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[Italia64]

The animation alone has nothing to do with power. That was your argument. Synchronization of lips and speech is just dedication from the devs.

Animations has a lot to do with power. Or you believe that Conker's individual fingers animations or lip synch are just dev's dedication?

You know how many polys you have to add to the character if you want that level of lip or fingers animation? This is why Conker charachter is so poly intense.

But this is just a small example. In your opinion why you have very good animations in PS1 fighting games but very bad in sport games?

Come on guys

 

[Sayad]

And you're saying that Conker is possible for PS1? Come on please.

Nope, you're just imagining things now!

 

[Toadthemushroom]

Yeah, the Takeda quote about cruising speed is a good one - very reminiscent of the PS3. Peak performance on both N64 and PS3 led to extremely impressive results, but the games that achieved that ran in the dozens. I guess because of the N64's very specific third party support you could say a fairly large proportion of titles actually achieved great results out of the whole, but the whole would have been larger if Nintendo focused on cruising speed (and went with optical media).

This quote from an N64 Magazine interview with Nintendo EAD programmer Giles Goddard (now head of Vitei) is good:

[Asked something about graphics]
The thing about the N64 was that it wasn’t particularly fast. SGI said that the ‘quality of our pixels are much better than anyone else’s’. Not a lot of people got that – for every pixel it drew, it put a lot of time and effort into it. They were nice pixels. Nicely-textured, nicely-coloured, nicely-lit, nicely anti-aliased. The PlayStation, speed-wise it was much faster, but the pixels were dreadful, there was no texturing, anti-aliasing. Blindingly fast, but the pixels just looked crap. That was SGI aimed for from the outset – the ‘Reality System’ graphics pipeline for Onyx and the Indy stuff – they were trying to compress that all down into the N64, and did a really good job. Quality of pixels over speed.

N64 definitely focused on things that matter for image quality in 3D games and from the 3D graphics themselves, though the lack of optical media (and the texture cache) was a double-edged sword in some games, as asset quality could be compromised. Only developers with superb knowledge of the hardware made it past these limitations and produced all-round impressive titles.

 

[Toadthemushroom]

Spyro did use lips sync with actual character models in a more open game, but being on inferior hardware, this was just way too much more work to do on PS1. Either way I mentioned that they cheated their way through with a lot of this, Crash cheated with facial animation, but lip sync is matching animation with voices, regardless of which had better models, lip sync was more accurate in Crash.

Yeah, I remember that. I just think the comparison was always missing the point in both cases with Conker and Crash, it wasn't about whether the system can independently achieve effects (or in the case of Crash, use design tricks to create them), but the focus should be on the N64's ability to do them in what were very ambitious games for the era.

 

[Italia64]

Yeah, the Takeda quote about cruising speed is a good one - very reminiscent of the PS3. Peak performance on both N64 and PS3 led to extremely impressive results, but the games that achieved that ran in the dozens. I guess because of the N64's very specific third party support you could say a fairly large proportion of titles actually achieved great results out of the whole, but the whole would have been larger if Nintendo focused on cruising speed (and went with optical media).

This quote from an N64 Magazine interview with Nintendo EAD programmer Giles Goddard (now head of Vitei) is good:



N64 definitely focused on things that matter for image quality in 3D games and from the 3D graphics themselves, though the lack of optical media (and the texture cache) was a double-edged sword in some games, as asset quality could be compromised. Only developers with superb knowledge of the hardware made it past these limitations and produced all-round impressive titles.

Right, I think that outside Rare, Iguana, Factor 5 and Boss Studio very rarely we saw some games that really show that N64 superiority. In most cases it was the contrary, escpecially when N64 games were low polys, foggy and blurry.

N64 wasn't an easy machine where develop games.

 

[CaseyTappy]

In the end I liked both the fog machine and the jag master as they both had their strong and weak points .
What I do remember was that I was blown away by the Playstation on launch with Wipeout and a monster truck race game and the grave disappointment I felt after that when I played Turok and some god awful rally game on the N64 launch, but also how that soon changed with Mario 64 .

 

[Italia64]

Yeah, I remember that. I just think the comparison was always missing the point in both cases with Conker and Crash, it wasn't about whether the system can independently achieve effects (or in the case of Crash, use design tricks to create them), but the focus should be on the N64's ability to do them in what were very ambitious games for the era.

Right

On PS1 you can do almost every effect (Terracon proves it), but of course not all in the same time and quality of Conker. This was the meaning of my list. I didn't want to say that PS can't do lip synch, it's plenty of PS games with that.

I hope now my point is more clear. On Conker not only you have the best features in terms of quality, but you also have them running on screen at the same time in fully explorable 3D worlds.

For example watch this video (especially in the Matrix-like section).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOJcJpBvfYA

Not to mention the wonderful mirror real-time reflexes.

 

[Sayad]

Animations has a lot to do with powers. Or you believe that Conker's individual fingers animations or lip synch are just dev's dedication?

You know how many polys you have to add to the character if you want that level of lip or fingers animation? This is why Conker charachter is so poly intense.

But this is just a small example. In your opinion why you have very good animations in PS1 fighting games but very bad in sport games?

Come on guys

Wow, you're missing the point again, lip sync is matching voice with lip movement, it's more about synchronization, you could still have more accurate synchronization with a sprite mouth pasted on a flat face than a moth with several thousand polygons!

The C3 lip sync I posted here for example:

Yep, C3's lip sync is just better: https://youtu.be/sHH9TgawtME?t=2m15s

Is way more accurate than SFV's story mode lip sync despite SFV boosting much more complex models and animation:
https://youtu.be/K_3XCypxmCY?t=26m55s

 

[adamsapple]

I'm sorry, I don't really have anything to contribute to this topic but I love when GAF has topics like this which compare old systems. Really fascinating stuff seeing how well PS and N64 games compare to each other.

I never owned an N64, only a PSX but surprised to see how 'clean' and aliasing free some N64 shots in this topic look, provided they're not all emulated shots. Something about those grungy 240p PSX shots is really memorable though. Games like Metal Gear and Vagrant Story were mind blowing back in the day.

 

[jabberwocker]

Oddly the weakest part of both systems became the deciding factor in which one did better.. cds had an abundance of storage but were horrible to load for the PSx, whereas n64 had great load time but no storage.. oddly we are at a time where both companies are back to the same type of formats as before although improved.

 

[adamsapple]

Oddly the weakest part of both systems became the deciding factor in which one did better.. cds had an abundance of storage but were horrible to load for the PSx, whereas n64 had great load time but no storage.. oddly we are at a time where both companies are back to the same type of formats as before although improved.

Well .. both PS4 and XB1 actually copy all the content to the HDDs now, so there's little to no streaming going on from the discs outside of straight up copying the content. It's not exactly 1 : 1 but I imagine flash carts are still going to be faster than an average spinning HDD (these new consoles don't exactly utilize SSDs).

 

[Italia64]

Wow, you're missing the point again, lip sync is matching voice with lip movement, it's more about synchronization, you could still have more accurate synchronization with a sprite mouth pasted on a flat face than a moth with several thousand polygons!

The C3 lip sync I posted here for example:


Is way more accurate than SFV's story mode lip sync despite SFV boosting much more complex models and animation:
https://youtu.be/K_3XCypxmCY?t=26m55s

I'm judging things from a graphical standpoint. I'm not talking about a just merely synchronisation aspect. I'm talking about the whole lip synch package in Conker. I thought this was pretty obvious.

So completely polygonal, various degrees of movements, conker close the mouth hiding the theets or keeping the theets outside, he moves the lips in a lot of ways and all perfectly match with the words said. All with actual game engine when the engine is calculating much more things.

Talking about features that stay on screen alone is pointless. It's like to praise the Rareware logo when you turn on Perfect Dark. It has tons of polys and the textures are so good that you can see stuff like that in modern consoles. But what's the point?

I personally never seen a lip synch better than Conker on PS1. But maybe my english is not good enough to let you understand what I mean.

So I link you this video in order to show what is a good lip synch on PS1, with engine graphics, not 2D and with all the enviroment on screen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOJcJpBvfYA

 

[MikeHaggar]

It's obvious spec-wise that the N64 is the more powerful box. Devs did some really impressive things on the PSX though. One thing to consider is the support that the PSX had compared to the N64. If it were reversed, and the N64 had the support that the PSX had, imagine what types of the results devs would have gotten out of the machine. I'd imagine we would have seem some really impressive stuff (more impressive than anything ever released) that just wouldn't have been possible on PSX. The N64 simply didn't have anywhere near as many devs trying to squeeze every lost ounce of performance out it.

 

[M3d10n]

Italia64, I would refrain from listing "transparencies" as one of the "superior" N64 features. The N64 didn't support additive blending, only alpha-blending, which is not really suitable for "bright" effects like fire, lasers, light rays/shafts/halos and the like. Something like the Final Fantasy summons and magic spells would look subpar on it.

 

[jabberwocker]

Well .. both PS4 and XB1 actually copy all the content to the HDDs now, so there's little to no streaming going on from the discs outside of straight up copying the content. It's not exactly 1 : 1 but I imagine flash carts are still going to be faster than an average spinning HDD (these new consoles don't exactly utilize SSDs).

I was just really making a note that it's funny that it's come full circle. Obviously it's much different now as they both use different technology and we have downloadable content and storage capacity's that are built in.

 

[Tain]

I never owned an N64, only a PSX but surprised to see how 'clean' and aliasing free some N64 shots in this topic look, provided they're not all emulated shots.

They are mostly emulated shots.

 

[Italia64]

Italia64, I would refrain from listing "transparencies" as one of the "superior" N64 features. The N64 didn't support additive blending, only alpha-blending, which is not really suitable for "bright" effects like fire, lasers, light rays/shafts/halos and the like. Something like the Final Fantasy summons and magic spells would look subpar on it.

Watch this video entirely
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OLTbS27oIU

If we wants to talk about impressive graphical features from a graphical standpoint we should list stuff like Soul Reaver. It may looks less impressive than FFVII battles, but at least all its features are hardcore stuff in fully esplorable 3D worlds.

 

[M3d10n]

It's obvious spec-wise that the N64 is the more powerful box. Devs did some really impressive things on the PSX though. One thing to consider is the support that the PSX had compared to the N64. If it were reversed, and the N64 had the support that the PSX had, imagine what types of the results devs would have gotten out of the machine. I'd imagine we would have seem some really impressive stuff (more impressive than anything ever released) that just wouldn't have been possible on PSX. The N64 simply didn't have anywhere near as many devs trying to squeeze every lost ounce of performance out it.

Storage would still limit a lot of what devs could do. For example, Crash Bandicoot used a streaming technique that allowed it to use pre-computed polygon sorting and visibility culling. One can only imagine the crazy visuals one could do on the N64 using a similar technique due to to texture filtering and higher polygon throughput (using custom/fast microcode), but alas, it would never fit a N64 cartridge because it caused each level to be a few megabytes each, some pushing over 10MBs.

You can bring Resident Evil 2 as an example of compression, but remember that a large chunk of the development time of the port was spent in compressing the game to fit into 64MBs. Not everyone would be willing to spent that much money getting around storage limitations.

Watch this video entirely
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OLTbS27oIU

If we wants to talk about impressive graphical features from a graphical standpoint we should list stuff like Soul Reaver. It may looks less impressive than FFVII battles, but at least all its features are hardcore stuff in fully esplorable 3D worlds.

That's a terrible video, why not use a direct feed? 

Also, what's that to do with anything? I'm stating a fact: the N64 cannot do additive blending. Additive blending is crucial for the visuals of things like the FF summons due to the way it causes the underlying pixels to go brighter as they accumulate, ergo, they would look worse on the N64 because you cannot reproduce those effects with alpha-blending alone.

You can verify this by looking at the DS remakes of FF3 and FF4: the DS also can only do alpha blending, no additive, and the summons/spells are more subdued as a result. They don't go anywhere as near as crazy with the particles/beams/flames: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJz8Di8VCTA (this is the iOS version, but the assets and effects are identical do the DS version)

So no, the N64 cannot do "better" transparencies than the PS1. Posting off-screen potato cam videos of 14" CRT TVs won't change that. Turok 2 has some nice faux-bright effects like the flare bow, but that only works in isolation: if you fire the flare so it overlays other transparencies like flames, you see the effect break apart.

 

[Lord Error]

Had no idea ERP was a programmer on WDC. That's one of the more mind blowing factoids in this thread!

 

[Celine]

For example, Crash Bandicoot used a streaming technique that allowed it to use pre-computed polygon sorting and visibility culling. One can only imagine the crazy visuals one could do on the N64 using a similar technique due to to texture filtering and higher polygon throughput (using custom/fast microcode), but alas, it would never fit a N64 cartridge because it caused each level to be a few megabytes each, some pushing over 10MBs.

The first console game which I remember used said technique is Crash 'n Burn for 3DO (1993) and it show (compared to other polygonal games for 3DO).

[cut]TV shots don't really help any more than emulator shots do[/cut]

Couldn't care less about the debate with Italia64 and in a way you can see polygons just as well (or better) on an emulated shot but off TV screenshots are always appreciated because they show the authentic look of the games.
All of those games were developed looking at the results on SD CRT TV.

Spoiler

Of course I know you already know it and agree with the above

 

[Italia64]

The CRT is 29".

You wrote is not very suitable for fire so I showed you the amazing Turok 2 completely polygonal and adjustable fire.

I never seen the multilayered transparencies level of Tooie and Conker on PSX.
But on PSX I just played almost all the most important titles and tons of racers. So maybe them exist and I never met them.

Unfortunately I don't have a way to record directly from the hardware. That's why the video I posted.

Luckily soon I will have one. So it will be much easier to show videos in this kind of posts. Now is a bit annoying because I always have to search on YouTube and specify the minute and second, or I have to record using the smartphone.

 

[Italia64]

Had no idea ERP was a programmer on WDC. That's one of the more mind blowing factoids in this thread!

That man is a genius.

And one of the most amazing things of WDC is under the bodycars...The physics.
WDC physics...I absolutely love them, especially with the manual transmission.
The physics system is very advanced and was ten years ahead of its time.

Rob Povey considers it much better than the GT one, but he also respects the GT one because in his opinion they made a great work with what they had.

 

[Lux R7]

Perfect Dark was mind blowing when i was a kid.

 

[Lord Error]

Crash 3 definitely had (much) better lip sync - well full facial animation actually - where Conker had just lip sync. And that was whole three years before Conker, although it was limited to cutscenes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ethGbIkvSoI&feature=youtu.be&t=28m07s

Someone mentioned that Crash 3 had more open levels where you could actually turn the camera around? What did those look like, as I remember the series mostly with a fixed path camera. If there were more open levels like that, they couldn't use their precomputed polygon culling method.

It's weird to think that Jak and Daxter came in the same year as Conker lol. That must have felt like a total wasted effort on Rare's part technologically, when you look at it from that point in time.

 

[Italia64]

The first console game which I remember used said technique is Crash 'n Burn for 3DO (1993) and it show (compared to other polygonal games for 3DO).


Couldn't care less about the debate with Italia64 and in a way you can see polygons just as well (or better) on an emulated shot but off TV screenshots are always appreciated because they show the authentic look of the games.
All of those games were developed looking at the results on SD CRT TV.

Spoiler

Of course I know you already know it and agree with the above

What a pity the CRT quality is not replicable on YouTube. I would love to see on YouTube the same quality I can admire on my CRT.
Even with the best capture systems available the quality is not good enough.

I hope in future things will change.

 

[manueldelalas]

It's obvious spec-wise that the N64 is the more powerful box. Devs did some really impressive things on the PSX though. One thing to consider is the support that the PSX had compared to the N64. If it were reversed, and the N64 had the support that the PSX had, imagine what types of the results devs would have gotten out of the machine. I'd imagine we would have seem some really impressive stuff (more impressive than anything ever released) that just wouldn't have been possible on PSX. The N64 simply didn't have anywhere near as many devs trying to squeeze every lost ounce of performance out it.

Not really, PS1 was by far more powerful, the thing is that the N64 was more modern and had better features.

For example, the PS1 could render much more polygons, but on the N64 you render one big ass polygon on the floor, and you had your open world, this is the reason N64 games had big worlds and PS1 was stuck with small areas.

Polygon warping was another thing N64 solved hardware wise, and on PS1 you had to either solve it manually, get stuck with fixed camera or ignore the problem completely.

Remember that the N64 was cheaper to make than PS1.

In the end, gaming has always been bells, whistles, smokes and mirrors, and Nintendo always understood this. This is the reason Nintendo hardware ALWAYS lack in raw power, but almost always have modern features.

Even PS2 had more raw power in some areas than the powerful GCN.

 

[D.Lo]

Crash 3 definitely had (much) better lip sync - well full facial animation actually - where Conker had just lip sync. And that was whole three years before Conker, although it was limited to cutscenes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ethGbIkvSoI&feature=youtu.be&t=28m07s

It's weird to think that Jak and Daxter came in the same year as Conker lol. That must have felt like a total wasted effort on Rare's part technologically, when you look at it from that point in time.

That's a really dumb thing to say. There's always more powerful hardware. Do you also wonder if Crash 3 and Crash Team Racing felt like a total wasted effort on Naughty Dog's part technologically when they could have been working on N64 or Dreamcast?

 

[r3ddvil]

This thread is 4 years old btw

It's been brought back from the dead, 4 times now..lol.

 

[Italia64]

Crash 3 definitely had (much) better lip sync - well full facial animation actually - where Conker had just lip sync. And that was whole three years before Conker, although it was limited to cutscenes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ethGbIkvSoI&feature=youtu.be&t=28m05s

It's weird to think that Jak and Daxter came in the same year as Conker lol. That must have felt like a total wasted effort on Rare's part technologically, when you look at it from that point in time.

Conker's Was Released in 2001, when several far better graphics was yet available since years.

Rareware staff simply was able to push the best possible graphics of a system, they never thought to produce the best 2001 graphics with a 5th gen hardware. They didn't want to create the best graphics of the 6th generation of course.
But probably they did even that, as many persons consider Conker Live & Reloaded the best graphics of the 6th gen. And Star Fox Adventures is definitely among the best GameCube graphics.

Unluckily we never* saw the graphics that almost surely would been the best of the 5th generation, even better than Conker's Bad Fur Day.

This game:
https://youtu.be/rKFJx-FQ86w

 

[Celine]

Not really, PS1 was by far more powerful, the thing is that the N64 was more modern and had better features.

For example, the PS1 could render much more polygons, but on the N64 you render one big ass polygon on the floor, and you had your open world, this is the reason N64 games had big worlds and PS1 was stuck with small areas.

My guess is that World Driver Championship for N64 is among the SAT/PS1/N64 games with the highest polygon count per second (if not the best).
It wouldn't surprise me if it was more than 100K (around 120K?) per second.

What I would say on the other hand is that PS1 probably had better tools, less bottlenecks and on average bigger disposable development budget than both N64 and Saturn (the latter factor of which is very important because the better talents usually flow where there is more money).

 

[MikeHaggar]

Not really, PS1 was by far more powerful, the thing is that the N64 was more modern and had better features.

For example, the PS1 could render much more polygons, but on the N64 you render one big ass polygon on the floor, and you had your open world, this is the reason N64 games had big worlds and PS1 was stuck with small areas.

Polygon warping was another thing N64 solved hardware wise, and on PS1 you had to either solve it manually, get stuck with fixed camera or ignore the problem completely.

Remember that the N64 was cheaper to make than PS1.

In the end, gaming has always been bells, whistles, smokes and mirrors, and Nintendo always understood this. This is the reason Nintendo hardware ALWAYS lack in raw power, but almost always have modern features.

Even PS2 had more raw power in some areas than the powerful GCN.

I'm not going to argue with anyone in this thread, but this is just wrong. You're also sort of contradicting yourself. The N64 was a more powerful box with a fuller feature-set when it came to 3D graphics.

 

[Italia64]

My guess is that World Driver Championship for N64 is among the SAT/PS1/N64 games with the highest polygon count per second (if not the best).
It wouldn't surprise me if it was more than 100K (around 120K).

What I would say on the other hand is that PS1 probably had better tools, less bottlenecks and on average bigger disposable development budget than both N64 and Saturn (the latter factor of which is very important because the better talents usually flow were there is more money).

This is why WDC still in 2017 amazes me.
They managed to do something with better graphics and physics than GT with a very small team. While GT2 was an AAA production.

Robert Povey personally explained me how this was possible:

"A lot of the right people in the right place at the right time, we had good artists and good engineers. We took a somewhat different tack with the hardware than most, we had enough experience with it to experiment intelligently".

 

[Lord Error]

That's a really dumb thing to say. There's always more powerful hardware. Do you also wonder if Crash 3 and Crash Team Racing felt like a total wasted effort on Naughty Dog's part technologically when they could have been working on N64 or Dreamcast?

I said that with tongue in cheek. But wow I totally forgot Dreamcast came out in 1998. Pushing for the best tech on something that's positively ancient at that point in time, must feel a bit backwards, when your primary job is to be a programmer tasked to do the best possible graphics, lol. It just seems this kind of stuff is far more normalized now.

But probably they did even that, as many persons consider Conker Live & Reloaded the best graphics of the 6th gen.

No, they probably didn't - come on now, lol.
Dinosaur Planet looks completely awesome, wow, I've never seen that video.

 

[TheMagician]

Not really, PS1 was by far more powerful, the thing is that the N64 was more modern and had better features.

For example, the PS1 could render much more polygons, but on the N64 you render one big ass polygon on the floor, and you had your open world, this is the reason N64 games had big worlds and PS1 was stuck with small areas.

Polygon warping was another thing N64 solved hardware wise, and on PS1 you had to either solve it manually, get stuck with fixed camera or ignore the problem completely.

Remember that the N64 was cheaper to make than PS1.

In the end, gaming has always been bells, whistles, smokes and mirrors, and Nintendo always understood this. This is the reason Nintendo hardware ALWAYS lack in raw power, but almost always have modern features.

Even PS2 had more raw power in some areas than the powerful GCN.

Most third party games which were built for both platforms from the beginning looked much better on the N64.

I had WWF Warzone on the 64 and my brother had it on the Playstation and the N64 version looked so much better.

Shadowman was another we had on both platforms. The N64 version completely blew it out of the water.

The N64 wasn't the most perfect piece of hardware it's fair to say but I ultimately believe it could have handled most PS1 games if not for the storage issue. Resident Evil 2 showed what they could do with the N64 later in its life.

You'd never in a million years get Majora's Mask running on the PS1. It would be a complete mess.

 

[M3d10n]

The CRT is 29".

You wrote is not very suitable for fire so I showed you the amazing Turok 2 completely polygonal and adjustable fire.

"Polygonal fire"? That's just a bunch of billboard sprites, just as any fire particles ever. Again, fire looks better with additive blending, because that's how flames work in real life.

I never seen the multilayered transparencies level of Tooie and Conker on PSX.
But on PSX I just played almost all the most important titles and tons of racers. So maybe them exist and I never met them.

Then you didn't watch that that FFIX video I posted, or played any PS1 RPG whatsoever. Or your definition of "multilayered transparencies" differs from mine, which I'm beginning to suspect from your posts.

 

[keraj37]

PS1 could do 2,000 polygons per frame, N64 could do 3,000 or more.

GPU doesn't operate on polygons, but tris.

 

[Italia64]

False man, Turok 2 flame-thrower effect is completely polygonal. I don't want to fight but you're wrong.

About FFVII I just wrote what I think.

 

[Schopenhauerian]

...Additive blending is crucial for the visuals of things like the FF summons due to the way it causes the underlying pixels to go brighter as they accumulate, ergo, they would look worse on the N64 because you cannot reproduce those effects with alpha-blending alone. You can verify this by looking at the DS remakes of FF3 and FF4: the DS also can only do alpha blending, no additive, and the summons/spells are more subdued as a result. They don't go anywhere as near as crazy with the particles/beams/flames: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJz8Di8VCTA (this is the iOS version, but the assets and effects are identical do the DS version)...

Thanks for this info! I've been curious about stuff like this after reading the 'Final Fantasy 7: An oral history' piece (written/assembled by Matt Leone at Polygon, recommend it to everyone who hasn't read it). Would certainly be interested to hear any other thoughts you might have on this:

...Square’s Hiroshi Kawai had significant difficulties when testing the N64’s capabilities against the PlayStation, at a time when Square had not yet made the final decision to go with Sony for FF7. There was communication between Square and Nintendo about these difficulties, and Nintendo took the step of organizing a trip for Square’s programmers, to try to address their concerns: http://www.polygon.com/a/final-fantasy-7

It would certainly be interesting to discuss what was responsible for the difficulties that Kawai/Square were having: perhaps it was the insufficient information/documentation on how to implement custom microcode, perhaps it was the hardware bottlenecks that were never properly addressed by Silicon Graphics, or perhaps (as was suggested by Kawai himself) it was the lack of clear communication between Nintendo’s hardware team and Silicon Graphics...

 

[Celine]

False man

M3d10n is right when he says that N64 doesn't support additive blending.

 

[MrChocolate]

This is the landmark of PS1.

https://youtu.be/_G7d6jwSOTA?t=1490

Nothing on N64 comes even close to it. 60 fps full of bells and whistles.

Of course, it had to be developed by PD.

 

[Italia64]

M3d10n is right when he says that N64 doesn't support additive blending.

I wrote that he's clearly wrong because he wrote that Turok 2 flame-thrower fire is made by z-sprites. It's simply a wrong statement.

 

[jett]

This is the landmark of PS1.

https://youtu.be/_G7d6jwSOTA?t=1490

Nothing on N64 comes even close to it. 60 fps full of bells and whistles.

Of course, it had to be developed by PD.

I think Omega Boost is only 30fps. You can see slowdown there too.

I owned it back then, neither here nor there, but it sucked.

 

[MrChocolate]

I think Omega Boost is only 30fps. You can see slowdown there too.

I owned it back then, neither here nor there, but it sucked.

It is 60fps on the OG Hardware. The video is awful though.

EDIT: It is 60fps on the special stage, similar to the Special Route in Gran Turismo, I stand corrected.

 

[Timu]

What a pity the CRT quality is not replicable on YouTube. I would love to see on YouTube the same quality I can admire on my CRT.
Even with the best capture systems available the quality is not good enough.

I hope in future things will change.

Please dude, not this again!!!=O

 

[Italia64]

Please dude, not this again!!!=O

You know, I'm obsessed with the best possible quality

 

[Timu]

You know, I'm obsessed with the best possible quality

And I'm obsessed with direct capture from the consoles themselves which I prefer over emulators!!!

 

[Italia64]

Of course. Everything is better than emulators.

 

[Jack The Nipper]

I still prefer destruction derby 2, ridge racer and gran Turisomo over the n64 racers. It's not close to me.

Vanark and some of the Disney games are also quite nice looking.

Vanark and star fox is a nice comparison

 

[M3d10n]

I wrote that he's clearly wrong because he wrote that Turok 2 flame-thrower fire is made by z-sprites. It's simply a wrong statement.

I checked the video again, and it does seems Turok 2 uses some crossed planes for some of the flames instead of, huh, "z-sprites". I'm not really sure why they did that: perhaps in their engine it was cheaper to just add a few extra triangles to those than use CPU time to keep them facing the camera. That's a far cry from "fully polygonal fire", which doesn't even that much make sense, unless you mean Quake-style fire:

Anyway, what you call "z-sprites" are just polygons. They are just made to face the camera at all times. Neither the N64 or the PS1 have "true" sprites, everything is made using triangles under the hood, even 2D games.

And when talking videogame graphics, polygons = triangles. Unless you're talking about the Saturn, of course, lol.

Anyway, the Turok team did make the most they could from alpha-blending to make them look "bright", but no amount of programmer effort will add additive blending to hardware that doesn't do it (short of software rendering, see Golden Sun on the GBA).

 

[harz-marz]

I wish the current gen console fanboys had the knowledge and information on display in this thread. I've found it a fascinating and enjoyable read, thanks!