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You are forgetting the Sega Model 1 and Sega Model 2 arcade platforms. So many great 3D games (Virtua Fighter, Virtua Racing, Daytona USA) Sega's problem wasn'
by phire 3y ago
You are forgetting the Sega Model 1 and Sega Model 2 arcade platforms. So many great 3D games (Virtua Fighter, Virtua Racing, Daytona USA)
Sega's problem wasn't that it didn't see 3D coming. They did, despite the common claims on the internet, the Saturn was designed to be a 3D capable console, with dedicated 3D hardware.
Sega's problem is that they bet on the wrong 3D technology. Like Sega's arcade systems. the Saturn was designed for quads, and could only do forwards texture mapping (which doesn't allow for UV coordinates).
While the playstation went for triangles and inverse texture mapping. It turns out that was the correct direction, and the whole industry settled on that as a standard. All game engines and tooling would assume triangles.
To make things worse, the Sega's hardware 3D implementation wasn't that good even at the techniques it was trying to implement.
- KingOfCoders 3y ago"[...] and Daytona was great too" "You are forgetting [...] Daytona USA"
- phire 3y agoI mean the arcade version of Daytona USA, which ran on a dedicated 3D arcade hardware (The Sega Model 2) that predated the Saturn by 2-3 years. Part of the reason why the Saturn port of Dayton USA was so good, is because the game was designed for the Model 2 hardware, and the Saturn's 3D capabilities were cost-optimised versions of the Model 2 3D capabilities. VDP1 was designed to do 3D. It's not just a 2D sprite engine that developers later tricked into doing 3D, it was absolutely intentional that it would be used for 3D from the very start. the fact the 3D quads could also be used to show thousands of 2D sprites with full scaling/rotation/distorting was more of a intentional bonus of the design. Yes, Sega did miss a trick by also dedicated a bunch of the silicon budget to 2D-only capabilities. VDP2's four layers of scrolling backgrounds plus two layers of mode-7 style "3D planes" are pretty useless for 3D work. They should have dropped VDP2 entirely and and focused on making VDP1 more powerful. When games were actually designed around the Saturn's 3D capabilities, the results were pretty good. Daytona is great, Tomb Raider is another great. Some games went further, going out of their way to adjust their game design so they could take advantage of VDP2's 3D planes. That's the major reason why Panzer Dragoon looks so good, the water is a 3D VDP2 layer. The skybox too, but that's reasonably common technique in Saturn games.