dark wrote:The way I understand EM is that it is actual dynamic realtime reflections of the surrounding environment, and not just another texture plastered onto the object that was drawn to appear like it reflects the environment. It seems to me this realtime rendering would use a lot of memory and cpu power.
The [Gamecube's] frame (draw) buffer's 7.68 GB/s bandwidth is also very effective for supporting environment mapping allowing real environment reflections on objects, water surfaces, glass, etc. Most environment mapping on the DC was faked using a small texture that roughly represented the environment.
http://www.segatech.com/technical/conso ... index.html
Oh yea but the "fake" way is the old school spherical environment mapping that the dreamcast allows.That is also called environment mapping.The newest way is still not real time , called I think cube environment mapping that uses 6 textures instead of 1 like the dreamcast.From what I understand from a non- programmer view spherical environment mapping you use a texture similar to the environment u wish to imitate then program the texture to " move" according to the camera view.So technically the dreamcast does environment mapping just not real time reflections via render to texture, I guess? So its never real time. a quote from a programming tutorial
Sphere Environment Mapping is a quick way to add a reflection to a metallic or reflective object in your scene. Although it is not as accurate as real life or as a Cube Environment Map, it is a whole lot faster! First you will need a picture of the environment you want to map onto the sphere
whatever man, the ps2 was never a true 60hz machine and everyone knows that, the graphics were always crappy and grey scale, very pasty nothing like the crystal clarity of all Dreamcast games, but that's me, if you don't agree that's up to you.
Seriously man, your confused , its not about agreeing for disagreeing.Also 60 hz is the refresh rate for the display isnt? You mean 60 fps and all 4 last generation machines run at 60 fps seconds.Seriously just look at this official sony document where they put their real stat.
http://research.scee.net/files/presenta ... eWeGot.pdf . heck they even mentioned the highest polygon count they seen was 125,000 polygons in one scene at 60 fps( meaning 7.5 million polygons at 60 fps in a real game!, something the dc could only dream of) I dont mean to derail , I simply wuold like to know the truth and not make the dc a mythical machine that was godly.Iam a fan but Iam also realistic to what the limit of the machine was.
Again i apologize for derailing it so far so ill just shut up and lurk from now on on this topic.