The 64 has Anti-aliasing. That is the short explanation.
Also, this explains why PlayStation graphics look like PlayStation graphics.
This was a great video, and he’s got a few interesting ones on beating piracy protections
I honestly think the PlayStation has the better graphics, especially considering it’s older and weaker than the N64. At glorious 240p, I think anti-aliasing is honestly a downside–the CRT mostly does that work already. While the N64 might have better polygons, the PlayStation, in my opinion, renders a better image, with better textures. That’s not even to mention game sizes being several times larger on PlayStation, thanks to CDs.
There is no game on the N64 that looks as good as Final Fantasy IX. Not a single one. IX might not be fully 3D, but the game does respect the hardware it’s on. After all, nobody ever said the SNES had bad graphics for lacking proper 3D. The 2D style could just go so much further on PlayStation. Combine that with FMVs, and I’d struggle to find a game that looks as consistently good as some of the PlayStation’s biggest hits.
The N64 still pushes great graphics, though. I enjoyed my time in Zelda. The games look and play quite well. The impressively 60FPS F-ZERO X has physics that still work great. I still can’t help but feel like it’s just a worse version of modern graphics, while the PlayStation feels like its own aesthetic, and own world. I grew up with modern consoles, and I still enjoy the charm of pre-rendered backgrounds and FMVs compared to what’s being put out now.
“You’re the best looking guy here!”
Can you add the Saturn to your comparison?
PS1 graphics dance though.
Played the original Gran Turismo on a modern TV with my family last Christmas and it was honestly really distracting seeing geometry jump an actual appreciable distance on the bigger screen.
Gameplay holds up though, we had great fun
Popping the CD I had of GT 2 into my old 2010 MacBook was so bad lol. I remember seeing review quotes when it started up that said “life-like graphics” and then looked at the trees that were just two perpendicular 2D images and thinking “yea, whatever you say”.
They both looked like the left image on a CRT. That actually did a lot to smooth out the jagginess of early low-poly 3D.
Yes, but the N64 still had more or less “better” looking games. Even though the PSX had higher resolution textures, it was no match for the N64’s feature of perspective correct geometry and texture mapping. The PSX’s affine texture mapping and vertex snapping due to imprecise floating point math could not be hidden on a CRT, unless the 3D was really, really tiny. This is why so many PSX games opted to use pre-rendered backgrounds instead of rendering in full 3D, whereas this was a rarely used method in N64 games. It was basically a cheat, because the CRT masked (sometimes more convincingly than other times) the fact that the background was just a JPEG. Fully 3D games on the PSX just look 100% worse when compared to their N64 or PC counterparts, and its almost purely because of these quirks of the PSX.
For example, ignoring the minor texture improvements, comparing Metal Gear Solid on PSX vs MGS Integral on PC, all things like for like (same resolution, same display, point texture filtering, etc), MGS Integral looks a million times better because it has perspective correct geometry and texture mapping. Now personally, I always prefer MGS on the PSX because I like that weird quirk and consider it part of the “true experience,” but ultimately this is a graphical weakness of the PSX, and one that even CRTs could not do much to hide.
The smoothing effect of the scanlines from a CRT screen wasn’t that extreme. They still very much looked like the meme.
Source: Grew up playing both consoles on a CRT.
Yeah but Coco had round booba whereas Lara and Tawna had triangles so…… check mate liberal. Don’t look at Aya from Parasite 1 and 2 those are exceptions.
Don’t look at Aya from Parasite 1 and 2
I can and I will.
I like how PS1 did 3D differently than pretty much any other system ever, which is why if you look long enough at a model, you will see it warp and contort weirdly as vertexes jump between points because it didn’t have floating point numbers or something like that (can’t really remember the technical details).
It’s super unique and faking this effect in modern engines is pretty neat. It’s also weird playing on some PS1 emulators that don’t have this effect, because it’s better than original hardware.
Didn’t some early 3d pc games have this effect as well? I vaguely remember the wobbliness from the first Quake (or was it unreal? Can’t remember).
I played around with upscaling PS1 games in retroarch last night and I was pleasantly surprised. There are some YouTube videos that talk through the process https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6yDWYeuQ2pI
It can breathe new life into some dated looking games. Highly recommend giving it a try
IMO, that’s the wrong direction. The right direction is to apply some good CRT shaders. Those games were designed for CRT and low resolutions and they can never look great when rendered at higher res. Upscaling works much better for PS2 generation and up.
I didn’t think to experiment with the shaders much, so I’ll give that a shot. I briefly tried the cell shading shader, but that looked way too unnatural for me – but it is neat.
(As an aside, I have my original PlayStation 1 and I really want to snag a real CRT at some point for some true nostalgia.)
I have two real CRTs (a 4" JVC radio TV and a 27" Sylvania), and while none of the existing shaders perfectly capture it, a guy who calls himself “Retro Crisis” on YouTube and Github has some modified CRT shaders that come really, really close.
My only gripe is that he has different shaders per system, rather than a single “this is your CRT so all games will correctly render through this one” shader.
