my mate mark was saying Model 2 has monochromic textures and the way it made colour was by stacking several together? Got any more info on this, it sounds really unusual!

Also he said it was dervied from military flight simulator chipsets, hence why it's so hard to get docs on it!

But Model 3 was a real 3dfx-type chip yeah?

Newsdee's Love, Glory, and Discussion Boards

> my mate mark was saying Model 2 has monochromic textures and the way it made
> colour was by stacking several together? Got any more info on this, it sounds
> really unusual!
>
> Also he said it was dervied from military flight simulator chipsets, hence why
> it's so hard to get docs on it!
>
> But Model 3 was a real 3dfx-type chip yeah?
>
> Newsdee's Love, Glory, and Discussion Boards
>

I believe he's right, but I could be wrong.
Model 3 used a graphics chipset from Lockheed Martin...IIRC.

> my mate mark was saying Model 2 has monochromic textures and the way it made
> colour was by stacking several together? Got any more info on this, it sounds
> really unusual!

I dont think so, but Elsemi's the one to answer that one...

> Also he said it was dervied from military flight simulator chipsets, hence why
> it's so hard to get docs on it!

Model 2's 3D was developed to order by Fujitsu to a pretty exact specification as laid down by Sega with assitance by General Electric/Martin Marietta when Sega required some beefing up of the existing Model 1 hardware (texture mapping, higher polygon count etc.)
It wasnt specifically military, just general flight simulators (the commercial ones are just as advanced) and as I've said before, the reason doc's are so hard to get for it is because it's a 1 off custom chip made for 1 purpose/customer only, it was never intended for public use, so the documents were never released to the public, and if you know anything about what happens in large companies, you know things go missing when they're not kept somewhere visable...

> But Model 3 was a real 3dfx-type chip yeah?

Model 3's 3D system was developed jointly by Lockheed Martin's Real3D division and Sega from the ground up (not a modified to fit system like Model 2) and it was a *lot* more advanced than anything else at the time (a lot more advanced than 3DFX)

Six...

System16 - The Arcade Museum

I did read that in a magazine at the time, but I didn't want to be publicly mocked by the People Who Know :p

> Model 3's 3D system was developed jointly by Lockheed Martin's Real3D division
> and Sega from the ground up (not a modified to fit system like Model 2) and it
> was a *lot* more advanced than anything else at the time (a lot more advanced
> than 3DFX)

Actually the Model 3 chipset was first developed as a standalone graphics processor for high-end use. Lockheed sold it as a big box with a SCSI-2 interface and a monitor connector for high-end visualization. That's why in Model 3 the CPU/sound (upper) board talks to the lower (3D) board via SCSI-2. A much less powerful derivative of that chipset became the Intel i740, for those who remember that :-)

And the textures are full color on both Model 2 and 3. The only thing "odd" about Model 2 relative to "modern" 3D is that it used quads (like Model 1 and Saturn) instead of triangles. Model 3 is a triangle machine however.

> my mate mark was saying Model 2 has monochromic textures and the way it made
> colour was by stacking several together? Got any more info on this, it sounds
> really unusual!
>
I cannot answer this one for you, others probably already have.



> Also he said it was dervied from military flight simulator chipsets, hence why
> it's so hard to get docs on it!
>
The Sega MODEL 2 board is indeed based on flight simulator chipset technology, from Martin Marietta and Fujitsu. not necessarily military flight simulator technology, but that makes no difference really.

MODEL 2 is, in a nutshell, a heavily upgraded MODEL 1 board with texture mapping and more polygon performance. the Martin Marietta / Fujitsu chipset technology is pre-Lockheed Martin Real3D that was used in Model 3.... (thus, Model 2 is not Real3D technology but an older subset of it).

MODEL 2 dates back to 1993, first used in Daytona USA which was also first seen in 1993, and released in completed form in early 1994, shortly after Namco's System 22 Ridge Racer came out in fall 1993.



> But Model 3 was a real 3dfx-type chip yeah?
>
Model 3 does not use 3Dfx whatsoever. it uses FAR superior technology. Model 3 uses Lockheed Martin's Real3D/Pro-1000 technology: 2 of those graphics processors in parallal. each Real3D/Pro-1000 GPU can do 750,000 rectangle polygons (4 sided polys) per second, each. with texture mapping, g-shading, lighting, anti-aliasing, filtering, etc. applied to those polys with no performance drop. Model 3 can do over 1,000,000 polygons with that quality, per second, sustained. (1,500,000 peak, 1,000,000 sustained). compared to a PC 3D graphics accelerator that has similar performance on paper, Model 3 blows them out of the water.

I would say that one polygon on MODEL 3 is worth 10 polygons of a 1990s PC 3D chip. so for example, a 3Dfx Voodoo2 which can supposedly do 3 million polygons per second peak, gets blown out of the water by supposedly weaker sounding Model 3 board. Voodoo2 probably only does 400K to 500K polygons in actual games with everything turned up.

It takes a Gamecube or an Xbox to rival & surpass the quality and performance of MODEL 3, in practice.

Dreamcast and PS2 cant match MODEL 3 in many areas, in games, even though both have higher paper specifications. sure, the PS2 and DC can outperform MODEL 3 in some areas, but those consoles get left behind in other basic areas of 3D graphics. feature for feature, Model 3 is better. examples:
both PS2 and Dreamcast can do mip-mapping. but Model 3 does mip-mapping better. both Dreamcast and PS2 can do some forms of anti-aliasing, but Model 3 does AA *MUCH* better, and in EVERY game, at 60fps. very few PS2 and DC games even use AA - and their methods of AA are not as good, and it usually comprimises framerate and other things.

MODEL 3 also has alot of texture space, so typically MODEL 3 games have more texture variety even though DC can do higher res textures.

the proof is in the games. a lot of Dreamcast and PS2 games look like shit compared to MODEL 3 games. only the best DC and PS2 games beat Model 3 games graphically in every single area at 60fps. That is when the developer has maximized the strengths of DC or PS2, and hidden or minimized their weaknesses.

the sorry fact is, DC and PS2 are much newer than Model 3.
the Model 3 technology was completed in 1995. it was demoed by Sega in May 1996. the first game (VF3) did not hit Japan until late 1996, and Model 3 games were not widespread in the U.S. until 1997. Dreamcast came out in 1998, PS2 in 2000. given Dreamcast and PS2's higher specifications on paper, you'd think that they'd thrash Model 3 completely. not the case. although the graphics chips in DC and PS2 are better than 3Dfx and other early PC 3D chips, the quality polygon for polygon is still not as high as Model 3. the only reason why PS2 and DC can even compete with Model 3, is because they can push more polygons and more pixels. so it is quality (Model 3) vs quantity (DC, PS2).






> Newsdee's Love, Glory, and Discussion Boards
>

> > Model 3's 3D system was developed jointly by Lockheed Martin's Real3D division
> > and Sega from the ground up (not a modified to fit system like Model 2) and it
> > was a *lot* more advanced than anything else at the time (a lot more advanced
> > than 3DFX)
>
> Actually the Model 3 chipset was first developed as a standalone graphics
> processor for high-end use. Lockheed sold it as a big box with a SCSI-2
> interface and a monitor connector for high-end visualization. That's why in
> Model 3 the CPU/sound (upper) board talks to the lower (3D) board via SCSI-2. A
> much less powerful derivative of that chipset became the Intel i740, for those
> who remember that :-)
>

slight correction, the Intel i740 is not a derivative of Real3D/Pro-1000. it was a freshly designed chip by Intel, Real3D and Chips & Technologies. it was a very low-cost chip in 1998, that could barely compete with Voodoo2, and was closer in performance to a Voodoo1, even though i740 was higher quality in features. i740 in practice was not even as good as the old pre-Real3D Martin Marietta/Fujitsu Model2 board. i740 had no geometry processor of its own, unlike Model 2 which had the Fujitsu DSPs and Model 3 which had geometry processors inside the Real3D/Pro-1000 GPUs.

In short, the i740 did use Real3D technologies, but not specifically a derivative of the Real3D/Pro-1000 used in Model 3. the analogy would be: General Motors: they make an older 1995 Corvette and a newer 1997 Chevy Cavolier. both cars use GM technologies, but one is far cheaper and has less performance than the other. the older higher-end car outperforms the newer lower-end car.


> And the textures are full color on both Model 2 and 3. The only thing "odd"
> about Model 2 relative to "modern" 3D is that it used quads (like Model 1 and
> Saturn) instead of triangles. Model 3 is a triangle machine however.
>

> > my mate mark was saying Model 2 has monochromic textures and the way it made
> > colour was by stacking several together? Got any more info on this, it sounds
> > really unusual!
> >
> > Also he said it was dervied from military flight simulator chipsets, hence why
> > it's so hard to get docs on it!
> >
> > But Model 3 was a real 3dfx-type chip yeah?
> >
> > Newsdee's Love, Glory, and Discussion Boards
> >
>
> I believe he's right, but I could be wrong.
> Model 3 used a graphics chipset from Lockheed Martin...IIRC.
>
yep.

Model 3 used a PowerPC 603 CPU and a twin Real3D Pro-1000 graphics chipset.

> I would say that one polygon on MODEL 3 is worth 10 polygons of a 1990s PC 3D
> chip. so for example, a 3Dfx Voodoo2 which can supposedly do 3 million polygons
> per second peak, gets blown out of the water by supposedly weaker sounding Model
> 3 board. Voodoo2 probably only does 400K to 500K polygons in actual games with
> everything turned up.

No way. The Model 3 isn't really that powerful at all. It was fairly impressive when it came out but its specs are grossly exaggerated. The Model 3 is a scaled down Pro-1000 derivative and it doesn't have 2 of them. It might have 2 geometry processors or 2 rasterizers or whatever but that's nothing out of the ordinary.

The Model 3 had limited bandwidth for sending 3D data. It operates on "models" which are collections of polygons (objects, essentially) which are all transformed by a common matrix and link to the next object to be drawn. I talked to someone who worked at Real3D and they claimed that initially all polygon data was fetched from VROM and that Sega was very disappointed with this so a couple megs of polygon RAM were added for dynamic vertex data (deformable car models, etc.)

Still, the VROMs for most games are 32-64MB and they contain almost all of the polygon and texture data. It's an interesting architecture that worked extremely well for the time period (the CPU essentially only had to update matrices) but that sort of hardware has gone the way of the dodo.

The modern approach is to just throw geometry at the cards and have them render it (caching of polygon data as draw lists is also common, I believe.) It's a more flexible but resource-intensive approach.

> It takes a Gamecube or an Xbox to rival & surpass the quality and performance of
> MODEL 3, in practice.

No way. By the time the Riva TNT hit the scene, Model 3 was obsolete.

Model 3 games definitely do not push around hundreds of thousands of polygons per scene. Try a few thousand. I remember Ville once hooked up a polygon counter to his D3D engine in Supermodel and in Sega Rally 2 there were around 9K polys per frame. And note that these are being fetched from the Real 3D board's local memory!

I could add some statistics-gathering to Supermodel to get some more figures but it's been almost a year since I've compiled and ran the program and some games are bitchy and might require some work to get running again (we poked around Supermodel a lot constantly tweaking and breaking compatibility.)

> MODEL 3 also has alot of texture space, so typically MODEL 3 games have more
> texture variety even though DC can do higher res textures.

Model 3 had 8MB of texture memory. Max texture resolution was 256x256.

> the proof is in the games. a lot of Dreamcast and PS2 games look like shit
> compared to MODEL 3 games.

You need to take another look. Model 3 games look nice because of nostalgia and because they're moving fast on arcade monitors but if you look at still shots or examine them closely, you'll see lots of billboards and simple geometry with relatively ordinary texture mapping.

DC kicked Model 3's ass hard. Look at Naomi vs. Model 3, even. There's no comparison. None whatsoever.

> The Model 3 had limited bandwidth for sending 3D data. It operates on "models"
> which are collections of polygons (objects, essentially) which are all
> transformed by a common matrix and link to the next object to be drawn. I talked
> to someone who worked at Real3D and they claimed that initially all polygon data
> was fetched from VROM and that Sega was very disappointed with this so a couple
> megs of polygon RAM were added for dynamic vertex data (deformable car models,
> etc.)
>
> Still, the VROMs for most games are 32-64MB and they contain almost all of the
> polygon and texture data. It's an interesting architecture that worked extremely
> well for the time period (the CPU essentially only had to update matrices) but
> that sort of hardware has gone the way of the dodo.

That's actually very interesting info, Bart, thanks for sharing that with us. It seems in a way quite analogously similar to older 2D tile/sprite-based arcade architectures - the main CPU itself only manipulates some registers and some pointers, and the actual graphics tile/sprite data remains in ROM and is processed by the hardware to generate the display. Except in this case, the ROMs contain model/texture data, and the graphics hardware is a 3D rasterization pipeline. Adding RAM-based model storage, would be like RAM-based tile storage for 2D arcade hardware.

> The modern approach is to just throw geometry at the cards and have them render
> it (caching of polygon data as draw lists is also common, I believe.) It's a
> more flexible but resource-intensive approach.
>
> > It takes a Gamecube or an Xbox to rival & surpass the quality and performance
> of
> > MODEL 3, in practice.
>
> No way. By the time the Riva TNT hit the scene, Model 3 was obsolete.

That seems slightly a stretch. I've used a Riva TNT (16MB PCI) before, to play UT, and ... it doesn't even seem in the same world as a Model3 arcade game, as far as the graphics go. No way. Enabling AA would make it far, far worse in terms of comparative performance.

> Model 3 games definitely do not push around hundreds of thousands of polygons
> per scene. Try a few thousand. I remember Ville once hooked up a polygon counter
> to his D3D engine in Supermodel and in Sega Rally 2 there were around 9K polys
> per frame. And note that these are being fetched from the Real 3D board's local
> memory!

Well, that's not surprising. I think UT pushes probably around 10K poly/scene too, roughly, except that Model3 can add all kinds of nice texture-filtering and full-screen AA effects too, without any noticable slowdown that I can see. Try doing that on an TNT - bad idea.

Plus, you have to consider the fact that the TNT is limited in features, so much so that in fact UT multi-passes the rendering. (The reason being, that original game engine was designed for the Voodoo/Voodoo2 chipset, and utilizes some of those features in the graphics pipeline, that either have to be disabled or multi-passed on other cards such as the TNT, to get the same resultant visual effect. This is benchmarkable; the TNT gets half the frame-rate of a similarly-equivalent V2 card.) IMHO, the rendering chipset in a DC blows away a TNT, for the most part, especially with AA enabled.

> > MODEL 3 also has alot of texture space, so typically MODEL 3 games have more
> > texture variety even though DC can do higher res textures.
>
> Model 3 had 8MB of texture memory. Max texture resolution was 256x256.

Texture space in ROM or RAM or both? I wonder how / if they handled modifiable textures, or supported render-to-texture? I'm surprised at the limited texture resolution though, considering VivoNono and the Namco Sys22 stuff. (Voodoo2 hardware was also similarly 256x256 limited, of course.)

> > the proof is in the games. a lot of Dreamcast and PS2 games look like shit
> > compared to MODEL 3 games.
>
> You need to take another look. Model 3 games look nice because of nostalgia and
> because they're moving fast on arcade monitors but if you look at still shots or
> examine them closely, you'll see lots of billboards and simple geometry with
> relatively ordinary texture mapping.
>
> DC kicked Model 3's ass hard. Look at Naomi vs. Model 3, even. There's no
> comparison. None whatsoever.

I was always of the opinion that the Model3 was just ever-so-slightly higher-end than the straight-up Naomi or DC systems, although I think they could connect multiple Naomi boards in parallel to increase the rendering capability. (Doesn't HOTD2 or something use two Naomi boardsets? I'm not super-familiar with that hardware.)

Then again, I swear Outrun2 looks amazingly better than 99% of the home-console XBox games out there too, it's really hard for me to believe that it's running on what is effectively an XBox inside the machine. I guess that 512MB RAM / media-board really helps with that. One little thing that seemed strange to me though, when I first saw that game in the arcade, was that the attract-mode movies were some sort of MPEG or something, rather than rendered in realtime such as most other contemporary 3D racers, like Scud Race / Super GT was.

> That's actually very interesting info, Bart, thanks for sharing that with us. It
> seems in a way quite analogously similar to older 2D tile/sprite-based arcade
> architectures - the main CPU itself only manipulates some registers and some
> pointers, and the actual graphics tile/sprite data remains in ROM and is
> processed by the hardware to generate the display. Except in this case, the ROMs
> contain model/texture data, and the graphics hardware is a 3D rasterization
> pipeline. Adding RAM-based model storage, would be like RAM-based tile storage
> for 2D arcade hardware.

Yes, that's a good analogy. I've heard that Namco System 11 (or 22 or both?) also stored data in ROM. In the case of Namco hardware, textures were usable by the rendering hardware while in ROM.

> > No way. By the time the Riva TNT hit the scene, Model 3 was obsolete.
>
> That seems slightly a stretch. I've used a Riva TNT (16MB PCI) before, to play
> UT, and ... it doesn't even seem in the same world as a Model3 arcade game, as
> far as the graphics go. No way. Enabling AA would make it far, far worse in
> terms of comparative performance.

If not Riva TNT then definitely GeForce. And I still don't know if Voodoo 2 and Riva TNT generation hardware was that far behind. The Voodoo cards were basically just polygon rasterizers AFAIK and I think this limited their performance -- even if they could draw polygons fast there was still a lot of time wasted sending all those polygons every single frame.

I imagine by the time the Riva came out, and certainly the GeForce, the cards were capable of caching display lists. From my limited experience with 3D APIs, the usual programming model is to just send draw commands every frame but OpenGL (and I'm sure Direct3D) has always supported display lists and nowadays vertex buffered objects are the way to go.

My guess would be that by the time these features began to appear in consumer cards, Model 3 had been out-done.

> Well, that's not surprising. I think UT pushes probably around 10K poly/scene
> too, roughly, except that Model3 can add all kinds of nice texture-filtering and
> full-screen AA effects too, without any noticable slowdown that I can see. Try
> doing that on an TNT - bad idea.

Model 3's texture filtering is just tri-linear filtering (mip-mapping.) Besides that and AA, there really isn't anything else going on. And as for the AA, keep in mind that Model 3 games run at 496x384 on a medium res screen.

It's difficult for me to tell how much benefit the AA really gives. In Supermodel with its numerous graphical glitches, slideshow framerate, and full-bright rendering, everything looks awful. Lighting makes a huge difference and things look a lot better when running at 60FPS.

> > Model 3 had 8MB of texture memory. Max texture resolution was 256x256.
>
> Texture space in ROM or RAM or both? I wonder how / if they handled modifiable
> textures, or supported render-to-texture? I'm surprised at the limited texture
> resolution though, considering VivoNono and the Namco Sys22 stuff. (Voodoo2
> hardware was also similarly 256x256 limited, of course.)

Model 3 could only render textures from its 8MB memory. Textures could be stored in ROM but have to be DMA copied to texture memory to be used. Note also that the CPU has no access to the ROM space and can only send texture upload commands to the GPU.

> I was always of the opinion that the Model3 was just ever-so-slightly higher-end
> than the straight-up Naomi or DC systems, although I think they could connect
> multiple Naomi boards in parallel to increase the rendering capability. (Doesn't
> HOTD2 or something use two Naomi boardsets? I'm not super-familiar with that
> hardware.)

No way. DC is vastly superior to Model 3. There's just no comparison between DC/Naomi games and Model 3. PowerVR was a much better piece of kit.


> on what is effectively an XBox inside the machine. I guess that 512MB RAM /
> media-board really helps with that. One little thing that seemed strange to me
> though, when I first saw that game in the arcade, was that the attract-mode
> movies were some sort of MPEG or something, rather than rendered in realtime
> such as most other contemporary 3D racers, like Scud Race / Super GT was.

Don't forget that these polished Sega games have excellent artwork. Model 3 games can still look very nice today, I'll admit, but when you take a closer look, you'll see that the 3D hardware has been pitifully outdated since the late 90's.


----
Bart

I would say that one polygon on MODEL 3 is worth 10 polygons of a 1990s PC 3D chip. so for example, a 3Dfx Voodoo2 which can supposedly do 3 million polygons per second peak, gets blown out of the water by supposedly weaker sounding Model
> > 3 board. Voodoo2 probably only does 400K to 500K polygons in actual games with everything turned up.
>
> "No way. The Model 3 isn't really that powerful at all."

I disagree. Model 3 was completed in 1995, when Nvidia was introducing their first chip which was a big failure, the NV1 used in the Diamond Edge 3D cards. Model 3 was widely accepted to be THE standard for videogame graphics in the mid to late 1990s. but you say it wasnt that powerful at all...

"It was fairly impressive when it came out but its specs are grossly exaggerated."

I disagree again. It's specs like polygon count were downplayed. unlike every single PC 3D accelerator chip maker of the 1990s, who totally stretched and exaggerated their specs. like Voodoo1: 3Dfx claimed it could do 1,000,000 polygons, and 3,000,000 for Voodoo2. the Voodoo2 did not even reach 1M in realworld, let alone Voodoo1. and Voodoo1 typically pushed 200,000 to 250,000 textured polygons with everything on, in actual games. less polygons than the Model2 board of 1993-1994. every other 3D chip maker claimed rediculasly high specs that never matched reality.


"The Model 3 is a scaled down Pro-1000 derivative and it doesn't have 2 of them. It might have 2 geometry
> processors or 2 rasterizers or whatever but that's nothing out of the ordinary."

from what I understand, 2 geometry processors + 2 rasterizers, thus the often-listed twin Real3D Pro-1000s in parallel. even if it isnt actually two Pro-1000s, but one Pro-1000 with 2x geometry and 2x rasterizer, same difference.

"The Model 3 had limited bandwidth for sending 3D data. It operates on "models" which are collections of polygons (objects, essentially) which are all transformed by a common matrix and link to the next object to be drawn. I talked
> to someone who worked at Real3D and they claimed that initially all polygon data was fetched from VROM and that Sega was very disappointed with this so a couple megs of polygon RAM were added for dynamic vertex data (deformable car models, etc."
>

I won't argue with that. I'll assume you're right about this stuff :)

>"Still, the VROMs for most games are 32-64MB and they contain almost all of the polygon and texture data. It's an interesting architecture that worked extremely well for the time period (the CPU essentially only had to update matrices) but that sort of hardware has gone the way of the dodo."
>
yeah, but again, Model 3 was completed in 1995 (games released in 1996) so of course it is outdated now.

"The modern approach is to just throw geometry at the cards and have them render it (caching of polygon data as draw lists is also common, I believe.) It's a
> more flexible but resource-intensive approach."
>
regardless of the older apprach that Model 3 used, it seriously kicked the living shit out of every consumer gaming 3D setup (console or PC) until the Dreamcast arrived with comparable performance in 1998-1999. and even then, Dreamcast did not completely rival Model 3 in every way.


It takes a Gamecube or an Xbox to rival & surpass the quality and performance of MODEL 3, in practice.
>
> "No way. By the time the Riva TNT hit the scene, Model 3 was obsolete."
>

I totally disagree here. I never saw anything on a TNT, TNT2 or TNT2 Ultra that could rival Model 3. the entire TNT/TNT2 line lacked geometry processors, Model 3's Real3D Pro-1000(s) was a complete 3D solution that did not depend on the modest CPU (PowerPC 603e) to provide geometry & lighting calculations. and the rasterizer portion of Real3D Pro-1000 was superior in the implementation and use of the graphics features that it had, compared to TNT/TNT2. yes the TNT2 had some features that Model 3's Real3D did not have but that does not make TNT2 better overall. 32-bit color or resolution alone do not make up for other deficiencies.

I would say that it was not until NV10 / GeForce256 (GeForce1) in late 1999, that PC 3D chips rivaled Model 3. you seem to be swayed totally by the paper specs, which of course makes PC 3D cards that preceeded GeForce look so much better than they really were, by a factor of 5 to 10 times.

"Model 3 games definitely do not push around hundreds of thousands of polygons per scene."

I didn't say per scene / per frame, I said per SECOND.

"Try a few thousand."

yeah, per scene / per frame. huge difference.

"I remember Ville once hooked up a polygon counter to his D3D engine in Supermodel and in Sega Rally 2 there were around 9K polys per frame."

9,000 polygons * 60 frames per second - 540,000 polygons per second. which is in line with Model 3's 1,000,000 polygons. Sega Rally 2 does not hit the peak performance, but does more than a few thousand polygons/sec, obviously :)

"And note that these are being fetched from the Real 3D board's local memory!
>
> I could add some statistics-gathering to Supermodel to get some more figures but
> it's been almost a year since I've compiled and ran the program and some games
> are bitchy and might require some work to get running again (we poked around
> Supermodel a lot constantly tweaking and breaking compatibility.)"
>
ok, again I wont argue this, since it is outside my understanding :)

> > MODEL 3 also has alot of texture space, so typically MODEL 3 games have more
> > texture variety even though DC can do higher res textures.
>
> "Model 3 had 8MB of texture memory. Max texture resolution was 256x256. "
>
but Model 3 had that fast-access VROM that DC did not have.
Model 3 games have lower res texture, but usually more of them. more variety. Model 3 games look "texture heavy" and maintain 60fps. most Dreamcast games have higher res textures but have fewer textures, and even with that, often run at 30fps or less. but I admit that is the fault of the developer in most cases since Dreamcast is capable of surpassing Model 3 in many ways, if its strengths are applied properly.

> > the proof is in the games. a lot of Dreamcast and PS2 games look like shit
> > compared to MODEL 3 games.
>
> "You need to take another look. Model 3 games look nice because of nostalgia and because they're moving fast on arcade monitors but if you look at still shots or
> examine them closely, you'll see lots of billboards and simple geometry with
> relatively ordinary texture mapping."
>
the quality of Model 3 graphics is very high even though the amount of geometry is small by PS2 and even DC standards. but every Model 3 game ran at 60fps for the most part, and that was not really a virtue of the arcade monitors (afterall a shitty game on a shitty arcade board can have a choppy framerate) but more to do with Model 3's graphics pipeline and its stability, its ability to maintain a solid 60fps with all rendering features on, plus Sega's careful programming of games, but mostly to do with the 'solid' and exellent hardware that Lockheed Martin had put together.


> DC kicked Model 3's ass hard. Look at Naomi vs. Model 3, even. There's no
> comparison. None whatsoever.
>
I disagree somewhat. NAOMI and Dreamcast certainly beat Model 3 in certain areas. but not all areas. there are aspects of Model 3 that are superior to the PowerVR2-based NAOMI & Dreamcast. even SEGA's AM division leaders have said this, including Yu Suzuki. who should I believe :)

It took about half a dozens years for consumer 3D graphics technology to catch upto and surpass Model 3, a board that was completed in 1995, around the time the very first crappy 3D cards were hitting the market, this was before even Voodoo1.

> > No way. By the time the Riva TNT hit the scene, Model 3 was obsolete.
>
> That seems slightly a stretch. I've used a Riva TNT (16MB PCI) before, to play
> UT, and ... it doesn't even seem in the same world as a Model3 arcade game, as far as the graphics go. No way. Enabling AA would make it far, far worse in
> terms of comparative performance.

agreed!. that seems very true, and that is in line with the general understanding out there that PC 3D accelerators (before GPUs such as GeForce) were not on-par with Model 3, even if their paper specs were several times higher than Model 3.

the thing about Model 3 is, it not only actually reach its claimed polygon performance of 1,000,000 sustained polygons could maintain that with every rendering feature applied. from texture mapping to trilinear filtering to anti-aliasing and everything else.

Ask a TNT or TNT2 Ultra to do that, and you will be nowhere NEAR Model 3 polygon performance and framerate (60fps locked)

> > Model 3 games definitely do not push around hundreds of thousands of polygons
> > per scene. Try a few thousand. I remember Ville once hooked up a polygon
> counter
> > to his D3D engine in Supermodel and in Sega Rally 2 there were around 9K polys
> > per frame. And note that these are being fetched from the Real 3D board's
> local
> > memory!
>
> Well, that's not surprising. I think UT pushes probably around 10K poly/scene
> too, roughly, except that Model3 can add all kinds of nice texture-filtering and
> full-screen AA effects too, without any noticable slowdown that I can see. Try
> doing that on an TNT - bad idea.
>
exactly.

> Yes, that's a good analogy. I've heard that Namco System 11 (or 22 or both?)
> also stored data in ROM. In the case of Namco hardware, textures were usable by
> the rendering hardware while in ROM.

System 22 pulls textures straight out of rom. System 11 is PSX based and the textures are read out of rom into ram and then dma'd into vram.

smf

>No way. DC is vastly superior to Model 3. There's just no >comparison between DC/Naomi games and Model 3. PowerVR >was a much better piece of kit.

I've inside knowledge of both systems, and you ask any Sega AM developer which was the more powerful hardware system, and they will say Model 3 Step 2/2.1, not Model 3 Step 1 or 1.5 though.

The Naomi was considered a cheaper alternative and a cheap way for operators to buy later games (also the ability to port games in a short time span), as the Model 3 PCB was around £2000 for the CPU/Video boards.

Even though Naomi was released in 98 with House of the Dead 2, it was still established that games like Star Wars Trilogy would look and perform better on Model 3, also there was some serious hardware 3D issues on the Naomi so they decided to make the Hikaru board, which was vastly more powerful than Naomi, and probably the Naomi 2, this was considered the replacement for Model 3, although too costly compared to Naomi, however Sega did venture into mutliple threaded Naomi hardware, such as F355 and Airline pilots, these where for showcase games and these games clearly are more powerful than Model 3.

The sad thing is that you say Naomi was more powerful than Model 3, then why did Sega not port the following games:

Daytona 2 BOTE or PE
Scud Race/Super GT
Emergency Call Ambulance
Spikeout/Spikeout FE
Dirt Devils
LA Machine Guns

Infact most of them didn't get ported, and if you played/seen the XBOX Outrun 2 levels of Scud/Daytona 2 you'll know they look nothing as good as the Arcade version.

So on paper, who cares.. I know that Model 3 rocked!

> my mate mark was saying Model 2 has monochromic textures and the way it made
> colour was by stacking several together? Got any more info on this, it sounds
> really unusual!

No, Model 2 uses 16 colours per texture max.

> "It was fairly impressive when it came out but its specs are grossly
> exaggerated."
>
> I disagree again. It's specs like polygon count were downplayed. unlike every
> single PC 3D accelerator chip maker of the 1990s, who totally stretched and
> exaggerated their specs.

Nobody downplays their specs. Performance specs are typically very simplistic calculations based on available hardware resources that don't take into account the interplay of different components over time. Look at processor IPC numbers for a good example.

> Pro-1000s, but one Pro-1000 with 2x geometry and 2x rasterizer, same difference.

My understanding is that the Model 3 is a scaled down Pro-1000. Real Pro-1Ks were large standalone boxes and packed more punch than Model 3.

> Dreamcast arrived with comparable performance in 1998-1999. and even then,
> Dreamcast did not completely rival Model 3 in every way.

The Model 3 doesn't rival the DC. I've never seen the Model 3 do graphics that were better than the DC's.

> It takes a Gamecube or an Xbox to rival & surpass the quality and performance of
> MODEL 3, in practice.

No, PCs before the current generation of consoles were already far ahead of the Model 3.

> could rival Model 3. the entire TNT/TNT2 line lacked geometry processors,

When the GeForce came around, hardware T&L was available on consumer level cards.

My Supermodel dev machine is a mere 500MHz Pentium III with a GeForce II and my card is far better than the Model 3. It would be capable of tossing that geometry around without many problems I suspect if it wasn't for the Model 3's unfriendliness towards modern APIs like GL and D3D.

Supermodel's graphics problems are due to the fact that state changes (enabling/disabling textures, changing blending modes, toggling lighting, etc.) are very expensive and Model 3 specifies state information on a per-polygon basis. The usual programming model is to set up various state attributes, render a big chunk of polygons, then change states when absolutely necessary. I'll bet most hardware has per-polygon attributes but this isn't accessible from any API.

> I didn't say per scene / per frame, I said per SECOND.
>
> "Try a few thousand."
>
> yeah, per scene / per frame. huge difference.
>
> "I remember Ville once hooked up a polygon counter to his D3D engine in
> Supermodel and in Sega Rally 2 there were around 9K polys per frame."
>
> 9,000 polygons * 60 frames per second - 540,000 polygons per second. which is in
> line with Model 3's 1,000,000 polygons. Sega Rally 2 does not hit the peak
> performance, but does more than a few thousand polygons/sec, obviously :)

Note that Sega Rally 2 was Step 2.X Model 3 hardware which had an upgraded R3D GPU and a much faster CPU. The 9K figure is quoted off the top of my head and is an upper limit. The actual figure may be anywhere from 3K-9K. I'm curious now so when I get home later tonight I might hook up a polygon counter to Supermodel.

> but Model 3 had that fast-access VROM that DC did not have.
> Model 3 games have lower res texture, but usually more of them. more variety.
> Model 3 games look "texture heavy" and maintain 60fps.

A cursory glance of the DC specs reveals that both systems have an equal amount of memory for textures.

> the quality of Model 3 graphics is very high even though the amount of geometry
> is small by PS2 and even DC standards.

What exactly does "high quality" mean if the geometry count is lower, the graphics pipeline was far less flexible, various effects were simply impossible (such as anything requiring multi-pass rendering), and the resolution was lower?

> but every Model 3 game ran at 60fps for

Console and PC games since have been able to maintain 60FPS or higher while looking better. Some games toss around lots of geometry or effects or just aren't written well.

> I've inside knowledge of both systems, and you ask any Sega AM developer which
> was the more powerful hardware system, and they will say Model 3 Step 2/2.1, not
> Model 3 Step 1 or 1.5 though.

Inside knowledge? Are you a developer that has worked on these systems for Sega? Are you friends with the Sega AM2 team? No? Oh....

> The sad thing is that you say Naomi was more powerful than Model 3, then why did
> Sega not port the following games:
>
> Daytona 2 BOTE or PE
> Scud Race/Super GT
> Emergency Call Ambulance
> Spikeout/Spikeout FE
> Dirt Devils
> LA Machine Guns
>
> Infact most of them didn't get ported, and if you played/seen the XBOX Outrun 2
> levels of Scud/Daytona 2 you'll know they look nothing as good as the Arcade
> version.

This is absurd. Do you honestly think an XBox can be out-done by Model 3? Comparing levels between 2 different games is laughable.

As for why these games weren't ported, who knows? Maybe they figured they wouldn't be as fun on a console. Maybe they didn't have time to waste on countless arcade conversions and wanted to focus on better games? Gunblade NY wasn't ported either to my knowledge so why would LA Machineguns be any different? Scud Race ran on Step 1.5 hardware which you yourself acknowledge was less powerful than Naomi hardware and is what I've been saying all along.

Well, they were actually some kind of "lightmap" :) they are used to modulate the computed light value. The way the real color is output is quite weird. I'll try to explain:

The rasterizer generates the "3d" layer to the framebuffer the following way:
The polygon "base" colour stored in the polygon data is a 10 bit palette index, and it's output directly to the framebuffer.
The light value computed by the Geo DSP is multiplied by the texel value (4-bit) and then reduced to 6 bit through a table (Luma conversion table, selectable per polygon IIRC). This 6 bit value is output to the framebuffer along with the 10 bit palette value.

Then for each screen pixel, the video mixer (color generator or something like that) gets the tilemap values and framebuffer value and arranges them in the right priority (tilemaps can be over 3d plane or over 3d plane, selectable per tile). If the visible one is the 3d plane, then it computes a RGB555 value corresponding to the polygon "base" color by indexing the 10bit color in a 1024 entries palette table.
Then separates each component and looks in 3 separate tables (one for each component). The lookup address is computed combining the pixel color (5 bit) with the luminance value (6 bit) and each entry stores a 8 bit value. By doing it for each component it converts from RGB555+6bit luma to a RGB888 value, that is sent to display.





> my mate mark was saying Model 2 has monochromic textures and the way it made
> colour was by stacking several together? Got any more info on this, it sounds
> really unusual!
>
> Also he said it was dervied from military flight simulator chipsets, hence why
> it's so hard to get docs on it!
>
> But Model 3 was a real 3dfx-type chip yeah?
>
> Newsdee's Love, Glory, and Discussion Boards
>

> > That's actually very interesting info, Bart, thanks for sharing that with us.
> It
> > seems in a way quite analogously similar to older 2D tile/sprite-based arcade
> > architectures - the main CPU itself only manipulates some registers and some
> > pointers, and the actual graphics tile/sprite data remains in ROM and is
> > processed by the hardware to generate the display. Except in this case, the
> ROMs
> > contain model/texture data, and the graphics hardware is a 3D rasterization
> > pipeline. Adding RAM-based model storage, would be like RAM-based tile storage
> > for 2D arcade hardware.
>
> Yes, that's a good analogy. I've heard that Namco System 11 (or 22 or both?)
> also stored data in ROM. In the case of Namco hardware, textures were usable by
> the rendering hardware while in ROM.
>
> > > No way. By the time the Riva TNT hit the scene, Model 3 was obsolete.
> >
> > That seems slightly a stretch. I've used a Riva TNT (16MB PCI) before, to play
> > UT, and ... it doesn't even seem in the same world as a Model3 arcade game, as
> > far as the graphics go. No way. Enabling AA would make it far, far worse in
> > terms of comparative performance.
>
> If not Riva TNT then definitely GeForce. And I still don't know if Voodoo 2 and
> Riva TNT generation hardware was that far behind. The Voodoo cards were
> basically just polygon rasterizers AFAIK and I think this limited their
> performance -- even if they could draw polygons fast there was still a lot of
> time wasted sending all those polygons every single frame.
>

ALL consumer-gaming PC 3D chips were simply rasterizers, up *until* the NV10 / GeForce came out in the fall of 1999 with on-chip geometry processor (T&L). all low-cost consumer PC 3D chips before the GeForce, including the TNT and TNT2 were rasterizers like all the Voodoo cards. although there are many differences between Nvidia TNT / TNT2 and 3Dfx Voodoo, Voodoo2, Banshee, Voodoo3 and VSA-100 (Voodoo4/5), they were all rasterizers without any ability to generate their own polygons (they relied on the CPU for that) if you wanted a PC 3D card with on-board geometry processing / T&L, you would have to purchase an expensive $1000+ board from 3DLabs with GAMMA (geometry/T&L) plus Glint (rasterizer) or a Real3D-100 (lower end than Real3D Pro 1000) or similar expensive card. thus, gaming cards in the $150 to $600 range all lacked geometry processing, until GeForce.

> I imagine by the time the Riva came out, and certainly the GeForce, the cards
> were capable of caching display lists. From my limited experience with 3D APIs,
> the usual programming model is to just send draw commands every frame but OpenGL
> (and I'm sure Direct3D) has always supported display lists and nowadays vertex
> buffered objects are the way to go.
>
> My guess would be that by the time these features began to appear in consumer
> cards, Model 3 had been out-done.
>
we did not see PC *games* outperforming Model 3 across the board until after the 1990s were over -- Even if *some* PC 3D chips had *some* features that were beyond Model 3. the fact remains that Model 3 was unrivaled from 1995-96 until late 1999 or 2000 on the PC side (not counting dreamcast) that's about 5 years, give or take.


> > Well, that's not surprising. I think UT pushes probably around 10K poly/scene
> > too, roughly, except that Model3 can add all kinds of nice texture-filtering
> and
> > full-screen AA effects too, without any noticable slowdown that I can see.
> Try
> > doing that on an TNT - bad idea.
>
> Model 3's texture filtering is just tri-linear filtering (mip-mapping.) Besides
> that and AA, there really isn't anything else going on. And as for the AA, keep
> in mind that Model 3 games run at 496x384 on a medium res screen.
>
> It's difficult for me to tell how much benefit the AA really gives. In
> Supermodel with its numerous graphical glitches, slideshow framerate, and
> full-bright rendering, everything looks awful. Lighting makes a huge difference
> and things look a lot better when running at 60FPS.
>
> > > Model 3 had 8MB of texture memory. Max texture resolution was 256x256.
> >
> > Texture space in ROM or RAM or both? I wonder how / if they handled modifiable
> > textures, or supported render-to-texture? I'm surprised at the limited texture
> > resolution though, considering VivoNono and the Namco Sys22 stuff. (Voodoo2
> > hardware was also similarly 256x256 limited, of course.)
>
> Model 3 could only render textures from its 8MB memory. Textures could be stored
> in ROM but have to be DMA copied to texture memory to be used. Note also that
> the CPU has no access to the ROM space and can only send texture upload commands
> to the GPU.
>
> > I was always of the opinion that the Model3 was just ever-so-slightly
> higher-end
> > than the straight-up Naomi or DC systems, although I think they could connect
> > multiple Naomi boards in parallel to increase the rendering capability.
> (Doesn't
> > HOTD2 or something use two Naomi boardsets? I'm not super-familiar with that
> > hardware.)
>
> No way. DC is vastly superior to Model 3. There's just no comparison between
> DC/Naomi games and Model 3. PowerVR was a much better piece of kit.
>
>
> > on what is effectively an XBox inside the machine. I guess that 512MB RAM /
> > media-board really helps with that. One little thing that seemed strange to me
> > though, when I first saw that game in the arcade, was that the attract-mode
> > movies were some sort of MPEG or something, rather than rendered in realtime
> > such as most other contemporary 3D racers, like Scud Race / Super GT was.
>
> Don't forget that these polished Sega games have excellent artwork. Model 3
> games can still look very nice today, I'll admit, but when you take a closer
> look, you'll see that the 3D hardware has been pitifully outdated since the late
> 90's.
>
>
> ----
> Bart
>

> >No way. DC is vastly superior to Model 3. There's just no >comparison between
> DC/Naomi games and Model 3. PowerVR >was a much better piece of kit.
>
> I've inside knowledge of both systems, and you ask any Sega AM developer which
> was the more powerful hardware system, and they will say Model 3 Step 2/2.1, not
> Model 3 Step 1 or 1.5 though.
>
> The Naomi was considered a cheaper alternative and a cheap way for operators to
> buy later games (also the ability to port games in a short time span), as the
> Model 3 PCB was around £2000 for the CPU/Video boards.
>
> Even though Naomi was released in 98 with House of the Dead 2, it was still
> established that games like Star Wars Trilogy would look and perform better on
> Model 3, also there was some serious hardware 3D issues on the Naomi so they
> decided to make the Hikaru board, which was vastly more powerful than Naomi, and
> probably the Naomi 2, this was considered the replacement for Model 3, although
> too costly compared to Naomi, however Sega did venture into mutliple threaded
> Naomi hardware, such as F355 and Airline pilots, these where for showcase games
> and these games clearly are more powerful than Model 3.
>
> The sad thing is that you say Naomi was more powerful than Model 3, then why did
> Sega not port the following games:
>
> Daytona 2 BOTE or PE
> Scud Race/Super GT
> Emergency Call Ambulance
> Spikeout/Spikeout FE
> Dirt Devils
> LA Machine Guns
>
> Infact most of them didn't get ported, and if you played/seen the XBOX Outrun 2
> levels of Scud/Daytona 2 you'll know they look nothing as good as the Arcade
> version.
>
> So on paper, who cares.. I know that Model 3 rocked!
>

I agree almost 100%

Model 3 was absolutely staggaringly impressive in the mid 1990s, and still impressive in the late 1990s. even though NAOMI was better in certain specific areas of the 3D hardware compared to Model 3, the Model 3 was better in other areas.

If Sega and Lockheed had brought out Model 4 with say, 10 million polygon performance on paper, it would have blown the living fuck out of PS2/System246, NAOMI 2, Gamecube/TriForce and Xbox/Chihiro, dispite the fact that these systems do 10-20 million polygons/sec.

lets put it another way. if all the current-gen consoles (Xbox, Gamecube, PS2, Dreamcast) were scaled down to 1M polygons/sec, keeping all of their inherent traits
(good and bad), they would not hold a candle to Model 3.

The only reason why the current consoles are able to compete with Model 3 and in many areas, beat Model 3 badly, is because the polygon and pixel performance is so much higher. but the quality is actually lower, in many respects.

> The Model 3 doesn't rival the DC. I've never seen the Model 3 do graphics that
> were better than the DC's.

I'd just add one exception: alpha blending. The DC sucks supernovas through nanotubes as soon as you have anything partially transparent. Standard problem with tiled rendering.

OG.

Sega didn't port them because they had a policy for not porting old games. Top Skater got left out IIRC too, I'd have definately bought that.

smf