Low Poly Hardware Specs

[hawken]

Nintendo DS

http://dadako.com/forums_old/screen_ds.png

suggested polygon count for performance (total visible): 2000
texture memory (per screen): 512kb
max texture size: 1024px x 1024px
screen colour depth: 18-bit (260,000 colours)
alpha blending: 5-bit (32 colours)
suggested texture size: under 128 x 128

----------------------------------------------------------

Sony PSP

http://dadako.com/forums_old/screen_psp.png

suggested polygon count for performance (total visible): 50,000
texture memory: 2mb
max texture size: 128px x 128px
screen colour depth: 16-bit (65,536 colours)
alpha blending: 8-bit (256 colours)

----------------------------------------------------------

iPhone 3G

http://dadako.com/forums_old/screen_mobile.png

suggested polygon count for performance (total visible): 7000
texture memory: 24MB
max texture size: 1024px x 1024px
screen colour depth: 16-bit (65,536 colours)
alpha blending: free! (use PNG)
suggested texture size: under 512 x 512

----------------------------------------------------------

[steady]

cool cool cool
just an idea
lets do a vote and choose one format
and then use challenges/contests to generate content and make a lowpoly polycount.net game hoooraaaayyy

[hawken]

depends which format we can get the most info for really. devs, please chip in.

[master of unlocking]

Here is what I know about the DS.

polygons per screen at 60fps: <font color="red"> 2000 </font> Well, this is true if you plan to have 3D going on both screens. Which I wouldn't recommend. A good scenario is 2000 polys per frame at 60fps. You can also pull off 4000 polys per frame if you drop to 30 fps.

[hawken]

there's a limited number of verts it can hold in memory - so you can only get 2048 polygons on each screen even if you're running at 1 frame per second.

It really is a hard fast rule of the hardware according to a thread on http://forum.gbadev.org/

[KDR_11k]

If you give it a framebuffer you could draw half the scene in the first pass and the other half in the second pass.

[Toomas]

[ QUOTE ]
If you give it a framebuffer you could draw half the scene in the first pass and the other half in the second pass.

[/ QUOTE ]

If it could only hold 2048tris in memory then you would have to do t&amp;l twice aswell and i dont know how good you can do it (i guess you cant really).

[lkraan]

Here's what I know about the PSP. In the end how much of the specs that you will use depends on your engine and how much resources is needed for other stuff.

polygons per screen at 60fps: 80k per frame is what we're sticking with as the limit
texture memory (per screen): ?
max texture size: 128px x 128px (yep)
screen colour depth: ?
3d data format: GMO
texture format: GIM which goes from 4 bit indexed to 32bit RGBA. With the standard GMO model converter the texture gets baked in the binary GMO file along with the model.
alpha blending: 8bit

[Toomas]

I was just wondering, so you use 256colour textures for DS now is it viable to have custom pallet for each texture?

[hawken]

[ QUOTE ]
I was just wondering, so you use 256colour textures for DS now is it viable to have custom pallet for each texture?

[/ QUOTE ]

that would appear to be the case

[Toomas]

DS can do coloured lightning, that is proven by AC:WW fireworks.
AC does semi transparency aswell (embarassed animation).

[CheapAlert]

P100 w/ Voodoo2 can go 45fps with 3500 polys onscreen with 5 256x256 textures on 640x480 iirc :P

[jimiyo]

i dont know if this is the right area to ask, (Great info BTW!!!) what kind of polycount/texture does WOW characters and objects have? they all seem to be relatively low poly eh?

[danr]

(disclaimer - all the following info is apparent to anyone with a copy of the noted game) ... 128x128 isn't a "maximum" size for the PSP hardware - on our last PSP game, you'll see several environment textures scattered around the place at that res x2, and a couple at even bigger than that. 128 is however a good guide for a practical top-end size for general texture use. "Maximum" size is 1024x1024


Also - the screen display is 24-bit, but some games run in a 16-bit mode.

[Ryno]

Yeah, we're going bigger than 128s as well. I did a bunch at 256, and a few at 512x256 with the intention of downsizing as needed. Apparently it isn't needed, as it is running fine.

[CMB]

Does anybody know anything about ngage?

[Jackablade]

I've developed for NGage. I'll have to look up the specifics as its been a while, but I can tell you for a start theres no alpha blending. It supports Targa format textures. Pretty sure the screen is 16 bit. Maximum texture size appears to be 4096*4096 but feasibly you'd never want anything bigger than 128*128 unless you're texturing vast areas of level geometry or something.

[CMB]

Thanks JackBlade.
Would this tri. count plan work good?
600 main character
400-600 npcs.
100-200 a weapon
200 doodads and environment art.
Any examples,portfolios,textures or wireframes of ngage games would be great.

[uk_resistant]

what about extra maps like spec, normal etc etc

I know Psp can do spec maps, but im intrested in normals.
Ps2 can do them so it isnt out the question is it?

[Toomas]

PS2 can render normalmaps? I kind of doubt it.

[uk_resistant]

quoted from wikipedia (which actually used to say a few games that used normal maps, one of them being path of neo)

"Currently, normal mapping has been utilized successfully and extensively on both the PC and gaming consoles. Initially, Microsoft's Xbox was the only home game console to fully support this effect, whereas other consoles use a software-only implementation as they don't support it directly on hardware."


so i guess yeah,ps2 can do them.

[Joseph Silverman]

[ QUOTE ]

so i guess yeah,ps2 can do them.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure that's true. Anyone can add to Wikipedia.


I don't have any real knowledge about this, but I seem to remember compaines like Ubisoft specifically mentioning what effects they were using instead of normal mapping when making a PS2 version of some of their Xbox games. (Like SCCT and GR2)

[uk_resistant]

yeah thats true.
At the very least in terms of consoles xbox can because it has doom 3.
anyways, would be cool if psp could do it, regardless of how it would look on the tiny screen.

[Joseph Silverman]

At the PSP's texture resolutions I don't imagine normals would look great.

[CrazyButcher]

no real specs, but a nice overview of "same game" on multi platforms, on the left you can change to the different platforms

http://startrek.bethsoft.com/art/ta_pspscreens.html

[achmedthesnake]

kinda, late on this thread, but what the hell...

regarding the PSP - it can play flash swf's through its webbrowser function, and as far is a know it only takes flash player 6 stuff - anyone one know wether that's increased with the firmware upgrades - it'd be nice if we could get some as2/as3 action happening

(and damn sony for making dev on a psp so bloomin hard).

[fade1]

I was just wondering, so you use 256colour textures for DS now is it viable to have custom pallet for each texture?

you can't use more then 256 colors on the ds. for alpha texture there is just stencil then. for 5bit alpha 32 colors for 3bit alpha 8 colors.
there is converter to "autoconvert" the textures, but the quality is not that good. especially for alphas you need to handpick to get better results.

[jpgourley]

alpha blending: 1,3, and 5 Bit

Getting alpha sorting to work correctly on the DS can be a pain, if I can go with a 1 bit I absolutely do.

There is a max limit of 2000 Polys per frame, but you can also run into problems if there is over about 400 polys being drawn in a single line. This can cause massive screen tearing issues.

We try to keep our levels under 10k tri's to prevent performance issues, but I have seen some that run perfectly fine coming in at around 17k tris.
Thetexture memory (per screen) number given doesn't sound right. It may depend on your engine and how the memory banks are being distributed between compressed textures, uncompressed textures, as well as sound and model data. In my experience I've had two 128Kb banks delegated for compressed and uncompressed textures, with an additional 128 bank being partially (64Kb) used to uncompress the textures while the additional 64Kb is used for sound. All additional memory goes to model data and the executable files. Designating one bank for compressed textures you do lose half of another, but you fit about three times the textures in when compressed.

[dactilardesign]

what about adding Iphone to the thread?
from an iphone thread: (http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=57052)

I´using unity3d for developing a game for the iphone and the limit with this engine is 7000triangles on screen


suggested polygon count for performance (total visible): 7000?
texture memory (per screen): 24MB?
max texture size: 1024px x 1024px
screen colour depth: 16-bit (65,000 colours)
3d data format: ?
texture format: ?
alpha blending: ?
suggested texture size: under 512?


The only model I've done for Iphone was around 2000 triangles and 512x512 texture for an OpenGLES engine.

btw, I think DS specs are correct.

[genericnamedave]

In my experience of doing art for a few platforms, the DS is the ultimate exercise in creating low-poly/low-texture models. We had to make whole characters with 300 tris and use 100x100 maps.

The low-poly character also has to register nicely in that small frame. So, my vote is for the DS format.

(PSP if we were doing 1000 tris with 256x256 maps)

[ptoing]

I am quite sure that the NDS has a bitdepth of 5 bit per channel, making it 15 bit of colourrange, not 18.

[fade1]

basically this is right. but when combining textures with vertex colors you can get 18bit. honestly, this doesn't make much difference for an artist, except maybe for skydome gradients.

[Harry]

Here's what I know about the PSP. In the end how much of the specs that you will use depends on your engine and how much resources is needed for other stuff.

polygons per screen at 60fps: 80k per frame is what we're sticking with as the limit
texture memory (per screen): ?
max texture size: 128px x 128px (yep)
screen colour depth: ?
3d data format: GMO
texture format: GIM which goes from 4 bit indexed to 32bit RGBA. With the standard GMO model converter the texture gets baked in the binary GMO file along with the model.
alpha blending: 8bit

I know for a fact that 128x128 isn't max texture size on psp - I've seen some of my own models with 256x256 textures on my psp in fact. I was always under the impression that the max was 256, based on what a few devs told me, but since then they've said forget the limit but stick to 256 max for the sake of performance.

[GugloPWN]

I am quite sure that the NDS has a bitdepth of 5 bit per channel, making it 15 bit of colourrange, not 18.

I think this is true, but stick with 256 paletted colors (1 bit alpha).

Also to explain 3D on both screens. There is only 1 3D engine that can write to one screen at a time. To write 3D to both screens you have to write the second screens 3D on the first screen, then copy over a picture of that to the second. So you get 2000 tri per screen, but have to alternately draw each screen cutting fps in half. You also have to use 128k of your texture memory to store the screengrab.

[swifty]

Hello all,

This is actually my first post on this forum. I'm a grad. student beginning work on my master's project and this thread has quite a lot to do with my topic. I was wondering where the numbers in the first post came from. If anyone (especially the initial poster) knows, I'd love to have the source. Thanks.

[A_Nub]

The psp specs are Wrong

The psp's speed really depends upon the engine and optimization.

Vram size is 2MB, but textures may be stored in the 24mb ram as well.
You can swizzle textures to get a speed boost as well
Not to mention That the psp supports up to 512x512px textures, however they tender to be slow.
Also the screen buffer can be 32 or 16bit in either 8888,5650,5551, or 4444 formats.

If you want any more information let me know, I have been programming for the psp for along time, just making small tech demos for myself and such.

[die_Kröte]

I'm currently working on a project targeting the 1 Ghz Android phones. Looking at the recommendation for the iPhone 3GS, it suggests 7000 (visible) tris and that's only a 600 Mhz processor. I'll be using VBO's and all Native code for my OpenGL calls (Android programming is in Java but you can use native C code through the JNI) so I think I can crank out upwards of 11k tris. Anyone have any thoughts on that?

[JonConley]

I'm currently working on a project targeting the 1 Ghz Android phones. Looking at the recommendation for the iPhone 3GS, it suggests 7000 (visible) tris and that's only a 600 Mhz processor. I'll be using VBO's and all Native code for my OpenGL calls (Android programming is in Java but you can use native C code through the JNI) so I think I can crank out upwards of 11k tris. Anyone have any thoughts on that?

Not sure about phones but most devices now have dedicated 3d / graphics hardware. These are the bottlenecks and limits to the amount of triangles on screen (and typically the memory for this hardware). The processor will not normally be a bottleneck when you are talking 3D games, granted on phones and such you need to be considerate of the processor time for physics and game logic.

The processor difference between the Android and Iphone won't make much of a difference in rendering, only the dedicated hardware differences would.

Another limitation would be Android using Java vs. Iphone using objective C natively, java is a slower language then C, granted on PCs there normally isn't too much of a difference but on devices with slower processors the difference will be much more noticable.

[die_Kröte]

Not sure about phones but most devices now have dedicated 3d / graphics hardware. These are the bottlenecks and limits to the amount of triangles on screen (and typically the memory for this hardware). The processor will not normally be a bottleneck when you are talking 3D games, granted on phones and such you need to be considerate of the processor time for physics and game logic.

The processor difference between the Android and Iphone won't make much of a difference in rendering, only the dedicated hardware differences would.

Another limitation would be Android using Java vs. Iphone using objective C natively, java is a slower language then C, granted on PCs there normally isn't too much of a difference but on devices with slower processors the difference will be much more noticable.

Well, on one good side, Android does allow native code though JNI and I'm running all of my opengl calls natively. The Snapdragon CPU appears to have an AMD Z430 GPU which I'm having trouble getting much information on. I should have my hands on a phone any day now... so maybe I can get some benchmarks myself.

[hawken]

yeah the raw maths for the iPhone 3gs point towards it being able to do upwards of 112,000 triangles onscreen (at 60 fps) - but in reality, it starts to slow down quite badly at over 5,000 or 6,000 triangles, when using a 3d engine like Unity.

[MikeF]

Bit of thread bump here, but does anyone know the specs for the Ipad? I've done some searching around and i'm getting conflicting information

[Naked-Robot]

Sorry to be a total newb, but...

If the screen colour depth for iPhone 3G is 16-bit, and alpha blending is free if I use PNG, does that mean that if I save my diffuse out as a 16-bit, I have to save my alpha separately as a PNG?

[Conor]

iPad resolution - 1024x768
iPod touch and iPhone 3gs and older resolution 480x320
iPhone 4 resolution (retina display) 960x480

iOS supports 32-bit textures with 8 bit alpha (I always use .png), however the final screen image is rendered in 16-bit color.

iOS also supports compressed textures using PowerVR texture compression as .pvr files. These are like DXT compression - lossy and mushy results so you only really use them for photographic style textures, nothing crisp and certainly not for sprites.

iOS devices have texture filtering in hardware and some games feature AA, but those are usually slow paced games, not requiring a high framerate.

I can't comment on polycounts as I'm making a 2D game, but I'd imagine it's somewhere between PS1 and PS2 depending on which iOS device you're running on.

[ZABE]

Hey guys am new to this website and am a student studying computer games design. currently am working on my hand held games design assignment and have created danger mouse for the psp at 750 triangles would you agree if this is a suitble ammount for a main character in an adventure game?
and does anyone have any examples they could just describe of past projects for the DS with specs and tir counts etc?

this information will be used in my research and would be greatly appreciated =)

[keres]

[ QUOTE ]

so i guess yeah,ps2 can do them.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure that's true. Anyone can add to Wikipedia.


I don't have any real knowledge about this, but I seem to remember compaines like Ubisoft specifically mentioning what effects they were using instead of normal mapping when making a PS2 version of some of their Xbox games. (Like SCCT and GR2)

Any shading algorithm is possible for any platform, technically. I mean, it's not probable or practical to see PS2 w/ normal mapping, but it's not a very obscure algorithm and you can program software lighting to use normal maps.

Also, thanks a ton for this thread. UDK has just released iOS support with the new beta, and some people at the forums there wonder about poly counts for models.

[jeanbr07]

Hello to everybody!! Im newbe here, and in 3D art. Im a programmer and i like to adventure in the 3D creation world.

Anyone knows the polycount for Android based devices like Nexus S? Or Htc Desire HD?? And for iPhone 4 and iPad???

[himadri_sm]

And for iPhone 4 and iPad???


would like to know the specs for these..... please..

[sketch81]

Hey Guys, Any luck with iPad specs for characters, vehicles and environments... Much appreciated...

[Lamont]

On UDK I got 70~80 skinned meshes on screen chasing the player (1 player 5 bones, NPC 3 bones instanced). Each mesh was about 470 tris. Environment was about 13k. One texture (1024x1024) for the environment, using a UDK made lightmap, one texture for the NPC and one for the character.

With Unity there's so much you have to deal with. Scripting performance is ON YOU. GUI performance as well. So if your GUI is a hog, you will not get much on screen. My latest project in Unity started out with max 20 enemies on screen. This was all scripting performance issues. I knew it. After some changes(I found the issue) I was able to get 240 at 15fps. I cap it at 120 now. That's 120x702 polys. The NPC share a single texture/mesh. The GUI is one texture with boss health and player health bars. Environments range from 8,000~14,000 polys (but not all on screen at once with a single 1024x1024 for everything. Player mesh is 702. New NPC mesh is now 300~ polys. Bullet sprites are 16x16, and each mesh has a shadow blob. 1 sound for shooting (enemy) one sound shooting player/boss. One sound track, no environment sounds.

I would like to add that only certain bosses are skinned, other than that all the other meshes are just animated in code. Personally I don't think there's a hard number for UDK and Unity for iOS, there's too many variables. It's all about "How YOU want to do it".

These numbers are on iPod4G and iPad1.

[sketch81]

Thanks heaps Lamont (http://www.polycount.com/forum/member.php?u=25636), this is very helpful information. :)

[DEElekgolo]

Some info on the nds.

The nds supports 6 texture formats:


A3I5: 3 bit alpha 5 bit color index(palette with direct alpha)
4 color palette (each texel is 2 bits)
16 color palette (each texel is 4 bits)
256 color palette (each texel is 8 bits)
A5I3: 5 bit alpha 3 bit color index (palette with direct alpha)
4x4-Texel Compressed (each texel is 32 bits, each independently being a 4x4 palleted image, 2 bits per sub-texel)
Direct Texture (each texel is 16 bits. last bit is alpha.)


The NDS has a 15 bit color screen as well as 8 VRAM banks which can be repurposed to store texture data or the frame buffer and such. The 3D engine reserves the use of at least 1 128kb VRAM bank (A-B). You may also use more than 1 bank for storage of textures. Keep in mind that you use the texture bank for texture data and pallets.

Geometry supports vertex normals but they override any previously done vertex color commands.
The nds supports directional lights only and when defining the vertex normals, it is equvilant to setting a vertex color, but this time it samples the normal and the directional lights to set the vertex color.

The NDS's 3d engine is very similar to openGL specifications so libraries like devkitpro have adapted to openGL-like functions.

Anyways here is the bank info:


VRAM A: 128kb
VRAM B: 128kb
VRAM C: 128kb
VRAM D: 128kb
VRAM E: 64kb
VRAM F: 16kb
VRAM G: 16kb
VRAM H: 32kb
VRAM I: 16kb

[cptSwing]

On UDK I got 70~80 skinned meshes on screen chasing the player (1 player 5 bones, NPC 3 bones instanced). Each mesh was about 470 tris. Environment was about 13k. One texture (1024x1024) for the environment, using a UDK made lightmap, one texture for the NPC and one for the character.

With Unity there's so much you have to deal with. Scripting performance is ON YOU. GUI performance as well. So if your GUI is a hog, you will not get much on screen. My latest project in Unity started out with max 20 enemies on screen. This was all scripting performance issues. I knew it. After some changes(I found the issue) I was able to get 240 at 15fps. I cap it at 120 now. That's 120x702 polys. The NPC share a single texture/mesh. The GUI is one texture with boss health and player health bars. Environments range from 8,000~14,000 polys (but not all on screen at once with a single 1024x1024 for everything. Player mesh is 702. New NPC mesh is now 300~ polys. Bullet sprites are 16x16, and each mesh has a shadow blob. 1 sound for shooting (enemy) one sound shooting player/boss. One sound track, no environment sounds.

I would like to add that only certain bosses are skinned, other than that all the other meshes are just animated in code. Personally I don't think there's a hard number for UDK and Unity for iOS, there's too many variables. It's all about "How YOU want to do it".

These numbers are on iPod4G and iPad1.

Thanks for the information! Which, if any, changes can we expect from the iPad2 Hardware-wise?

[NeoTechni]

PSP's texture limit is actually 512x512

http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/06/Aquaria-on-the-PSP
(the GE, presumably "Graphics Engine")

the GE's limits of 512x512 pixels.

The PSP game I made used 512x512 textures, so I know this first hand.

[Add3r]

I know no body really develops 3D Games for Windows Phones, but I worked with a tiny development firm and I was leading the bench marking before the project was scraped. We were able to solidify the fact that any windows phones (the newer ones can tremendously exceed these numbers with the new hardware), including the very first of the first generation phones, can view comfortably about 30k Tris on the screen at a time. We know this number can go higher, but we had 30k comfortably with absolutely no lag (at the time they were static meshes). We were using 600 Tri characters with 256 textures, fully rigged and ready to go. I am unable to really give any very specific information regarding Vram and buffering, etc. This information can easily be found online though, via google. Just thought I would share my findings. These bench marks were used to find if our ideas were possible, and might seem unpractical (like the 256 textures, normally we would use 128s max)

Windows Phone (Information gathered via Tech demos/Bench Marks):

- Tris on Screen (comfortably): 30k, these were static meshes, using 256*256 textures
- Max Texture Size: 2056, might be higher, I know this number is shared with the xbox 360, as they share many caps when it comes to game development. Obviously the phones cant handle the same loads (this should obviously be common knowledge... I hope)
- Can support up to 72 bones per character
- No Normal map support, just diffuse (not sure about specular, didn't make it into our benches)

I know this list is incomplete, like I said, and I will update if any more information is pulled from out tech demos and benchmarks. More information, including extensive information and specs on everything I listed can be found online. Just thought I would share our findings :)

[cptSwing]

great info!

[Leyto]

Hello!

Has anyone found some infos on nintendo 3ds assets specifications?
I googled this :
http://i.imgur.com/aoMZq.png

But it's hard to interpret it for a game artist :P

[A78jmber]

I'm not sure that's true. Anyone can add to Wikipedia.

[DanTsukasa]

I don't think that sounds right either.
15.3M polygons a second sounds like far too much, I mean even the original PSP can't do anything like that, sounds more like the Vita specs honestly, and even then I'd say its probably pushing it. That'd make the 3DS on par with the 360 and the ps3 practically. From what I understand the 3DS is essentially on par with the VITA, running at I believe 30FPS (due to duel screen + 3d effect).

[Mahdydayswota]

I think, that you are not right. I am assured.

[Lamont]

And I think you`re a damn machine...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/56/Terma3.jpg