Newsgroup: it.comp.console.playstation
Titolo: PS2 e' ufficiale!

Tratto da 
www.videogames.com/psx
Sony Emotional About PS 2?
On Tuesday, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. and Toshiba made a joint
announcement at the 1999 International Solid-State
Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco regarding a new microprocessor
called Emotion Engine.
The purpose of the conference was to talk about the chip's potential for
"future computer entertainment applications."
Considering that SCEI's only business is the PlayStation, the natural
assumption is that Emotion Engine will not only be
the heart and soul of the PlayStation 2, but also its grins, frowns, and
eyes.
Sony claims that the .18 micron process 128-bit chip runs at 250 MHz and
has the capability of running 5 billion
floating-point operations per second, and 2.1 million instructions per
second. Graphically, the chip can spit out 55
million polygons per second without any effects turned on. As effects are
added, the chip gets slower: Adding parallel
lighting slows the chip to 34 million; adding lighting and fog will drop it
to 30 million; and with lighting, fog and
bezier curves turned on - it drops to 13 million polys. In case you don't
have the time to add up all the polygons rendered
to screen when you play your favorite titles, read this: The current
PlayStation runs 360,000 polygons per second with a
32-bit processor running at roughly 33.9 MHz.; the Dreamcast's max output
is 3 million polygons per second running at
200MHz and capable of running 1.4 billion floating-point operations per
second.
In short, the tech guys at Sega may be investing in Huggies diapers today.
While we know that Sega was under the suspicion that Sony's next console
would be using a high-end process called NURBS to
render environments and characters, Sony has apparently taken a step back
to help introduce some new concepts in what could
be the next big thing for consoles - emotion. The Emotion Engine hopes to
bring more fluidity to characters and facial
expressions. The only other example of this type of approach is Square's
upcoming film for Final Fantasy. and as we've
We've seen the first sample video of the movie - the facial expressions
look amazing. Sega is just beginning to try this
approach with Shen Mue. But more polygons can only make facial movements
look better and this is where Sony's 13 million
polys could really hurt Sega. If Sony can achieve near-perfect facial
emotions, games are about to become amazingly complex
(and programmers and artists can kiss their cozy sleeping habits goodbye).
Sony's official word on the chip doesn't indicate if the chip will indeed
power the next PlayStation but the company
pointed to the chip as a forward-looking experiment that will "enable
software developers to synthesize realistic
behavioral animation that make characters appear as though they act and
move on their own will." How many other characters
need 13 million polygons rendered to screen for any other Sony product? The
second concept of interest is the Bezier curve.
Over the past few years this has been on of the major goals of consumer
games. Why? It comes down to curves. Current titles
render curves through a series of smaller or large square angles. Back in
the early days of desktop publishing, this made
large text look blocky on curved areas. Bezier curves helped take a series
of dots and then draw a line between each or
those dots. The more dots in a pattern, the more complex and graphically
pleasing the curve looks. While iconnecting dots
may sound simplistic, it takes a great deal of computing power to achieve.
In the Emotion Engine, just turning this feature
on in hardware drops the maximum output from 30 to 13 million polys. The
use of bezier curves could help build breathtaking
organic-looking environments, smooth characters, and realistic blood...
just imagine anything that requires a curved edge.
While Sony is reluctant to call the joint announcement of the Emotion
Engine chipset an announcement that PlayStation 2 is
on the horizon, there is some word that top-tier developers have already
received development kits to help begin the long
process of building PlayStation 2's first generation of titles.
Also, no one appears to know if the new machine will be DVD or CD-ROM
based. While DVD-ROM will hold more data and offer
gamers the option of running DVD movies (the Emotion Engine also decodes
MPEG-2), the current cost of DVD drives isn't
cheap, while CD-ROM drives are relatively inexpensive.
The Emotion Engine sounds powerful but also pricey. Sony would want to make
sure a PlayStation launch would be successful,
given that cost is a big factor with home consoles. Considering that the
chip also requires a sound chip, controllers for
managing input and output, and more chips to deal with dishing out graphics
to screen - the machine's cost could get even
higher. One solution would be to build two types of PlayStation 2s. One
PlayStation would be for those gamers with a little
extra cash who want to play DVD. And there could be another PlayStation 2
with a less expensive CD-ROM for those who didn't
want to pay as much. The only downside to this scenario is that developers
tend to support either DVD or CD-ROM, not both.
Rumors have indicated that the US launch of the Dreamcast may include a
special DVD version of the console just in case
Sony decides to embrace DVD.One thing is clear. Sony has some big decisions
to make in the next few months.
And considering the popularity of the PlayStation - gamers will be
listening.
Countdown to PS2 Begins
The next batch of details surrounding the PlayStation 2 will be revealed on
March 2 at SCEI's developer's conference in
Tokyo. Sony told Reuters that it is preparing to launch a new version of
the PlayStation hardware, but would not say when.
This follows the ISSC conference held a few weeks ago at which SCEI
revealed its latest project, a join venture with
Toshiba that has produced the Emotion Engine, a new chipset which will
likely play a key role in the next PlayStation.
PlayStation 2 Cometh
After all the talk and speculation about the future of Sony's next console,
Sony may be getting ready to unleash a gaming
tsunami of epic proportions tomorrow when the company is expected to reveal
new PlayStation 2 information at a developer's
conference in Tokyo. It will be a full house packed with journalists and
developers from around the world - and hopefully
the show won't disappoint.
The Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported in its Monday morning edition that Sony
will introduce a new video game machine
(reportedly called "PlayStation 2") before March 2000 featuring the Emotion
Engine processor codeveloped by Toshiba and
SCEI. Additionally, the machine will be able to play DVD movies. According
to the report, even though it will be several
times more powerful than Intel's Pentium III, it will cost less than a PC
(which runs about 100,000 yen in Japan - about
US$840). Because the new console will use DVD as its delivery format, it
will increase data capacity per disc by seven to
eight times to just under 5 gigabytes.
Development of the Emotion Engine chip has cost Sony and Toshiba nearly 10
billion yen ($84 million) and is not just a move
to become the dominant force in the video game market, but possibly to take
over Intel and Microsoft's hold on the
microchip market. A Sony executive, as quoted by the paper, said, "We take
aim at the stranglehold on the chip/operating
system market enjoyed by the Intel-Microsoft alliance." He went on to say
that the major wars in the technology market will
be fought over entertainment applications, not over business-related
applications.
The article goes on to hype the system's capabilities, saying that it will
be able to produce images with the quality of
Disney/Pixar's Toy Story (remember when Nintendo said the N64 would have
Jurassic Park and T2-quality effects when the
Project Reality was first announced?), and that it will be able to handle
50 times more 3D data than the Dreamcast.
Sony Takes a Giant Step...Back
When Sony got into the console hardware market, the PlayStation was
different. It focused on an older market, embraced 3D
as its standard, took the entire gaming market into its arms, and fought
off the market grip that Sega and Nintendo had,
pushing them to the second and third positions. For the past few days,
readers have been asking about backward
compatibility, and we've been relegated to quote history: No console in the
recent history of gaming since the days of the
original NES has been "out of the box" backwards compatible. This concept
has been discussed time and time again regarding
the last two generations of console systems. Would the Saturn have been any
better if it ran Genesis games from the memory
card port? Maybe. Would the SNES have been better if it ran NES games from
day one? Maybe.
Sony has worked with LSI Logic to help build this option into its new I/O
Processor for 100 percent backward compatibility
with the current PlayStation, with added use of new IEEE 1394 (FireWire)
and Universal Serial Bus (USB) interfaces for new
PS2 peripherals. The I/O Processor is based on the same chip that runs in
your PlayStation right now, but it comes with
added cache memory and a new memory architecture that increases data
transfer by four times. In English, this could mean
significantly fewer load times for your games.
Using the FireWire and USB interfaces to communicate to controllers equals
a performance increase of more than 20 times.
The USB port can push out 1.5Mbps and 12Mbps (Megabits per second), and the
FireWire ports can transfer data from 100Mbps
and 400Mpbs. Undoubtedly, the USB ports will be used for controllers, small
video cameras, keyboards, and mice, while
FireWire will be used for connecting the PlayStation 2 to devices like
VCRs, newer TVs, and larger video cameras. FireWire
is already used in the video industry as a fast way of transferring digital
video information from cameras to video-editing
suites.
USB has one major advantage: Theoretically it supports up to 127 devices on
a single port and can actually supply power to
newer controllers for small LCD screens, high-powered force-feedback, and
other options. Not only does this save you from
having to plug more stuff into your overcrowded wall socket, it should
bring players more into the game.
Sony Creates A Monster
TOKYO - It's not just a rumor anymore. At a developers conference held
Tuesday in Tokyo, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.
unveiled its next-generation console, known widely as the PlayStation 2. A
price and a name for the new machine were not
announced at the conference. The system will be released in Japan this
winter (before March, 2000), followed by a US
release in fall, 2000.
Sony confirmed the use of DVD (and CD) as the storage medium of choice for
the next system. It's likely that developers
will begin producing games on CD, eventually making a seamless move to
DVDs, as needed. Rumors of backward compatibility
were confirmed by Ken Kutaragi and cheered by attendees. The system will
not improve the graphics of the current breed of
PlayStation games, but it will be 100 percent compatible with PS1's games.
It will include a modem, but details of how fast
that modem will be have not been finalized.
Amidst the system's specifications are Sony's Graphics Synthesizer and
Emotion Engine. Capitalizing on the ability of the
system to produce human-like emotions, Sony and its top developers showed
off demos of exactly what the system can do. One
demo showed the old-man character from screenshots of Final Fantasy The
Movie changing his various emotions in real time.
Another Emotion demo starred the starting-gate girl from Namco's Ridge
Racer series.
Sony says that the Graphics Synthesizer in the next-generation PlayStation
hardware will aid in the development of richly
detailed game worlds via the machine's massive floating-point processing
power. It also allows for an incredible amount of
realism. For instance, Sony showed off a "puff-ball" demo, where wind
affected each strand of each puff ball differently.
It can also simulate real-world physical attributes - like gravity,
friction, mass, water, wood, metal, and so on - like no
other machine. Sony dubbed this "Emotion Synthesis" - making game
characters and environments behave just as they would in
the real world. According to the company, this reaches beyond the capacity
of current state-of-the-art workstations and
approaches the power seen in large-scale super computers used for
scientific simulations.
Sony's press material released today sums it up nicely: "Imagine walking
into the screen and experiencing a movie in
real-time... this is the world we are about to enter."
Aside from the game side of things, Sony has built an MPEG2 decoder into
the hardware to use as its image decompression
technology. Not only will DVD increase the storage capacity developers have
to use, but it could makes it possible to play
DVD movies on the system - much like you can play music CDs on the
PlayStation today. The use of digital technology will
not only help graphics, it will help sound, as well - and Sony is going all
out, providing processing of audio formats,
such as Dolby Digital AC-3 and DTS. Imagine playing a game with
theater-quality surround sound. It's enough to pull you
kicking and screaming into the game environment. In addition, Sony has
thought about the future, adding support for Digital
TV.
In the backwards-compatibility department, Sony has built in a new I/O
Processor that uses the original PlayStation's
32-Bit core, allowing for 100 percent compatibility with the original
system's games on the new machine. While no details
were given, it's expected that you will be able to use data from the
original PlayStation, including memory cards.
Development systems will begin making their way to developers this spring,
with more announcements from Sony leading up to
the machine's launch.
-- 
Kennedy the best President
---
ken...@thepentagon.com

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