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Nintendo 3DS technical discuss thread: lets talk about this here

StuBurns

Banned
wsippel said:
That makes no sense. It would only need a higher resolution (more pixels) if the screens were bigger. Screenshots and trailers look like jaggy messes on a PC because the PC is typically the system with the "shit resolution" (pixel density). The physical resolution of the 3DS top screen actually exceeds that of the Vita as far as I remember (266PPI vs. 237PPI).
Nonsense. And my laptop PPI is higher than the 3DS, when considering the 2D resolution, which is what matters. You never perceive the image quality you're suggesting.
 

Synless

Member
dark10x said:
I'm not denying that fact.

However, the difference between launch PS2 games and some of the games released later in its life are SO significant that it may well have been a different platform all together. Take a look at something like Burnout 1 vs Burnout Revenge. The difference is ENORMOUS.

We went from a launch title like this...

midnightclub43.jpg


to this...

mc3.jpg


You really think we're going to see leaps of that magnitude on 3DS?
The first game really looked that bad? Some of that geometry is almost ps1 looking.
 

Synless

Member
PdotMichael said:
Thats Midnight Club
I see, I noticed he said Burnout to Burnout Revenge so I thought the pictures were in reference to those. Still, I remember the PS2 having some rough looking launch titles, but I didn't remember them being that bad.
 
GTA and Midnight Club are big open world games, not a fair comparison

Burnout 1 (PS2)

IEjol.jpg


yeah, the gap is still big

edit:

ahhhhhhhhh.... oh god

the lower picture is midnight club too, but it looks Burnout-like - strange
 

Lonely1

Unconfirmed Member
StuBurns said:
As if that even matters. Do you think Infinity Blade is voodoo? The machine is capable of outclassing the 3DS, and it has.

Also, Rage looks better than any 3DS games too. However as someone who doesn't really care about iOS gaming, I'm hardly the person to educate you.
I have already talked about IB. Now, Rage features super simple characters models on static "mega textures" backgrounds that need about 1GB of storage for a 20 minute game wih a single setting, and also are devoid any of kind of dynamism within them. Of course, you are free to say that, for you, is better looking than anything on the 3DS, but I will contend that it is a technical marvel.
 

StuBurns

Banned
Lonely1 said:
I have already talked about IB. Now, Rage features super simple characters models on static "mega textures" backgrounds that need about 1GB of storage for a 20 minute game wih a single setting, and also are devoid any of kind of dynamism within them. Of course, you are free to say that, for you, is better looking than anything on the 3DS, but I will contend that it is a technical marvel.
I didn't call it a technical marvel, nor would I anything on the 3DS.
 

Lonely1

Unconfirmed Member
StuBurns said:
I didn't call it a technical marvel, nor would I anything on the 3DS.

Well, I will also contend calling it technically superior than anything currently on the 3DS. So, there.
 

Ninja Dom

Member
It's a strange one. Yes, Infinity Blade and Rage on iOS look far beyond what the 3DS can do but then again, Super Street Fighter 4 3D Edition's characters have far more frames of animation and are far smoother than SSF4 or SSF4 Volt on iOS. 60fps on 3DS with the 3D turned off in the options.

Similarly do you think that iOS devices could pull off the graphics of Dead or Alive Dimensions at 60 fps like the 3DS does?

I still think that DoDonPachi Ressurection on iOS has some incredible graphics on iOS, maybe the best for me. Anybody think the 3DS could do this game (screen size accepted)??
 

Lonely1

Unconfirmed Member
Ninja Dom said:
I still think that DoDonPachi Ressurection on iOS has some incredible graphics on iOS, maybe the best for me. Anybody think the 3DS could do this game (screen size accepted)??

Well, the 3DS CPU might prove to be too weak for such game (?). It is definitively weaker than the iPhone's.
 
Well, the 3DS is powerful enough to run a graphically enhanced version of MH3 Tri (which was one of the Wii's very best looking games) so we know that it's more powerful than Wii.
 

Lonely1

Unconfirmed Member
Nuclear Muffin said:
Well, the 3DS is powerful enough to run a graphically enhanced version of MH3 Tri (which was one of the Wii's very best looking games) so we know that it's more powerful than Wii.
Source?
 
Ninja Dom said:
It's a strange one. Yes, Infinity Blade and Rage on iOS look far beyond what the 3DS can do but then again, Super Street Fighter 4 3D Edition's characters have far more frames of animation and are far smoother than SSF4 or SSF4 Volt on iOS. 60fps on 3DS with the 3D turned off in the options.

Similarly do you think that iOS devices could pull off the graphics of Dead or Alive Dimensions at 60 fps like the 3DS does?

I still think that DoDonPachi Ressurection on iOS has some incredible graphics on iOS, maybe the best for me. Anybody think the 3DS could do this game (screen size accepted)??

You can play street fighter volt on a ~3-4 years old iPhone 3G, I guess that's explain it and the iPhone games are just low budget productions
 

BDGAME

Member
Monter Hunter really looks good in these scans. I remember Capcom say they outperformed Wii with 3DS. Maybee they are talking about Monter Hunter Tri G.
 

dacuk

Member
StuBurns said:
I never said I expect iPhone 4 quality visuals, I said I can't find myself all that impressed by a dedicated handheld that isn't as powerful as my phone, which is actually much smaller too.

However, PSV is the same price 3DS was, and it is looking to produce much better than iPhone 4 visuals, so any excuse concerning price I'm going to write off as untrue. Nintendo very easily could have made a PSV quality system. And the Wii could have been PS360 quality, and although I'd say it's too early to say, the WiiU is looking every bit as underpowered all their post-GC systems.

I would like to take a look at your WiiU development kit...because you have one, right?...right??????
 

StuBurns

Banned
daCuk said:
I would like to take a look at your WiiU development kit...because you have one, right?...right??????
As if I need one to have an opinion on the software shown. But as others have suggested, it's not really on-topic at all, so I won't bother.
 
dark10x said:
The main issue with 3DS really IS its insanely low resolution screens. All of its games at a higher resolution would look so much nicer, but 400x240 is simply too low. At least the games all tend to run much better than your average phone title.

No. THe low resolution is not the problem. In-fact, if the 3DS had the texture memory and polygon capabilities of the wii, devlopers would have had no trouble taking advantage of the resolution similarly to how capcom used low resolution for RE4 on the GCN.

To answer the OP: The 3Ds can't do anything polygon intensive like star War RS, and while it can come close, it can only do high numbers of shaders at once when doing very small areas with 1 or 2 enemies at a time.

On every aspect the 3DS is huge potential wasted on crappy hardware design decisions:
- Great shaders wasted on sub-PS2 texture quality and polygon count
- 3D wasted on a low resolution and mediocre graphics
- New Wifi features wasted on a 4 hour battery
- Analog nub that, while superior to the PSP nub, takes up too much internal space.

Nuclear Muffin said:
Well, the 3DS is powerful enough to run a graphically enhanced version of MH3 Tri (which was one of the Wii's very best looking games) so we know that it's more powerful than Wii.
Only if by "graphically enhanced", you mean with some normal maps added at the cost of a significantly lower polygon count and texture resolution.
 

BDGAME

Member
TestOfTide said:
No. THe low resolution is not the problem. In-fact, if the 3DS had the texture memory and polygon capabilities of the wii, devlopers would have had no trouble taking advantage of the resolution similarly to how capcom used low resolution for RE4 on the GCN.

To answer the OP: The 3Ds can't do anything polygon intensive like star War RS, and while it can come close, it can only do high numbers of shaders at once when doing very small areas with 1 or 2 enemies at a time.

On every aspect the 3DS is huge potential wasted on crappy hardware design decisions:
- Great shaders wasted on sub-PS2 texture quality and polygon count
- 3D wasted on a low resolution and mediocre graphics
- New Wifi features wasted on a 4 hour battery
- Analog nub that, while superior to the PSP nub, takes up too much internal space.


Only if by "graphically enhanced", you mean with some normal maps added at the cost of a significantly lower polygon count and texture resolution.

Ok sir, how do you like your crow?
 
TestOfTide said:
Only if by "graphically enhanced", you mean with some normal maps added at the cost of a significantly lower polygon count and texture resolution.

Go and actually look at the scans before spouting nonsense.

Also, as the 3DS is running MH Tri with enhanced visuals, while running in S3D, the 3DS must have at least double the rendering power of the Wii.
 

StuBurns

Banned
Nuclear Muffin said:
Go and actually look at the scans before spouting nonsense.

Also, as the 3DS is running MH Tri with enhanced visuals, while running in S3D, the 3DS must have at least double the rendering power of the Wii.
You have no idea what you're talking about, I beg you to either do some research, or leave this thread forever.
 
StuBurns said:
You have no idea what you're talking about, I beg you to either do some research, or leave this thread forever.

What part of what I'm saying is wrong? S3D requires the hardware to render the scene twice.
 

M3d10n

Member
TestOfTide said:
No. THe low resolution is not the problem. In-fact, if the 3DS had the texture memory and polygon capabilities of the wii, devlopers would have had no trouble taking advantage of the resolution similarly to how capcom used low resolution for RE4 on the GCN.

To answer the OP: The 3Ds can't do anything polygon intensive like star War RS, and while it can come close, it can only do high numbers of shaders at once when doing very small areas with 1 or 2 enemies at a time.
That's a lot of confidence on your claims. Are you a dev, per chance? "High number of shaders"? "1 or two enemeis at a time"? What the fuck are you talking about?

And how on earth does the 3DS, with 96MBs of RAM for games, has less "texture memory" than the 32MBs PS2 (which had only 4MBs of actual VRAM)?
 

StuBurns

Banned
Nuclear Muffin said:
What part of what I'm saying is wrong? S3D requires the hardware to render the scene twice.
Even if the game was asset perfect, (and you don't know it is, don't even consider suggesting otherwise based on scans, we will know when it's out) it will be running at considerably lower resolution. It would take about "double the rendering power of the Wii." to do the exact Wii game, at it's native resolution and framerate but in 3D, but the 3DS will not be doing that.

And even that's a massive over simplification of the true demand of 3D, which isn't double.
 

firelink

Banned
No. THe low resolution is not the problem. In-fact, if the 3DS had the texture memory and polygon capabilities of the wii, devlopers would have had no trouble taking advantage of the resolution similarly to how capcom used low resolution for RE4 on the GCN.

To answer the OP: The 3Ds can't do anything polygon intensive like star War RS, and while it can come close, it can only do high numbers of shaders at once when doing very small areas with 1 or 2 enemies at a time.

On every aspect the 3DS is huge potential wasted on crappy hardware design decisions:
- Great shaders wasted on sub-PS2 texture quality and polygon count
- 3D wasted on a low resolution and mediocre graphics
- New Wifi features wasted on a 4 hour battery
- Analog nub that, while superior to the PSP nub, takes up too much internal space.

Originally Posted by Nuclear Muffin:
Well, the 3DS is powerful enough to run a graphically enhanced version of MH3 Tri (which was one of the Wii's very best looking games) so we know that it's more powerful than Wii.
Only if by "graphically enhanced", you mean with some normal maps added at the cost of a significantly lower polygon count and texture resolution.

It is one thing to speculate what the 3DS can do, but don't act as if what you are implying is fact.

The 3DS has, at bare minimum, 4MB of VRAM and maybe 96MB of available FCRAM (which is over twice as fast as DDR2, and a tiny bit faster than DDR3). FCRAM is three times as fast as RDRAM, the RAM used in the PS2. However, the PS2 ram was clocked at a higher clock speed, about 400MHz, so the effective data rate is about the same. So at the same data rate, the 3DS has three times the RAM of the PS2, and the same (or more) amount of VRAM available.

There are a couple things we do not yet know. One is, how much VRAM is actually there? If 4MB, that is fine. The 3DS is operating at a much lower resolution than the PS2, so it should technically be better. But at the same time, is the FCRAM in the 3DS unified? If so, it would allow the GPU to borrow unused RAM, sort of like how an integrated GPU steals your system RAM. If that is the case, the 3DS VRAM could be well...anything.

So no, the 3DS does not have sub-PS2 textures. Half-assed games might make it seem like that, but a quick glance at Revelations, Mario Kart or 3D Land, or hell, even Ocarina, show that it is capable of much higher textures. The Wii has only 3MB of VRAM, so it is definitely more capable than that. The limiting factor here might be space issues. Currently, except for MGS, all games are shipped on 2GB carts. The PS2 used DVDs, which use 4.6GB. Textures might not appear that great because they simply would not fit.

As for the polygon performance, we all know the PS2 was a beast in terms of polygon pushing power. No one really knows what clock frequency the PICA200 GPU in the 3DS is running at, so no one can actually determine if it can technically push more polygons than the PS2. I say technically, because no game I have seen so far looks like it is coming close. That could be because they are not used to the hardware, it might be because it is not possible, who knows. Only time will tell.

Even if the game was asset perfect, and you don't know it is, don't even consider suggesting otherwise based on scans, we will know when it's out. But even if that was the case, it will be running at considerably lower resolution. It would take about "double the rendering power of the Wii." to do the exact Wii game, at it's native resolution and framerate but in 3D, but the 3DS game will not be doing that.

I dunno if the 3DS has twice the power of the Wii (I definitely do not think that. A little better at the most), but I know that the Conduit developers ported Conduit 2 over to the 3DS "asset perfect", and it ran flawlessly and in 3D. This developer claims they pushed the Wii to its limits, and if they did, maybe we have a baseline, but who knows.
 

StuBurns

Banned
firelink said:
I dunno if the 3DS has twice the power of the Wii (I definitely do not think that. A little better at the most), but I know that the Conduit developers ported Conduit 2 over to the 3DS "asset perfect", and it ran flawlessly and in 3D. This developer claims they pushed the Wii to its limits, and if they did, maybe we have a baseline, but who knows.
If that is indeed the case, it's very impressive yeah. I don't agree Conduit 2 is anything like the best looking Wii game (I would put MHTri up there though), but still, a perfect port is very impressive regardless.
 

firelink

Banned
StuBurns said:
If that is indeed the case, it's very impressive yeah. I don't agree Conduit 2 is anything like the best looking Wii game (I would put MHTri up there though), but still, a perfect port is very impressive regardless.

It was in one of the E3 videos I saw around the time the 3DS was first revealed I think. I'll have to find it for you when I have the time.
 

StuBurns

Banned
firelink said:
It was in one of the E3 videos I saw around the time the 3DS was first revealed I think. I'll have to find it for you when I have the time.
That'd be cool if it's not too much trouble, otherwise no problem, I can google it, I'm sure it'll turn up something.
 

StuBurns

Banned
Thanks, it's a shame the direct feed video of the games was so low quality, it did look impressive from the off-screen game play.
 
M3d10n said:
The iPod Touch has the same internal hardware, but a worse quality screen. The reason it is much cheaper than the iPhone is due to the way Apple handles production: the iTouchs are made after the iPhones they are based on have reached mass market production volume and approach the peak of their demand. So the hardware is both cheaper to produce and Apple has a surplus of production capacity due to the demand peaking, so they use it to produce iTouches.

You're just making this up.

"We'll just make this product because we have a surplus of production capacity".

right.


the "low resolution" screen is probably the factor that makes 3DS works as well as it does. Double the res and the 3DS might not be able to do stereoscopic 3D while maintaining the framerate.As is; in 3D mode, it uses battery much more aggressively and the framerate takes a hit.
 
StuBurns said:
As if I need one to have an opinion on the software shown. But as others have suggested, it's not really on-topic at all, so I won't bother.

What software has been shown?! I mean, in it's final form, not alpha or after a couple weeks of the devs owning kits. Oh wait, you can't show anything
 

firelink

Banned
StuBurns said:
Thanks, it's a shame the direct feed video of the games was so low quality, it did look impressive from the off-screen game play.

I know. It looked like one of the most visually impressive 3DS games, and Destructoid were the only ones who thought it worth covering. Not sure why.
 

StuBurns

Banned
Zoramon089 said:
What software has been shown?! I mean, in it's final form, not alpha or after a couple weeks of the devs owning kits. Oh wait, you can't show anything
If only 'final form' games are acceptable, we need to stop a lot of the conversation in this thread.

If Nintendo can't run their stuff at better than 720p, and pretty much none of the devs who've commented have suggested it's a generational leap, I feel pretty confident that it's not.
 

AzaK

Member
Mr. Wonderful said:
It doesn't matter what it's capable of when the resolution still sucks.


Not really.

For years we had SD TV, initially in RF where your effective resolution is probably 200 lines. Movies still looked fucking great if they were made great. Resolution is such a small, small part of looks, it's almost insignificant.

And just to be clear, I'm not saying the 3DS is capable of photorealistic graphics in its low resolution, just that res really doesn't matter compared to other features.
 
StuBurns said:
If only 'final form' games are acceptable, we need to stop a lot of the conversation in this thread.

If Nintendo can't run their stuff at better than 720p, and pretty much none of the devs who've commented have suggested it's a generational leap, I feel pretty confident that it's not.

Yeah, but all those devs have also said the hardware isn't final...
 

firelink

Banned
StuBurns said:
If only 'final form' games are acceptable, we need to stop a lot of the conversation in this thread.

If Nintendo can't run their stuff at better than 720p, and pretty much none of the devs who've commented have suggested it's a generational leap, I feel pretty confident that it's not.

Not to derail the topic, but if you are expecting a generational leap in visuals from any next-gen console, I think you are going to be disappointed.

I have heard that the Wii U is capable of higher texture resolution though compared to PS360, if that helps any.
 

StuBurns

Banned
Zoramon089 said:
Yeah, but all those devs have also said the hardware isn't final...
Okay, that's certainly a fair comment. The WiiU that was at E3 was not a generational leap, I can't say for a fact that the machine that will launch will be similar.

I can't think of a single platform in history that has had any sort of huge technical improvement after being initially shown, but that doesn't mean we won't see that here. However, if you read the post, I said it looked to be as underpowered at their post-GC systems, I didn't state as fact that it will be.
 

BDGAME

Member
oatmeal said:
What?

What development was there between these posts?

Monster Hunter Tri G appear and has:

1 - Big and detailed enviroments, like de wii version:
BCyyI.png



2 - Good and detailed monsters, like Wii version:
tgs2011_title_mh3g_game04_l.jpg
tgs2011_title_mh3g_game05_l.jpg
tgs2011_title_mh3g_game06_l.jpg


3 - Best light and shadows than the Wii version.

And now we now its not a Dreamcast with shaders. From Zelda to this... a really big jump, no?
 

M3d10n

Member
Pachterballs said:
the "low resolution" screen is probably the factor that makes 3DS works as well as it does. Double the res and the 3DS might not be able to do stereoscopic 3D while maintaining the framerate.As is; in 3D mode, it uses battery much more aggressively and the framerate takes a hit.
Actually, it wouldn't be possible to make it both 3D and high resolution. I don't know of any screens at that size with resolutions much higher than 800x480, that's retina-display-grade DPI.

The 3D mode uses more battery mostly because it increases the screen brightness. If you look at the screen from an extreme angle and turn 3D on and off you can see this quite clearly. Some games which do nothing different with 3D on and off might use less GPU time with it off, but there are many games (all Capcom games, OoT and StarFox 64, AFAIK) which "abuse" the fact the 3D needs to render two frames and use it for 2X FSAA (rendering two frames with slightly jittered camera matrices and blending them together).
 
AzaK said:
Not really.

For years we had SD TV, initially in RF where your effective resolution is probably 200 lines. Movies still looked fucking great if they were made great. Resolution is such a small, small part of looks, it's almost insignificant.

that's because film resolution isn't the same as screen resolution/resolution output.

insignificant? such ignorance on display.


right.....
 
Minsc said:
Here is my biggest problem with the 3DS (I know it's the DS, but the resolution is similarly low, 400x240 vs 256x192 against 960x640):

http://www.31012.com/images/games/PlantsVsZombiesDS_017.jpg[IMG]

Compared to say how it looks on an iPod Touch:

[IMG]http://www.31012.com/images/games/Plants-Vs-Zombies-Retina-2.png[IMG]

Clearly not a deal breaker, but my enjoyment of games is lowered a bit visually by the 3DS's resolution (unless the game is meant to be low-res). Still, I'd take a fun low-res 2D game over a crappy high-res one any day, it's just a shame the 3DS games aren't ~2x the resolution.[/QUOTE]Completely agree. After owning a 4th gen touch for the good part of the year the 3DS' resolution is kind of a bummer.
 
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