Imperial Hot
Banned
Sadly, that is about right. I am not trying to offend anyone, but a lot of times the Zelda games get a slightly higher score do to there branding. But hey, Zelda is a good series so maybe it deserves it.Tieno said:
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Concerning Wii Graphics (not complaining Wii graphics sucks)
- Thread starter Lobster
- Start date
vanguardian1
poor, homeless and tasteless
I just recently posted these on another board discussing the same subject, pretty much.
http://forums.gametrailers.com/showthread.php?t=68776&page=1
here's the informative post, although the fill rate isn't corrected except for the front page
http://forums.gametrailers.com/showpost.php?p=1654810&postcount=151
underfooter
Banned
I don't know if Zelda should score a 9.0 for graphics, but I think it has a reason to get an edge over Sonic and maybe SSX (I havn't played it). It was just solid. The framerate was solid, it didn't have any glitches, it was consistent-quality through-out, and most importantly it had an artistic integrity 5 years of SSX and god-knows-how-many of Sonic can't touch.
vanguardian1 said:
Yes, this is the other game I keep mentioning that clearly demonstrates to me 'higher than GCN/Xbox' standard imo. The lighting in motion is really quite impressive to boot. But, maybe technically it won't be anything special if it's just small empty spaces of ocean in the end. We'll see.
Few points...
1) Same happened to Xbox 360 last year. "best looking games" for the system kept coming but all got a 9. Including games which some would say looked weak and some would say looked amazing.
2) As someone here already said, I think reviewers are expecting something that Xbox can't do, or at least on par with the very best that Xbox had to offer.
3) With Zelda reviewers usually expect lesser graphics from games with a large game world. e.g. GTA, Saint's Row, Elder Scrolls etc Zelda wasn't really as big as them, but enough reviewers mentioned ir for it to count.
1) Same happened to Xbox 360 last year. "best looking games" for the system kept coming but all got a 9. Including games which some would say looked weak and some would say looked amazing.
2) As someone here already said, I think reviewers are expecting something that Xbox can't do, or at least on par with the very best that Xbox had to offer.
3) With Zelda reviewers usually expect lesser graphics from games with a large game world. e.g. GTA, Saint's Row, Elder Scrolls etc Zelda wasn't really as big as them, but enough reviewers mentioned ir for it to count.
plagiarize
Banned
vanguardian, some of those screens are at the wrong aspect ratio... could you fix that?
edit: on topic though, we KNOW on a technical level that the wii is capable of Rebel Strike graphics as an absolute minimum, and no game has come near touching them yet. you can't expect a game to get into the higher scores on a technical level until that bar is at least raised a bit.
Lost Planet is an interesting example, because when someone can play the demo i think it's absolutely fair to mark stuff down for not looking as good even if it still over half a year away.
you can try to explain to them that it's just a demo and it doesn't have the same content and so on, but you won't convince them. their 360 can do it right there and then.
i'm fortunate enough to have played Super Mario Galaxy. i know that the wii is capable of much more than we're seeing so far.
edit: on topic though, we KNOW on a technical level that the wii is capable of Rebel Strike graphics as an absolute minimum, and no game has come near touching them yet. you can't expect a game to get into the higher scores on a technical level until that bar is at least raised a bit.
Lost Planet is an interesting example, because when someone can play the demo i think it's absolutely fair to mark stuff down for not looking as good even if it still over half a year away.
you can try to explain to them that it's just a demo and it doesn't have the same content and so on, but you won't convince them. their 360 can do it right there and then.
i'm fortunate enough to have played Super Mario Galaxy. i know that the wii is capable of much more than we're seeing so far.
nintendorly
Banned
sp0rsk said:
But touch my teaaars, with your lippssss, touch my woo-o-orldddd, with your finger tiiiiips! And we can have forever! And we can love foreveeeeeerrr!
AniHawk said:
the company did other diving games for this gen that looked nowhere near that sort of visuals, so i mean not only is it an odd niche (to keep making diving games, i mean) but also represents a pretty clear jump ahead of what we've been seeing on Wii. a '9' or '10' standard for the system!
MasterMFauli
Banned
Wollan said:
Yeah, i keep reading how Amirox sets himself up for a big disappointmenton.
This looks like X360 in this GIF.
MasterMFauli said:
it's a tiny gif that hides flaws AND remember the game is SD resolution, AND is in a mostly empty ocean. I've seen it full size, so I have no delusions. And I don't know why you guys think it to be impossible either. You guys have already set your standards SO LOW at this point, I think
Check out the video from when they originally unveiled the game. That was at, like, E3 2006! This last Forever Blue video was from a reel from September iirc. And at full size, it's similar. You can see where it has to be held back, due to Wii. Nothing impossible, BUT a higher standard.
Magicpaint
Member
From what I've seen, Zelda TP is still the most impressive looking Wii game. SSX Blur looks like SSX3 and Sonic Wii while impressive isn't really pushing the Wii in any real way.
MasterMFauli
Banned
Amir0x said:
With the bolded text, you mean the GIF or what?
Nice youtube-clip, looks definitely worse than the GIF, but i´d play it noentheless.
I just hope this game will feature really deep sea, with underwater-canyons and such...but...oh, i get off-topic :-/
MasterMFauli said:
Yeah the gif is from a more recent 'build' of Forever Blue, they showed in the major September Wii blowout. At full size, it looks only like an improvement over the original due mainly to lighting. They improved lighting a lot. It is definitely not out of the realm of Wii, imo.
plagiarize
Banned
blur has more post processing stuff going on than SSX 3 (such as that blur). it uses the on tour engine, but runs at a higher framerate, so it *is* technically the best SSX game so far from a technical perspective.Magicpaint said:
Diablohead
Member
The wii may be more powerful then xbox 1 but the devs have to learn to control it all, games are not on par 100% with some of the later in the xbox life game releases because dev time has been less.
I'm sure the wii will get some lookers coming christmas, the newer games coming out right now already have a step up in that area.
I'm sure the wii will get some lookers coming christmas, the newer games coming out right now already have a step up in that area.
Diablohead said:
I don't even think the difference between those 2 machines will change something at the user end. The difference between a PS2 and Xbox seemed bigger and for many games the difference was minimal.
"Ninja Gaiden graphics" will probably more something like the norm on the Wii than on the Xbox but the Wii won't trounce the Xbox at all. I bet you people that there will be an handfull of games that will kick Xbox's ass, not "most games".
Android18a
Member
I suspect we won't see any true improvement in visuals over the life span of the Wii. Look at Gamecube and N64 games - some of the earlier ones look a LOT better than the latter ones (particularly first party offerings).
Gamecube: Smash Bros Melee, Luigis Mansion, Waverace Blue Storm, Rogue Squadron 2 etc really looked great, and hold up today with great character modelling, and generally impressive visuals. Aside from, say, Resi 4, the graphics on the Cube have actually dropped. Thats how it seems to me, at least. Smash Bros Character models are better looking than any of the ones from "actual" games like Twilight Princess, Mario Sunshine or even Metroid Prime (anyone notice the awfully low res textures on Samus' suit, apparent when on a lift?).
N64: Compare the Mario model from Mario 64 with Smash Bros, Mario Party, Mario Golf, Mario Tennis etc. It's like they decided at some point they could get away with using 4 polygons per character. Other than Majoras Mask, the Rare output or Paper Mario, late N64 games were pretty ugly.
Gamecube: Smash Bros Melee, Luigis Mansion, Waverace Blue Storm, Rogue Squadron 2 etc really looked great, and hold up today with great character modelling, and generally impressive visuals. Aside from, say, Resi 4, the graphics on the Cube have actually dropped. Thats how it seems to me, at least. Smash Bros Character models are better looking than any of the ones from "actual" games like Twilight Princess, Mario Sunshine or even Metroid Prime (anyone notice the awfully low res textures on Samus' suit, apparent when on a lift?).
N64: Compare the Mario model from Mario 64 with Smash Bros, Mario Party, Mario Golf, Mario Tennis etc. It's like they decided at some point they could get away with using 4 polygons per character. Other than Majoras Mask, the Rare output or Paper Mario, late N64 games were pretty ugly.
I do expect future Wii games to look better. I've been messing with GC homebrew and the TEV (specially the indirect texture unit) is insanely flexible.
Here's a little thing not everyone knows about: on the GC you have two blocks of RAM, the main one (24MB, fast) and the "external" one (16 MB, slow). Textures, geometry, the framebuffers and assorted offscreen buffers plus your program must all fit in the 24MB. The 16MB block is reserved for sound, but there are a few tricks to put non critical stuff in there too.
On the Wii you got two blocks too: a 24MB one (T1 SRAM, faaast) and a 64MB one (GDDR3, still fast). You can put whatever you want in any of those blocks. So one could have the main program and some compressed sounds in the 24MB block and use 64MBs for textures, geometry and buffers. Just for counts, a 512x512 texture compressed with DXT1 uses 171KBs of video RAM (mipmaps included). Do the math and see how much of those you could fit in there.
Also, it seems that setting up the TEV's indirect texture unit for doing tone-mapping (which would help wonders in making the IQ more next-gen-ish) is very possible. There's no excuse for laziness.
Here's a little thing not everyone knows about: on the GC you have two blocks of RAM, the main one (24MB, fast) and the "external" one (16 MB, slow). Textures, geometry, the framebuffers and assorted offscreen buffers plus your program must all fit in the 24MB. The 16MB block is reserved for sound, but there are a few tricks to put non critical stuff in there too.
On the Wii you got two blocks too: a 24MB one (T1 SRAM, faaast) and a 64MB one (GDDR3, still fast). You can put whatever you want in any of those blocks. So one could have the main program and some compressed sounds in the 24MB block and use 64MBs for textures, geometry and buffers. Just for counts, a 512x512 texture compressed with DXT1 uses 171KBs of video RAM (mipmaps included). Do the math and see how much of those you could fit in there.
Also, it seems that setting up the TEV's indirect texture unit for doing tone-mapping (which would help wonders in making the IQ more next-gen-ish) is very possible. There's no excuse for laziness.
ElectricBlue187
Member
Tieno said:
QFT
With N64, I think part of its drop is due to a focus on adding detail.
With Mario, the textures were designed to appear as smooth, colored surfaces. Textures filtering was just becoming big and, rather than attempting to draw lots of detail, they went for smooth colors. This likely saved on memory and allowed for some textures to exhbiit detail. It was a great mix. The style was designed around what the N64 could do.
Later games simply attempted to do more and the results were often ugly. They attempted to add detail when the system couldn't really handle it and the results were often messy. Framerate also started to take a nose dive.
Both systems have to deal with a 3mb framebuffer, however. This places great limitations on textures and image quality. You have to fit a lot into 3mb.
TheIkariWarrior
Member
Wii is meant to capable of graphics that are, for the most part, somewhat better than Xbox1 overall, even if Xbox1 has an advantage in shaders.
Wii has more CPU power more pixel fillrate, more bandwidth, more RAM.
the Hollywood GPU was not in the hands of developers until mid 2006 / summer 2006. final SDKs i believe came out even later. many Wii games were built using Gamecube's chipset.
also, many developers are focusing their time on learning how to make the most of the controller, making new types of gameplay, rather than graphics.
I'm not making excuses for Wii graphics, what we've seen for the most part doesn't look too hot, with the exception of several upcoming games.
the scuba-diving game, Mario Galaxy Metroid Prime 3.
most important thing to remember is, Wii has over 3.5x the amount of fast memory that GameCube had. that alone will lead to better graphics. Granted, Wii is never going to be more than a GameCube with 2-3 the performance, but that really isnt too bad since Wii doesnt have to run at 720p requiring 3x the fillrate.
many games won't push the graphics capability of Wii, some will.
Wii has more CPU power more pixel fillrate, more bandwidth, more RAM.
the Hollywood GPU was not in the hands of developers until mid 2006 / summer 2006. final SDKs i believe came out even later. many Wii games were built using Gamecube's chipset.
also, many developers are focusing their time on learning how to make the most of the controller, making new types of gameplay, rather than graphics.
I'm not making excuses for Wii graphics, what we've seen for the most part doesn't look too hot, with the exception of several upcoming games.
the scuba-diving game, Mario Galaxy Metroid Prime 3.
most important thing to remember is, Wii has over 3.5x the amount of fast memory that GameCube had. that alone will lead to better graphics. Granted, Wii is never going to be more than a GameCube with 2-3 the performance, but that really isnt too bad since Wii doesnt have to run at 720p requiring 3x the fillrate.
many games won't push the graphics capability of Wii, some will.
bumpkin
Member
Because Sonic has had a pretty shitty track record as of late? That'd be my guess... It's going to take more than one semi-solid game to wash the taste of Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic 360/PS3 out of our mouths. :lolBlindN-Fan said:Ok then lets use Sonic.
How does this deserve a score lower then Zelda in the graphics department.
hmm??
Meta-Knight
Member
I may sound strange to some, but quality of graphics is an opinion. I personally think TP has the best graphics by far because of character design, level design, artistic style and special effects like lighting which is far more evolved than in any other Wii game. The twilight world is also impressive. Because of this if I had to write a review for the game I would put an 8 or a 9 on the graphics.
Now about SSX blur, it's nice and all, but... blurry. I haven't played the game but it doesn't seem like it's leaps and bounds ahead of TP in the graphics department. But the blur effect is very nice
I contender for best graphics on Wii is Dewey which looks amazing.
Now about SSX blur, it's nice and all, but... blurry. I haven't played the game but it doesn't seem like it's leaps and bounds ahead of TP in the graphics department. But the blur effect is very nice
I contender for best graphics on Wii is Dewey which looks amazing.
dark10x said:
The 3MB EDRAM is misunderstood. It's more like a processor cache instead of normal memory.
The GPU only performs raster operations on the cache. When it finishes drawing on the 3MB cache, it copies the image somewhere in the main RAM. The video chip cannot display images directly form the cache into the screen: the buffer must reside on the main RAM.
So, front and back buffers, plus all render-to-texture targets (for shadows, glow, reflections) reside on the main RAM. You only need to fit one of them at a time, plus a z-buffer of the same size. Still, there isn't enough cache for a full 24-bit 16:9 720P frame+z-buffer (and 16-bit would still be stretching), but there is enough for a complete 24-bits 16:9 480p buffer.
Starchasing
Member
maxmars said:
Yes, thats what i have in mind too, a buffer that holds the next frame to be displayed
backflip10019
Member
It's very difficult to rate a game based solely on screenshots; it doesn't matter what the game looks like in a screenshot, but rather in motion. I haven't played Sonic, nor have I played SSX Blur, so I don't feel qualified to weigh in on how good they look in motion.
Tenacious-V
Thinks his PR is better than yours.
Yeah, I don't know what the problem is. Lazy devs or something. Wii should be able to output stuff slightly better than the cream of the crop of Xbox1 games. Games should look at least on par with Ninja Gaiden, but what's out right now... They've had how many years to master the hardware and yet they're still coming out with stuff that would look weak on GC.
dark10x said:
That's false the framebuffer is nothing like before. Here's an update from the big Wii topic at B3D.
"I had a chance to talk to a few people who looked at the leaked SDK, and I'll try to recap what I've learned:
- Broadway is clocked at 729MHz, bus at 243MHz.
- TEV revision is the same as with Gamecube (2).
- The Codewarrior compiler still uses the "gekko"-arch.
- Almost all includes are pretty much identical to the Dolphin SDK.
- The higher overall performance affects the audio DSP (more voices, additional effect slot).
- Some new APIs were added, for example a stream (de)compression API for LZ77 and some other algorithms (dedicated hardware?).
- The two memory pools are simply two different "arenas" (unlike Gamecubes ARAM).
- The video interface now features a comb filter and gamma correction in hardware.
- Both memory pools may contain a framebuffer (embedded framebuffer removed?).
And, like bomlat wrote, the SDK is not final - wasn't the GPU not even finalized 'til very close to launch? Like late August or something...?"
The framebuffer is a different configuration from before and leads to the possibility that devs can use more memory from the 1t-sram (24MB) and GDDR3 (64MB).
People should make extreme note of the final comment. Devs with these sdk still don't know how to take advantage of the Hollywood because nintendo has yet to document it. This also flat out proves that maxconsole and ign specs are from old kits with non final hardware.
Eteric Rice
Member
I wouldn't doubt it if the Wii could put out visuals a lot better than the X-Box. Hell, the Gamecube was damn near it in visuals, so something twice as powerful should logically be able to do much better.
plagiarize
Banned
so why the prevalence of 16 bit colour in wii games? people using old SDKs or Cube engines?Hatorade said:
tahrikmili
Member
BlindN-Fan said:
The Hype Train is right at home on the rails baby!
Starchasing
Member
dark10x said:
I agree, and I guess this will be true for a while. It seems like Nintendo´s direction, where graphics are not that important, is pushing everyone to do this.
dark10x said:
I know about the texture cache, but I believe it only stores a small part of the texture(s) currently assigned to the texture slots (for single pass texturing). That's what GPUs have been doing for years, and that's why disabling mip-mapping actually worsens the framerate on anything newer than a GF1, since it'll cause lots of cache misses.
On the GC case, I don't think the problem is the cache per see, but the fact that you only have 24MBs to work with, and must share it without your program and graphics. When you think about it, the GC barely has any extra room for textures when compared to the PS2, unless you compress all your textures (which all devs *should* do unless absolutely necessary, since it can reduce textures up to 1/8th of their original size).
When flipping the 16-bit switch can free 1MB+ of RAM (which can hold almost a 1024x1024 compressed texture), most devs will feel very tempted to do it.