Hardware How powerful IS the 3DS exactly?

[DiscostewSM]

Many games nowadays take different aspect ratios into consideration, and they're all handled by their respective game engines. I doubt going from 400x240 to 800x240 would be any harder to deal with. Game text would benefit from the increased screen width at least.

 

[Rydian]

400x240 is a 5:3 aspect ratio, but 800x240 is 10:3, making it a lot wider than normal. The issue is it's only wider in one direction (by a hell of a lot more), and the aspect ratio of the viewing surface wouldn't change. This is a bigger and stranger difference than having two different physical screen ratios, because the physical screen ratio is the same. This isn't just 4:3 to a widescreen resolution, this is the difference between 5:3 and 10:3.

This can cause hell with the UI and other sprite-based objects.

Here's MUGEN (a sprite-based game) rendered at various resolutions...

400x240 (correct aspect ratio).

800x240 (incorrect aspect ratio).

400x240 (scaled from 800x240).

 

[koji2009]

The 3DS should be powerful enough that if we can get homebrew and homebrew adapters the .mkv 720 output should be possible. The 3DS is NOT a weak system. It is certainly better than the PSP. Just for the fact of the 3d Display (displaying 2 images to make a 3D scene in realtime) should show it's processing power. But who honestly know outside of the N engineers?

Uh.... why would you need to run 720p (1280×720) on a 3DS when considering that the screen itself is only 800x240 pixels, and only 400x240 per eye in stereoscopic mode. Without direct access to the PICA GPU, it's going to be hard to get HD movies running on it (again why do we need HD on a screen that is not even 720p is still baffling...)

Maybe for the convenience of not having to re-size/re-compress a video just for use on the 3DS?

To add, we all know what type of CPU/GPU the 3DS uses (ARM CPU, DMP PICA200), but actual clock speeds have not been confirmed. We do know the RAM type/speed/amount, and I would assume that Nintendo wouldn't want such great RAM to go to waste on something that couldn't keep up with that.

Just a heads up... we know for a fact that the PICA200 does NOT have programmable shaders... therefore the graphics hardware would not be able to aid in decompressing/running videos unless it was designed to do so... and even if it was, it probably wouldn't be capable of running 720p because there would be no reason to DESIGN THE HARDWARE to do so.

"mkv"'s are just a container... I assume you know that the actual video compression used by most are h.264 which is INCREDIBLY demanding... without any sort of video hardware acceleration you'd require a beefy 2+ghz system which we do know for a fact the 3DS is not.


For the PICA200, it's best to think of it, PC standard wise, as comparable to a theoretical DX8.5 graphics card. It doesn't have programmable shaders (which is why DX9 games can still be made and look almost on par with DX10/11 today) but it does have a much broader array of pre-made shaders allowing for a lot of good effects, especially when used correctly.

 

[DiscostewSM]

400x240 is a 5:3 aspect ratio, but 800x240 is 10:3, making it a lot wider than normal. The issue is it's only wider in one direction (by a hell of a lot more), and the aspect ratio of the viewing surface wouldn't change. This is a bigger and stranger difference than having two different physical screen ratios, because the physical screen ratio is the same. This isn't just 4:3 to a widescreen resolution, this is the difference between 5:3 and 10:3.

This can cause hell with the UI and other sprite-based objects.

Here's MUGEN (a sprite-based game) rendered at various resolutions...

400x240 (correct aspect ratio).
*snip*

800x240 (incorrect aspect ratio).
*snip*

400x240 (scaled from 800x240).
*snip*

I did think about this whole aspect ratio deal a bit more, and I forgot one simple fact about the 3DS. It uses 1:2 ratio pixels. As far as both perspective and orthographic projections are concerned, using an aspect ratio of 5:3 even with a display that has double the resolution horizontally won't make a real difference because the pixels are 1:2. The aspect ratio value is based on width divided by height, resulting in a real number that GPUs use with their matrix math, which doesn't have to be connected by the same width and height of a display when a GPU takes those values in.

Think of it like this. Take your first image, and stretch the width by double. That is what a 5:3 aspect ratio would look like in an 800x240 (10:3) image container. Because the pixels are 1:2, you reduce the width by half, giving you what you had already. So, what's the point? Well, look at your sprites in that image. A sprite's pixels looks like it is 2:1, when in reality, the assets themselves are not. If the sprite asset was forced into double the width so every other column was a duplicate, it would display as being 4x as wide under a 5:3 aspect ratio in a 10:3 container. From there, you tell the GPU to scale the sprite's width by half when it draws it, so now it matches what the original looks like (again, as 5:3 in a 10:3 container). The display with 1:2 pixels reduces that again by half, giving you the original image of 400x240. Now what? Well, the sprite's asset is double in width with duplicated pixels every other column. What a developer could do with this situation is draw/render/whatever the sprite at double that size (both width and height), then with the finished product (the asset to be used), just scale the height by half. Now you have the sprite asset, having double the width, but now includes that extra detail. With the prior situation (sprite width scaling, the reducing the end image by half), you now have the same image, except now, the sprite is twice as detailed horizontally.

Dunno if this all makes sense (it does in my mind), but I could show a visual representation of what I mean if needed.

 

[Rydian]

If the sideways pixels would be duplicated there's no need to run at 800x400 anyways since they'd have the same resolution after scaling, and the fact that you'd need duplicate sprites for that mode would irk developers.

I don't see this happening.

 

[DiscostewSM]

If the sideways pixels would be duplicated there's no need to run at 800x400 anyways since they'd have the same resolution after scaling, and the fact that you'd need duplicate sprites for that mode would irk developers.

I don't see this happening.

Perhaps I didn't explain the approach well enough. I'll show a visual representation.

All are displayed with a 5:3 aspect ratio.
The 1st and 2nd images are blown up, not just to show them with the same aspect ratio, but also so I can mimic non-square pixels on the 2nd image.

1) 400x240
2) 800x240
3) 800x480

(Click image, then expand to display full size)
(Spoiler put in place because the file size is quite big)

Spoiler

The 1st and 2nd may look the same if you focus purely on the ground (which contains a lot of horizontal lines, but as you begin to look around areas like the hands, and other spots that show more vertical lines than horizontal lines, you can see the difference.

Just to prove that I didn't do any "doctoring" of the images to try and prove some point, go ahead and take the image, and shrink the width and height half with a program that won't do interpolation. The result will be all 3 images looking exactly the same.


Not quite sure by what you mean of having duplicate sprites, but how I see it, only one copy for each sprite would be needed. How the GPU handles rendering it is where the difference lies.

 

[Kayouu]

Well if we remember what Konami said about MGS -
"The hardware is well beyond Wii and approaching 360/PS3 capabilities with what the system can do, and when you see this demo in action you can see why"
But thats really vague on what that truly means. That's gonna be my main game though I think. Unless we get to see a sweet GTA game or something badass like a port of Wolfire's Overgrowth (HAHA I WISH) or A MMO Version of Minecraft would be sweet on the 3DS I think. I can dream right?

 

[altorn]

The 3ds is more powerful than the PSP. But the NGP is far more powerful than the 3ds.

 

[Joe88]

Well if we remember what Konami said about MGS -
"The hardware is well beyond Wii and approaching 360/PS3 capabilities with what the system can do, and when you see this demo in action you can see why"
But thats really vague on what that truly means. That's gonna be my main game though I think. Unless we get to see a sweet GTA game or something badass like a port of Wolfire's Overgrowth (HAHA I WISH) or A MMO Version of Minecraft would be sweet on the 3DS I think. I can dream right?

that demo barely looked better then the PS2 MGS3

 

[chris888222]

The 3ds is more powerful than the PSP. But the NGP is far more powerful than the 3ds.

I heard from some site (forgot what it was, it was definitely not kokatu) that Sony overexaggerated the power of the NGP. I do not know whether it is true or not, but what I know for sure is that if a console is too powerful = pricey (or maybe even hardware probs such as overheating!)

Most powerful doesn't mean best though, I can't wait to see what games the NGP has to offer. If they're good enough, then we'll see...

 

[koji2009]

Well if we remember what Konami said about MGS -
"The hardware is well beyond Wii and approaching 360/PS3 capabilities with what the system can do, and when you see this demo in action you can see why"
But thats really vague on what that truly means. That's gonna be my main game though I think. Unless we get to see a sweet GTA game or something badass like a port of Wolfire's Overgrowth (HAHA I WISH) or A MMO Version of Minecraft would be sweet on the 3DS I think. I can dream right?

that demo barely looked better then the PS2 MGS3

http://www.nintendoeverything.com/44446/

Look at those pictures and tell me the 3DS MGS looks like the PS2 version with a straight face. Specifically look at the hair of both pictures, and the boxy look of the PS2 version versus the 3DS version. As well as the look of the grass in the second picture.

That MGS3 demo wasn't prerendered, when the demo was shown you couldn't play it, but you could move the camera angles however you liked, proving it wasn't just a 3d movie running on the system.

 

[MakiManPR]

Urza dont worry lets just wait for the NGP to show them a REAL POWERFUL HANDHELD


/Troll

 

[Juanmatron]

3DS = Visual quality as the Xbox but with a power between PSP and PS2 = Not more powerfull than a GameCube = Not more powerfull than a Wii.

 

[granville]

In terms of visuals, yeah it can get up there with Xbox and Wii (in some ways even better). But we can't really make ANY sort of comparisons on raw processing power until we know what the actual processor IS. And we've really no clues besides that it's ARM-based (duh). There's a huge range of power it could be packed with, we just can't tell for now. The people that found out the RAM it used couldn't get the model and speed of the CPU sadly, so we need to wait for another way to find out. Apparently it is powerful enough to please plenty of developers though, including citations comparing the system to the Wii. We shall see though, no need jumping to any sort of conclusion until the actual CPU has been fully announced with clock speed and such.

I don't think anyone is under the impression 3DS will be able to compete graphically or power-wise with NGP (well there probably ARE some ignorants who do think that, but whatever). That beast has a quad core ARM processor of the Cortex A9 variety, along with a beefy GPU of course. That was never the question though, and trying to bring that up is kind of getting off the point considering this topic is about 3DS and what sort of power it has.

 

[Rydian]

Not quite sure by what you mean of having duplicate sprites, but how I see it, only one copy for each sprite would be needed. How the GPU handles rendering it is where the difference lies.

Both a high and low-resolution sprite?

 

[Joe88]

Well if we remember what Konami said about MGS -
"The hardware is well beyond Wii and approaching 360/PS3 capabilities with what the system can do, and when you see this demo in action you can see why"
But thats really vague on what that truly means. That's gonna be my main game though I think. Unless we get to see a sweet GTA game or something badass like a port of Wolfire's Overgrowth (HAHA I WISH) or A MMO Version of Minecraft would be sweet on the 3DS I think. I can dream right?

that demo barely looked better then the PS2 MGS3

http://www.nintendoeverything.com/44446/

Look at those pictures and tell me the 3DS MGS looks like the PS2 version with a straight face. Specifically look at the hair of both pictures, and the boxy look of the PS2 version versus the 3DS version. As well as the look of the grass in the second picture.

That MGS3 demo wasn't prerendered, when the demo was shown you couldn't play it, but you could move the camera angles however you liked, proving it wasn't just a 3d movie running on the system.

you should get a more reliable source for screen shot comparisons instead of somebody just droving the internet for a few bad screen shots

I have it running right now and second screen shot looks nothing like the game
it looks like somebody took it with a cell phone instead of using a proper capture card

 

[pachura]

Based on the specs we know, we do know the pica200 series supports antialiasing. It's up to developers to program it in though. We know Resident Evil Revelations uses it in 2D mode, so it's possible to do even on high-end games.
That makes me wonder even more why didn't Nintendo use antialiasing in 3DS' Home Menu and other built-in games ? 3D scenes are extremely simple there (just a few triangles & few textures), just begging for some antialiasing...
My theory is that while Pica200 technically supports antialiasing, it is so slow that it practically makes it unusuable, and the guys from MT Framework are doing some clever trick to smooth edges instead of using hardware AA.

An 800x240 resolution would have a different aspect ratio, which would be a minor annoyance to program around (mostly with HUD/GUI stuff), giving almost no benefit since it's in only one direction.
Well, we're talking about experts writing/porting whole game engines, dealing with shaders and 3D transformations on daily basis, I think they can cope with non-square pixel aspect ?
Remember PC games from DOS era ? Very often they were using 320x200 screen mode. Guess what, pixels there were not square, either.
Also, what I've already written in another thread, Amiga had "High Res" mode - 640x256 - using double horizontal resolution. It was really helpful in increasing text readability, although not used that much in games.

QUOTE('koji2009')

Look at those pictures and tell me the 3DS MGS looks like the PS2 version with a straight face. Specifically look at the hair of both pictures, and the boxy look of the PS2 version versus the 3DS version. As well as the look of the grass in the second picture.
That MGS3 demo wasn't prerendered, when the demo was shown you couldn't play it, but you could move the camera angles however you liked, proving it wasn't just a 3d movie running on the system.

That was a fixed path ("on rails") demo. This means they could have optimized it extremely well. A real game engine needs to manage texture buffer, dynamically hide objects which are too far, dynamically simplify distant objects & textures, calculate lights & shadows, not even to mention handling enemies' AI. All of this could have been precalculated in this demo.

 

[Deleted User]

C'mon, there's no need to get offended...

I own DS Lite and 3DS, never owned any Sony console. But the facts are:
- most of 3DS launch games (excluding Street Fighter) could easily run on PSP graphics-wise
- 3DS's resolution (400x240) is less than PSP's (480×272), and I haven't yet seen a single use of antialiasing. Even in the Home Menu, which displays really simple 3D scenes
- according to leaked specs of Pica200, its triangle throughput is slightly less than PSP (30.6 vs. 33 million)

Let's wait for the release of Resident Evil and Metal Gear Solid to see what's this machine capable of. But for now, comparisons against PSP are perfectly reasonable.

There doesn't even look liek there IS a PICA200 GPU in the disassembled thing

 

[DiscostewSM]

That makes me wonder even more why didn't Nintendo use antialiasing in 3DS' Home Menu and other built-in games ? 3D scenes are extremely simple there (just a few triangles & few textures), just begging for some antialiasing...
My theory is that while Pica200 technically supports antialiasing, it is so slow that it practically makes it unusuable, and the guys from MT Framework are doing some clever trick to smooth edges instead of using hardware AA.

I would agree that it may be more process-intensive, but not to such a scale that it makes it unusable. More along the lines of it having to process more means the GPU requires more juice (battery power) to kick it into gear. The built-in games and Home Menu, while AA would help, are things that shouldn't waste more juice than they need to.

Look at those pictures and tell me the 3DS MGS looks like the PS2 version with a straight face. Specifically look at the hair of both pictures, and the boxy look of the PS2 version versus the 3DS version. As well as the look of the grass in the second picture.
That MGS3 demo wasn't prerendered, when the demo was shown you couldn't play it, but you could move the camera angles however you liked, proving it wasn't just a 3d movie running on the system.
That was a fixed path ("on rails") demo. This means they could have optimized it extremely well. A real game engine needs to manage texture buffer, dynamically hide objects which are too far, dynamically simplify distant objects & textures, calculate lights & shadows, not even to mention handling enemies' AI. All of this could have been precalculated in this demo.

That is under the assumption that they made a game engine from scratch or deconstructed a working engine just for that demo, that only contained what they needed, when they needed them. I highly doubt that is the case here. They could have been developing a game engine for some time, or even started from a prior game engine (like Capcom with their MT Framework), and fix the issues while adding/subtracting capabilities that can/cannot work when going to another platform. The fact that the demo was on-rails doesn't mean the game engine was built solely for that. Now, I don't doubt that things like NPC AI are missing (as it is more of a cut-scene mode), but interactions with the environment, physics, lighting, etc. are still done in real-time, as hard-coding anything is just not feasible anymore.

QUOTE(tigris @ Apr 10 2011, 02:20 PM)

There doesn't even look liek there IS a PICA200 GPU in the disassembled thing

That is because it is part of a SoC (System on Chip), which is combined with the CPU(s). It is not separate chip from everything else.

 

[Rydian]

An 800x240 resolution would have a different aspect ratio, which would be a minor annoyance to program around (mostly with HUD/GUI stuff), giving almost no benefit since it's in only one direction.

Well, we're talking about experts writing/porting whole game engines, dealing with shaders and 3D transformations on daily basis, I think they can cope with non-square pixel aspect ?
Remember PC games from DOS era ? Very often they were using 320x200 screen mode. Guess what, pixels there were not square, either.
Also, what I've already written in another thread, Amiga had "High Res" mode - 640x256 - using double horizontal resolution. It was really helpful in increasing text readability, although not used that much in games.

Those games ran in that resolution, period. Here, we know that each image will be 400x240 when the 3D is on, so why bother for 800x240?