How powerful is the dreamcast?

[bonzobanana]

I use a projector for many games consoles so get to see very detailed images of various consoles stretched across a wall and have to say the VGA output of the dreamcast is pretty good. Some games are surprisingly good visually. I gave up using my ps2 with my projector as the visuals were so blocky, full of jaggie lines and very low contrast via component. It just looked awful. Its just not projector friendly. The wii often seems no better than dreamcast and sometimes the dreamcast does a good job of competing visually with the original xbox. Of course the ps3 and 360 show some distance between dreamcast but I'm still impressed with some dreamcast visuals. Dead or Alive 2 still looks visually stunning. Le Mans is very impressive.

It seems to be punching far above its weight. Its only a 100mhz gpu yet sails past the ps2 not in polygons but in resolution and textures. It seems to beat the gamecube and wii for textures much of the time not polygons.

I realise the powervr technology and tile based rendering means the gpu only actually renders what can be seen so all polygons are on screen to see unlike other gpus which render a lot of polygons which are in the background and not seen. What percentage of polygons are wasted on other gpus, 10%, 20%? So for example if the Dreamcast produces 3 million polygons per second, how many polygons does the gamecube have to produce to do the same image, 3.5 million, 4 million, 5 million?

Tile based rendering is also meant to give more consistant frame rates because when a large object obscures the background, the background isn't rendered so you have more consistant speed.

Does this account for why the dreamcast is so competitive or is it the fact it has 8meg of video memory and hardware texture compression. I mean the ps2 only has 4meg of video memory and no texture compression and the gamecube/wii only has 3meg of video memory, 2meg for the frame buffer and 1meg for textures which doesn't seem a lot considering the sega saturn had 1/2meg for textures.

In my experience the dreamcast doesn't compete with the xbox much. I've seen xbox stuff that clearly the dreamcast couldn't attempt. However I've seen games on both dreamcast and ps2 where the dreamcast easily wins visually. Even the wii seems to have some sort of texture memory problem as many games have limited textures or at least simple and repeated textures. Don't get me wrong I've seen wii games with visuals the dreamcast couldn't do but I've also seen wii games that not only look worse than the best dreamcast games but also merely average dreamcast games.

Dreamcast



Wii




Just curious on people's opinions on dreamcast graphics or have I got it horribly wrong.

[K_I_R_E_E_K]

Well yes, dreamcast does look good visually, it does have a bad ansitropic filter, i guess it isn't needed high detail on fr away textures, it's a nice way to improve speed.
Regarding everything else, looks great.

Dreamcast may also have his fair amount of bad looking games, but at the time i don't know any, regarding the average and the good games, they probably have that status because one of the reasons may be the graphics displayed so i'm not suprised if some wii games don't look as good as some DC games

Also

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cXgzPPRxeo[/youtube]

[Macabre]

I remember trying to play Unreal Tournament on a PS2 after playing it for ages (and still do) on my dreamcast. Yes, dc can make some very nice textures, it wasn't untill a few years in the ps2's life that developers abused the # of polygons to make pretty games.

I also have a projector for my main entertainment system, but still use a crt tv for my sega stuff (i love light gun games!). I use a mitsubishi hc3800, and with component from my ps2 and wii, it has a hard time matching some graphics when I plug up my vga + dreamcast as well.

The problem I think is that most wii titles have those horrific black bars (and the sheer size of my display shows off how bad some Wii titles are graphic-wise), and the ps2 wast really meant to be upgraded to go to HD, or it just wasn't done right hardware-wise (like it comes with the option select output and compoenent use, but... it sucks).

Annoying with me; when playing some ps2 games, i have to revert back to standard composet cables, as games like Mortal Kombat Armageddon do not function properly when being put out threw component - it all comes out green.


I don't own a 360 or ps3. When it comes to sheer eye-popings beauty in graphics, for me and my game library, it looks like this;

1.) God of War II (ps2 component 1080p)
2.) (a very small list of compatable hd ps2 games)
3.) Everything released on xbox classic, as every single game seems to be converted PERFECTLY to hd.
4.) Mixture of dreamcast / wii / ps2 games here, as with signal converters and bleeders / ect, it all looks good-ish.



edit; what I really hate about ps2 is the annoying work it takes to get surround sound out of games. For my xbox classic, all I had to do was put in the Halo 2 map pack, which automatically updated all software and even supplied a surround sound speaker-test for optimal placement.

If anyone still has their xbox classic, I'd suggest looking for a copy of that map pack, even if you don't play the game, as service for that hardware is no longer available online (as far as I know), and this disc was the last legit software update (again as far as I know).

[cloofoofoo]

Iam just going by what i read on the net about the dreamcast but it seems the dreamcast has more burden than most ppl think.Apparently the lighting and transformation of polygons fall all on the cpu not gpu.Then add game logic,physics and special effects like motion blur and what not,all this falls on the cpu.Then another thing i noticed alot of people say,is that if you push too many vertices/polygons on the dreamcast there isnt much space left for textures seeing how the frame buffer takes a huge chunk all ready(thats why the color depth is 16bit not 24 bit for most games).Apparently most of this is true because to some extent its mentioned in sdk documents(most of it anyway).So while its realistic polygon max is 3 million not many companies were able to reach it,heck they barely reached 1 million triangles at 60 fps.

Originally i didnt want to believe that so i started extracting some scenes from the null dc dreamcast emulator and wow i was shocked how low poly most games really were.a 1999 game like maken x gave me like 25,000 polygon scene times 60 fps thats around 1 million polygons,a 2001 game sonic adventure 2 was pretty much the same polygon count and that was 1st party!.
Now games like dead or alive 2 did pretty well in polygon count(they were pretty high when i extracted) but so far i think the highest poly count i captured was trigger heart, it was running about 50,000 polygons at 60 fps,a spot on 3 million!Heck even the programmer of makaron deunen said on his blog that he noticed trigger heart ran around 44000 polygons at 60 fps.So that pretty much makes it seem like one,if not the highest performance game on the dc.Though deunan captured a screen shot of doa2 showing it was running at 58,000 polygons for that frame.

Iam guessing squeezing polygon preformance out of the dreamcast could take sometime and decent budget?but seeing how the dc only last 2/3 years on the market it just didnt get a chance.So who knows what the future held for the dc with games like soul reaver 2, half life, gunvalkyrie , agartha and more.I mean as good for texturing the dc is,it will only take you so far before you noticed how theres little complexity to the scene and i think thats what most cancelled 2001 and up games were going to fix.

[50inchDLP]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPzEKIAXwDM[/youtube]

Lemans is absolutely stunning running in 480P on VGA. I dont think there is a racer on wii that looks as real as that game. I heard it pushed 5million polygons and it looks it. Not to mention insane lighting,shadows and textures. just watch the day to night transition in that game, its so real. little touches like brake rotors glowing red when braking hard is also impressive.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUThKGys19s[/youtube]

Suzuki Alstare Extreme Racing is also another stunning game with very good textures, lighting and draw distance.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z29U6kc6hI[/youtube]

Propeller Arena also shows us some of the amazing graphics the DC was capable of. the draw distance and textures are insane all very smooth with alot of action.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Pt0FXCQXuk[/youtube]

Red Dog is a DC game often overlooked but everyone i show this to is amazed of the quality visually. it looks better than some xbox 360 arcade games. notice the sharp textures and lighting.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joZ0cCaFmM0[/youtube]

Shenmue is shockingly good looking even by todays standards.

Over all I believe that if the DC stayed in the game for as long as the PS2 did we would have seen the ps2 looking inferior as the years gone by. I actually stay up some nights wondering what could have been if Sega had not given up so fast.

[diogo_alex]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cI_zdPwyrQ[/youtube]

[mazonemayu]

more powerfull than the ps2
nuff said

[bonzobanana]

There has been some comments about the dreamcast running out of video memory but surely it fares really well for that with 8meg of video memory. If the frame buffer is less than 2meg and tile based rendering is meant to reduce memory requirements too because it eliminates the need to store and display unseen information you must have some sort of advantage. The dreamcast has getting on 3x as much video memory as gamecube/wii that must be some advantage too or is there some sort of bandwidth limitation that nullifies the video memory advantage?

Also tile based rendering is meant to make polygons go further because they can all be seen. Doesn't that make the dreamcast's polygons much more effective?

I noticed here http://www.anandtech.com/show/558/4 that imagination technologies are claiming that modern games have 2.5 to 3.5 overdraw meaning if the dreamcast produces 1 million polygons the gamecube would have to produce lets say 3 million to produce the same image due to much of the gamecube polygons being hidden in the background.

Alternatively you could say the dreamcast can do with 4 million polygons what it would take the gamecube to do with 12 million.

To me this explains the dreamcast punching well above its weight but maybe I haven't grasped the facts correctly.

[Macabre]

We'll honestly never know what the dc could have been. Sheer numbers of processing power / output are one thing, but the game that utilizes it is another. As mentioned above, that racing game has the highest % of polygons on the dreamcast. Its a racing game, how many people actually enjoy that sort of game? Thats one sub genre of games (one that I hardly seem interested in, I prefer crazy taxi)

Some homebrew games look great, but they all tend to be of a typical style, and those developers all wanted to make a particular game, and i doubt their goal was to make something so pretty on an outdated console that it would make your eyes bleed.

First party or not, the godly developers that make games that push the systems to their limits didn't have time to polish games for the dreamcast.

Like I said above, God of War II on the ps2, nuff said. It came out, what, 7 years after the ps2 did? And good lord look at the graphics. When you line that up to some of the ps2 initial releases, it really makes you wonder what ~-=First Party Developers=-~ like SEGA could have done with 7 years of making games on their dreamcast.

Probably something better than a high-polygon count racing game.

[Outrunner]

How many polygons do the High Quallity models of Shenmue characters? Those models that give you the tutorial on the Passport?