/vr/ - Retro Games

>>6487632
>this and other features which cause n64 games to look distinctly blurry is something i don't really consider a good thing
Thinking edge AA blurs the image suggest a fundamental misunderstanding of how the algorithm works. It's coverage-based, so it only targets edges.

Also, this is a resurrection of the "I don't like its aesthetics, so it doesn't prove technical superiority" argument.

>but not really that big of a deal
It's a pretty big deal when you consider a game like MGS and Resident Evil, when those polygonal joints keep popping. A similar technical advantage lies in the fact that the N64 computes vertex coordinates at a far higher precision than PS1 (preventing the polygon wobbling which is prevalent on the latter platform).

>yea the textures are perspective-correct, are always drawn where they're supposed to be, etc, except they're a 32x32 image stretched over 5m2 due to bandwidth and cart size constraints, so they're a blurry, incomprehensible mess anyway
This is more of a stereotype of the earliest or most poorly programmed N64 games, than later software like Conker which have high texture resolutions, and in fact, a texture pipeline which outputs more varied textures in the one frame than PS1 games (some of the better PS1 games just resort to high frequency tiling of high resolution textures).

>>6372085
>cude attempt at AA
Truly a mindless poser. Gotta have muh pixels or it isn't le retro, even if those pixels are a negative on the overall image quality.

>>6357954
The N64 output is good. Aliasing is a bad thing.

>>6326534
>"muh totally necessary AA"

>he's still spreading misinfo that the N64's AA is a screen-blurring effect instead of an edge smoother

>>6301620
>partner up with graphics hardware firm that nearly goes bust by the end of the decade
They did nothing wrong. Silicon Graphics were indisputably the world leaders in 3D graphics hardware in the mid 90s. Anyway, the actual engineers behind the N64's GPU left SGI to form ArtX and then created the GameCube GPU. They were then bought by ATi and then proceeded to create the R300 chip, which is considered to this day to be the greatest GPU for its time that ATi/AMD ever produced.

>antialiasing over 240p
You do know that jaggies are more prominent at lower resolutions right? I'm guessing you're another clueless fool who doesn't realize that the N64's edge anti-aliasing actually worked incredibly well. Remember that Sony's implementation of edge anti-aliasing on the PS2 was actually inferior to SGI's approach on the N64, which is why hardware AA was almost never used in PS2 games.

>no dedicated audio hardware
Fair point, but it did include hardware capable of processing audio that wasn't the GPU. And the N64's programmable approach allowed for things like real-time Dolby Surround decoding, features that the PS1 and Saturn with their fixed-function sound chips weren't capable of.

And N64 audio sounded fine in the right hands.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YRGbfufHG8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y0RwyI8j8k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rcpLWo-GeU

>sells like shit anywhere not USA
Apparently sold quite decently in a few European countries (not UK) and Australia though.

Thanks to Digital Foundry we now have undeniable evidence that the N64 used actual anti-aliasing and not just a blur filter. It DID have a blur filter, but it was a completely separate pass to the edge anti-aliasing.

This is a pretty fucking impressive technical achievement for 1996 hardware.