Topic: Could it be possible for the Revolution to...TruForm?

[yomer]

      Does anyone remember Ati's TruForm technology? Well, could it be possible for Ati to make the GameCube games use that technology to use more polys in the Revolution. Given that Revolution will be backwards compatible and the GameCube used Ati's graphic chip also.  Imagine playing "The new Legend of Zelda" again on the Revolution with even more amazing graphics and better frame rates.  I know I'm expecting too much from the Revolution, but it would be great if it got TruForm technology or some sorts of it.

      Heck, even the new Zelda game could be programmed to detect the Revolution hardware. Maybe that's why Nintendo chose to ship Zelda this generation. Million's of copies of Zelda would ensure million's of Revoultions sold!!!

[KDR_11k]

I've seen it in action, looks like crap. Besides, the software needs to support it to tell it which geometry should get tesselated lest you want to end up with horribly distorted level architecture as well. As opposed to only horribly distorted characters, that is.

[yomer]

Oh, I see. But at least a new game (like Zelda) could be built from scratch with support for the next gen hardware, right?

And given some programming patterns, maybe not in all games but you could end up getting at least better frame rates. Maybe Ati's old TruForm technology wasn't capable enough and who knows if it could be perfected in some way. TruForm was never fully developed it was just a concept made available to the public to see if they supported it. I think that Nintendo didn't announce backwards compatibility just beacuse that meant a bigger library. There has to be another set of reasons they chose to support this generations software.

[Don'tHate742]

you should really read my thread in the Gamecube forum.....Gameboy: Portable GameCube.

[Galford]

Truform?

Does ATI even support this technology any more?
I thought there was a grand total of two games that used it, and they didn't look
very good.

[KDR_11k]

Which two would that be? Half-Life and Serious Sam?

EDIT: Just remembered that the Unreal Engine supports that as well.

[Galford]

Unreal supports Truform?  Or is it Unreal 2?

I'll have to do my homework on this one...

[oohhboy]

Return to castle Wolfentisn supports it.

[KDR_11k]

Well, UT2004 supports it. I don't know since what revision of the UE it is in.

[RickPowers]

TruForm was very gimmicky, and fairly useless in real application.  While the new ATI GPU in the Revolution might be technically capable of supporting it, why bother?  With a fixed hardware platform, the developer can add more polygons themselves, and get better control over framerates and graphic quality.  Seriously, what artist/developer in their right mind would trust the hardware to arbitrarily add polygons when there is the potential that it could slow the game down?

TruForm was a way that gamers with ultra-bleeding edge cards to be able to run "yesterday's" games with greater visual fidelity, since there was a lot of left-over horsepower.  It would be completely out of place on a console.

[Morales]

While I don't think this TruForm stuff will be used, I can see the Revolution being able to up the resolution of the games and maybe fix some of the ones with crappy framerates.  With the online community, maybe some people will actually take it upon themselves to redo the textures ala what some people are doing now with OoT.  For Gamecube games though, many games look perfectly smooth to me design wise.  A lack of polygons is not one of the major problems.  

[yomer]

Well, maybe TruForm will not be included, but the essential idea of visual improvement could. I think there was another reason why Nintendo wanted to include backwards compatibility, and my best guess would be that they planned on improving framerates, draw distances, etc, since they started developing many Gamecube games. So it would be a great seller for those hardcore Zelda, metroid, and any other great game; who would go and buy a Revolution to replay their newly improved games.

[Galford]

Kinda like Sony did with the PS2?  Didn't they add fast loading and texture filtering to certain games?