| shams said: Interesting... did some more reading here: http://wiinside.blogspot.com/2007/04/inside-wii.html ...and it mentions this: "3 Megs embedded Ram Same ( Wii able to use A-Ram as Additional GPU/CPU Ram )" The basic (embedded) frame buffer is the same - but the GPU may be able to use external memory as well? Probably not for the frame buffer though. Also mentions that the Wii is "locked" at 32-bit colour (GC was 18bit colour). So I think you are right, not enough frame buffer memory for 720p. May also not be fast enough(?) to sample the frame buffer to achieve proper 720p? When you consider that the Wii only has to push around 300k pixels / frame (versus 2m for full 1080p!), you can see that a reduced fill rate is still very effective - and can mean a lot more effects can be implemented.
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It should be fast enough to do 720p with similar effects as the Gamecube. 720p is 2.67 times larger than 480p, and Wii has 3x the fillrate of Gamecube.
I don't have a Wii SDK, so I don't know the relationship between the RAMDAC and the embedded framebuffer. It may be that you render a frame to the embedded RAM do any post-processing effects there, then copy it into graphics memory for the RAMDAC (double buffering). There still is not enough framebuffer for one 720p frame (unless you use 16-bit color), but it may be possible to, for example, draw the top half of the frame, copy it, then draw the bottom half. But this may all be moot if the RAMDAC simply isn't up to the task. :)
Full stereoscopic 3D is something I've spoken about in the past, even having written my own stereoscopic graphics demo. It's absolutely bonkers, and I hope one of the three companies is able to do it and be successful with it. That's a console I'd pay $500 for -- Sony, are you listening?
