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[Thunder Monkey]

Yes. Or trying to do it the IMR way on a deferred architecture. Or simply trying to shoehorn in a complex lighting model designed for consoles when a simpler lighting model with much cleaner IQ would likely result in a more pleasing overall picture.

Wipeout 2048 and VT4 show what's possible when you play to the hardware's strengths.

Which is the truth of every platform. Play to its strengths and you can achieve incredible things.

But devs still like their homogeneity of pipelines and engines. I can understand. If you've got a full plate even minor differences can set you back. So for the most part it looks like they don't very much anymore. If it can't be dumped onto a platform with minimal effort it just won't be done.

But given your history with software dumps (can't even call some of them "ports") you know that.

It is the console experience on the go. Some games being below native res is all part of that.

So you're saying there's a chance for a Vitarebound?

 

[kinggroin]

I'm not sure they were referring to the image on the gamepad

Btw how is the quality on the pad screen? Still haven't gotten to try or even see one yet. I heard it was bad though...makes sense for low latency streaming.

I'm guessing the wiiU actually doesn't work as much when just sending an image to the gamepad as well ..

Serviceable, if not decent at times. Depending on how large your TV is and how close you sit, games can look a bit sharper on the pad thanks to a higher PPI.

Edit: There is image compression BTW, with red displaying the most artifacts.

 

[2+2=5]

It is the console experience on the go. Some games being below native res is all part of that.

Sadly it's true, what is the last AAA game with 1080p resolution on the ps3?

 

[Skyzard]

Wasn't the magical power of price drop pushed into the wayside a long time ago?
If there's no software that can push the Vita, the increase will be temporary (that's known since forever now) and worst of all it will worsen the situation for Sony as the system will be less profitable than it is leaving them with less margin to invest.
If anything they should up the value instead of lowering the price.

Heck their primary competitor in this field do exactly that, each revision up the value and so goes the price and they don't seem to have more problems selling that after the price hike.

If anything one should expect a better outlook on the Vita when/if big games come and I don't mean companion games either.

And software not selling (I actually don't know if that's the case for Vita) is actually a bigger problem for Vita, as if games are not selling it'll end up with the worst part of the psp when no one made games for that except in Japan (because the market wasn't dead) and special partnerships.

Nah. The system is just a luxury atm and with the economy people are probably waiting on the price drop since it was already announced.. We saw what price cuts did to the sales.. there could be even better games (no doubt!) but there is enough to see a much more reasonable boost of sales with the price cut imo. Hopefully the major/anticipated games won't be far off.

Serviceable, if not decent at times. Depending on how large your TV is and how close you sit, games can look a bit sharper on the pad thanks to a higher PPI.

Edit: There is image compression BTW, with red displaying the most artifacts.

That's good to hear because I heard some pretty negative things about it (even reports from casuals in that wiiu family reception thread). I was mainly interested in picking one up for the gamepad and surprisingly the low power usage is actually quite attractive due to the way I want to play it (off-screen mostly). Shame ZombiiU doesn't have a gamepad only mode - will wait atm for the regular nintendo big hitters...and some money. Gone broke buying games for my Vita

 

[sajj316]

if you're counting bullshot for RE3DS, then here's some uncharted GA bullshot before the game is released with higher/native res and some AA.

How emaculate it would have looked with 2-4x AA ....

Maybe next time!

 

[Celine]

@Mael
With or without software a price drop is going to happen sooner rather than later.

 

[Maastricht]

If you guys really want to compare to PS3, there have been many comments about the differences. Very obviously, the Vita is less powerful than the PS3. But it's still really powerful.

Versus the PS3:
- you'll have to reduce shader use by about 50%
- CPU is certainly less than half of the Cell, but not as many games use Cell to the max
- MSAA is relatively cheap on the Vita vs PS3 (can be as little as 10% overhead, where PS3 is more like 25% for 2xMSAA, and 50% for 4xMSAA apparently)
- Vita has more main memory, but less graphics memory (512MB main, 128MB graphics), where you have to detract some memory of those 512MB for the OS, party chat and it's maximum of 5 concurrent 'small apps' that are allowed to run beside it. It seems though (from dev screenshots) that this is still leaves at least 400MB of main memory available for a game, and possibly more.
- both types of memory are most likely slower than PS3. I've seen a figure of 13GB, and it's not clear if this is VRAM, main RAM, or both but that VRAM is simply on a separate bus so that reading from both at once is faster than just reading from a shared pool (compare this to the iPad 3 that apparently has two busses to its single pool of memory to the GPU, to optimise that speed/throughput). PS3 is 22GB/s for both of its pools of memory.
- Polygons per (30fps) frame seems to be in the order of 200.000 according to Bend, at least for their engine. This can be up-to 1-3 million for PS3 games (where it should be noted that a really good game engine only needs to draw 1.2 polygons max for a 1280x720p image, or you'd have more polys than pixels, and that's per definition inefficient (some actual GPU programmers are sure to disagree though )
- Vita native resolution is 960x544 (522240) vs PS3 (for most games) 1280x720 (921600). This means that the Vita needs about 60% of the throughput of the PS3 games. It would therefore need to be (all pros and cons combined) at least 60% as efficient as the PS3 to be able to do similar things at native resolution.
- Vita uses components and APIs that are similar to modern PCs (and PS3s). Shaders work similarly, texturing works similarly, etc.

There's more information like this out there. The upshot is clear: the Vita is weaker, and most likely in most cases at least 50% weaker (and many areas considerably more so, others less or better) than the PS3 or more. It is allowed to be at least 40% weaker. As a result, some sacrifices need to be made in order to run ports.

Not all games use the maximum power of the PS3 however, so they can be ported quite well (something like Rayman origins or Virtua Tennis are good examples, and something like Virtua Tennis can then benefit from the MSAA advantage that the Vita has vs the PS3 for instance.

By profiling the games that have been ported, you can get an impression on what aspects are harder on the Vita and what things are easier. it is never clear cut however. If you compare the PS3 and the PS2, then relatively the PS2 had far more framebuffer bandwidth thanks to its very efficient VRAM (EDRAM), to the point that the PS3 can barely keep up with it at PS2 like resolutions for (old school) framebuffer effects, and it simply can't do them at HD resolutions. So even some PS2 ports to Vita are going to run into similar issues.

But overall, the Vita is way beyond the previous gen consoles. Feature wise it's 'current gen', and powerwise its somewhere inbetween the PS2 and PS3, depending on what feature you look at, but on average I'd say closer to PS3 than PS2, and programming wise obviously waaay closer to the PS3.

 

[Jonnyram]

And beyond the Vita power, we have to remember a PS3 game like Uncharted is 25 gigs, when a Vita game is 2g.. That's 12 times less...

I respect you, but that is a bloody ridiculous thing to say. Xbox 360 relies on DVDs and is on a par with PS3. It has nothing to do with storage size.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

I wasn't talking about you I should have done a better job making that clear
Oh and console on the go is old news.
Gameboy was NES on the go after all.
As well GameGear is Master System on the go.

Generally hindered to a degree though.

Vita is outputting visuals and and utilizing play mechanics on par with console offerings. That's impressive. Usually there's missing buttons or sticks, and almost always lacking visuals in comparison.

Vita could have been different. Vita coulda been a contender. But publishers are asses "If you can't do it with 3 interns on their lunch breaks then why should we try?"

 

[yurinka]

You realize that's what i'm saying. Assets are BAD, and IQ is horrendous. That's why it's far from a PS3 game. What's so hard to accept ...

A lie is hard to accept. It looks great in this SMALL screen.

 

[kinggroin]

I'd argue that most developers aren't wisely using the hardware on the Vita. Sometimes ambition can be detriment.

Its got decent specs for sure, but why not leverage those specs the way one would on the mobile platform? Aim for native resolution, 60fps, great art direction and leave the slow loading sub native low frame rate console facsimiles to the actual consoles. Just my opinion.

Would also lower development cost and maybe....:gasp:....allow for cheaper prices too!

Edit: Not to mention publishers have made it clear Vita is mostly NOT going to get the kind of attention and resources to adequately leverage the hardware and reach some level of parity with its stronger console cousins.

 

[omonimo]

If you guys really want to compare to PS3, there have been many comments about the differences. Very obviously, the Vita is less powerful than the PS3. But it's still really powerful.

Versus the PS3:
- you'll have to reduce shader use by about 50%
- CPU is certainly less than half of the Cell, but not as many games use Cell to the max
- MSAA is relatively cheap on the Vita vs PS3 (can be as little as 10% overhead, where PS3 is more like 25% for 2xMSAA, and 50% for 4xMSAA apparently)
- Vita has more main memory, but less graphics memory (512MB main, 128MB graphics), where you have to detract some memory of those 512MB for the OS, party chat and it's maximum of 5 concurrent 'small apps' that are allowed to run beside it. It seems though (from dev screenshots) that this is still leaves at least 400MB of main memory available for a game, and possibly more.
- both types of memory are most likely slower than PS3. I've seen a figure of 13GB, and it's not clear if this is VRAM, main RAM, or both but that VRAM is simply on a separate bus so that reading from both at once is faster than just reading from a shared pool (compare this to the iPad 3 that apparently has two busses to its single pool of memory to the GPU, to optimise that speed/throughput). PS3 is 22GB/s for both of its pools of memory.
- Polygons per (30fps) frame seems to be in the order of 200.000 according to Bend, at least for their engine. This can be up-to 1-3 million for PS3 games (where it should be noted that a really good game engine only needs to draw 1.2 polygons max for a 1280x720p image, or you'd have more polys than pixels, and that's per definition inefficient (some actual GPU programmers are sure to disagree though )
- Vita native resolution is 960x544 (522240) vs PS3 (for most games) 1280x720 (921600). This means that the Vita needs about 60% of the throughput of the PS3 games. It would therefore need to be (all pros and cons combined) at least 60% as efficient as the PS3 to be able to do similar things at native resolution.
- Vita uses components and APIs that are similar to modern PCs (and PS3s). Shaders work similarly, texturing works similarly, etc.

There's more information like this out there. The upshot is clear: the Vita is weaker, and most likely in most cases at least 50% weaker (and many areas considerably more so, others less or better) than the PS3 or more. It is allowed to be at least 40% weaker. As a result, some sacrifices need to be made in order to run ports.

Not all games use the maximum power of the PS3 however, so they can be ported quite well (something like Rayman origins or Virtua Tennis are good examples, and something like Virtua Tennis can then benefit from the MSAA advantage that the Vita has vs the PS3 for instance.

By profiling the games that have been ported, you can get an impression on what aspects are harder on the Vita and what things are easier. it is never clear cut however. If you compare the PS3 and the PS2, then relatively the PS2 had far more framebuffer bandwidth thanks to its very efficient VRAM (EDRAM), to the point that the PS3 can barely keep up with it at PS2 like resolutions for (old school) framebuffer effects, and it simply can't do them at HD resolutions. So even some PS2 ports to Vita are going to run into similar issues.

But overall, the Vita is way beyond the previous gen consoles. Feature wise it's 'current gen', and powerwise its somewhere inbetween the PS2 and PS3, depending on what feature you look at, but on average I'd say closer to PS3 than PS2, and programming wise obviously waaay closer to the PS3.

Isn't it GPU a lot better of the ps3? & about the whole RAM, isn't it unified or something like that?

 

[Mael]

@Mael
With or without software a price drop is going to happen sooner rather than later.

That's not what I'm saying, what I'm saying is that without software the effects will fall flat.
We have enough examples throughout this gen and the last to know that with a certainty

Nah. The system is just a luxury atm and with the economy people are probably waiting on the price drop since it was already announced.. We saw what price cuts did to the sales.. there could be even better games (no doubt!) but there is enough to see a much more reasonable boost of sales with the price cut imo. Hopefully the major/anticipated games won't be far off.

So you're saying that it'll be like ps3 all over again where the hardware won't move unless the respective SCE bundle it with everything their hands can get?
And that's a luxury item in the same way that every single systems before it were.
People keep pinning the initial problems on the price of the mem cards and what not while that may be a valid concern, I'm mostly certain that it never registered at all to most people.
Seriously if the games were that good people would be buying it in drove.
After all every time someone talk about a game system they usually talk about the games.
Heck even the comparison drawn with 3ds and vita here boils down to Resident Evil vs Uncharted.

Generally hindered to a degree though.

Vita is outputting visuals and and utilizing play mechanics on par with console offerings. That's impressive. Usually there's missing buttons or sticks, and almost always lacking visuals in comparison.

Vita could have been different. Vita coulda been a contender. But publishers are asses "If you can't do it with 3 interns on their lunch breaks then why should we try?"

Why should 3rd party care when even Sony isn't putting its top devs on the hardware!
And aside from Color, what you could do on NES could be done on GB.
And Gamegear could actually run Master system games as is (I would know MS was pretty popular here).
Console gaming on the go may be a good reason to own a Vita but it's not exactly novel which is more my point.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

I'd argue that most developers aren't wisely using the hardware on the Vita. Sometimes ambition can be detriment.

Its got decent specs for sure, but why not leverage those specs the way one would on the mobile platform? Aim for native resolution, 60fps, great art direction and leave the slow loading sub native low frame rate console facsimiles to the actual consoles. Just my opinion.

Would also lower development cost and maybe....:gasp:....allow for cheaper prices too!

Because money and talent are limited.

Vita is different enough that you either need a dedicated Vita team or a competent Vita port team. I guess western publishers had no faith in it.

I'd prefer to see a huge swath of dedicated Vita devs getting the funding they need. Since that's not in the cards I'd be fine with a few Vita porthouses. But that doesn't seem likely anymore. At this point... I shudder to think of the software future of such an intriguing design.

It really is a powerful little son of a bitch. For its size and intent? Too much power for handheld devs.

 

[orioto]

If you guys really want to compare to PS3, there have been many comments about the differences. Very obviously, the Vita is less powerful than the PS3. But it's still really powerful.

Versus the PS3:
- you'll have to reduce shader use by about 50%
- CPU is certainly less than half of the Cell, but not as many games use Cell to the max
- MSAA is relatively cheap on the Vita vs PS3 (can be as little as 10% overhead, where PS3 is more like 25% for 2xMSAA, and 50% for 4xMSAA apparently)
- Vita has more main memory, but less graphics memory (512MB main, 128MB graphics), where you have to detract some memory of those 512MB for the OS, party chat and it's maximum of 5 concurrent 'small apps' that are allowed to run beside it. It seems though (from dev screenshots) that this is still leaves at least 400MB of main memory available for a game, and possibly more.
- both types of memory are most likely slower than PS3. I've seen a figure of 13GB, and it's not clear if this is VRAM, main RAM, or both but that VRAM is simply on a separate bus so that reading from both at once is faster than just reading from a shared pool (compare this to the iPad 3 that apparently has two busses to its single pool of memory to the GPU, to optimise that speed/throughput). PS3 is 22GB/s for both of its pools of memory.
- Polygons per (30fps) frame seems to be in the order of 200.000 according to Bend, at least for their engine. This can be up-to 1-3 million for PS3 games (where it should be noted that a really good game engine only needs to draw 1.2 polygons max for a 1280x720p image, or you'd have more polys than pixels, and that's per definition inefficient (some actual GPU programmers are sure to disagree though )
- Vita native resolution is 960x544 (522240) vs PS3 (for most games) 1280x720 (921600). This means that the Vita needs about 60% of the throughput of the PS3 games. It would therefore need to be (all pros and cons combined) at least 60% as efficient as the PS3 to be able to do similar things at native resolution.
- Vita uses components and APIs that are similar to modern PCs (and PS3s). Shaders work similarly, texturing works similarly, etc.

There's more information like this out there. The upshot is clear: the Vita is weaker, and most likely in most cases at least 50% weaker (and many areas considerably more so, others less or better) than the PS3 or more. It is allowed to be at least 40% weaker. As a result, some sacrifices need to be made in order to run ports.

Not all games use the maximum power of the PS3 however, so they can be ported quite well (something like Rayman origins or Virtua Tennis are good examples, and something like Virtua Tennis can then benefit from the MSAA advantage that the Vita has vs the PS3 for instance.

By profiling the games that have been ported, you can get an impression on what aspects are harder on the Vita and what things are easier. it is never clear cut however. If you compare the PS3 and the PS2, then relatively the PS2 had far more framebuffer bandwidth thanks to its very efficient VRAM (EDRAM), to the point that the PS3 can barely keep up with it at PS2 like resolutions for (old school) framebuffer effects, and it simply can't do them at HD resolutions. So even some PS2 ports to Vita are going to run into similar issues.

But overall, the Vita is way beyond the previous gen consoles. Feature wise it's 'current gen', and powerwise its somewhere inbetween the PS2 and PS3, depending on what feature you look at, but on average I'd say closer to PS3 than PS2, and programming wise obviously waaay closer to the PS3.

Thx for that. I guess you will be more credible than me.
Gaf is so ridiculous sometimes with its infantile fanboys...

 

[kinggroin]

Because money and talent are limited.

Vita is different enough that you either need a dedicated Vita team or a competent Vita port team. I guess western publishers had no faith in it.

I'd prefer to see a huge swath of dedicated Vita devs getting the funding they need. Since that's not in the cards I'd be fine with a few Vita porthouses. But that doesn't seem likely anymore. At this point... I shudder to think of the software future of such an intriguing design.

It really is a powerful little son of a bitch. For its size and intent? Too much power for handheld devs.

Yeah, right, that's my point

Check my edit.

I think with the limit on talent and money, they'd be better served with less ambitious stuff that can easily exploit hardware the fastest (native res, 60fps, and great art direction) rather than trying to to squeeze normal mapped specular highlighted grass blades with AO. I'm exaggerating, but you get the idea.

Of course in an ideal world, we would have much more confidence from publishers, along with the proper funding, and I'd still probably own one :-(

 

[dark10x]

I think it's pretty clear why some people perceive iOS games as being more impressive.

A lot of Vita games are designed to bring actual console games to a handheld. NFS-Most Wanted, for instance, provides the same gameplay and world as the console game with visual compromise. The iOS version of Most Wanted looks nicer at a glance but is a very simplistic game in comparison. It's not the same game.

 

[Pie and Beans]

Thx for that. I guess you will be more credible than me.
Gaf is so ridiculous sometimes with its infantile fanboys...

You make some great art, but you really need to lose the terrible attitude as it'd be a shame to see you disappear from this forums ranks for some silly ignorant outbursts.

Never really got the bagging on Golden Abyss, beyond not running at native res, its a truly incredible looking game, and an even better playing one than Uncharted 3. Playing it on my Vita at launch was an unforgettable experience, much like those first mindblowing PSP games.

 

[orioto]

You make some great art, but you really need to lose the terrible attitude as it'd be a shame to see you disappear from this forums ranks for some silly ignorant outbursts.

Never really got the bagging on Golden Abyss, beyond not running at native res, its a truly incredible looking game, and an even better playing one than Uncharted 3. Playing it on my Vita at launch was an unforgettable experience, much like those first mindblowing PSP games.

I'm so terrible indeed i'm a monster there, eating babies and insulting minorities.. lol i swear sometimes...

 

[kinggroin]

I'm so terrible indeed i'm a monster there, eating babies and insulting minorities.. lol i swear sometimes...

Orioto
Good Art/Bad Attitude

 

[orioto]

Orioto
Good Art/Bad Attitude

I honestly think i'm really not someone disrespectful or trolling or anything, and i'm most of the time trying to make a point by precise and constructive argumentation. The fact that i'm a party popper for Nintendo or Sony or whatever fanboys cause i'm not in the defense force, and i don't really have a particular camp, doesn't make me a bad guy...

Probably for the first time i'm acting slightly offensively due to people reacting to my effort to make a point by "bouhou you're a liar my console is the best" and suddenly i'm a borderline bannable troll.. lol really..

 

[Aucool]

You make some great art, but you really need to lose the terrible attitude as it'd be a shame to see you disappear from this forums ranks for some silly ignorant outbursts.

Never really got the bagging on Golden Abyss, beyond not running at native res, its a truly incredible looking game, and an even better playing one than Uncharted 3. Playing it on my Vita at launch was an unforgettable experience, much like those first mindblowing PSP games.

I think that you're exagerating, GA look great but aliasing is really a pain in the ass, it ruined my pleasure to see it. Wipeout is a lot more polished, also Gravity Rush.

 

[H_Prestige]

I wonder why Sony hasn't ported Demon's Souls yet.

 

[UncleSporky]

A lie is hard to accept. It looks great in this SMALL screen.

Are you seriously trying to discredit Orioto by saying he's a Nintendo fanboy? He's been super critical of everything they do for a really long time now. I was surprised to see him talking down a Sony system.

 

[Mael]

I honestly think i'm really not someone disrespectful or trolling or anything, and i'm most of the time trying to make a point by precise and constructive argumentation. The fact that i'm a party popper for Nintendo or Sony or whatever fanboys cause i'm not in the defense force, and i don't really have a particular camp, doesn't make me a bad guy...

Probably for the first time i'm acting slightly offensively due to people reacting to my effort to make a point by "bouhou you're a liar my console is the best" and suddenly i'm a borderline bannable troll.. lol really..

I'd tell you to not bother but hey it's a free country.
Seriously this sometimes feels like early 2007 with the console wars going on and logic and everything getting thrown aside to defend an expensive piece of plastic.
The worst part are the exagerations which plague every discourse....

 

[orioto]

Are you seriously trying to discredit Orioto by saying he's a Nintendo fanboy? He's been super critical of everything they do for a really long time now. I was surprised to see him talking down a Sony system.

Yeah thx and indeed, what a surprise, some people are not .. fanboys! They are criticizing objectively. I know it's pretty rare those days. I'm more in the "never happy" camp. That's why nobody likes me lol.

And my mario is bald! bald and old for christ sake!

 

[SmokyDave]

Never really got the bagging on Golden Abyss, beyond not running at native res, its a truly incredible looking game, and an even better playing one than Uncharted 3. Playing it on my Vita at launch was an unforgettable experience, much like those first mindblowing PSP games.

Agreed. It really was a 'console in your hands' moment from the title screen onwards.

People play it down but, ultimately, it's the best looking handheld title of its ilk.

 

[Skyzard]

I think that you're exagerating, GA look great but aliasing is really a pain in the ass, it ruined my pleasure to see it. Wipeout is a lot more polished, also Gravity Rush.

Gravity Rush felt a bit worse to me than UC for some reason (maybe lighting?). Different tastes I guess..still all 3 are great games. Can't exactly play them anywhere else - just have to hope for the best. Given that they were pretty much early/launch games you'd think the Vita will be able to pump out even better next year and so on. Imagine with a cpu unlock if we'd get native uncharted/gravity rush

(GR and UC are the same resolution + no aa according the list we've been using - thanks AlStrong) - not that is all there is to it, but just for those curious.
'
orioto - you did bite (from what I can tell) worse than the others

Gaf is so ridiculous sometimes with its infantile fanboys...

avatar quoting should stop though - I don't like modnation (framerate ruins it for me)

 

[ResidentDante]

I wonder if they will do a new Vita model after a while? Like PSP 1000, 2000 and 3000.

 

[Maedhros]

I wonder if they will do a new Vita model after a while? Like PSP 1000, 2000 and 3000.

Probably. They'll probably drop the 3G model too.

 

[kinggroin]

Yeah thx and indeed, what a surprise, some people are not .. fanboys! They are criticizing objectively. I know it's pretty rare those days. I'm more in the "never happy" camp. That's why nobody likes me lol.

And my mario is bald! bald and old for christ sake!

Pshhh, you're not a fanboy? Then why you draw Nintendo things huh? Let's see you squirm out of this air tight argument.

 

[surly]

I haven't read the whole thread, but how would the Vita compare with, say, a high end Android smartphone? Obviously, having no decent controls is what lets phones down, but some of the graphics in high end Android games look pretty close to that of Vita games.

 

[kinggroin]

I haven't read the whole thread, but how would the Vita compare with, say, a high end Android smartphone? Obviously, having no decent controls is what lets phones down, but some of the graphics in high end Android games look pretty close to that of Vita games.

The way it would to high end iOS devices?

Same games man, just different screens.

Edit: I will say, native support for 360 and PS3 controllers on android, do push it over iOS as far as playability is concerned. If you're docking a device nor playing through HDMI out, this is a nice plus.

 

[yurinka]

Are you seriously trying to discredit Orioto by saying he's a Nintendo fanboy? He's been super critical of everything they do for a really long time now. I was surprised to see him talking down a Sony system.

I don't know who he is.

Just saw someone with a Mario avatar saying that one of the best looking handheld games ever looks horrendous, something that for non blind people who played the game is totally the opposite. Hell, this game visuals have been acclaimed everywhere. Maybe he never played it and his reference is just compressed screenshots shown in a way bigger screen that its original one, but my impression was just that clearly trolling.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

Agreed. It really was a 'console in your hands' moment from the title screen onwards.

People play it down but, ultimately, it's the best looking handheld title of its ilk.

By a long shot.

Pshhh, you're not a fanboy? Then why you draw Nintendo things huh? Let's see you squirm out of this air tight argument.

Hah!

 

[UncleSporky]

I don't know who he is.

Just saw someone with a Mario avatar

Right, this is why this sort of behavior is moronic. It's not funny, witty or insightful to judge someone by their avatar as if it meant something about the type of person they are.

Also he didn't say the game looks horrendous, he said the IQ is horrendous. Whether you or I agree with that or not, he's referring to the sub-native resolution, not the entire presentation as a whole.

 

[sechsterangriff]

Right, this is why this sort of behavior is moronic. It's not funny, witty or insightful to judge someone by their avatar as if it meant something about the type of person they are.

Quoting cherry picked parts of his post isn't less moronic either...

 

[deimian86]

PS Vita is powerful enough to get some acceptable/good ports of the current generation.

Sonic Racing, Virtua Tennis 4, Rayman Origins, SFxT... really awesome on a handheld but I'm sure that things like The Last of Us are impossible on Vita.

 

[UncleSporky]

Quoting cherry picked parts of his post isn't less moronic either...

Stop being disingenuous, it's a method of highlighting. He "just saw someone with a Mario avatar," and that was where his mind stopped working and he hit the quote button without considering whether or not this person was actually biased one way or the other.

Pie and Beans actually criticized him on the content of his post rather than the cosmetic picture he chose...and yurinka eventually did so as well when pressed, as he should have from the beginning.

 

[Skyzard]

PS Vita is powerful enough to get some acceptable/good ports of the current generation.

Sonic Racing, Virtua Tennis 4, Rayman Origins, SFxT... really awesome on a handheld but I'm sure that things like The Last of Us are impossible on Vita.

Oh man. I hope not. Last of Us specifically would be something unreal.. imagine a cross-buy on that. Gyro aiming..

 

[SmokyDave]

Right, this is why this sort of behavior is moronic. It's not funny, witty or insightful to judge someone by their avatar as if it meant something about the type of person they are.

I don't wish to dwell on this point because it's utterly irrelevant to the topic at hand, but, I don't understand the line of thinking that an icon chosen to represent someone shouldn't be thought of as representative of the person.

 

[BLACK AMERICAN PSYCHO]

If you guys really want to compare to PS3, there have been many comments about the differences. Very obviously, the Vita is less powerful than the PS3. But it's still really powerful.

Versus the PS3:
- you'll have to reduce shader use by about 50%
- CPU is certainly less than half of the Cell, but not as many games use Cell to the max
- MSAA is relatively cheap on the Vita vs PS3 (can be as little as 10% overhead, where PS3 is more like 25% for 2xMSAA, and 50% for 4xMSAA apparently)
- Vita has more main memory, but less graphics memory (512MB main, 128MB graphics), where you have to detract some memory of those 512MB for the OS, party chat and it's maximum of 5 concurrent 'small apps' that are allowed to run beside it. It seems though (from dev screenshots) that this is still leaves at least 400MB of main memory available for a game, and possibly more.
- both types of memory are most likely slower than PS3. I've seen a figure of 13GB, and it's not clear if this is VRAM, main RAM, or both but that VRAM is simply on a separate bus so that reading from both at once is faster than just reading from a shared pool (compare this to the iPad 3 that apparently has two busses to its single pool of memory to the GPU, to optimise that speed/throughput). PS3 is 22GB/s for both of its pools of memory.
- Polygons per (30fps) frame seems to be in the order of 200.000 according to Bend, at least for their engine. This can be up-to 1-3 million for PS3 games (where it should be noted that a really good game engine only needs to draw 1.2 polygons max for a 1280x720p image, or you'd have more polys than pixels, and that's per definition inefficient (some actual GPU programmers are sure to disagree though )
- Vita native resolution is 960x544 (522240) vs PS3 (for most games) 1280x720 (921600). This means that the Vita needs about 60% of the throughput of the PS3 games. It would therefore need to be (all pros and cons combined) at least 60% as efficient as the PS3 to be able to do similar things at native resolution.
- Vita uses components and APIs that are similar to modern PCs (and PS3s). Shaders work similarly, texturing works similarly, etc.

There's more information like this out there. The upshot is clear: the Vita is weaker, and most likely in most cases at least 50% weaker (and many areas considerably more so, others less or better) than the PS3 or more. It is allowed to be at least 40% weaker. As a result, some sacrifices need to be made in order to run ports.

Not all games use the maximum power of the PS3 however, so they can be ported quite well (something like Rayman origins or Virtua Tennis are good examples, and something like Virtua Tennis can then benefit from the MSAA advantage that the Vita has vs the PS3 for instance.

By profiling the games that have been ported, you can get an impression on what aspects are harder on the Vita and what things are easier. it is never clear cut however. If you compare the PS3 and the PS2, then relatively the PS2 had far more framebuffer bandwidth thanks to its very efficient VRAM (EDRAM), to the point that the PS3 can barely keep up with it at PS2 like resolutions for (old school) framebuffer effects, and it simply can't do them at HD resolutions. So even some PS2 ports to Vita are going to run into similar issues.

But overall, the Vita is way beyond the previous gen consoles. Feature wise it's 'current gen', and powerwise its somewhere inbetween the PS2 and PS3, depending on what feature you look at, but on average I'd say closer to PS3 than PS2, and programming wise obviously waaay closer to the PS3.

This is the exact type of post I was looking for.

 

[surly]

The way it would to high end iOS devices?

Same games man, just different screens.

Edit: I will say, native support for 360 and PS3 controllers on android, do push it over iOS as far as playability is concerned. If you're docking a device nor playing through HDMI out, this is a nice plus.

I only mentioned Android because it's what I use, so I've played a bunch of games on it. I wasn't implying that the top Android phones outperform the iPhone for games. I have no idea if they do or they don't, but high end Android games look fairly close to the quality of Vita games to me in terms of the graphics.

 

[chickdigger802]

Some of the comparisons here are a bit iffy.

GTA Vice City on iOS is the best version of the game visually on consoles (well if you balance out the higher res visuals vs some of the missing visual features from the xbox version).

I do wonder why MGS and Persona 4 aren't native res on vita though... Does it just have to do with the relatively newness of the hardware or is there some other underlying problem?

 

[kinggroin]

I only mentioned Android because it's what I use, so I've played a bunch of games on it. I wasn't implying that the top Android phones outperform the iPhone for games. I have no idea if they do or they don't, but high end Android games look fairly close to the quality of Vita games to me in terms of the graphics.

No, I get that. I was just saying that Android and iOS both compare the same to Vita. They both can hold up favorably to many of its games, but you have to keep in mind that its only on a superficial level mostly. Vita games tend to be far more complex when it comes to actual gameplay and design.

 

[longdi]

Asscreed looks ass on Vita.
I think Ubisoft must be reusing their PSP assets and engine.
MG PW looks almost as good sans the even lower resolution output.

Sony should force Vita developers to use AA and sharper textures. That will make a bigger perceptible difference on the smaller screens than advanced models and lighting.

Imo thats what making iOS games look "better" to the untrained casual's eyes. Games just look cleaner and sharper on iOS. I also think ipad4 is much more power than Vita even at the higher res. ipad4 developers could always use up scaling tricks to draw better graphics. ipad4 has massive more memory bandwidth if im not wrong.

 

[kinggroin]

Asscreed looks ass on Vita.
I think Ubisoft must be reusing their PSP assets and engine.
MG PW looks almost as good sans the even lower resolution output.

Sony should force Vita developers to use AA and sharper textures. That will make a bigger perceptible difference on the smaller screens than advanced models and lighting.

Imo thats what making iOS games look "better" to the untrained casual's eyes. Games just look cleaner and sharper on iOS. I also think ipad4 is much more power than Vita even at the higher res. ipad4 developers could always use up scaling tricks to draw better graphics. ipad4 has massive more memory bandwidth if im not wrong.

The iOS/Android games are also usually much less complex and/or smaller in scope

 

[dark10x]

Asscreed looks ass on Vita.
I think Ubisoft must be reusing their PSP assets and engine.
MG PW looks almost as good sans the even lower resolution output.

That's not true at all.

Assassin's Creed has very poor image quality but the level of detail on the models is much higher than a PSP game, the game makes use of dynamic world shadows (hugely demanding), plenty of shaders, a complex animation system, lots of on-screen NPCs, etc. Peace Walker is broken up into tiny maps with load screens between each area while topping out a maximum framerate of 20 fps. There's not a whole lot going on in Peace Walker in comparison to ACL.

I do think they should have set their sights a bit lower with AC and focused more on a smoother framerate and cleaner image quality. They tried to cram all of the console visual features into the game at the expense of these things. The PSP could never hope to deliver anything even remotely similar, though.

Games just look cleaner and sharper on iOS

They are also very simplistic in comparison. There's more to a game than just what you see on screen. Your comparison of Peace Walker to Assassin's Creed suggests that you don't understand the fundamental difference between such games. Something like Infinity Blade looks fantastic but it really consists of a bunch of static, tiny rooms with two character models on screen without any physics, path finding, advanced AI, etc.

 

[Drek]

Thx for that. I guess you will be more credible than me.
Gaf is so ridiculous sometimes with its infantile fanboys...

I know, right?

Hell, wasn't that long ago I saw a post where someone tried to say the PSV wasn't remotely close to the PS3 in terms of power. Hell, even said its "not even half the PS3" and that it isn't "a mini PS3 at all". You know, despite all the PS3 to Vita ports people claim comprise the system's entire library.

 

[Yopis]

Agreed. It really was a 'console in your hands' moment from the title screen onwards.

People play it down but, ultimately, it's the best looking handheld title of its ilk.

Had a great time with it. Also loved hotel dusk on 3ds which is off topic.