cloofoofoo wrote:The dreamcast can trade blows with step 1 and step 1.5. Step 2 and up completely outpaces the dreamcast.
I would agree with that assessment.
Although even Model 3 Step-1 has advantages over Dreamcast.
Dreamcast is newer technology-wise, so some of it's effects offer more flexibility (lighting, shadows, fog), it's got more transparency-levels, TC and the like. It uses triangles instead of Model 3's quads, which makes things a lot easier and less expensive.
Also, it's games ran at a slightly higher resolution (640x480 compared to M3's 496x384).
But Model 3 Step-1's ROM-architecture offers vastly more raw horsepower. Those were over $20.000 expensive beasts!
Also, when comparing (theoretical) polygon-performance, people should always consider that Model 3's specs on this always include shading, texturing, illumination, z-buffering, transparency, anti-aliasing and the like.
Dreamcast's numbers do not (disregarding z-buffering, of course) and are limited by available memory anyway, if you want to still have some space for VQ-compressed textures.
I especially like the anti-aliasing-part on Model 3.
No Dreamcast-game used real anti-aliasing, I know only of a handful using the partial 2xSSAA (which works only horizontally) and that's about it (don't confuse the flicker-fixer on interlace displays with AA). Model 3 has it's own edge-AA-solution, which works similar to MSAA.
cloofoofoo wrote:Lets look at step 1.5/1.0 games. Virtua fighter 3 tb is quite close to the model 3. Very small difference in polygon count while heavy difference in clothing physics. Overall not too bad.
I have to agree.
VF3 on the DC does not deserve the bad reputation it had back then, you have to look closely to see the differences (textures suffered a bit, too, and there's more aliasing). You surely got the arcade-experience at home!
On the other hand, people often say VF3 on the DC was only a launch-title and could be better... true, but they ignore VF3 was a launch title for the much more complicated Model-3-architecture as well. Also, VF3 came two and a half years earlier in the arcades, a long time in the 3D-graphics-industry, so understanding of 3D-game engines in general and also the development of game engine assets and human resources moved on, too.
Still a questionable policy that one of Sega's top-arcade-hits did not enjoy top priority by porting them Sega-internally, but Genki did a very good job in the end nonetheless.
cloofoofoo wrote:Step 2 - sega rally 2 runs half the framerate and massive reduction to geometry.
Or unstable 60fps depending on the version... textures suffered a lot as well, as did draw-distance.
SR2 on DC ran at WinCE which always introduced a little overhead, but could not match the arcade-version anyway, which ran at Step 2, which was vastly more powerful than earlier M3-revisions.
Still much, much closer to the arcade then SR1 was on the Saturn!
But while the Saturn-game was praised into the sky for being faithful to the arcade, SR2 on the DC was stomped on... I still don't get it.
cloofoofoo wrote:just saying that model 3 freaking streams everything in final format from its rom to its gpu at will, at massive speeds gives it a huge huge advantage over the Dreamcast that probably leads to all these downgrade to cope with having to stuff the ram with assets AND having no built in tnl.
I agree. People often do not realize how different M3s hardware was to later setups. Just comparing the specs they know, disregarding the specs they don't understand and then treating both systems as if it were the same architecture just does not do it justice.
cloofoofoo wrote:Youre crazy to think dc can emulate it.
Well, the thread opener asked if those games could be ported, which is a different situation of course.
We will never know how well that would work out and how real ports of those games would look on DC, unfortunately.
But Model 3-emulation on Dreamcast?
No way in hell... you would have measure the speed of the game in frames per year. : D