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The PlayStation didn't have perspective-correct texture mapping despite having a real 3D rendering pipeline: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8TO-nrUtSI https:/

The PlayStation didn't have perspective-correct texture mapping despite having a real 3D rendering pipeline: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8TO-nrUtSI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8TO-nrUtSI

sshumaker 5y ago
Yes, which is why games that really took advantage of the hardware like Crash Bandicoot just used tons of small triangles.
- mikepurvis 5y ago
  To be fair, the best N64 games did that too, though for different reasons (pitiful amount of RAM for storing textures).
bitwize 5y ago
A lot of this has to do with the fact that many Japanese manufacturers of the era basically got to 3D hardware by improving 2D sprite chips so they could scale and do affine transforms. This is why the PlayStation couldn't do perspective correct nor filtered textures and lacked a Z buffer, and why the Saturn drew with quads instead of tris. Nintendo partnered with the most advanced Western 3D hardware manufacturer -- SGI. The N64 was kind of a cut down Indigo.
malkia 5y ago
for that reason some games (on PS1) would subdivide on the fly, and have special code to avoid t-junctions (extend by pixel, such that there is no gap), also there were no sub-pixel coordinates hence the "shimmering" - still though some games brought quite impressive graphics for what the chip offered.
- malkia 5y ago
  Another difference was using small 4-bit textures with own palette applied on different parts of the character body, instead of one huge skin (like done in Quake), not only this allowed for better sampling - e.g. no blurries around shoulders, but also better and more optimal use - for example most of your hands, or legs often are with the same texture,hence two (or more) different 4-bit textures might server better than one huge 8-bit one (and the pallette for it would be smaller too). But then there were also tricks of reusing textures (mapping) directly from what was drawn on screen (for blurring, etc).

The PlayStation didn't have perspective-correct texture mapping despite having a real 3D rendering pipeline: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8TO-nrUtSI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8TO-nrUtSI

sshumaker 5y ago

Yes, which is why games that really took advantage of the hardware like Crash Bandicoot just used tons of small triangles.

mikepurvis 5y ago
To be fair, the best N64 games did that too, though for different reasons (pitiful amount of RAM for storing textures).

bitwize 5y ago

A lot of this has to do with the fact that many Japanese manufacturers of the era basically got to 3D hardware by improving 2D sprite chips so they could scale and do affine transforms. This is why the PlayStation couldn't do perspective correct nor filtered textures and lacked a Z buffer, and why the Saturn drew with quads instead of tris. Nintendo partnered with the most advanced Western 3D hardware manufacturer -- SGI. The N64 was kind of a cut down Indigo.

malkia 5y ago

for that reason some games (on PS1) would subdivide on the fly, and have special code to avoid t-junctions (extend by pixel, such that there is no gap), also there were no sub-pixel coordinates hence the "shimmering" - still though some games brought quite impressive graphics for what the chip offered.

malkia 5y ago
Another difference was using small 4-bit textures with own palette applied on different parts of the character body, instead of one huge skin (like done in Quake), not only this allowed for better sampling - e.g. no blurries around shoulders, but also better and more optimal use - for example most of your hands, or legs often are with the same texture,hence two (or more) different 4-bit textures might server better than one huge 8-bit one (and the pallette for it would be smaller too). But then there were also tricks of reusing textures (mapping) directly from what was drawn on screen (for blurring, etc).