SEGA SATURN'S GRAPHICS & RESOLUTION

[Aydan]

Ok first of all I have come to a few conclusions.

The Sega Saturn's textures and models are more than fine on a technical level. The one thing which makes them look VERY blocky, pixelated and so on is....

THE RESOLUTION OF THEM.

Think about it. Play a new pc game at the lowest resolution and how pixely and jaggy does everything look? (forget anti-aliasing and filtering since i dsont think these old systems had much of it if any).

Notice how it looks?

To further my theory is look at the High resolution 3D game virtua fighter 2. The models and textures look fantastic wheras other 3d games while still being impressive still have the pixely blocky problem.

The reason for the lower resolution on most games was to keep the FPS high. It's the same with modern games. My PC cannot run most new games on max settings with high full resolutions, but I can play them at full speed on the lowest resolutions.

This is probably why most if not all (minus VF2) are such low resolution and thus look blockly end urgh.

If any sega saturn game could be somehow forced to run in higher resolutions it would look so much better.

My third point is that if you look at the PS2 NiGHTS It is nothing more than the sega saturn version which is a direct port and no changes to models or textures, you can see this yet the models look so much smoother and textures look a little clearer because of the higher resolution.

God damn you sega if you made the machine a weee bit better....



Also finally, the N64 looked the best in terms of no jaggies not because of its filtering but also because it output at a higher resolution. The filtering helped a little i would say but even if you put filtereing on the saturn I dare say it wouldn't have done much.

I play my saturn on my hd tv with the "Smootheness" option on 0 and it does help a little but if only tvs could come with some kind of filtering to make saturn games look even nicer somewhat.

ah well post your thoughts and ideas or proof if possible

[mick_aka]

Dec 4, 2009 9:44:57 GMT Aydan said:

Also finally, the N64 looked the best in terms of no jaggies not because of its filtering but also because it output at a higher resolution.

Almost everything on the N64 ran in 320 × 240 until the RAM expansion pack came out over xmas 1998 when the Saturn was already dead in the water.

With the N64 and the Saturn you are almost comparing two different generations of consoles, if the Saturn had been released in the middle of '96 as the N64 was I dare say the system would be much more powerful, mainly due to the price of components dropping.

And no, there is no way to force the Saturn's VPU beyond it's maximum resolution, which is 704 X 480 at 480i, and if there were there's not enough fast ram to do anything useful at a higher res.

[Aydan]

I'm not comparing it to the N64.

I was simply referencing the fact that it looked less jaggy and so on because of filtering and what not.

Most of the saturn games run at the low resolution which is why the 3d doesntr look as smooth and textures aren't as smooth looking as they do in virtua fighter 2.

[superdeadite]

The N64 has jaggies, they are just hidden by the super blurriness. N64 hurts my eyes, it's like everything is underwater. I much prefer the Saturn's jaggies

[Anthaemia.]

There are plenty of games that ran in the Saturn's lowest display mode and still looked good, though I'll not mention the Shenmue prototype as we've yet to see any direct feed images so it's difficult to say for sure how much of the aliasing was being smoothed by video compression. Of course, we can't say the same thing for Sonic World or Panzer Dragoon Saga, which are two examples that immediately spring to mind when I think of stunning yet low resolution titles. Much of the problem lies with developers - particularly texture artists - who can't find a suitable balance in composing their frames... while the majority of programmers for the Nintendo 64 were restricted by their host platform's memory!

[TmEE]

higher res alone makes little difference, you need higher quality textures too... and higher res will halve your frame rate most probably, as the fill rate of the GFX chips is not too great for higher resolutions.

[Aydan]

Yeah I understand textures also help but play any modern games on the PC and set it mega low on resolution and then higher and it does make a difference. A HUGE difference. Try games like half life or left 4 dead even. The Difference does show itself.

Still, the saturn was just an under dog in the hardware dept. If it was as good as people think then it would have shown one way or another.

Stll my all time favourite system though.

[Kibbles]

Dec 7, 2009 2:38:21 GMT TmEE said:

higher res alone makes little difference, you need higher quality textures too...

Higher resolution rendering renders your Polys and Vertices with greater detail, reducing or eliminating jaggies.

If it's percieved detail you want, then by all means, up the resolution of your textures - however low resolution textures will still look better being rendered and processed at a high resolution than a low one.

Hell, games without textures, a la Virtua Racing, look better being emulated in high res than in low res.

[Aydan]

Exactly what I was trying to say!

a PERFECT EXAMPLE

Sega Saturn games on PC. Look at the Sonic R for pc compared to saturn. The same as Panzer Dragoon on PC. The games are 100% the same. Textures and everything YET Panzer Dragoon looks even better on PC despite being exactly the same. The only difference is higher resolution. FACT.

Resolution plays a part of how it looks, not just the texture sizes or model quality.

Imagine playing Burning Rangers or Nights if they had a pc version, exactly the same quality but higher resolutions. Everything would look better. Textures & models.

[Anthaemia.]

I can appreciate that resolution makes a difference with the overall look of any game, but would something like Burning Rangers appear that much better without improving the draw distance, frame rate and flickering polygon issues, not to mention its strange method of rendering transparencies that would be redundant on any other platform than the Saturn?

[Kibbles]

Dec 7, 2009 21:48:49 GMT Aydan said:

Exactly what I was trying to say!

a PERFECT EXAMPLE

Sega Saturn games on PC. Look at the Sonic R for pc compared to saturn. The same as Panzer Dragoon on PC. The games are 100% the same. Textures and everything YET Panzer Dragoon looks even better on PC despite being exactly the same. The only difference is higher resolution. FACT.

Resolution plays a part of how it looks, not just the texture sizes or model quality.

Imagine playing Burning Rangers or Nights if they had a pc version, exactly the same quality but higher resolutions. Everything would look better. Textures & models.

Well the PS2 version of Nights is rendering in 480 with better models and textures as well as having an original Saturn mode.
I've actually heard a rumor that there was a PC version of Nights developed in-house at SEGA but never released and only used personally by Sonic Team staff?

Can anyone shed any light on this?

[Anthaemia.]

Considering how much of a high profile Saturn game NiGHTS was, it's hardly surprising management wanted to release a PC version. Sonic Team handed over their source code and assets for the Saturn original, but during the porting process it became obvious Sega's US division wasn't able to perfectly reproduce the warping polygonal surfaces of the Soft Museum level, so it was decided a new stage dubbed Sparkle Attic would take its place. After discovering that a planned boss known as Selph had been removed from the final Saturn game, efforts were made to reinsert this character for what quickly became the centrepiece of a PC-exclusive feature. At the very last minute, someone within SOJ - possibly even Yuji Naka (though who has never been confirmed)? - disapproved of the changes that were made and reminded Sega PC their sole purpose was to simply release PC versions of existing console or arcade titles... as if the unit's name wasn't enough of a clue! I'm in absolutely no doubt copies of this are still enjoyed personally within Sega, though I can assure you it was certainly not the work of Sonic Team and would only have been approved by Naka's department.

[Kibbles]

Speaking of Sleph, was it ever unveiled as to what that boss fight was going to be? Presumably something to do with 'self' and it would have affected the Story as the director of Nights Journey of Dreams on Wii himself stated that Selph was deleted from the final game because they felt the story was perfect as it was.

[Anthaemia.]

Takashi Iizuka has never gone into detail about Selph, though it's probably a safe guess from the other references within NiGHTS that it would have been somehow linked to either of the characters you can play as, perhaps even being a mirror image of their consciousness or some kind of alter ego, much like Reala is to Nights. If this is correct, I can at least see why Selph was removed because there was already an ego conflict with the Reala battles and then later against Wiseman during the brief instance there are both Elliot and Claris on screen in-game. Anyway, I'm no psychologist and this is probably way off the mark, but it does seem quite likely based on what we do know...

[Aydan]

Yeah Burning Rangers would have helped with those upgrades, but I'm talking from a stand point of resolutions. It would have looked better in terms of models and textures. Sure the other glitches would exist but I'm not taking them into consideration.

As I said, the PC version of Saturn titles with higher resolutions look fantastic. Panzer Dragoon for example. Exactly same games, textures and models yet the higher resolution on PC makes it looks SO much better. The textures don't look as blocky or pixelated for example. The models also look better, just everything really.

Ah well.

I also read up on a HUGE HUGE article which was posted on this forum about the saturn hardware stating that several programmers said it's easy to get the Saturn to run as fast if not some what better than playstation in its games however the problem was you needed to be able to program in assembler to take advantage of its dual processors to sync them wheras the PSX had libraries made already and you could use C language to do it all, making it easier for better results.

Such a shame.