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[shenmue mugen]

Starts at 0:43.

That looks real bump mapping that interacts with light on that top of that track.

I know that the big "rotating N" during the boot up 64DD sequence also has bump mapping.

Are there any other examples of this technique on the N64 or Dreamcast?

 

[JordanN]

Considering the N64''s extremely limited texture cache, would using a bump map even be worth it?

On top of the forced bilinear filtering, the details would be smoothed out.

The PS2 was much more powerful but even when it tried bump mapping (like in The Matrix), it was always low-res and hideous. The hardware just wasn't there yet.

 

[The Former Gamer]

Starts at 0:43.

That looks real bump mapping that interacts with light on that top of that track.

I know that the big "rotating N" during the boot up 64DD sequence also has bump mapping.

Are there any other examples of this technique on the N64 or Dreamcast?

How can you tell the big 'N' had a bump map, and what would be the advantage of that anyway?

 

[V4skunk]

It does look like bump mapping on the truck.
We need a remake or sequel to Blast Corps! It's one of the best games on N64.

 

[Shadowplay1979]

The N64 had very limited..basically everything then did..bump mapping capabilities that are different then whats used today. I think Tresspasser was one of the first to use true bump mapping. However since 2003 games rely on normal mapping which is a more advanced form of bump that uses more information. We also use parallax and tesselated height maps now as well since geo is pretty cheap in most cases.

 

[The Former Gamer]

Is bump mapping just the idea of making something flat seem not so flat?

Also, how could you tell on the big 'N'... I've been looking at it, and I can't seem to tell.

 

[hunthunt]

you are simply just one ignorant fuck.

N64 only coulf render textures 32x32 at 4 kb, far and away from anything like bump.mapping.

That is just one minuscule square.

 

[shenmue mugen]

you are simply just one ignorant fuck.

N64 only coulf render textures 32x32 at 4 kb, far and away from anything like bump.mapping.

That is just one minuscule square.

Bad day my friend?

Well, it does look like bump mapping which is also the case here at 1:14 during the N64DD attractive mode.

 

[Trimesh]

Is bump mapping just the idea of making something flat seem not so flat?

Also, how could you tell on the big 'N'... I've been looking at it, and I can't seem to tell.

Basically, yes - in current usage, it refers to any of a number of techniques that can be used to make a flat surface reflect light as if it were not flat.

In that demo you can see it's bump mapped because the specular reflections occur at different angles in different areas. If it was a flat surface then there would be a single angle where you had specular reflection from the whole surface.

 

[The Former Gamer]

Basically, yes - in current usage, it refers to any of a number of techniques that can be used to make a flat surface reflect light as if it were not flat.

In that demo you can see it's bump mapped because the specular reflections occur at different angles in different areas. If it was a flat surface then there would be a single angle where you had specular reflection from the whole surface.

I'm guessing this bump mapping would take slow down the games if there was too much of it for a limited hardware to handle?

 

[Trimesh]

I'm guessing this bump mapping would take slow down the games if there was too much of it for a limited hardware to handle?

In practice they generally slowed things down significantly, for multiple reasons. The first is simply the extra calculations needed, but that's only a small part of the impact - turning on bump maps may also force you to use a more complex lighting model than if you weren't using them, which also slows things down (sometimes drastically). The final thing is N64 specific - the graphics processor is microcoded and the programmer can choose which set of ucode they load into it - depending on the features you need you may end up having to load ucode that's more capable, but also slower.

So it's more a case of not just being inherently slower, but also defeating certain optimizations you might otherwise be able to use to speed things up.

 

[The Former Gamer]

In practice they generally slowed things down significantly, for multiple reasons. The first is simply the extra calculations needed, but that's only a small part of the impact - turning on bump maps may also force you to use a more complex lighting model than if you weren't using them, which also slows things down (sometimes drastically). The final thing is N64 specific - the graphics processor is microcoded and the programmer can choose which set of ucode they load into it - depending on the features you need you may end up having to load ucode that's more capable, but also slower.

So it's more a case of not just being inherently slower, but also defeating certain optimizations you might otherwise be able to use to speed things up.

So, in layman terms, it's like walking around with shiny armour... It'll slow you down, but it sure does look pretty...