Jaguar's polygon pushing "power"

[Atari_Owl]

I heard of that (Voxatron) - it does look interesting.. looks like proper voxels? not just heightmapping like the rest (and i include myself in that)

 

Am i mistaken or is there another full voxel thing? Some kind of fan project? I cant really remember.

Edited May 3, 2012 by Atari_Owl

[JagChris]

Found this referenced from a Tomb Raider on the Jaguar fantasy thead:

 

http://www.atariage....00#entry1235640

 

 

Actual graphics performance is hard to measure, as there are no industry-

standard benchmarks. Rebellion Software has claimed that the Jaguar can

render "10,000 Gourard shaded, large, 65536 color, any shape polygons per

second," while still performing other tasks. Presumably this level can

be increased further with optimized programming; indeed, some unofficial

calculations speculate that FIGHT FOR LIFE may generate between 20,000 to

40,000 texture-mapped polygons per second.

 

This seems kinda high. I think they were smoking something.

Edited May 14, 2012 by JagChris

[+CyranoJ]

Plus 'Fight For Life' looks and plays like utter shit, so hardly a good benchmark.

 

Anyway, lots of polys won't give you a great game if the underlying game is crap to start with. For example, I'd rather play Virtua Racing than Ridge Racer 17 because it's more FUN.

 

EDIT:

 

Plus 20,000 polys/sec is only ~333 polys/frame at 60hz... Fart inflated beachball, anyone?

[JagChris]

Plus 'Fight For Life' looks and plays like utter shit, so hardly a good benchmark.

 

Anyway, lots of polys won't give you a great game if the underlying game is crap to start with. For example, I'd rather play Virtua Racing than Ridge Racer 17 because it's more FUN.

 

Agreed, but fun factor aside, the topic is the Jags poly pushing power.

[+CyranoJ]

Agreed, but fun factor aside, the topic is the Jags poly pushing power.

 

Then why were you talking about voxels for the last 2 pages?

[JagChris]

Agreed, but fun factor aside, the topic is the Jags poly pushing power.

 

Then why were you talking about voxels for the last 2 pages?

 

Coercion.

[fernando marrin]

i really enjoy my Jag,

and always wondered if it was more powerful on 3D than 32x

polygon games look quite similar on both systems

[Chilly Willy]

i really enjoy my Jag,

and always wondered if it was more powerful on 3D than 32x

polygon games look quite similar on both systems

 

Neither one lasted long enough to get a REAL look at how good they could do 3D. The 32X barely got one generation of games, and everyone knows that first gen games rarely push the console. They weren't even using the DMA for the sound on the 32X before it got canceled! If you've seen my Yeti3D demo for the 32X, you start to get an idea of what they could have done, and even that is just a taste.

 

What the 32X had going for it: good compilers, separate frame buffers, and the 68000 could run in the Genesis work ram without stealing bus cycles from the RISC chips.

What it had going against it: 16 bit buses really limited the bandwidth, no hardware for the video beyond a simple line fill, and little ram.

 

What the Jaguar had going for it: a hardware blitter that also handled 3D, and a lot more ram.

What it had going against it: bugs that needed to be worked around, lack of a good compiler for the RISC, and a shared bus. At least that bus was wide and fast!

[VladR]

I read the whole thread and still have only a very vague idea about the jag`s poly throughput.

 

If Fight For life pushes roughly 30.000 tris/sec, that means it`s just 1000 tris per frame in 30 fps (or 500 tris in 60 fps).

 

And it has been said that even this is questionable.

 

As a PC/Xbox game programmer, growing up with Atari, who would like to give a Jag try (I got several shitloads of art assets and C++ code/engine), I`d appreciate if I got some more precise answer - e.g. does 30k textured tris per second (under normal game load - e.g. AI/Audio/Input) sound about right ?

 

Depending on game / camera, 30 fps might be more than enough. Hell, a top-down action RPG is usually playable even in 15 fps.

And that would give me 2,000 tris per frame, which might be enough for a relatively decent-looking scene.

 

 

So, 30k textured tris/second - as a ballpark figure - is it representative of an easily achievable performance on Jag ?

[Atari_Owl]

Let me put it this way

 

Tomb Raider II on the PS1 is 15fps and less, i've measured 12 even in relatively empty scenes so it will surely get much lower

Majora's Mask on the N64 is 16fps and less and it has been claimed although i have not measured such that it drops below 10fps in busy scenes (OoT is slightly higher than MM but not massively)

 

How many polys depends on what kind of polys, size and if you use the not really very good Atari renderer.

If you run the 3D JAZ demo you can see how many polys/sec the Atari renderer can draw.

 

 

And no i'm not going to get into how many AOP is drawing because its a sure fire recipe for trouble and p***ing contests

[+Stephen]

I read the whole thread and still have only a very vague idea about the jag`s poly throughput.

 

If Fight For life pushes roughly 30.000 tris/sec, that means it`s just 1000 tris per frame in 30 fps (or 500 tris in 60 fps).

 

And it has been said that even this is questionable.

 

As a PC/Xbox game programmer, growing up with Atari, who would like to give a Jag try (I got several shitloads of art assets and C++ code/engine), I`d appreciate if I got some more precise answer - e.g. does 30k textured tris per second (under normal game load - e.g. AI/Audio/Input) sound about right ?

 

Depending on game / camera, 30 fps might be more than enough. Hell, a top-down action RPG is usually playable even in 15 fps.

And that would give me 2,000 tris per frame, which might be enough for a relatively decent-looking scene.

 

 

So, 30k textured tris/second - as a ballpark figure - is it representative of an easily achievable performance on Jag ?

FFL is nowhere near 30 FPS. 12 to 15 maybe. It's not a great game, but I do think it is an impressive demo of nicely textured good graphics 3D engine. I really wish the designer would have went for the look of Tobal No 1 (flat shaded polys).

 

Zero 5 has a very high framerate, but it uses 256 colour mode flat shading, and honestly, only looks to have a few dozen polys on the screen at any time.

 

The Jag was just not designed for 3D. It is a 2D power house but if you look at the way the video is built up, it is really a 2600 on steroids. The screen is built line by line. It's been a very long time since I looked at any of the demos that came with BSG + Jugs, but I am pretty sure they had a 3D demo with FPS and poly counter. I seem to remember 8-10k/sec is the best I ever saw it do - and they were small.

[Crazyace]

I found this - using the Atari 3D renderer , which has poly counts..

Here are a couple of screenshots

This renderer seems use gpu ram as a buffer - so it's faster than the original Atari code.

DEMO.zip

[Atari_Owl]

I read the whole thread and still have only a very vague idea about the jag`s poly throughput.

 

If Fight For life pushes roughly 30.000 tris/sec, that means it`s just 1000 tris per frame in 30 fps (or 500 tris in 60 fps).

 

And it has been said that even this is questionable.

 

As a PC/Xbox game programmer, growing up with Atari, who would like to give a Jag try (I got several shitloads of art assets and C++ code/engine), I`d appreciate if I got some more precise answer - e.g. does 30k textured tris per second (under normal game load - e.g. AI/Audio/Input) sound about right ?

 

Depending on game / camera, 30 fps might be more than enough. Hell, a top-down action RPG is usually playable even in 15 fps.

And that would give me 2,000 tris per frame, which might be enough for a relatively decent-looking scene.

 

 

So, 30k textured tris/second - as a ballpark figure - is it representative of an easily achievable performance on Jag ?

FFL is nowhere near 30 FPS. 12 to 15 maybe. It's not a great game, but I do think it is an impressive demo of nicely textured good graphics 3D engine. I really wish the designer would have went for the look of Tobal No 1 (flat shaded polys).

 

Zero 5 has a very high framerate, but it uses 256 colour mode flat shading, and honestly, only looks to have a few dozen polys on the screen at any time.

 

The Jag was just not designed for 3D. It is a 2D power house but if you look at the way the video is built up, it is really a 2600 on steroids. The screen is built line by line. It's been a very long time since I looked at any of the demos that came with BSG + Jugs, but I am pretty sure they had a 3D demo with FPS and poly counter. I seem to remember 8-10k/sec is the best I ever saw it do - and they were small.

 

That sounds familiar, maybe for textured? I dont really remember

 

Anyway thats what can be done with the Atari renderer... if you're prepared to go to the pain of writing your own then very substantially higher numbers can be achieved.

Plus if you're prepared to go for flat or just gouraud, and without z buffering this will increase even more

[JagChris]

I found this - using the Atari 3D renderer , which has poly counts..

Here are a couple of screenshots

This renderer seems use gpu ram as a buffer - so it's faster than the original Atari code.

 

Thats interesting. Hitting option on the Wire frames demo produces different wire frame models.

[+Stephen]

I found this - using the Atari 3D renderer , which has poly counts..

Here are a couple of screenshots

This renderer seems use gpu ram as a buffer - so it's faster than the original Atari code.

That's the one I remember. Thanks.

[+Stephen]

That sounds familiar, maybe for textured? I dont really remember

 

Anyway thats what can be done with the Atari renderer... if you're prepared to go to the pain of writing your own then very substantially higher numbers can be achieved.

Plus if you're prepared to go for flat or just gouraud, and without z buffering this will increase even more

That's beyond my level of coding at the moment I've been stuck in the business world of code for the past 6 years, and it looks like it will be that way for a lot longer. At least it pays the bills.

[JagChris]

[VladR]

How many polys depends on what kind of polys, size and if you use the not really very good Atari renderer.

If you run the 3D JAZ demo you can see how many polys/sec the Atari renderer can draw.

OK, here are the details of the scene:

1. Top-Down camera at Fixed Height (for slightly less computations per frame, or even precomputed transformations - though 2MB of RAM is awfully low)

2. Outdoor environment - e.g. Flat terrain (2 tris), but obviously covering whole screen, composed of several tiles (say, ~10) - this could be just a simple , huge, 2D sprite - though I`m not sure If I can combine 2D&3D easily on jag. It would be great if I could just use Blitter and draw the whole 320x200 bitmap in one go.

3. Buildings - about ~10 on average (per scene). Polycount is 12-50

4. Characters - Sprites - there`s no way that from that altitude about 15 meters from ground), you could see some nice textured characters from polygons - that would be just a pixel mess, and since there`s no antialiasing, sprites will look better (at the cost of memory)

5. Props - trees/stones/barrels - probably just sprites, prerendered from different angles

6. HUD - Lower part of screen (say, 15-20% of screen height - depending on how I fit all info into just few lines in that low resolution) - a 2D Bitmap (like in Doom)

[VladR]

I found this - using the Atari 3D renderer , which has poly counts..

Here are a couple of screenshots

This renderer seems use gpu ram as a buffer - so it's faster than the original Atari code.

Cool ! Thanks ! That`s what I was looking for ! So, now I have some actual number. 8100 (textured/unshaded) tris/sec which are relatively easily available - since it uses the original atari renderer (and not some super-optimized RISC code)

 

Since this is a top-down game, I don`t need 60 fps, not even 30 fps. 20 fps should be fine. That would give me 400 tris per scene - which should be plenty.

 

Stars to look pretty doable more and more...

Edited May 26, 2012 by VladR

[JagChris]

[JagChris]

Hmm I think my video is the older demo. I think I got the demo.cofs mixed up.

[JagChris]

I got the demo.cofs straightened out. I'll post a video fo the later one here in a bit.

[sd32]

VladR, are you thinking about doing a "Grandia 1" type of game for the Jaguar?. Is that the type of engine you are talking about?

[JagChris]

[Atari_Owl]

How many polys depends on what kind of polys, size and if you use the not really very good Atari renderer.

If you run the 3D JAZ demo you can see how many polys/sec the Atari renderer can draw.

OK, here are the details of the scene:

1. Top-Down camera at Fixed Height (for slightly less computations per frame, or even precomputed transformations - though 2MB of RAM is awfully low)

2. Outdoor environment - e.g. Flat terrain (2 tris), but obviously covering whole screen, composed of several tiles (say, ~10) - this could be just a simple , huge, 2D sprite - though I`m not sure If I can combine 2D&3D easily on jag. It would be great if I could just use Blitter and draw the whole 320x200 bitmap in one go.

3. Buildings - about ~10 on average (per scene). Polycount is 12-50

4. Characters - Sprites - there`s no way that from that altitude about 15 meters from ground), you could see some nice textured characters from polygons - that would be just a pixel mess, and since there`s no antialiasing, sprites will look better (at the cost of memory)

5. Props - trees/stones/barrels - probably just sprites, prerendered from different angles

6. HUD - Lower part of screen (say, 15-20% of screen height - depending on how I fit all info into just few lines in that low resolution) - a 2D Bitmap (like in Doom)

 

Doesnt seem unreasonable.. i wish you the very best of luck and shall eagerly watch progress, when you feel confident to announce something please let me or zerosquare know and we'll put it in the homebrew project list