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Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

The Hyperdimension Neptunia games have character graphics that breathe and move and looking at them I thought they were vectors but when I looked into the resource packs I was astonished to find no whole-character CG's but instead bitmap eyes and mouths and shoulders and other parts that the system would transform and move around with the 3-d scaler.

Even to draw 2-d graphics the 3-d technology works so much better.

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I think that's just an artifact of the fact that not nearly as much effort has been expended on 2D graphics as 3D. In fact, I've become convinced through my Pathfinder work that the GPU is just as good as the CPU for 2D vector graphics. It's just that our 2D rendering stacks are way behind.

(As an aside, I think this state of affairs is unfortunate, given how much money there is in mobile apps and browsers and the like. The vast majority of the research goes to 3D, and 3D is flashier and prettier work in a sense, but the amount of time we spend reading text on a screen generally dwarfs the amount of time people spend consuming 3D CG entertainment...)

What 2d functionality do you think is being left on the table? The way I see it, most 3d raster graphic techniques boil down to baking data in a way that's easy to pipeline. It doesn't really have anything to do with 3d vs 2d. Verts and textures are the way they are because its easy to linearly interpolate them in parallel.

Do you mean vector vs raster?

If the GPU is only "just as good" why bother with GPU rendering at all? Free up the CPU for other work?

Yes, definitely. We did that in SimAirport, basically rendering everything as if it was full 3D and use none of the engine-provided "2D features" (which largely amounts to 'more work on the CPU').

Finding fun mechanics that add to CPU load is awfully easy. ;)

It's faster than the CPU if done properly.

On the Playstation 2, which didn't have accelerated perspective correct texture mapping, Parappa the Rapper embraced and ran with the stylized 2D-in-3D look!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYKbmx9ykWM&t=2m29s

Think you mean the Playstation 1; the second definitely had perspective-correct texture mapping.

Yes, you're right! It looks like they've pimped out the graphics for the later releases of Parappa.

One of my favorite PS1 games whose designers rightfully said "fuck it, we're just going to draw perspective-incorrect textures" as well as "fuck it, we're just going to simulate newtonian-incorrect physics" in the name of excellent gameplay, is Twisted Metal 2!

Check out the deliciously distorted faces of the buildings along the Boulevards of Paris:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6mB8zlx88g&t=12m38s

Peter Macon, the guy who voiced Axel and Minion in Twisted Metal, now plays Lieutenant Commander Bortus on The Oriville!

https://orville.fandom.com/wiki/Peter_Macon

TM2 felt so distinctly anti-simulationy that I still have problems with casual ‘racing’ games in which the physics are truer.

‘Crash Drive 2’ is the closest online game that I've found so far, but its imbalanced upgrade mechanics botch the challenge after a few hours.

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