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VF2 Model 2 (1994) vs. VF2 PS2 (2004). 56k'ers will be SPoDded
- Thread starter Sho Nuff
- Start date
SEGA's heritage as a hardware manufacturer meant their developers were always involved in the design of the platform on which they'd work. The systems were shaped to some extent to their interests, so the developers have become quite discerning towards a machine on the basis of its hardware. It's more important to their work ethic than some typical third party who's used to just working on whatever's served to them.
Mr_Furious
Member
Talk about mountains out of mole hills. Everything that's been bitched about (from what I read) is focused on aesthetics. What about the gameplay??? I'd much rather pay $25 for this over a hundred(s) to play the arcade version, if the gameplay is faithful. Also, what TV are you using for those screen grabs because the display can differ greatly. Also, is it calibrated properly? All these things factor into the sharpness (downsampled textures aside) of the overall picture.
DaCocoBrova
Finally bought a new PSP, but then pushed the demon onto someone else. Jesus.
The only thing I find odd is the geometric differences in the modeling.
AndriaSang
Member
Great screenshots, Sho. Can you make your camera take 60 shots per second so we can count how many missed frames the PS2 version has? This thing is as stuttery as the DC port of Sega Rally.
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
Here's a very interesting text that talks to great detail about this 'port' (when you read it, you'll see that it's not really a port but rather a Model 2 emulator on PS2 running VF2, as they couldn't port it because the original source code and model and texture data were lost)
http://www.sega.jp/community/segavoice/041014/01_4.html
(use babelfish)
Considering that Model 2 emulators on PC require monster hardware in comparision to what PS2 has, it's not really a bad work by Sega's programmers.
*edit* It also explains why they opted for 57.7 FPS instead of 60. Due to the timing of the original hardware, reproduction of the exact framerate was necessary or the game would not work in the emulated environment. Too bad, as I think having timed frame drops all the time must be annoying thing to watch.
http://www.sega.jp/community/segavoice/041014/01_4.html
(use babelfish)
Considering that Model 2 emulators on PC require monster hardware in comparision to what PS2 has, it's not really a bad work by Sega's programmers.
*edit* It also explains why they opted for 57.7 FPS instead of 60. Due to the timing of the original hardware, reproduction of the exact framerate was necessary or the game would not work in the emulated environment. Too bad, as I think having timed frame drops all the time must be annoying thing to watch.
i see the lighting is off, it looks very flat, and the textures obviously took a hit. personally i didnt see the point of this port to begin with though, when you have VF4 whats the point? ports of never released games like Scud Racer is one thing but this is just for sheer nostalgic reasons.
If it was running on an emulator some of the textures wouldn't be so drastically different. Hell just look at the roof of the temple, very different. This is no emulator. They just built the game from the ground up on the PS2 and tried to reproduce the arcade version as much as they could.
They failed, obviously.
They failed, obviously.
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
You'd be better off reading that text if you are interesting in the matter at hand.
I would say VR-FlatOut is the only good one.
Yeah, I'd have a hard time believing it's emulated given the textures, models and lighting is all noticably different. Unless they went into the game itself, dropped polycounts, changed lighting and used lower rez textures... but then I'd assume they'd need the source code to do all that. 
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
You need to look no further than the development shots of various emulators to see that they can run the game with graphics all screwed up, with wireframes instead of polygons, etc. That is especially true if the 3D hardware of the original is emulated by mapping functions to a 3D hardware of the platform that is running the emulator (which of course is the case here as the software rendering emulation would be way too slow)
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
They have the whole section in that text dedicated to textures and what they did with them, so go and read it Seriously, the text is about as technical as texts on Gamasutra, perhaps even more so.
Seriously, the text is about as technical as texts on Gamasutra, perhaps even more so.
The Faceless Master
Member
well, alot of the bugs and glitches work, like magic throwing akira from across screen on a bodycheck
and the textures don't look vastly different, just off color and with alot of misalignments... anyone ever use an emulator where the game's textures are misaligned depending on what filters you use?
and the textures don't look vastly different, just off color and with alot of misalignments... anyone ever use an emulator where the game's textures are misaligned depending on what filters you use?
Ninja Scooter
Member
wait, so you managed to get the whole cab and board for under $200? Is this what these machines normally go for or did you just get a lucky find?
Yow, it is emulated. :/
Though they didn't lose the source code entirely, just the 2.1 revision. Also there was a problem extracting graphic data due to toolsets or something?
Still doesn't explain the textures miraculously being lower rez though. In fact the article says the PS2 & Model 2 textures are identical (which they pretty clearly aren't). Maybe it'd help if someone translated directly?
Though they didn't lose the source code entirely, just the 2.1 revision. Also there was a problem extracting graphic data due to toolsets or something?
Still doesn't explain the textures miraculously being lower rez though. In fact the article says the PS2 & Model 2 textures are identical (which they pretty clearly aren't). Maybe it'd help if someone translated directly?
Shogmaster
Member
Emulation makes sense since lack of RAM on PS2 for shitty texture explaination falls apart when you realise that the entire Model 2 hardware has like probably less than 8MB of RAM (I think it's even less to 4MB, actually). If the game was re-coded/ported for PS2, 32MB+4MB+2MB of PS2 would have been more than plenty without any streaming of textures from main RAM to VRAM.
But for emulation, 38MB is really bare. I can see them compressing the shit out of existing textures to make emulation of Model 2 VF2 work with 38MB of PS2 RAM.
Emulation also makes sense of the slow down. If PS2 can do massive geometry of Soul Calibur 2 (conservatively, 75,000+ triangles per frame) without problems @60fps while doing more complicated animations and physics etc., only emulation can make sense of struggling with less than 5,000 quads per frame @58fps.
But for emulation, 38MB is really bare. I can see them compressing the shit out of existing textures to make emulation of Model 2 VF2 work with 38MB of PS2 RAM.
Emulation also makes sense of the slow down. If PS2 can do massive geometry of Soul Calibur 2 (conservatively, 75,000+ triangles per frame) without problems @60fps while doing more complicated animations and physics etc., only emulation can make sense of struggling with less than 5,000 quads per frame @58fps.
Die Squirrel Die
Member
Why, why, why did we not get an updated VF4 version of this stage? We get an updated dojo (big whoop), a great wall (actually the great wall stage was pretty cool) and then a bunch of bleh stages like the cave and the harbour but not this. Not the stage which is probably the most fondly recalled in all VF history. They'd better do a dazzlingly gorgeous version for VF5.
AndriaSang
Member
He does admit that they had to compress the textures in order to make them fit. He says that the Model 2 has more texture memory than the PS2.
The 57.5 framerate thing is, he says, both for control and for graphics output. People internal to Sega complained that the Sega Saturn version felt too fast, so they wanted to change the speed at which the controller is read.
The 57.5 framerate thing is, he says, both for control and for graphics output. People internal to Sega complained that the Sega Saturn version felt too fast, so they wanted to change the speed at which the controller is read.
If they're using an emulator, that makes more sense. I didn't look at the article, but I bet the emulator core just emulates the CPU and geometry coprocessor, and then the commands sent to the graphics chip are run through an emulation layer that maps Model 2 graphics commands to GS graphics commands.
If they're not poking into the state of the program for hints (like "it looks like the game is trying to render Sarah, I should load the textures for Sarah now and not have any other textures loaded") then I could see them statically loading the VRAM and hoping for the best, since they wouldn't know what the emulated game is trying to do.
It's too bad that they didn't give us options to run the game at full NTSC framerate, or to ignore vsync when rendering at 57Hz (you'd see a tearing effect scroll down the screen every so often but the motion would be more fluid)...
If they're not poking into the state of the program for hints (like "it looks like the game is trying to render Sarah, I should load the textures for Sarah now and not have any other textures loaded") then I could see them statically loading the VRAM and hoping for the best, since they wouldn't know what the emulated game is trying to do.
It's too bad that they didn't give us options to run the game at full NTSC framerate, or to ignore vsync when rendering at 57Hz (you'd see a tearing effect scroll down the screen every so often but the motion would be more fluid)...
KyotoMecca
Member
Die Squirrel Die said:
Why, why, why did we not get an updated VF4 version of this stage? We get an updated dojo (big whoop), a great wall (actually the great wall stage was pretty cool) and then a bunch of bleh stages like the cave and the harbour but not this. Not the stage which is probably the most fondly recalled in all VF history. They'd better do a dazzlingly gorgeous version for VF5.
They sort of updated it for Shun's VF3 stage - but no bridge. I really loved some of those VF3 stages. Don't know why VF3 gets such a hard time with fans, I really loved it (though I can never go back to playing it since VF4 admittedly, I think I loved the game's art design and music more than anything else, whereas VF4 / Evo / FT is pure gameplay euphoria).
hirokazu said:
That's kind of what they did. Did you not read the thread?
It's not like you can compare an N64 emulator to a Model 2 emulator, though. I mean, there isn't even one single fully functional, high speed Model 2 emulator available on the PC whereas N64 emulation has been around for years now.
Emulating Model 2 is FARRRR more complex.