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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Shin’en Multimedia: Wii U Is Most Definitely A Next-Generation Console

Ljink96 on 26 May 2013

The Wii U is just as much a next generation console as the PS4 and the Xbox Infinite. excuse me, one. It can do things that they could only dream of doing and the PS4/One can do tings that the Wii U can only dream of doing. That is what makes a console war, my friends. The Wii U is more than the average competitor and I think it is the most innovative system on the market right now to be honest.

I know that a lot of people tie graphics and next gen together and to an extent that is true. Recall that there was a time when Nintendo was the greatest graphical powerhouse on the market. The Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, and yes the Gamecube were the most powerful consoles, spec wise of their generations. Sega Genesis was faster yes but SNES just outgunned it in every other aspect. The Gamecube, depending on what way you look at it, was equal or slightly more powerful than the PS2. But who cares bout power?

I love the Wii U and I'm sure I'll buy a PS4 sometime as well. Sony and Nintendo are just all I really need. But seriously. Being able to play a game off the screen onto your gamepad is a great reason to get one. The Wii U will eventually get the games. Just wait. It only makes sense for everybody to wait for Nintendo to come out with their best games first so that other companies can release their games to a greater user base.



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Nem on 26 May 2013
pezus said:

No...

Does my post hint at that? I said KZ2 and 3 could probably run on WiiU, and they are two of the most graphically advanced PS3 games. It's quite obvious that SF couldn't be made on PS3.

@dahuman: The lighting was far beyond what PS3 could do. So were the particle effects, shadows, and amount of stuff on-screen. All this happening with very little aliasing and already at a stable FPS.

You both should read through this: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-inside-killzone-shadow-fall

"In terms of graphics, this is where the enhancements Guerrilla has made over Killzone 3 are perhaps best appreciated. For in-game characters, the PS3 game used three different LOD models (more polygons used the closer you are to the character in question), up to 10,000 polygons and 1024x1024 textures. Things have changed significantly for PlayStation 4 with seven LOD models and a maximum of 40,000 polygons and up to six 2048x2048 textures."

"Lighting looks simply phenomenal in Killzone: Shadow Fall (to the point where Guerrilla released an entirely separate presentation on how it works) with a full HDR, linear space system in place that's a clear evolution of the techniques used in Killzone 2 and its sequel. A key new feature is something similar to what we see in Kojima Productions' FOX engine and Unreal Engine 4 - a move to physical based lighting. In the past, in-game objects would have a certain degree of their lighting "baked" into the object itself. Now, the physical properties of the object itself - its composition, its smoothness/roughness etc - are variables defined by the artist, and the way they are lit depends on the actual light sources in any given scene."

"During this evolution all lights in any given scene became "area lights" - able to influence the world around them, and all light sources have actual volume to them too. Everything on-screen has a real-time reflection that considers all the appropriate light sources. A mixture techniques including ray-casting and image-based lighting produces some exceptional results."

 

PS3 couldn't run this. Not a chance. They'd have to change the entire game, not just the textures

They would have to reduce the polygon number aswell. To be honest, its difficult to tell that the models had that many more polygons because its so hard to tell the difference. The improvement is there but its not clear as it was between previous gens. As i said before, the human eye has limits, and while things on a zoom in level might be very improved, we dont play games on zoom-in.

I still think and obviously the game could be ported to PS3 and Wii U. It would be downgraded, but it would still play the same. The only thing we would be losing is prettier graphics. This is why this new gen consoles look like present gen with extra eye candy than full blow new technology that allows for unprecendented things in gaming.



curl-6 on 26 May 2013
Hynad said:
curl-6 said:
Hynad said:
Nem said:
TheJimbo1234 said:
Nem said:
Been saying this for a year now. No one listens.

Now that the xbox one is revealed and all stats known, do people still think that its the leap they thought it was? Its only a difference of texture detail and frame-rate. To the naked eye, the difference isnt much.


Not at all. Everyone who says such a thing simply has not seen what modern engines are capable of.


Of course. I'd like to see more examples and less faith leaping.

You mean... Like seeing something Shin'en have done for the Wii U that actually support their claims?

Nano Assault Neo.

That game certainly doesn't show the superiority of the Wii U compared to the HD twins. -__-

Nano Assault Neo does things PS3/360 cannot.
http://www.notenoughshaders.com/2012/11/03/shinen-mega-interview-harnessing-the-wii-u-power/



curl-6 on 26 May 2013
Scoobes said:
curl-6 said:
Hynad said:

You mean... Like seeing something Shin'en have done for the Wii U that actually support their claims?

Nano Assault Neo.

That game is hardly a graphical showcase for the console. It's barely pushing the envelope.

At this point, its probably the best example we have of Wii U's graphics behind Trine 2: Director's Cut.



jake_the_fake1 on 26 May 2013
z101 said:
jake_the_fake1 said:

On the second part, you do realise that the PS4 has the same setup but it's intergrated into a single chip, plus both the CPU and GPU have access to 8GB of high bandwidth ram making EDram a non-requirment,


The Wii U eDRAM bandwith is much faster than normal RAM the PS4 uses. Interesting statement from the lead system architect from the PS4: 

For example, if we use eDRAM (on-chip DRAM) for the main memory in addition to the external memory, the memory bandwidth will be several terabytes per second. It will be a big advance in terms of performance.

He even explain why the PS4 don't use eDRAM:

However, in that case, we will make developers solve a puzzle, 'To realize the fastest operation, what data should be stored in which of the memories, the low-capacity eDRAM or the high-capacity external memory?' We wanted to avoid such a situation. We put the highest priority on allowing developers to spend their time creating values for their games.

Sony don't use eDRAM because they wanted to make console that is very easy to handle even for dumb programmers so they sacrifice performance for easy programming, the other reason is that eDRAM is very expensive.

Source: http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20130401/274313/?P=2

How do you know that the WiiU's EDRAM bandwidth is faster than the PS4 ram?

Nintendo haven't revealed it's EDRAMS bandwidth, all we really know is that it's 32MB, also the EDRAM is there in the first place to mitigate the very slow DD3 ram it's currently using, just how it was on the 360. You simply can't assume that because Cerny mentioned that he could have used EDRAM with 'several terabytes per second' but choose not to that it somehow means that the WiiU EDRAM is that fast...keep in mind EDRAM at large capacities is expensive, and Nintnedo doesn't do expensive, it would be more fair to say that Nintendo would have chosen a lower specced EDRAM that me their requirement’s, just as they've done with the rest of the machines specs.

Keep in mind that even the 360 EDram had a bandwidth of 256GB/s only to it's FPU allowing it to take the brunt of bandwidth intensive operations like AA, however to the rest of the system the bandwidth was just 32GB/s...Microsoft used some smart words for their console war cannons, which is why if you look at the Xboxone Microsoft has an ESram of 102GB/s which makes sense since it's a bandwidth for the whole system and not for just 1 aspect of a component. So with what I just mentioned, Nintendo could have easily taken a xbox360 approach in it's hardware guts but of course tinkered with it a little.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/1689/2

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6972/xbox-one-hardware-compared-to-playstation-4/3 (more recent comparison)

Also I'd like to point out that neither the high end GPUs from Nvidia or AMD use EDram in their graphics card, in fact the stock GTX680 has a bandwidth of 192.2GB/s, while the Titan has 288.4GB/s, graphical beasts of their time, just a little perspective.

I'd like to also emphasise that Cerny's approach was developer centric, and as he said he wanted to remove any stumbling blocks, and split memory set ups comprising of small fast ram and large slow ram makes developers life hard, they would rather have 1 large and fast pool of ram, and Sony have done this, hence Cerny's decision to have 8GB GDDR5 ram with 176GB/s of bandwidth, best of both worlds.

 



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Hynad on 26 May 2013
curl-6 said:
Hynad said:
curl-6 said:
Hynad said:
Nem said:
TheJimbo1234 said:
Nem said:
Been saying this for a year now. No one listens.

Now that the xbox one is revealed and all stats known, do people still think that its the leap they thought it was? Its only a difference of texture detail and frame-rate. To the naked eye, the difference isnt much.


Not at all. Everyone who says such a thing simply has not seen what modern engines are capable of.


Of course. I'd like to see more examples and less faith leaping.

You mean... Like seeing something Shin'en have done for the Wii U that actually support their claims?

Nano Assault Neo.

That game certainly doesn't show the superiority of the Wii U compared to the HD twins. -__-

Nano Assault Neo does things PS3/360 cannot.
http://www.notenoughshaders.com/2012/11/03/shinen-mega-interview-harnessing-the-wii-u-power/

And what are those things, exactly? 

If you really think that this game couldn't have been made for the HD twins to look just the same, you're fooling yourself.



Imaginedvl on 26 May 2013

Well I think the WiiU is a new generation console :) Maybe not next hehe.



curl-6 on 26 May 2013
Hynad said:
curl-6 said:
Hynad said:
curl-6 said:
Hynad said:
Nem said:
TheJimbo1234 said:
Nem said:
Been saying this for a year now. No one listens.

Now that the xbox one is revealed and all stats known, do people still think that its the leap they thought it was? Its only a difference of texture detail and frame-rate. To the naked eye, the difference isnt much.


Not at all. Everyone who says such a thing simply has not seen what modern engines are capable of.


Of course. I'd like to see more examples and less faith leaping.

You mean... Like seeing something Shin'en have done for the Wii U that actually support their claims?

Nano Assault Neo.

That game certainly doesn't show the superiority of the Wii U compared to the HD twins. -__-

Nano Assault Neo does things PS3/360 cannot.
http://www.notenoughshaders.com/2012/11/03/shinen-mega-interview-harnessing-the-wii-u-power/

And what are those things, exactly? 

If you really think that this game couldn't have been made for the HD twins to look just the same, you're fooling yourself.

No offense, but I'll take the word of a developer with an impeccable technical track record and no history of lying over an anonymous forum user.



jake_the_fake1 on 26 May 2013
Nem said:
pezus said:
 

No...

Does my post hint at that? I said KZ2 and 3 could probably run on WiiU, and they are two of the most graphically advanced PS3 games. It's quite obvious that SF couldn't be made on PS3.

@dahuman: The lighting was far beyond what PS3 could do. So were the particle effects, shadows, and amount of stuff on-screen. All this happening with very little aliasing and already at a stable FPS.

You both should read through this: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-inside-killzone-shadow-fall

"In terms of graphics, this is where the enhancements Guerrilla has made over Killzone 3 are perhaps best appreciated. For in-game characters, the PS3 game used three different LOD models (more polygons used the closer you are to the character in question), up to 10,000 polygons and 1024x1024 textures. Things have changed significantly for PlayStation 4 with seven LOD models and a maximum of 40,000 polygons and up to six 2048x2048 textures."

"Lighting looks simply phenomenal in Killzone: Shadow Fall (to the point where Guerrilla released an entirely separate presentation on how it works) with a full HDR, linear space system in place that's a clear evolution of the techniques used in Killzone 2 and its sequel. A key new feature is something similar to what we see in Kojima Productions' FOX engine and Unreal Engine 4 - a move to physical based lighting. In the past, in-game objects would have a certain degree of their lighting "baked" into the object itself. Now, the physical properties of the object itself - its composition, its smoothness/roughness etc - are variables defined by the artist, and the way they are lit depends on the actual light sources in any given scene."

"During this evolution all lights in any given scene became "area lights" - able to influence the world around them, and all light sources have actual volume to them too. Everything on-screen has a real-time reflection that considers all the appropriate light sources. A mixture techniques including ray-casting and image-based lighting produces some exceptional results."

 

PS3 couldn't run this. Not a chance. They'd have to change the entire game, not just the textures

They would have to reduce the polygon number aswell. To be honest, its difficult to tell that the models had that many more polygons because its so hard to tell the difference. The improvement is there but its not clear as it was between previous gens. As i said before, the human eye has limits, and while things on a zoom in level might be very improved, we dont play games on zoom-in.

I still think and obviously the game could be ported to PS3 and Wii U. It would be downgraded, but it would still play the same. The only thing we would be losing is prettier graphics. This is why this new gen consoles look like present gen with extra eye candy than full blow new technology that allows for unprecendented things in gaming.

You are right, the human eye does have limits, and yet the brain is adept at picking out inconsistencies of the most smallest things. Every heard of the uncanny valley? it's the missing detail which our brains says should be there but isn't instantly breaking the suspension of disbelief.

As for the second point, this happens every generation, launch PS2 games looked like PS1 games, PS3/360 launch games looked like upresed PS2/xbox games, and yet when these launch games are compared with games that come out at the end of the generation they are worlds apart, the same will happen here and every generation until we hit photo realism, then your statement will hold its ground, till  then all we should do is marvel in the eye candy and simply enjoy.

 



Scoobes on 26 May 2013
curl-6 said:
Scoobes said:

That game is hardly a graphical showcase for the console. It's barely pushing the envelope.

At this point, its probably the best example we have of Wii U's graphics behind Trine 2: Director's Cut.

Then we need more to come to a full conclusion.. like Mario Galaxy on Wii. Hopefully Nintendo will show something off at E3.




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