🚀 go-pugleaf

On Thu, 4 Mar 1999 21:38:44 -0500, "Link" <mikemaz@interlog.com>
wrote:

>Geoff Howland wrote in message <36dee3cd.76130691@news>...
>
>>I really dont think the PC will be doing what we saw the PSX2 demo
>>doing in real time within this year, I certainly havent seen any
>>programs out currently that will do that or anything CLOSE to it in
>>geometry flexibility and smoothness of surfaces and clarity.
>
>No kidding.  Which demo is this?

Its the PSX2 animation that shows the woman from the cover of the new
Ridge Racer game walking down a runway-catwalk thing, her hair bounces
and turns in near individual strands (well they are individual, but
they are thicker than a single hair), then it switches to a fighting
scene with about 20-30 guys jumping around that are pretty well
detailed and very smooth and curved surfaces (looks like it at least)
and two guys fighting in the middle, which shows that it can do a lot
of animated geometry at the same time while filling the whole screen.

Then it shows a old mans face that looks bump mapped animating with
real time mesh/NURB/whatever-theyre-using deformations that show
muscle moves to different facial features, then the make like 100 of
these bop around the screen.

Then they have cars from Ridge Racer racing in the inside of a city,
that are definitely curved surfaces and just look incredibly smooth
and the light is specularly lighting them just AMAZINGLY.

Ive seen nothing like it on anything less than an Onyx, like I said.

>>Perhaps
>>the best PC system now trying to render at television screen sizes
>>could do something similar, but I certainly havent seen anything like
>>it yet.  Even the PIII enabled games that look incredible like Outcast
>>pale in comparison.
>
>Okay, so it looks good I guess :)  (personally, I think it's the low-res,
>blurry TV signal.. but I'll have to see some demos :)

I dont think that a PIII 500 with the top 'o the line consumer
graphics card could do this at TV resolutions.  

Especially not the geometry as we all know we have that geometry limit
and the PSX2 looks like its a geometry/matrix pumping machine. Of
course this is only my speculation so take it for what its worth, but
I think PCs currently have a geometry bottleneck which this one
doesn't or at least has a bigger opening for the bottle.

Its a significantly cool machine.  

As other people have said, this may be the next low-priced graphics
workstation.  In fact, if it could be, it would be the next low priced
graphics workstation priced even at $1500 for the console since it
seems to do its thing better than PCs could  currently.

-Geoff Howland
Lupine Games               http://www.lupinegames.com/