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Nintendo 3DS technical discuss thread: lets talk about this here
- Thread starter BDGAME
- Start date
Nuclear Muffin
Banned
Brad Grenz said:Done! Actually, these came out as 400x224 in 16x9 mode.
First is one done in DX9 with no AA and no anisotropic filtering:
And here is one in DX11 with 4x MSAA and 16x Aniso:
As you can see, it's a bit clearer but the low resolution destroys most of the texture detail in both cases. The aliasing is also still pretty bad in motion with lots of pixel crawling even with MSAA, again because there are so few pixels to work with.
Tri G on 3DS for comparison's sake.
As can be seen, the textures look identical in comparison to the top image (though the 3DS image as a whole looks cleaner, probably thanks to the 2x AA being applied here)
So obviously they're reusing all of the models and texture assets from the Wii version as is (which means that I was right)
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Fafalada said:
iPad 2 uses an SGX543MP2 (over the SGX535 used in the iPad and the iPhone 4) and Apple claims about 9x faster graphics processing (well, the A6's new CPU's help too).
Vita uses an SGX543MP4+ ... so, about 2x the cores of iPad 2's GPU and its driver is probably several times faster. MSAA on Vita should be tons cheaper in both VRAM size and performance terms: given how on iOS they do not allow the GPU to do on-chip MSAA resolve (writing out all the samples and doing the resolve after that... it is not exactly cheap compared to writing out resolved samples only).
I'd say Vita is more than 8x faster than the iPhone 4
It's not even the same 'set', so they can't be identical. Look at the creates, on the original there is one on the floor full of green stuff, on the 3DS version it's standing up and has two next to it.
They are not the same scene, to pretend anyone knows if the full asset resolution is actually there or not is ridiculous. They have made changes, we don't know how many.
They are not the same scene, to pretend anyone knows if the full asset resolution is actually there or not is ridiculous. They have made changes, we don't know how many.
People HAVE played most of them, however, and I doubt we'll see a dramatic change in visual quality.BDGAME said:
They look good and, on the small 3DS screen, they should match up reasonably well. It's clear, however, that they are not throwing around the same amount of geometry we've seen in the Gamecube and Wii iterations of those series.
PdotMichael
Banned
Brad Grenz said:
It looks as if you turn the output resolution down and not the native resolution.
Polygon performance and fillrate varies a lot on the Wii, depending on which features are being used. Enabling the fixed function lights drop vertex throughput per additional light and using multiple texture layers (lightmaps, gloss maps, reflection maps, etc) also has adverse effects on fillrate.
On the 3DS things are further complicated because it has a programmable vertex pipeline, so the vertex throughput depends on the complexity of the vertex program.
I also don't know if the MAESTRO extensions actually do the additional per-vertex processing required by some effects automatically when enabled or if devs need to feed that data manually in the vertex program.
It's also unknown how exactly the per-pixel lights are implemented in the 3DS: they can either be rendered in one pass or in multiple passes (which would consume fillrate for multiple lights). It's also unknown if they are done in tangent-space (requires more per-vertex processing) or world-space (looks better, but requires more per-pixel processing).
It's also worth mentioning that the Pokedex models are far more detailed than the ones in Wii's Pokemon Stadium. If you use AR markers, it's possible to show around 10 pokemons at once, all casting shadows on each other. So a 3DS stadium game could look much better than the Wii version, with self-shadowing and per-pixel lighting even.
On the 3DS things are further complicated because it has a programmable vertex pipeline, so the vertex throughput depends on the complexity of the vertex program.
I also don't know if the MAESTRO extensions actually do the additional per-vertex processing required by some effects automatically when enabled or if devs need to feed that data manually in the vertex program.
It's also unknown how exactly the per-pixel lights are implemented in the 3DS: they can either be rendered in one pass or in multiple passes (which would consume fillrate for multiple lights). It's also unknown if they are done in tangent-space (requires more per-vertex processing) or world-space (looks better, but requires more per-pixel processing).
Due to S3D, the 3DS would need twice the Wii's vertex throughput to render exactly the same amount of geometry. Firelink's calculations seem very reasonable, and I believe the 3DS' GPU is clocked at something between 100MHz and 133MHz, which would put it at 40~50M polygons. Cut that by half for 3D and you have a difference that roughly mirrors what we've seen so far.dark10x said:
It's also worth mentioning that the Pokedex models are far more detailed than the ones in Wii's Pokemon Stadium. If you use AR markers, it's possible to show around 10 pokemons at once, all casting shadows on each other. So a 3DS stadium game could look much better than the Wii version, with self-shadowing and per-pixel lighting even.
blu said:
Yes, rumored. And lol and this anamorphic crap.
Anamorphic widescreen is when something is made specifically for a 16:9 widescreen, but has the ability to shrink to fit the screen instead of the picture being cut off or cropped.
Although you only see 640x480, the game/scene is rendered in 854x480, so it still eats up pixels.
M3d10n said:
Every single description of the Wii GPU has said it is capable of anamorphic widescreen.
Anamorphic widescreen, by definition, renders the image larger than 640 pixels.
If you have any description to the contrary, or why this is being shown everywhere, then by all means, please share your input.
As for the analysis in general: either way, the 3DS is either right above the Gamecube in terms of power, or completely blows it away. So there is nothing to worry about there. Even rendering in 3D it is still more capable than the GCN.
I suppose we'll just have to wait and see before anyone proves it, although I think Mario Kart 7 looks a lot better than Double Dash, but I wouldn't exactly call Double Dash the peak of the GCN's abilities.
There are homebrew GC and Wii SDKs, you can get all the technical details (without resorting to pirated SDKs or breaking NDAs) from them.firelink said:
And you don't need to render to a 16:9 buffer for anamorphic widescreen. A 3D game only needs to scale the view matrix horizontally so everything looks squished in 4:3. There were a few Saturn games that supported widescreen this way.
Graphics Horse
Member
firelink said:
Not in terms of the framebuffer size, no.
blu and M3d10n know what they're talking about.
Also, I belive Double Dash still runs at 60fps in 4 player split screen, although that wouldn't be much use on a handheld.
720 pixels actually, but most often an overscan border is used.M3d10n said:
There is no output resolution difference between setting the Wii to 4:3 or 16:9. As M3d10n said the difference is just compressing/expanding the horizontal view matrix. Some GC games (like F-Zero GX) did that as well.
Here's how it works:Datschge said:
- The GPU can be only render to EDRAM (like the 360).
- Render buffers allocated in EDRAM cannot be wider than 640px (height is only limited by memory, but this means around 580 pixels tall).
- A render buffer must be copied to main RAM before it can be displayed on the screen by the video DAC.
- The render buffer can (optionally) be scaled to 720 horizontal pixels when copied from EDRAM to RAM (it can also be converted from RGB to YUV).
Fun fact: to get the highest IQ possible a Wii game could render to a PAL-sized buffer (640x576) and scale it to 640x480 before sending it to the video DAC. I'm not sure which, if any, games do this, though.
Brad Grenz
Member
PdotMichael said:
The native resolution was set to auto - window size, and then I adjusted the window size until I found 400 px wide and used the built in screenshot function.
PdotMichael
Banned
My try:
Dx9 - 433 x 240 - without AA or AF
vs.
The bloom effect is stronger than in reality, it makes the picture a little blurrish but it's very nice looking in Monster Hunter Tri. The 3DS version has no Bloom effects. Texture quality is higher than the 3DS version. Look at the water, too.
Dx9 - 433 x 240 - without AA or AF
vs.
The bloom effect is stronger than in reality, it makes the picture a little blurrish but it's very nice looking in Monster Hunter Tri. The 3DS version has no Bloom effects. Texture quality is higher than the 3DS version. Look at the water, too.
PdotMichael
Banned
firelink said:
just no
No, I'm pretty sure he's right. Some of the other screenshots from the game have them. And the hardware in question supports it, so...PdotMichael said:
That's not how it works. HDR, by itself, does not make colors bleed beyond their pixels: you still need a bloom pass to make light bleed. All HDR does is allow the bloom to only show up where it should: in truly overbright areas (but several PS360 games don't use this way for "dramatic effect").firelink said:
I don't think the 3DS supports actual HDR: in the PICA200 feature sheet there's no buffer format with more than 32-bits per pixel. What Capcom calls "HDR" in their MT framework paper is something else: maybe it's "Valve-style" HDR, which works on low precision color buffers.
The 3DS version does use bloom, as it's possible to notice some color bleeding in some areas, but it's not as exaggerated as in those Dolphin pics (which look off BTW, it isn't that strong on the Wii either).
PdotMichael
Banned
Yeah, the bloom effect is not perfect with Dolphin.
M3d10n said:
I know you know your stuff, but this is completely wrong.
HDR is a rendering engine that allows for a very high range of luminescence. It allows dark colors to appear darker, and it allows bright areas to appear brighter. HDR has been and is used without bloom shaders.
Yes, bloom allows colors to bleed, because all it is really is a Gaussian blur applied to the screen with a bright-pass filter - that is why the colors bleed.
Here is a quick bloom effect added to the 3DS picture in Photoshop:
Look familiar?
How I know the 3DS is using HDR (and it is capable, btw) is because the hut in specific is very bright, as bright as the Wii screenshots almost. However, the water and the parts of the scene in shadows are still very dark and shadowed. A bloom shader without HDR just makes the entire image unnecessarily light. The effect works because it makes the image brighter, bleed, and reduces the contrast so that the difference between darks and brights is not very diverse.
The Tri G picture would not have that range of contrast or luminescence unless it was using HDR, but the colors are not bleeding, so there is no Gaussian blur applied, so no bloom.
Yes, but I was talking about 2x1. There's no reason to bother with jitter tricks when you can just use the real thing.Mr_Brit said:
Wouldn't 2xSSAA be achieved by rendering one image at 800x480 and then downscaling horizontally? That's how it works on PCs, I don't see why it wouldn't work that way on the 3DS.M3d10n said:
Actually Pokedex 3D does something like this for AA in 3D: it seems to render a a slightly bigger vertical resolution and downsize vertically. The problem is that only horizontal artifacts are antialiased and vertical artifacts are unaffected.Luigiv said:
The AA in SSFIV3D, RE:Mercs and Zelda OoT looks completely different: the samples are well distributed (like in 2XMSAA), which shows that the AA samples are not uniformly distributed. You don't get AA like this by rendering to a buffer that isn't scaled by integer amounts (2X, 3X, etc).
Correct.firelink said:
Ah, sorry. The 3DS hardware lighting seems to be able to produce high-precision color values before writing them to the screen and it might have a feature that allows tone-mapping (via a look-up table). This is how Valve does HDR in Source engine.firelink said:
It cannot store these HDR values in a buffer for later use, however.
That's actually the "+" in the PSV's SGX543. It's a special target/texture format which encodes HDR values in a RGBA9995 32-bit texture. It falls in the "clever encoding" category, but done via hardware.StuBurns said:
(Source)
It's not terribly high precision and uses a shared exponent for all 3 color channels (so it's not possible to have one color channel have a much different brightness value than the others), so I'm not sure if can be used for large scale dynamic exposure, but it should be enough for tasteful bloom (for the few devs that do it -_-).
I'm pretty sure I heard somewhere the 3DS can support full HDR.
I have no idea where, so this isn't exactly something to be taken with more than a grain of salt. But still, even HDR on the level of Source is good enough for me.
On the topic of AA, does anyone even know if the 3DS can do anything over 2x? I saw a DMP report around the time the PICA200 was announced to be the GPU, and I remember them mentioned that when 3D on the 3DS is turned off, any game can use 2xAA at no cost to performance because of some special enhancement on the chip. But I have never heard of anything above that being even possible.
Oh, BTW, since the Vita can do HDR with just 32 bit, doesn't that mean the 3DS could somehow do HDR with 32 bit as well? Or am I missing something? I'm a bit confused.
I have no idea where, so this isn't exactly something to be taken with more than a grain of salt. But still, even HDR on the level of Source is good enough for me.
On the topic of AA, does anyone even know if the 3DS can do anything over 2x? I saw a DMP report around the time the PICA200 was announced to be the GPU, and I remember them mentioned that when 3D on the 3DS is turned off, any game can use 2xAA at no cost to performance because of some special enhancement on the chip. But I have never heard of anything above that being even possible.
Oh, BTW, since the Vita can do HDR with just 32 bit, doesn't that mean the 3DS could somehow do HDR with 32 bit as well? Or am I missing something? I'm a bit confused.
Nuclear Muffin
Banned
PdotMichael said:
No, he's correct. The 3DS hardware supports native HDR lighting, the Wii version of Tri had to fake the HDR effects (like the sky turning from white to normal colour).
firelink said:
Wouldn't that technically be possible by rendering to a higher resolution framebuffer and then downscaling? (like Pokedex 3D but even higher resolution)
Of course it would be an enormous drain on system resources, but it might be nice for games with simple visuals to begin with.
Gamer @ Heart
Member
indeed. i love reading this kind of tech talk. Keep it going smart gafGDGF said:
PdotMichael
Banned
Nuclear Muffin said:
HDR is not part of the PICA2000 specifications
PdotMichael said:
HDR is not specifically listed, but then again, neither is bloom. Capcom has been claiming Revelations has HDR. Not sure what kind of HDR, but I imagine even if it is only in the same vein as Lost Coast, then that is still a form of it, and an impressive one not possible, or at least shown, on the Wii.
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
HDR as in 'exponential pixel format' would definitely need some form of hw support to be viable (wither that or fully-programmable pixel shaders allowing for tricks like the NAO32 format). But HDR as in 'denormalised pixel format' can be done in basic 'dumb' GPU passes and standard pixel formats (not even referring to Valve's 'cannot-do-translucencies' HDR approach here). It would just need to sacrifice precision for range, and thus suffer from precision and possibly performance issues.Argyle said:
No, anamorphic widescreen, by definition, allows the storage of a horizontally compressed image within a 4:3 resolution. The Wii is incapable of rendering a widescreen resolution. It most certainly DOES NOT render at 853x480. The Wii always outputs a 4:3 image and relies on the TV to stretch the image resulting in rectangular pixels.firelink said:
dark10x said:
The definition of anamorphic widescreen, even the one you just posted, dictates otherwise.
For anamorphic widescreen to work, the stock image HAS to be rendered higher than 480p 4:3. Look at the definition of the term:
The image is COMPRESSED to fit within a 4:3 window. You know what compressed means, right? It is shrunk? An image already rendered at 4:3 would not have to be shrunk to fit 4:3. I thought that was common sense.
If the Wii truly supports anamorphic, it also has to support at least 720x480.
CrunchinJelly
formerly cjelly
Ridge Racer has bloom and HDR.
Or at least it looks like HDR and bloom. Really nice when coming out of tunnels.
Or at least it looks like HDR and bloom. Really nice when coming out of tunnels.
Shadow of the BEAST
Banned
if it works like dvd. anampohic widescreen means the image itself is stretched, and then squeezed to fit the tv aspect ratio.
CrunchinJelly
formerly cjelly
It has numerous 720p and 1080i games. So, yes.Mr_Brit said:
PdotMichael
Banned
Mr_Brit said:
yes:
Resolutions: 480i, 480p, 576i, 576p, 720p, 1080i