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WHAT SATURN GAME HAD THE BEST GFX
MiChAeLSiRiLl - Apr 5, 2002

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  antime Aug 24, 2002
I'll see your VF2 and raise you Wipeout 3 SE.

 emazur Aug 24, 2002
Or Tekken 3 for that matter. 640*480 res, good use of light source shading/shadows, and great camerawork (especially for throws). FMV is real perty too. 21 characters, sound kicks ass, and I personally find the Tekken series to be much more entertaining than the VF series. But I`m getting off topic here.

I think the Saturn game with the best gfx is Nights. Best graphics for an rpg go to Panzer Saga, and best graphics for a driver go to Sega Rally (though I haven`t played many racers on saturn). VF2 of course looks nice, and was probably better looking than most games when it was first released (I don`t remember but I think Tekken 2 was released around the same time, which only has 320x240 res).

 M3d10n Aug 24, 2002
Tekken 3 is low-res, I ensure you. I've seen it on PSX-based arcade machines (basically, the PSX version reprogrammed to run with tokens), big screen, and there's no way a 640x480 game can be THAT jagged. Also it seems to runs at 30fps (maybe it runs at 60... but the PSX's "parkinson's syndrome" on ANY polygon movement kills the effect of smooth animation). VF2 runs much smoother on my eyes.

Of course, Tekken 3 is... 3, 4 maybe 5 years newer than VF2, and the PSX has more polygons, smoother lighting and transparency effects. Those should be taken in account while comparing graphics between different plataforms.

While Burning Rangers, as an example, might not look as good and smooth as many PSX games, it was on the Saturn, where polygons were more scarce, goraud shading was far more expensive to the CPU, and alpha-blending transparencies were no-existant. I think Sonic Team even used the "Grandia technique"(*) to make it run.

(*) The "Grandia technique", one of the reasons I find Grandia the most technically impressive game on the Saturn, consists in using the Saturn DSP processor (sound operations) to calculate 3D data for the graphics. That's why ALL of the game's music are pre-recorded, instead of real-time synthetized. Same for Burning Rangers.

 antime Aug 25, 2002

  
	
	

		
		

			Originally posted by M3d10n@Aug. 25 2002, 3:29 am



(*) The "Grandia technique", one of the reasons I find Grandia the most technically impressive game on the Saturn, consists in using the Saturn DSP processor (sound operations) to calculate 3D data for the graphics.


The SCU (System Control Unit) has a DSP that was meant to be used for 3D calculations. The sound unit also has a DSP but it is purely for sound effects.

 emazur Aug 25, 2002

  
	
	

		
		

			Originally posted by M3d10n@Aug. 24 2002, 7:29 pm



Tekken 3 is low-res, I ensure you. I've seen it on PSX-based arcade machines (basically, the PSX version reprogrammed to run with tokens), big screen, and there's no way a 640x480 game can be THAT jagged.


I dunno about that. Besides the fact that it looks good, it has the `shimmering effect` that high res games have when played on a normal tv, which gives me reason to think to think it aint 320x240. I did a search on google and found conflicting reports on the resolution, so I`m not sure. One possibility- I believe the psx has a medium high res mode (something like 512x386, or so. I remember reading a game mag a long time ago that said Legacy of Kain 2 used this mode).

 M3d10n Aug 25, 2002
Hmm... now I recall the PSX has an intermediate resolution mode. It has a few extra horizontal lines, I think (320x400? I might test some games on VGS and see what happens), and that explains the shimmering on certain games. But I surely know very, very few games used 640x480 and up on the PSX because it really stress the system (but it was widely used for menus, logos and stuff). As an example, the PSX DOA is 320x240 (but at least they added fancy smooth lighting to make up to that, and to the distort-fest arenas).

But there is Wipeout 3's special hi-res mode. Never player it, but people say it looks good. God knows what kind of trickery they had to do in order to get that working.

 Koralsky Aug 25, 2002
Average PSX resolution is 320x240. Games like Soul Reaver and Tomb Raider 5 run in 512x240. Tekken 3 run in 320x240 with 30 FPS. VF2- 640x480 and 60 FPS. Tekken have very nice lighting that VF2 has not. That is why Tekken 3 looks maybe more good in graphic departament than VF2, but form the tehnical point of view VF2 Saturn blows Tekken 3 for PSX.

 Daniel Eriksson Aug 26, 2002
Ok, VF2 might not have light-sourcing, but Fighters Megamix has, and it looks way better than Tekken 3, also, Fighters Megamix has more caracters, arenas and options. Actually, Fighters Megamix blow Tekken 3 away totally in my opinion.

 DBOY Aug 27, 2002
Megamix is definitly my favorite 3D fighter.

 emazur Aug 27, 2002
Megamix looks better than Tekken 3? No way! The characters in Megamix are so blocky and pixelated compared to Tekken 3 (and any other 3d fighter I`ve played) , and I consider Tekken`s textures and backgrounds to be far more interesting and better looking. I`m not sure what the big deal is with the lighting. In Tekken 3 there are spotlights that follow the characters, shadows, and lights from the sparks that appear when you hit someone. It`s nice but I don`t think it makes much difference. As for 60 vs 30 fps, I personally don`t think it makes a difference with games on a 2d plane (such as fighters), though it helps big time with games played from the first perspective (such as racers and fps games).

 fivefeet8 Aug 28, 2002

  
	
	

		
		

			Originally posted by emazur@Aug. 27 2002, 9:06 am



As for 60 vs 30 fps, I personally don`t think it makes a difference with games on a 2d plane (such as fighters),


I think it makes a lot of difference.. Tekken 3 runs at 320x240 at 60fps.. You can tell the difference between 30 fps and 60 fps quite clearly.. 60 fps is just soo much smoother.. I agree though, that VF 2 still wins tekken 3 because it was able to run 60 fps and still be at a higher resolution..

Grandia is legendary..

 Vash Aug 29, 2002
want to see a great psx game? Play this Star Trek simulation thingy, which came out last year or so, dunno the name anymore but it really surprised me, thought my neighbour bought a PS2 at first but no, PS1 at it´s limit.

And hey, I live in PAL-land so 50fps will do for me ;-) Never experienced that "parkinson problem" with the PSX though. Care to explain? All movement in any 3D-game I played was very smooth, although you can clearly see that the movements in Tobal2 are by far more fluid than in any other PSX fighting game.

 M3d10n Aug 29, 2002
Never came to your attention that, in 80% of the 3D games in the PSX, the polygons keep shaking when they move? It's less obivous on camera movement (but it happens EVEN on camera movement on certain games), but it happen often when things are animated.

It's like if the polygon vertices were snapping to some sort of grid or something when they move... of course some games manage to avoid that (strangely, many first generation games doesn't have this problem), and in some games it is worse than others (see Alundra 2). I noticed it even in the PSX Grandia (but it doesn't happen often)

It almost seem like the PSX has something like a "variable 3D coordinate accuracy" that the developers can increase/decrease.

 Vash Aug 29, 2002
nah, they just pass on the Z-Buffer, that causes most of the problems (most obvious when you play R-Type Delta on an emulator with 3D-Glasses, the triangular shield seems to be completely in front of your craft).

Shaking polygons? I have yet to encounter these whether on a real PSX or on an emulator. As I said, sometimes polygons near the player perspective get warped, but this is due to skipped perspective correction calculations, for god´s sake, that thing only has 3 megs of ram or so.

Or do you mean shaking textures instead of polygons? That´s a completely different story, but most problems like this are again caused by a lack of perspective correction algorithms. Look at the road in GT p.ex, the edges seem to "jump" a bit when you move from side to side, also at the lower end of the screen it gets bent towards the sides, that´s what I mean. Many Saturn racing games I know used untextured polygons for the road so it´s less obvious there.

 antime Aug 29, 2002

  
	
	

		
		

			Originally posted by Vash@Aug. 29 2002, 2:28 pm



nah, they just pass on the Z-Buffer, that causes most of the problems


Like the Saturn, the Playstation has no Z-buffer. Most of these problems are due to insufficient accuracy in the transformation calculations, like you said. IIRC the GTE of the PSX has some inaccuracies that some games correct but others don't bother or can't afford it. The lack of perspective-correct texture mapping is mostly due to the hardware not supporting it, but again some games attempt to hide it with varying success.

 Vash Aug 30, 2002
well, one "could" always fix things like a Z-buffer and perspective correction in software, but the engine would probably be slow and there would not be much memory left for other tasks on these machines. Plus, you probably won´t notice on a kids room tv

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