How many polygons per second is enough ???

As PC's and Consoles and videocards keep getting faster and faster, there should come a point of diminishing returns. I was pondering just how fast they need to be to render essentially any type of game in a photorealistic manner ? If for example a racing sim had cars made of 5000 polygons a piece, and you had a field of 45 cars, running at 60 frames per second minimum with all visual effects turned on, plus an equal number of polygons alloted for environmental objects, it seems you would need about 27 million polygons per second rendered. Assuming that fill rates were adequate for say 1280 by 1024 at that rendering speed, I would think that a very realistic interactive animation could be produced. My question is , at what approximate Fillrate, Polys/sec, etc, will we see games limited less by hardware constraints than creativity constraints in software ? What would be the approximate ideal minimum system specs for a current type of racing sim from a programmers perspective, to create his dream racer ? How many generations of PC hardware or console hardware are we from those specifications, Geforce 6, Playstation 3, XBOX 2 ?

Take an example of a card like a GF2 GTS, that can do, with a good 3d engine, about 10 million triangles per second (it can only do 14 MTris/sec in a contrived demo, not in a real game). So if you want your game to run at 60 fps, that's 166,000 triangles per frame. That may be enough for a racing game, but racing games need way fewer triangles than some other types of game. Say you wanted to render a realistic looking outdoor environment. You would need more than 10X this number. Have you seen the game 'Project IGI' (aka I'm Going In)? In IGI you can see literally for miles and miles in the outdoor terrains. The cost of this is that the landscape are barren, no grass, no bushes, and very few trees. There's probably 50 trees per level, and they are done with 2 triangles each. To do a realistic looking tree is probably 200 triangles at least. So if you want a forest of a thousand trees (which would be a pretty small forest btw), then you've already gone beyond what a GF2 can handle. Then say you wanted to cover the ground with grass, even with only 1 triangle per blade of grass, that would take millions of triangles. Then say you wanted your land to look like real land, and not like it was made of giant triangles, so you want your landscape 4 or 8 times as detailed as IGI's. No current graphics card would get anywhere near handling this. On an X-box, this would probably run at about 2 fps :) Faster graphics cards might not be needed for racing games but they are needed. (btw a card without hardware vertex processing can't get anywhere near 10 MTris/sec) "Loosay2" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]... > As PC's and Consoles and videocards keep getting faster and faster, there > should come a point of diminishing returns. I was pondering just how fastthey > need to be to render essentially any type of game in a photorealisticmanner ? > If for example a racing sim had cars made of 5000 polygons a piece, andyou had > a field of 45 cars, running at 60 frames per second minimum with allvisual > effects turned on, plus an equal number of polygons alloted forenvironmental > objects, it seems you would need about 27 million polygons per secondrendered. > Assuming that fill rates were adequate for say 1280 by 1024 at thatrendering > speed, I would think that a very realistic interactive animation could be > produced. My question is , at what approximate Fillrate, Polys/sec, etc,will > we see games limited less by hardware constraints than creativityconstraints > in software ? What would be the approximate ideal minimum system specsfor a > current type of racing sim from a programmers perspective, to create hisdream > racer ? How many generations of PC hardware or console hardware are wefrom > those specifications, Geforce 6, Playstation 3, XBOX 2 ?

On 02 Mar 2001 10:13:28 GMT, [email hidden] (Loosay2) wrote: >As PC's and Consoles and videocards keep getting faster and faster, there >should come a point of diminishing returns. I was pondering just how fast they >need to be to render essentially any type of game in a photorealistic manner ? There's a long way to go. Shadows that are projected on the polygons themselves, realtime surrounding reflection mapping... The did a realtime raytracing scene already, with some 60 CPU's @15fps. :) Cool. Haven't got any screenshots though, but it's been done. There is even a method of always rendering your surroundings as a skybox texture, then as the player moves through the environment, you re-render those textures. Think about it for a while, it's not that trivial to visualize. :) >If for example a racing sim had cars made of 5000 polygons a piece, and you had >a field of 45 cars, running at 60 frames per second minimum with all visual >effects turned on, plus an equal number of polygons alloted for environmental >objects, it seems you would need about 27 million polygons per second rendered. Aren't we already at 1 Gigapixels/second for some time, and 27M poly's doesn't seem like *that* much nowadays. It's just that the system buses are getting a bit crowded. Let's hope they'll crossbar the PC's architecture soon (or *something* to get the subsystems to talk to each other faster). Ruud van Gaal, GPL Rank +53.25 Pencil art : http://www.marketgraph.nl/gallery/ Car simulation: http://www.marketgraph.nl/gallery/racer/

I haven't seen the movie you are talking about, but I have seen the demo running at a mall store. What you are seeing is a replay, which runs usually at a higer resolution than actual gameplay. It's a common trick among console advertisers, All footage on TV about the Sports games Like Madden 2001 etc are replay shots not actual in-game action. I have been underwhelmed by many of the PS2 titles I've seen over in my son's room..(gonna have to ask the missus what his name is again) GT3 does indeed look smashing but I have yet to see what the actual racing looks like and or the cockpit.... dave henrie "rrevved" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

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> On 02 Mar 2001 10:13:28 GMT, [email hidden] (Loosay2) wrote: > > >How many generations of PC hardware or console hardware are we from > >those specifications, Geforce 6, Playstation 3, XBOX 2 ? > > Have you seen any screenshots/movies of Gran Turismo 3 on the PS2? > You should take a look. The movie is 18mb but I -guarantee- that you > won't believe your eyes. It will be released in March in Japan and > in June in the U.S. > > Pics: > http://www.ps2faction.com/gamedb/screenshot.php3?id=70&page=1 > > Movie: > http://www.dailyradar.co.uk/features/game_feature_page_457_1.html > >

>"rrevved" <[email hidden]> wrote > Have you seen any screenshots/movies of Gran Turismo 3 on the PS2? > You should take a look. The movie is 18mb but I -guarantee- that you > won't believe your eyes. It will be released in March in Japan and > in June in the U.S. I had the chance to see the press version of GT3 sent a couple of weeks ago. Graphics are so-so, they are on-par with NFS:PU, but not anything more. They over-do everything. Realism has really took the back seat in GT3. AND THE PS2 FLICKERS!!!!! OH MY EYES!!!!! -- -- Fran�ois M�nard <ymenard> -- May the Downforce be with you... -- http://www.ymenard.com/ -- People think it must be fun to be a genius, but they don't realise how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.

I read a looong time ago in an interview with game developers that for photorealism they would need a minimum of 80 Million Poly's per second. As far as fillrate, I think Ten Gigapixels would be enough. There's more to realism than fillrate and polygons, thats why the some GF3 reviews are 25 pages long. "Loosay2" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]... > As PC's and Consoles and videocards keep getting faster and faster, there > should come a point of diminishing returns. I was pondering just how fastthey > need to be to render essentially any type of game in a photorealisticmanner ? > If for example a racing sim had cars made of 5000 polygons a piece, andyou had > a field of 45 cars, running at 60 frames per second minimum with allvisual > effects turned on, plus an equal number of polygons alloted forenvironmental > objects, it seems you would need about 27 million polygons per secondrendered. > Assuming that fill rates were adequate for say 1280 by 1024 at thatrendering > speed, I would think that a very realistic interactive animation could be > produced. My question is , at what approximate Fillrate, Polys/sec, etc,will > we see games limited less by hardware constraints than creativityconstraints > in software ? What would be the approximate ideal minimum system specsfor a > current type of racing sim from a programmers perspective, to create hisdream > racer ? How many generations of PC hardware or console hardware are wefrom > those specifications, Geforce 6, Playstation 3, XBOX 2 ?

PS2 IS TRULY OUTSTANDING I never thought I would consider it but after seeing those pictures and reading the specs looks like I should be shopping for one instead of a DVD player What's your advise guys? rrevved <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

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> On 02 Mar 2001 10:13:28 GMT, [email hidden] (Loosay2) wrote: > > >How many generations of PC hardware or console hardware are we from > >those specifications, Geforce 6, Playstation 3, XBOX 2 ? > > Have you seen any screenshots/movies of Gran Turismo 3 on the PS2? > You should take a look. The movie is 18mb but I -guarantee- that you > won't believe your eyes. It will be released in March in Japan and > in June in the U.S. > > Pics: > http://www.ps2faction.com/gamedb/screenshot.php3?id=70&page=1 > > Movie: > http://www.dailyradar.co.uk/features/game_feature_page_457_1.html > >

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>PS2 IS TRULY OUTSTANDING > > > I never thought I would consider it >but after seeing those pictures and reading the specs >looks like I should be shopping for one >instead of a DVD player > >What's your advise guys? >

I bought the PS2 a month ago, and I own a Dreamcast as well. GT3 is the game I am most anticipating. I expect it will be awesome overall, yet flawed in some respects, as is true with all games and sims. It is certain not to please a few PC loyalist, no matter how good the game maybe. If you cannot stand TV resolutions, or just don't like consoles, then you will dislike this game and nitpick about its shortcomings no matter what. Most of the games I have rented or bought for the PS2 are not any better than the average dreamcast games , and a few are actually inferior in both gameplay and graphics, to my surprise given that the PS2 is supposedly more than 10x as fast as a Dreamcast in theory. However, Madden 2001 is the one game I have seen that shows off the superiority and potential of the PS2. The motion capture variation is far beyond the PC version of the game, and runs ultra smooth, and is very realistic, easily the best I have ever seen on PC or console, ever. The PC version is higher rez of course, but beyond that, it pales by comparison. As was the case with the original playstation, I expect that we will see the most amazing games on the PS2 at the end of its lifespan. Afterall, no one could have predicted that the lowly 32MHZ 300Kpolygon per sec PS1 would be able to produce something as excellent as Gran Tourismo, based upon the early games that appeared on that system 5 years ago. I think competition with PC and XBOX hardware will push developers to create some games 2 or 3 years from now that currently many people would say the PS2 hardware is incapable of displaying.

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] (Loosay2) wrote:

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>>PS2 IS TRULY OUTSTANDING >> >> I never thought I would consider it >>but after seeing those pictures and reading the specs >>looks like I should be shopping for one >>instead of a DVD player >> >>What's your advise guys? > >I bought the PS2 a month ago, and I own a Dreamcast as well.

PC, PSX, and a Dreamcast here. I just bought the DC after the last price slash after having been on the fence for a while. >GT3 is the game I am most anticipating. Same here. I bought the PSX strictly for Grab Turismo (and later, GT2). Rationally it doesn't stand up to buy a $150 system for one title, but in the end, I'm more than satisfied with the choice. Ditto for the DC. That one was primarily for F355 Ferrari Challenge, but also picked up SegaGT and Metropolis Street Racer. I'm afraid that even at $80 for that system, I'm finding it harder to get my $'s worth. F355 is a terrific driving game. I have a lot less nice to say about the others. What I'm getting at is that it comes down to the application you want it for. To me, iIt makes no sense to buy something for $300 (let alone waiting in line in the freezing cold and/or paying 2x list) if there is *nothing* you will do with it once you have it! I'm amused by all the reports (on-line and in overheard conversations at stores) from owners who are complaining that they either have been disappointed or have not even found anything they want to play on it. If there is a "killer app" for it THAT IS AVAILABLE, then go for it. GT3 *may* be it for the PS2 for me. But (a) it isn't out and (b) aside from improved graphics (no small aside) it doesn't look to be any better than the first GT. I'll wait. And given the XBOX, waiting seems to be a good idea (though I'll wait on that one too!). Don't go by specs, promises or hype. Go by what you see, what you want it for, and from reviewers you trust.