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[I_D]

I think its referring to the decades old "When will gaming reach Toy Story level graphics?" question

But that's a joke isn't it?

KH3 looks good, but it's not even close to actual Toy Story graphics. Art style, sure, but not graphical fidelity. Even that screenshot a few posts up is a jaggy mess compared to the movie.

oh mannnn, this game. also the first game to really nail melee in an FPS

Not only did it nail combat, it's STILL the best first-person combat in any game.

And while we're at it, it also had blood effects that realistically dripped down walls, enemies bruised and bled depending on where you hit them, and it had amazing real-time lighting effects and almost every single light in the game could be shot-out to create dark places to hide.

 

[Ne0n]

The Chronicles of Riddick was the first game to use normal-maps to help with textures, which is now the standard for pretty much all 3d games. It also looked better than Doom friggin 3 on the Xbox, left Halo 2 in the dust, and was arguably more impressive than Chaos Theory.

oh mannnn, this game. also the first game to really nail melee in an FPS

 

[Painguy]

Im sure its been done before. VF2 Saturn I think and some others.

I tried to check VF2 out, but all levels are flat. I cant see any instance where characters would dynamically deform based on 3d obstacles. From what I've read, Jurassic park trespasser & oot were the first to do it (jurassic park coming out 1 month b4 oot), but who knows maybe i just didnt look hard enough lol.

 

[Jaguar Victory]

I played the shit out of Comanche. It came out earlier than that though. Ahh, ok, see the 1992 edit.

 

[Psychological Intellect]

But that's a joke isn't it?

KH3 looks good, but it's not even close to actual Toy Story graphics. Art style, sure, but not graphical fidelity. Even that screenshot a few posts up is a jaggy mess compared to the movie.

Toy Story 1

 

[LCGeek]

Rogue Leader: Rogue Squadron 2 on GameCube. Still impressive to this day.

It's sequel rebel strike is the First 3D game with light scattering that we are getting use to these days.

GameCube was a beast if you had factor5 wizardry and talent.

Also riddick isn't the first game to spam normal maps the game quoted in the post is. Look up factor 5 bump mapping solution it was hailed at the time as miracle considering cube has no natural support for it. Combined CPU and GPU to get the effect and it does qualify as more than EMBM considering it's done on per pixel level.

 

[I_D]

Toy Story 1

People who think KH3 looks like Toy Story (yes, 1) are probably the same people who can't see the difference between 30fps and 60fps or 1080p vs 4k.

It's not even a comparison from an IQ perspective.
It looks great, don't get me wrong, but let's not kid ourselves.

 

[Painguy]

People who think KH3 looks like Toy Story (yes, 1) are probably the same people who can't see the difference between 30fps and 60fps or 1080p vs 4k.

It's not even a comparison from an IQ perspective.
It looks great, don't get me wrong, but let's not kid ourselves.

IQ wise maybe (TS1 is rendered at 900p & heavily multisampled), but in terms of rendering tech we've far surpassed TS1.

 

[mattwhite924]

It's sequel rebel strike is the First 3D game with light scattering that we are getting use to these days.

GameCube was a beast if you had factor5 wizardry and talent.

Also riddick isn't the first game to spam normal maps the game quoted in the post is. Look up factor 5 bump mapping solution it was hailed at the time as miracle considering cube has no natural support for it. Combined CPU and GPU to get the effect and it does qualify as more than EMBM considering it's done on per pixel level.

I don't know if I'll ever be able to prove it, but I still believe that the GameCube could push more polygons in real world situations than either of it's competitors. Things like Rogue Squadron 3 pulling off all of 2's campaign in split screen at 60fps, or all of the tiny geometric details that Metroid Prime threw around, it's just nuts.That little system packed a punch, and is absolutely fascinating from a technical point of view.

 

[Laiza]

I thought part of the reason for that though was that it was actually "poorly" written in the way it used resources or something (in addition to being graphically impressive)

Nothing about the original Crysis was "poorly written". It was absolutely a game ahead of its time, and the system reqs for the "Ultra" settings reflected that.

 

[LCGeek]

I don't know if I'll ever be able to prove it, but I still believe that the GameCube could push more polygons in real world situations than either of it's competitors. Things like Rogue Squadron 3 pulling off all of 2's campaign in split screen at 60fps, or all of the tiny geometric details that Metroid Prime threw around, it's just nuts.That little system packed a punch, and is absolutely fascinating from a technical point of view.

Rebel Strike has the highest sustained poly performance of the big 3 of that gen with all its effects at 60fps it speaks for itself even now. No game can come close once you start asking does it do light scattering, does it have a respectable lighting model, does it perform at 30-60fps with high polys and everytime the question is asked you can go no. In other words I got ya fam. Example of light scattering below.

There are plenty of Xbox titles cube is never doing as is or without a ton of work but this one title is a silver bullet to any hate towards the system not being able to pull it's own weight.



PS metriod prime in wiremode is insane considering it's not a space flight game but a realized world. I think only wreckless or PGR impresses me that much of that gen in that area. PS2 did have the jax games which were monsters in polys themselves just much more simple than the other 3 games mentioned.

 

[lumzi23]

Pretty sure it didn't have anything that crazy. It just used bump mapping. The new effect they talked about with Rebel Strike was light scattering, which I think was their term for bloom.

I think it did. I remember being in a lot of arguments about it. Like the Death Star run in one of those games was supposed to have it.

 

[Synth]

I tried to check VF2 out, but all levels are flat. I cant see any instance where characters would dynamically deform based on 3d obstacles. From what I've read, Jurassic park trespasser & oot were the first to do it (jurassic park coming out 1 month b4 oot), but who knows maybe i just didnt look hard enough lol.

The ring itself is elevated. Depending on position, a character may have one leg on the ground, and another on the ring.

Ocarina of Time is also predated by a whole two years by Virtua Fighter 3 in the arcades (and is only a week ahead of the Dreamcast release) where undulating and protruding surfaces are a key element in basically every stage.

 

[Wood Man]

First time I saw Virtua Fighter I was blown away. I had no idea what I was looking at, but it looked freakin' cool. Hard to believe it's been over 20 years.

 

[dogen]

I don't know if I'll ever be able to prove it, but I still believe that the GameCube could push more polygons in real world situations than either of it's competitors. Things like Rogue Squadron 3 pulling off all of 2's campaign in split screen at 60fps, or all of the tiny geometric details that Metroid Prime threw around, it's just nuts.That little system packed a punch, and is absolutely fascinating from a technical point of view.

I can't say for sure, but that's kinda hard to believe considering the Xbox was nearly on par with the highest end PC GPUs at the time in terms of polygons/s (and close to double nvidia's best, the geforce 3).

I think it did. I remember being in a lot of arguments about it. Like the Death Star run in one of those games was supposed to have it.

Normal mapping I'm guessing.

 

[LCGeek]

I can't say for sure, but that's kinda hard to believe considering the Xbox was nearly on par with the highest end PC GPUs at the time in terms of polygons/s (and close to double nvidia's best, the geforce 3).

Theoretical not sustained. In the end we had 4 systems that gen that shattered graphical perceptions that just doesn't happen these days.

 

[Psychological Intellect]

People who think KH3 looks like Toy Story (yes, 1) are probably the same people who can't see the difference between 30fps and 60fps or 1080p vs 4k.

It's not even a comparison from an IQ perspective.
It looks great, don't get me wrong, but let's not kid ourselves.

Nah, KH3 is quite easily a step above TS1. Get ya eyes checked pimp

 

[dogen]

Theoretical not sustained. In the end we had 4 systems that gen that shattered graphical perceptions that just doesn't happen these days.

The PC specs it was comparable to were theoretical as well so what's the difference?

 

[Magnus]

Perhaps not a historic achievement, but having to rebuild old games from scratch due to lost source code and match their original is mighty impressive.

Crash Bandicoot and KH1, as examples.

EDIT: Not really a technological achievement but praise is warranted.

KH1 was rebuilt from scratch for the HD remaster? Holy shit.

 

[FireBeaver]

KH1 was rebuilt from scratch for the HD remaster? Holy shit.

They lost the original code so they went back and redid the whole thing.

 

[Psychological Intellect]

KH1 was rebuilt from scratch for the HD remaster? Holy shit.

Not exaaaactly, theh lost the source code so they had to build it back from the disc.

 

[mattwhite924]

I can't say for sure, but that's kinda hard to believe considering the Xbox was nearly on par with the highest end PC GPUs at the time in terms of polygons/s (and close to double nvidia's best, the geforce 3).



Normal mapping I'm guessing.

I mean just in geometry pushing power. The Xbox GPU was clearly more powerful in other areas

As for Rogue Squadron, they do mention using displacement maps during the in-game commentary. I believe it was used for the terrain. That technique wasn't all that unusual at the time, since you could easily define a map with a simple grey-scale image to define the terrain height.

 

[Magnus]

All the Toy Story and KH3 posts confuse the shit out of me. It's like half of GAF is 100% convinced that's KH3 is clearly superior, and the other half is 100% convinced that Toy Story is. There's no gray area.

Which is it? It has to be a fairly black and white matter-of-fact kind of thing, no?

 

[DevilWillcry]

Donkey Kong Country on SNES: I had never seen prerendered visuals like this before. It all ran so smoothly on top of that. This was the technical achievement standout of this generation. It still looks and plays great today too!

Metal Gear Solid on PlayStation and Half-Life on PC: These games were both so ahead of their time. These two games are among the first games to take voice acting and presentation seriously. Not only that but the visuals were on par with or better than pretty much anything else from the awkward early 3D era. Plus they both did big things to advance game design within the Stealth and FPS genres.

Shadow of the Colossus for PS2: How did a system from the start of the new millennium manage to pull off a game designed entirely of massive moving boss puzzle levels within a huge solitary open world? The more powerful competition at the time didn't have anything like SOTC. The clever art design, brilliant soundtrack and amazing animations created an atmosphere and an experience that is unlike anything else to this day. It's an artistic and technical achievement even on the PS2 WITH the frame drops

God of War III for Playstation 3: This game came out 7 years ago and it still looks and feels like it could have come out this year. The level of meticulous detail put into every bit of this game is insane. If you look closely, Kratos' muscles tense up and loosen depending on what he's doing in the game. The game's opening boss sequence is one of the most impressive technical achievements of the last generation and it's still one of the most impressive playable video game segments to this day.

 

[LCGeek]

The PC specs it was comparable to were theoretical as well so what's the difference?

Let me see in real world differences.

PCs of xbox strength especially non celerons based cpus about equal or stronger kept their frames. However I will be nice to the xbox it having Geforce 4 level tech helped it to have much better effects unless you had a much better gpu in the system. Ports weren't also straight as level sizes had to be nerfed to keep frames even 20-30fps this is notable in HL2 or Doom3. People also used higher res and still maintained similar fps on PCs xbox is limited to 480p for most games. Most gamers of that era on pc were easily 800x600 to 1280x1024 which is a clear step up from 640x480. PC didn't have halo though.

IQ and Assets levels were also difference. You can look up port comparisons on those two to see strengths of either side.

 

[wbEMX]

I don't even know where to begin.

Eh, GT4 was more impressive. I mean, the US version ran in 1080i, which is freaking crazy if you think about the time it was released and on which hardware it ran.

 

[jett]

I think the Luminous engine is insane and I wish KH3 and all Square games were using it.

I'm good with UE4, thanks.

 

[low-G]

People who think KH3 looks like Toy Story (yes, 1) are probably the same people who can't see the difference between 30fps and 60fps or 1080p vs 4k.

It's not even a comparison from an IQ perspective.
It looks great, don't get me wrong, but let's not kid ourselves.

Only things we're going to miss is the raytraced reflections in Buzz's helmet, and you're never going to beat selective AA that can take a day to solve aliasing on some line.

 

[dogen]

Let me see in real world differences.

PCs of xbox strength especially non celerons based cpus about equal or stronger kept their frames. However I will be nice to the xbox it having Geforce 4 level tech helped it to have much better effects unless you had a much better gpu in the system. Ports weren't also straight as level sizes had to be nerfed to keep frames even 20-30fps this is notable in HL2 or Doom3.

IQ and Assets levels were also difference. You can look up port comparisons on those two to see strengths of either side.

No idea what you're trying to say lol.

 

[supermarioworldE]

I'm not sure if this counts, but I still think the concept of combining two seperate cartridges to make a new game was a cool idea in 1994, and was pretty ahead of its time considering DLC.

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

Goes without saying:

 

[Samikaze]

While not a graphical achievement by any means, Road Rash on PS1 was one of the first games to support a licensed, high quality soundtrack.

Also, holy crap! Thank you OP, for posting that Comanche game! I used to play that so much on my first computer. Wonder if I can find it somewhere for free...

 

[lumzi23]

Normal mapping I'm guessing.

I am pretty sure was it wasn't. What you said about the light scattering was correct but I also think there was displacement mapping as well. I remember all the console wars on G4techtv gamers lounge/the show forums as well as pcvsconsole forums. It was a very prominent argument in favor of GC being more powerful than Xbox.

They used Normal Mapping on the characters and DM on stuff like some of the geometry on the death star iirc.

Unless the person I was arguing with was wrong (which I doubt because the guy knew his stuff and iirc he he had links for much of what he said from Factor 5).

His name was TheRealShadowFox.

 

[LCGeek]

No idea what you're trying to say lol.

No in general they aren't equal.

1. Xbox ports to PC aren't 1:1, so that puts a kink in equal performance argument.
2. Some xbox titles have strong FX due to the fact you could use the tech vs having to wonder if the pc gamer had a geforce 4 level and beyond gpu to use it.
3. Xbox levels had to be chopped see Doom3 or Half Life 2 comparisons.
4. Assets as in polygons aren't equal.
5. You're IQ and Resolution are still much more on PC especially a cpu and gpu that can compete with geforce 4 level console considering nv2a is a hyrbid.
6. FPS generally higher and more stable on PC.

There were plenty of reasons to own an xbox that gen mainly the exclusives and xbl or that some titles say GTA3 were more worth the time on a console than on a PC.

 

[dogen]

I mean just in geometry pushing power. The Xbox GPU was clearly more powerful in other areas

As for Rogue Squadron, they do mention using displacement maps during the in-game commentary. I believe it was used for the terrain. That technique wasn't all that unusual at the time, since you could easily define a map with a simple grey-scale image to define the terrain height.

Maybe they meant height mapping? Just guessing though.

No in general they aren't equal.

1. Xbox ports to PC aren't 1:1, so that puts a kink in equal performance argument.
2. Some xbox titles have strong FX due to the fact you could use the tech vs having to wonder if the pc gamer had a geforce 4 level and beyond gpu to use it.
3. Xbox levels had to be chopped see Doom3 or Half Life 2 comparisons.
4. Assets as in polygons aren't equal.
5. You're IQ and Resolution are still much more on PC especially a cpu and gpu that can compete with geforce 4 level console considering nv2a is a hyrbid.
6. FPS generally higher and more stable on PC.

There were plenty of reasons to own an xbox that gen mainly the exclusives and xbl or that some titles say GTA3 were more worth the time on a console than on a PC.

uhh.. I said I don't know what you're saying, then you say "No in general they aren't equal.".

lol

At least look at the post I was replying to originally. It had nothing to do with PC hardware. I was just saying that since the xbox could push nearly twice as many triangles as a geforce 3(and somewhere approaching a radeon 8500, which was top of the line back then) I'm guessing it could do more than the gamecube.

 

[UncleSporky]

Indeed.

This was on the Gameboy Advance.

Other impressive GBA games:

Payback

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryNR9nVB2z8

When actual GTA on GBA looked like this:

Payback accomplished this:

Of course it could easily be argued that the real GTA on GBA was cleaner and more "readable" and probably much more fun. But this is about technological achievements!

This GTA clone is actually BETTER than GTA 1 & 2 in some ways, in that it uses actual 3D models for vehicles and not just sprites. As I recall, it even had some lighting effects at night, headlights and taillights.

Stuntman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W5YOCW3r1Y

V-Rally 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6KbJMJ7NUk

Just a few of several (many?) polygonal 3D racers on GBA.

 

[Cow Mengde]

Also one of the Rogue Squadron games on Gamecube as far as I know was the first game to use Displacement Mapping (essentially Tessellation from what I understand).

Everybody's talking about Toy Story graphics, and the Gamecube had Star Wars graphics over a decade ago.

Ok fine, so it's not like it's a 1:1 recreation, but holy hell it looks amazingly close to the movies back in the day. The modern Star Wars games has this weird lighting that looks off.

 

[Mr_Antimatter]

Guinness can in fact, get things wrong. Soul Reaver hid some loading in game behind the door animations, the rest was done on the fly.

In fact, Eurogamer did a specific article highlighting this particular thing in reference to the DF video.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2017-soul-reaver-legacy-of-kain-the-genesis-of-todays-open-world-epics

Soul reaver was a damn marvel. Only loading screen was at the start of the game, else you can play the entire thing and never hit one. All the loading was done while running some sort of long animation to hide it.

Jak is amazing as well. No load times, and at the time, it pushed more polygons then any ps2 title, iirc. It was often used in early ps2 era flamewars to justify the console's claims.

As for my entry: Red Factions Geomod technology.

Before that, such levels of destruction and leveling alteration outside of scripted events was pretty unheard of. Recoil had some environment deformation in 1999, but not nearly to the same level.

When actual GTA on GBA looked like this:

Payback accomplished this:

This was actually a stylistic thing by DMA design. They thought the game would suck in true 3d, pointing to games like Streets of sim City. So GTA 1 and 2 were strictly 2d, and they made sure to include the top down 2d camera in gta 3 in case it suffered from full 3d's effects as well. GTA1's manually actually spokr about the issue, iirc.

 

[LCGeek]

uhh.. I said I don't know what you're saying, then you say "No in general they aren't equal.".

lol

I was responding to your theoretical comment.

It's never equal cause ports are never 1:1 situations, which keeps comparisons fair.

I also am having a hard time finding a fair comparison for a pc of the time. The xbox had a customized P3, so unless you accounted for that you can't do a 1:1. The GPU is a hybrid with no PC equal.

Hence me saying what I said. You can't really match it up to other parts of the time considering it's one of the few heavily customized high end consoles ever built. Next to dreamcast their wasn't a better console at proving the time of arcades even high end pc gaming was over.

 

[LightofRohan]

All the Toy Story and KH3 posts confuse the shit out of me. It's like half of GAF is 100% convinced that's KH3 is clearly superior, and the other half is 100% convinced that Toy Story is. There's no gray area.

Which is it? It has to be a fairly black and white matter-of-fact kind of thing, no?

It's impossible for it to be a "matter of fact" kind of thing. Because real-time and prerendered are so drastically different that it is a completely different art-form.

They are going to look different. But visually KH3 is better from '98 Toy Story 1. You are completely ignorant to argue against that...

BUT we literally have a thread for this obnoxious debate.

 

[dogen]

I was responding to your theoretical comment.

It's never equal cause ports are never 1:1 situations, which keeps comparisons fair.

I also am having a hard time finding a fair comparison for a pc of the time. The xbox had a customized P3, so unless you accounted for that you can't do a 1:1. The GPU is a hybrid with no PC equal.

Hence me saying what I said. You can't really match it up to other parts of the time considering it's one of the few heavily customized high end consoles ever built. Next to dreamcast their wasn't a better console at proving the time of arcades even high end pc gaming was over.

You are way off track somehow. All I was talking about was how many polygons the xbox could do versus the gamecube.

 

[Cow Mengde]

Rebel Strike has the highest sustained poly performance of the big 3 of that gen with all its effects at 60fps it speaks for itself even now. No game can come close once you start asking does it do light scattering, does it have a respectable lighting model, does it perform at 30-60fps with high polys and everytime the question is asked you can go no. In other words I got ya fam. Example of light scattering below.

Digital Foundry's video on the Gamecube Star Wars games can't come soon enough. The technologies in these 2 games are mind blowing even today. The graphics hold up really well. At a glance, you could still mistake it for a modern game.

 

[LCGeek]

You are way off track somehow. All I was talking about was how many polygons the xbox could do versus the gamecube.

My bad.

Also I've answered that question it though it could be more nuanced.

Cube did the most period also at 60fps when it did. There's no debate. Show me one game equal to rebel strike performance, polys, and tech features then we can have a debate.

Sadly neither Cube or Xbox were full exploited as the generation ended early for them. This should be taken in to account and alex ward said it in referring to not being able to exploit burnout.

Digital Foundry's video on the Gamecube Star Wars games can't come soon enough. The technologies in these 2 games are mind blowing even today. The graphics hold up really well. At a glance, you could still mistake it for a modern game.

Most def.

What irks me is that factor 5 had lair running on the architecture, Wii not GC. I would wreck things to see a fraction of that considering gc to xbox titles we have seen from rare showed the system had capabilities if you had the time and talent.

 

[LinkSlayer64]

Doesn't that make it not seamless then?



It was normal to put that in amiga demo back then. I don't know why they thought it was a good idea for a game lol.

No, because there wasn't a single fade to Black or loading screen. By "door opening animation" I don't mean like Resident Evil or Dino Crisis. The door opening was in-engine. (For lack of a better term.)

 

[Shaanyboi]

Star Wars: Dark Forces

That game introduced a level of verticality that most other Doom clones at the time never accomplished. Looking up and down was a big deal, not to mention the introduction of ducking and jumping.

Having 3D levels that could be built on-top of one another changed shit in ways that no one thinks about anymore. Not to mention its engine allowing for animated textures etc. which allowed for stuff like conveyer belts and other visual tricks.

 

[dogen]

My bad.

Also I've answered that question it though it could be more nuanced.

Cube did the most period also at 60fps when it did. There's no debate. Show me one game equal to rebel strike performance, polys, and tech features then we can have a debate.

Maybe, but if you're referring to rebel strike with it's supposed 20M/s figure, then you should realize that that's only at peak and also possibly before occlusion and frustum culling. I've tested in dolphin, and can confirm that the average count isn't nearly that high.

Also, there was an xbox game in development by boss games (they did world driver championship on N64) that peaked at 30M per second, if that counts for anything.

 

[Cow Mengde]

What irks me is that factor 5 had lair running on the architecture, Wii not GC. I would wreck things to see a fraction of that considering gc to xbox titles we have seen from rare showed the system had capabilities if you had the time and talent.

Yeah, I would love to see direct feed footage of the lair engine running on the Wii instead of the few seconds of off screen footage what we got.

 

[LCGeek]

Maybe, but if you're referring to rebel strike with it's supposed 20M/s figure, then you should realize that that's only at peak and also possibly before occlusion and frustum culling. I've tested in dolphin, and can confirm that the average count isn't nearly that high.

Yes I'm referring to the peak but considering the tech involved what other games on xbox can really belong in the same mention. Like you I wonder where it was or how they got the numbers considering the claim, but they were more forward than most that gen and other claims they made across the board were validated. Again it would be something if the game had no lighting model, no per pixel effects or bumpmmaping and yet somehow this cube game did with that output when even nintendo didn't expect that ever.

Yes it does and I mentioned pgr and wreckless as poly pushers on XBOX.

Also, there was an xbox game in development by boss games (they did world driver championship on N64) that peaked at 30M per second, if that counts for anything.

Someone leaked it on b3d once. For xbox game and the draw distance I saw along with structure of any console of that generation it would've been king. It was unfinished but the fps and polys were there which has me going how. The bridge seuqnce for one level left me floored. It took PGR3 for me to take 360 seirously.

Is this the game?

His post clearly like alex ward hints at another tier of OG Xbox that we really didn't see in early titles. I can fathom a basic image of a game like that but to see it shame Gran Turismo and early PGR without question would be another matter

 

[Syril]

I remember downloading this years ago. I still have no idea how they did it.

Well here's a super technical explanation.

https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/metaprogramming-for-madmen/

 

[pottuvoi]

Always loved the Frontier for bypassing limitations of Amiga in planet solar system scale coordinate system. (Impressive.)
Also for polygons where one edge could be curved and 'tone mapping/palette selection' to 16 final colors.

The original Jak and Daxter was the first game with a seamless open world

Nope.

We already had absolute firsts in videogames thread.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=830107