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curl-6 on 11 December 2016
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bonzobanana said:
curl-6 said:

Devs like High Voltage talked about how Wii's larger RAM allowed them to render more elements per scene compared to Gamecube. It was not just a buffer. Let's be realistic here; no console is going to reserve over 70% of its memory for caching, that's absurd. And totally unnecessary; with the amount of data Wii games have, a DVD drive and no HDD is just fine. Feeding 88MB of RAM is quick and easy. It's once you get up to PS3/360/Wii U levels of RAM that optical drive speed becomes a bottleneck.

And you're overestimating the complexity of the Wiimote. Its beauty was in its simplicity. It did not actually track movements in 3D space it all, it used simple gyros and accelerometers to register angle and movement, which give feedback no more complex than an analogue stick.

I don't think you've grasped how it works. It's caching so the data can be quickly loaded into main memory. It's fully utilised but the whole point is its not waiting to be pulled in from the optical drive. The fact its in the GDDR3 memory means it can be quickly moved to the main 24MB of very fast memory with the wide databuse's to cpu and gpu. Your making it sound like the cpu and gpu works directly with the data held in GDDR3 memory as if it can bypass needing to use the main 24MB of memory which I'm pretty sure it can't. Have you seen the GDDR3 chip on the wii motherboard its completely away from the main gpu and cpu and only has a slow databus.

When I said tracks movement in 3D space I guess that would be better as calculates movement in 3D space which is what the my explanation previous to that explained. I totally disagree with your point about no more complex than an analogue stick and I think you would too if you actually took time to read what you wrote. A game has to be purposely developed for motion controls you can't just add a motion controller to any game that has joypad input.

You're making it sound like Wii only had 24MB of RAM available to games though, with the rest serving to merely spool data from the disc, and just that isn't true. Developers from High Voltage to Factor 5 to Climax all attested to Wii being able to do more than GC thanks to its memory improvements.

HVS: "Interestingly, many things we are doing on the Wii would technically have been possible on the GameCube. However, we are able to render many more visual effect elements per scene on the Wii due to its higher CPU / GPU processing speeds and increased memory."

https://www.engadget.com/2008/06/16/wii-fanboy-interviews-high-voltage-on-the-conduit/

Factor 5:

"RG: And with much more memory...

JE: Yeah, exactly, and the memory! That is a very good point. Aside from the shaders, our main limitation which we always found on the GameCube was the memory: the memory was a struggle the whole time; it was a very hard struggle. That was actually our biggest struggle. When we got the Wii specifications we were excited because we said "wow, this is actually the amount of memory which we needed"

RG: The memory problem you had before

JE: Yes, exactly, that would've been our "dream memory". (laughs)"

http://www.nintengen.com/2007/09/wii-can-do-lot-more-graphically-factor.html

And there is nothing complex about the Wiimote. It has a gyro in it. When you tilt it, the gyro's tilt is registered, just like the tilt of an analogue stick. The accelerometers provide similarly basic feedback. It's incredibly simple and requires no advanced processing whatsoever.