Dreamcast Vs. PlayStation 2

[Rogue Trooper]

Quick quote from Free Radical, from interview with Edge they did on making Timesplitters:

'..With Sony claiming 75 Million Polys per sec, we concluded that we'd be surprised if even 10% of that figure was achievable-and we were right'

Think that says it all on just how much Sony over-hyped the PS2 :-)

Free Radical also said on the plan of Timesplitters  being a Multiplayer game 1st and foremost:

'..Imagine our surprise when the PS2 seemed to be missing a couple of controller ports!'

[nakamura]

You don't need to compare VGA to RGB on PS2, as DC video output (640X480P, flicker-free etc) is far cleaner than the PS2's video out

I assume with 480p you are talking VGA as progressive is not available via RGB. Also PS2 had pretty impressive RGB out when the correct flicker filters were applied.

Through RGB there will always be some sort of flicker. It's just less noticable at 60hz and if you are playing only optimised PAL games like Silent Hill 2, you will not see the full benefit of what the PS2 offers.

And for the record I did not start this damn thread.

[TL]

And for the record I did not start this damn thread.

Nope it was split off from the other one because people were de-railing it.

[tomwaits]

There are some PS2 games that offer progressive scan output if you're using component video cables. You usually have to hold ^ and X simultaneously when the system boots. But, there are very few games that support it for such a large library. And, many of the games that support progressive scan on the NTSC release don't support it on the PAL version.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pl ... HD_support

[Rogue Trooper]

There are some PS2 games that offer progressive scan output if you're using component video cables. You usually have to hold ^ and X simultaneously when the system boots. But, there are very few games that support it for such a large library. And, many of the games that support progressive scan on the NTSC release don't support it on the PAL version.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pl ... HD_support

Yeah seem to recal God Of war 2 had an HD cheat mode on NTSC, but not Pal.

Own The Getaway+Primal on Pal, both use Progressive Scan mode via component had no idea until i booted them up and was like ah-ha!

[Rogue Trooper]

And for the record I did not start this damn thread.

Nope it was split off from the other one because people were de-railing it.

And...dare i ask what's wrong with such a thread?.

Not sure about anyone else, but i personally bought hardware on the back of hype, £270 for a launch MCD, impulse buy after the promo.video given away with Mean Machines, Atari Jaguar, impulse buy after seeing video preview of AVP, both made claims that were so far removed from reality it was unreal (Jaguars 850 Million Pixels per sec animation speed etc), does'nt mean the hardware did'nt deliver games i very much enjoyed, nor that i feel i cannot look back with hindsight on the purchase or claims made, even poke fun at myself.

The DC VS PS2 battle as a purchaser of both, was a very interesting era i felt, looks like others do as well.Sega made some advertising gaffes in terms of promoting the online side, Sony with hyping up the power of PS2, there's no reason we owners of both cannot have a debate on where both delivered the goods for us as gamers and where they feel short.

The best way i've always felt to learn the true power of hardware is by reading interviews with those who worked on them, that's why i buy EDGE for it's making of articles, read RG and this forum for the interviews.

I ended up with the DC, the PS2, the Gamecube and Xbox from that era, as i said earlier 1st time i've ever felt need to own more than 2 consoles from 1 generation, it was expensive, but i'd have hoped offered up scope for debate.

I own a PS1, PS2, PSP+PS3 and it's been a very interesting path to see how in the space of a few years Sony has gone from getting things so right with the PS1, to coming back from the brink with PS3 (high prices, PSN hack etc) and seems not to have learnt lessons from the PSP with Vita.

With Sega, watching them go from hardware to software only has again, been very intersting to watch, as an Ex-MD, Game Gear, Saturn and MCD owner, current DC
owner, i wondered what mistakes if any would be learnt from.


Sadly Sega dropped out of the hardware race after the DC, but Sony's hype machine did not learn from the PS2 era, claims of outputting 2X 1080P images at 60 FPS in gaming etc.

Think Laird did the right thing by creating new thread, initally i was thinking oh-oh, this is'nt going to end well, but having slept, woke up and thought why should'nt there be a decent debate on merits of the 2 systems?.

I mean the PS2 (or percived power of..) pretty much killed of Sega in terms of a hardware company, auctual games competing with expected, now we see Sega publishing crud like AVP (Rebellion) and Aliens C.M (Gearbox), so are they a better company now than then?


Just trying to open up some debate here.

[dcultrapro]

I don't mind hearing rogues arguments but most of this more technical information is over my head. All I can do is lend my opinion to the discussion without tabling any published facts or anything, because at the end of the day it is just peoples opinions.

I'm of the opinion that the Picture quality of the Dreamcast when played via VGA to PC monitor is second to none from the 5th generation and that the playstation 2 that I own and use via RGB Scart (not sure if its true RGB) I Think, looks god awful by comparison, the colours are washed out unless you turn contrast and colour up in settings but then they appear to bleed horribly and there is a lot of either screen blur or some form of inconsistency that makes it look like the colours are running

I'd actually be interested to hear some suggestions to make the picture of the PS2 Better because I really like Shadow of the Colossus, King Of Fighters Maximum Impact, Transformers, Auto Modelista and am only able to use the PS2 to play my PS1 games currently

So yeah, how could I get the best picture for it? bear in mind I have a 42" LED 3d tv with all the usual inputs; HDMI, Component, VGA, RGB, RCA etc

[Rogue Trooper]

I don't mind hearing rogues arguments but most of this more technical information is over my head. All I can do is lend my opinion to the discussion without tabling any published facts or anything, because at the end of the day it is just peoples opinions.

I'm of the opinion that the Picture quality of the Dreamcast when played via VGA to PC monitor is second to none from the 5th generation and that the playstation 2 that I own and use via RGB Scart (not sure if its true RGB) I Think, looks god awful by comparison, the colours are washed out unless you turn contrast and colour up in settings but then they appear to bleed horribly and there is a lot of either screen blur or some form of inconsistency that makes it look like the colours are running

I'd actually be interested to hear some suggestions to make the picture of the PS2 Better because I really like Shadow of the Colossus, King Of Fighters Maximum Impact, Transformers, Auto Modelista and am only able to use the PS2 to play my PS1 games currently

So yeah, how could I get the best picture for it? bear in mind I have a 42" LED 3d tv with all the usual inputs; HDMI, Component, VGA, RGB, RCA etc

I'd hope my posts are seen as debates, not arguments and with the technical aspects when dealing with any format (PS2, Saturn, DC, Jaguar etc) i'll quote developers who've worked on the hardware, i'm so far from a techy person myself (could'nt even figure out DOS Box on my PC i'm ashamed to say).

Regarding the best piccy quality on modern TV's-This has been a big issue for myself, whilst my Xbox was dead easy, just use Component cable for best picture and Dreamcast even simpler (as i'm currently not a VGA box owner), as SCART delivered a great picture, the PS2+G.C fared far worse.

I cannot even use my G.C as the piccy is so poor via SCART, things like the HOTH levels on Star Wars:Rogue Squadron 2 are just total white out, gutted!.

PS2 originally tried Scart, was'nt great at all, bought Component cable, better and unlocked the 480P modes in some games but i'm still getting the issues you describe.Tried altering TV's settings etc, makes little to no difference.

[dcultrapro]

of course! I wasn't using the term argument in a derogatory way, hopefully it didn't come across like that! Thanks, glad I'm not the only one, it just looks bad and I'm pretty sure I bought component for it somewhere as well, though I'll be buggered if I know where it is lol

[Rogue Trooper]

of course! I wasn't using the term argument in a derogatory way, hopefully it didn't come across like that! Thanks, glad I'm not the only one, it just looks bad and I'm pretty sure I bought component for it somewhere as well, though I'll be buggered if I know where it is lol

I'm guessing here, so bear with me, but piccy quality can also be effected by all the signal processing jiggery-pokery your TV is doing, some have game modes, image sharpening features etc, TV's doing all sorts of upscaling, A/D conversion, colour correction etc and it varies from set to set etc, so try turning off some of the features IF your TV has them.

I've seen 3rd part VGA boxes for PS2, but at £50+ and no idea of how 'great' they are, i'm not touching them.

I did buy the Xploder PS2 HDTV kit (boot disc, component cables) etc, but that's just getting your PS2 to 'fake' the images and upscaling games, streching image etc (cable was decent enough mind), few things like Bully and wipeout Fusion loked sharper in 480P over 480i, but taking games upto 720P using the boot disc just streched things to a viewpoint i'd not seen since playing as the Alien on AVP on PC :-)

Think i'm fooked as a Pal G.C owner, stuck with Scart etc, so guess that'll never be used again unless i hook it up to the crummy 14" SD portable (not a happy prospect).

[nakamura]

A PS2 via an LCD looks shit, as do ALL  of the other SD consoles but a bit less so.

A PS2 via a top quality CRT and RGB looks fantastic. Vibrant, sharp and certainly no colour bleeding at all. If you are playing an SD console via a HDTV you are doing it wrong anyway.

A DC via RGB on a lovely CRT also looks amazing, a bit better than the PS2 in fact.

The PS2 suffers not so much poor output, more poor development. Very early games like Timesplitters and Ridge Racer used no flicker filter at all which was utterly stupid. Add in 50hz only and you simply have a mess of an image. At 60hz these images are better, add in anti aliasing like Tekken tag on USA and it looks stunning.

Any games looks better in 60hz because there is instantly less flicker, quite a lot in fact and as a result the jaggies are less pronounced because the image is flickering so quickly you can barely see the transition. Sony should have pushed 60hz games much harder from day 1. That would have made PS2 games certainly look much better as no doubt the PAL stuff could be rough.

[Rogue Trooper]

Sorry, but PS2 does suffer from poor output in terms of video and that honestly is down to Sony's hardware choices.

Sega initally only planned for the Dreamcast to have 8 Mb or main operating ram, but found it restricted the hardware far too much in terms of what it could render, in order for the Dreamcast to handle 5 Million PLAIN polygons a second and anything like 3 Million texture-mapped polygons a second, they increased that to 16 Mb and also added an extra 8 Mb of Video Ram, it's a reason DC textures look so clean and vibrant compared to PS2's.

The Dreamcast has more Ram avaiable to it, than the Playstation 1 and Playstation 2 combined have.Sony scrimped on the Ram and did it again on PS3, but we've seen changes since then from them with Slim'N' Lite models onwards of PSP having double the Ram of the Phat's, Vita having it's Ram increased over original allocation.

Another strength of the Dreamcast hardware lies in it's Video Encoding Processor (and GPU), which offers a fully wired 640X480 TV output, which is interopolated down from the the GPU's 1,920X480 image.Games coded specifically for it, such as MDK 2 have far richer textures, which run in higher res etc.

Both systems suffered from poorly optimised games, basic ports etc, but i'd hardly call ICO, which had fantastic lighting and animation for it's time, poorly coded as it was written specifically for the PS", yet it's base resolution was 512X224 on NTSC (Pal being improved to 512X256) and it FORCED the PS2 hardware to output a lower quality progressive scan image, rather than the normal interlaced output.

Then you have Hideo K.with his MGS games, MGS 2 was seen as the flagship PS2 game and he+team improved on the engine for MGS 3:Snake Eater, again, coded FOR Playstation 2, but it's native resolution was 512X448 which the PS2 hardware then cheated a bit by upscaling to 640X480 for the image which hit the tv screen.


The 3Do similarly 'cheated' it's claimed 640X480 res.is based on the hardware upscaling the image before it hits the TV.So Sony far from the 1st to use hardware to 'cheat' along the way.


By comparison, you'd NEVER have seen something so open world like GTA3 on the DREAMCAST, in the way the PS2 version was.DC version would be far less detailed, lower polygon counts, far more (and longer) loading times etc and something like GTA:San Andreas or God Of war, God Of War 2, Burnout 3 etc, just beyond it, these gamers developed with strengths of the newer hardware in mind.


PAL PS2 games often lacked the Progressive Scan modes NTSC versions had, but as i said earlier, understandable due to so few HDTV's in UK at that time.

Long story short is, PS2 far better at lighting, more complex, open world games, higher polygon count than Dreamcast, but is limited to 4Mb of Video Ram, which means games have to 'offload' textures until they are needed which can cause bottlenecks if your not optimising code for the hardware (reason a lot of early PS2 games ran at 512X384 was developers still learning how toavoid bottle necks as system fought over Ram).

The Dreamcast in comparison as far as textures go has both hardware texture compression and double the video ram avaiable, so it can store higher quality textures and get them when needed far easier than PS2, but you won't see the kinda special FX in terms of lighting or high polygon models etc you will on PS2 when hardware used.

[Rogue Trooper]

Would have been interesting to see how the following turned out on Dreamcast as they were either canned or switched to PS2:

System Shock 2-Early footage has been found.

Max Payne-PS2 version was rough compared to Xbox version, grainy etc, would DC version had lower quality character models, but richer textures etc?.Despite being annouced, work never seems to have really started.

Gun Valk.Ended up on Xbox, looked gorgeous, but camera+control scheme turned it into a frustration fest.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer-ended up on Xbox.

Toe Jam+Earl 3-again, switched to Xbox.

Shinobi-Project moved to PS2 early on.

PS2 version of Half Life uses DC version code (have DC version, great character models etc, but far too much loading, not that PS2 version is brilliant either).

On subject of poor ports to PS2, Rayman 2 on PS2 suffers in frame rate as it's a DC port, 'helped' by use of Renderware 2 and when E.a took the 1st, W.I.P version of Quake 3 to show John Carmack, he is meant to have took 1 look at it and said 'No F**king Way!) PS2's limited texture Ram causing issues trying to port PC code etc.

[Rogue Trooper]

A PS2 via an LCD looks shit, as do ALL  of the other SD consoles but a bit less so.

A PS2 via a top quality CRT and RGB looks fantastic. Vibrant, sharp and certainly no colour bleeding at all. If you are playing an SD console via a HDTV you are doing it wrong anyway.

A DC via RGB on a lovely CRT also looks amazing, a bit better than the PS2 in fact.

The PS2 suffers not so much poor output, more poor development. Very early games like Timesplitters and Ridge Racer used no flicker filter at all which was utterly stupid. Add in 50hz only and you simply have a mess of an image. At 60hz these images are better, add in anti aliasing like Tekken tag on USA and it looks stunning.

Any games looks better in 60hz because there is instantly less flicker, quite a lot in fact and as a result the jaggies are less pronounced because the image is flickering so quickly you can barely see the transition. Sony should have pushed 60hz games much harder from day 1. That would have made PS2 games certainly look much better as no doubt the PAL stuff could be rough.

Think your being a little harsh on Timesplitters here, bear in mind:

Free Radical were a recently set up bunch of coders (being Ex-RARE team members) and made a decision to do a launch PS2 game in under 12 months, by this i'm talking design and create from scratch (concept to finished game) in that time and they were NOT using someone else's game engine say Unreal 2 engine, instead they built theirs from the ground up and as they themselves have said, the biggest issue with that was finding you had to ignore ALL the hype Sony was giving in regards to the PS2 hardware (75 Million Polys etc) and instead finding just what realistic perfomance would be.

They were used to coding for Nintendo hardware, not the complex beast the PS2 turned out to be and were constantly hitting brick walls with memory limitations, disc access times, music streams etc etc.PS2 hardware must have been something of a shock to the system.

They put the lessons learned from making TS1 into good practice for TS2 and it was'nt until TS2 Sony had the PS2 performance Analyser avaiable, which they used to find bottlenecks in the code.

They've described making 1st Timesplitters whilst getting their heads around PS2 hardwre as 'Aiming for the moon and winging it every step of the way'

'Utterly Stupid' is hardly a fair comment mate, given what they were up again'st, 12 months to make a game on a system your not familar with and is causing headaches for so many other developers, which is currently lacking the tools you need to find out how good your code is and pressure is cranking up to get it out the door.Think we as gamers should be thankful for what they did manage rather than what was missing.

Not having a go, so please don't read it the wrong way, but rather just intending to show the 'bigger picture' here in terms of what it was like developing for PS2, reality coders found compared to what Sony had promised.

[nakamura]

I know exactly what went in to make Timesplitters and the job Free Radical did to make and I rewarded them by buying it. I liked it a lot myself.

However the game had no 60hz option or any type of flicker filter. Either of these would have improved the look no end as the US version was a lot nicer looking than the PAL game.

I'm not the one who bitches about the jaggies on the early games.