Crazyace

PZ doesn't actually seem any higher res than comanche? - The near voxels look blocky in some of the videos, but the mid to far seems to be 320x200 on the PC ( only 256 colours as normal for VGA , but as far as I can tell PZ could be 256 colours as well ) Magic carpet was another PC game using voxels, it came out on the PSX as well, but I didn't play it that much. I think once you get to a 266MHz PC you're well into Pentium 2/3 territory, and your PC is likely to have local bus VESA graphics with true colour support. Voxels wont choke at that speed.

It didn't work that way - the PSX didn't have a palette in the same way as VGA ( or even the jaguar ) - it's display was either 16 bit ( 5.5.5 plus stencil bit ) or 24 bit. When drawing textured sprites or polygons to the 16 bit screen the PSX would use another area of video memory as a CLUT to expand 4 or 8 bit textures, but there wasn't any limit to the number of CLUTs - they were just pointers to memory.

I dont know - I looked at the game , and the tree's are all forward facing ( billboard sprites ) - and the enemies seem to only have 16 or 32 frames of rotation - seems workable with sprites. It's still the heart of a really good game for the Jaguar though, and the biggest shame is that it ( and Doom, and BattleSphere ) didn't come out early in the life of the machine and generate console sales. ( I remember reading somewhere that 3D0 sold a million units in japan based on the Streetfighter game - That number of sales may have been enough to keep Atari in the market )

Yes , if you look in the jaguar manual it shows how the colours were picked. The PSX was 5.5.5 RGB , ( it also supports 24 bit for movies and displays, but the 3D hardware only draws triangles in 5.5.5RGB ) Voxel's were a good alternative until 3D graphics cards took off - then polygons took over the PC world - It's a real pity though that SVGA cards never standardised earlier - as it was possible to get 16 bit colour, just not in a standard way that could be used by games ( as VESA didn't really come in till 94ish ) It's just a UART - the PSX cable links 2 machines directly, ( and the Jaguar links multiple machines in a ring )

Oh yeah real great! To bad you are 8 bits short in color , a boxed in view and a much slower frame rate! Oh, btw is that a 100 MHZ Pentium or higher?(27MHZ Jaguar blows it's dooors off) Next.... No idea what PC it's running on ... but it came out in 1992, which was why I linked it for you, as you seem to think voxels weren't used till recently Oh yeah another great one! Choppy, crappy, blocky, low color DEMO!!!! I friggin DEMO that barely can run at 15 FPS from what it looks like. Now add few enemies and some AI and watch that choke like a frog swallowing a horse. Nice try, but not really. The A8's can do a full game with voxels....how sad is that? I think the only sad thing here is your grasp of framerates but it is a youtube video, so maybe you should check it out on a real playstation before making asinine comparisions with A8 games Owl's game and Phase Zero are both cool ( and it's a real shame PZ didn't make it out, as it's the kind of game the jaguar really needed ) - I think the enemies are just sprites though.

About 3 minutes on this - seems like Voxel's to me but I'll let you decide, as you seem to have a better understanding of my graphics knowledge ( It's a PSX demo )

Um, sorry my friend but no ......It is graphically more powerful in polygans ability. It can not match the Jaguar in computing and voxel landscapes, deal with AI and game logic on the level of BS and still maintain a 60 fps frame rate that only gets more efficient the more units you network together. The PSX stops at 2 units...The Jaguar with BS can do 32. The Jaguars work together and now you have serious multi processing going on. The PSX just does not have the ability on the same level computationally. One MIPS can not out perform two J-RISC's on its best day. I have to disagree with you here - One MIPs with cache and 3D geometry coprocessor, can computationally match the two J-Riscs. The networking on BS is a different topic, and I'm really looking forward to playing it ( networked if possible , although I guess only one person has enough Jaguars to really show it off ) Once I play it I'll see if I can think of anything - but if the AI is so wonderful I think it's more the extreme skill of the programmers rather than something magical in the Jaguar chipset. Now that's interesting - I guess that must be comparing the multiply and divide cycle times , as they aren't as quick in terms of cycle counts. However it's a major jump to generalise that to 'math' in general.

No that is not the reality. The very fact that they lack the networking is why they are too weak to ever be able to match the Jaguar in this respect. It is the multi hook ups of the JAg and the unique means of true parallel processing that not even the Saturn can do with it two SH2's. It would stand a much better chance than the PSx but again, if you had actually read why I stated they can't, instead of once again assuming you know what you are talking about, you'd have known this. The PSX and Saturn are graphically more capable in the polygon arena but not in the computing arena. It aint the case. How much better does BattleSphere get when it's networked? ( I'm assuming you're saying that the networking is the advantage here - because you don't really make much sense otherwise ) My point about the networking is that there's no real difference between the hardware used for link cables on the PSX, and the Jaguar - only the wiring is different. So exactly the same networked AI could be implemented if it had to be. And the Saturn and PSX are computationally more capable than the Jaguar as well as graphically more capable - ( The Saturn is generally even more capable than the PSX )

Comanche says hi, ( 1992 - seemed to be pretty good on my PC )

I'll definitely come again - it was a good event. ( I'll actually looking forward to one this year , and I'll try to get some interesting code ready to show )

yes - and I'm saying that the PSX wouldn't have trouble with the physics and AI - It's a more powerful machine, after all.

Think of CRY mode in the same way as component video - or SVHS , one byte represents the colour (like chroma on SVHS) and one byte represents the brightness ( luma on SVHS ) - You have brightness that matches full 24 bit RGB , but a much more limited set of colours to pick from. This is getting more off topic, but, how about the saturn for comparison? I think this did come up before and you mentioned it could be closer at least (outside of networking -I'd immagine the Saturn would have used the cartridge port for any kind of network adaptor though -it did get a modem supported by the nelink/seganet service). Anyway, you've got the dual SH2s, plus a 11.3 MHz 68EC000 which was intended mainly for controllign the audio subsystem, but I beleive it wasn't limited to that. (it does work on its own bus though, the dedicated 512 kB of used for audio) There's also the SH1, but I think that's completely dedicated to controlling the CDROM drive. (and a DSP coprocessor intended to help with 3D math) But again, I mean no disrespect to battleSphere or Scatologic for that matter, that really was an oversimplified comparison (albeit intended to be considdering the perspective of a relatively simple audience), and I definitely hope I eventually get a chance to play it. I doubt I'll be dissapointed. That's the reality - both the Saturn and the PSX would be able to reproduce BattleSphere - they are more powerful systems than the jaguar. The only thing that would limit them is the fact that neither machine was ever pitched with multiplayer link cables by the manufacturer.

Such hyperbole always makes me want to play BattleSphere, but then the price always stops me I was always surprised the 4play didn't make a PC version at least - there's nothing really special about it graphically, and the network play would fit a lot more on the PC. I guess I'll have to hope that there's a Jagfest this year where someone brings a copy I'd disagree on not being able to reproduce it on the PSX though - even something like Phase Zero could be reproduced on the PSX. ( The CRY mode is the one thing that couldn't be - the PSX supports 24 bit RGB, but it's graphics hardware is completely designed around drawing 16 bit RGB pixels )

Comparing Jag Doom and PSX doom is actually pretty interesting, as they are both good versions. The Jag version has really smooth lighting that's much better than the PC 256 colour look, but it is half res. The PSX version has different coloured lighting - better than the PC version, but not as smooth as the jaguar look. However it's drawing at full res, so it's running twice as much as the Jaguar version. In terms of frame rate I think the PSX version wins out - but the Jaguar version is still pretty amazing. ( It's far better than the 32X/3D0/SNES versions available at the time )

Isn't the main reason that ROF is faster the fact that it only uses 47 lines ( In the 160x96 mode ) - and Eidolon uses a lot more lines ( in the 160x192 mode which matches the c64 better ) Koronis uses around 90 lines of GTIA mode 10 - which is completely different to the way the C64 works ( hence the extra shades ) so the 2 versions are less comparable.

Oh no, I can actually envision a Top Trumps game containing all of the 8 bit and 16 bit machines now

I think it’s hilarious how the ST fails so utterly against the Amiga that it’s reduced to fighting with the Amiga’s little brother (and only just holding it’s own.) No arguments there , ST vs Amiga was the 16 bit version of Spectrum vs C64

As long as you put in 'Joystick port 1.79MHz / 7815Kb' and 'Colours 128 / 512' we can play all day

There are other differences between TV and VGA , both gamma power, and the colour temperature are different. ( And I guess, from Lazarus's initial point that there might be overdrive on R,G,or B - but you could just turn up the brightness to fix that. ) ( I guess if you map all YCbCr values to RGB you can get negative values - which aren't valid for a normal RGB display )

Funnily enough there are some hires games for the ZX81 ( via some awesome software hacks ) -

Please do! I really do regret I started this thread. As said before it was not my intention to get all this crap. The topic bring good things for me too. I really enjoy my Atari ST again. Thanks to the Atari ST fans, I look with a complete different look to that machine. It's a great system, and next to my Atari 8bit it is fun too! But due to some people here, this thread is finished in garbage. Thanks guys. Very well done. @Albert: So please, please lock this thread, and perhaps you even can delete it at all. I'm the topicstarter, and I really have a not so good feeling being TS from this braindead thread. The topic was interesting , and the results of the poll show a far more balanced view than a lot of the back and forth arguing would suggest ( even Atariksi only voted 'most things better on a8' ) - It's always interesting seeing the evidence given as backup - I would never have looked at Photochrome if I hadn't picked up on ST stuff again, and PeteD's APAC conversions ( and the odd C64 picture that crept in ) are also interesting to look at. Even the 160x240x16 mixed resolution picture Atariksi put up was cool - if it was on A8 I think it's a really really good piece of handiwork.

Ah well, I should really read all of the thread overnight before replying

Well, I was asking you to back up your point - I assumed you had the technical knowledge to do it. The parrot picture isn't that important to me - I just placed it as an example from the web of a 128 colour picture. Don't worry though - I'm still waiting for your Kaliya picture on A8 , as I've said several times, as I'm interested in how that looks on an A8. ( If you've only made it on photoshop just let me know, as I can stop asking for it )

I think you need to read up again - subsampling chroma is effectively low pass filtering the colour, or 'dropping the resolution'

What's photoshop got to do with the A8?