Some features can be scaled, others simply need the hardware implace to be able to do it. Seeing that the WiiU is running a 40nm gpu, it certainly won't have the power needed to do many of these functions at all, and this is what happens when you have an exponential power gain. Take the PS2 and xbox. The xbox was almost twice as powerful, but it was still feeble in terms of computing and the 100% extra power allowed it to do little more. Now, however, 100% more power is a phenominal amount of power as we are talking about a few more terraflops, not one or two gig more. This huge boost allows entire new features to occur that would have been to much of a system hog previously eg. real time particles. You also have the huge issue of memory bandwith which the PS4 has an unrivalled amount (even to PC's), not sure on the xboxone due to lack of info, but the WiiU isn't even on the horizon. Devs will be creaming themselves over this feature because as you'll know, it will make life very easy for them and allow a lot to happen in game.
Also as a side note, as TV resolutions grow/more people get 1080 screens, you can't afford to down scale anything. Textures need to be sersiouly upscaled along with shadows, polygon counts etc as the HD resoltion tears crappy graphics apart. If you then downscale the resoltuion, this will look very poor in comparison to the competition.
But which features?
The WiiU can run Unreal 3 Engine, but not the samaritan demo.
Again, back to car analogies :D A car can drive on a road, but can it reach 70mph? 100mph? 200mph? etc. Same goes for the consoles and many engines.
1.) The silicon size doesn't have anything to do with features, Wii U has the feature set, I think you are talking about the raw power required to have all the effects on screen at once, which is actually possible if it's toned down. I don't know how much more of course, I'm not a Wii U dev or anything. The games also don't need to run in 1080p, it can run in 720p or even in dynamic res, it's not a deal breaker.
2.) Xbone and PS4 can't run the Samaritan demo either, actually, they can, at prolly 1FPS, while the Wii U might go at 0.5FPS lol. I also don't know why you are comparing it with cars, the analogy actually doesn't work since you won't get anywhere faster during traffic hour no matter how fast your car can go. The correct analogy would be exactly how a gaming engine would work, which is much more dynamic.
1) Silcon size is important. It tells allows you to get an estimate for the power of the chip, and then what other features it will have eg. bandwith, inbuilt AA features, resolution support etc. Resolution is a deal breaker. Anyone running a gaming PC will tell you this from experience. It also means less power goes into AA and more cna be placed on having prettier textures, shadows, more obejects and so on.
2) PS4 can run it....hence why it ran the more demanding U4 engine demo. No idea about the xbone, and the wiiU certainly can not. As for the anology, that would be bandwidth. More traffic is not a problem is you have more lanes, something the PS4 has a brutal amount of.
osed125 said:
TheJimbo1234 said:
But which features?
The WiiU can run Unreal 3 Engine, but not the samaritan demo.
Again, back to car analogies :D A car can drive on a road, but can it reach 70mph? 100mph? 200mph? etc. Same goes for the consoles and many engines.
Ok, well a few things with that demo. First off, what is it running on? Then you have the issue of falling between 24-30fps for realtively small scences, and then, most importantly, he never mentiones the WiiU but specifically mentions the ps4 and xbone for dx11 features, but mentions how they can turn them off for current consoles. I think it will be a case of dx11 for ps4, pc, xbone, and dx9 for the wiiu.
