Punished Miku
Gold Member
Hard for Hardware is the main one I remember. They met on Saturdays.
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Has the PS2 aged poorly visually?
- Thread starter Paperclip Killa
- Start date
cinnamonandgravy
Member
ok now show those games at the original ps2 resolution and settingsSome games hold up pretty well to this day.
Art direction >>>>>>>> polycount, resolution, etc
Dr. Claus
Vincit qui se vincit
They look even better as they were designed for CRTs.
MiguelItUp
Member
Really? I just loved the 360 dashboard and LIVE experience so much more than PSN. It just felt much more user-friendly to me. In terms of UI, functionality, everything. Still played some occasional exclusives on PS3, even online. But I felt like there was no competition at all between LIVE and PSN.
Yeah, Gen 8 was an odd one for me personally. Because of how much I loved the 360, I got an XB1. But, I was disappointed. Eventually sold it not too long after. Got a PS4, eventually sold it. But then with the exclusives coming out I was interested in, I ended up getting a PS4 Pro in the future and it finally stuck. The Wii U was such an weird one for me. I loved a lot about it, especially the exclusives. But man did its tech feel severely underutilized. But, it was the one console I kept while playing hot potato between the other two, lol. This was the gen where I began focusing on PC more than anything else because I finally got a decent system.
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PS2 gen is the first to really be "upscaled" and still look good, plenty of games like Final Fantasy 12, Silent Hill 3, etc, have texture quality beyond of what's capable of displaying at SD resolutions, where as other games have ridiculous high poly count models for things, like Tekken Tag 1 which put heavy focus on the character models since they were still using basic backgrounds, so when rendered at a higher resolution helps bring out those extra details.
On another note, the PS3/360 generation benefits most from emulation and is closest to "standard" games today, going from 720p to 4k, Trilinear filtering to 16xAF and in a lot of cases boosting frame rate from 30fps to 60fps (or higher) gives such a clarity boost and latency boost that it's basically a free "remaster".
On another note, the PS3/360 generation benefits most from emulation and is closest to "standard" games today, going from 720p to 4k, Trilinear filtering to 16xAF and in a lot of cases boosting frame rate from 30fps to 60fps (or higher) gives such a clarity boost and latency boost that it's basically a free "remaster".
cinnamonandgravy
Member
CRT worship has gone full blown retarded.
has to be from people who have basically no experience with them.
SlimeGooGoo
Party Gooper
VulcanRaven
Member
So games have but not all. Its about art direction. MGS2 and Tekken Tag Tournament look great to this day.
bentanchorbolt
Banned
From PSOne/N64 to Xbox 360/PS3, most games look dated now especially if they were aiming for realistically resolutions. And the worse part about that era of gaming especially for 3D games are the controls.
SF Kosmo
Al Jazeera Special Reporter
The main way in which PS2 graphics have aged poorly compared to other systems of the time is the lack of native progressive scan in most games. These games look fine on a CRT but they don't translate to HD very well and even in emulation rely on DVD-like deinterlacing.
Even in emulation this is an issue. When you play GameCube or even Dreamcast games you're used to seeing them crip and clean and they lend themselves nicely to higher resolutions as well, but PS2 games can't do that as easily. Some games do support pro scan as an option, but those options are often hidden and obscure. There are also patches you can apply to a lot of games to add it. But it's a lot of extra effort and it's hit or miss.
There's also the issue of lower VRAM than even the Dreamcast which did mean blurrier textures on average, but I think this is a lesser issue.
Even in emulation this is an issue. When you play GameCube or even Dreamcast games you're used to seeing them crip and clean and they lend themselves nicely to higher resolutions as well, but PS2 games can't do that as easily. Some games do support pro scan as an option, but those options are often hidden and obscure. There are also patches you can apply to a lot of games to add it. But it's a lot of extra effort and it's hit or miss.
There's also the issue of lower VRAM than even the Dreamcast which did mean blurrier textures on average, but I think this is a lesser issue.
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squarealex
Member
you talk a lot a shit
I mean if we're going that way - GC had half of the PS2 VRam, and no - there was no magic 2x efficiency of compression to compensate for it (DC TC was the only one to come close to 2x over others - but there were other issues with its that somewhat limited that impact).
VRam amount did hurt that gen - but it affected all the non-XBox consoles. Lots of 16bit games - especially on DC, but GC and PS2 were far from unscathed.
The way P-scan was mis-handled was squarely at the hands of Sony though - they chose to hold it back, and then even actively made it harder to ship games with it in the way technical-requirements worked.
MGS2, Tekken, GT are among the best looking games that generation.
poodaddy
Member
I get what you're saying OP. A lot of people are gonna answer emotionally as they invested a lot of hours into their PS2 back in the day, just as I did, but honestly I do believe that GameCube and Xbox games aged better if we're talking about exclusives. That being said, often times PS2 got the best multiplatform ports back then due to the huge install base, so GameCube would sometimes get shit ports that didn't take advantage of its hardware differences. Xbox usually just had the hardware to brute force a decent port, but that didn't necessarily mean the ports were much better on Xbox than PS2.
Being as even as possible, I'd say GameCube produced the most memorable exclusives of that gen, PS2 had the best library, and Xbox had the most interesting tech on show, (it was essentially a high end PC in a console, which was nuts at the time), but of those three PS2 definitely aged the worst.
Now Dreamcast....is timeless lol.
Being as even as possible, I'd say GameCube produced the most memorable exclusives of that gen, PS2 had the best library, and Xbox had the most interesting tech on show, (it was essentially a high end PC in a console, which was nuts at the time), but of those three PS2 definitely aged the worst.
Now Dreamcast....is timeless lol.
Jk, but....not really 
Paperclip Killa
Banned
OP is about real hardware and half the posts are emulation screenshots, and recommending to play games in emulators to make the PS2 look better.
What the heck are you talking about?
Todays tech isn't being compared at all.
What the heck are you talking about?
Todays tech isn't being compared at all.
squarealex
Member
The PS2 system is designed for CRT Home, not for LCD Stuff or other "raw" thing..
Also, PS2 chip can do thing that even the Xbox, Dreamcast, GameCube, PS3 and 360 can't do...
People need to watch this
Also, PS2 chip can do thing that even the Xbox, Dreamcast, GameCube, PS3 and 360 can't do...
People need to watch this
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Dr. Claus
Vincit qui se vincit
I loved the 360 Dashboard when it was Blades and after the first NXE update. I hated their continuous changing of the UI and when it switched to Metro? Worst design ever. Live was definitely better than PSN, but I didn't really play either platform for MP. I play for SP games and the 360 started failing in the second half when it focused on family, MP, and Kinect for me.
PS3 on the other hand just kept fixing its issues. Added trophy support, improved its online infrastructure, kept its UI, and focused on creating a wide variety of high quality single player titles across many genres. Roles were switched at that point.
Yea, PC has been my Go to for most of my life - though I am very disappointed that the last twenty years basically killed off physical PC games. I miss those days.
TGO
Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
People tend to look at the PS2 in hindsight.
Announcing that 2 consoles that that came out after it are more powerful like it wasn't obviously always gonna be that way while neglecting to consider how powerful the PS2 was with the hardware that was available to it.
The GCN & Xbox both incorporated tech that was 3 years ahead of what the PS2 had when it was finalized.
The PS2 was impressive, if not flawed with some cutbacks.
But to imagine what the PS2 could have been if it began development in 1999 instead of 1996.
Danjin44
The nicest person on this forum
??? both Tekken and MGS2 have more stylize characters models similar to FFX and FFXII.
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Halo2redvsblue
Member
Yes But it was the only system to fully use it's power. I remember a EGM article about this. It Said the PS2 was the weakest out of the GameCube and Xbox, but GameCube and Xbox would never reach their maximum potential while the PlayStation 2 did.
SolidQ
Member
Today devs don't know how make good physics, Physics worse than Red Faction 2001 year sic! Also Half life 2. That was working on 1 core CPU's
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Spukc
always chasing the next thrill
did not read or watch but
ps2 games look like sheit on my fat ps3 on hdmi.
look just fine on my old crt using a ps2
Fbh
Member
Yup.
But people in this thread are already moving the goalpost.
We've gone from" Ps2 graphics aged badly" to "Ps2 graphics aged badly if you play them on original hardware on a modern TV and emulation doesn't count even if you are literally just increasing the resolution"
MiguelItUp
Member
You and I both.
64bitmodels
Reverse groomer.
CRTS on OG hardware blurs the shit out of the image and hides a lot of the detail and crisp polygons.
Emulation & HD remasters truly exposes how fucking beautiful most of these games look
call me a zoomer but you'll never catch me playing these artistic masterpieces on a CRT. 6th gen was the last gen you even needed those TVs and the games honestly aged better without them
Dr. Claus
Vincit qui se vincit
CRTS on OG hardware blurs the shit out of the image and hides a lot of the detail and crisp polygons.
Emulation & HD remasters truly exposes how fucking beautiful most of these games look
call me a zoomer but you'll never catch me playing these artistic masterpieces on a CRT. 6th gen was the last gen you even needed those TVs and the games honestly aged better without them
Depends on the game. some of them were designed with 1080 and 720p in mind, but most were designed with 480p and scanlines to hide the more simplistic textures and to take advantage of aliasing to add artificial textures to the environment. Ratchet and Clank happens to be one of those games where it looks very bad in an uprezzed HD form.
Aenima
Member
Nop, some of the PS2 games still hold up quite good. The only console gen that aged like trash was the PS1 gen as the earlier 3d graphics looked pretty bad. Games Like Final Fantasy 7 managed to do tricks with pre-rendered backgrounds that improved the visuals by alot, but full 3d games aged realy bad. Played Silent Hill the PS1 version on PS3 and the game was fugly as hell, but since was an horror game, it kinda worked.
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I mean if you just look at numbers compared to current day values then anything before PS4/XB1 is shit tier and shouldn't look good. Especially if you ignore all the tricks and techniques the consoles used to work around the limits, the PS2 for example had excellent alpha handling and could render out way past than what's capable on a 32MB GPU, this is why games like Silent Hill 2 had such dense fog, or how San Andreas was able to apply that atmosphere filter which was cut out of the PC and Xbox versions.
Alexios
Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
Read the thread title, it says "the PS2" (then the OP goes on to explain it's about the game visuals running on it vs other systems) and not "the PS2 games when enhanced with emulators and why stop there let's also add graphics mods or full remasters & remakes, anything to let it have the win" >_>
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Unknown?
Member
Not if those 3rd parties put effort into it. There are examples of it such as Burnout and NFS Hot Pursuit 2.
Fbh
Member
Ok, but then we should also exclusively look at how they hold up on a CRT, as was the way they were intended to be played and the tech they were designed for.
If it's ok to judge how Ps2 games hold up on modern displays it should also be ok to emulate them to bring them up to the standards of modern displays.
Basic emulation isn't adding new textures or effects, it's the same game just running at a higher resolution
TaylorSwiftFan
Member
That was truly masterpiece. Sadly today no similar racing game
What a game. Now we have crap like Forza and NFS which are popular.
Comandr
Member
That was truly masterpiece. Sadly today no similar racing game
It is absolutely crazy how fun Burnout 3 still is today. It is criminal that it hasn't been remastered. I imagine it would be a licensing fiasco.
Corporal.Hicks
Member
Here's a comparison with your retrotink 5x screenshot. Remember that your screenshot shows real colours, whereas my photos have washed out colours that don't represent what I can see in real life.
Your retrotink 5x screenhsot
How it looks on my LCD from up close:
Plasma
CRT
IMO not even my LCD show such extreme pixelation like your retrotink screenshot. On my plasma photo I can see aliasing that is inherent to this game, but there's no pixelation (simply because the image isnt upscaled so many times).
BTW- the dots on my photos, that's dithering, PS2 games had limited colour depth, so developers used dithering to mask colour imperfections. On SD CRT, the dithering dots are blurred, but at 480p they are clearly visible on both my plasma and LCD. IMO Xbox version looks and runs way better despite running at the same resolution (there is no dithering and aiming is much smoother and more responsive).
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Shut0wen
Member
Ive had it way below 26fps, i mean i have a ps2 thats chipped, never known it to cause issues other then being a bastard to launch games but definitely the last 2 missions frame dips are really bad, last atleast 5 secs again with heavy explosions, didnt say it was a bad port but ps2 after 3 years had afew games where dips were incredibly obvious but at the time people wouldnt of realised, just like how red dead redemption runs ass on ps3, even viewtiful joe has frame dips which involve the game being slow but again at later levels
Shut0wen
Member
I know sega was infamous on there ports, pretty much 90% of there games are un playable, not sure if its down to bad ports or ps2 being incredibly weak compared to xbox and gamecube because most developers should of atleast made games on rhe ps2 as everyone pretty much had one
This. Plasma for retro is amazing.....actually for everything it is.Your screenshots looks extremely bad, not even my LCD upscale picture so badly.
Anyway on high resolution display something like 480i/p look bad no matter what you do. It's however possible to emulate 6'th gen consoles, because the image quality is noticeably improved on an emulator at something like 4x the resolution.
I however still prefer gaming on real hardware. On my low resolution plasma games from 6'th gen consoles looks amazing, way better even compared to my SD CRT (because the CRT makes the image blurry to an extreme degree.).
SD CRT
Plasma
SD CRT
Plasma
I have played burnout 2 lately (PS2 is the best version, even xbox version doesnt look so good) and this game still impress me. On my plasma the textures look much better compared to my SD CRT, and picture has almost HD look to it. I have taken these photos from close distance, but from something like 2.5m from my plasma (my normal viewing distance) not even aliasing is a problem.
6'th gen games can look good on LCD as well, but it has to be low resolution and small LCD. If you have something like 26 inch 720p LCD even PS2 games looks very good.
Yep 100% PS2 lack of mipmapping makes it soar in HD. Mid and far away assets look a generation ahead. Some PS1 games benefit the same aswell.yes, games with more complex geometry produce shimering as the geometry gets very small when far from camera or small parts jumps between scanlines giving the impression of noise, a game with simple scenarios and smoother textures like MGS2 will definitely look less noisy compared with MGS3 which has trees and plants everywhere it also doesnt help that lot of ps2 games use textures in a way that look very sharp in oblique angles compared to your standard mip mapping of the era looking like anisotropic filter on steroids, giving far more detail but producing noisy images but this particularity does marvels when using emulators where you can increase resolution
Henry Panic
Banned
I do find it strange most of its best selling games look bad, and almost all it's best looking games are niche or flops.
bobone
Member
The PS2 looked bad at the time if you had a nice PC or an Xbox/Gamecube.
I remember being completely blown away after I saw Splinter Cell on my uncles Xbox then going home to my PS2.
But I love games of that generation, so to me it aged perfectly fine.
If they are available you should definitely buy the Xbox or Gamecube versions, since now there is no excuse not to have the best visual experience available.
The controls and lack of autosaves are much harder to stomach than the graphics.
I remember being completely blown away after I saw Splinter Cell on my uncles Xbox then going home to my PS2.
But I love games of that generation, so to me it aged perfectly fine.
If they are available you should definitely buy the Xbox or Gamecube versions, since now there is no excuse not to have the best visual experience available.
The controls and lack of autosaves are much harder to stomach than the graphics.