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3DS Uses DMP's PICA200 GPU
- Thread starter charlequin
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Ignis Fatuus
Banned
Booooo!brain_stew said:
If you play with 3D enabled you will get jaggies.Boney said:
brain_stew
Member
GoldenEye 007 said:
MSAA only affects polygon edges and is fast, supersampling antialiases the whole image and is dog slow (you're effectively rendering at 4x the resolution and then downsampling). No game is going to use 2x2 supersampling, so no AA for you S3D mode. Like I said though, Nintendo can use jittered samples to give free 2x supersampling in 2D mode since they're already rendering two versions of the scene. The Starfox screens had 2x supersampling.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
Jaggies should actually be less prominent because of the way you're viewing the image.Ignis Fatuus said:
brain_stew
Member
Thunder Monkey said:
I'm far from convinced by this, there's no real theory behind it so I'll have to see it for myself.
Its looking like we'll ahve the choice of 2D and no jaggies or S3D and jaggies, pick your poison.
markot said:
That don't enable the 3D depth, you should get 2x supersampling (which will provide terrific image quality) if you do this based on what we've seen so far.
brain_stew
Member
Branduil said:
They're two different images though. Supersampling through jittered samples doesn't work like that, it has to be based on the same image.
Called it! 
A description of some of the advanced hardwired effects with pics: http://www.dmprof.com/en/en_maestrotechnology.html
A description of some of the advanced hardwired effects with pics: http://www.dmprof.com/en/en_maestrotechnology.html
brain_stew
Member
Ezduo said:
PSP says hi.
WrenchNinja
Member
Well I don't care about this 3D stuff, so yay AA.
brain_stew
Member
Crewnh said:Well I don't care about this 3D stuff, so yay AA.
If this is indeed the way it works (and it makes perfect sense that it does, it allows both modes to have the same performance characteristics while giving a nice benefit to the 2D mode in the process) then its pretty nice to have the choice. I know I'll want the 3D experience in some games but in those where it doesn't make much of a difference it'll be nice to be able to trade it in for some really high quality antialiasing (as demonstrated in that Star Fox pic).
ShockingAlberto
Member
Assuming nothing else costs money, they sure would.Snakeyes said:
viciouskillersquirrel
Member
How does the "free" supersampling in 2D mode work to remove aliasing from the image, exactly? I mean mathematically.
I've been reading the whole thread and this is the only part I even vaguely understand.
I've been reading the whole thread and this is the only part I even vaguely understand.
brain_stew
Member
Ezduo said:
Yeah, just a bit! :lol
Tbf, most of it comes from texture aliasing/shimmering and that shouldn't be an issue here since the chip supports mipmapping and decent texture filtering modes. Still, the one game on the PSP that has really pristine image quality (GT) is, incidentally, the one title that uses a similar AA scheme to the one that the 3DS looks to be using in 2D mode.
Technosteve
Banned
how does it handle making the 2d image in to 3d? does it use a trick or double renders like everyone else?
charlequin
Banned
That no-MSAA thing is really the fly in the ointment here. :lol Bummer about that -- although given the way console/handheld development has gone on until now it would've been pretty unusual for Nintendo to really be the first people to go for the throat on anti-aliasing-driven IQ.
Father_Brain
Banned
Snakeyes said:
After E3, I'll be pleasantly surprised if it actually launches for $200 or less. The sheer novelty of the 3D counts for a lot when it comes to what consumers will pay for it.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
This would help the discussion.Branduil said:
Jon of the Wired
Member
So, I've flipped through the publicly available information and this looks like a nice little chip. Without knowing the clockspeed and number of pipelines in the 3DS implementation of the PICA200 it's impossible to say anything about the pure pixel/vertex pushing power of the chip, but from the E3 demos it doesn't look like there's much problem there.
The chip basically implements all of the most common uses of programmable shaders in fixed-function hardware, which is a clever move for a mobile chip and should allow the 3DS to produce graphics that look surprisingly close to what you find on a current gen console. However, my big concern is that this is going to result in an even more extreme version of the UE3 effect. The overwhelming majority of the effects the PICA200 implements in hardware are dedicated to approximating realistic lighting, reflections, and shadows. Which is great if you want a realistic looking game, but largely useless if you want to go for a more stylized art style, or really anything outside the typical look of modern computer graphics.
Just as UE3 games are often accused of all looking the same, I'm worried that the ease of use and performance of the PICA200's effects will lead almost all devs to strive for a very realistic look, since that's what the hardware's good at. Doing anything else will mean shifting all the work to the CPU and leaving most of the PICA's fancy hardware completely idle. Depending on the bidirectional bus speed between the GPU and CPU doing any kind of fancy software shading may not even be practical.
The chip basically implements all of the most common uses of programmable shaders in fixed-function hardware, which is a clever move for a mobile chip and should allow the 3DS to produce graphics that look surprisingly close to what you find on a current gen console. However, my big concern is that this is going to result in an even more extreme version of the UE3 effect. The overwhelming majority of the effects the PICA200 implements in hardware are dedicated to approximating realistic lighting, reflections, and shadows. Which is great if you want a realistic looking game, but largely useless if you want to go for a more stylized art style, or really anything outside the typical look of modern computer graphics.
Just as UE3 games are often accused of all looking the same, I'm worried that the ease of use and performance of the PICA200's effects will lead almost all devs to strive for a very realistic look, since that's what the hardware's good at. Doing anything else will mean shifting all the work to the CPU and leaving most of the PICA's fancy hardware completely idle. Depending on the bidirectional bus speed between the GPU and CPU doing any kind of fancy software shading may not even be practical.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
Some will I'm sure.Jon of the Wired said:
Others... well won't. And those same effects can have a very stark effect on stylized games.
Technosteve
Banned
it's most likely an Arm processor like in the DS for the CPU.
I don't think that will necessarily be a problem, there's not really any style in which being able to use normal maps is bad. We can already see both Mario Kart and Star Fox are using shaders and they still look nothing like RE or MGS.Jon of the Wired said:
We need some of those cross-eyed 3D pictures in here, but with extra-aliased edges so we can see what effect that has :lol
brain_stew
Member
Technosteve said:
No doubt about it tbh.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
I don't think anyone was really questioning that one.brain_stew said:
The graphics processor was where the real mystery was at.
brain_stew
Member
viciouskillersquirrel said:
It should work very similar to how Gran Turismo on PSP does it, which is explained here:
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1345145&postcount=38
Instead of alternating frames, it'll be alternating pixels that are blended togethe to provide 2 samples for each edge. Note this anti aliases the whole image, not just the polygon edges.
viciouskillersquirrel
Member
I have a question for the people who know the ins and outs of graphics tech RE: backward compatibility with the DS/DSi.
How did the DS / DSi handle graphics? I was under the impression that they were using twin ARM processors and no traditional GPU. What would the use of this chip mean for back-compatibility? Would it sit idle and let emulation be handled by the CPU?
How did the DS / DSi handle graphics? I was under the impression that they were using twin ARM processors and no traditional GPU. What would the use of this chip mean for back-compatibility? Would it sit idle and let emulation be handled by the CPU?
Flying_Phoenix
Banned
Been reading up and it seems that Nintendo has gone the perfect route.
The only thing that is a bummer is no MSAA but then again in the right hand developers can do some crazy stuff. Just look at how far developers got with the DS's lack of AA.
The only thing that is a bummer is no MSAA but then again in the right hand developers can do some crazy stuff. Just look at how far developers got with the DS's lack of AA.
Jon of the Wired
Member
Thunder Monkey said:
Though, just saying it's an ARM CPU gives absolutely no indication of its performance. I'd be very curious to know whether it will be an ARM11 or a Cortex A8 processor, and whether or not it'll have a NEON vector unit. Presence of a NEON unit, even more than clockspeed, will have a huge impact and what you'll be able to do on the CPU.
brain_stew
Member
Lonely1 said:
Judging by the screenshot's we've got (and "common sense" with regards to the direction of other SOCs), I'd say there's at least 64MB in there, we've seen some really nice texturing already. We know some of that is dedicated to the GPU as well.
viciouskillersquirrel
Member
That is pretty clever and should work quite well.brain_stew said:
Question, though: do the cameras on both images need to be offset slightly, even in 2D mode, for this to work?
Technosteve
Banned
I wonder if they have a different processor driving the bottom screen or on processor does both.
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