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curl-6 on 18 May 2024
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Chrkeller said:
curl-6 said:

Even a 2012 card is 7 years ahead of the PS3 and 360. RAM size would be bigger issue though.

I see it more in terms of the techniques being used; PS3/360, rooted in 2005 technology, have a distinctive approach to graphics, defined by rather harsh materials which tend to look either shiny and plastic or matte and clay-like, as they generally have only a base, dirt, and specular layer. 

PS4/XBO made the jump to Physically Based Rendering, resulting in much more nuanced and realistic material properties you see in basically every major game of the last decade; Switch has this too, giving its lighting and shading a look more characteristic of the 8th generation than the more basic "everything is either shiny or flat" you see on PS3 or 360.

Reflections are another key point; on 7th gen these were typically handled with cubemaps or mirrored geometry; PS4/XBO moved to screen space reflections as standard, and the Switch inherits this as well.

Nintendo's games typically eschew anti-aliasing, but we have seen from third party efforts that Switch is also capable of the modern temporal supersampling anti-aliasing that became standard on PS4 and XBO, whereas MSAA and later FXAA were the standard method on PS3 and 360.

The basic "look" of PS3/360 is largely defined by these techniques, (pre-PBR materials, cubemap/planar reflections, FXAA/MSAA, etc) while Switch shares more in common with the methods used on PS4/XBO. (PBR, SSR, TSSAA, etc)

I hear you.  Especially when consoles were very unique in design, especially with the Cell.  

But games are so scalable and hardware compatibility has sky rocketed post ps3, running the same games isn't a good metric.  

Just my 2 cents.  Good discussion, but I'm off to Bed of Chaos then 4 Kings.  

Games and engines are much more scalable than in the past, but there's still a limit to what can feasibly be done on 2005 console hardware.

With Switch, you can take a game like Witcher 3, or Kingdom Come, and port it across by trimming back settings while retaining the core game design and technology.

You couldn't do that with the PS3, its just too memory limited and its GPU isn't compatible with 8th gen rendering paradigms.