Something about XBOX that pisses me off.

I hate how all the games have this \'overly bright textured look\'. The games just don\'t seem to look realistic in a photo realism sense. I find that PS2 uses more gritty colours, and gives the overall look of games a realistic appearance.

Is this to do with the XBOX hardware? Is it possible to use these same gritty colour\'s on XBOX?

Here is an example of what I am talking about. Below are pics from the PS2 and XBOX version of NFS:HP2.

See what I mean when it comes to the colours?

PS2


XBOX


I know its kinda hard to tell from the screens, but I think you all get my drift.

THe PS2 version looks dirty (I don\'t know how to explain this) and the Xbox version looks fruity. Maybe you should get better pics to compare?

Thats what I am talking about though! PS2 games look gritty, where as XBOX games have this smooth bright coloured sorta thing about it.

I dunno, I might need to find better pics.

[GmanJoe]

I think what racer means is that the Xbox version looks pasted on. Sorta like taking pictures of cars and pasting them to another photo of a different quality. Hence....the cookie-cutter look.

I do agree. But there are some games on Xbox beautifully executed. Some. Munch\'s Oddysee for one.

All I know is when I get the games home, the PS2 can\'t touch the textures on xbox.  The games just look better.

X-Box- To bright


PS2- To gritty


NGC- Just right

yeah, if it wasnt for the shitty controller, the NGC would be looking fabulous

"Shitty" is subjective, my friend..

[Living-In-Clip]

I always reffered to it as the DirectX look, but what do I know?

I prefer the ultra colorful Xbox graphics over the gritty PS2 graphics; just a personal preference.

Actually, the controller is the only thing I like about the NGC right now.  

What I dislike about PS2\'s graphics is how it seems like most games only have a dozen colours in them.

I can see both points of view. I used to argue this point a lot back in the DC vs. PS2 day. I do like the grittier color scheme in -SOME- games.. because some games have an atmosphere which just demands dark and realistic looking color pallets. The PS2 seems to get these games down excellently.. but you really don\'t see any of the overly colorful and impressive scenes that you will on Xbox, NGC, or DC. Some games just demand bright and colorful graphics.. like Crazy Taxi for example. "Dirty" jus dosen\'t cut it.

For me tho.. I enjoy texture detail far more than color schemes. What\'s the point in realistic coloring if the textures are all washed out and faded? This is one of the PS2\'s biggest hurdles (along with AA).. and we know it can be overcome. It\'s just a question of how often we\'ll see it. In the end it all comes down to gameplay tho.. graphics are only impressive for about 20 minuites on average. After that, you\'re stuck with what\'s beneith all the flash..

I think the Xbox games have cleaner images.  I found some info.

PS2 vs. Xbox: Graphics Processors


Here is where the PS2 and Xbox differ tremendously in approaches to graphics processor design.  Again we\'ll start out with the PS2 first.  The task of rendering is left to the Graphics Synthesizer (GS) which is a massively parallel graphics core running at 150MHz.  The low clock speed of the core is theoretically made up for by the fact that it has 16 pixel pipelines giving a theoretical pixel fill rate of 2.4 gigapixels/s and a peak theoretical texel fill rate of 1.2 gigatexels/s for single textured games.  We all know how reliable theoretical fill rates are so we\'ll leave the specs at that, but it is pertinent to point out that these fill rates are entirely dependent on 100% utilization of the 16 pixel pipelines of the GS.  As we know from our experience with execution units in CPUs, that sort of assumption should never be made.  

In order to keep those pipelines filled, Sony designed the GS around 4MB of embedded DRAM on the die of the GS and connected to the pixel pipelines by a 2560-bit (that\'s not a typo) bus.  When operating at 150MHz this gives the GS a 48GB/s path to its 4MB of eDRAM.  The theory behind this is that with that much bandwidth, keeping all 16 pixel pipes filled should not be a problem.  This is one of the strong points of the GS design although it is highly unconventional due to the sheer die space and bandwidth requirements of the massively parallel pixel pipeline design.

The problem is that as you very well know, 4MB is not enough to store all of the information necessary to render frames that are supposed to be displayed at 60 fps.  Thus the GS is in need of a high speed external memory bus.  As with all consoles, the graphics processor and host CPU share the same memory space and bus.  In the case of the PS2, Sony decided to go the Rambus route and outfitted the PS2 with 32MB of dual channel PC800 RDRAM.  This is the same memory bus configuration as the Pentium 4 and thus offers 3.2GB/s of memory bandwidth to be shared between the EE and GS.  This is hardly enough memory bandwidth and hardly enough memory storage for game execution code as well as high resolution textures.  This is generally why most PS2 games are limited to relatively low resolution textures compared to what we\'re used to seeing on PCs.  While the embedded DRAM of the GS core definitely helps out, there is still room for improvement.  

Anti-aliasing can be done by the GS however memory bandwidth and fill rate constraints are very present since as far as we know, the GS was not designed around a multisampling AA algorithm in mind.  The culmination of all of this is that PS2 games have been branded as being very aliased and poor in image quality mostly because of the lower resolution and lower detail levels that game developers are forced to use for textures combined with the usual aliasing issues.

We\'ve already discussed the merits of the Xbox GPU as it is undoubtedly the most powerful GPU on the market today.  It\'s a tried and true solution that is a direct derivative of the NV20/NV25 cores and is given twice the memory bandwidth of the PS2\'s GS.  In fact, the only area in which the NV2A core falls behind is in the lack of any embedded DRAM.  What is quite important is that developers are currently taking advantage of the NV2A\'s pixel and vertex shaders which bodes very well for the PC gaming market since it will hopefully show PC developers how easy these programs are to implement and how stunning the after effects can be.  

The AA support provided for by the GPU also makes a lot of sense however developers do need to enable it in order for gamers to realize its benefits.  Another limitation is that most developers are used to having the host CPU handle the T&L calculations while with the Xbox they must get used to using the GPU and its programmable T&L pipeline for all of that.

pstwo.. do you even have your own opinion or did someone copy/paste your views into your head? I think they were asking for personal preference.. not necessarily a tech analysis.

[Jumpman]

The only thing that pisses me off about Xbox is that montrosity of a controller. The graphics are already far beyond anything the PS2 can handle IMO. Also, just because one Xbox port has brighter colors it doesn\'t mean all of the games have it. I would like to hear some of these other games that supposedly have this "overly bright textured look".

PS2\'s aliasing problem really bothers me. GameCube and Xbox have great anti-aliasing so it\'s hard to look at PS2\'s games sometimes. That\'s why I prefer N64\'s graphics over PSX\'s even with the blurro-mania textures. Just my odd preference.