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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Is this Gen of Consoles just WEAK?

curl-6 on 23 October 2014
fatslob-:O said:
curl-6 said:

Not frequently. It's rare in the Rogue games that it doesn't achieve the desired effect.

Meanwhile, on PS2, texures are flat and blurrier.

That's the thing though ... These aren't rare corruptions if we go by the posted videos. If anything bump mapping is rare in Rogue Squadron as it's selectively applied. 

Sure the textures are of a lower resolution on the PS2 but it compensates that with more detailed polygon meshes ... 

I own both games, bump mapping is not rare, is it abundant, covering the entire surface of levels like Hoth and the Death Star, as well as character and vehicle models. As for the vids, their excessive video compression obscures half the bumpmaps.

And Rogue 2 pushes 12-15 million polyons a second, (http://au.ign.com/articles/2001/08/29/rogue-leader-chat-transcript ) Rogue 3 I recall pushed 20 million though I can't find the original source for that. They were high poly games in addition to pulling an obscene amount of (for the gen) high end effects.

The depth to surfaces you get from bumpmaps was missing on PS2, which in conjunction with the lower res texures made its games look comparatively flat.



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TheJimbo1234 on 23 October 2014
Landguy said:

Earlier, a thread was started claiming that the PS4 was lame.  The basic thought seemed to be based on the idea that the PS4 was not revoltionay or even evolutionary.  Just a more powerful PS3.  That thread has been locked.  So, let's try to be civil here.

That led me to the following thoughts:

I would say that the WiiU has the gimmick controller. Other than that, it is way under powered. But, coming from the Wii, that was a significant upgrade in graphics and general horsepower.  The reality is, that hasn't stopped it from having good games. That is something lost on people nowadays.

The PS4 does seem like just a PS3.5. The thing is, if you buy the XB1 without Kinect, it too is basically the same as a suped up 360.

This is all about the fact that all of the new consoles are just too under powered to "impress" us with their capabilities. Sure, the games look a little better. But do they really seem "Next Gen"? Not really. Even with a lot of small new features, the biggest one is gameplay. In that regard, none of the new consoles have really shown that there is a big improvement YET.   When that happens, people will be more impressed.

So, do you think this current generation PS4/XB1/WiiU are WEAK or not fully taken advantage of yet?


Oh they are weak.

When the ps2 came out, it beat PCs hands down and eaily out stripped them for power to price as well. The 7th gen just stopped short of PCs as they were not dx10 enabled, but again, they were far cheaper than a PC of equal power.

However the 8th gen is just weak. They came out and a £150 gpu out performed a console. A top end gpu at console launch (which is now only £215) absolutley destroys the consoles meaning that the consoles are already very dated and when SteamOS comes out, you could build a steam machine which will be the same size as a console and probably a few times more powerful....for only £100 more or so.



fatslob-:O on 23 October 2014
curl-6 said:

I own both games, bump mapping is not rare, is it abundant, covering the entire surface of levels like Hoth and the Death Star, as well as character and vehicle models. As for the vids, their excessive video compression obscures half the bumpmaps.

And Rogue 2 pushes 12-15 million polyons a second, (http://au.ign.com/articles/2001/08/29/rogue-leader-chat-transcript ) Rogue 3 I recall pushed 20 million though I can't find the original source for that. They were high poly games in addition to pulling an obscene amount of (for the gen) high end effects.

The depth to surfaces you get from bumpmaps was missing on PS2, which in conjunction with the lower res texures made its games look comparatively flat.

Video compression does almost nothing to bump maps seeing as how their not SUB PIXEL effects ... 

Per SCENE means nothing. I want to know per FRAME since that's the most important metric for visual fidelity and the models in rogue squadron look really simplistic in comparison to some PS2 games and a lot of xbox games.

In terms of pixel quality, the PS2 did leave some more to be desired but it didn't exactly make the GC score with a home run against the competitor when it could do whatever it wanted with the power ... 



curl-6 on 23 October 2014
fatslob-:O said:
curl-6 said:

I own both games, bump mapping is not rare, is it abundant, covering the entire surface of levels like Hoth and the Death Star, as well as character and vehicle models. As for the vids, their excessive video compression obscures half the bumpmaps.

And Rogue 2 pushes 12-15 million polyons a second, (http://au.ign.com/articles/2001/08/29/rogue-leader-chat-transcript ) Rogue 3 I recall pushed 20 million though I can't find the original source for that. They were high poly games in addition to pulling an obscene amount of (for the gen) high end effects.

The depth to surfaces you get from bumpmaps was missing on PS2, which in conjunction with the lower res texures made its games look comparatively flat.

Video compression does almost nothing to bump maps seeing as how their not SUB PIXEL effects ... 

Per SCENE means nothing. I want to know per FRAME since that's the most important metric for visual fidelity and the models in rogue squadron look really simplistic in comparison to some PS2 games and a lot of xbox games.

In terms of pixel quality, the PS2 did leave some more to be desired but it didn't exactly make the GC score with a home run against the competitor when it could do whatever it wanted with the power ... 

They don't need to be sub pixel to be blurred over.

There is no PS2 game  know o that does as much technologically as Rogue 2 and 3, because PS2 was less capable hardware. It wasn't massively weaker, but the Gamecube did have a noticeable advantage.



Landguy on 23 October 2014
Shadow1980 said:
They're powerful enough. The graphics I've seen in both games I've played and in gameplay videos of other titles look like a generational leap to me. I think the real problem here is short memories. Everybody expects some new revolution or innovation every generation, but honestly practically every generation has done little besides give us "better graphics boxes." The only exception was the fifth generation. The rise of 3D polygon-based graphics necessitated new innovations, new genres, and new ways to play. The switch from 2D to 3D was the single biggest paradigm shift when it came to game design. Many types of games we now play today were simply impossible on a 2D plane. Nothing else comes close to this literal game-changer. Even motion controls, which were perfected on the Wii after 20 years of failed attempts by various companies, had minimal impact; they were simply too limited in capability and scope, and for most games a traditional gamepad was more than sufficient. It's no surprise that motion controls are now on the way out.

But the fact that the last several generations have been mostly evolutionary is not a bad thing. Even simple increases in computing power still confer tremendous advantages and improvements to game design, including bigger worlds, better AI, and more sophisticated physics. You can't simply dismiss the improvements made over the last several generation just because they didn't provide the level of innovation we saw with the 2D-to-3D switch in the mid 90s. To do so would be to dismiss many excellent games of greater scale, scope, and intricacy than their fundamentally-the-same predecessors (think GTAV vs. GTAIII), improvements that were only possible on stronger hardware. In most cases, evolutionary is just a good as revolutionary.

I mostly agree with you.  I do n't think anyone is saying that the cumalative effect of the last 2 generations isn't VERY significant.  I think the perception is that this generation from the end of the last generation isn't providing significant obvious improvements.  Are the worlds bigger?  Yes.  But, the size of the world can take hours or days to fully realize.  Is the AI smarter/better?  Probably, but again it would take hours to really see the advancements.

If you compare launch titles of the 360/PS3 to the end of life titles on the PS3/360 you can see great advancements, especially if you compare the endo of life xbox/PS2 games to the end of life 360/PS3 games.  Sure, we are only a year into this generation, so we haven't hit the peak of their capabilities.  But, the differences in design between the PS4 and XB1 is small.  The difference in design from both the PS4/XB1 and PCs is even smaller.  The YEARS needed to optimize the PS4/XB1 game creation tools is simply not needed.  Fully optimized tools will be available much sooner.  Thus the systems shouldn't see such dramatic increases in capabilities.

The biggest gain people will remember from this generation will be things that aren't even hardware related.  Streaming, EA Access and things like that.  Things that can be done on the PS3/360, but would be much harder and wouldn't help push people to new hardware and the ever closing ecosystems that will really be the future of gaming.



It is near the end of the end....

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alabtrosMyster on 23 October 2014

This is not new, the ps2 was weak, the og Xbox was weak the ps360 were all weak compared to top of the line PCs of their day... They all had the benefits of being dedicated gaming machines! No hassle, something the masses understand.

 

Really, I say this as a long time PC and console gamer... I would say that back in the 90s new consoles had some specific hardware features you did not see on PC until later, basic things like hardware scrolling, scaling, transparencies, basic 3d acceleration for the first PlayStation, texture filtering for the N64, etc. By the time the Dreamcast was released you had PCs with more video memory than the consoles had in total, higher resolution monitors with video cards capable of pushing refresh rates above 60hz...

 

Oh I forgot, the ps2 was the first consumer device with something like shaders! That was an important feature at the time!(but a good. PC still offered many benefits).

 

That brings us to today, I think ms especially was complacent and released a machine that they knew full well it would not deliver consistent performance at 1080p with detailed graphics... The ps4 is where a console should be, affordable from the start, decent performance, and it has good policies regarding content... 



Erwin-VGC on 23 October 2014
alabtrosMyster said:

This is not new, the ps2 was weak, the og Xbox was weak the ps360 were all weak compared to top of the line PCs of their day... They all had the benefits of being dedicated gaming machines! No hassle, something the masses understand.

 

Really, I say this as a long time PC and console gamer... I would say that back in the 90s new consoles had some specific hardware features you did not see on PC until later, basic things like hardware scrolling, scaling, transparencies, basic 3d acceleration for the first PlayStation, texture filtering for the N64, etc. By the time the Dreamcast was released you had PCs with more video memory than the consoles had in total, higher resolution monitors with video cards capable of pushing refresh rates above 60hz...

 

Oh I forgot, the ps2 was the first consumer device with something like shaders! That was an important feature at the time!(but a good. PC still offered many benefits).

 

That brings us to today, I think ms especially was complacent and released a machine that they knew full well it would not deliver consistent performance at 1080p with detailed graphics... The ps4 is where a console should be, affordable from the start, decent performance, and it has good policies regarding content... 

Why are you lying?



Landguy on 23 October 2014
alabtrosMyster said:

This is not new, the ps2 was weak, the og Xbox was weak the ps360 were all weak compared to top of the line PCs of their day... They all had the benefits of being dedicated gaming machines! No hassle, something the masses understand.

 

Really, I say this as a long time PC and console gamer... I would say that back in the 90s new consoles had some specific hardware features you did not see on PC until later, basic things like hardware scrolling, scaling, transparencies, basic 3d acceleration for the first PlayStation, texture filtering for the N64, etc. By the time the Dreamcast was released you had PCs with more video memory than the consoles had in total, higher resolution monitors with video cards capable of pushing refresh rates above 60hz...

 

Oh I forgot, the ps2 was the first consumer device with something like shaders! That was an important feature at the time!(but a good. PC still offered many benefits).

 

That brings us to today, I think ms especially was complacent and released a machine that they knew full well it would not deliver consistent performance at 1080p with detailed graphics... The ps4 is where a console should be, affordable from the start, decent performance, and it has good policies regarding content... 

I was following what you said until the very end.  What in particular are you speaking to as far as the bolded above?



It is near the end of the end....

GodOfPeace3 on 23 October 2014
Erwin-VGC said:

The CPU of the PS4 is a complete let down for me, because the PS3 CPU is more powerfull...


Really? What is it that you wish the CPU was able to do that it is not doing for your PS4 right now? Games these days don't use the CPU much at all, even on PC. It's all about the GPU.



Areym on 23 October 2014

We literally just started this gen. Give it 2 years or so and then we can call judgement. Have some patience.

That being said, the Wii U IS weak, comparatively.



"Trick shot? The trick is NOT to get shot." - Lucian