Wii Hardware Discussion

[ShadowV7]

I'm not gonna believe IGN,I don't believe them all that often.Who ever said that it wasn't the final hardware would of mentioned the games that were running on more finalised.Pedro and his tech talk pretty much convinces me aswell

[SpinesN]

Pedro you sure do know your stuff

*thumbs up*

[Jamba]

Pedro what do you do? Are you a dev or do you work with graphics programming?

[kilho]

pedro! outro portugues por aqui?

[pedrocasilva]

Pedro and his tech talk pretty much convinces me aswell

Pedro you sure do know your stuff

*thumbs up*

thanks guys

 

Pedro what do you do? Are you a dev or do you work with graphics programming?

Nothing of the sort, I just do a lot of research on it, it's not like I actually have experience dealing with them though, but I love a good tech discussion so I hang out at those forums, I've read a lot about flipper from the developers themselfes so think I know flipper features very well now, saying that it just strikes me that IGN aren't even informed about what flipper could do, or the original PowerPC for that matter... "souped up Xbox"? that's laughable.

 

But this time IGN is clearly setting the fire on themselfes on this one:

The developer is also hard at work on polishing the graphics in the game to make it a noticeable step up over the previous titles. Retro has added new bloom effects and much more complex particle systems for even bigger fireworks. The target framerate for the final game is a smooth 60 frames per second.

Source: http://revolution.ign.com/articles/707/707486p1.html

 

In a Interview:

IGN Wii: What are the technical differences between Prime 1, 2 and now Corruption? Are you doing anything in this game that you are, visually speaking, particularly proud of?

 

Bryan Walker: Each iteration of Prime, from the first up until Corruption, has really pushed the existing hardware up to its limits. We've made a lot of fundamental changes to the underlying technology of Corruption to take advantage of the additional horsepower of Wii and, of course, the new controller. You'll see things, particularly in the visuals, such as bloom lighting and a lot more pizzazz where particle effects and such are concerned. It's a distinctly better looking game than the previous iterations.

Source: http://revolution.ign.com/articles/708/708948p2.html

 

Do IGN even know what Bloom effect Means? ... no shaders is it?

Bloom (sometimes referred to as Light bloom) is a computer graphics shader effect used by computer games.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_%28shader_effect%29

 

On December 24, 2002, Microsoft released a new version of DirectX to 9.0. DirectX 9.0 introduced Shader Model 2.0 which offered one of the necessary components to enable rendering of high dynamic range rendering, lighting precision. One of the first graphics cards to take advantage of DirectX 9.0 was Ati's Radeon 9700, though the effect wasn't programmed into games for years to come. On August 23, 2003, Microsoft updated DirectX to DirectX 9.0b, which enabled Pixel Shader 2.x (Extended) profile for ATI's Radeon X series and NVIDIA's GeForce FX series of graphics processing units.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_rendering

 

Although the above quote refers to HDR alltogether, bloom could be considered one of the effects of that "suite". So I know for sure that bloom can't be done on DirectX 8 cards/Pixel Shader 1.x, only on software... Bloom is for Pixel Shader 2.x compliant cards. And ATi's R300, Radeon 9500/9700 was the first chip to be able to do those.

[Guest Stefkov]

well ign wrong, didnt believe it anyway, im not the techy guy either.

 

but anyway on to why im posting, ninty havnt really mentioned about this DVD playback function much have they? how much it will be, etc. hopefully theyll show about it soon, even though my 360 has dvd playback, i think it will be much cooler just putting the disc in rather than a tray sticking out.

[Teppo Holmqvist]

I'm sorry about wrong terminology, I'm not that big tech head. But I will believe you get the idea.

 

People are just mixing integrated shaders and programmable shaders together. Cube didn't have programmable shaders, it just had integrated shaders. But what is integrated shader? Every modern 3D-card has lots of different kinds of shaders integrated to the board. Some classic examples are; emboss mapping, bump mapping, projected shadows, self-shadowing, projected reflections, layered fog, etc. Programmer can use and mix these shaders to get desired, cool looking effect in the game.

 

PS2 and Gamecube didn't feature programmable shaders, but Xbox did. Programmer could create their own custom tailored shaders for the game and therefore were less dependant on what different shaders were on the GPU. Of course, many games didn't use custom shaders because GPU's own shaders were more than enough in most cases.

 

So... it looks like with Wii Nintendo has decided (once again) to only have integrated shaders. This gives less freedom for programmers, but it really does make it easier to optimize GPU.

[wackman]

I'm sorry about wrong terminology, I'm not that big tech head. But I will believe you get the idea.

 

People are just mixing integrated shaders and programmable shaders together. Cube didn't have programmable shaders, it just had integrated shaders. But what is integrated shader? Every modern 3D-card has lots of different kinds of shaders integrated to the board. Some classic examples are; emboss mapping, bump mapping, projected shadows, self-shadowing, projected reflections, layered fog, etc. Programmer can use and mix these shaders to get desired, cool looking effect in the game.

 

PS2 and Gamecube didn't feature programmable shaders, but Xbox did. Programmer could create their own custom tailored shaders for the game and therefore were less dependant on what different shaders were on the GPU. Of course, many games didn't use custom shaders because GPU's own shaders were more than enough in most cases.

 

So... it looks like with Wii Nintendo has decided (once again) to only have integrated shaders. This gives less freedom for programmers, but it really does make it easier to optimize GPU.

 

Nintendo Patent:

 

"A graphics pipeline including: a recirculating texture unit including a

texture coordinate processor, a texture mapper and a texture data

feedback path that recirculates selected

texture-mapped data from the texture mapper back to the texture

coordinate processor; and a hardware shader that blends selected inputs

to provide a calculated color or opacity output that is fed back for

use as an input to the hardware shader for a

subsequent blending operation, wherein said hardware shader includes a

blending operation stage that provides both color blend and alpha blend

operations, wherein said texture coordinate processor interleaves the

processing of direct and indirect texture

coordinates."

 

What do you make of this? Displacement mapping?

[Teppo Holmqvist]

Nintendo Patent:

 

Do you have direct link? Abstract isn't usually best place to understand what patent actually means.

[DCK]

l Rogue Squadron games use Normal Mapping with no hit

And IGN say Wii can't do it. Man, they really are talking out of their ass.

[pedrocasilva]

I'm sorry about wrong terminology, I'm not that big tech head. But I will believe you get the idea.

 

People are just mixing integrated shaders and programmable shaders together. Cube didn't have programmable shaders, it just had integrated shaders. But what is integrated shader? Every modern 3D-card has lots of different kinds of shaders integrated to the board. Some classic examples are; emboss mapping, bump mapping, projected shadows, self-shadowing, projected reflections, layered fog, etc. Programmer can use and mix these shaders to get desired, cool looking effect in the game.

 

PS2 and Gamecube didn't feature programmable shaders, but Xbox did. Programmer could create their own custom tailored shaders for the game and therefore were less dependant on what different shaders were on the GPU. Of course, many games didn't use custom shaders because GPU's own shaders were more than enough in most cases.

 

So... it looks like with Wii Nintendo has decided (once again) to only have integrated shaders. This gives less freedom for programmers, but it really does make it easier to optimize GPU.

The overall idea you just gave is right, but Flipper has a very particularly unique architecture. If you were comparing a PC GPU without shaders to one with shaders you would be right on the mark, though... but this isn't the case.

 

ArtX was a small company and they couldn't possibly do a Pixel/Vertex shader compliant device like ATi and Nvidia had at the time, due to a lot of reasons like access to the technology itself, let alone implement it... When ATi aquired them the flipper architecture was ready and medling with it would surely ensue a delay, and it wasn't really needed...

 

Is GC just a fixed T&L pipeline when compared to Xbox's Geforce 3? yes it is... can you do programable shaders? yes you can, easily...

 

How? programmable ISA, it's basically a workaround, Gamecube did it all Rogue Squadron games use Normal Mapping with no hit, aswell as volumetric fog... Zelda Wind Waker would be impossible to do without them, aswell as Resident Evil 4 and well... pretty much every game that pushes the system, it's not in any way harder to do than making a shader for a Pixel Shader compliant architecture.

 

Factor 5 interview:

Planet GameCube: How flexible and useful is Gekko in assisting Flipper with custom lighting and geometry? Are you using this feature? Does it compare to the vertex and pixel shaders on the Xbox's graphics chip?

 

Julian Eggebrecht: Maybe without going into too much detail, we don’t think there is anything visually you could do on X-Box (or PS2) which can’t be done on GameCube. I have read theories on the net about Flipper not being able to do cube-mapped environment maps, fur shading, self-shadowing etc... That’s all plain wrong. Rogue does extensive self-shadowing and both cube-maps and fur shading are not anymore complicated to implement on GameCube than on X-Box. You might be doing it differently, but the results are the same. When I said that X-Box and GameCube are on par power-wise I really meant it.

 

Planet GameCube: In a recent IGNinsider article, Greg Buchner revealed that Flipper can do some unique things because of the ways that the different texture layers can interact. Can you elaborate on this feature? Have you used it? Do you know if the effects it allows are reproducible on other architectures (at decent framerates)?

 

Julian Eggebrecht: He was probably referring to the TEV pipeline. Imagine it like an elaborate switchboard that makes the wildest combinations of textures and materials possible. The TEV pipeline combines up to 8 textures in up to 16 stages in one go. Each stage can apply a multitude of functions to the texture - obvious examples of what you do with the TEV stages would be bump-mapping or cel-shading. The TEV pipeline is completely under programmer control, so the more time you spend on writing elaborate shaders for it, the more effects you can achieve. We just used the obvious effects in Rogue Leader with the targeting computer and the volumetric fog variations being the most unusual usage of TEV. In a second generation game we’ll obviously focus on more complicated applications."

Source: http://www.planetgamecube.com/specialArt.cfm?artid=1906&CFID=11151805&CFTOKEN=aa2c549f1ef80fd7-7CB32E68-C09F-3E62-05BF68C7F058F7E6

 

shame most of my favorite threads on the matter are dead though otherwise I'd have much more material

 

you get my rift though, GC is not even comparable with a standard PC GPU, in that stand it lacks programable shader suport, but on it's unique architecture it does the very same thing seamlessly...

 

EDIT:

And IGN say Wii can't do it. Man, they really are talking out of their ass.

Sorry for quoting you for quote you did to me, but I deleted it (the post) acidentaly, sorry :P (just to point that out)

[Jamba]

So what we are saying is that it is easier in some ways for devs as they don't have to program the shaders but also the GPU (I know this was the case with the Flipper) is incredibly optimised to use all of the shaders that it has available, right? But for other 360 say, there are programmable shaders, which are less effficient but obviously more versatile?

 

So to sum up, Nintendo has to pick the perfect selection of integrated shaders to allow people to make great looking games.

 

Question: Do 360 or PS3 have GPUs which are optimised for using their integrated shaders (if they have any )?

[pedrocasilva]

So what we are saying is that it is easier in some ways for devs as they don't have to program the shaders but also the GPU (I know this was the case with the Flipper) is incredibly optimised to use all of the shaders that it has available, right? But for other 360 say, there are programmable shaders, which are less effficient but obviously more versatile?

 

So to sum up, Nintendo has to pick the perfect selection of integrated shaders to allow people to make great looking games.

 

Question: Do 360 or PS3 have GPUs which are optimised for using their integrated shaders (if they have any )?

It's not easier... it's pretty much the same thing, Gamecube does real shaders, just as easily as a Xbox does.

 

The thing is, a developer who comes from a PC development enviroment is already pretty much used to the pixel shader standard on the Xbox, Xbox 360 and PS3, unless he's been living on a cave since 2000, I suppose. Although he is not used to Gamecube process (that isn't more hard in anyway than the regular process, so it's a matter of learning)

 

GC (and Wii by the sound of it) is just diferent but it gets the work done with just as much eficiency, if not more.

 

Nintendo doesn't have to pick shader pre-implementation on hardware... Devs can program it themselfes, it's really a full programable shader API there, there's nothing Xbox does that GC can't on the shader department. We could question how Wii compares to Pixel Shader 3.0 implementation though, we simply don't know, yet... but it seems to be doing the equivalent to Pixel Shader 2.x (Light Bloom effect at least).

 

I didn't undertand the last sentence you made though... xbox 360 has a new unified Shaders, who is somewhat comparable to the flipper system, ironically...

 

instead of having a separate unit (or units) for Pixel and Vertex Shading it does it all in a unified architecture... well flipper doesn't have separate vertex/pixel shader areas aswell it just uses the programmable ISA for both

 

So I hope that aswers your question although I'm not very documented on those architectures, as far as I know there is no special optimization for a shader in particular, but X360 has unified shaders and that serves optimization purpose, PS3's RSX is also a enhanced architecture for graphics so it might should have some advantages, even if it's a few extra shader units.

[Hellfire]

It's pretty funny that Matt says he's a tech whore and knows nothing. Seriously, this is very retarded and hurts Nintendo's image in the web. Idiots.

[phez_boy]

thats the one thing i have alway liked about nintendo. instead of simply geting a hollow box and just simply shoving in mass amounts of ram and CPU and other high-priced specs, they actually craft the technology so that its easy, cheap, and efficent. and is it just me, or is matt cassamina like a sony and ms secret agent who secretly hates nintendo and wants them to fail miserably?

[xernobyl]

pedrocasilva: Não tens mais nada para fazer???

 

You can do everything without shaders... but not as fast. "a deepness in the sky" has bloom, and it was done way before PS1.0 standard was created. Even earlier demos (1997) on AMIGA had bloom, it can be seen on some TBL works.

I've seen some things about gamecube's architecture a while ago, and it's a really good architecture for graphics, while xbox and ps2 have a standard pc like architecture.

[James McGeachie]

and is it just me, or is matt cassamina like a sony and ms secret agent who secretly hates nintendo and wants them to fail miserably?

 

No, like me he's a realistic Nintendo fan, one who doesn't convince themselves that the hard facts are wrong so they can live in false hope. Regardless of what anyone in this thread is saying, they do not have the Wii development hardware in front of them and dont know what it can really do. Despite how much people want to argue the power of the system too, the fact is we haven't had any footage so far of a game that's really what we could consider a BIG diference from a Gamecube game. In fact, most of the third part games we've seen so far are really a good deal below what I expect from Gamecube games.

[pedrocasilva]

pedrocasilva: Não tens mais nada para fazer???

xernobyl: são 4 da manhã e tão 28 graus :shock:

You can do everything without shaders... but not as fast. "a deepness in the sky" has bloom, and it was done way before PS1.0 standard was created. Even earlier demos (1997) on AMIGA had bloom, it can be seen on some TBL works.

I've seen some things about gamecube's architecture a while ago, and it's a really good architecture for graphics, while xbox and ps2 have a standard pc like architecture.

Yes you can program most things on software but it's nowhere as fast, just like you can force a G4 TI4200 (mid-end) to do DirectX 9 effects on software but that performance will be on-par with a low end GFX 5200... There's always a big performance hit involved.

 

Also those bloom effects you're talking about, that's not called bloom, just a workaround to fake it... what does give the impression of bloom? basically the whites and light filled colors are vibrant... can't you trigger that just by playing with the contrast? This is called "Enhanced Contrast Settings" and was used in games this generation like Metal Gear Solid 3. it's a really clever way to do it but it isn't bloom...

 

Bloom

The visual effect that bloom achieves is that bright spots in a scene get magnified and brighten the area around those spots. In order to achieve this, two passes of down filter are first performed. Because bringing out the bright spots does not require much detail, two passes of down filter boost the performance without sacrificing quality. Next, a bright pass is done. This postprocess picks up the areas in the image that are above a certain threshold, makes them white, then makes the rest of the image black. After that, two alternating passes each of horizontal bloom and vertical bloom are performed. Finally, two passes of up filter are performed, then the result is combined with the original image. Note that the second up filter pass and the combine are done in a single effect, Combine 4x.

Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/directx9_c/PostProcess_Sample.asp

 

if it doesn't do it like this (multiple passes) then it isn't bloom, it requires shaders, and it's a stablished standard.

 

And PS2 architecture has nothing to do with PC architecture, the GPU outputs zero fill-rate it's really all up to the CPU, then you have the vectors... well it's a standalone architecture.

No, like me he's a realistic Nintendo fan, one who doesn't convince themselves that the hard facts are wrong so they can live in false hope. Regardless of what anyone in this thread is saying, they do not have the Wii development hardware in front of them and dont know what it can really do. Despite how much people want to argue the power of the system too, the fact is we haven't had any footage so far of a game that's really what we could consider a BIG diference from a Gamecube game. In fact, most of the third part games we've seen so far are really a good deal below what I expect from Gamecube games.

Then you're trying to tell us that Wii is actually worse than a GC? If a developer with double the power of GC (Wii has at least that) makes a subpar GC game graphics-wise he is simply bad at it, we know as a fact that the Tony Hawk developer didn't ever work with GC hardware before, they are newbies to it and must have a pretty tight budget that explains most of it, I guess. most games on E3 were ported in 2 weeks or less, or were running on a GC on steroids (more RAM and CPU) the only games using the most recent hardware revision were Metroid Prime 3 and Mario Galaxy as far as I recall and those looked great... but still the hardware (GPU) wasn't finished.

 

Most skilled developers could do better graphics out of the cube with just more RAM and storage media space (DVD).

 

Nobody is getting their hopes up though, Wii is no Xbox 360 and it doesn't do HD, we're not even going there... But I know what the GC can do and comments like "Wii is a souped up Xbox" "Wii doesn't have shaders"? are they stupid or what? so they even know what they are talking about? I think they don't.

[mario_jr]

They used the bloom effect in MGS 3 alot. And MOA Airborn has Bloom effect as well but not as much as MGS 3.

[phez_boy]

No, like me he's a realistic Nintendo fan, one who doesn't convince themselves that the hard facts are wrong so they can live in false hope. Regardless of what anyone in this thread is saying, they do not have the Wii development hardware in front of them and dont know what it can really do. Despite how much people want to argue the power of the system too, the fact is we haven't had any footage so far of a game that's really what we could consider a BIG diference from a Gamecube game. In fact, most of the third part games we've seen so far are really a good deal below what I expect from Gamecube games.

 

i dont live in a sense of false hope. i am simply looking at the details. do u realise that the hollywood chip isnt even finished as well as the fact they have spent near 5 years building it? you dont spend five years and only god knows how much money investing in development only to achieve a minor upgrade. and the reason i said what i said bout matt cassamina is he seems like an alright guy, but someone who should be helping promote a system should not be constantly refering to the bad points at any chance available. what about the record braking lines at E3? what about the fact the people lined up for 4 hours and still walked away from the wii with a smile on their face? just give nintendo and their 3rd parties time is what im saying. the judgments being past here should not be applicable to a unfinished and still semi-secret console.

[Teppo Holmqvist]

Regardless of what anyone in this thread is saying, they do not have the Wii development hardware in front of them and dont know what it can really do.

 

Seriously... if Wii's GPU is based on Gamecube, where in the hell shaders would disappear? Of course you can tell us that Wii's GPU will be more primitive than any 3D-card that was released after 1998. Because that is what you are saying and you must understand how stupid, not "realistic" that sounds.

[wackman]

i dont live in a sense of false hope. i am simply looking at the details. do u realise that the hollywood chip isnt even finished as well as the fact they have spent near 5 years building it? you dont spend five years and only god knows how much money investing in development only to achieve a minor upgrade. and the reason i said what i said bout matt cassamina is he seems like an alright guy, but someone who should be helping promote a system should not be constantly refering to the bad points at any chance available. what about the record braking lines at E3? what about the fact the people lined up for 4 hours and still walked away from the wii with a smile on their face? just give nintendo and their 3rd parties time is what im saying. the judgments being past here should not be applicable to a unfinished and still semi-secret console.

 

Well, actually Matt Cassamawhatshisname is very positive about the games on the Wii. He thinks Mario galaxy was game of the show. The only thing he is saying is that the wii will not be as powerfull as many people hope and that a lot of the games we saw at E3 were played on near final development kits. He wants Nintendo to be succesfull, but questions certain decisions Nintendo makes concerning the hardware.

 

I for one hope that some of the games will improve graphicly, because good quality graphics make the game more fun to play. And Nintendo always seems to deliver good graphics. That doesn't mean that things have to be more realisticly. I just want developpers to make an effort to make things look good. The Tony Hawk screenshots are awfull. I think they're early development screenshots but if they're not.... Then they think they can. Zelda looks fine (and a new Wii zelda wil lookeven better) Metroid looks fine (and a new wii metroid will look even better), Mario, looks perfect (because this game was made for the wii).Red steel looks good enough to buy at launch but should/could look a lot better in my opinion.

 

The thing is, we are all guessing at this point ant we won't be sure untill Nintendo will show us what the Wii is actually capable of.

[SpinesN]

Of course the thing has shaders. Consider

1. The wii is backward compatable with the gamecube

2. The wii is the weakest of the next gen consoles

 

You can infer from here that emulation would be impossible since the power to emulate all functions of two unique and proprietary peices of equipment is not present. Thus the wii MUST be hardware compatable with the gamecube. This means that the wii will have all the functions of the cube (and unless nintendo is filled with idiots the wii will have a good number of new functions).

 

For example the GBA can play GB/GBC games because in addition to the 32-bit cpu in it (used for GBA games) is shares the same 8-bit GB/GBC cpu. This is also why the DS cannot play gameboy games as it ditched the 8-bit CPU (it has the 32-bit cpu that the GBA has plus it's own). Can the GBA do more than the GB? Yes. Can the DS do more than the GBA? Yes.

 

The wii will be a bit different (this part is speculation). Since the hardware is much more expensive than GB hardware it would seem that nintendo is keeping all the functions of the older cpu (and gpu) by simply using the current chips has bases for new chips. I suppose it is possible for nintendo to have new hardware and simply throw in an extra cpu and gpu for compatability but given nintendos desire to keep costs down that would be a bit far fetched.

 

As pedro said the biggest problems with the cube were media storage space and ram space. 1.5GB was a bit low and caused a lot of textures to be compressed and end up looking muddy (washed out, dull, etc...) and don't forget pre-rendered videos in games those eat space like mad. Ram space was also a bit of an issue since the xbox has 64MB of ram, the ps2 had 32MB of ram and the gamecube only had 24MB (though it was MUCH faster). Lazy devs didn't want to spend the effort to port games since it would require either redoing ram allocation or just taking things out of the game to allow it to fit in the ram. The ram issue is going to be a BIG thing for the wii, I know pedro has faith in that 64MB (that was the last rumored spec right?) would be fine, but, considering the 360 has 512 (shared for the system, could be 511 for the cpu and 1 for the gpu or any other combination) and the ps3 has 256 for each component (256 for the cpu and 256 for the gpu) I think the ram will be VERY limiting to the wii this time around (as far as ports go). The saving grace of it is that the 360 and ps3 force HD (720p minimue to be exact). This means everything in every game will take up more ram space (more pixels to fill). But I suppose we shall see won't we?

 

btw my main point was that matt's an idiot :p

[Jamba]

Arrrgh.... I know it's kinda my fault but for everyone else who comes to read this thread maybe we should get a bit more on topic or start something in the tech section.

 

Anyways, thanks for aswering my questions as much as you could Pedro, I think that I am thinking about these things a bit too simply. I'll look up a bit more on flipper so I can understand. Thanks for all the quality links as well mate.

 

So, summing up, Matt knows very little about what he's saying. Should we be worried? Doubt it, I'm sure we will see plenty of nice shaders in our games without having to pay a king's ransom.

[Guest Stefkov]

i just noticed on the controller in the all you need to know thread, the home button has a litle house picture, but thats somethign else, the start and selct have changed to a plus and minus? and he small a and b have now changed to 1 and 2? and is it me or has the 'big' a button gotten smaller?