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The big question: how powerful is the 3DS?

Gnub said:
Nah. If they go back to the static stationary background/environments like RE0 for Gamecube then I can see it making that picture happen in real time. Well based on the Metal Gear shots anyway.

Why do people assume that the RE screens are bullshots but not the SSF4 pics? Why would Capcom only release bullshots of one of their games?
 
Snakeyes said:
And this is why I hate the fact that Ninty has seemingly stopped revealing their hardware specs. A spec sheet would make this arguing irrelevant.

speculation increases hype. keeps people talking. keeps your system on peoples mind.
 
That (supposed) gameplay shot of MGS3D still looks pretty PSPish. I still don't get the Boss/Snake fight screens, aren't those from the Naked Sample aka essentially a tech demo?
 
mikespit1200 said:
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the 3D effect have more to do with the LCD panel that they used? I'm pretty sure the 3DS isn't rendering two separate frames like Nvidia's implementation on their desktop cards.
"Stereo 3D" means you need two images. How they are delivered to each eye is irrelevant.
 
mikespit1200 said:
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the 3D effect have more to do with the LCD panel that they used? I'm pretty sure the 3DS isn't rendering two separate frames like Nvidia's implementation on their desktop cards.

It is.
 
Zoramon089 said:
Why do people assume that the RE screens are bullshots but not the SSF4 pics? Why would Capcom only release bullshots of one of their games?
Jaggies. The lack of jaggies automatically calls "bullshot!" claims, regardless of the content of said shots.
 
mikespit1200 said:
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the 3D effect have more to do with the LCD panel that they used? I'm pretty sure the 3DS isn't rendering two separate frames like Nvidia's implementation on their desktop cards.

Anything that does stereoscopic 3D is going to have to render two different images, one for each eye. How they separate those images to go to the different eyes is a different matter, and that's what's special about the 3DS's screen.
 
The 3DS is clearly more powerful than the PSP, that much I don't think anyone should be trying to argue. Looking at the PS2 pics of MGS3 I think it's safe to say that by looking at Street Fighter, MGS3DS, and Kingdom Hearts it appears to be more powerful than it as well.
 
Branduil said:
This is Nintendo's most visually impressive console ever.

Can't believe people can't see it's better than PSP or PS2.
I hate to say it but I agree. It even looks like it can handle some effects better than the Wii could (said normal mapping, various shader effects).
M3d10n said:
Jaggies. The lack of jaggies automatically calls "bullshot!" claims, regardless of the content of said shots.
See Star Fox 64 shots. Also notice Chris and her partners arms? They look noticibly low-poly.
 
Trojita said:
For anyone that says the 3DS copy is better, do you see all of those jaggies especially over her clothes?

I think people are being blinded by the bloom effect and the different look overall of the two games.

The jaggies are noticeable in the 3DS pic because the shot has been blown up x2.
 
brain_stew said:
What awesome textures......................

its not like mgs3ds has good textures

3DS_MGS3D_03ss03_E3.png



The PS2 sucked balls at texturing, beating it in this area is hardly a big accomplishment, even the DC eclipsed the PS2's meagre texturing capabilities, ffs, the damn thing didn't support any sort of texture compression at all.

there were quite a few ps2 games with really impressive texture work,hitman bloodmoney on ps2 has textures you wouldn't believe the ps2 can handle it

also ubisoft created something for splinter cell 3 called geo texturing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPi69Tpn4RM
 
brain_stew said:
http://ps2media.gamespy.com/ps2/image/article/566/566899/metal-gear-solid-3-snake-eater-20041116104748608.jpg[IMG]

What awesome textures......................

The PS2 sucked balls at texturing, beating it in this area is hardly a big accomplishment, even the DC eclipsed the PS2's meagre texturing capabilities, ffs, the damn thing didn't support any sort of texture compression at all.[/QUOTE]

Uh... scaled to the 3DS resolution (240 pixels high, width is a little bigger)

[IMG]http://i50.tinypic.com/15cj6ro.jpg
 
Jigsaw said:
i just booted up subsistence and grabbed this shot (via intensity pro card + component)

pic_03_juf.jpg

snakeeatertest8uj7.png


it has some really weird blur filter (maybe the same flicker filter ff12 has) it helps hide the jaggies but...well its blurry

need to find my savedata so i can make a shot of the flowerfield in the end

Yeah this is a good comparison. Resolution makes a big difference. 400x240 is just really low. For me the 3DS is sub-PS2/GC graphics for sure. In 2D mode anyway. When you take into acount the fact that it has to render everything twice well obviously the 3DS is more powerful, I suppose. It should also look much prettier in 3D.
 
Red Blaster said:
That (supposed) gameplay shot of MGS3D still looks pretty PSPish. I still don't get the Boss/Snake fight screens, aren't those from the Naked Sample aka essentially a tech demo?

Vertex count is the only area that looks "PSPish."

The normal maps, specular highlights and texture quality are well beyond anything in a PSP game. There's also the complete lack of dithering as well, something which is present in basically all of the PSP's premier titles. Doesn't look very "PSPish" at all as far as I'm concerned.
 
Honestly, when I was watching the Kid Icarus trailer, I thought it looked almost exactly like the Brawl game engine...which is obviously a Wii game. I mean there are plenty of Wii games that don't look that good...
 
As someone who is blind in one eye and can't see 3D, would the image quality go up any if I switched it to 2D mode exclusively? does anybody know or want to take a guess?
 
Now, how about we try to guess how much RAM the thing has? I say 64MBs or more, but less than 128MBs.

And I hope this time Nintendo learned how to make the games interact with the system OS without having part of the OS hard-coded into the games themselves (the DS wifi libraries and the Wii home menu).
 
Goron2000 said:
As someone who is blind in one eye and can't see 3D, would the image quality go up any if I switched it to 2D mode exclusively? does anybody know or want to take a guess?

The quality won't change, it will just not be in 3D.
 
brain_stew said:
Vertex count is the only area that looks "PSPish."

The normal maps, specular highlights and texture quality are well beyond anything in a PSP game. There's also the complete lack of dithering as well, something which is present in basically all of the PSP's premier titles. Doesn't look very "PSPish" at all as far as I'm concerned.

I'm referring to this screen here:

pic_03_juf.jpg
 
Goron2000 said:
As someone who is blind in one eye and can't see 3D, would the image quality go up any if I switched it to 2D mode exclusively? does anybody know or want to take a guess?
You cannot switch to 2D mode. All you can do is reduce the 3D depth to zero, but the game will still render two frames at 400x240. Supporting two different resolutions in a handheld would be incredibly retarded, since there would be no way to guarantee a consistent performance in both 3D and 2D mode.
 
brain_stew said:
"Kondo says they are shooting to match the battery life length of the DSi."

:D :D
It saddens me we'll probably not return to DSLite-levels of battery life, but this is good enough.

Now all we need is to know the price. This is the point that'll determine whether Nintendo has created themselves a new PS2 or a new PS3.
 
Snakeyes said:
Do you guys think that Nintendo may allow devs to completely turn off the chip's 3D effect to push more polygons?

Probably not with launch titles but later on I can see it happening, especially if its a game that has most of its action on the bottom screen.

Since I don't have a DSi, how long does one last, roughly?
 
3DS_MGS3D_03ss03_E3.png


It's shots like this who make me think the 3DS graphics are not so awesome because it really doesn't look better than MGS PW.
I'm really confused about the 3DS graphics, I really don't want to raise my hope and be disapointed by the games.

One thing that impresses me in MGS PW is the animation, the explosions and the large scale battle. I want to see a 3DS game do that.

We really need more media and gameplay videos.

And no, kid icarus doesn't look like a wii game. The Icarus model is very low poly and there not really a lot of action going on screen. Some people need to try games like sin and punishment 2.

Damn, the 3ds release is too far away :(
 
Dedication Through Light said:
They are trying...

This is particularly impressive, what is the DSi's batterly life? 8-10 hours?

3-4 hours on the highest brightness setting, 4-6 on the second highest and 6-9 on medium.
 
brain_stew said:
Probably not with launch titles but later on I can see it happening, especially if its a game that has most of its action on the bottom screen.

Since I don't have a DSi, how long does one last, roughly?
5-6 hours on maximum brightness. Also Splinter Cell looks like shit, I'm wondering how Capcom is getting such amazing results from SF and RE.

Edit* How you get 3-4 is beyond me, I get more than that.
 
Snakeyes said:
Do you guys think that Nintendo may allow devs to completely turn off the chip's 3D effect to push more polygons?
I don't think so. That's the whole point of the device, and unlike sub-HD 360/PS3 games a non-3D 3DS game would stick out like a sore thumb and would probably be criticized by the media and by the consumers.

Also, we don't know how customized and optimized for 3D the 3DS GPU is. Nintendo truly nailed down the art of designed streamlined handheld hardware: the GBA and DS had incredibly well-oiled architectures with little to no bottlenecks or hard-to-use graphics features. Also, considering how little time 3rd parties had with the device and the quality of the 3rd party tech demos, it's obvious the 3DS is very developer-friendly, so the 3D is probably transparent to implement and requires little effort from the developers.
 
brain_stew said:
Probably not with launch titles but later on I can see it happening, especially if its a game that has most of its action on the bottom screen.

Since I don't have a DSi, how long does one last, roughly?
between 3/4 and 4/5 that of the lite.

am i the only one who finds the comparisons to ps2 highly humorous? .. ok, i see M3d10n does too.
 
Burnst said:
It's like this, but the two images are displayed at the same time and delivered by a special LCD.

3d_t_rex.gif

This is the first of these moving images posted here on gaf where I kind of see the 3D ness.
 
3DS appears to hit in all the modern ways in such things as testures and shading capabilities. It does appear to lack in the raw polygon pushing power though of the last gen consoles.

This means comparisons are gonna be all over the place. Nice textures especially for the resolution coupled with some great effects to flesh out the environments definitely put it much more in line with what modern hardware can do which really started with say the xbox and pc games at the time and have trickled down into everything like say the iphone.

At the same point though it just doesn't have the raw number crunching potential under the hood. One of the easy things for the PS2 to do was push polys. It might have sucked balls doing textures, and getting effects was a lot of work. Yet it could easily push polys. The cube was no different when you look at a launch game like Rouge Squadron. Obviously the Xbox was a beast all around.

Good thing is depending upon the game raw poly power might not really be needed, and better effects can clearly elevate things to a new level. Heck that's really been the story of this console generation and pc for that matter. It's all about the shaders.

The big key for me is gonna be price though and battery. This is NOT some second coming of 360/PS3 hardware on a handheld, and while the graphics are a clear step up it's mid 2010. I expect this kind of shit these days. So don't act like it's super hawtness and try and charge me PSP Go like money Nintendo.
 
So do we currently agree that the 3DS pushes less polys than the ps2 and GC, but the shaders and other effects are superior?
 
Earl Cazone said:
dreamcast level it is.

let's all agree on this so in some strange way it makes Sega announce a new Jet Set Radio for the 3DS

by the time the real facts come out and we know how powerful it is, JSR3DS will already be in development. we all win.
 
Obviously the 3DS is more powerful than the PSP and in some areas more advanced than the PS2, GC and Wii! It's just that a significant portion of the available horsepower is creating that second image for the 3D effect and so the end result of most games is going to be similar to PSP and or PS2 level graphics with improvements.

That's still not bad for a handheld although it's not quite the leap I was hoping for, especially at such a low resolution. Still, as someone else said it's plenty powerful enough to do great games on and opens up the all important action and shooting genres for the hardcore, something that really wasn't well represented on the DS with it's meager graphic capabilities.
 
i hope the price doesn't go higher than $249 at launch. i don't think i'm willing to pay more than that. at least it's backwards compatible with the ds games.
 
M3d10n said:
I don't think so. That's the whole point of the device, and unlike sub-HD 360/PS3 games a non-3D 3DS game would stick out like a sore thumb and would probably be criticized by the media and by the consumers.

Also, we don't know how customized and optimized for 3D the 3DS GPU is. Nintendo truly nailed down the art of designed streamlined handheld hardware: the GBA and DS had incredibly well-oiled architectures with little to no bottlenecks or hard-to-use graphics features. Also, considering how little time 3rd parties had with the device and the quality of the 3rd party tech demos, it's obvious the 3DS is very developer-friendly, so the 3D is probably transparent to implement and requires little effort from the developers.
Wouldn't that mean that it would be feasible to maximise 2D performance?
 
M3d10n said:
Oh, for fucks sake. It will take years before a SOC (system-on-a-chip) GPU can push as many polygons around as the PS2 did. Their size, power and heat restrictions are gigantic barriers which make them evolve at much slower rates, performance-wise, than bigger GPUs.

And I'll bold it because seems people aren't fully aware of it: Sony "cheated" with the PSP and used a gigantic GPU that is almost as big as a laptop GPU. That's why it took fucking years until we started seeing comparable graphics on mobiles like the iPhone 3GS and now the 3DS.

We are comparing a 6-years old netbook-class GPU against a mobile-class GPU.

1) Geometry: it is too early to tell and the games shown are all over the place, but the 3DS seems equivalent to the PSP on this level. Both are below PS2.

2) Shaders: from the looks of it it's quite obvious the 3DS is using an OenGLES 2.0 GPU, which supports programmable shaders in enough capacity to do fully normal-mapped characters with specular lighting (MGS) and self-shadowing (SFIV, RE). This is quite a step forward from the PS2, the PSP and even the Wii (all per-pixel effects on the Wii were merely hacked environment maps).

3) Resolution: 400x240 is close, but below PSP's 480x272, but there is the 3D. Both are lower than the PS2/Wii 640x480

4) IQ: no dithering to be seen (a staple on the PSP and PS2 and on many Wii games). Some games seem to be using MSAA (it's necessary for DS backwards compatibility but it's hit on performance is unknown). AF support not confirmed.

I believe with the 3DS Nintendo finally has a handheld that is the "sweet spot" of graphics capabilities: good enough to allow a wide range of game types and graphical styles, but simple enough to make the developers life easy. That they can do it all while running in 3D is quite a feat, but the jury is still out until battery life and price are revealed.

Interesting, thanks for this. I wasn't aware of the situation with the PSP graphics card. I don't profess to keep up with mobile graphics tech, but I was always curious as to why we weren't seeing the PSP being thoroughly eclipsed by products like the 3GS.
 
330vlar.gif


AM I DOING THIS RIGHT?
 
Instro said:
So do we currently agree that the 3DS pushes less polys than the ps2 and GC, but the shaders and other effects are superior?

Pretty much. Obviously textures are hit and miss and the PS2 has a higher resolution so it's harder to compare.
 
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