562
The Gamecube was also pretty generic hardware and it's also a pain in the ass to emulate. However the Xbox didn't have very many true exclusives, a lot of "exclusives" coming out on PC, so it's only natural that it's going to be the console with the smallest emulation community.
The use of a resistor for time keeping doesn't mean the processing components aren't generic.
>>44196654
That damn aerogel cap. I need to remove it from mine before it calls it quits.
>>44196529
well yea
>>44194826
If I remember correctly Grand Tourismo 4 ran at 1080i if you had the right cable
I would love to have a go of it at 1080
>>44194532
apparently 3 and vice city was planned for gamecube, but got scrapped because nintendo was still viewed as a kiddie only console at the time, so they felt it be a flop.
>>44196562
because emulating a P3 and a custom nvidia gpu is not an easy task, they're both super complex
it's easy to make software for because from a developers perspective, using the official XDK, its not much different to writing windows software (or so i've heard, feel free to correct me on this)
>>44196654
>The Gamecube was also pretty generic hardware and it's also a pain in the ass to emulate
Is that true? Dolphin works pretty perfectly for me, maybe it's just because I have a fairly powerful rig though.
>However the Xbox didn't have very many true exclusives, a lot of "exclusives" coming out on PC, so it's only natural that it's going to be the console with the smallest emulation community.
That's semi true, the fact it doesnt have a great library is only part of the reason
source: http://pulp365.com/last-console-crack-depth-interview-original-xbox-emulation/
>>44196644
I wasn't talking about texture filtering, but the precision at which polygons were rendered. A lot of developers talked about how Sony obsessed with trying to render as many polygons as possible while SGI, who were the ones behind the Nintendo 64 hardware, were obsessed with rendering precision instead.
>>44196677
GT4 and Tourist Trophy support 1080i via a component cable.
If you have a modded PS2 and can run ELFs, you can get a nifty program called GS Mode Selector. You can force 480p, 720p or 1080i with it.
I tried a few games - Odin Sphere looks great (although playing it on PS3 is better), Tales of the Abyss looks nice too, although it gains a small 'black bar' border.
>>44196573
>the CPU fan being taken out
gpu*
the cpu fan was the case fan, it didn't change
another change was the bios chip, 1M (four banks) for 1.0/1.1, 256k (1 bank) for 1.2-1.5, and a 256k ROM for 1.6 (previous were flash chips) (all iirc)
this affected some things, namely some modified bioses used the extra space in 1.0/1.1 for additional features, and of course in rev.1.6 you couldn't flash the bios (forcing a modchip or softmod instead)
>>44196746
Oh, I thought that was a CPU fan.
There was also the usb daughterboard being removed since 1.1 and the small changes in HD and DVD drives.
>>44196704
The guy does sort of list a lack of people as the #1 reason and he talks about it being a console being a difficulty, not the hardware itself. The main technical difficulties he's talking about are emulating the custom extensions to the DirectX API that Microsoft made for the Xbox.
>>44196711
i know what you meant, i just thought i'd point out filtering too, since it's a very noticable difference between the psx and n64
you'd have to admit though, that it makes sense to consider speed over accuracy for a games console, especially back then when even small differences in power made a large visual difference
i've always preferred psx graphics over n64 graphics
>>44195906
Last time I checked most webpages don't use the entire fucking unicode range.
>>44196779
yea, there was also the point where they moved from 8G hdds to 10G hdds (though both still formatted to use 8G)
>>44196810
The graphics were both fucking shit from todays standpoint. Graphics from the 16bit era >>>>> mushy early 3d crap.
>>44196704
>Is that true? Dolphin works pretty perfectly for me, maybe it's just because I have a fairly powerful rig though.
It's taken them a LONG time to get to this point. Honestly though, anything as complicated as 5th and 6th gen systems is a pain in the ass to emulate.
>>44196720
GT4 1080i mode isn't really 1080i. It's something like 512i scaled up. The 480p mode looks better.
>>44196838
i don't think it's fair to compare 2D games and 3D directly
that and it's not like the snes and genesis were the best at 2D either, the neo geo destroyed them at 2D
of course, psx/n64 games are clearly primitive by todays standards, back then the possibilities of 3D was enough to overlook the obvious lack of polygons and rudimentary animation
plus there's even some nice 2D games on the playstation, ever played castlevania: symphony of the night?
>>44196833
Yeah, mine has a 10 GB. After hotswap, it's easily formatted for a bonus 2 GB.
I'll probably install my old 40 GB IDE drive on it later on, though.
>>44196911
forgot the link
http://psx-scene.com/forums/f291/gs-mode-selector-development-feedback-61808-print/index206.html
>>44196960
i've had an 80G in mine since forever
did it by hotswapping the original drive and using ndure/the font exploit, after i booted into a homebrew dash, i flashed Xecutor2 onto the onboard bios
zero cost hardmod, don't need to lock the hdd, and my "C:" contains only xbmc, no original dash installed at all
>>44195196
Well sony outright lied about how much better the ps2 was than the dream cast so idiot japs bought the ps2
>>44197004
Neat. I kept the original BIOS so I'll still have to relock the drive. Got the EEPROM dump so I'm set.
My PS2
>FMCB with OPL
>500GB internal HDD filled to the brim with games
>Component cables
>Connected to a 2TB NAS filled with all kinds of games.
>64MB memory card which is still going strong.
>>44196830
unless they are showing the entire fucking unicode range
>>44197041
yep, as long as you have a copy of the eeprom you can recover from any hdd-related worries, make sure you keep it safe
speaking of the eeprom, i modified that in mine, too, to make it identify as an american console, unlocking the ability to enable 480p/720p/1080i modes
i have xbmc in 720p, and games forced to use 480p
i must say, 480p over components looks amazing, night and day over composite/480i
>>44196810
>i've always preferred psx graphics over n64 graphics
You couldn't competently do large 3D worlds on PSX. As textures aren't perspective accurate you'll get glitches on trying to draw large amounts of terrain.
The only way around it is to draw a lot of polygons. Sure, that's what some games like Spyro did (combined with aggressive LOD), but then you've not no system resources left for anything else.
>>44197110
Thankfully mine is an US model already. I got a component cable for it, and damn it's good indeed.
I also have a lot of semi dead Xboxes that I need to check, but my old desktop with IDE just died on me. Gotta fix that first.
Some don't boot, a couple have dead HDs. The ones that work do not read discs (god, the Xbox DVD drives are SHIT) - only one still reads them well.
>>44197207
hey, spyro looked and played wonderfully, i'd say it's one of my favourite game engines (and game series) on the psx
>>44197217
>Thankfully mine is an US model already
saves a little work, once you change the eeprom in a PAL/EU unit, it works exactly like an NTSC/US console, there's no other difference
i'm not sure why they disabled 480p/720p/1080i on PAL units in the first place
as for dead xboxes, if it's hdd related, chances are you can:
1. read the eeprom externally (i've done this a couple times, making a serial reader is dead simple)
2. use the eeprom to unlock the hdd and reformat/reinstall the official dash (plus softmod while you're at it ;)
or if the hdd's dead, use the eeprom to make/lock a new xbox hdd from another (i presume you're familiar with xboxhdm?)
>>44197326
also, i haven't used the dvd drive in my xbox in years, at this point i'd say it's only good for softmodding using splinter cell or mechwarrior, putting games on the hdd is just too nice
same with the ps2, i have a 120G hdd in my ps2 (SCPH-50002), games load so fucking fast from hdd on the ps2, faster even than the xbox i reckon
>>44197326
Yep, I've used xboxhdm. The two consoles with HDD problems are definitely just that because I can hear the click of death in the discs.
I'll probably pull the HDDs from one of the dead Xboxes, if I can get their EEPROMs, that is.
As for the EEPROM reader, I'll definitely get/make one once I'm done fixing the desktop.
The most interesting consoles of the lot are three with an Aladdin Advance chip. None of them boot correctly. It's either BLACK or stuck in Xbox logo. Tried booting with both front panel buttons, nothing different happened...
I've been forgetting about them, and when I finally started to work on them again, my trusty old desktop stops working. Damn.
Since you guys seem to know a lot about this subject, I've heard that people managed to decompile sonic 1 from the genesis, and recompile it into a byte perfect ROM that ran fine on the genesis/emulators. How exactly did they do that?
>The most interesting consoles of the lot are three with an Aladdin Advance chip. None of them boot correctly. It's either BLACK or stuck in Xbox logo. Tried booting with both front panel buttons, nothing different happened...
if the modchip is dead you'd just need to unplug it from the xbox mobo and mod it another way
alternatively you could try reflashing the modchip, depends what's wrong with it (make sure it's in securely, no bad wires)
plus of course if it fails to boot with the modchip unplugged then it's something else, so try that first
no way to recover from a broken xbox hdd without the eeprom (since the xbox will refuse anything not locked with it's unique eeprom), so a serial reader is the simplest way to get them fixed
>>44197508
that doesn't sound like a related subject, tbh
>>44197508
I guess making their own compiler is the only sane logical answer, but honestly, I have no idea.
>>44197508
What? A ROM dump of Sonic 1 runs on an emulator right away, no need to decompile.
I know that Sonic Retro has the Genesis games decompiled, though. These greatly help romhack makers.
>>44197547
Yeah, I thought as much. I tried pulling off the chip from its socket thing, but it still doesn't boot. There are two wires, though - might need to pull them off too.
>>44197577
>There are two wires, though
do they go to the eject/power buttons?
if so, no, removing them shouldn't stop the xbox from booting, they're just sensor wires so the modchip knows immediately which mode to use, depending on how you turned on the xbox
>>44194558
you're thinking about the PS3.
>>44197607
>removing them shouldn't stop the xbox from booting
sorry, i mean, them being there shouldn't affect the xbox's ability to boot/run
>>44197607
No, they go to two points in the mobo. One in the lower middle and another close to the LPC socket thing.
>>44197632
They all power up, at least. That's something, I guess.
I've been leaving these for last because they seem to be the weirdest cases of all.
>>44194532
>nintendo is for kids
ever hear of pic related?
>>44197632
probably a later model xbox with the header partly unwired from factory
it probably has more wires underneath, too
unplugging it is probably enough, though i don't have a lot of experience with physical modchips
have you tried flipping its bank switch (while it's off)? assuming it has one
also, when it gets to the logo, does it show the "microsoft" logo underneath (or something else in the same place)
if it doesn't, it might also be a hdd issue (the microsoft logo only shows up when the bios successfully hands over execution to/loads another executable, normally a game xbe on a dvd, otherwise the dashboard on the hdd)
>>44197702
no, but i've played the patched version (no hidden violence) of manhunt on the wii, and it's brutal
>>44197702
Nintendo was being perceived as having a kid audience. They tried to fight that image (eg, Resident Evil, Eternal Darkness).
>>44197737
I can honestly say I've never seen a more violent game than mad world. good game though
>>44197783
i haven't heard of mad world, but if it's more violent than manhunt then that's quite a feat
>>44197783
More violent than the first Postal?
>>44197816
postal is pretty violent, but it's violence is dulled by its unrealistic/comedic nature
violence is more ... violent when it's done realistically
>>44197808
I don't think it's more violent than manhunt.
Maybe more bloody, but it's way over the top and unrealistic. Manhunt is just plain sadistic.
>>44197878
yea, and it's even more so on the wii specifically imo, due to the wii's controllers
it's likely why the wii version was officially censored
if you can try the patched (removed violence censor) version on the wii, you should, it's probably the most violent game experience i've seen
making a stabbing motion with your arm to stab someone in the game is far more powerful than "press X to stab"
>>44197808
>>44197816
have a look:
http://youtu.be/sk8zqgj2sw0
>>44196431
I can remember when Halo 2 caught on and my brother and I wanted to buy an Xbox. It was nearly impossible to find since Microsoft killed it at the height of its popularity not because there wasn't demand but because it cost so much to produce (supposedly got MORE expensive as time went on since MS didn't own the IP And was dependent on their suppliers for what were no longer commodity parts after a couple years)
Gran Turismo 4 could do 1080i over component and it still looks pretty decent today.
>>44196501
The evolutions of the PS3's performance over time is really weird. The first few years games looks and performed awfully vs. the 360, but later on PS3 games looked and performed worlds better than the 360 versions.
I guess the power really was there. It just took ~5 years to find it.
>>44196511
Yeah its really fun.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga62uiXbEjI
>>44198506
So is it better programmer practices or lack of good documentation?
>>44197878
I've played both. The main difference is that Mad World is fun and a good game.
>>44198506
>but later on PS3 games looked and performed worlds better than the 360 versions
I don't think there was that much of a difference. Even the best looking ps3 games weren't that much more impressive as what's on the 360
>>44198553
I read that the first PS3 SDKs were entirely in Japanese.
But also the firmware was updated to allow more memory to the game software over time.
The biggest benefit of the most impressive PS3 games was SPE programming though. The actual theoretical benefits of the Cell did pay off for those studios who had the time and expertise to spend so much time focusing on a single platform instead of other aspects of their cross-platform product. But that's kind of an unreasonable expectation for the modern games industry outside of first-party studios. That's probably why Microsoft's Azure stuff for the Xbone will never do anything interesting too.
>>44198506
Builds of Gran Turismo 5 from 2006 looked better than any other game at the time. Too bad they inundated the game with so many lackluster features and didn't release it until late 2010, at which point the competition had nearly caught up.
>>44198731
Cross-platform games toward the end still ran and looked better, generally, on the PS3. I suppose that's mostly down to licensed engine makers really figuring out the PS3.
GTA5 is an interesting case. I assume it runs on fundamentally the same engine as GTA4 and Red Dead Redemption, but while those games ran a lot better on the 360, GTA5 runs and looks significantly better on the PS3. Would be interesting to have Rockstar explain why that is.
I love it when /v/ and /g/ come together to discuss video game console hardware.
I genuinely do
>>44198830
It was released later so they had more time figure it out.
Here is a cool article on the PS2 achitechture.
http://arstechnica.com/features/2000/04/ps2vspc/
Loved that Ratched dev commentary video too!
Also impressed with the xbox and gc consoles. The gc just has so much power in that tiny package, great hardware. Shame about the retarded discs and no online.
Xbox is great just from a brute force power perspective, and did a lot of things first.
Also, on the PS2 arch
http://forums.pcsx2.net/Thread-Why-is-PCSX2-slow
>>44195380
the first time I saw someone playing Shadow Of The Colossus blew my mind cuz it had motion blur instead of fake motion blur bullshit like in GTA:VC, it looked pretty good.
I'll play that game someday, bought a modded PS2 a few months ago just for that and Silent Hill 3, and the MGS series, I heard they're good.
>>44198950
GC was the most powerful by far, but very limited in where everything was heading.
Apart from the obvious - 1.4GB discs, the GPU was 'weird' for something new.
It wasn't weird in general, it was actual a very powerful fixed-function GPU, but it was fixed function in a world that had already turned to programmable shader functions.
This made it easy for idiots to port shovelware to and Japanese devs who abide by conversativsm to make some nice games.
But all the good western devs were long gone fomr the fixed-function game, they loved the freedom programmable shaders gave them and ran with it - shit even as basic and hard to program as they were, the PS2 could do shader functions the GC simply couldn't - and the Xbox was a brogrammers' wet dream.
Programmable shaders allowed effects that would have taken weeks of busywork to make on a fixed-function pipeline - it's not that the GC couldn't have the BEST graphics, it's that making those graphics wasn't economical.
Also, GC did have online, not quite like Xbox Live, but then again XBL on the original Xbox was a very limited service that most of the world couldn't use either...
>>44199117
What's the difference between "real" motion blur and fake motion blur? Honest question.
>>44199171
>GC was the most powerful by far, but very limited in where everything was heading
I've never heard anyone say that before. Even factor 5, the guys who made arguably the best looking gamecube games said you could do anything on the gamecube that you could on the xbox, but they never said it was more powerful.
>>44199442
It still impresses me that Rogue Leader was a launch game for the Gamecube. That game was pretty as hell.
>>44199498
I wish there was an interview like this about the development of that game. They made it in 9 months, I believe.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2000/11/11/interview-battling-the-n64
>>44194008
They made a specific processor just so the characters in the game could express their emotions?
So like, where are you guys when /g/ is usually inundated with Desktops, Homescreens and consumerism generals?
>>44199415
what I meant with "fake motion blur" is that motion blur that looks pretty bad because it takes less resources of the graphics card to make it work, if you observe one single frame you'll see that there's no actual blur on the frame, the way it's made is by keeping the previous 2 or more frames on the next frame to make your eyes think there's motion blur, but there's not and it looks bad and it's annoying.
>>44199566
I did actually find this, but not the actual video itself
http://www.blizzpub.net/forums/topic/20994/
anyone know if this video still exists?
>>44197715
Interesting. I get no Microsoft logo, that's why I concluded that it got 'stuck'.
One of them is a 1.2 or 1.3 (conexant chip) and another is 1.4/1.5 (focus). Can't remember the third.
Perhaps they have issues somewhere else, I'll have to check the whole motherboard.
>>44199785
Update, now that I checked my chart, the third console has error 07 (bad HD, I think?)
This one should be easy to fix if it's just that.
>>44199596
So, is real motion blur applied to the current frame depending on the direction and speed the camera is rotating to?
Did we ever get confirmation how much PS3 currently reserves memory for the OS? Some homebrew developer should be able to know this.
>>44199869
yes
they both have a specific name but I forgot.
>>44200011
One's called vector motion blur, the other is just afterimaging
>>44195196
>>44197039
>>44195409
>>also the fact that it didn't have very attractive titles imo, I mean sure the usual sport ones but other than that you didn't think at the time "oh boy, I'd sure kill for a dreamcast"
The titles may have with a few exceptions lacked major brand recognition, but what ultimately did Dreamcast in was the PS2's DVD player which brought normalfags into the market, bailing out the first of three shit launch lineups in a row to date.
For about a six month period, the highest selling title on the PlayStation 2 was pic related.
>>44200050
>he didn't like Tekken Tag Tournament or Summoner
sure is pleb in here
>>44200070
This was back when AM2 and SNK were running circles around Namco in the fighting genre. Tekken was always a poor man's Virtua Fighter 2 without the benefit of any SNK difficulty.
>>44196987
>http://psx-scene.com/forums/f291/gs-mode-selector-development-feedback-61808-print/index206.html
Thanks anon. Just wondering, have you tried this with San Andreas?
>>44200011
Left one doesn't look very blurry, unless it is that "drunken" effect they give to some scenes in some games. I guess it will be more noticeable in a video.
>>44197737
Manhunt came out on Wii? Holy shit
>>44200197
No, I was just linking for the info on gt4
>>44200217
left one doesn't have motion blur, it has that shitty effect I was talking about a few posts earlier.
I placed those 2 pics for comparison.
>>44196810
The biggest problems with the N64's visual output IMO was the decision to make the RCP's VI component always interpolate to a width of 640 pixels, which is why every game looks blurry as fuck. There is also the issue with textures looking blurry as fuck, but that was more the fault of lazy developers who didn't want to bother working around the small texture cache and just took a tiny texture and blew it the fuck up.
>>44200331
One is vector motion blur, the other is accumulation buffer motion blur.
>>44199596
It was indistinguishable on crt televisions however.
>>44196699
Can't you virtualize the CPU and the GPU (the latter using OpenCL)?
>>44198506
>>44198553
>>44198731
Getting the best graphics out of the PS3 requires divvying up graphics tasks between the proper GPU and the SIMD portions of the cell processor. It's a pretty nasty task, but towards the end of the PS3's lifespan some studios figured it out. Earlier titles suffered because the SIMD portions are damn near useless for more branching tasks like AI and graphics tasks are easier to just do on the GPU, so a good portion of the Cell just sat unused..
>>44201511
Speedy virtualization requires the same architecture, and Cell isn't X86, it's based on the Power architecture.
>>44195941
>2014
>white rice
>white anything
>white anyone
>>44201688
>>>/mlp/
>>>/lgbt/
>>44201957
Oh, misread it.
Did Jason Rubin still program by the time Naughty Dog started work on Crash?
>>44200453
Even using a SCART, the N64 looked so terrible it made me nauseous - thanks, crappy video encoder. I could play it more than 30 minutes as a kid without getting headaches (serious).
I get seasick easily too, mind you.
>>44199117
same, the real motion blur in SotC is amazing
also the movement/animation/physics
really the whole game feels like it's a generation ahead of the rest
>>44200453
yea, for the texture thing, it's a bummer it was so small
though it's not like they could use too many anyway, thanks to tiny expensive cartridges
i'll take unfiltered larger textures over trilinear blurred tiny textures anyday
also the frame rate, was there a particular reason basically every n64 game was slow as hell? or did the devs just universally push it too hard?
>>44201957
As I recall the big problem with emulation of the original Xbox was the documentation for the GPU being nonexistent and the custom Windows based OS.
It makes you wonder if the PS4 with its well documented GPU architecture and BSD based OS will be relatively easy compared to other recent consoles.
>>44194771
Because Sony thought that they would dominate with the PS3 the same way they did with the PS2, only much harder.
They wanted to make their exclusives the absolute cream of the crop, and failed to realize that the vast majority of games would be multi-platform.
>>44195941
This makes me wonder, why in the hell did Microsoft decide to go with the weaker of the two GPU solutions?
Did they not expect Sony to go with that Pitcairn chip?
>>44201651
A 2.7GHz PowerMac G5 quad could probably work well
>>44206858
The G5 Quad (2 dual-core CPUs) ran at 2.5 GHz.
The G5 that ran at 2.7 GHz had 2 single-core CPUs.
>>44205778
They didn't have any info on what sony was using until they announced it.
>>44202184
No, I think he let andy take over when they teamed up. He definitely wasn't still programming by the time they got to crash. He was working on textures, models, and I think the levels.
