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[lordchompy]

Playstation Vita is recognized as being quite a bit below the performance level of PS3, not just with things like shaders and polygons, but especially the CPU which prevents some of the more processor cycle intensive game from running on the portable hardware.

But the PSP was closer to its console cousin in performance when looking at games like GTA, God of War, and the plethora of PS2 ports that are impressively similar to their console counterparts.

There's just one thing which Vita does better relative to PSP when you take all the fancy polygons and whatnot aside, image quality.

If comparing some of the more impressive PS2 to PSP ports in screenshots, Prince of Persia the Warrior Within, for an instance, they look remarkably close. But looking at the actual game in person on PSP, you'll see texture flickering, collision detections issues, and horrible white seams between some of the geometry, as if the world wasn't properly put together. I've never seen most of these issues before on any other console, so it's quite jarring when it's so noticeable.

This isn't limited to a few bad apples, I've seen this in a lot of PSP games, especially ports from PS2. Is this inherently a PSP hardware shortcoming or just developer laziness? The only time I've seen something close to this sort of bad image quality on Vita was in Resistance Burning Skies.

Anyone care to guess what was causing this image quality malaise in PSP games?

 

[KeioSquad2]

Seams in the geometry are flaws in the math engine...the ps1 had the same issue.

 

[SolsticeZero]

Making the Vita closer to the PS3 probably would have made it a lot more expensive at the time.

As for the PSP, I thought it was just weak specs all around (not to mention UMD).

 

[exmachina64]

Seams in the geometry are flaws in the math engine...the ps1 had the same issue.

Is that a hardware issue or a software issue?

 

[2+2=5]

I don't think the psp was closer to the ps2 than vita to the ps3.
Imo it's too early to judge, we are at the first year of the vita and we already have killzone mercenary that looks better than many ps3 fps and almost on par with killzone 2-3 released later on ps3 lifecycle, while crisis core for example is very far from final fantasy xii.

 

[CypherSignal]

Is that a hardware issue or a software issue?

Hardware, realistically. The processors in the PSX simply didn't have the ability do to math with a high-enough precision to not have those cracks and such.

 

[lordchompy]

Hardware, realistically. The processors in the PSX simply didn't have the ability do to math with a high-enough precision to not have those cracks and such.

And what about the texture flickering and clipping issues?

 

[Robert at Zeboyd Games]

As someone who owns a bunch of PSP & Vita games, I can't get behind your premise that the PSP is closer to a PS2's power than the Vita is to a PS3.

 

[lordchompy]

As someone who owns a bunch of PSP & Vita games, I can't get behind your premise that the PSP is closer to a PS2's power than the Vita is to a PS3.

Take a look at the following games, then: GTA Vice City Stories, God of War Ghost of Sparta, and Silent Hill: Origins.

Incidentally, these games have none of the issues I mentioned in my OP, but then again they aren't 1:1 ports from PS2.

So I'm still perplexed by how some games on PSP have such horrendous image quality issues but others are free of the anomalies.

 

[KeioSquad2]

And what about the texture flickering and clipping issues?

Those issues could be caused by a number of things.....low precision z pass, ram overflow, usually it's hard to pin down so in lesser hardware they go unfixed.

 

[Mzo]

PSP wasn't that close to a PS2. At all.

 

[Robert at Zeboyd Games]

Take a look at the following games, then: GTA Vice City Stories, God of War Ghost of Sparta, and Silent Hill: Origins.

Conversely, take a look at Gravity Rush, Rayman Origins, and Uncharted: Golden Abyss. These are all launch or close-to-launch Vita games that would not have looked out of place on the PS3. And it'll just get better as devs spend more time with the system.

PSP felt much more like a PS1.4 whereas Vita feels more like PS2.7.

 

[entremet]

Making the Vita closer to the PS3 probably would have made it a lot more expensive at the time.

As for the PSP, I thought it was just weak specs all around (not to mention UMD).

Weak? They needed to make it affordable and have decent battery life. I was pretty awesome for 2005 and being portable.

 

[Shadow Hog]

It was closer to the PS2 than a PS1, but definitely under the PS2. I could tell the models in Castlevania were lower-poly than PS2-era models were.

 

[lordchompy]

Anyone who has ever worked on something for the PSP care to weigh your opinion in?

 

[poopninjamvc3mk]

Conversely, take a look at Gravity Rush, Rayman Origins, and Uncharted: Golden Abyss. These are all launch or close-to-launch Vita games that would not have looked out of place on the PS3. And it'll just get better as devs spend more time with the system.

PSP felt much more like a PS1.4 whereas Vita feels more like PS2.7.

Lol wut? You must not have seen Soul Calibur Broken Destiny and Tekken 6 which looked of waaaaay better than the PS2 SCs and Tekkens.

PSP was more like a portable dreamcast if anything. It would be the type of graphics we seen if dreamcast kept going and we see the max potential when DEVS learn how to fully take use of it's power.

 

[Moon_frogger]

Naw man. Psp wasn't even close to ps2 capabilities.

 

[PsihoPerihelion]

It might be relative to the developer working on the console more than the console itself. I played God Of War on my PSP last night and hated the image quality. Jeanne D'arc, on the other hand, looks stunning for a portable game.

 

[ExigentContact]

The PSP was basically a little more powerful than the Dreamcast, and with some trickery/knowhow, could produce results that came very close to PS2 efforts. The Vita seems to be in more or less the same boat in terms of gulf of power, but it's a bit closer because its architecture has support for a lot of modern features that were ubiquitous this past generation.

 

[M3d10n]

Bandwidth is always the first thing to go when you create portable hardware, which explains many of the shortcomings of the PSP, Vita and 3DS compared to their home-console counterparts (PS2, PS3 and Wii).

 

[lordchompy]

Bandwidth is always the first thing to go when you create portable hardware, which explains many of the shortcomings of the PSP, Vita and 3DS compared to their home-console counterparts (PS2, PS3 and Wii).

Vita and PSP run a 64 bit memory bus, correct?

 

[phosphor112]

I feel like the Vita is much closer to the PS3 than the PSP was to PS2. Mainly because the Vita has many GPU features that the PS3 doesn't have, giving it distinct advantages, even though the triangle count on the Vita is about half of the PS3.

 

[wanders]

This might be off topic but the PSP had so much potential, it was one of the only affordable, portable device with access to the internet through WiFi. There could have been a app store from then get go.

 

[rjc571]

PSP wasn't that close to a PS2. At all.

Indeed, the PSP hardware was more akin to that of a (heavily) souped-up PS1 than that of a dumbed-down PS2. Its processor was essentially a PS1 processor OC'd by a factor of 10.

 

[patrickthehedgehog]

I think of...the fully modeled tanker train at the beginning of Crisis Core. That really feels more like PS2 level than PS1 to me.

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080815181926/finalfantasy/images/2/28/Sector1.png

 

[Ishida]

Indeed, the PSP hardware was more akin to that of a (heavily) souped-up PS1 than that of a dumbed-down PS2. Its processor was essentially a PS1 processor OC'd by a factor of 10.

God of War: Ghost of Sparta goes WAY beyond a "heavily souped-up PS1".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf1zNtZEcc8

 

[lordchompy]

God of War: Ghost of Sparta goes WAY beyond a "heavily souped-up PS1".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf1zNtZEcc8

Shit, I'm still waiting for this sort of fidelity to become the standard on Vita.

 

[SniperHunter]

I feel like the Vita is much closer to the PS3 than the PSP was to PS2. Mainly because the Vita has many GPU features that the PS3 doesn't have, giving it distinct advantages, even though the triangle count on the Vita is about half of the PS3.

Agreed! I was blown away by how good the new Killzone game looks on Vita, the IQ is really awesome! PSP was a meh system IMO. Too much dithering in games

 

[Lonely1]

I don't think the psp was closer to the ps2 than vita to the ps3.
Imo it's too early to judge, we are at the first year of the vita and we already have killzone mercenary that looks better than many ps3 fps and almost on par with killzone 2-3 released later on ps3 lifecycle, while crisis core for example is very far from final fantasy xii.

Sorry, but I disagree with that.

 

[ss_lemonade]

It was just weaker?

I do know that the 16bit color thing of the PSP makes image quality take quite a hit

Lol wut? You must not have seen Soul Calibur Broken Destiny and Tekken 6 which looked of waaaaay better than the PS2 SCs and Tekkens.

Haven't seen Soul Calibur Broken Destiny but from what I played of Tekken 6 psp, ps2 Tekken 5 looked better

 

[friz898]

Well my credentials for opinion include

82 PSP Games.

Lots of PS2 games.

15 Vita Games

45'ish PS3 games.

I always felt that the PSP was a PS 1.5. However, I agree that a few of the games we saw the last two years such as the God of Wars, Resistance Retribution, Grand Turismo, Tekken, Soul Calibur, and a few others made it look more like a PS 1.6/1.75 or something. This was obviously due to it being max'ed out.

Now currently the Vita is roughly like a PS 2.4/2.5 is the way I see it. But I also feel that, regardless of the limitations, once the Vita is maxed out, it'll be more like a PS 2.7/2.8 when compared to a PS3.

 

[DUFFMCWALIN]

Agreed! I was blown away by how good the new Killzone game looks on Vita, the IQ is really awesome! PSP was a meh system IMO. Too much dithering in games

I agree. The PSP had some great games but I feel the Vita is more in line with its console brother than the PSP was.

 

[Lysander518]

I take it you haven't seen Killzone Mercenary.

 

[GYNGA]

We haven't seen what Vita can really do yet. I mean look at the Killzone Mercenary, and it's only 1.5 year into the Vita's life-cycle. Kojima would do wonders with that little thing.

 

[staticneuron]

I think there are alot of issues with direct comparison because of Ram issues and the fact that most of its life the PSP was underclocked. Despite the turnaround at end of its life most of its life on the market made it seem like less than a PS2, in terms of size of levels and complex characters onscreen.

If the PSP launched with more RAM I am sure it would have not only looked like a PS2 at times but probably surpassed it.

 

[CamHostage]

The PSP was basically a little more powerful than the Dreamcast, and with some trickery/knowhow, could produce results that came very close to PS2 efforts. The Vita seems to be in more or less the same boat in terms of gulf of power, but it's a bit closer because its architecture has support for a lot of modern features that were ubiquitous this past generation.

Right, the OP keeps bringing up games that were a lot like their PS2 counterparts, but the thing is, they were built to approximate those games on new engines customized for what PSP could do in its resolution and power cap; games for PS Vita on the other hand generally are using the real engines from PS3 games and then from there the developers have to cut down and simplify. (That's not exactly the story, as MGS Peace Walker used the MGS4 engine of all things... an engine doesn't at all tell the whole story. But when you look at PSP ports like Gun or Burnout or NFS as well as versions of PS3 games like Assassin's Creed or Dante's Inferno you can see the careful mimicry that is informed by the original but is not pulled from the parent source.) They did amazing things with the PSP in its day (and even though the PS Vita can take a modern engine readily, the "cut-down" approach can have major drawbacks that sometimes the ground-up approach avoids and defeats,) but developers that were hot stuff on PS2 didn't exactly have a free ride on PSP, it was a very different platform.

"Power" comparisons of gaming hardware are often a lot of talk, at some point you have to leave that behind and talk about the actual system because the roads will fork and comparisons will fail to connect.

 

[Shtof]

I don't know, after playing Killzone Mercenary I feel the Vita is as close to a PS3 as the PSP is to the PS2.

 

[Aizu_Itsuko]

Haven't seen Soul Calibur Broken Destiny but from what I played of Tekken 6 psp, ps2 Tekken 5 looked better

Maybe the small screen is giving many people the impression that PS2 and PSP are closer than they actually are, but both Tekken 5 and Soul Calibur are more detailed on the PS2. I have been playing them emulated lately and running them on the same screen, there's a pretty big difference. We are talking lower polycounts and texture resolution, missing or reduced effects and some background elements that were 3D on the PS2 are now 2D. They are still amazing looking games on the PSP though.

 

[Lazy8s]

Vita can compare so well because the engineers behind the GPU have a lot of graphics expertise for balancing the limiting factors in the rendering algorithm away from the precision of computation and its complementary set of buffers.

Rendering into on-die tile buffers allows the maximum precision for color and floating-point depth values as well as low-bandwidth cost AA. All of this was true even of their last generation GPU architecture, the PowerVR MBX which delivered solid image qualities to mobile graphics starting back in 2004.

Since mobile displays are held so much closer to the user's eyes, image quality is not something that should be compromised. The PowerVR engineers realized this and made sure that hardware algorithms were implemented correctly, such as MBX's mipmapping which properly accounted for a texture's slope to reduce shimmering as well as its curved surface support which supported tesselation with fractional values and allowed for differing levels on LOD on neighboring patch edges to prevent seams/cracks from forming in the geometry.

 

[Dereck]

The PSP was basically a little more powerful than the Dreamcast, and with some trickery/knowhow, could produce results that came very close to PS2 efforts. The Vita seems to be in more or less the same boat in terms of gulf of power, but it's a bit closer because its architecture has support for a lot of modern features that were ubiquitous this past generation.

 

[Lazy8s]

I wonder where Hidetaka Magoshi and others from Sony's graphics design team are. Some went to Toshiba? Some still at Sony? Maybe one or more at Digital Media Professionals?

 

[lordchompy]

Vita can compare so well because the engineers behind the GPU have a lot of graphics expertise for balancing the limiting factors in the rendering algorithm away from the precision of computation and its complementary set of buffers.

Rendering into on-die tile buffers allows the maximum precision for color and floating-point depth values as well as low-bandwidth cost AA. All of this was true even of their last generation GPU architecture, the PowerVR MBX which delivered solid image qualities to mobile graphics starting back in 2004.

Since mobile displays are held so much closer to the user's eyes, image quality is not something that should be compromised. The PowerVR engineers realized this and made sure that hardware algorithms were implemented correctly, such as MBX's mipmapping which properly accounted for a texture's slope to reduce shimmering as well as its curved surface support which supported tesselation with fractional values and allowed for differing levels on LOD on neighboring patch edges to prevent seams/cracks from forming in the geometry.

All this is assuming you are developing from scratch, and on an engine optimized for Power VR architecture. Some direct PS3 to Vita ports look noticeably worse than their PS3 counterparts, particularly Mortal Kombat 3, which runs on a much pared down version of Unreal Engine 3.

And as far as mipmapping goes, sure maybe there isn't as much shimmering in the textures' slope, but I can tell you the lack of anisotropy is killing texture quality for me.

Do you know why Vita hardware can't manage at least 4X AF in many games?

 

[sk3tch]

Surprised this hasn't been posted in this thread, yet -

Face-Off: PlayStation 3 vs. PlayStation Vita (published August 17, 2013)
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-ps3-vs-ps-vita-face-off

Vita really isn't that far off of the PS3. Similar to how the PSP and PS2 compared, at least.

 

[cm osi]

PSP wasn't that close to a PS2. At all.

yeah, no way.

 

[dr. apocalipsis]

The PSP was basically a little more powerful than the Dreamcast, and with some trickery/knowhow, could produce results that came very close to PS2 efforts.

Nope, not even close.

The screen make it looks better than it really is.

 

[Raonak]

Killzone mercanary looks better than a lot of PS3 games. First time in a while where i;ve been wowed by graphics in a long time. the IQ is insane. completely native res.

Looks like a toned down version of killzone3 honestly.

 

[Evolution_1ne]

Vita is closer to the PS3 than PSP was the PS2, wtf is OP on??

 

[Lazy8s]

As far as I remember, the cost of AF is reasonable on Series 5XT designs like the Vita's 543MP4+, especially with the relative abundance of effective fill rate.

While peak performance numbers may suggest certain effects are more practical than they might otherwise be considering some of the interdependencies associated with unified shading units and with compromises in mobile graphics architectures in general, the main reason for a lack of AF is likely developers, perhaps mistakenly, balancing too much of the workload to convoluted shaders.

 

[lordchompy]

As far as I remember, the cost of AF is reasonable on Series 5XT designs like the Vita's 543MP4+, especially with the relative abundance of effective fill rate.

While peak performance numbers may suggest certain effects are more practical than they might otherwise be considering some of the interdependencies associated with unified shading units and with compromises in mobile graphics architectures in general, the main reason for a lack of AF is likely developers, perhaps mistakenly, balancing too much of the workload to convoluted shaders.

Not sure about Power VR architecture, but on PC, going from trilinear to 4X anisotropic filtering in modern video cards incurs a negligible performance hit of about 2-5% at most. I noticed PSP had better textures and AF in certain games than Vita.

 

[heringer]

Hmm, I dunno. I feel like Vita is closer to PS3 than PSP is to PS2, at least after playing Killzone Mercenary.

The gaps are in the same ballpark though.