What Jaguar games were able to reach 60fps? What 3D games were able to reach 30fps?

[Chinese Cake]

i do not have the hardware to do the tests myself and I have been having issues finding any sites that talk about the Jaguars game performance so i figured that the Jaguar forum on the biggest Atari site may have the answers I seek haha.

 

So my question is, did any Atari Jaguar games 2D or 3D, reached 60fps? I know that it may seem like an odd question but I've noticed that Jaguar performance is actually rather solid when they aren't trying to hard to push textures and other graphical ambitious that the Jaguar can't handle well so I am curious.

 

This ties into my second question about 3D polygonal games specifically. Did any of 3D games reach or maintain 30fps? 

 

[sirlynxalot]

Iwar and iron soldier are very smooth. Wouldn't be surprised if they are at least 30fps for the most part.

 

Zero5 doesn't seem like a slouch on fps either.

[JagChris]

Reportedly Battle sphere hits between 20-60 fps.

 

The Atari Owl project according to the programmer averages 20fps.

 

 

[JagChris]

 

Edited October 23, 2022 by JagChris

[Chinese Cake]

20 minutes ago, JagChris said:

Reportedly Battle sphere hits between 20-60 fps.

 

That's a pretty big range, what's the FPS dependent on? 

[philipj]

2 minutes ago, JagChris said:

https://youtu.be/TVpfzHFA1Es

I've always liked the fractal demo on this game... remember reading somewhere that both the GPU and DSP were used to pull off realtime "Fractal Mandelbrot"; It moves very smoothly and reasonably fast.

[JagChris]

12 minutes ago, Chinese Cake said:

 

That's a pretty big range, what's the FPS dependent on? 

I haven't really investigated. But probably the usual.

 

You can watch the videos for yourself and they might give you an idea.

[agradeneu]

10 hours ago, sirlynxalot said:

Iwar and iron soldier are very smooth. Wouldn't be surprised if they are at least 30fps for the most part.

 

Zero5 doesn't seem like a slouch on fps either.

Iwar drops frames heavily (under 20 FPS) . Its reasonable fast if there is not much rendered on screen. But  30 FPS is a big stretch for both.

IS is much more stable but it is mostly under the target FPS.

 

[agradeneu]

9 hours ago, Chinese Cake said:

 

That's a pretty big range, what's the FPS dependent on? 

Number of rendered objects. It is 60FPS when there is empty space.

 

[agradeneu]

Most 2D games run 60 FPS (with slowdowns)

 

For 3D games, 60 FPS were mostly out of reach, as well as locked 30 FPS.

 

Best performing games were averaging slightly above/under 20FPS.

Edited October 24, 2022 by agradeneu

[Chinese Cake]

11 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Iwar drops frames heavily (under 20 FPS) . Its reasonable fast if there is not much rendered on screen. But  30 FPS is a big stretch for both.

IS is much more stable but it is mostly under the target FPS.

 

 

I heard that in Iwar if you switch from firstperson to external view the frame rate picks up, but I don't have a working copy anymore to test that myself. 

 

11 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Most 2D games run 60 FPS (with slowdowns)

 

Other than Raiden i supposed. That's much better than the 3DO however. I think it only has two 60fps 2D games?

 

11 hours ago, agradeneu said:

For 3D games, 60 FPS were mostly out of reach, as well as locked 30 FPS.

 

So not that different from the N64. Well-played Atari, well-played. 

[+cubanismo]

Does anyone know the FPS Tempest 2000 runs at? I always forget it's a 3D game, because it's very smooth compared to the other 3D game on Jaguar. It also runs noticeably faster/smoother on some of the very small webs. Feels like going from 30fps->60fps, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's going from 20->30 or something instead.

 

I think FPS is a poor measure of how well a game from this era plays thougj. I'm pretty sure Checkered Flag runs at a higher FPS than various other 3D games on the Jaguar, but the controls are so spotty it's unplayable. On the other end, I have no problem controlling my bike at what, like 5fps? Maybe even 3fps on Supercross 3D, and similar at higher but still pretty low FPS in World Tour Racing. It's all about how you sample input and apply it across those few frames, not strictly the FPS. I think people get this high-FPS == more responsive thing from naive game that strictly sample input once per frame, then don't properly account for input coming in at a non-fixed rate, etc.

[Editorb]

On 10/24/2022 at 1:44 PM, Chinese Cake said:

 

I heard that in Iwar if you switch from firstperson to external view the frame rate picks up, but I don't have a working copy anymore to test that myself. 

 

I-War is much faster in first person than any external views.

[Chinese Cake]

15 hours ago, cubanismo said:

Does anyone know the FPS Tempest 2000 runs at? I always forget it's a 3D game, because it's very smooth compared to the other 3D game on Jaguar. It also runs noticeably faster/smoother on some of the very small webs. Feels like going from 30fps->60fps, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's going from 20->30 or something instead.

 

I think FPS is a poor measure of how well a game from this era plays thougj. I'm pretty sure Checkered Flag runs at a higher FPS than various other 3D games on the Jaguar, but the controls are so spotty it's unplayable. On the other end, I have no problem controlling my bike at what, like 5fps? Maybe even 3fps on Supercross 3D, and similar at higher but still pretty low FPS in World Tour Racing. It's all about how you sample input and apply it across those few frames, not strictly the FPS. I think people get this high-FPS == more responsive thing from naive game that strictly sample input once per frame, then don't properly account for input coming in at a non-fixed rate, etc.

 

This thread 

 

Says that the Tempest 2000 on the Jaguar drops frames compared to the Saturn version, though nobody gives out specific numbers I think it's safe to say that less than 25fps is likely at least. 

 

As for the debate around framerates it really does enhance the play experience. the controls would still be bad but Checkered Flaq would improve visually (in motion) and in gameplay otherwise if it was a locked 30fps imo. Imagine Ridge Racer on the PS1 or Daytona on Saturn as the frame rate of a 3DO racing game, that would result in worse gameplay and motion visuals for both games. 

[JagChris]

2 hours ago, Chinese Cake said:

 

This thread 

 

Says that the Tempest 2000 on the Jaguar drops frames compared to the Saturn version, though nobody gives out specific numbers I think it's safe to say that less than 25fps is likely at least. 

 

Many have stated they believe T2K pushed the Jaguar really hard. 

 

But not even Jeff Minter believed that. 

[Chinese Cake]

1 hour ago, JagChris said:

 

Many have stated they believe T2K pushed the Jaguar really hard. 

 

But not even Jeff Minter believed that. 

Really? It looked good and ran well enough for what it did, but it never looked like it was pushing hardware to me. I think Iron Soldier fits the bill better. 

[42bs]

Unless you know what the hardware can do, how will you judge if something pushes it to the limits?

 

And I am pretty sure no one can 'see' the FPS of a game just by playing it. 

[42bs]

This demo is really pushing the limits!

https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=50467

[+CyranoJ]

28 minutes ago, 42bs said:

This demo is really pushing the limits!

https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=50467

 

That demo is awesome and technically brilliant.

[+cubanismo]

1 hour ago, 42bs said:

And I am pretty sure no one can 'see' the FPS of a game just by playing it. 

I think a lot of people think they can 🙂

 

I don't claim to be one of them, but you can tell something noticeably changes when playing on the simpler webs in Tempest. I believe it's an FPS jump, but I don't know from what to what. I'll have to look up the level number of the most obvious one at some point for others to check out, but I don't have my game saves + a skunk handy currently.

[42bs]

Yes, frame drops are noticeable in some games. But telling it drops from 30 to 25 or from 60 to 20 needs the "perfect eye".

Edited October 26, 2022 by 42bs
typo

[+cubanismo]

BTW, if you want a great example of someone really knowing what they're talking about when they claim something runs at 30fps or 60fps, check out the work analyzing frames in Virtua Cop in the middle of this ridiculously complete 4 hour overview/documentary of the game by PandaMonium. Link/embed should be to the timecode of the relevant portion to save you roughly 3 hours and 55 minutes.

 

 

[42bs]

I read "I am Error" which does also some in-depth investigations of some SNES games. Would be great to have an Jaguar emulator where we could easily switch off and on CPUs or features.

 

[agradeneu]

1 hour ago, 42bs said:

Yes, frame drops are noticeable in some games. But telling it drops from 30 to 25 or from 60 to 20 needs the "perfect eye".

I might disagree. With modern games being locked to perfect 30 FPS or 60 FPS the average eye became much more sensitive to frame drops.

60FPS to 20 FPS is a huge, very noticable drop! Most PC players are really super sensitive even with minor drops, say 60 - 50.

 

In fact, I recently tweaked graphics options in "Black Mesa" till I achieved a relative stable 60 FPS to my eye, with minor drops. 

 

 

Of course you can not count frames, but there are simple utilities like FPS analysis tools and simply experiencing enough 30 FPS or 60 FPS games to know the difference when you see it.

 

For Jaguar games, there are some infos and analysis:

 

-Digital Foundry did an analyis of JagDOOM, and it was 17-20 FPS. That is a nice reference, as it is considered one of the fastest 3D games on Jaguar

 

- Eclipse said that Iron Soldier runs 25 FPS (PAL), but it is not locked or stable, obviously. I guess it is 30 FPS on NTSC, but it drops frames. So a low 20 FPS spectrum is a good guess for average FPS.

 

- Jeff Minter said something around 20 FPS for T2000, but that is from my hazy memory. Play Tempest 2000 on PS1 to see 60FPS. Then frame drops become a lot more noticable on Jaguar

 

- For 2D games, 60 FPS is the standard. Revisiting Zool 2, I was suprised how hard it drops frames frequently, SLOWDOWNS! 

 

- For our projects, we really try to get rid of any frame drops, Jumping runs stable at the monent and I carefully design every level to keep it that way. Same with Gravitic. It was no problem to overload the engine and produce severe slowdowns. But that played like BS. So I tweaked every level to hit the sweet spot.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 26, 2022 by agradeneu

[agradeneu]

3 hours ago, 42bs said:

Unless you know what the hardware can do, how will you judge if something pushes it to the limits?

 

And I am pretty sure no one can 'see' the FPS of a game just by playing it. 

It means something impressive happens on screen. The thing is , you dont need to know the hardware to be impressed or not. And then there are references on each system. 

AVP and Doom are impressive technical showcases and are "pushing" the hardware, Zoop is probably not. So it is about graphics, of course.

 

Very inefficient code does "push" the hardware as well, but to poor results.

If the artwork is rubbish, the game will be unimpressive as well. 

 

For each generation, there were references for impressive games "pushing the limits", mostly established by reviewers and journalists:

 

- 2D 16 bit generation: number of sprites moving on screen, size of sprites (Bosses!), color and detail, fluid animation, parallax layers, no slowdown or flicker 

 

- 3D 1st generation: number of polygons/objects rendered, amount of detail, speed/fluidity of animation (FPS), texture detail, free movement, lighting effects

 

To conclude, "pushing the limits" is mostly about highest possible quality of a game and bashing out all the graphics capabilities a system could offer.

Edited October 26, 2022 by agradeneu