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Is the PS/2 A Disappointment?
katananja writes: "According to this page Playstation 2 is the industry's big disappointment. This article compares de DC versus PS2 in many ways you can imagine.
To better understand the PS2's limitations and the Dreamcast's strengths, you need only look at the available video memory for your answer. While the DC has 8MB of VRAM, the PS2 has only 4MB of VRAM. The main problem arises because a polygon takes up roughly 40 bytes of RAM. When you have 5 million of them in a given second, this amounts to 5 million/60fps = 83,333 polygons in a given frame of animation. If each of these polygons uses 40 bytes of VRAM, you will use 3.33 MB displaying these 5 million PPS. This doesn't leave the PS2 much room for its framebuffer which uses around 1.2MB just to display the end data, not to mention that you still need to leave room for textures to put on those polygons." This is obviously biased 'cuz the site is 'Segaweb' but it's got a lot of interesting tidbits. As always tho, the real test is the games.
If you want to make a valid comparison, you need to compare Dreamcast release titles to Playstation 2 release titles.
Early titles never look anything like later titles - that much is beyond debate. If you're comparing currently available titles then this makes sense. If you're comparing the hardware, as this article purports to do, then comparing a first-off PS2 title to a third or fourth generation Dreamcast title is rather foolish.
I'm actually rather surprised by the content of many fan reviews (and some of the comments here). Many are along the lines of "PS2 will kill DC" or "DC won't let PS2 take off". How ridiculous is this?
You'd think, now that we've seen how one company holding a lock on a market (Microsoft?) is such a detrimental force against the consumer, we'd all be praying that all the consoles do reasonably well, to force competition to create better and better games and consoles.
I own a DC, and when the price comes down will own a PS2. I don't get to play games alot, but when I want to, I'll not be locked into a console to determine what I play. Sega has more original games than any other console maker out there. Period (Jet Grind Radio or Seaman to name two examples). Sony has some of the stronger sports games (Madden for example) and a few other genres. Sega and Sony both have great RPGs.
Hardware-wise, I've been skeptical for some time that the PS2 would appear significantly more advanced than any other new console. In comparing Madden to NFL2K (not the new, I prefer to compare first gen to first gen) or TTT to Soul Calibre, I don't see any amazing advance.
Of course this article is biased, but it's no more biased than the same FUD we've seen on PS2 sources for a year now.
The so called 'problems' with the Playstation 2 have nothing to do with hardware, and everything to do with programmer stupidity and laziness.
Programming for the PS2 is inheirently different than for a PC or even the Dreamcast. My brother is a developer for the PS2 (as well as Dreamcast, and X-box. We've been playing games on a PS2 Development machine for a few weeks now) and is going nuts everyday reading this crap slandering the Playstation 2. Here is what is boils down to.
VRAM is used PER FRAME. You don't load up all the game's textures into VRAM and leave 'em there like you would on a PC or Dreamcast. The Playstation has 48 gigabytes of bandwidth between it's components. So, what does that mean? I means you STREAM your textures EVERY frame. If you have 48 gigs a second and 60 frames per second, you can stream up to 800 megabytes of textures PER FRAME. And that is uncompressed. The playstation allows you to do compression WHILE streaming the textures, for FREE with no extra cycles. And you can stream them directly from the DVD if you wanted.
You only need to load the textures for THAT frame and no more.
The problem is not with Playstation 2 hardware (which kicks ass), it is with the developers who are coding for it like it was a PC. The Playstation does not have a cute architecture that panders to weak programmers. It does one thing and it does it well. Coding properly for the PS2 requires programmers to get down to basics, write microcode for the VMU's and fine tune their applications to the Playstation 2's unique hardware.
What I'm afraid of, is that when X-box gets released with hardware that is basically a PC in different packaging, is that developers won't want to bother coding for the PS2 because they can just port their programs with little to no change from PC to X-box.
Hopefully, however, developers will realize their mistakes in programming for the PS2 like it was a PC and start making better software.
Perhaps the writer of the article should examine less the superficial stats of the two systems (ie. VRAM only), and begin to think more outside of the box.
You don't typically store polygons in VRAM. You calculate polygons dynamicly as you render the frame. Yeah, you need some sort of reference point (3D models, etc.), but that can be stored in regular RAM just fine. Anyone know how much main memory the PS2 has? The DC?
On the other hand, the Voodoo 1 also had 4MB of VRAM. I'm having trouble understanding how a "next generation" console can get by with so little. Even 8MB is puny compared to modern PC graphics cards.
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That's exactly right - and if you want another example to prove that point, look at the market share of PalmOS devices vs. Windows CE. The incredible amount of software available for the Palm is just like the Gameboy situation.
A small proportion of people want the coolest, fastest, most colorful gadget available. Most people want what satisfies their needs at the right price. Unfortunately for the first group, they aren't a big enough group to make devices like Windows CE a good proposition when you think about the proportionally higher R&D & production costs for their devices. (hence Philips dropping their Windows CE line) Fortunately, these devices are produced by engineers who mostly belong to that first group.
Of course the availability of software is also driven by the quality of the development tools. The Codewarrior IDE is excellent - you don't even need hardware to start work, the emulator is just as good as the real thing. The documentation from Palm is about the best I've seen for any platform. By contrast, Windows CE requires an add-on to VisualC++. In the early days you had to use assemblers and DOS to build for CE! And finding which Win32 API calls were actually present was largely a matter of guesswork. I wonder how manay developers were (like me) so disgusted by the Windows CE development environment that they switched to Palm and never looked back?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Dreamcast
THANK YOU.
When was the last time you saw a new point mentioned in any post to any story on Slashdot?
This article is a total sham. First off, the PS2 doesn't store any of it's polygons in VRAM. VRAM is used solely for textures, frame buffers, and color lookup tables. There is no limit to the number of polys the PS2 can draw because they are drawn as they come in off the bus. There is a theoretical limit on how many it can draw in 1/60th of a second but this is limited by the bus speeds not by VRAM, and for the most part, not the GS.
The dreamcast, however, uses a different rendering technique that requires all polygon data be stored in VRAM because it does post-processing for sorting without using a z-buffer. The advantage here is that the dreamcast can render double-size and get free anti-aliasing. But this means the dreamcast has a hard limit that no amount of assembly can get you more polys drawn. There is a trick you can do on the PS2 to get anti-aliasing but you have to give up almost all of your VRAM. For this reason most PS2 games don't have anti-aliasing. The PS2 does provide hardware accelerated anti-aliased drawing, but for anti-aliased drawing you have to have pre-sorted polygons. And all PS2 games (I know of) use the Z-buffer for sorting so they disable anti-aliased drawing. In short, the anti-aliased drawing features on the PS2 are totally useless.
That is the big difference between PS2 and dreamcast. So the dreamcast actually looks better (anti-aliasing) but the PS2 is capable of drawing much much more poly data.
-- Virtual Windows Project
Forget the GameGear, there were two other systems from the same era with MUCH better hardware and much worse marketing/game support: The Atari Lynx and the Turbo Express. The Turbo Express not only has awesome hardware specs, but played the exact same games as the TurboGraphix-16 console. Anyone else out there remember Bonk?
-B
But one of the major problems is: the games! Somehow Sony has convinced several major developers not to release their flagship titles on the Dreamcast. Example: Namco does develop stuff for Dreamcast, but why don't they release Tekken Tag Tournament for it? Same with Street Fighter EX3 by Capcom - other versions of Street Fighter are available for the Dreamcast, but not the EX-line :(
So I don't have much choice, as fighting games is the only stuff I use a console for...
It will be interesting to see how Microsoft handles this with the XBox, who will have more influence on the developers? Microsoft or Sony?
Even IBM doesn't list it on their public history of milestones pages. :)
Seriously, though, the trademark for Sony's platform is PS2, not PS/2. The former stands for "PlayStation 2", and the latter is IBM's "Personal System/2".
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Also, that many polygons will probably never be completely optimized by any given game, allowing for more of that 4MB to be used. One reason why is because it's being played on a /TV/, an item that doesn't have a very large resolution, thus less memory is required. And how about system memory? It'd be feasable to store pixmap data there temporarily, I'd think. It really depends on how it's managed. Some 4Mb video cards I've seen well outperform 8Mb cards made by other companies.
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CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
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Actually, the PS2 does not ship with a broadband adaptor (though it will have one shipped around January, I believe).
Also, I think that the Dreamcast has a broadband adaptor coming out fairly soon.
The X-Box does ship with a broadband adaptor.
Interestingly, I think that shipping with a broadband adaptor is the right idea, though I think the X-box will not do well for other reasons. Sony's take on this all is that while they think broadband will be growing and a worthwhile market for the PS2, they said in an interview that they thought broadband would really be mainstream around the release of the PS3 (which then presumably would ship with a broadband adaptor).
In one way they may have a good point - what happens to these broadband adaptors if IPV6 is released and widely adopted by broadband providers? Will they be able to cope? There's still a lot of technical facets of consumer broadband that might alter in teh next few years.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Whether intentional or not, you have some bad information here.
Consoles have a very different mindset than a PC, where an analogy can be made with the difference between an oven and a microwave. There are superficial similarities, there are some overlaps, but mainly they fill two different functions in a household. Not a perfect analogy, but useful, I think.
A console is $200. For 5 or 6 years. That's it. PS2 will probably by $300. Add $40 for another controller, maybe $60 for some specialized add ons, and you've made an investment of $400 for 5 years.
A gaming PC, to be fair, costs about $800 today. I won't count a monitor into that cost, but hey, a 32" tv isn't a cheap thing either.
Across 5 years, lets say you upgrade memory, once, cuz M$ releases their next OS which requires twice the memory. And you up the HD, for similar reasons. Lets use today's prices, but cut in half, due to Moore's Law. That means 128mb will cost you $70, and a decent HD will cost you $150(I'm assuming disk size doubles, rather than price falling). Then let's say you upgrade your vid card once, to keep up with the M$ upgrade trend. Say another $200. That means in 5 years you can casually spend $1230, already twice what a console offers.
Then you also have to worry about drivers every 3 months(random period), about OS updates every year, and game patches every other week for the first 2 months of it's existence.
Whereas a console, you buy, plug in, and pop a game in, and you're set. Is that worth saving $600? I think so. I own both a PC and a console.
As for game price; Most PC games are about $40-$60, that I know of. Surprise, a 3cd set for the PSX is only $50! Year old games are $30, and 'classics' are $10-$20 (classics in the PC sense would be Civ, Doom, Quake, Alone in the Dark, etc)
Then there are used games ^^
Dunno, just a rebuttal, that even if a console isn't for the curmudgeon like you, it fits into the lifestyle of many (another analogy would be a boombox single unit CD player/stereo, and a component built audio system. Why buy a boombox for $200 when you can apply it to buying a better reciever, or a cd unit, or an amp, or speakers, etc?)
The nick is a joke! Really!
GPL Deconstructed
I used to actually believe that the quality of the system itself matters when predicting the success of a new system.I no longer believe any such thing. Look at the GameBoy.
The GameBoy came out at roughly the same time as the Sega GameGear. Both were portable systems riding on the coat-tails of new systems (SNES and SegaGenesis). One of the main differences I remember was that the GameGear had a BEAUTIFUL screen. It was back-lit, and was color. The GameBoy, as we all know, was in the classic Green&White.
However, the reason I have to remind you of the GameGear screen but we all know what the GameBoy screen looks like is that the GameGear flopped, while the GameBoy is still alive TODAY!
Can you believe that?!? The GameBoy is still being played by a new generation of 10-year olds. There's a new thin design, and there's a weak color version, but the console is the still the same technology as 10 years ago. Is there ANY other game system of any sort that has this sort of shelf life? I can't think of anything.
The reason the GameBoy is still around is the game support. Nintendo had a monopoly on the good games. The GameGear was killed because they just didn't get the good cartridges. It's all about the games. Mario and Zelda and FinalFantasy just beat the crap out of Sonic and PhantasyStar and so forth.
The test of whether the PS2 will survive will NOT be how much video ram it has. That'll help, sure. The real test will be what games they get and how well they implement them.
Since when does VRAM have anything to do with the number of polygons drawn? Polygons are in RAM and drawn straight into the frame buffer.
4MB and 8MB of RAM has a big effect on the number of textures you can use, but thats all. VRAM size has absolutly not bearing on the number of polygons drawn.
Well, that's _ONE_ advantage. The MAC advocates might point out that they tout the same story. In fact, however, if you don't skimp out on the price tag of a PC, you shouldn't have any difficulty. Since win95's Direct X came out, I haven't had a compatibility problem for my main desktop... True, I choose my hardware with a mircro-scope, but I chose name-brands, which are typical of more expensive vendors.
A _big_ advantage of console games is that programmers have a common target platform. For the longest time, this was the biggest problem for PC's.. Recently, again, with Direct X, this pretty much goes away. Others that wish to take the more difficult road use GL, etc, but the trend is towards convergence and compatibility. Still consoles have the edge (as long as you're not trying to port to every console out there).
As for reliability, I've never seen a reliable console. Even my old Atari would crash on occasion. It's a computer, it isn't infallible, or immune to bad code.. And as the programs get more complex, the likelyhood increases. I snicker under my breath when my friend says he has to "reboot" his N64 periodically.
Heck, one Sega machine had dual procs, but few progammers used it becuase race condition management just throw you out the window.
The MAIN reason why consoles are so popular is content.. They simply have a great wealth of games. I don't know what the cost is for a PC game verses a console game, but it's just been the trend for most of history. Granted, I find many of the games on consoles dumbed up versions of their PC counterparts, mainly because the limited control "buttons", but also because of the appauling resolution and interlacing inherent in a console setup.
We were taught when I was young to not sit too close to the TV because of the radiation.. But consoles do the exact opposite.. They place you right in front of a heavily flickering monitor with interlacing to mess with your built in motion sensing.
Back to the original point, consoles definately have simplicity going for them, but PC's are slowly catching up. You already have to know how to turn the computer on and off if you do any sort of productivity. Now you just pop the CD in, and it'll automatically install and or RUN. Aside from the million and one things a user can do to screw this up, that's pretty straight forward. Consoles win by utilizing the AOL syndrom (that I herefore coin). Reduce the number of options your customer has, and you simplify their life, and can claim that they're happier humans. The gamble works because the vast majority of people accept this, and new-commers can always initially appretiate it. Also, even experienced uses might enjoy this, so long as they can do what-ever they like (the only explanation I can offer towards Mac Power Users). The small minority that feel closterphobic in such restricted environments will simply opt NOT to choose that platform.
Personally, Sony's dream scares me.. They wish to produce the most powerful hardware on earth, and sell at a loss so that they can lock you into their accessories (like games, or home entertainment). Of course you'll be able to control your Sony TV, stereo, VCR, Sony internet connection, etc. Why need a PC at all when you can do all the basic Home operations from your living room. Heck, put a PSX next to every TV in your house.
It's not a real danger, but you never know.
-Michael
-Michael
The bit about deferred rendering is just wrong, at least as the author explained it. All 3d polygon based systems from the beginning of time do backface culling. It simply isn't possible to be in a position to see both sides of a polygon from a single camera position unless you are doing ray-tracing type reflections. No system 'textures both sides of the polygons'.
What the author probably meant is that the DC graphics libraries are smart enough to not do texturing for polygons which are completely occluded by other polygons, but that is a software function, not a hardware function. Z-buffer algorithms have been doing that in 3d graphics systems for years as well.
I suspect the author read about some cool rendering thing the DC did and didn't understand it, but felt motivated nonetheless to beat up on the PS2 about it.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
In games, the same instructions are made over and over on different data (i.e. rendering). This data is constantly changing, and it takes a lot of memory bandwidth to support this. By designing the PS2 with small amounts of memory and a lot of bandwidth, it is more difficult to program for, because using the PC mentality (Load all data into memory and pull out what you need when you need it) does not work. The PS2 does not have the memory to do so. Instead, you need to load the data into memory more dynamically, so over the course of generating a frame of graphics on screen the whole 4MB of video ram may be used several times over, instead of trying to do everything in it.
The bottom line is that programming for the PS2 requires much more dynamic memory managment, whereas programming on the PC utilizes a more static style.
Ars Technica recently had a very interesting article on the two completely different architectures somewhere (I can't seem to find it).
Only those who dream can grasp reality.