PC-FX: Polygon Capable?

[MissaFX]

I think what they mean is that the Saturn was not designed to do 3-D graphics.

Yeah, I know the chip was bolted on at the last minute, but at least to my understanding, it's doing real 3-D math and crunching real polygons. It isn't faking.

I cannot quote any hard facts, but my understanding is that the 3-D part of the saturn is a vector engine or something, not what most people call a polygon producing chip.  It does make polygons though with whatever chip it has for this purpose.  I believe the number of polys is under 100k also assuming it is not one of the cheaply produced, 1 cpu titles.

[Kitsunexus]

I bet it's version of "Another World" is kickass then. 



(offtopic, but was Fade To Black PS1-only?)

[Necromancer]

There is no dedicated 3d hardware in a Saturn; the extra chip added at the eleventh hour was a second SH-2.  The Saturn didn't have to have the second chip to do 3d, but it certainly helped keep games from looking like Falcon.

(offtopic, but was Fade To Black PS1-only?)

The game was also on PC.  The song is by Metallica.

[MissaFX]

There is no dedicated 3d hardware in a Saturn; the extra chip added at the eleventh hour was a second SH-2.  The Saturn didn't have to have the second chip to do 3d, but it certainly helped keep games from looking like Falcon.

(offtopic, but was Fade To Black PS1-only?)

The game was also on PC.  The song is by Metallica.

Ok, so the VDP1 is actually the video processor which is producing polys (3-D sprites in this case).  The VDP2 is a video processor which takes load off VDP1 processor by producing bitmap backgrounds and by performing rotation math (and a few other effects)?

[Necromancer]

Ok, so the VDP1 is actually the video processor which is producing polys (3-D sprites in this case).  The VDP2 is a video processor which takes load off VDP1 processor by producing bitmap backgrounds and by performing rotation math (and a few other effects)?

Yessum, that's the way I understand it anyhow.  Saturns also have a DSP that's responsible for geometry calculations, but I don't know if it's limited to backgrounds, sprites, or whatever.

[handygrafx]

what I meant was, the Saturn cannot do true polygons - the Saturn's various processors produce distorted sprites to fake 3D polygon graphics.  there are no dedicated 3D processors in Saturn unlike the PS1 and Nintendo. there is no z-buffer in Saturn at all. (there isn't in PS1 either but its 3D subsystem is closer to a true polygon engine, which N64 had).  All of Saturn's chips are designed to push sprites & background layers, scaling & rotation.   

the Saturn was upgraded several times to be more powerful.  not only was a 2nd SH-2 CPU added, but also a 2nd VDP.   originally there was only 1 SH-2 CPU and 1 VDP.   the SCU DSP, embedded into one of the other chips, was also probably a late addition. 

about 'distorted sprites' - I didn't make that up -- I got that from Next Generation magazine.

The saturn has a powerful sprite engine, so
that all 3d stuff must be calculated by the CPUs and passed on to the
sprite engine, which will display them.

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.video.sega/msg/d8f64ea6f4f36c56?dmode=source



I'm looking for the specific NG article, but until I find it...

Along with the SH2s, the VDP and its frame buffer draws 3D objects on screen as distorted sprites. The geometry engine is effective, but also more of an afterthought on Sega's part, primarily to combat the PlayStation's built-in powerful 3D chipset.

http://darkwatcher.home.att.net/console/details/saturn.html

[Kitsunexus]

Wow, so the Sega Saturn is just a vector-capable Superscaler? BEST SYSTEM EVER.

[handygrafx]

Saturn evolved from a 32-bit system Sega was developing starting around 1990 or 1991 called the GigaDrive. roughly the same time NEC started developing IronMan/Project Tetsujin.
 
the main processor started out as either  68030 or NEC V60.  Then in 1992 or 1993 Sega switched to a SH-2, then two SH-2s, and all kinds of video/graphics  chip changes & upgrades, most of which are pretty much unknown.

late in the development, in 1993, there was Jupiter, a cartridge-only version of Saturn (which did not have the final Saturn chipset) Also SoA developed their own 32-bit upgrade, the Mars, which was the 32X.  basicly a downgraded version of Jupiter, I think (not 100% certain of that.)

there were numerous plans, some real, some rumored, of upgrading the Saturn with various 3D accelerator chips, and also the 3DO M2.  any of the real planned upgrades were obviously scrapped in favor of designing two rival prototype systems to completely replace Saturn:  BlackBelt and Dural/Katana.   the Dural was selected, officially named Katana, and given the consumer name, Dreamcast.

Dreamcast was NEC's next move in videogames, but they only manufactured the Videologic-designed PowerVR2DC graphics chip.

[Kitsunexus]

Blackbelt was powered by 3DFX. I can only imagine Shenmue, but with blurry textures.



As much as I rag on them though, the Voodoo2 was my best friend.

[Michael Helgeson]

Some things need to be clarified here. The Saturn had a more capable brute force polygon drawing ability then the PS1. It could do more at a higher res when the programmers knew what they were doing too. Neither system,PS1 or Saturn had what you would consider a separate from the cpu, expensive hardware accelerated 3d chipset made specifically to pump out high end,high res texture mapped polygons. This kind of stuff did not happen until Videologic and Nec did Power VR and 3DFX did the Voodoo chipset 3d Accelerator chips in the PC market replacing the typical 2D 64-bit graphics cards that did 3d polygons via software with the cpu,with, depending on the computer, a math co-processor installed also doing all the calculations with the cpu.

A example pic of how this looked:
Need for Speed 2 Se in software mode on Pc:

Need for Speed 2 Se in Glide 3d Accelerated mode on Pc:


Notice how pic 1 is how the game pretty much looked on PS1 also,just in lower res?

Till then (3D accelerated graphics chip age) the polygons drawn by the Saturn and PS1 both were both resembling visually what you would call drawing polygons in software mode on 2D accelerator cards on Pc,as this is how the end look always appeared,as seen above. The PS1s 3d calculating engine was located in its main cpu,as was its 2D engine for decompressing video playback. The PS1s ability was to draw 360,000 flat-shaded polygons per second and 180,000 texture mapped and light-sourced polygons per second with a output res of 256×224 to 640×480. Mostly 256×224 was used for anything 3d on PS1 because they wanted to maintain a fluid 60fps as much as possible.

The Saturn with its massive selection of chips could pump out 500,000 flat shaded polygons per second and 200,000 texture-mapped polygons per second at 352x224,640x224, and 704x480. Also, the Saturn rendered quadrilaterals,not triangles like the PS1. Because of this there was alot less texture distortion unlike 3d games on PS1 which suffered greatly from this. Another thing to bring up is this,later after learning how to better use the hardware they were able to achieve true transparency effects on the Saturn by using  simple polygon stipples.

You want to see proof of all the above Saturn wise? Just play Dead or Alive,Toshinden URA,Last Bronx,VF2, Daytona CE,Burning Rangers,Radiant Silvergun,Quake,Grandia,Panzer Dragoon 1-Saga,Shining Force 3,All Japan Pro featuring VF,and plenty of others if you don't just limit yourselves to US releases. In the cases where titles are on both systems the Saturn's 3d visuals are typically (DOA and Grandia) always better unless the programmers just sucked.

If you look at the specs of actual Model 2 hardware,its pretty amazing to see how well Sega did in general of providing home ports of their arcade titles on the Saturn. They maintained most of what made the game fun,audio wise and visually. Only a few home ports sucked,like House of the Dead. Not bad considering they were using way lower costing chips rated at far lower performance.

Both the PS1 and Saturn were impressive for their time,each in their own ways,because they both had 3d based titles that were very impressive. Neither system failed to show off what it could do.

Kits,ditch the Voodoo 2,buy my spare Voodoo 4500
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=260198996088&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT&ih=016