Topic: Do 3ds' Graphics stand up to the wii?

Your eyes can deceive you. There are differences, obviously >:3

_{you can tell for sure on bigger TVs, at least, I can}

Oh no, there's a difference. Kinda subtle, but it's there

Yeah, my mistake. The Wii displays at 480i/480p which only tells you its vertical resolution (whatever x 480). It turns out the NTSC television standard is 720x480, and I only saw that after visiting that site. I always thought it was 640x480 since that's the usual resolution for digital screens. You learn something new every day, huh.

If you set your Wii to 4:3 on a widescreen TV there are no black bars on the sides. It just looks stretched horizontally. As for picture clarity, I have no idea and it probably depends on how the TV handles the signal.

SD resolutions are much smaller and the picture is generally less clear, so the difference wouldn't be noticeable. Not to mention CRTs and plasmas have built-in image smoothing/blurring for SD signals so you won't be getting a very sharp image either way. Perhaps for HDTVs with higher pixel density and clearer images you'd notice it, but then they're all widescreen anyway.

I was talking about the Wii, Still, I'm pretty sure component can only output maximum 1080i. Apparently, due to some ruling by the FCC, many set top boxes downgrade 720p/1080i signals to 480p when outputting through component cables even though they can handle the HD signal. So much for that. :/

If the graphics are even close it will be amazing. Think of how much smaller the screen is compared to a regular TV. Jaggy lines go away when you shrink down the picture.

It depends on your TV picture settings. You can most definitely display a 4:3 signal from the Wii with the black bars on the side on a widescreen TV, I do it and NEED to do it all the time when I play VC games otherwise the game, as you said, looks stretched. You can also display a 16:9 signal from the Wii in a 4:3 box and it looks squashed.

It is 640x480 the same as DVDs it's just stretched to a 720x480 frame. You weren't mistaken even though I'm not sure if your reasoning was sound!

If you don't believe me think of it this way. IF the Wii did 720x480 and only when you set it to widescreen..... wouldn't games perform better on 4:3 screens? Do they? The first two years I owned my Wii I exclusively played it on a 4:3 screen and when I jumped to a 16:9 screen I didn't notice any drop in performance. Anecdotal evidence? Maybe... but the Wii does display Anamorphic 480p.

Also, my old TV was really fussy with resolution changes and yet it didn't "complain" at all when I sent a 16:9 signal to it from the Wii. It just looked squashed!

@skywake Yes that's true. I didn't notice any performance difference between 4:3 and 16:9 myself either. Letterboxing done by the TV doesn't reduce the image's resolution, right? So that could be one way of preserving the picture clarity on widescreen TVs although you'd have to live with the black bars.

A little research showed me that the Wii's internal framebuffer is a maximum size of 640x582 and its external framebuffer can be larger than that. The contents of the external framebuffer is what is sent to the TV, so it must be scaled to 720x480. Then when the image is sent to the TV the video interface automatically scales the image again - so the pixels really are stretched when they are displayed on a widescreen TV, but there is no drop in performance from these scaling operations. I guess the clearest picture quality you can get on the Wii is by outputting at 4:3 to a standard TV.

Still, if you're using a widescreen CRT or plasma EDTV then the pixel stretching shouldn't be noticeable. Perhaps it would be on an HDTV though. At the end of the day it really depends on how you perceive the image yourself.

Well not it goes in depth, so that gives it more possiblities

I don't believe that the 3DS has better graphics than the Wii. I think that its simply because of the smaller screen. (Example, in my opinion) If your playing a console game with 10x the graphics of the handheld on a screen thats 10x bigger as well, then I think that the graphics will look to the similar handheld simply because of the smaller screen.

No need to exaggerate things and.... it doesn't really make any sense to say "10x the graphics". 10x the frame rate maybe... but 10x the graphics? How can you measure that?

Also, the Wii displays 640x480 so it displays 0.3MP and the 3DS does 2x 400x240 + 320x240 so 0.27MP. Hardly a 10x difference in resolution. From the screenshots and videos we have seen it can definitely do particle effects and textures of at least the same, if not better, quality than the Wii. It does this as you said on a screen that is smaller than what the vast majority of people would use with the Wii. The screen size means nothing to the displaying of graphics though it's only worried about the pixels.

From what we have seen I would guess that the 3DS is maybe just bellow the Wii in terms of what it should be capable of. We can judge it currently against the Wii in this way because we are looking at it through trailers and promotional screenshots in the same way we would with Wii games. In reality though it's doing this on a tiny screen though so... IRL it'll be able to get away with more. Some have even said that the 3D effect does some sort of super AA so... who knows. I guess we'll have to see it.

Only the top screen has a 3D effect, because Nintendo doesn't want stylus scratches ruining the 3D effect on the bottom screen.

I know. What I mean is that the 3D effect is achieved by using two screens on top of each other. Sort of. It uses a parallax barrier, so it is one screen, but each eye sees different pixels. So in effect, it needs to render stuff twice, that's why I was referring to two screens.

Well we shouldn't really judge a device's graphics potential by its early games anyway. Developers get better at using hardware over time. Compare:

TimeSplitters (PS2, 2000)

Final Fantasy XII (PS2, 2006)

@HolyMac: I think comparing two games in the same genre would be better, Killzone looks pretty damn good. But you're totally correct, you just have to look at 360 launch games to see it.

I wasn't commenting on genres at all, only time frame. Killzone is not an early PS2 title. It was released in 2004, in the middle of the PS2's lifespan, so it makes sense it would look good.

Genre doesn't matter regarding graphics or artwork quality. Still, here's a screenshot of an early PS2 RPG for comparison. This almost look likes late PSX graphics, where FFXII was approaching current gen in its visuals. And they're both on the same console.

Summoner (PS2, 2000)

Different genres have different graphical priorities though like FPS have more detailed arms and guns than third person shooters. That's what I meant, you can see the progress better if you compare games of the same genres. I wasn't disagreeing with you.

Yeah, I see. Well, the arms and guns in TimeSplitters are still kinda ugly anyway... I admit that was a pretty extreme example though lol. What were they thinking!

In fact, even the DS has had some pretty major differences in graphics between early and late titles. Anyone else notice the same minigames in SM64DS ran at a much smoother frame rate in NSMB? And I think the visual quality of 3D graphics has had some major improvements since its early days, though I can't think of any specific examples.

Anyway, my point is that it's possible that the launch 3DS games aren't using the hardware to its fullest potential. A few years down the line we may have some stunning games on the device thanks to the developers learning more about it from experience. Hopefully this is the case!

I'm not sure how much it really matters anyway. I mean, New SMB Wii was doing a lot more than New SMB on the DS was but you didn't hear anyone talk about the different visuals. Nobody talked about how New SMB was more or less on a game on either system based on visuals. It was all gameplay. Well, SOME said that the Wii version was using "DS graphics" which is obviously not true but the point remains.

So the way I see it......... it doesn't really bother me how visually impressive the 3DS is. It looks damn good from the screens but it doesn't bother me too much. If the best looking game only ever reaches the visual quality of Twilight Princess, the high end of what the Gamecube can do, then I'm more than happy especially if the games are as fun to play as Zeldas, Marios and Metriods generally are. Hopefully the 3DS also gets it's Portals though but, as I have said, those games won't be great just for visuals