These articles are always excellent.
PS1 games do not hold up so good, but PS2 games uprezzed to 1440p-4k are basically perfect imo.
PS1 games do not hold up so good, but PS2 games uprezzed to 1440p-4k are basically perfect imo.
The ps1 was released 1.5 years before the N64, the 3dfx voodoo chip is as capable as the n64 (maybe more so considering memory available), but I guess both Nintendo and Sony did opt for a bit more cost-efficient designs to make a profit on their consoles.
Looking at the release dates, the progression of capability is quite matched.
1994 dec 3 ps1 1995 nov 6 3dfx voodoo 1996 jun 23 n64 1998 nov 27 dc 2000 mar 4 ps2
On the emulator side I would definitely recommend Duckstation. It's performant, has great UI / UX and also has a CRT filter available by default that more or less recreates the original look, even slightly warping the image to make you feel like you are staring into a TV tube.
4k lets you scale the image and insert scanlines without scaling artifacts and with enough extra pixels to make the scanlines feel properly soft.
HDR lets the shader compensate for the brightness lost to the CRT filter without desaturating the color.
Very likely. CRT technology from phosphors to screen masks to deflection yokes were highly-evolved but there was still a lot of headroom for more performance and new innovation. Some CRT tubes where capable of driving much higher brightness than their controllers ever allowed.
It's unfortunate that CRT manufacturing wound down entirely after ~2010. While the size, weight and huge glass volumes where impractical for mass-market consumer media devices, CRTs also had unique capabilities modern display tech still can't match. With all the current interest in retro CRTs, I actually looked into what it would take to do small runs of ultra high-end HD CRTs for collectors, almost on an artisanal boutique basis. Unfortunately, it looks like the upstream manufacturing chain of many component elements also collapsed because there were no other applications for them. So, the start-up costs to make the first one would be pretty huge.
(https://blurbusters.com/crt-simulation-in-a-gpu-shader-looks...)
The evolution of graphics was brutal in the 90s and early 00s, but somewhere around the PS3's appearance it slowed down since lighting models were becoming "good enough" on the PS3 for not being annoyingly bad and asset creation costs became the limiting factor rather than hardware.
That isnt to say that technology hasn't improved (duh!) Just that at that point there was enough grunt and memory that you could approximate what you want without massive compromise.
I still think this is true. But we will take the extra capabilities while we are here.
Eeh ... speak for yourself. PS1 did mark the dawn of the 3D era for home consoles. There are lots of people who are into the low poly 3D models with the characteristic PS1 "wobble".
Sure a lot of it may be nostalgia but it does have its charm and I can say it's grown a lot on me over time. Especially once I learned about the PS1's unique hardware limitations. If my social media feed is anything to go by "PS1 graphics" are having a bit of a revival with lots of people trying to recreate that look.
Ps1 also only had a 4KB cache but it could also dynamically manage it for larger textures but that came with a large performance penalty.
The blur on N64 was a combination of that and small cartridge size. It graphics setup did have some advantages, look at Mario 64 for example. The hills in the distance are usually just a few polygons with some low resolution textures stretched over them. The filtering and perspective correction means it is a very consistent image, you would not be able to do that on PS1 without it becoming a visual mess.
PS1 affine rendering was fast but limited, which for the release window was good enough.
>o by "PS1 graphics" are having a bit of a revival with lots of people trying to recreate that look.
Yea I like it too I'm not saying it is bad :)
Also I do hate these cringe zoomers.
The crazy thing too was how much a step up PS2 was compared to PS1 in terms of available compute and sheer horsepower. But even that wasn't enough for a sandbox game like GTA 3 to run without a lot of clever tricks [1]
I see 0 difference in graphics 2016-2026
As for gameplay, that console has a massive library, with thousands of commercially released games (and a lot of hidden gems). I'd be surprised if any gamer wouldn't find at least one to their taste in that catalog.