/vr/ - Retro Games

>>4103578
This is a Sega rage thread

>>4103578
the hardware was a clusterfuck

>stream-line the hardware
>don't piss off Kalinske
>make a good Sonic game

Were these the Saturn's fatal flaws?

>>4103601
>don't hire a fucking moron to head your US division

>>4103608
Stolar fucking up the west would've been prevented with SoJ not pissing off Kalinske.

why did sega rally have such a clean and pretty 3d compared to ps1 games?

>>4103578
no games

>>4103613
Z Buffer.
Ps1 has none, so polygons fight for dominance as they try to assert their depth.

Saturn puts polygons in their place.

We lacked a cohesive, cooperative international direction.

>>4103601
Sonic R looks ok. Sonic Jam is often over shadowed.

IT WASN'T FAIR

>>4103601
>Kalinske
Who? Oh yeah that guy who worked marketing Barbie at Matell.
I don't think anyone from SoA is really necessary at all, all disposable people.

>>4103738
>Who?
Oh, just the guy who made SEGA relevant in the console sphere.

>>4103747
He wasn't even the guy who came up with "Nintendon't".
Nobody from SoA is really necessary.

>480p standard
>PAL60
>RGB
>VGA support
>Online out of the box
>Broadband adaptor released for high speed net play
>DLC
>Internet Browser
>1GiB GD-ROMs
>Doesn't require a mod-chip for piracy
>Can play imports easily
>4 Controller Ports without splitters
>God damn BUTTONS and a SCREEN on the memory cards

>>4103646
Sonic R is not ok in any sense of the word, I remember playing it in a store in-era and being legitimately angry at how shitty it was

full turn from "oh wow 3D Sonic" to "what the fuck is this shit" in 5 minutes

>>4103758
PS2 killed this

>>4103749
>it's the "SoJ did nothing wrong" autist again

Well, whatever. You can at least admit Tom and his team did a better job running SoA than anyone else in charge, right?

>>4103780
*A cheap DVD player killed this

The other day I learned that Sega was an american company, well started as one
By the way it wasn't fair
Nintendo should have died

>>4103787
I never said SoJ did nothing wrong.
Yeah, I can admit that, Genesis was the most successful Sega system in USA. But to be honest, Genesis is genuinely a great system, it practically marketed itself by simply having a good game library accessible for everybody.

>>4103812
>the guys who did the Famicom should have died
Nah, both Sega and Nintendo should have stayed alive, in an ideal world.

>>4103578
Sony was the only company with functional brains in the 5th and 6th gens. Sega and Nintendo deserved what came later.

>>4103578
Maybe it could have had more of a chance had the 32X been completely canceled, and Bernie Stolar got murdered 3-5 months into his position as SoA CEO.

>>4103861
If it weren't for Stolar, you wouldn't have had a $200 Dreamcast launch.

As for the Saturn, he was just doing what SOJ told him to do. They were looking for potential hardware upgrades for the Saturn already before the launch because they knew it was shit.

>>4103758
Don't forget slipperiest analog stick of all time.

>>4103903
More than the Saturn table-shape controller? Really?

>>4103893
>Stolar was mostly just doing what SOJ wanted him to do

What makes you so sure of that point?

>>4103601
That and the price.

>>4103989
And yet the PS2 cost roughly the same when it first came out in 2000, and with an expansion bay that was basic in many ways.

>>4103620
Saturn has no z-buffer. Vertex calculation in software lets developers set a higher level of precision than the hardware vertex calculation of PS1 which is always fixed into low accuracy.

Also forward (quad) texture mapping produces less affine texture distortion in some circumstances.

>>4103859
You meant functional wallets and 3rd party bribing.

>>4103578
>underage caps rant
>20 years
>you're not fooling anyone summero

>>4103601
here's the actual issues:
>price ($100 more was an issue, but if it had games, it might have been able to weather that)
>early launch
>actual dev tools (IIRC, what you got around launch was a quick and dirty SH-2 version of GCC, a few fairly cryptic Macintosh System 7 graphics+sound tools for converting shit so you could use it on Saturn (Windows ones came later IIRC), and a poorly translated dev manual).
>nogaems
the machine is overall weaker than the PS1, there were nearly no games at launch, and until like 1997 or so, making Saturn games was a total pain in the ass just because Sega's devkit sucked

also, it really didn't matter what was released on the Saturn, as long as things actually were released at all, there's zero actual reason to not just release everything you can in the west just so you could have a library at all

>>4103646
Sonic R is gorgeous, but controls like ass. Even when you're good at it, it still controls like ass, you just know exactly what to do and when.
...but it's easily the best looking Saturn game, with fully lit everything, smooth fade-ins, mostly consistent framerate, good looking textures, the works. No random texture jitter like in Panzer Dragoon Zwei, no major texture warping issues in general like most Saturn games.
And the draw distance is relatively okay (except in 2 player mode where it's fucking appalling).
It's a game that would have been impressive on PS1.

Sonic Jam is a kind of crap set of ports with slowdown for no reason unrelated to what's on screen (mostly in Sonic 2) and massively inferior sound effects (arguably worse than shit like early-mid 2000s era Gens sound emulation, it's really bad). It's got a fair few neat features like multiple difficulty levels and time attack and spindash in Sonic 1 and shit, though.
The 3D Sonic World is neat and I like the mission mode, but the camera is hideously bad and mostly just points down except in one tiny area of the map so you can't see anything ahead.

>>4103613
that's the arcade version you cheater, PS1 games look as good if not better than saturn sega rally

It had internal clock which was used in some games. PS lack it.

>>4103770
Sonic R is made hilariously worse if you're holding forward to accelerate instead of the dedicated accelerate button. The game is actually fucking unplayable like this, you flat out cannot turn properly.
Also, not knowing about L/R for hard turns would make the game seem absolutely obnoxious.

The controls still suck (your character is obscenely slippery and good luck turning around if you need to), but a lot of people have a far, far worse impression of them than they should because of these two things.

>>4103608
Wasn't he run out of Sony for trying to do what he ended up doing at Sega, pushing sports and shit heavily to the detriment of all else? Something like that.

why the fuck did Sega pick him up, unless they were looking for insight on Sony

>>4104069
They do, but Sega Rally on Saturn is still pretty nice. It's got cuts (and they kind of resembles the cuts needed to bring Time Crisis to PS1), but it's surprisingly close to arcade as a whole.
Here's a gif.

>>4103613
Switch to in-car view, crawl along, then try making that claim again.

>>4103758
Soooo not retro

>>4103578
didn't ps1 not come with a game or memory card at that price? So consumers ended up paying close to 400 on launch anyway? I seem to remember thinking the price btfo thing was bullshit. I guess people are just that dumb
I think that 3D was a mistake at the time. 1994 was way too early. Saturn's 2D was incredible. If Sega wanted to remain cut throat they should have mocked how shitty psx games looked (We all knew they looked fucked up. don't pretend. we were impressed by the sheer power, the amount of polygons rendered simultaneously, but nobody thought early 3D games looked beautiful in the least) and focused on the niche markets that would have attached harder to the system. All they fucking advertised were 3D gamrs, they ignored shmups,rpgs and the the best fighters on the system in the west.


It sold what, 7 mill in Japan? If they pushed 3-4 in the US and UK they would have retained significant enough market share to not be such a failure.


either way, I love the Saturn.

>>4104029
Sega and Nintendo being dumb as fuck with their consoles helped as well.

>>4104192
Hilariously nintendo is one of the main reasons for sony entering the market because they went full jew.

>>4104209
nintendo and sony breaking up literally changed the entire market forever

>>4103780
Sega killed it.
The DC was actually selling pretty well.

>>4103578
>I've been holding this in for 20 years
You haven't, nobody was rooting for that piece of shit, not even Sega.

>>4103758
>Doesn't require a mod-chip for piracy
yeah definitely an advantage

>>4104029
>3rd party bribing
They just treat them like human beings.

>>4103893
I've heard of a new SDK for the console (Hi, Virtua Fighter RPG testing the waters) but not of hardware upgrades?

>>4103578
With all due respect despite Stolar being a total fucking moron I truly think the Saturn wouldn't have jobbed so fucking hard in the West. Had they only canceled the 32X and had the titles like Knuckles Chaotix etc ready for launch day Saturn.

Also would it have used the 4mb ram cart?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVYyHqXdxHI

>>4103859
>Nintendo deserved what came later.
You mean massive success and a bank account so full that they could spend decades releasing flop after flop and still be fine?

>>4104404
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVYyHqXdxHI

I hope it will be in the mini saturn

>>4103578
>WE HAD THE GAMES

No you didn't. You had arcade ports and LITERALLY NOTHING else.

That's why the system only sold in Japan where arcades were still popular.

>>4104209
>because they went full jew.
Didn't Sony want 100% of the profits for the CD-based games on the SNES CD?

Also, something to have into consideration, Sony owned a share for the use of compact discs, so every time a Sega Saturn, 3DO, whatever other system that used standard CDs sold a copy, part of that went to Sony.
Also Sony owned factories that manufactured CDs, they didn't need to buy CDs, while Sega and others did.
Sony was in a very accommodated position, entering the console market was a no brainer for them.

>>4104475
They wanted a cut in the sales but I doubt it was something outrageous like 100%.

>>4104183
3D would have been fine... if there were any 3D games.
Didn't matter if it was weaker if it wasn't $100 more at launch. The early launch was such a decisive mistake that literally the words "$299" ended all hope the machine had -- if it had a market, people would have made games for it (and it did in Japan, where it then got an absurd amount of shovelware shit that only the nip market could possibly appreciate).

no seriously, almost all the 3D games are:
>ports from PS1 at a lower framerate
>Sega arcade ports (some good, some bad)
>a few Sega originals for the machine
and that's about it, nearly no one else was on board, there's like a dozen original Saturn games not made by Sega with actual 3D gameplay

2D was better on Saturn... entirely because of tilemapping -- the PS1 has to waste a lot more RAM (or waste its rendering budget by spewing loads of sprites to simulate tilemapping) and can't (easily) do various linescroll/raster tricks without just saying fuck it and using a polygon mesh for it.
spending RAM on other things means you can't have as many frames of animation in memory

It's not like the Saturn has an advantage with putting more shit on screen, because the PS1 can render more shit on the screen at once (although that doesn't matter too much at this point).

>>4104492
Obviously not. Both sides imply a somewhat different story of course and we'll probably never know for sure but I think in all likelihood all Sony wanted was the rights to press the discs in their existing factories and to make a reasonable production fee just like they ultimately did with the Playstation's developers' games.

I think Nintendo was just so used to taking a slice for pic related which has no real value that they thought Sony was planning to be just as big a bunch of jews as they were.

We'll never know for sure though. Sony may have been planning to squeeze Nintendo out from the beginning and as a result their production fees transformed radically from ones designed to squeeze Nintendo to death into ones to undercut them by producing games at prices impossible to compete with.

We may never know for sure but either way Sega was/would have been in trouble that generation.

Victor Saturn Model 1 is such a cutie

>>4104006
Saturn also had a DSP that could do 48 bit precision.

>>4104062
>Sonic R is gorgeous, but controls like ass

Use the shoulder triggers you moron. Game controls perfectly fine.

>>4103960
>What makes you so sure of that point?

Sega-16 has interviews with key people where they mention that SOAs job was making sure that they can get as many devs as possible for the Saturn successor. They were preparing the ground for the DC even while the Saturn was in its prime.

>>4104398
There's an interview with one of the STI guys, Olaf or Hector something, where he mentions Sega going around to Nvidia and 3dfx, asking if they have chipsets that could run Virtua Fighter 3 at home. Nvidia tried showcasing them a chipset, but it didn't produce any video outputs in the meeting. 3dfx did a better offer and had software that could do full simulation of the silicon to prevent such problems. This was back in early 1995.

They knew the Saturn was going to be shit even before the launch.

There were also planned 3d accelerator carts, one planned by AM2, one planned to be used for Tomb Raider 2, one rumoured to use a Lockheed Martin chipset (before Intel bought them). In the end they canned all of that and jumped ship to the Dreamcast as early as possible, which fucked up whatever devs they still had in Japan, because they just got around to figuring out how to do games on the Saturn.

>>4107412
Sonic R's controls are absolute trash. You're slippery as fuck, period. The game is unplayable if you don't use the triggers.
it's not like I haven't unlocked everyone and gotten all the emeralds

>>4104209
part of me is convinced that the SNES Play Station would have been just as lame as the Sega CD if not lamer (because the biggest issue with the Sega CD is that it barely added anything and couldn't output video directly, and getting graphics off the cool blitter chip onto the screen at a decent framerate is hard, at least with NTSC v-blank -- the longer PAL v-blank would have helped a lot with transferring graphics out of the Sega CD, since the bottleneck is almost entirely putting it on screen rather than generating it on the Sega CD)

Sega CD ended up with a small handful of scaling+transform games (that other than like Batman and Soul Star kind of ran like ass and looked like ass because the Genesis really wasn't made for expansions and see above), a handful of heavily marketed FMV games (something that actually took advantage of the CD format, but was a shit game format), and then an absolute ton of games that might as well be on the Genesis, but with the minor addition of CD audio (making the cost hard to justify for players)
the prototype we got of the SNES Play Station is very literally just a CD drive that you can hook up to the SNES, no expansion CPU or anything (which might have been added, they'd have had to have been braindead to not consider it, especially with the fact that the SNES was made for expansion hardware from the get go, but we don't know)

>>4103578
I mean, when you have to rely on Panzer Dragoon Saga as one of your "best" games, your console can't be very good.

>>4108110
SNES Play Station didn't have the idiotic design issues of the Sega CD. It had direct audio and video input and it could interrupt the main cpu properly, no need for the stupid lock-step you had to set up on the Sega CD.
It would've been less powerful but way easier to work with than the Sega CD. And knowing Nintendo, also much cheaper.

The prototype that was found only had a CD drive bolted to a SNES. But the 1993 design document (which presumably details a Philips model) also adds a dedicated CDROM controller, and a secondary SCCP, a 32bit RISC cpu clocked at 21MHz with "powerful arithmetic functions including floating point arithmetic commands".

So it would've been more like a SNES + SFX2 chip + 1mbyte memory + 512kbyte cd cache + double speed cd drive. Think of Yoshi's Island with CD sound as the baseline of how games could've been on it.

The Sony model would've been baseline SNES with cd audio, though.

>>4104062
>It's got a fair few neat features like multiple difficulty levels
Sonic Jam's easy mode was the only reason I ever saw the last few levels in Sonic 3 as a kid. I never could figure out how to get past the barrel in Carnival Night Zone, which was removed in easy mode.

>>4107412
>Saturn also had a DSP that could do 48 bit precision.
Barely anybody ever used it sadly. But 48-bit isn't really that precise, it's like 12-bit per SIMD element right? Might be an advantage over PS1's GTE if that's 8 bit per element or 32-bit SIMD though.

>>4103578
I was a Nintendo and later a Sonyfag growing up. Didn't really have more than a passing familiarity with Sega until about a year ago when I started collecting their consoles.

Now, probably 90% of my daily gaming is on Sega machines, love all their arcade ports and whatnot. Knowing what I missed out on growing up and how Sega basically screwed itself over repeatedly after the genesis is painful.

I really hope this Amazing Sega or whatever shot they announced means they're going to attempt to return to form in an uncharacteristically competent way

>>4109021
>also much cheaper
most of the cost of the Sega CD was the CD-ROM drive, that shit was expensive back then
hell, that's a decent bit of why the 5th gen machines launched at such high prices, it wasn't until like 1996 that drive prices had finally really stopped being stupid

>>4109153
>most of the cost of the Sega CD was the CD-ROM drive, that shit was expensive back then

No, it was expensive because it was stupidly over engineered. It had a LOT of extra memory, an entire 68k, a giant scaler chip, a PCM sound processor, the drive used Sony components, an extra PCB for just connecting the units together, and an extra PCB that does audio mixing so you can have stereo output.

The sony snes cd would've been way cheaper since it used less parts, and because it used a lot of Sony ICs that they could produce in-house.

The Philips snes cd might have cost the same as the Sony one, despite the extra chip. It had no fluff like a full LCD screen, and no SNES components inside. Of course, it would've been an expansion only, not an all-in-one machine.

>>4103608
>>4103612
Story? Wasnt kalinske the guy who did hot wheels and barbie?

>>4103578
>We had the hardware
Even as a Segafag I highly disagree with you. Sure, Saturn was good at 2D or whatever but it was still a clusterfuck

>>4109197
>>4109153
reminder that the Sega CD does not use CD-ROM

>>4109296
*drive

>>4103758
Which version of Shenmue (2) should I emulate?

>>4109349
Dreamcast of course idiut

>>4109296
>>4109304
wut

>>4109463
Sega was too cheap to use a REAL CD-ROM drive, instead they literally put in a consumer grade audio drive.

>>4109898
If you think the MEGA CD one is cheap i'd love you to take a look at the NEO GEO CD then.

when used right, was the Saturn more powerful than the PSX https://youtu.be/foZUcPQAMvg

>>4110202
I've always been skeptical about that video. That doesn't look like it should be achievable on stock hardware, sorry.

>>4104075
Yeah, Bernie was the no-RPG guy and it worked for Sony early on, pushing the sport and action games on PS1 gave it a large audience but when FFVII came along, and Bernie was still trying to push a hard ban on JRPGs Sony knew what to do.

>>4110206
don't underestimate the Saturn

>>4110223
I still think it was supposed to use an external GPU addon like a RAM cart or something. If they had the technology to do games like that why didn't they use it on Virtua Fighter or Burning Rangers?

>>4103578
>im 20 years old
You're not fooling anyone kiddo

>>4110240
Burning Rangers was way earlier, probably before the windows dev tools. VF3 was planned for Saturn and would have used an extra 3D hardware thing either in the ram slot or possibly where the vcd port is.

>>4110206
I can easily believe it, given the low framerate and loads of static geometry.
No lighting is real-time at all in the video. Zero. None.
this actually helps loads, since baked lighting allows you to hide the fact that certain parts of models have very little geometry backing them -- almost all of the actual model detail is concentrated in the faces, which drastically helps with making humans look good, the rest of the model looks about twice as good as the ones in say, Die Hard Arcade.

Any time the particularly complicated models (people) show, the framerate starts to die. Three people on screen is enough to bring everything to a crawl. It's a late title, so they had a graphics library that didn't suck, so just doing ordinary 3D transforms wasn't a heavy burden like it was for most of the machine's life.

The most impressive thing shown is the stellar texture work and animation. There's loads of really nice baked lighting.
If you're willing to accept incredibly heavy frame drops, graphics like this are doable on the Saturn.

I'm certain that everything shown there is doable on PS1 at the same or better framerate (maybe not by too much more, the people are fairly detailed), although you'd have jitter issues like every PS1 game ever.
Hell, it might be higher detail for the sheer fact that the PS1 can push more shit on screen by far. It's not an easy thing to get graphics this nice out of either machine, but it's also not out of the question.

it also doesn't help that there are extremely few 3D games on the Saturn to compare the video to, many of which were rushed/lazy PS1 ports, and then most of the rest of the notable ones are Sega arcade ports
there were very few 3D games that were built for and designed around the machine, so it's hard to even judge what the system could put out

>>4110202
>when used right, was the Saturn more powerful than the PSX

Nope, the VDP1 simply does not have the fillrate for that. It's something like 4 times slower, and you need to go through ten different hoops to get shading to work (and it only works in the lowest resolution mode).

That Shenmue video is a good example. All the shading is pre-baked on mode 7 backgrounds, and the polygon scenes run at something like 10fps. PSX had some very late games that looked like that but with an actual playable frame rate.


>>4110206
>That doesn't look like it should be achievable on stock hardware, sorry.

I say it is just about possible. The polygon models are about the same quality as VF2. Now consider that the game uses the hardware way better due to more advanced dev kits, and that it runs at 10-20 fps on any scene with people in it. The few scenes with super impressive scenery are all empty buildings, except for the forest with Ryo and the chick, which looks like 5-10 fps.

I really would love to see the code for this running though, just so I can check how they got those insanely impressive building models, and if they used the VDP2 in any interesting manner.

>>4110421
>the stellar texture work

That texturing is crazy. I don't even know how they could do that with the little memory the Saturn has for texturing. The only thing I can imagine is that they reserved something like 98% of the VRAM all for textures, and then updated the polygon draw lists (which also use VRAM) dynamically for every few polygon draws... with draw commands being 16 byte writes only, it would probably not halt the VDP1 too much to update that inbetween drawing. I can't even begin to think how much optimization that would need to even work, though.

>>4103758
>no dvd

but best port of THPS 1&2

>>4110468
No.

>>4109220

Kalinske made Sega the company that went punch for punch with Nintendo. He's the one who told Sega of Japan to pack Sonic 1 in with the Genesis, which they hated the idea of but sold millions upon millions of Genesises(Genesii?), and directed the edgy ad campaigns that got Sega the perception of being the equal of or better than Nintendo. Basically every win Sega had was Kalinske.

And the SoJ executives started to hate him, and then hated him more and more with every success that proved them wrong and Kalinske right. Eventually they managed to exclude him entirely from the decision-making process and took complete control, which lead to the 32X and Saturn designs, which were done over his objections, and proved to be total disasters as he'd predicted.

And so he quit and was replaced with Bernie Stolar, who happily helped SoJ finish running the company into the ground.

>>4110501
>And the SoJ executives started to hate him
Stopped reading here, stop shilling that fanfiction made up by some journo.

>naive youth identified

>>4110504
<----
ur face

>>4110456
>the VDP1 simply does not have the fillrate for that. It's something like 4 times slower
To be fair this does require some clarification. At some basic things VDP1 isn't a whole lot slower. It's when you start trying to do advanced things like blending which is where VDP1 shits itself - I think some blending modes have like an 8x penalty on VDP1. Shit's crazy.

>I don't even know how they could do that with the little memory the Saturn has for texturing
It probably would have had to use VDP2. The clever tiling it can do is highly efficient with video memory. Of course, making sure VDP2 doesn't fuck up in free form 3D scenes would be hell.

Honestly I don't think the Shenmue stuff is that impressive. The texturing doesn't look any better than Vagrant Story, and even that game wasn't perfect.

>>4103807
Does belittling the PS2 really make you feel any better?

>>4110534
>At some basic things VDP1 isn't a whole lot slower.

Wrong. The guy who coded Quake for both systems confirmed it. Saturn version was running at ~20fps average, held back by the VDP1, while Playstation could hit 60fps when it wasn't held back by the t&l. That's 3x difference minimum.

Sega docs state that it requires 3 cycles plus some setup time to write a textured pixel by the way. It's been a while since I calculated it, but that came out to something like 11mpixel max, if you use quite large textures (that you don't have the memory for...), but with 16x16 textures it is lower due to the setup time, something like 7-8 mpixel. Transparency is 5-6 cycles per pixel iirc, the docs state "up to 6 times slower" but that's compared to the most basic untextured write mode.

Playstation has ~33mpixel on paper but it uses SGRAM that can read and write in a single cycle, so it only loses cycle misses and setup time for drawing a triangle. That makes it over twice as fast - but if you use untextured polygons it can write them twice as fast and shading can still be applied.

And the PSX is way better at texturing and shading.

>It probably would have had to use VDP2.

You can't really use 2d backgrounds in a fully 3d world. It could be useful only for a HUD, and for the flat "mode 7" background. Technically it could draw the 4 sides of the inside of a house, but the house has to be completely square shaped for that.

I'm very sure it was used for flat grounds, though. In a lot of scenes for that video, you can see that the ground has no texturing seams, which would indicate that they are one single flat plane.

>>4110941
>Wrong. The guy who coded Quake for both systems confirmed i
I was talking more about the theoretical performance of the chip rather than real world memory factors. The fact is that VDP1 has a peak fill rate of something like 28 MPixel/s against the PS1's 33 MPixel/s. So anything VDP1 can do in a single cycle, that thing will be similar to PS1 performance in theory. Albeit, this would be a very small list, and of course held back in the real world by memory, etc.

>You can't really use 2d backgrounds in a fully 3d world
In theory you could, but you'd have to rotate it perfectly as if it were one very big polygon.

>Technically it could draw the 4 sides of the inside of a house
I thought VDP2 could only draw 2 rotated backgrounds at once?

>>4110964
>The fact is that VDP1 has a peak fill rate of something like 28 MPixel/s against the PS1's 33 MPixel/s

No, that's just the frequency they are running at - 28.6MHz and 33.33MHz. But the VDP1 can't draw anything in a single cycle except maybe DMA operations or blanking the framebuffer. PSX can texture in 2 cycles or draw nontextured in 1 cycle. The later models with SGRAM could also do blending without needing an extra cycle. VDP1 also wastes a lot of its fillrate in pixel overwrites.

>In theory you could, but you'd have to rotate it perfectly as if it were one very big polygon.

That's the mode 7 style background, which can and was used for flat planes since the beginning. I meant the normal 2d backgrounds which can only zoom (2 of them) or only scroll (2 of them).

>I thought VDP2 could only draw 2 rotated backgrounds at once?
It's complicated. You can either do 1 rotated bg + 2 zooming + 2 scrolling, or do 2 rotating bgs. However the 1st rotating bg can use two separate non-z rotate values in hardware. That means you can do two rotated backgrounds that touch each other at a flat edge. Imagine it as a ground and a sky that touches each other at the horizon. The background in Panzer Dragoon is a mode 7 ground, with a flat rotating backdrop behind it: those two are one single background, with the rotation matrix changed halfway through.

Now if you look at a cube, you can only see 3 sides at any given time, all of which touch each other at 2 edges. You can draw 2 sides with one rotating bg like that, by changing the rotation at the edges. Then you use a textured poly (or the 2nd rotating bg) for the remaining third side. That way you could draw the inside of a house, and you can cover up any irregularities with polygons.

The 2nd rotating bg can only use a single layer, so it's not that useful, I only know of one game that used it (which incidentally looks almost as good as Shenmue, as far as polygons and texturing).

>>4110964
>The fact is that VDP1 has a peak fill rate of something like 28 MPixel/s against the PS1's 33 MPixel/s.

SEGA docs state 24 million pixels / second for the VDP1, and the PSX in sprite mode can hit 66 mpixels.

This does not account for overheads, dram cycle miss, updating the draw command list, pixel overdraw, etc, all which subtract from this amount.

>>4111049
>VDP1 can't draw anything in a single cycle except maybe DMA operations or blanking the framebuffer
Oh that's interesting. I thought it could at least write a colored pixel in a single cycle.

>PSX can texture in 2 cycles or draw nontextured in 1 cycle
So its peak texturing fill rate is 16.5 MPixel/s? That's the first I've heard of this.

>VDP1 also wastes a lot of its fillrate in pixel overwrites
Yeah but overdraw is pretty common for all GPUs except tile-based deferred rendering ones. Why does Saturn overdraw more than the PS1? Maybe this is just the same thing as the blending penalty?

>That way you could draw the inside of a house, and you can cover up any irregularities with polygons.
Kind of looks like it could have been used in a few places in that Shenmue demo.

>>4111051
>SEGA docs state 24 million pixels / second for the VDP1
I always thought that figure was from an early iteration of VDP1 hardware when it was running at 24mhz. That seems a little strange though...you'd imagine the MPixel/s figure would be divisible by the clock speed (e.g. 14.3 MPixel/s) or did Sega already factor in some overhead into that peak figure?

>This does not account for overheads, dram cycle miss, updating the draw command list, pixel overdraw, etc, all which subtract from this amount.
Of course, that subtracts from every peak amount ever, including that of PS1. But I'd at least like to know what VDP1 could output in theory.

>>4103578
MMMM WHATCHA SAAAAAAY
TTTTHAT YOU ONLY MEANT WELLL

>>4110523
Huh? Sorry I don't speak meme.
But seriously, stop engulfing all that western propaganda against SoJ. Nobody hated Kalinske, I doubt the guys at SoJ knew who he was other than "that american guy".
SoJ may have been clumsy, unefficient, but I doubt they wasted time feeling hatred for SoA because of a supposed competition between SoA and SoJ, that's bullshit and you know it, it's all made up by journos and Kalinske himself who wants to make people believe he would have saved Sega but evil japs didn't let him. Pro tip: he couldn't have saved Sega. He had luck that Yuji Naka and Naoto Oshima made Sonic, that's all. Kalinske wasn't even the guy who came up with "nintendon't" marketing campaign.

>>4111339
Even if it is all fake bullshit spun up by Kalinske, he's still more of a believable "my work kept this afloat" guy than Ken Penders.

playstation 1 was the beginning of the end, sony butt fucked gaming so hard, i mean just look at the retarded DLC shit we got today

>>4111372
>blaming Sony for DLC
>og Xbox did it first
wew lad
inb4 obscure not outside of Japan 90s console dlc.

>>4111378
Dreamcast had DLC... sort of.
It was all on the disc and unlocked by VMU saves, but it was there.

Saturn
>expensive
>harder to develop for
>all trends were pointing to 3D and Saturn was not made for it
>SEGA was still supporting all previous more established consoles
>SEGA puts out too much pricey hardware too often

PS1
>cheap
>dev kits are cheap
>easier to develop on
>wanted to push for 3D
>Sony had good reputation for making quality electronic devices like CD walkmans and TV etc.
>right place right time

You should be blaming SEGA for its misfortunes.

>>4110504
>Stopped reading here, stop shilling that fanfiction made up by some journo.

Name one console that SoJ made entirely on their own, that became successful, and did not have a best-selling Virtua Fighter title.

>>4111401
It's okay if Kalinske had the luck to be in time for Sonic the Hedgehog, that doesn't mean SoJ hated his guys or all that crazy shit that journo wrote on his console wars book.

>>4111059
>So its peak texturing fill rate is 16.5 MPixel/s? That's the first I've heard of this.

No because it runs at 66MHz.

>Why does Saturn overdraw more than the PS1? Maybe this is just the same thing as the blending penalty?

VDP1 draws textures by taking a texture and looping through every pixel of every line of it. Even if the quad in question has its rights side shorter than the left side (BC < DA), which results in the latter lines overwriting the former ones. This means that some pixels are written twice (or more), which results in waste. If you have per-polygon transparency enabled, it'll also result in transparent pixels written multiple times, giving you artifacts. From the top of my head, you can see this in Pandemonium, Tama, and the ending of Riglord Saga 2. The booster lines in Sonic R also suffer from this, but they are small and displayed for a little time so you'll only notice it if you pause the game at just the right time.

The PSX uses triangles with UV mapping, it only draws the pixels the triangles consists of, and only samples the textures that will be visible.

Of course if you have a polygon partially covering up another, different polygon, you get overdraw. But the Saturn has pixel overdraw problems when just texturing a single polygon. There is one single caveat to this, you can use a concave shape, like a bowtie, to draw smooth outer curves, for example Sonics eye, without a texture.

>Kind of looks like it could have been used in a few places in that Shenmue demo.

Yeah, exactly what I meant. One or two of those house lookarounds in the video have extremely detailed walls and floors with seemingly no texture warping, so they are possibly generated at least partially by the VDP2.

>>4111059
>I always thought that figure was from an early iteration of VDP1 hardware when it was running at 24mhz.

It was never running at 24MHz, even the 1993 stats that mentioned the NEC V60 cpu, listed it as 28MHz. Running it at 24MHz would've been actually more difficult / expensive since 28MHz = NTSC colour * 8.

>you'd imagine the MPixel/s figure would be divisible by the clock speed

No, because for example a chip could write 2 pixels in a clock cycle. Or four. Or sample 3 textures, and so on.

>did Sega already factor in some overhead into that peak figure?

Possibly.

>But I'd at least like to know what VDP1 could output in theory.

One of the DTS discs have a slide with a figure. I have it at home somewhere.

>>4111408
iirc the whole "SOJ hate" was mentioned by some other sega guy, not Kalinske, and the article is up somewhere at sega-16.

Kalinske did more than just Sonic, if they didn't have Sonic then they would've bundled, I dunno, Streets of Rage 2 or something.

>>4110534
Vagrant Story has pretty good texturing though.

>>4111408
all Kalinske really needed was the ability to say
>no, this early launch is fucking retarded
and have someone actually listen

or hell:
>wait, the Saturn is ready for release in Japan? why the fuck are we releasing the 32X?
because if Kalinske isn't talking out his ass, the people in SOA didn't know know that the Saturn was so close to release
if I had a source, I'd even say something like until it released in Japan, no one in the US had a working Saturn (this isn't sourced and probably isn't true)
and considering that story about them cobbling together a working Sega CD from some dummied out units that'd been shipped over that wouldn't power on, it's believable

I don't think it's hate for SOA, I think it's just pig-headed Japanese bureaucracy sticking their fingers in and digging in to exert control.

>>4111380
That's not DLC then...is it?

>>4111431
>No because it runs at 66MHz
I understand this would be a fairly trivial difference but how do you know that it doesn't run at 33mhz instead just with two pixels per clock for 2D?

>VDP1 draws textures by taking a texture and looping through every pixel of every line of it.
Oh yes, I remember this. It loops through every texel instead of every polygon pixel. I get it now.

>>4111438
>No, because for example a chip could write 2 pixels in a clock cycle. Or four. Or sample 3 textures, and so on.
Well then it would be a multiple of the clock cycle. Still doesn't explain how they got 24 from 28 except by overhead.

>>4111471
>Vagrant Story has pretty good texturing though.
It does, but repetitive tiling is very obvious in some places.

>>4111492
It's what we today call on-disc DLC.

>>4103578

>WE HAD THE HARDWARE,
only part of it was really good

>WE HAD THE GAMES
not really, the saturn has less memorable games compared to the competitors for that era

Sega fucked up starting with the 32x and went on and on. The Dreamcast was SEGA ultimate console, but at that point it was already too late.

>>4111471
>I don't think it's hate for SOA, I think it's just pig-headed Japanese bureaucracy sticking their fingers in and digging in to exert control.

Japan does that shit ALL the time. They have this practice where they destroy a persons career buy specifically not allowing him to work on anything interesting, sometimes reducing their workload by so much that their job is literally sitting in an office. The idea is that by not allowing the guy to create anything, he'll leave on his own, without needing to fire him. They pulled it off with Yu Suzuki, and they pulled it off with Kalinske as well.

>or hell: wait, the Saturn is ready for release in Japan? why the fuck are we releasing the 32X?

By that point - 1994 late autumn - they already had at least the ICs and cases and such mass produced for the 32x, with only final assembly and logistics remaining.

They should've asked this question in 1993 december, and if they did, they probably would've gotten the gentle response of getting fired and another CEO hired who will produce the 32x anyway.

Japan was pulling the strings, so they only had little wiggle room. The reason they had so much independence in 89-93 was cause Nakayama told them that they can do whatever the fuck they wanted. But later on they started pulling the strings.

>>4111471
>because if Kalinske isn't talking out his ass
He most likely is.
Reminder that we still haven't heard SoJ's side of the story.

>>4111552
This JAPAN DID NOTHING WRONG KALINSKE LYING WHITE PIGGU shtick got old a long time ago

>>4111504
>how do you know that it doesn't run at 33mhz instead just with two pixels per clock for 2D?

iirc it was measured and the service manuals also mention it.
I'm pretty sure the system isn't plotting 2 pixels per cycle because it also needs to read the framebuffer row by row to output the final image.

>Still doesn't explain how they got 24 from 28 except by overhead.

Point was that clockspeed does not equal fillrate. And yeah, the 24mpixel is likely an estimate.

>>4111552
>Reminder that we still haven't heard SoJ's side of the story.

And you never will, Japanese have too much pride to admit that they made a mistake, and too much respect to have a single wrong thought about their bosses. That and most of the SOJ execs from the era are likely dead by now (they were like 70 year old in the 90s).

>>4111608
>because it also needs to read the framebuffer row by row to output the final image
Why would the GPU itself need to do that for 2D mode? (which I'm guessing is basically a blit mode)

>>4111059
>I'd at least like to know what VDP1 could output in theory.

okay, got it. There's a SOE tutorial that gives this figure for the amount of cycles to draw a textured polygon:
70 + (x * y * 3) + (y * 5)
and for drawing a textured, gouraud shaded polygon:
302 + (x * y * 3) + (y * 5)

The 70/302 is the initial setup time for things getting the draw command, setting up a shading table, etc. The x*y*3 is reading, processing, and writing a textured pixel for every x*y coordinate. The y*5 is an approximation for dram delay/miss.

That gives 530 cycles for a 8*8 textured, shaded polygon. At a 28.6MHz clock that gives you a bit less than ~54000 polygons, or a pixel fill rate of 3,45 mpixel.
If you do this without gouraud shading (302 cycles for 8x8 texture), you get ~94700, or a fill rate of 6,06 mpixel.

Now let's try it with 64x64 unshaded polys (for example, a 2d fighting game):
70 + (64 * 64 * 3) + (64*5) = 12678 cycles
28 600 000 / 12678 = ~2255 polys per second
2255 * 64 * 64 = 9,236 mpixels.

Now let's try nontextured, gouraud shaded 8x8 polys (something like a basic Sonic model):
302 + (8 * 8 * 2) + (8 * 5) = 470 cycles
28 600 000 / 470 = ~60850 polys
60850 * 8 * 8 = 3,89 mpixels

let's try filling the screen with 1 single colour polygon:
70 + (352 * 224 * 2) + (224*5) = 158886 cycles
28 600 000 / 158886 = 180 polys
180 * 352 * 224 = 14,1 mpixels

and finally, the entire framebuffer:
70 + (1024 * 256 * 2) + (256*5) = 525638 cycles
28,6 / 525638 = ~54 polys (per second, so less than 60 fps!)
~54 * 1024 * 256 = 14,2 mpixels. The overhead is negligible by now.

Not that fast in practice.

Assuming the PSX follows a similar formula (which is not correct because it draws triangles, not quads), at 66MHz with 2-cycle texturing, you'd get over 17mpixel, which is over 4 times the performance. But it also has no pixel overdraw, it can do 1 cycle texturing (for non-shaded sprites), and it can do transparency much faster because SGRAM allows for bit masking...

>>4111729
>Assuming the PSX follows a similar formula (which is not correct because it draws triangles, not quads), at 66MHz with 2-cycle texturing, you'd get over 17mpixel,

* using 8x8 textured squares, but this is wrong because this is drawn internally as two triangles. If you just use 8x8 sprites, it is done in a single cycle because it is just a matter of copying the appropriate texture pixel.

And then there's the texture cache, which also removes the 1 cycle for reading the texture (because it is already cached).

PSX just leaves the VDP1 in the dust. There's no way around it. And it is also easier to work with, does shading better, has more transparency modes, has UV texturing, and so on.

>>4111654
>Why would the GPU itself need to do that for 2D mode? (which I'm guessing is basically a blit mode)

It still needs to take the framebuffer and output it to the TV screen. So reading it row by row and feeding every pixel through a DAC and outputting the analog video signal.

>>4111729
Thanks for this, this is awesome.

>>4111738
>It still needs to take the framebuffer and output it to the TV screen. So reading it row by row and feeding every pixel through a DAC and outputting the analog video signal.
That would be done asynchronously on the video interface part of the GPU, if it's anything like the one on N64.

>>4104873
I'm fairly certain that it's consistently said that Sony wanted to have full control over publishing anything that was on the PlayStation, including Nintendo IPs. Nintendo holds its IP so dearly that they wouldn't let it happen, and Sony would essentially be making all of the money that Nintendo raked in through their insane licensing system.

Autistic jargon aside, Saturn was always meant for 2D, which is where it excels greatly over N64 and PSX. PSX is neither good at 2D nor 3D, just sub-par at both, while N64 is amazing at 3D and Saturn at 2D.

>>4111569
>Japan did nothing wrong
I never said that though, Kalinske fanboy.
>And you never will, Japanese have too much pride to admit that they made a mistake, and too much respect to have a single wrong thought about their bosses. That and most of the SOJ execs from the era are likely dead by now (they were like 70 year old in the 90s).
Yeah, this sucks, but are we really sure there aren't any books or interviews in some japanese magazines or books we might not be aware of?

>>4104031
>implying underages know what a Saturn is
lol

Are the arcade ports of this console really good?

>>4111513
So if you have to complete a level to progress to the next that's DLC? kek

>>4112129
Pretty much arcade perfect sans loadings and some slowdowns.

>>4112129
yes.

>>4111882
The Saturn is better in 2d for two reasons: it has a dedicated tilemapper and later on it got a memory card. If the Playstation had enough memory, it could've demolished the Saturn flat out in everything (with enough effort you can reproduce tilemapper effects with triangle strips).

>PSX is neither good at 2D nor 3D, just sub-par at both,

For 1994 silicon, it is fucking stellar at 3d.

>N64 is amazing at 3D

You mean it could have been amazing at 3d, if it didn't have some crippling hardware bugs, and managed by a company who didn't want anyone to make good games on it.


>>4111941
>are we really sure there aren't any books or interviews in some japanese magazines or books we might not be aware of?

I very much doubt it. The japs in general don't give a single flying fuck about any effort the westerners might have in a field they are #1 at, so they'd have no reason to talk to SOA or SOE at all. And in the event they interviews SOJ and asked about the success of their overseas divisions, they'd probably reply with the ever-respectful "we are very proud of them", even if they actually resented them for real.

>>4112135
That's not how it worked, you would unlock bonus features like custom chaos, character skins, etc through DLC.
Marvel vs Capcom 2 Japan had legit entire characters unlocked by DLC and some music tracks ie levels in Samba de Amigo was only unlockable through DLC. Now all that shit is lost to time.

>>4112135
They an entire island and extra boss unlocked by dlc in Skies of Arcadia too.

>>4112141
>that bias pro-ps1, anti-n64

>>4112135
If the game forced you to pay for a digital key that would unlock the next level, then yes.

What model is the most reliable? Also what is a good place to buy them from besides ebay?

>>4112172
Fair enough, Dreamcast DLCs were free. They are still downloadable content though.

>>4112167
>it's not bias it's truth!!!

>>4104183
Early PSX games looked like utter dogshit but considering how underpowered the hardware was, the graphical fidelity of games that came later in the lifespan of the console are all the more impressive.

What really irked me were the N64 graphics. They started out much better but never evolved much. The blurry texture filtering and limited space on the cartridges really put a damper on improving the graphics beyond the look of Mario64. If your whole schtick is to harp on about how your console is 64bit instead of just 32bit, at least make sure your games look twice as good also but they never did.

I was a big Nintendo fanboy, used to hate Sega for being so cocky and arrogant. I really wanted the Ultra64 to succeed and crush everybody but then it wasn't called Ultra and was ultra wither. I used to laugh at ugly PSX games at first. Halfway through there generation, I traded my N64 for a modded PSX because I had played everything I wanted and there were so many games on PSX, which also started to look real good. When I saw screenshots for Legend of Mana, I decided fuck Nintendo.

I never looked back and the company was never great again.

>>4112398
Are you really this extremist with other things in life?
>I used to love oranges, but when I tasted apples for the first time, fuck oranges! never again!

Anyway, it was kinda the opposite for me, I used to only own a PS1 back then, didn't even know Saturn was a thing, and thought N64 was the kiddy console (theirony is that I was still a kid, but you know how 11 year olds are, I used to think I was mature for playing mortal kombat).
I loved PS1 RPGs back then but nowadays it's hard to go back to them, mainly due to the excessive amount of loading times. RPG and loading times don't go well.
I finally decided to give the N64 a try a few years ago and against all odds, I liked it. Sin and Punishment is probably the best 5th gen game I played, other than Resident Evil 2.

>>4112414
Sin and Punishment is overrated treasureshit. Best N64 game is either F-Zero X or Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon.

>>4112414
>Are you really this extremist with other things in life?
I really dislike the direction Nintendo has gone in. GCN was the last worthwhile console from Nintendo, if only because of the first Metroid Prime game. I was disappointed when N64 became a nogames console but I was just sad. I only now hate them for what they've become since. Nintendo used to be known for innovation, good graphics and challenging gameplay. The company I loved doesn't exist anymore. It's just a shadow of their former self that won't stop molesting and pimping out the same old IPs.

Kiddies who's first Nintendo console was the N64 don't even know the Nintendo that used to be good.

Also, I never understood people's problem with loading times. I can't even imagine what it must be like to be bothered by something like that. PSX also had way more to offer than just RPGs. It probably has the best library of any console.

>>4112441
The best N64 game is Goldeneye by far. Nothing else comes close.

>>4112167
The only games on the N64 that looked better than PSX ones were the first party Nintendo titles, most Rare titles, and the Factor 5 releases.

>>4112441
>overrated
Nice opinion, sadly it's not popular!

>>4112443
Don't you think you're a little bit jaded against Nintendo?
And calling the PS1's library the "best library of any consoles" also seems a bit too optimistic for it. It has a good amount of games, but best of any console? eh.
>>4112473
The only PS1 titles that look on par with N64 are Polyphony Digital ones.

>>4112539
>Don't you think you're a little bit jaded against Nintendo?
I agree with him completely. Nintendo became an entirely different company when Iwata took over. What did they call it, "paradigm shift"? I mean, it was probably necessary since Sony took all their third party away with the Playstation, but still, it sucks it had to happen to them, they were one of the best videogame companies of all time.

>>4112547
I agree, Sony also used to be cool back in the ps1 days, cooler than they are now at least, but I mean, you guys seem a bit exaggerated.
Also, I think Iwata only stepped in as the president of Ninty on the GC era, N64 was still yamauchi (who was actually secretly 7 oni demons, his body was a vessel)

How come a thread for Sega turned into a Nintendo bashing thread?
Too much false-flagging or what?

>>4112552
Sony was never cool, it was always a sterile faceless corporation, like Microsoft.
Sega and Nintendo were the good guys of vidya industry.

>>4112558
this. fuck sony and fuck microsoft

>>4112142
>DLC is on the disc
>Now all that shit is lost to time
kek

>>4112172
So the fact that none of this so called DLC required you to pay for a digital key to unlock it means that it's not DLC according to your definition. Got it.

>>4112141
>if it didn't have some crippling hardware bugs
What hardware bugs are you talking about?

>>4112398
>They started out much better but never evolved much
You are delusional. Banjo-Kazooie looks far more advanced than Marino 64. Banjo-Toole looks far more advanced over Kazooie. And Conker has its significant improvements over Tooie.

>at least make sure your games look twice as good also but they never did.
Cleaning up the image quality with stable vertices, etc is already making it look twice as good before you do anything else.

>When I saw screenshots for Legend of Mana, I decided fuck Nintendo
Sounds like you just wanted 2D games

>>4112473
World Driver Championship technically speaking looks better than anything on PS1 thought it's art style is inferior to say R4. Even Turok 2 looks better than anything on PS1 though it's framerate is slow. Shadow Man and Rush 2049 look better than anything on PS1. Once again, technical speaking rather than art style.

>>4112638
Nope, just means it's Free DLC.

>>4112556
Old Sega trick.

>>4112659
>far more advanced
marginally improved at best

>Cleaning up the image quality with stable vertices, etc is already making it look twice as good before you do anything else
An advantage which was then squandered with the addition of the ever present bilinear filtering that makes it look like somebody smeared vaseline all over the screen.

A lack of space for high quality music, cut scenes and generally lavish presentation was also a big deal and made N64 games look barebones, bland and 2nd class.

>Sounds like you just wanted 2D games
Not just 2D games but fuck yeah I wanted more and prettier 2D games in that generation, especially for genres were it makes sense. Fuck Nintendo for giving 2D the cold shoulder so hard. Inb4 muh Mischief Makers.

>>4112884
>marginally improved at best
Alright let's put this to the fucking test. Two boss arenas.

>>4112884
>>4112890
and here's the so-called "marginal improvement"

>with the addition of the ever present bilinear filtering that makes it look like somebody smeared vaseline all over the screen
Confirmed for not knowing what bilinear filtering does. The "vaseline" on the screen is actually aggressive dither filtering - the same thing early 3dfx PC cards did.

>>4103578
>WE HAD THE GAMES

just fuck off. Saturn was THE orginal "no games"

>>4112890
>>4112894
Nigga, please. Conker was released long after the PS2 came out. It's arguably the best looking N64 game by far, yet not at all indicative of the general quality of games on that console.

I don't know what you mean by dither filter. I'm not aware of any N64 games that make use of a lot of dithering that would need to be filtered. Do you per chance mean the pixelated low resolution textures that had to be used because of the lack of space? They are not dithered, they are just pixelated because of the low resolution.

Bilinear filtering makes shit blurry, that's what it does. If you think it does not, please let me know what you think it does do instead. That should be funny. Maybe you have it confused with anisotropic filtering which makes shit less blurry when viewed at an angle in game.

>>4103758
>things nobody wanted or cared about

Remember: there is only reality.

>>4112890
>>4112894

>>4103807
>cheap

Do we really have to go through this every thread? NOBODY wanted another Arcade console

>>4104029
>3rd party bribing

Nah they just didn't treat them like peices of shit

>>4104405
Oh yeah sorry;
>Nintendo's fans deserve everything they get

They will eat up those flops too.

>>4112943
>yet not at all indicative of the general quality of games on that console
But that wasn't your argument. You were saying that improvement was impossible due to the hardware/cartridges.

>I'm not aware of any N64 games that make use of a lot of dithering that would need to be filtered
Oh, so I guess you really don't know what you're talking about. Almost every N64 game (and Saturn and PS1 for that matter) uses a 16-bit framebuffer which is inherently prone to mach banding / dithering artifacts. A dither filter is required to remove these artifacts. Both PS1 and Saturn do dither filtering, but the N64's filtering is much more aggressive and thorough. This causes blur though because the colors are blended with each other to prevent clearly demarcated mach bands from appearing.

>Bilinear filtering makes shit blurry, that's what it does. If you think it does not, please let me know what you think it does do instead
It does make textures a little blurrier but only a little bit. Pic related.

Your images on the other hand, including the one here >>4112947
look like textures which have had their UV / tiling / mipmap coordinates incorrectly set by shitty N64 emulation.

The other thing to remember is that many N64 textures were pre-filtered to counteract the "rupee" triangulation artifact of N64's unique 3-sample bilinear filtering. N64 emulators use 4-sample bilinear filtering so their filtering doesn't play well with the pre-filtered N64 texture.

>>4112581
>>4112558

Fucking hell guys wat? Prehaps you are too young to remember how arrogant Nintendo tereated both large corners of the globe and 3rd party devs. Don't be mad that people choose what they want. One minute it's:
>PlayStation has no character
And next minute it's:
>people only like the concept of PlayStation because of heavy bran marketing! N-nintendo could have done that too, but they don't have a n ego to proove! Baka!

>>4112965
>You were saying that improvement was impossible due to the hardware/cartridges.
I said that the graphical improvement over the lifespan of the console wasn't very pronounced and I stand by that. Conker is an extreme outlier, no other N64 game looks that good and it came out at the very tail end of the generation, almost a year after the PS2 was released and only a few months before the gamecube was released. I mean come on.

>dithering artifacts
Oh, I thought you were talking about intentional dithering.

>It does make textures a little blurrier but only a little bit. Pic related.
I'd say it's a lot. It's especially bad with low resolution textures because there's more filtering to be done and so the blur becomes much more intense too. I don't mind some pixelation but I find the extreme smear and blur to be personally utterly disgusting.

Anyway, thanks for explaining in more detail why N64 graphics are such a blurry, disgusting mess but bilinear filtering is still partly to blame. I'm not very well versed in technical details but I thought the frame buffer was used to prevent the distortion of polygons only and didn't have an effect on textures.

Do you play any Doom source ports? When you turn on bilinear filtering, the results are staggeringly intense. It's super noticeable and extremely ugly. It makes the game look exactly like a N64 game lol.

>>4111882
Saturn can't do alpha.

>>4112965
Also, don't talk to me about emulators. I'm an old man and would never waste my time trying to emulate any N64 games. It's just that emulator shots are all that comes up when you google for screenshots. I vividly remember how extremely blurry and fucking ugly N64 games looked in person on a CRT TV, which only made the blur even more extreme.

When people look at PSX games now, they tend to forget or simply don't know about CRT TVs, which made PSX games' pixelation far less of an issue, actually made them look really good in my opinion but only made shit worse for N64 which was just bur upon blur and a side of blur with extra blur to go.

>>4113003
>It's especially bad with low resolution textures because there's more filtering to be done
???
As said, I don't think you know how bilinear texture filtering works. It's not like modern "smart" algorithms which produce complex blur effects with pixel shaders. Except for photoshop, emulator filters, or special effect scenes in modern games, nobody uses that for texture filtering.

On N64 it's something like this: For every pixel to be drawn fetch the three texels nearest to that pixel and linearly interpolate their colors to produce the final color. For PC GPUs it's exactly the same, except it fetches the four nearest texels. Whether the texture is 64x64 or 1024x1024 the algorithm is exactly the same.

>but bilinear filtering is still partly to blame
Not really. Low texture resolution is the ultimate culprit in any case, rather than the filtering. Even your OoT picture above demonstrates how nasty low-res textures would look without any filtering whatsoever.

The other culprit for N64's blur (other than dither filter) is that the console does some weird horizontal upscaling of the final image from 320x240 to 640x240 for some reason. HDMI/RGB mod can reverse this scaling and the improvement is immediately obvious.

>Do you play any Doom source ports? When you turn on bilinear filtering, the results are staggeringly intense. It's super noticeable and extremely ugly.
I'd argue this is partly psychological (i.e. you don't like it because it looks different from your preconception of how Doom should look) and partly technical. Doom was designed to be unfiltered so many textures are comprised of straight uniform lines which work well with unfiltered and don't work well with filtered. However, for your typical arbitrarily drawn texture filtered is much better.

>>4113021
>The other culprit for N64's blur (other than dither filter) is that the console does some weird horizontal upscaling of the final image from 320x240 to 640x240 for some reason. HDMI/RGB mod can reverse this scaling and the improvement is immediately obvious.
Why, how?

>>4113009
>which made PSX games' pixelation far less of an issue, actually made them look really good in my opinion but only made shit worse for N64 which was just bur upon blur and a side of blur with extra blur to go.
Quite the opposite, in fact. Blur isn't added on top of blur. It's not additive - that's not how it works. CRT inherently has blur in the way it displays, which means that N64's blur isn't particularly visible over CRT's display method. Arguably N64's internal scaling (which is a prime culprit from creating blur) works quite well with CRTs too - it was designed specifically for them.

>>4113026
IIRC Nintendo was worried that low-quality no-name CRTs that soccer moms buy from the Walmart bargain bin wouldn't be able to sync properly at 320x240 and would produce some kind of display artifacts. Obviously 2D games also ran at 320x240, but Nintendo was worried that those artifacts would be more obvious in 3D games than 2D games so every standard-res game is scaled to 640x240 to get around it.

The scaling works through some dumb linedoubling algorithm which blends the horizontal lines together in a really simple way. So dumb in fact that the HDMI/RGB mod can actually reverse to algorithm to restore the lines to their original non-scaled form. I'm guessing Nintendo/SGI threw in that scaling in that last minute during the QA process or something when the console's graphics displayed some kind of funny visual errors on shitty TVs.

>>4113037
What does horizontal resolution have to do with being unable to sync? I don't understand at all.

>>4113038
I have no idea. I'm not a CRT expert, but maybe cheap CRTs aren't very flexible in what resolutions they can display correctly.

>>4113048
As I understand it, a CRT doesn't understand discrete pixels at all, it just knows about lines and fields thanks to hsync and vsync.

>>4113021
>???
The lower res the original texture is, the more severe the blur effect is. I don't know why in technical terms but that is the observable fact of it. The more the pixels have to be enlarged, the more they are blurred. Makes perfect sense to me. If there's more pixels to work with, more of the original texture is retained. If a tiny texture with very few pixels has to be blown up, then the result is a complete blurry mess because the gaps that have to be bridged are huge.

>I'd argue this is partly psychological (i.e. you don't like it because it looks different from your preconception of how Doom should look) and partly technical.
The extreme blurring is entirely technical. My dislike for it is entirely subjective and personal preference. Nothing psychological about it though. It has nothing to do with any preconceived notion, you pompous, assumptions twat.

I have no qualms accepting that some people like their shit to look blurred but don't tell me it's not blurred. It's fine if you like it but it is what it is. Hell, if you like blurred graphics, of course you're gonna love N64 and think it's way prettier than anything on the PSX.

>Doom was designed to be unfiltered so many textures are comprised of straight uniform lines which work well with unfiltered and don't work well with filtered.
Lines? What lines? It's squares, blocky, blown up pixels. What lines? Also, Doom looks great on a CRT TV with slight blur and scanlines for added texture. Much better than on a PC monitor because it's so crisp that the pixelation is too sharp and very visible.

>However, for your typical arbitrarily drawn texture filtered is much better.
Of course a texture with more information, that is less blocky to begin with, is going to end up much less smeared.

>>4113021
>Low texture resolution is the ultimate culprit in any case, rather than the filtering. Even your OoT picture above demonstrates how nasty low-res textures would look without any filtering whatsoever.

Well, yes of course. That's coming back to the hardware limitations of the storage medium Nintendo chose. Of course extremely low res textures look ugly no matter what. My point is that the blur filters is like putting lipstick on a dog, it makes a difference but not an improvement.

>>4113031
>which means that N64's blur isn't particularly visible over CRT's display method

This is absolute bullshit. It is very visible. It's painfully visible. I couldn't disagree more strongly with you here. If you've actually seen N64 games, in person, on a CRT and still make that statement, there's no point in further arguing with you because our perceptions of reality are simply not matching and discussion is pointless because you live in a different world from me.

>>4104278
It was a bit of both. Sega could have continued for a full generation, but the suits simply found dropping R&D to be more profitable.

>>4113054
Yeah but more rows of pixels = more lines and vica versa. As I said, I don't know the real reason why N64 does that scaling, but it's a fact that it does it. My memory is based on what I heard some former N64 developers say was the reason some time ago.

>I don't know why in technical terms but that is the observable fact of it. The more the pixels have to be enlarged, the more they are blurred. Makes perfect sense to me
What you think makes sense to you has no relation to the filtering algorithm which does not work that way.

>If there's more pixels to work with, more of the original texture is retained
That's true whether the texture is filtered or unfiltered. Nearest neighbor (aka unfiltered) is based on the same "for every pixel fetch the nearest texel" principle as bilinear filtering except instead of three of four nearest texels being fetched unfiltered only fetches one near texel.

>Lines? What lines? It's squares, blocky, blown up pixels. What lines?
Basically the closer a texture gets to something that could be *easily* turned into a vector graphic (as opposed to a raster graphic) the better it will work without filtering. A good example is rows of bricks since they are comprised of rectangles and uniform lines of mortar.

>>4113064
Obviously it's going to be fucking blurry on a CRT, the games don't run at 640x480. Most CRTs don't even display a resolution beyond that. In the modern day that's very low-res. So yes, in an objective contemporary sense the N64 is blurry.

However compared to PS1, the N64 is not considerably more blurry on a CRT. Particularly on a low quality composhit CRT. You would essentially get all of the advantages without any disadvantages since you'd get copious blur anyway.

>>4113096
>However compared to PS1, the N64 is not considerably more blurry on a CRT.
The textures are considerably more blurry. The raw PSX output is very pixelated and benefits from the slight blurring effects the CRT does, in the same way that pixelated 2D games from previous generations benefit from a CRT.

>Particularly on a low quality composhit CRT.
I wouldn't know, I never had one of those.

>You would essentially get all of the advantages without any disadvantages since you'd get copious blur anyway.
Composite blur is that bad? I guess that might be a reason why burgers love the N64 so much. I see your point.

>>4113108
>The textures are considerably more blurry
That's due to lower resolution, not filtering. And it really depends on the game. The textures in games by good developers (e.g. Rare) games generally aren't any lower than PS1, and are in some places actually higher.

>Composite blur is that bad? I guess that might be a reason why burgers love the N64 so much. I see your point.
...As mentioned above, the console was designed for the lowest common denominator television. I would have preferred if Nintendo allowed users to adjust the console's display settings (particularly to turn off that scaling at will) but I guess they thought it would be too complicated and "PC-like" so whatever. Thankfully these days with HDMI/RGB you can completely reverse that scaling. And if you really love dither there are Gameshark codes which turn off the dither filter.

>>4113114
What are you talking about when you say dithering? I never knew of it as some effect to be avoided. When I hear dithering, I think of intentional dithering, used to artificially expand the limited amount of colors available.

>>4113119
5th gen consoles couldn't do real 32 bit color rendering, so they rendered in 16 bit colors and faked the missing colors through algorithm generated dithering

>>4113119
The N64 does what you call "intentional dithering" by weaving a dither pattern through the 15-bit image. However, it also goes a step further by attempting to hide this dither pattern. That's where most of the blur comes in.

Rayman 2 on N64 has a Normal and Sharp mode settings in normal-res mode. The latter demonstrates dithering without the console's attempt to hide the patterns, so you can basically see a grid like pattern across the screen.

>>4113123
> However, it also goes a step further by attempting to hide this dither pattern
Jesus Christ Nintendo is fucking retarded.

>>4113121
This didn't show up like that on a CRT though. This is like the waterfall in Sonic. You don't see any individual pixels from the dithering, unless you are like three feet away from the screen maybe. But when you sit on the couch and look at it, there's just fog, not floating pixels. It's an optical illusion that only works with CRT monitors but it does work.

well, this thread turned into one of the worst sony vs nintendo threads on /vr/ in a long while, congrats console warriors! but /v/ is that way.

>>4112938
>>4112946
>>4112949
>>4112951
>>4112959
>>4112972
Samesonyfag

>>4113141
>Jesus Christ Nintendo is fucking retarded.
It hides it by trying to simulate how a CRT would blur it together. Note it doesn't remove the pattern entirely, just makes it much less obvious. When playing Rayman 2 on the Sharp setting you can quite clearly see the pattern, much like you can on many PS1 games.

>>4113165
You've got three levels of blur plus the natural CRT blur. It's like Nintendo was trying to create the ultimate blur console. Low res textures combined with bilinear filtering blur, completely unnecessary dither removal blur and retarded last minute resolution scaling blur. I never knew just how deep the blur went. I was wrong to blame it all on just the bilinear filtering but that doesn't make the end result any less smudged looking.

I hope we can all agree that N64 produced extreme blurring. While the like or dislike for that effect is of course highly subjective, the fact that it exists and is extremely severe is an objective truth, an undeniable fact. I don't care too much about how it came to be but it's there and I for one absolutely hate how it looks. Thanks for explaining all those technical details though.

>>4113184

>>4113184
To me it doesn't look all that exaggeratedly blurry on a CRT, the problem is when you try to play N64 on a modern screen that can't display at 240p.

>>4113184
As mentioned, blur isn't additive like that. Shitty CRTs don't make blurry things blurrier - everything is pretty much equally blurry.

With the N64 Nintendo very clearly aimed the console's video output capabilities squarely at your typical normy who used composhit, and for them since everything was blurry, at least the N64 produced an image that was entirely free from visual "defects" that particularly plagued the PS1.

By the way that dither filter (including pattern hiding) was done on 3dfx cards too, which is why some people (at least these days) complain that the output of those Voodoo cards are a little blurry too.

>>4113205
Just let him hate on the N64, he seems to be enjoying it.

>>4113184
>Thanks for explaining all those technical details
>doesn't actually understand how they work at all

>>4113205
It's not a CRT doing it, it's the shitty composite cable that does. Of course everything looks like shit if you put it through a lossy connector.

>squarely at your typical normy* who used composhit
* in the USA

I don't think N64 or PSX even came with a composite cable in Europe, it was only scart and RGB if I recall correctly.

>>4113214
I thought I got the gist of it. What is it that you think I fail to understand?

>>4113216
>t's not a CRT doing it, it's the shitty composite cable that does. Of course everything looks like shit if you put it through a lossy connector.
It's both. Remember that all computer monitors (CRTs) used VGA in the past but there was a big difference in quality between good ones and bad ones.

Also shitty CRT TVs usually only had composite anyway.

> in Europe, it was only scart and RGB if I recall correctly.
N64 doesn't support RGB at all (without mods) so it would have been composite/s-video over the SCART plug at best.

>>4112659
>What hardware bugs are you talking about?

The one where it can't draw a polygon bigger than 4x4.

>>4113298
But that's literally the opposite of reality. It's the PS1 which can't draw large polygons without shitting itself due to its low precision triangle setup.

>>4112972
>Fucking hell guys wat? Prehaps you are too young to remember how arrogant Nintendo tereated both large corners of the globe and 3rd party devs.

That reminds me of an old anecdote. A local gaming mag got N64 apologist kids writing angry letters to them all the time about why they only write about 2-3 n64 games a month at most. The magazine was also running a videogame shop chain, so their editor shared a little detail about how Nintendo treated their buyers.

When the Zelda game came out (it got 99% in the magazine from what I recall), the editor specifically said that it was better than damn near everything on the Playstation, but Nintendo in their infinite wisdom sent a total of 12 carts for the ENTIRE COUNTRY, of which they, their best buyers, got 6. This was back when internet shopping was nonexistant over here, so if it was up to them, only 6 people would have the chance to play Ocarina of Time in the entire country.

>>4113121
>5th gen consoles couldn't do real 32 bit color rendering,

Neither could 6th or 7th gen consoles. I think PCs today can finally do 10-bit components which means 30-bit rendering but iirc it is only used in professional software, not games.

Maybe you should make sure you got your terms right before you argue technical details like that.

>>4113306
>It's the PS1 which can't draw large polygons

PS1 can draw a maximum 1023x511 textured polygon, or whatever is the largest you can fit into vram, or the framebuffer, whichever comes first.

>>4113312
I'm fairy sure by 32-bit color he means 8-bit per color plus 8-bit alpha.

The PS2 and Xbox could do it, though it was far more frequent with the latter. Dreamcast did the world's finest 16-bit framebuffers (probably only 16-bit color based GPU ever to dither alpha properly), and Gamecube did 24-bit.

>>4113312
I messed up my technical terms, I meant 32 bit color like how windows does it with desktop resolutions. What' the correct terminology for this shit?

>>4113312
Not him but I'm faaaaairly sure Quake 2 on the Nintendo 64 boasted about doing real 24 bit color rendering with an expansion pack.

>>4113318
>PS1 can draw a maximum 1023x511 textured polygon
You mean, texture, not polygon. N64 can also draw a polygon that large, but it can't texture that large.

The real issue is that if you draw really large texture polygons on PS1, you will get affine texture distortion from hell on it. Also due to the low precision triangle setup, you will get really nasty visual glitches if you try to make up a scene with large polygons. N64 won't suffer from this issue - you can make large landscapes out of big polygons and they won't fuck up.

Also the N64's texture size limit isn't a bug. It's more of a band-aid solution for the N64's single channel memory...

>>4113331
>but it can't texture that large.

Then what's the fucking point.

>>4113321
Color depth

>>4113354
Thanks!

>>4113354
You should've known he was talking about Color Depth not Color Rendering when he mentioned 32 and 16 bit Mr smartypants. Completely out different context from 10 bit and 30 bit rendering.

>>4113343
You don't need polygons that large unless they are far away like a landscape. And if they are far away in a landscape you'd probably fuck up your memory bandwidth trying to draw textures that large on a 5th gen console anyway.

Even Voodoo 3 could only draw max texture size of 256x256.

>>4113370
>Even Voodoo 3 could only draw max texture size of 256x256.

still 32 times bigger than what the N64 could.

>>4113415
The N64 isn't size restrained per-texture but space restrained. If you make a texture grayscale you can make it fairly large, relatively speaking.

>>4113310
What shithole country was that?