Could the SS RAM cart have made the system more powerful 3D?

[Vant3c]

I think the thing that would have helped the Saturn the most would have been continued cycle life in North America.

I agree with this statement whole hardheartedly. This seems to be a running theme with both the SS and the Dreamcast as well. Not getting a chance to realize the full system potential. I think the Saturn had a lot more umph in the chamber per say and wonder if the RAM cart would have gave it edge for the 3D aspect.

[Cronozilla]

I don't think there was any chance of the Sega Saturn being more lauded for 3D than either the PlayStation, or especially the N64. But maybe it would have been less ridiculed at the time.

I think if the Saturn stayed in the market, and the same market shifts happened, it would have gained some ground. Because 2D games got extremely popular towards the late 90s. And a lot of the touted 2D games on PlayStation were ports of Saturn games. Not to mention the absolute glut of games that weren't ported, and were left in Japan as a result.

Also, by the late 90s, the searing pain of the Saturn's launch price would have been thoroughly faded, if the system was out for a reasonable price with a supplied library, people would have given it a real shot. But, instead they handed their share of the market over to Sony on a silver platter.

[Jagosaurus]

Each fighter in VF is using a SH2 processor. That's crazy. The quote below sums it up to me. It's not necessary that the SS couldn't do it, it's just very difficult.


"One very fast central processor would be preferable. I don't think all programmers have the ability to program two CPUs—most can only get about one-and-a-half times the speed you can get from one SH-2. I think that only 1 in 100 programmers are good enough to get this kind of speed [nearly double] out of the Saturn."

—Yu Suzuki reflecting upon Saturn Virtua Fighter development.

Also, the rest of the world was using triangles. The SS used quads. This isn't necessarily "worse" but devs weren't accustom to it & it made porting from PSX difficult.

It was overall architecture versus lack of RAM IMO. There are some great 3D titles on the SS. Just took a special developer.

[marurun]

The Saturn was built to be a 2D graphics beast - and then specs on the PSX hit the market and Sega crammed in a 3d processor at the last possible moment during the design phase.

It's not a memory limitation that prevented the Saturn from matching the PSX 3d graphics - it's just not designed to render the graphics as effectively. Conversely, the PSX couldn't handle sprite heavy games the way the Saturn could. Sprite heavy games on PSX either had fewer sprites on screen or had to be rendered by slapping texture maps that matched the sprite's image on a 2d polygon.

This is both correct and incorrect (iirc). The Saturn's VDP1 and VDP2 and a single SH2 CPU were planned for the Saturn. The VDP1 is the 3D chip in the Saturn, and that wasn't changed. What was changed was the addition of a 2nd SH2 CPU. That was the last minute change to compete with the PS1.

The CPU is important, typically, to 3D rendering, but usually not as much as the 3D chip. This may not have been true for the Saturn. VDP1 works in a very non-traditional way when we think about normal 3D rendering techniques. It uses quadrilaterals instead of triangles, and the VDP1 seems to draw a texture exactly the same way it would draw a sprite (I read some of the official documentation, but it was a little over my head, so please correct me if I'm wrong, someone). The Saturn's sprite/object drawing capabilities establish the 4 points of the graphic and can bend and warp it on the fly, and I think this is how it draws polygons, by basically wrapping a bunch of objects such that they form a shape. So I think it ties up lots of CPU power to coordinate 3D. That's how an extra CPU would help, by helping to do more coordination and offload other system tasks.

That's why folks say the Saturn can draw 2D natively instead of as textures as the PS1 does, I think. It's because 3D on the Saturn is kinda 2D, the way 2D on the PS1 is kinda 3D. Though the Saturn loses a little speed to doing perspective correct texturing, and the PS1 doesn't. It just kinda vomits 3D up on the screen as fast as it can.

[Cronozilla]

I'll be honest, I kind of find Saturn's 3D quads charming.

[Vant3c]

I'm liking all the technical and detail information on the Saturn so far. So out of all that's been said so far what do u think of the increased abilities of a RAM cart would have done? Take a look at House of the Dead on the Saturn on YouTube and not emulation either but actually footage. All of the sprite assets, texture and frame rate. Do u think that it could have help in making it a better looking game and better performance from the port of the arcade version? Or do u think it would have needed a more specialize RAM cart to help improve the game.

So the question would be 4MB RAM cart that was used for lots of other games already or a specialize RAM cart to help the game?

[Pulsar_t]

There were rumours about a "Blackbelt" or something akin to it, as an addon for the Saturn to be able to run a Virtua Fighter 3 port. Of course that never materialised, but it'd be interesting if someone here found some scans or something pertinent.



Of course had Shenmue been released on the Saturn this discussion wouldn't have been happening to begin with

[Vant3c]

I agree with the Shenmue footage on the SS before it was scrapped and rebuilt for the DC. Although I am glad the game was made for DC instead; it shows how extremely powerful the SS was with that footage. I do believe that if that game was released it would have required a specialize RAM cart or the normal 4MB RAM cart.

I think that if Sega would have held out longer with the system in U.S it could have maybe gain some healthy market share back to maintain. It would have not beat playstation but could have got second place over the 64 like it did in Japan.

Going back to what I have said about the RAM cart I have been playing marvel super heroes on the SS ( awesome game by the way) and was using the RAM cart and it made such a big difference in game and made it look and feel super close to the arcade version more so than the PS1. I guess I figure this feature was under utilized in the american market for 2D but also not made use for 3D.

[MrPopo]

On the Saturn the main thing RAM would have done was to allow for more stuff to be in memory vs. being streamed from the disk (which was glacially slow in those days and isn't too hot on a modern drive). It could have allowed for more interesting textures, but textures are not the be-all end-all of 3D. The poly count is more a function of the speed of the rendering pipeline which is processor bound, rather than memory bound. A combination of clever shading and a high poly count can overcome a texture memory limitation.

For the 2D fighters that required the RAM cart it was because the Saturn needed every sprite associated with each character in memory, and in that era the sprite counts were going up and the sprites were getting bigger. So they needed more RAM because the combined sizes of each sprite sheet was larger than the Saturn's built in RAM. If you didn't load all the sprites in then mid match when you bust out a special move the system would grind to a halt while it loads the appropriate animation frames from the CD.

[Vant3c]

"MrPopo
Re: Could the SS RAM cart have made the system more powerful
Sun Sep 06, 2015 12:58 pm
On the Saturn the main thing RAM would have done was to allow for more stuff to be in memory vs. being streamed from the disk (which was glacially slow in those days and isn't too hot on a modern drive). It could have allowed for more interesting textures, but textures are not the be-all end-all of 3D. The poly count is more a function of the speed of the rendering pipeline which is processor bound, rather than memory bound. A combination of clever shading and a high poly count can overcome a texture memory limitation.

For the 2D fighters that required the RAM cart it was because the Saturn needed every sprite associated with each character in memory, and in that era the sprite counts were going up and the sprites were getting bigger. So they needed more RAM because the combined sizes of each sprite sheet was larger than the Saturn's built in RAM. If you didn't load all the sprites in then mid match when you bust out a special move the system would grind to a halt while it loads the appropriate animation frames from the CD."

So what u have said makes sense but let me ask u this; if what u say is true and it would not make such a difference for the system. Then could this also not apply to 64 RAM expansion as well? It is basically the same as the SS but I remember every one saying that all the games looked better and performed better. So why would one not get the benefit (SS) and the other one would (64)?