Check out this link:

http://www.pcsx2.net/

This is the website for PCSX2, an open-source PS2 emulator. As you can see in the screenshots there, this emulator is capable of actually rendering PS2 games at higher than their normal resolution (approx. 720p here), and they look absolutely incredible. Now why can't the PS3 do this?

I know the 1.8 update added upscaling of PS1/2 games, and that's well and good, but it's a sorry substitute for actually rendering the game's polygons at the higher resolution. All that upscaling does is stretch the 480i/p image to fit a high-def screen - polishing a turd, if you will - and I think the results reflect this.

So if a bunch of plucky basement programmers can slap together a semi-reliable emulator with this capability, what's stopping Sony, who knows the PS2's architecture inside and out? Is there some technical limitation I'm not aware of? I find that hard to believe - the guys at PCSX2 seem to think their emulator could actually run on PS3 with the right access and a lot of work. Could Sony actually have this feature in the works for a future update? Or do they think it just isn't worth the bother?

Maybe it's just me, but I would call this a system-selling feature. More than that, I'd call it more compelling than anything else the PS3 is offering right now. If you think about it, the PS3 really sells on the basis of two things: its future potential, and its PlayStation legacy (which includes the PS name and the game libraries of the past two systems). Adding hi-def options to its backwards compatibility function would be an absolutely enormous boon to the "legacy" half of the equation. So if they can do it, why isn't this a top priority?

Anybody else agree?

could not care less. id rather have all codec support.

Interesting. I agree. They should. However, perhaps their is a problem with... something. I dont know. They had to choose wheter or not they wanted to charge more/loose more.

You are correct borkachev. That would be, indeed, a great idea. And for that reason, Sony won't do it. Atleast not in 2007, unless they change their management.

This is the whole point of the "software" emulation of previous games (rather than using the emotion engine/hardware solution).

Are you sure that it isn't doing it - at least on newer PS3s? I would definitely expect it to...

Note that the games that use non-textured shading (gouraud) are the ones that will look the best, as the renderer can get a perfect graduation of colours in high resolution (that's why the Kingdom Hearts game looks so nice).

 

I think 1.8 showed that they are working towards that final goal.

ckmlb said: I think 1.8 showed that they are working towards that final goal.

 I think 1.8 showed that they have no interest in improving the software emulation in any way, including expanded features like high rez rendering. Sony seems more intent on adding new features.

That's one way to read it, and I hope you're right. But to me it seemed more like a guarantee that we won't see this feature for quite a while yet - I can't imagine they would bother adding upscaling if they were going to replace it immediately with a far superior feature. It's possible that it would require tweaking to add support for each individual game, something like the Xbox 360 does with its BC. (The PCSX2 emulator has to do this with most games - but I think the difficulty there is getting the games to run at all, a problem Sony has already beaten. Once they're running, raising the resolution seems pretty straightforward). But I still think it would be completely worthwhile for them to do it. Start with the most popular games and drip out other ones with each update... it would just be another way to heighten people's anticipation.

Well, I suspect that the problem is that it depends on the game. Using re-rendering for vector based games might be great, but they do nothing for sprites based games

Personally, I think it is a matter of available processing power ...

In both cases you're going to try to emulate the Emotion Engine on your CPU while mapping the Graphics Synthesizer to your GPU (in the case of the PC you're abstracting this through Direct3D or OpenGL calls). When you have completed this, if you want to boost resolution (add AA or AF) this is directly related to processing power on your GPU. Unfortunately for Sony the PC has had a crushing advantage in potential GPU power since nVidia returned to multiple graphics card set-ups with the Geforce 6; there were a few Quad SLi Geforce 6800GTX setups which should be far more capable then the capable then the RSX in the PS3.

This all means that these guys can generate screenshots of PS2 games running at 1920x1280 with 16xAA and 16xAF because someone has a dual Geforce 8800GTX setup and is willing to show off.