4 ms·

Yes, but it's basically the same story with the playstation. VDP1 draws distorted textured quads (it's misleading to call them sprites). The playstation's GPU

by phire 3y ago

Yes, but it's basically the same story with the playstation. VDP1 draws distorted textured quads (it's misleading to call them sprites). The playstation's GPU displays distorted textured triangles. The playstation GPU also knows nothing about 3D, it doesn't have a depth buffer. Like the Saturn, you have to implement depth sorting on the CPU and link all those distorted triangles up in the right sequence of 3-corner polygons to render a 3D model. Yet nobody ever claims the playstation isn't a 3D console.

KingOfCoders 3y ago
"it's misleading to call them sprites" "Sega calls them ‘distorted sprites’" [0] [0] https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/sega-saturn/#graphics https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/sega-saturn/#graph...
- phire 3y ago
  It's not incorrect to call them distorted sprites. They are. But they are also texture-mapped quads, because the two concepts are functionally identical. Sega explicitly pointed out this relationship in the documentation they sent out to developers. And if you are in a discussion about if VDP1 is 3D capable or just advanced 2D hardware that clever programmers tricked into doing 3D, then it doesn't really matter what terminology Sega used. It's misleading terminology because if the person you are talking to doesn't understand the functional equivalence between distorted sprites and texture-mapped quads, as the "sprite" terminology might lead them to assume it's 2D-only hardware.
  - KingOfCoders 3y ago
    "And if you are in a discussion about if VDP1 is 3D capable" This was not the discussion. The discussion was if Sega missed the total shift of gaming to 3D games that was brought on by 3D graphics cards and that propelled PCs into the mass gaming market (before 3D it mostly excelled at thing consoles couldn't do, like text adventures and point&click). And that it didn't need 2D hardware (at least for the international market, JP had e.G. more Shmups and it seems less interest in 3D shooters) but dedicated 3D hardware like the PowerVR2 they did put in the Dreamcast (too late, and I wrote Dreamcast software and loved the machine, so I'm not against Sega hardware in any way). And if they had anticipated the move of games (the vast majority of todays AAA titles are 3D games, for the better or worse, and in the Top 10 of most sold games, 8 are 3D and 2 are 2D or 2.5D) in it's majority to 3D, they at least had a chance to overtake the Playstation and survive as a game hardware vendor. The Saturn was only on par with the Playstation (e.G. at the time I owned Tomb Raider on both), which wasn't enough. If you take a look at the most sold PS1 games, it's mostly 3D games: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PlayStation_video_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PlayStati... The Wikipedia page says this about 3D of the Saturn: "[..] which resulted in the creation of the "SuperH RISC Engine" (or SH-2) later that year [..] According to Kazuhiro Hamada, [..] we realized that a single CPU would not be enough to calculate a 3D world." Although the Saturn's design was largely finished before the end of 1993, reports in early 1994 of the technical capabilities of Sony's upcoming PlayStation console prompted Sega to include another video display processor (VDP) to improve 2D performance and 3D texture mapping" Sega build the Saturn without a focus on 3D. Because they saw 3D coming too late, late in and after development had mainly finished, they added a 2nd CPU and added a VDP for 3D texture mapping to compensate for the lack of 3D capabilities.

by phire 3y ago

KingOfCoders 3y ago

"it's misleading to call them sprites" "Sega calls them ‘distorted sprites’" [0] [0] https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/sega-saturn/#graphics https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/sega-saturn/#graph...

phire 3y ago
It's not incorrect to call them distorted sprites. They are. But they are also texture-mapped quads, because the two concepts are functionally identical. Sega explicitly pointed out this relationship in the documentation they sent out to developers. And if you are in a discussion about if VDP1 is 3D capable or just advanced 2D hardware that clever programmers tricked into doing 3D, then it doesn't really matter what terminology Sega used. It's misleading terminology because if the person you are talking to doesn't understand the functional equivalence between distorted sprites and texture-mapped quads, as the "sprite" terminology might lead them to assume it's 2D-only hardware.
- KingOfCoders 3y ago
  "And if you are in a discussion about if VDP1 is 3D capable" This was not the discussion. The discussion was if Sega missed the total shift of gaming to 3D games that was brought on by 3D graphics cards and that propelled PCs into the mass gaming market (before 3D it mostly excelled at thing consoles couldn't do, like text adventures and point&click). And that it didn't need 2D hardware (at least for the international market, JP had e.G. more Shmups and it seems less interest in 3D shooters) but dedicated 3D hardware like the PowerVR2 they did put in the Dreamcast (too late, and I wrote Dreamcast software and loved the machine, so I'm not against Sega hardware in any way). And if they had anticipated the move of games (the vast majority of todays AAA titles are 3D games, for the better or worse, and in the Top 10 of most sold games, 8 are 3D and 2 are 2D or 2.5D) in it's majority to 3D, they at least had a chance to overtake the Playstation and survive as a game hardware vendor. The Saturn was only on par with the Playstation (e.G. at the time I owned Tomb Raider on both), which wasn't enough. If you take a look at the most sold PS1 games, it's mostly 3D games: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PlayStation_video_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PlayStati... The Wikipedia page says this about 3D of the Saturn: "[..] which resulted in the creation of the "SuperH RISC Engine" (or SH-2) later that year [..] According to Kazuhiro Hamada, [..] we realized that a single CPU would not be enough to calculate a 3D world." Although the Saturn's design was largely finished before the end of 1993, reports in early 1994 of the technical capabilities of Sony's upcoming PlayStation console prompted Sega to include another video display processor (VDP) to improve 2D performance and 3D texture mapping" Sega build the Saturn without a focus on 3D. Because they saw 3D coming too late, late in and after development had mainly finished, they added a 2nd CPU and added a VDP for 3D texture mapping to compensate for the lack of 3D capabilities.