I noticed on the box for the new PS2 (small) that the DVD playback is progressive. Does that make any difference for the 480i games? For example if a game is 480i will the new PS2 do the de-interlacing before it is sent to a native 720p HDTV and maybe eliminate the DLP lag so many PS2 users complain about.
New PS2 (Small) Progressive/Interlace
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Deinterlacing TO 480p material from 480i material wouldn't be a waste at all if it was fast enough. But I think if it included this feature, it'd be a little more widely advertised. At the very least, someone would've posted here excited about it...
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progressive scan is only when watching dvd's
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that's not true. Anything can be displayed in a progressive vs. interlaced signal. It is not content dependent. For instance many HD CRT television sets have two native resolutions, 480p and 1080i. So just about everything non-HD is displayed at progressive scan 480p with an onboard deinterlacer (or fed a 480p signal directly).
| Originally posted by morpheus6d9 progressive scan is only when watching dvd's |
Even if the new PS2's DVD playback is progressive scan it will have no effect on games. Enabling progressive scan in game requires specific code and restrictions on texture usage --full-sized frame buffers eat extra video memory that could have been used for more textures. The PS2 hardware was actually never designed to do progressive scan. The developers figured out a software hack to make it work after the hardware launched.
BTW: The Xbox has always had sufficient hardware to play DVD's progressive scan just as well as any HTPC. It is my understanding that it is restricted to interlaced mode to keep down the cost of the license from the DVD association. When you buy the $20 "DVD remote control" for the XBox, maybe a dollar of that pays for the remote. The rest goes to the DVD association. Microsoft made it a separate option so that you wouldn't have to pay the extra $20 if you didn't want to.
BTW: The Xbox has always had sufficient hardware to play DVD's progressive scan just as well as any HTPC. It is my understanding that it is restricted to interlaced mode to keep down the cost of the license from the DVD association. When you buy the $20 "DVD remote control" for the XBox, maybe a dollar of that pays for the remote. The rest goes to the DVD association. Microsoft made it a separate option so that you wouldn't have to pay the extra $20 if you didn't want to.
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That's not true at all. There was nothing about the design that hindered the usage of progressive scan. In fact I have technical documents about the GS given to developers with their development kits from when the PS2 was released where it specifically states all the modes the GS can handle which includes 480p and 1080i. Enabling progressive scan is not a software hack as you have direct access to this resolution on the GS.
See the problem is elsewhere. First, the way they designed the PS2 was in such a fashion that was so different than what developers were used to. Developers were used to the concept of VRAM. You have memory that stored your texture data which you would access as well as an area for the frame buffer. The PS2 architecture was designed to have a huge bus between memory and the GS. The embedded DRAM on the GS was not meant to be use as VRAM in the way people were used to. The bus was so big that it was designed to stream textures into the embedded DRAM which would act like a frame buffer. Now since the bus was so fast, you could stream numerous textures into the frame buffer before it would need to draw that single frame to the screen.
Now a misconception of even this among people who don't develop games is an example like a fighter. If that was the case that you constantly streamed texture data from memory, well then when you have a fighter, you have everything in view at once. See the 4 MB of DRAM, doesn't mean you need to cram all your texturse in there at once. You only need the textures in memory for the object your are drawing at that time. Again, the key here is that the bus is so fast that you can do this.
So that was the first problem, the fact that nobody knew exactly how the architecture was different. As a result, some people were only drawing half a frame broken up into even and odd scanlines in order to save memory. In fact the reason they were doing this is because it is a supported mode in the GS that was designed in the hardware. That is why many first generation games had bad jaggies because the fields would get out of sync often. Even then, you never had a full frame drawn in memory to allow a progressive scan image either. It was a hack job for developers to fix it because they were using it wrong to begin with.
Now getting to the second problem is Sony's lack of way of educating the developers on how they should be thinking of developing their games. This is sort of the developers fault too, but mostly Sony's. This goes back further to when the original PS was released. Back then they gave everyone libraries which made it easy to develop for, but developers were so used to coding to the metal on systems like the SNES and Genesis, that they wanted more freedom with the PS hardware. They constantly asked for access to the actual hardware/registers itself, but Sony refused for awhile which made the developers having to stick to libraries yet still complain about the lack of access to the hardware to increase performance. Eventually that would change in the PS life, but as a result would have a negative effect on the PS2. Since everyone complained about the restrictedness of having only libraries, this time Sony just gave them the pure technical documents of the hardware and pretty much said, have at it. This of course was overwhelming to the developers, and to some degree Sony was only giving them what they claimed to have wanted. But with such complex hardware, it became a chore to get anything done without libraries. That is why the PS2 became known difficult to program for.
So that leads to the third problem; Sony didn't provide libraries making the development environment easier to work with. This is all Sony's fault of course as I'm not trying to take the blame off them, but it also is partly the fault of the developers too. All of these factors is why the reputation exists today and the misconceptions that clearly still are passed around today about what the PS2 can and can't do. It's clearly evident when you look at the PSP environment which is completely developer friendly with an extended usage of developed libraries for the system.
So the bottomline is the PS2 was not nearly ill concieved in hardware design, as the concept of streaming textures into a dedicated frame buffer is pretty standard today, but it was ill concieved in how the developers were taught to take advantage of the system. The PS2 is very well capable of handling progressive scan and even HDTV resolutions. Memory is not the bottleneck that many of you believe it is. It took forever for gamers on serious game forums to overcome the concept of vram vs frame buffer. It's not an easy concept to grasp either if you're not tech savvy. Some games out there actually use a full frame buffer but don't have an option to enable progressive scan. Other games take advantage of the memory saved from using the interlaced mode as interlaced TVs still make up a majority of the TVs used to play games on. But one needs not to look any further than games like Burnout 3 and SSX3 to see that the system is very well capable of doing nice looking progressive scan games. It's all in the hands of the developers to enable it.
| Originally posted by corysama Even if the new PS2's DVD playback is progressive scan it will have no effect on games. Enabling progressive scan in game requires specific code and restrictions on texture usage --full-sized frame buffers eat extra video memory that could have been used for more textures. The PS2 hardware was actually never designed to do progressive scan. The developers figured out a software hack to make it work after the hardware launched. |
See the problem is elsewhere. First, the way they designed the PS2 was in such a fashion that was so different than what developers were used to. Developers were used to the concept of VRAM. You have memory that stored your texture data which you would access as well as an area for the frame buffer. The PS2 architecture was designed to have a huge bus between memory and the GS. The embedded DRAM on the GS was not meant to be use as VRAM in the way people were used to. The bus was so big that it was designed to stream textures into the embedded DRAM which would act like a frame buffer. Now since the bus was so fast, you could stream numerous textures into the frame buffer before it would need to draw that single frame to the screen.
Now a misconception of even this among people who don't develop games is an example like a fighter. If that was the case that you constantly streamed texture data from memory, well then when you have a fighter, you have everything in view at once. See the 4 MB of DRAM, doesn't mean you need to cram all your texturse in there at once. You only need the textures in memory for the object your are drawing at that time. Again, the key here is that the bus is so fast that you can do this.
So that was the first problem, the fact that nobody knew exactly how the architecture was different. As a result, some people were only drawing half a frame broken up into even and odd scanlines in order to save memory. In fact the reason they were doing this is because it is a supported mode in the GS that was designed in the hardware. That is why many first generation games had bad jaggies because the fields would get out of sync often. Even then, you never had a full frame drawn in memory to allow a progressive scan image either. It was a hack job for developers to fix it because they were using it wrong to begin with.
Now getting to the second problem is Sony's lack of way of educating the developers on how they should be thinking of developing their games. This is sort of the developers fault too, but mostly Sony's. This goes back further to when the original PS was released. Back then they gave everyone libraries which made it easy to develop for, but developers were so used to coding to the metal on systems like the SNES and Genesis, that they wanted more freedom with the PS hardware. They constantly asked for access to the actual hardware/registers itself, but Sony refused for awhile which made the developers having to stick to libraries yet still complain about the lack of access to the hardware to increase performance. Eventually that would change in the PS life, but as a result would have a negative effect on the PS2. Since everyone complained about the restrictedness of having only libraries, this time Sony just gave them the pure technical documents of the hardware and pretty much said, have at it. This of course was overwhelming to the developers, and to some degree Sony was only giving them what they claimed to have wanted. But with such complex hardware, it became a chore to get anything done without libraries. That is why the PS2 became known difficult to program for.
So that leads to the third problem; Sony didn't provide libraries making the development environment easier to work with. This is all Sony's fault of course as I'm not trying to take the blame off them, but it also is partly the fault of the developers too. All of these factors is why the reputation exists today and the misconceptions that clearly still are passed around today about what the PS2 can and can't do. It's clearly evident when you look at the PSP environment which is completely developer friendly with an extended usage of developed libraries for the system.
So the bottomline is the PS2 was not nearly ill concieved in hardware design, as the concept of streaming textures into a dedicated frame buffer is pretty standard today, but it was ill concieved in how the developers were taught to take advantage of the system. The PS2 is very well capable of handling progressive scan and even HDTV resolutions. Memory is not the bottleneck that many of you believe it is. It took forever for gamers on serious game forums to overcome the concept of vram vs frame buffer. It's not an easy concept to grasp either if you're not tech savvy. Some games out there actually use a full frame buffer but don't have an option to enable progressive scan. Other games take advantage of the memory saved from using the interlaced mode as interlaced TVs still make up a majority of the TVs used to play games on. But one needs not to look any further than games like Burnout 3 and SSX3 to see that the system is very well capable of doing nice looking progressive scan games. It's all in the hands of the developers to enable it.
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Too bad the developers aren't good enough to make Gran Turdismo 4 progressive scan, eh? Shoddy developers must make that game, for the PS2 could surely do it, right? Also SSX3 is nice in progressive scan mode, but the graphics in that game are far from "pushing the edge" in any way. They are very average. Burnout 3 has much better graphics, but they are not overwhelmingly great, even by PS2 standards.
I wish they'd do a puzzle game or something in 1080i. I mean why not? Also I have read that the maximum resolution of the PS2 was 1024x768 or 1365x1024 or something.... not 1920x1080. It was definitely a 4:3 ratio.
I wish they'd do a puzzle game or something in 1080i. I mean why not? Also I have read that the maximum resolution of the PS2 was 1024x768 or 1365x1024 or something.... not 1920x1080. It was definitely a 4:3 ratio.
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Actually I asked Kaz Yamauchi himself why they aren't using progressive scan in GT4 and he stated that they reason they aren't is because they are using the interlace mode in order to squeeze out every bit of power that they can get out of the system. He felt adding progressive scan would take away from other graphical effects and framerate that would actually hurt the image more than improve it. His direct words.
I'm inclined to believe him because when you're working at 640 x 224 instead of 720 x 480, you do have a bit more power at your disposal.
I didn't want to type this up, but here are the resolution modes that the PS2 supports:
Mode Resolution fv(Hz) Remarks
NTSC 256 x 448(224) 59.940 (): Resolution in interlaced
NTSC 320 x 224(448) 59.82 scanning
NTSC 384 x 224(448) 59.82 ""
NTSC 512 x 224(448) 59.82 ""
NTSC 640 x 224(448) 59.82 ""
PAL 256 x 512(256) 50.000 ""
PAL 320 x 512(256) 49.76 ""
PAL 384 x 512(256) 49.76 ""
PAL 512 x 512(256) 49.76 ""
PAL 640 x 512(256) 49.76 ""
VESA 640 x 480 59.940
VESA 640 x 480 72.809
VESA 640 x 480 75.000
VESA 640 x 480 58.008
VESA 800 x 600 56.250
VESA 800 x 600 60.317
VESA 800 x 600 72.188
VESA 800 x 600 75.000
VESA 800 x 600 85.061
VESA 1024 x 768 60.004
VESA 1024 x 768 70.069
VESA 1024 x 768 75.029
VESA 1024 x 768 84.997
VESA 1280 x 1024 60.020
VESA 1280 x 1024 75.025
DTV 720 x 480 59.94 480p
DTV 1920 x 1080 60.00 1080i
This is taken directly from the GS User Manual that comes with every PS2 development kit.
| Originally posted by Joe Redifer Too bad the developers aren't good enough to make Gran Turdismo 4 progressive scan, eh? Shoddy developers must make that game, for the PS2 could surely do it, right? Also SSX3 is nice in progressive scan mode, but the graphics in that game are far from "pushing the edge" in any way. They are very average. Burnout 3 has much better graphics, but they are not overwhelmingly great, even by PS2 standards. I wish they'd do a puzzle game or something in 1080i. I mean why not? Also I have read that the maximum resolution of the PS2 was 1024x768 or 1365x1024 or something.... not 1920x1080. It was definitely a 4:3 ratio. |
I'm inclined to believe him because when you're working at 640 x 224 instead of 720 x 480, you do have a bit more power at your disposal.
I didn't want to type this up, but here are the resolution modes that the PS2 supports:
Mode Resolution fv(Hz) Remarks
NTSC 256 x 448(224) 59.940 (): Resolution in interlaced
NTSC 320 x 224(448) 59.82 scanning
NTSC 384 x 224(448) 59.82 ""
NTSC 512 x 224(448) 59.82 ""
NTSC 640 x 224(448) 59.82 ""
PAL 256 x 512(256) 50.000 ""
PAL 320 x 512(256) 49.76 ""
PAL 384 x 512(256) 49.76 ""
PAL 512 x 512(256) 49.76 ""
PAL 640 x 512(256) 49.76 ""
VESA 640 x 480 59.940
VESA 640 x 480 72.809
VESA 640 x 480 75.000
VESA 640 x 480 58.008
VESA 800 x 600 56.250
VESA 800 x 600 60.317
VESA 800 x 600 72.188
VESA 800 x 600 75.000
VESA 800 x 600 85.061
VESA 1024 x 768 60.004
VESA 1024 x 768 70.069
VESA 1024 x 768 75.029
VESA 1024 x 768 84.997
VESA 1280 x 1024 60.020
VESA 1280 x 1024 75.025
DTV 720 x 480 59.94 480p
DTV 1920 x 1080 60.00 1080i
This is taken directly from the GS User Manual that comes with every PS2 development kit.
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Still I wish they'd make a puzzle game or something in 1080i. I mean why not? There are plenty of PS2 games out there that don't push a ton of polygons that would look cool in 1080i.
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This is incorrect, the xbox video encoder chip can only use macrovision with interlaced video. In progressive scan mode macrovision can't be used.
| Originally posted by corysama Even if the new PS2's DVD playback is progressive scan it will have no effect on games. Enabling progressive scan in game requires specific code and restrictions on texture usage --full-sized frame buffers eat extra video memory that could have been used for more textures. The PS2 hardware was actually never designed to do progressive scan. The developers figured out a software hack to make it work after the hardware launched. BTW: The Xbox has always had sufficient hardware to play DVD's progressive scan just as well as any HTPC. It is my understanding that it is restricted to interlaced mode to keep down the cost of the license from the DVD association. When you buy the $20 "DVD remote control" for the XBox, maybe a dollar of that pays for the remote. The rest goes to the DVD association. Microsoft made it a separate option so that you wouldn't have to pay the extra $20 if you didn't want to. |
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There really is no point though to make such an effort that less than 1% of the people likely to buy it will use. Game development times are short and rushed as is, why add a new factor to it? There are what, 3 Xbox games that use 1080i? It's not like the Xbox has a huge number of them, and there aren't many 720p games either.
| Originally posted by Joe Redifer Still I wish they'd make a puzzle game or something in 1080i. I mean why not? There are plenty of PS2 games out there that don't push a ton of polygons that would look cool in 1080i. |
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Why build in the feature into a system if you're never gonna use it? When the PS2 was designed, even less people had HD. Why would they include it then, also knowing full well that the PS2 can't really do anything in 1080i and that probably nobody would ever use it? Wouldn't that be like creating a color TV program in 1950, even though there are no color TVs in the world? Why take the effort to design that into their system? I just don't understand, especially with the rarity of HDTVs back in the day. I don't see why it would take much effort on the software end to make it work. The user would indicate that he has a display capable of 1080i and *boom* the game would render it's graphics in 1080i. And since it would be a game that doesn't have a ton of motion, it would be easy for the PS2 to do.
I guess Gran Turismo 4 will be the best the PS2 can ever look, since it is supposedly using every ounce of muscle of the system, and it's graphics don't even look as good as Rallisport Challenge 2.
I guess Gran Turismo 4 will be the best the PS2 can ever look, since it is supposedly using every ounce of muscle of the system, and it's graphics don't even look as good as Rallisport Challenge 2.
joe: You simply don't understand console development. Ok let's just run it down briefly. You want a puzzle game. Puzzle games tend to be sprite based. If that's the case, then you need to have assets that are optimized for 1080 resolution rather than normal interlaced 480. If you don't optimize the assets, then you could stretch it, but then what would be the point? The GS was at the time designed to not just be used for the PS2. Sure it was designed with the PS2 in mind, but Sony was leaving it open to possibly using it for other devices or in other ways. In fact it was in the form of the GS cube which is essentially several PS2's networked together used as a rendering system. You also have to factor in the fact that if you're switching things around, that can lead to bugs. In fact any addition in any code is prone to bugs. Again, with time being a factor, the extra effort tends not to be worth it. Heck why not name which game you ahve in mind that you wish had a 1080 mode?
Who knows if GT4 is using every ounce of muscle of the system? Nobody except for maybe Polyphony. Using the performance analyzer in the dev kit can help determine how much of the system is actually being used, but tehre will always be newer techniques and optimization that will let developers squeeze more out of a system. I haven't played Rallisport Challenge, only played the first one, but I can say that GT4 looks better than the prologue version. Oh ya, GT4 does render stuff at higher resolutions in the photo mode. Another thing you have to consider is that graphics is only one part of an equation when analyzing overall system performance. You can't just seperate graphics from other things. You have to look at in at every level to see where the performance is going. You have graphics, collision, AI, physics, and other things to factor in.
There are a lot of factors that you simply either don't understand or just haven't considered.
Who knows if GT4 is using every ounce of muscle of the system? Nobody except for maybe Polyphony. Using the performance analyzer in the dev kit can help determine how much of the system is actually being used, but tehre will always be newer techniques and optimization that will let developers squeeze more out of a system. I haven't played Rallisport Challenge, only played the first one, but I can say that GT4 looks better than the prologue version. Oh ya, GT4 does render stuff at higher resolutions in the photo mode. Another thing you have to consider is that graphics is only one part of an equation when analyzing overall system performance. You can't just seperate graphics from other things. You have to look at in at every level to see where the performance is going. You have graphics, collision, AI, physics, and other things to factor in.
There are a lot of factors that you simply either don't understand or just haven't considered.
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Actually my "puzzle game" suggestion was only that... a suggestion. You could have a point and click game or whatever, just something that doesn't move much that actually renders polygons and doesn't use sprites. GT4 renders stuff in high resolution in the photo mode, but from what I know the photo mode is just a still screen. You are still looking at 640x480. Not really a big deal and I think any console (including PS1, Saturn, though it would take them longer to do the render, of course) could do that, just as long as the end result is a still screen with no actual 3D movement going on.
You keep citing development time and how everyone's screwed if any extra effort goes into a game. How long has GT4 been in development for? Doesn't seem too rushed to me. Also I guess everyone is screwed for the next generation of consoles when they support true HD and all that cool stuff. Those new systems will take a lot of development effort, more people, more time, you name it. And people are still gonna expect the games to cost $50 or less. Will developers just say "screw it" for the HD modes? I really do apologize for patronizing you like this, it is not my intention, trust me. But the "time" factor seems to be more of an excuse for PS2philes than anything else. There are a lot of crappy PS2 games out there... they FAR outway the good or even decent games. If they had some extra effort here and there... who knows. They could have been worth 1 minute of attention by the players.
One thing I do know is that PS2 games usually look worse than the games on the other 2 consoles. There are a few exceptions like Need fo' Speed Hot Pursuit 2, which looked entirely different on the other 2 systems. But when it comes to exclusive games, the PS2 unfortunately comes in last in the visuals department. And to hear it has all of this unused power that absolutely nobody knows how to utilize is very disappointing to me. What a poor design the PS2 must be. I guess it's not even really worth discussing when it comes down to it, since said features will never be realized.
You keep citing development time and how everyone's screwed if any extra effort goes into a game. How long has GT4 been in development for? Doesn't seem too rushed to me. Also I guess everyone is screwed for the next generation of consoles when they support true HD and all that cool stuff. Those new systems will take a lot of development effort, more people, more time, you name it. And people are still gonna expect the games to cost $50 or less. Will developers just say "screw it" for the HD modes? I really do apologize for patronizing you like this, it is not my intention, trust me. But the "time" factor seems to be more of an excuse for PS2philes than anything else. There are a lot of crappy PS2 games out there... they FAR outway the good or even decent games. If they had some extra effort here and there... who knows. They could have been worth 1 minute of attention by the players.
One thing I do know is that PS2 games usually look worse than the games on the other 2 consoles. There are a few exceptions like Need fo' Speed Hot Pursuit 2, which looked entirely different on the other 2 systems. But when it comes to exclusive games, the PS2 unfortunately comes in last in the visuals department. And to hear it has all of this unused power that absolutely nobody knows how to utilize is very disappointing to me. What a poor design the PS2 must be. I guess it's not even really worth discussing when it comes down to it, since said features will never be realized.
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