Next-Generation Consoles Brenden Schubert & Nathaniel Williams With a Special talk by John F. Rhoads on Video Game Ethics

Sega Dreamcast

Billed by Microsoft as: The Windows CE Game Machine for the New Millennium Released September 9, 1999 Hitachi SH4 RISC CPU – 200MHz at 360 MIPS/1.4FLOPS Memory: 16MB main, 8MB video, 2MB sound

Dreamcast Graphics NEC PowerVR Second Generation –3 million polygons/second peak rendering rate –Perspective-Correct Texture Mapping –Point, Bilinear, Trilinear and Anisotropic Mip- map filtering –Gouraud shading –Z-buffering –Colored light sourcing

Dreamcast Graphics NEC PowerVR Second Generation –Full scene anti-aliasing –Hardware-based Fog –Bump mapping –16.77 million colors –Hardware-based texture compression –Super sampling –Shadow and Light volumes

Movie Time ! (ctaxi5.mov)

Sony Playstation 2

Playstation 2 Stats 300 MHz 128 bit RISC “Emotion Engine” chip (from Toshiba) 32 MB Rambus memory Standard DVD-ROM (CD-ROM compatible)

Playstation 2 Graphics 150 MHz clock 4 MB video memory 75 Million Polygons Per Second is absolute max 20 Million per second with 48 pixel quads, Z-buffering, alpha blending, and MIP mapping

Playstation 2 Graphics MIP-mapping Bi-linear filtering Surface/Edge Anti-aliasing Texture-correction 32 bit Z-buffering

Playstation 2 Special Features Plays DVDs right out of the box USB, PCMCIA, and “I-Link” I/O ports for modem and other peripherals Backwards compatibility with Playstation 1 games Hard Drive available in 2001

Movie time…

Video Game Ethics

Why are Ethics Important? Standard of Human Worth Need a common Standard to Gauge Excellence Commonly ignored Video Game Ethics Vs Video Game Links

What are Video Game Ethics? A set of general rules used to determine whether or not a game has been “won.”

Examples Game Genie Playing for other people Using FAQ’s Warping Konami Code Turbo Controllers

Perfect Example Bushido Blade

Want to know more?

Nintendo Gamecube

Game Cube Stats Powered by IBM PowerPC "Gekko“ (405mhz) 24MB system memory Proprietary DVD format (sorry guys – difficult to copy) Modem and Ethernet Capabilities

Game Cube Graphics Graphics chip “Flipper” 202.5mhz –2MB framebuffer –1MB texture cache –24 bit color –24 bit z-buffer Image Processing Functions: –Fog –Subpixel anti-aliasing –HW light x8 –Alpha blending –Virtual texture design

Game Cube Graphics More Image Processing Functions –Multi-texture mapping –Bump/environment mapping –MIP-mapping, bilinear filtering, real-time texture decompression (S3TC), etc. –Real-time decompression of display list –HW motion compensation capability ( If you care about sources:

Game Cube Graphics Actual display capability: 6 million to 12 million polygons per second (display capability assuming actual game with complexity model, texture, etc.)

Movie Time ! Don’t be so surprised Link, it’s not a big deal. (gamecube.mov)

Microsoft X-Box

X-Box Stats 733 MHz Intel Pentium III 64 MB memory Standard DVD-ROM (CD-ROM compatible) 8 GB hard disk

X-Box Graphics 300 MHz custom chip developed by Microsoft and nVIDIA 300 Million polygons per second (very small polygons, no lighting or effects) 100+ Million polygons per second (with shading and texturing)

X-Box Graphics DirectX API Nvidia's per pixel shading Compressed Textures 4 simultaneous textures Full screen anti- aliasing

X-Box Features USB Modem will be a future upgrade Full DVD Movie Playback 100 MBps ethernet enabled Windows 2000 kernel!

Movie time!

A Dark-horse Contender?

Hardware vs. Price DreamcastGamecubePlaystation2X-Box 200 MHz Hitachi SH4 405 MHz IBM Gekko 300 MHz Toshiba Emotion Engine 733 MHz Intel Pentium III 100 MHz NEC PowerVR 203 MHz ArtX Flipper 147 MHz Sony GS 300 MHz Nvidia 16 MB24 MB32 MB64 MB $199$ about $400$300 range

That’s the end.