old comments by Shigeru Miyamoto on [Gamecube] graphics

Miyamoto talks about Polygons

"Polygon movement is essential in the creation of 3D games. Therefore,
we are taking various steps to simplify polygon movement. Namely, this
includes calculation of polygon display, properly shading and lighting
the polygons and applying the textures. Whenever new hardware comes
out, the manufacturer always talks about how many million polygons it
puts out, but never mentions that when textures are applied only half
that can be handled. Then when you do the lighting calculations, the
number halves again. So the actual number of polygons is half of half,
or about 1/10th of what they say. So if the specs say the machine can
do 80-100 million polygons, that really translates to roughly 5-8
million.

Polygon-pushing power isn't enough; game machines have to be able to
handle things like terrain and collision detection too. When the CPU
handles these tasks, it can't do much else. With the GameCube, we've
divided the tasks up as much as possible to eliminate bottlenecks. If
you simply look at the documented specs for existing systems, they may
seem to be the latest and greatest things at the moment, but in a year
or so they'll already be outdated. On the other hand, looking at the
GameCube, I think it will have a shelf life of many years. We wanted
to make a piece of hardware that would free developers from worrying
about technical stuff like polygons or bottlenecks."




"Some people might say; 'GameCube isn't great, just look at its CPU
power.' The truth is though, for tasks such as drawing pictures or
making music, GameCube doesn't use the CPU. I think the balance of the
GameCube hardware will lead the industry for years
to come. Existing consoles aren't capable of producing the demo's we
showed at Spaceworld. In fact, I think the demo's resemble graphics
created by multi-million dollar workstations."

http://members.aol.com/mips36/shigeru_miyamoto.htm


Although not mentioned, ATI has to be thanked for that. The ArtX team
produced an amazing graphics processor for Gamecube that is still be
used today, only running faster, in the Wii.

Just look at the Melty Molten Galaxy in SMG, it looks absolutely
incredible!

"nv55" <nvidianv55.DeleteThis@mail.com> wrote in message
news:9b44973c-eece-4e6e-a6a8-cf8affdadda9@x69g2000hsx.googlegroups.com...
> Miyamoto talks about Polygons
>
> "Polygon movement is essential in the creation of 3D games. Therefore,
> we are taking various steps to simplify polygon movement. Namely, this
> includes calculation of polygon display, properly shading and lighting
> the polygons and applying the textures. Whenever new hardware comes
> out, the manufacturer always talks about how many million polygons it
> puts out, but never mentions that when textures are applied only half
> that can be handled. Then when you do the lighting calculations, the
> number halves again. So the actual number of polygons is half of half,
> or about 1/10th of what they say. So if the specs say the machine can
> do 80-100 million polygons, that really translates to roughly 5-8
> million.
>
> Polygon-pushing power isn't enough; game machines have to be able to
> handle things like terrain and collision detection too. When the CPU
> handles these tasks, it can't do much else. With the GameCube, we've
> divided the tasks up as much as possible to eliminate bottlenecks. If
> you simply look at the documented specs for existing systems, they may
> seem to be the latest and greatest things at the moment, but in a year
> or so they'll already be outdated. On the other hand, looking at the
> GameCube, I think it will have a shelf life of many years. We wanted
> to make a piece of hardware that would free developers from worrying
> about technical stuff like polygons or bottlenecks."
>
>
>
>
> "Some people might say; 'GameCube isn't great, just look at its CPU
> power.' The truth is though, for tasks such as drawing pictures or
> making music, GameCube doesn't use the CPU. I think the balance of the
> GameCube hardware will lead the industry for years
> to come. Existing consoles aren't capable of producing the demo's we
> showed at Spaceworld. In fact, I think the demo's resemble graphics
> created by multi-million dollar workstations."
>
> http://members.aol.com/mips36/shigeru_miyamoto.htm
>
>
> Although not mentioned, ATI has to be thanked for that. The ArtX team
> produced an amazing graphics processor for Gamecube that is still be
> used today, only running faster, in the Wii.
>
> Just look at the Melty Molten Galaxy in SMG, it looks absolutely
> incredible!

I think he exaggerated, but it's true that considering their unimpressive
system specs, the Gamecube (and now Wii) can put out very nice graphics.
They are extremely well balanced machines.