Sony Why PS1 graphics warped and wobbled so much

[SaysWho?]

Love videos like this.

 

 

[stepee]

Oh, I thought it was because they used weebles.

[AbsolutSurgen]

I am assuming it was done for cost reasons.  The cost/performance on this thing when it launched in '94, compared to anything else was INSANE.

[legend]

Before I watched the video, my bet was on numeric precision limitations, and I was at least mostly right! Didn't consider the other factors though. Cool video.

[XxEvil AshxX]

I thought it was cuz perspective is hard

[chakoo]

Video is spot on, It's a collection of issues that mostly came down to a cost and throughput issue. Affine issue sucked but the integer vertex coordinates was the worse part. Yet on the flip side the ps1 was far easier to work on than N64 at the time and while you had to render unnecessary polygons you could churn through them faster on ps1 than N64 (the early microcode and z-buffer had a huge penalty cost so it reduced the number of triangles you could process).

 

Side trivial, I'm responsible for the god awful 2nd to last ps1 game published in North America. It was a cheap project NewkidCo wanted us to churn out in 3 months and I had to write 2/3 of the game by myself. NKC went bankrupt once we got sony approval and the game sat in limbo for a few months until Take2 bought up NKC assets and shipped out the game to retail. For half a year I really though I would end up making the last published ps1 title until EA pushed out a fifa release. =|

[Reputator]

As mentioned in the video comments, there's a difference between mipmapping and texturing filtering, which this video doesn't distinguish between. Just something anyone watching should be aware of.

 

The PS1 was a great example of what it took in those days to get 3D graphics into the home. Sega, Sony, and Nintendo all took from different sources but it was the same idea: Scale down a larger commercial machine for consumer use. For Nintendo, it was the SGI workstations at the time used mostly for special effects in the film industry. For Sony it was live broadcast machines that generated real-time visuals for the TV. For Sega it was their arcade systems which, ironically for a failed system, was the only hardware actually made originally for gaming in mind (though it had roots going back to flight simulators).

 

It's easily the most fascinating time for 3D graphics technology.

[gamer.tv]

1 hour ago, chakoo said:

Video is spot on, It's a collection of issues that mostly came down to a cost and throughput issue. Affine issue sucked but the integer vertex coordinates was the worse part. Yet on the flip side the ps1 was far easier to work on than N64 at the time and while you had to render unnecessary polygons you could churn through them faster on ps1 than N64 (the early microcode and z-buffer had a huge penalty cost so it reduced the number of triangles you could process).

 

Side trivial, I'm responsible for the god awful 2nd to last ps1 game published in North America. It was a cheap project NewkidCo wanted us to churn out in 3 months and I had to write 2/3 of the game by myself. NKC went bankrupt once we got sony approval and the game sat in limbo for a few months until Take2 bought up NKC assets and shipped out the game to retail. For half a year I really though I would end up making the last published ps1 title until EA pushed out a fifa release. =|

Awesome story and such a shame as well. 

[stepee]

2 hours ago, chakoo said:

Video is spot on, It's a collection of issues that mostly came down to a cost and throughput issue. Affine issue sucked but the integer vertex coordinates was the worse part. Yet on the flip side the ps1 was far easier to work on than N64 at the time and while you had to render unnecessary polygons you could churn through them faster on ps1 than N64 (the early microcode and z-buffer had a huge penalty cost so it reduced the number of triangles you could process).

 

Side trivial, I'm responsible for the god awful 2nd to last ps1 game published in North America. It was a cheap project NewkidCo wanted us to churn out in 3 months and I had to write 2/3 of the game by myself. NKC went bankrupt once we got sony approval and the game sat in limbo for a few months until Take2 bought up NKC assets and shipped out the game to retail. For half a year I really though I would end up making the last published ps1 title until EA pushed out a fifa release. =|

 

Was it Cat in the Hat?

[chakoo]

25 minutes ago, stepee said:

Was it Cat in the Hat?

Yup. I still even have an extra copy of the submission disc for it (you have to burn to these special disc from sony and send like 6+ copies of it, So I had did a test burn first to make sure the build was valid then made the burns to send to sony. I kept the first disc).

[stepee]

58 minutes ago, chakoo said:

Yup. I still even have an extra copy of the submission disc for it (you have to burn to these special disc from sony and send like 6+ copies of it, So I had did a test burn first to make sure the build was valid then made the burns to send to sony. I kept the first disc).

 

 No offense man but I’m not sure that game looks so great.. :P

[chakoo]

59 minutes ago, stepee said:

 

 No offense man but I’m not sure that game looks so great.. :P

None taken. It's a cheap title made in under 4 months with a stupidly tiny team by a dying publisher to leech off a movie property without having the license rights to said movie property (they licensed out the books). I got roped into doing the work of 2 developers for most of the project and earned double pay for it.  

 

I made far better shit when I worked on Wii/PSP for Ubisoft or Soundshapes for Sony. But that's not really ps1 related. 

[stepee]

Just now, chakoo said:

None taken. It's a cheap title made in under 4 months with a tiny team by a dying publisher to leech off a movie property without having the license rights to said movie property (they licensed out the books). I got roped into doing the work of 2 developers for most of the project and earned double pay for it.  

 

I made far better shit when I worked on Wii/PSP for Ubisoft or Soundshapes for Sony. 

 

Soundshapes was one of my favorites last gen! Would love a new one..but I would want it on switch.

[chakoo]

Just now, stepee said:

Soundshapes was one of my favorites last gen! Would love a new one..but I would want it on switch.

The creator (Jess, formerly John) is cooking something up but it might still be a while. Also unsure it would be switch due to the 3 game contract she had with sony (SS was game #2). SoundShapes was great fun to work on. 

[Bloodporne]

7 minutes ago, chakoo said:

None taken. It's a cheap title made in under 4 months with a stupidly tiny team by a dying publisher to leech off a movie property without having the license rights to said movie property (they licensed out the books). I got roped into doing the work of 2 developers for most of the project and earned double pay for it.  

 

I made far better shit when I worked on Wii/PSP for Ubisoft or Soundshapes for Sony. But that's not really ps1 related. 

I mean, no matter what, you still made a fucking video game.

 

To me you might've as well said you successfully practice sorcery and had a video backing it up. Kudos. I've purposely never educated myself on the technical side of video games in general because I kind of love the magic that comes with my complete ignorance. I was super obsessive about music theory and playing in bands, learning instruments and so on in my late teens to late 20's and it killed that magic element as a pure listener in many, many recordings I had loved.

 

In short, it's a really impressive thing to me and I think it's cool as fuck you've made a game no matter how crappy

[Xbob42]

The wobbling (and the lack of texture filtering) was one of the main reasons I absolutely hated the PS1's visuals compared to the N64, which was blurrier but felt more like a proper finished system. Hearing about how, for example, the Giant Bomb fellas like that grimy PS1 look is very confusing to me. It was visually off-putting in every way, although I do like more modern takes on the style such as Anodyne 2 where they get the low-poly look mixed with modern lighting and it just makes it look very bizarre in a fun way.

Very interesting video, thanks!

[stepee]

4 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

@chakoo I don't know if you care, but you have enough PII in this thread for people to identify you in under 2 minutes.

 

This is actually true and especially easy because of a youtube video that pops up when searching for that game. I can edit if u didn’t realize ^_^

[Dre801]

I sometimes get the urge to pull out my OG PlayStation and hook her up.

[Nokt]

17 hours ago, SaysWho? said:

Love videos like this.

You might like this "Coding Secrets" playlist then. He does a lot of the old sonic games, but has a few others mixed in there.