The demo jumped into the middle of a heated battle, and several features that the Koei spokesperson had forgotten to mention were immediately evident. The demo ran in progressive scan at 1920 x 1080 resolution, according to a readout in the upper-right corner, and was completely anti-aliased. The environment shown was incredibly expansive, and the characters were unbelievable. Every motion was smooth, muscles flexed and bulged, dust was kicked up and swirled volumetrically as the battle raged. Individual warriors could be heard yelling distinctly over Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. The amount of detail was absolutely staggering, and polygonal clipping (where two models seem to go through each other) was non-existent. It would take far too long to list all the effects that were utilized in the demo, and yet the framerate counter in the corner never dipped below 60. The demo ran for a few minutes and sufficiently wowed the audience.
After that, the investors applauded politely, and the next demo was prepared by Namco, developers of the popular Tekken and Soul Calibur series\'. This time there was no pre-demonstration speech, the spokesman merely described features as they showed up. The Namco logo flashed onscreen, and then the display showed a huge, detailed, but empty Japanese temple. Techno-rock played in the background as the camera panned over the scene, and the spokesman described the ability of the PS3 to layer 6 textures in a single pass, with more easily possible by allocating power from the Cell. Then, red lightning split the screen, and the Tekken character Jin Kazama was shown in the center of the temple in Devil form, performing an embu. The camera zoomed in to show the individual detail on the feathers of his wings, and then zoomed in even further. The spokesman explained that, using the two EE/GS chips, it was easy to have dozens of textures for various levels of detail on the same model at different distances, and swapping textures out for actual polygonal detail was simple. The camera panned, and Jin\'s moving hair, glowing eyes, and detailed skin were showcased. Individual pores could be seen, and the shadowing was nearly true to life. It would be hard to say which model looked better, this real-time version or the pre-rendered model seen in Jin\'s Tekken 3 ending. (Interestingly, the embu Devil Jin performed consisted of his Tekken 3/Tekken Tag Tournament movelist). Then, the stockholders gasped audibly when Devil Jin morphed smoothly in realtime into the blue-skinned Devil Kazuya Mishima, continuing the embu in his own style without a hitch. At this point, the spokesman calmly pointed out the advanced morph/polygon distortion capabilities of the PS3. Devil Kazuya was surrounded with constant purple lightning which affected the environment\'s shadowing in real-time. Then, the character took to the air and morphed again, this time into a new, previously unseen character: A Devil Heihachi Mishima, who landed heavily on the floor of the temple, disturbing dust clouds both above and below. Actually, this Heihachi appeared to be modelled more after the Tengu, a demon from Japanese mythology. His skin was dark red to contrast with his white hair, and large black crow\'s wings sprouted from his back. Tengu Heihachi roared (impressive in 5.1 Surround) and then proceeded to completely destroyed the temple, revealing unseen polygonal detail in the structure and demonstrating true-to-life physics as wooden structures broke and came tumbling down. The final scene was a pan-out of a growing dust-cloud where the temple had been, and black thunderheads rolling in overhead. Then the Namco logo faded back in, while the spectators applauded.
The final two short demonstrations were provided by Squaresoft, a close partner of Sony\'s. Square had two demos to show. The first was a port of a previously seen demo of a scene from the Final Fantasy movie which had been toned down to run on the extreme high-end of PCs. This demo ran without a hitch on the PS3, and in fact could be modified even further using the controller. But the next demo was more impressive: The final character model of Aki Ross was rendered in real-time. Admittedly, the framerate hovered around 20 FPS at best and the background was a plain gray grid, but the fact that the model was being rendered at all was astounding. The controller was used to move around the model and zoom in on her 50,000 individual hairs and detailed eyes.
As unfinished hardware goes, the PS3 is astonishing. The most advanced game, graphically, of this generation (Doom III), would be child\'s play for the machine to handle. Sony has paid attention to the mistakes made with the PS2, and programming for the PS3 is made much easier by a supplied library of algorithms which can, if the developer chooses, be modified any way they choose.
And the PS3 promises to not just be a game console, but a high-end DVD and CD player as well. With MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 codecs part of the hardware, the visual quality of the images will be crystal clear. And with support for BRD out of the box, it promises to remain cutting-edge for a while.
As to backwards compatibility, that will now be supported by two peripherals, one for PS2 and the other for PS1 games. The peripherals look like stacked black boxes at this point, and plug into the front of the PS3 in the first and fourth controller ports. The front of each peripheral has two Dual Shock controller ports and two memory card ports, allowing for complete backwards-compatibility at a reasonable price. Sony showcased one of its best-selling PS2 games, Final Fantasy X, running through the peripheral. The PS3 performs something extraordinary to many PS2 games: it removes the dreaded "jagginess" that has plagued most releases since its birth. Anti-Aliasing has been implemented in hardware for the first time, and thus shimmering has been reduced as well. This is not a simple blurring effect, as the edges of models are actually sharper than originally. This is the boon that gamers have been hoping for. Sony didn\'t show changes to PS1 games, but said the improvement would be similar to that already provided by the PS2.
The PS3 is still quite a ways off. Its tentative projected date is Fall 2006, and the hardware will undoubtedly undergo many changes along the way to reduce cost and improve some slight graphical glitches (such as a noticeable hitch when some textures are swapped out for polygonal detail on Jin\'s wings, and some slowdown in the temple destruction in the same demo). But from what we\'ve seen so far, Sony is still poised to take the market by storm again.
