60 replies to this topic

[Goodtwin]

Good read 3Dude. A good post backed with links to back up your statements. Good stuff for sure. What still gets me is what exactly is baffling these developers trying to port games to Wii U. For example, what changes need to be made to game code to take full advantage of the large CPU caches? It seems that some developers see the Wii U as a very obvious step up from the current gen consoles. Criterion didnt seem to have trouble outshining the current gen consoles with Need For Speed MW, and that was a port basically done in about 3 months. I know they had played with the dev kits prior to that, but they werent 100% concentrating on NFS MW for Wii U until after the holidays with it releasing in March. Then we have Shin'en and Frozenbyte both stating that its definitely more powerful than current gen. There is obviously some very significant and key differences in optimizing code for Wii U vs the current gen consoles. Heck, that holds true for PS3 vs 360 as well, the main reason most 360 games outperform thier PS3 counterparts, but PS3 was a developers nightmare, Wii U seems to be a more straightforward design, but developers are obviously at a loss on how to get the most out of it. There must be some very fundamental differences at the core that simply make it very tough for developers to port game code to Wii U.

On a separate note, do you guys think that the Wii U may mandate the use of Vsync? For example, a lot of developers seem to sacrifice torn frames to keep the framerate up, but on Wii U, all these games have no screen tearing, but tend to suffer more framerate drops.

Edited by Goodtwin, 11 September 2013 - 09:36 AM.

[GAMER1984]

Good read 3Dude. A good post backed with links to back up your statements. Good stuff for sure. What still gets me is what exactly is baffling these developers trying to port games to Wii U. For example, what changes need to be made to game code to take full advantage of the large CPU caches? It seems that some developers see the Wii U as a very obvious step up from the current gen consoles. Criterion didnt seem to have trouble outshining the current gen consoles with Need For Speed MW, and that was a port basically done in about 3 months. I know they had played with the dev kits prior to that, but they werent 100% concentrating on NFS MW for Wii U until after the holidays with it releasing in March. Then we have Shin'en and Frozenbyte both stating that its definitely more powerful than current gen. There is obviously some very significant and key differences in optimizing code for Wii U vs the current gen consoles. Heck, that holds true for PS3 vs 360 as well, the main reason most 360 games outperform thier PS3 counterparts, but PS3 was a developers nightmare, Wii U seems to be a more straightforward design, but developers are obviously at a loss on how to get the most out of it. There must be some very fundamental differences at the core that simply make it very tough for developers to port game code to Wii U.

On a separate note, do you guys think that the Wii U may mandate the use of Vsync? For example, a lot of developers seem to sacrifice torn frames to keep the framerate up, but on Wii U, all these games have no screen tearing, but tend to suffer more framerate drops.

I'm not sure about the ports but the load times in Blacklist are killing me.I almost feel asleep waiting for a mission to load just morning... What make the loading times so long? I thought Wii U blu-ray disc read write speeds were better than ps360? This needs to be fixed asap

[EvilMoogle]

I imagine a game that is fully utilizing the PS4's power if downgraded to the Wii U would look something like this.

 

http://www.ign.com/v...phic-comparison

 

The PC version of FFXIV compared to the PS3 version is basically what will happen to any Xbox One/PS4 games downgraded to the Wii U in the future.

 

Just compare Skyrim and Oblivion on the consoles, over time the graphics get a lot better for a console.

 

Early on the Wii U be able to keep up and there really won't be any noticeable differences but further down the road you are going to see games look a lot better on the Xbox One and PS4 the same way FFXIV looks so much better on PC. The gap between the Wii U and the "next-gen" consoles will become greater every single year because the Wii U is basically a Xbox 360/PS3 in it's prime. We aren't going to see games look better on the Wii U. What we are seeing now is basically what you are going to get. 

Unfortunately for us Wii U owners we aren't going to see any leaps in graphics and over time we'll be getting downgraded ports from the Xbox One and PS4 that is if we are lucky enough to get ports. 

[GAMER1984]

EvilMoogle, on 11 Sept 2013 - 05:02 AM, said:I imagine a game that is fully utilizing the PS4's power if downgraded to the Wii U would look something like this.
http://www.ign.com/v...phic-comparison
The PC version of FFXIV compared to the PS3 version is basically what will happen to any Xbox One/PS4 games downgraded to the Wii U in the future.
Just compare Skyrim and Oblivion on the consoles, over time the graphics get a lot better for a console.
Early on the Wii U be able to keep up and there really won't be any noticeable differences but further down the road you are going to see games look a lot better on the Xbox One and PS4 the same way FFXIV looks so much better on PC. The gap between the Wii U and the "next-gen" consoles will become greater every single year because the Wii U is basically a Xbox 360/PS3 in it's prime. We aren't going to see games look better on the Wii U. What we are seeing now is basically what you are going to get. 

Unfortunately for us Wii U owners we aren't going to see any leaps in graphics and over time we'll be getting downgraded ports from the Xbox One and PS4 that is if we are lucky enough to get ports. 

maybe from 3rd parties but im willing to put money 1st and second party WiiU games will easily outperform resolution, textures, and framerate over ps360 noticeably starting next year.

[EvilMoogle]

EvilMoogle, on 11 Sept 2013 - 05:02 AM, said:I imagine a game that is fully utilizing the PS4's power if downgraded to the Wii U would look something like this.
http://www.ign.com/v...phic-comparison
The PC version of FFXIV compared to the PS3 version is basically what will happen to any Xbox One/PS4 games downgraded to the Wii U in the future.
Just compare Skyrim and Oblivion on the consoles, over time the graphics get a lot better for a console.
Early on the Wii U be able to keep up and there really won't be any noticeable differences but further down the road you are going to see games look a lot better on the Xbox One and PS4 the same way FFXIV looks so much better on PC. The gap between the Wii U and the "next-gen" consoles will become greater every single year because the Wii U is basically a Xbox 360/PS3 in it's prime. We aren't going to see games look better on the Wii U. What we are seeing now is basically what you are going to get. 

Unfortunately for us Wii U owners we aren't going to see any leaps in graphics and over time we'll be getting downgraded ports from the Xbox One and PS4 that is if we are lucky enough to get ports. 

maybe from 3rd parties but im willing to put money 1st and second party WiiU games will easily outperform resolution, textures, and framerate over ps360 noticeably starting next year.

 

The Wii U is slightly more powerful than the 360 and PS3 in terms of GPU strength but I could have sworn I've read numerous articles that have developers who claim the CPU's clock speed is actually lower than the PS3 and 360 (I could be wrong). 

[3Dude]

developers are obviously at a loss on how to get the most out of it. There must be some very fundamental differences at the core that simply make it very tough for developers to port game code to Wii U.

On a separate note, do you guys think that the Wii U may mandate the use of Vsync? For example, a lot of developers seem to sacrifice torn frames to keep the framerate up, but on Wii U, all these games have no screen tearing, but tend to suffer more framerate drops.

Im pretty sure the difference in how floating point is handled via simd is the main culprit here. Ps360 cpu's would be up crap creek without a paddle without them, its the single most blatantly obvious thing all ps360 games are EXTREMELY system tailored to. The ps3 excels with its spu's, but without proper optimization, the 360 code runs like doo doo when just ported over.

This is very clearly the same case with espresso. Its obviously not a powerhouse, but its becoming more and more obvious that simd fp demands are not the achilles heel I thought it would be. Its obviously quite capable of handling these demands, but it needs system specific optimizations or the code will run like doo doo. And thats something thats just beyond the competency level of these 3rd party bottom tear port teams. Hence why when the actual dev team does it, like criterion or frozenbyte, it ends up with excess. But it almost never runs as bad as the ps3 ports.... Im betting thats down to the system itself and its out of order execution.

It still has the 64bit fpu 'simd' with paired singles, x3 now, but thats very, VERY clearly not whats going on in this picture.

We also know there isnt some unknown proper simd part hidden somewhere on the cpu either.
Rad was pretty specific, when they said non simd.

Its doing it without it. Maybe the pipes are just so short that it just finishes clocks that much faster and it all adds up, I dont know. It would be awesome if rad tools went a little deeper on just how this is going down without simd.

 

CPU's clock speed is actually lower than the PS3 and 360 (I could be wrong).

It is roughly half the clock speed of ps360.

So are the cpu's in the ps4 and Xbone.

Clock speed is completely irrelevent for comparison across different architectures, and a completely useless data point on its own.

Espressos clocks/cycles per second (clock speed) is less than ps360

But its instructions per clock kinda rape ps360.


And the notion, dont reacall who said it, that somebody made about wii u visuals not getting any better than they are right now, that wii u is maxed out at launch is absolutely ridiculous. The commador 64 is still, to this day, getting improved graphics.

[Goodtwin]

I would love for them to go into detail on how this works, but its possible that they actually dont know.  It is surprising that the Wii U CPU is able to do so well with a program designed specifically around simd.  Perhaps some of this is due to Bink 2's ability to better distribute the workload across multiple cores.  So perhaps combined with a very short pipeline that excels in instructions per clock allows it to perform better than expected. 

[Dharmanator]

Wow. That was some great stuff. Learned a lot. I obviously am not that learned about this stuff. I can only rely on the eyeball test.

But you said this 3Dude:

"Yet the little Mcguffin doesnt seem to even care. Its destroying simd resource hogs and surprising devs who actually try left and right. This isnt just surprising, it shouldnt be possible."

The trying part. This is where we come back around to why Nintendo titles will outshine 3rd party and 3 rd party will shy away.

As you may remember from my posts I could care less. I make a point of owning all systems so I can enjoy all the games i have time for.

But for those that only want one system it seems they will always be disappointed in the Nintendo system. Thereby Diminishing its relevance to the masses.

But as long as they sell enough units to support software sales is all I care about anymore. I am confident that will happen.

[djlewe78]

Is it just me or is everyone in complete denial?
Look at the day one releases for xbox one and ps4, im a nintendo guy all the way, and I know graphics arnt everything but come on, they look incredible.
If wiiu can easily keep up with games like that, why haven't they?
It will be a noticeable downgrade and id rather they didn't bother and just gave us original games made for wiiu.
I mean talk is cheap, go to you tube and watch some of these new games.
Who remembers when we were all hyped up as need for Speed most wanted on wii u had "pc textures" lol I just saw the new forza on xbox one being played, now I feel a bit silly ...

[Goodtwin]

Is it just me or is everyone in complete denial?
Look at the day one releases for xbox one and ps4, im a nintendo guy all the way, and I know graphics arnt everything but come on, they look incredible.
If wiiu can easily keep up with games like that, why haven't they?
It will be a noticeable downgrade and id rather they didn't bother and just gave us original games made for wiiu.
I mean talk is cheap, go to you tube and watch some of these new games.
Who remembers when we were all hyped up as need for Speed most wanted on wii u had "pc textures" lol I just saw the new forza on xbox one being played, now I feel a bit silly ...

Need for Speed MW was ported by Criterion in about 3 months, and looks nearly identical to the PC version. The catch here is that the PC version isnt exactly a high end PC hardware taxing game. So even if Criterion were to have gotten the game to run the PC version on Ultra 1080p, it wouldnt have looked much better than it already does.




So yes Wii U is going to be at an obvious disadvantage compared to the PS4/X1, but that isnt to say that developers arent going to be able to leverage the Wii U's abilities in ways that arent fully understood just yet.

‘Wii U eDRAM usage is comparable to the eDRAM in the XBOX360, but on Wii U you have enough eDRAM to use it for 1080p rendering.
In comparison, on XBOX360 you usually had to render in sub 720p resolutions or in mutliple passes.
Even if you don’t use MSAA (MultiSample Anti-Aliasing) you already need around 16Mb just for a 1080p framebuffer (with double buffering). You simply don’t have that with XBOX360 eDRAM. As far as I know Microsoft corrected that issue and put also 32MB of Fast Ram into their new console.

I wanted to revisit what Shin'en said because I believe this could be relevant to the idea that there is likely resources going to waste. I have a feeling that developers are going to start to figure out that 1080p on Wii U is actually pretty easy to pull off on Wii U. Because all the buffers are kept in the edram, super fast with extremely high bandwidth, I have a feeling that a lot of developers are going to figure out that resolution is less likely to be a bottle neck with Wii U than it was with the PS3 and 360. Optimizing the rendering pipeline to maximize the edram's usefulness will likely play big dividends. This may be easy for a company like Shin'en because they are in complete control of their game engine. Remember when Shin'en spoke about proper use of the edram and cpu caches? If you arent using them effectively, there is a monumental amount of performance down the drain. This may be a very difficult task for the majority of game developers who use an existing game engine. Is the developer even in control of cpu caches and the edram when using these middleware options? Even if they are, does your average third party developer who is simply porting software have the skills to fully understand how to optimize cache and edram performance? Its all about betting the most out of the hardware, and its obvious that the Wii U's peak performance leans very heavily on the cache and edram. This is not a normal scenario for game engines that are developed around the PC architecture. Edram on the GPU for example is not used in the PC world.

Again, I am not trying to say that the Wii U is in any way on par with the X1 and PS4, it doesnt match those is outright performance, only that there is still plenty of untapped potential on the Wii U. Now the developers just need to go find it.

Edited by Goodtwin, 12 September 2013 - 08:06 AM.

[Rockodoodle]

Exactly.....

probably depends on how hard the dev is trying because look at skyrim on ps3 it sucks but if they really tried it would probably have little change really unless it was probably something really intense like something specifically made for the console like the engine was specifically made for ps4/xbox one

 

[3Dude]

Is it just me or is everyone in complete denial?
Look at the day one releases for xbox one and ps4, im a nintendo guy all the way, and I know graphics arnt everything but come on, they look incredible.
If wiiu can easily keep up with games like that, why haven't they?
It will be a noticeable downgrade and id rather they didn't bother and just gave us original games made for wiiu.
I mean talk is cheap, go to you tube and watch some of these new games.
Who remembers when we were all hyped up as need for Speed most wanted on wii u had "pc textures" lol I just saw the new forza on xbox one being played, now I feel a bit silly ...

Theres no way wii u is going to easily keep up with ps4, or even xbone. Especially exclusoves.

But on the other end of the spectrum, many of those games you are talking about will NEVER look like what was originally shown. Or even come close. Theyve already recieved numerous visual down grades, some of which are absolutely brutal.

You mention why wii u hasnt shown what it can do yet, then compare a ground up exclusive for xbone, to a ported 360 game with the pc texture game on wii u. Well, thats why, Its still a 360 game.

Devs have crapped out wii u games since the beginning. Not a single game was a serious attempt from a main team on wii u. And those that werent crapped out, were still ports from ps360. Not a single wii u title has been shown from a major 3rd party with 1/10th of the budget or staff used on ps360 games. So f course we wont be seeing anything.

And nintendo, well, nintendo apparantly had a like, six month long bar hopping bender and is still stumbling around with a lamp shade over its head and its pants around its ankles.

Though its starting to sober up. Parts of pikmin 3 have some serious wow factor. Games like tw101 show some SERIOUS horsepower. So much so that people are mistaking actual polygons for textures. (almost all detailing in tw101 is done via polygons as opposed to textures, down to the street paint, pretty clever, polygons dont pixelate no matter how close you get... at least clever as long as you have the horsepower to spare) And has so much going on at once over last gen, that its beyond many gamz gernalizt ability to comprehend and play.

Forza 5 stomps on nfsmwu, which is just a 360 game with a texture pack and improved lighting true... But so does mario kart 8... You can easily see it even with the difference in art style.

A lot of the games people are talking about there not being much if any of a downgrade, are true. Most of them arent making that assessment over system power, but the fact these games are just ps360 games being up ported to ps4 xbone. They are going to be looked back upon like 'gun' and other such early games on the 360. Its really not much of a stretch at all.

Games like deep down have been downgraded so much they are no longer identifiable wuith their original unviels.

Exclusives like infamous are starting to look AWESOME now, but that wasnt always the case. Infamous's SERIOUS lod issues have been lovingly overcome by the art team, but nevertheless is proof the ps4 just isnt the power house many thought it was... If it was it would have powered through unoptimized.

Killer instinct xbone, a side view fighting game has dropped 1080p so it can reach 60fps....

And then you have to think about the fact this gen... as well know it inthe future, hasnt even begun yet. The technologies that will define this generation, for all systems, dont even exist in a real runtime factor yet.

If you keep jumping the gun at every little event, you are going to be feeling silly a lot in the future.

[Happy Monk]

I always go back to this - Iwata said games like Assassin's Creed 3 are only utilizing around 50% of the Wii U's raw power, indeed many of the games released thus far by third parties have only used one of the three CPU cores for the main brunt of processor-heavy elements.

Assassin's Creed 3 looks good enough on Wii U (occasional frame stuttering), imagine something using at least 90% of the system's potential raw power. The Wii U will be fine in terms of graphics, behind? yes. Like the Wii? no. More like the PS2 compared to the Gamecube.

As long as sales pick up, third party ports should start appearing more. But it will never be enough for the internet.

[Dharmanator]

Thanks 3Dude. I always enjoy your posts. I still don't know if we agree or disagree on anything because I am so unarmed for your tech knowledge.

All I can do is try to learn and get more facts.

But as a consumer I do have the need to get what I think is the best product. If the developers aren't optimizing the Wii U it kind sucks for the Nintendo faithful. I really do love Nintendo, but I support all the consoles.

[3Dude]

Thanks 3Dude. I always enjoy your posts. I still don't know if we agree or disagree on anything because I am so unarmed for your tech knowledge.
All I can do is try to learn and get more facts.
But as a consumer I do have the need to get what I think is the best product. If the developers aren't optimizing the Wii U it kind sucks for the Nintendo faithful. I really do love Nintendo, but I support all the consoles.

Thats the way to do it.

[namkotje]

Games like deep down have been downgraded so much they are no longer identifiable wuith their original unviels.
 

 

Indeed.

 

Look at those screens: http://www.neogaf.co...t=676477&page=4

 

Compare that with the reveal trailer: 

 

Also, diminishing returns.

Edited by namkotje, 12 September 2013 - 02:40 PM.

[Nollog]

http://www.radgameto...com/bnkhist.htm

Added Wii-U support for Bink 2 - play 30 Hz
1080p or 60 Hz 720p video! We didn't think
this would be possible - the little non-SIMD CPU
that could!

what exactly is blink 2 anyway?
i saw their changelog a few days ago and they made it sound like a big deal and the psv can do a 544p version of it.

[GAMER1984]

what exactly is blink 2 anyway?
i saw their changelog a few days ago and they made it sound like a big deal and the psv can do a 544p version of it.

 

http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Bink_Video

 

http://www.radgameto...com/bnkmain.htm

[Nollog]

http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Bink_Video
 
http://www.radgameto...com/bnkmain.htm

Well done ogre.
I know what blink is.
I want to know what makes blink 2 such a super duper feat.
It's just a video player/codec as I understand it.

[GAMER1984]

Well done ogre.
I know what blink is.
I want to know what makes blink 2 such a super duper feat.
It's just a video player/codec as I understand it.

 

 

A$$.... sorry had to say that... the reason it was mentioned is because its SIMD heavy the whole thing is built on mindset of consoles or machines that can do heavy SIMD task... and they mentioned the Wii U CPU which has no SIMD support still being able to handle the program. i mean you still have people that believe Wii U isnt getting frostbite or unreal engine support because it cant run SIMD task so this just kind of disproves that.