3DS graphic capabilities revealed

[lisalover1]

Why so defensive? This gadget is likely going to cost as much as an iPod touch so people are entitled to expecting similar, if not superior performance from it.

The 3DS has already proven to be at least on par wither the graphic capabilities of what has been shown in the Citadel tech demo (notice I said Tech Demo, not Game); have you seen the 2 Resident Evil games for the 3DS?

[flamepanther]

When you know as much about how engines work as John Carmack we'll talk. Until then, it's just noise.

Didn't he once stand up on G4 TV and state that it wouldn't be feasible to get good performance out of the PS3?

Just to fan the flames a bit, Mark Rein has said that the 3DS tech spec from Nintendo isn't powerful enough to run the Epic Citadel tech demo, it's not high enough spec to even run the most basic implementation of U3 Engine.

Assuming he's correct... Not powerful enough to run the engine is not the same as not powerful enough to achieve similar results. He's probably right that the engine would not port over directly. After all, the Unreal III engine is meant to be easily ported between several platforms. It's meant to be tweaked and optimized for a target platform with minimal change to the code that's already been written. That means a majority of the engine has to be written in abstract, high level code. To get similar results from less powerful hardware, it would take a lot more low level programming, built from scratch specifically for that hardware and that hardware alone. By that point, it's no longer the same engine anymore.

I doubt that John Carmack and Mark Rein would find it worth their time to re-write all of their hard work from scratch like that, just like Carmack didn't think it would be worth doing it for the PS3. They'd see it is too much work for not enough payoff, and I can't blame them for that. It still doesn't preclude another developer from doing more with less, so to speak.

[EvilRyu2099]

Hmm, John Romero......John Carmack.........



Trust me man, what flamepanther is saying is pretty much graphics 101, there's no way to get a real environment, complete with moving models and random real-life input to work, run or look that pretty. ESPECIALLY when it's not hardware geared for it specifically. It can come close to a degree, but never as good as a tech demo, just look at the Commodore 64 and Commodore Amiga demoscene. They make some amazing stuff like full 3D and video streaming apps, but none of it will work outside of that demo in a real-world application.

When you know as much about how engines work as John Carmack we'll talk. Until then, it's just noise.

Just to fan the flames a bit, Mark Rein has said that the 3DS tech spec from Nintendo isn't powerful enough to run the Epic Citadel tech demo, it's not high enough spec to even run the most basic implementation of U3 Engine.

John Carmack hasn't been the most honest about porting etc.. Most people realize that you could run a base U3 engine on an Iphone 4 but it would be quite difficult to emulate a full U3 game with models actually taking up space... Of course people are going to want to run their engine on an Iphone because they are selling like hotcakes.. See the previous post of trying to port Doom to SNES etc..