Ah no worries! From my side I was only trying to explain more about the origins of the article, since I see it often mentioned/speculated in many forums.
If you check the other articles about the PlayStation [1] and the Nintendo 64 [2], you'll see that the design of a 3D-capable console in the 90s was a significant challenge for every company. Thus, each one proposed a different solution (with different pros and cons), yet all very interesting to analyse and compare. That's the reason this article was written.
Author here! Surprised to see it shared! This article was the first one where I studied how a cryptography-based system worked and how it was subsequently broken, back in late 2019. Lot of things in the website have changed since then.
For this reason I humbly ask, if you find any mistakes, please report them here:
Yeah, it was mainly because the article got too long, so I had no option but to draw the line somewhere. There's still a tiny mention at the footer below the main motherboard image:
> Showing the 'Xenon' revision (the first one), taken from my model from 2005. Xenon motherboards are also famous for being defective by design (they get too hot to play games with!). Remaining GDDR3 chips are found on the back.
Btw, I've replaced the bad links with archived ones. I triggered an archive of that site back in December just in case such great source would disappear, never expected to happen just after releasing the article!
Hi, this took me 6 months to write, I've also tried as hard as possible to cross check all my references, and include them in the article in a way the reader can find the citations just like in academic writings.
Statements denoting speculation are started with words like 'presumably' or 'it is assumed that'.
I've also took an extra month to send the draft to many experts (part of whom are still active in the Xbox 360 scene) to gather feedback and make all the appropriate corrections. See the 'Changelog' at the end of the article.
I'm afraid I can only do so much. Just like you said, this is all voluntary work. I also keep a repo with all the manuscripts to correct all the mistakes after publishing any content (https://github.com/flipacholas/Architecture-of-consoles).
I don't know how else I could improve this, but I'm always open to suggestions.
I don't know what you mean with reorganization and editing.
(works better with accessibility tools, like text to speech; and translators)
There are also new PDF and EPUB editions here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/67035520 (it's a public post, I just needed a place to upload those files without consuming my hosting's bandwidth).
> Essentially, every single PS1 game 'faked' 3D by using the GTE (which was separate from the GPU) to project 3D points and polygons into a 2D rasterizer.
While it's true that the PS1 handles perspective projection through the GTE (as the GPU is a primitive rasterizer, after all) I don't think it's fair to call it 'faked 3D' since, in my understanding, 3D projection is another fundamental stage in the graphics pipeline (our displays are 2D grids of pixels, so we need to transform the 3D world into something it can be displayed there). Other consoles like the Nintendo 64 provided more capability on the GPU side (the RCP) which allowed to move part of the matrix operations away from the CPU chip.
Be as it may, I've seen the 'fake 3D' claim before and I'm starting to wonder if I'm missing something in my understanding of this technology, maybe someone can offer a third opinion?
Thanks. I was worried about the fact this console has so much going on inside, so if I end up writing too much (like 100k words) about it, the reader may get too tired and lose interest. In the end, I wrote 20k words with lots of diagrams to help out. I also adapted the site to properly add citations, in case the reader wants to know more about a specific topic.
I don't mind being wrong and I will correct the article if needed. That being said, I'm interested in debating this, what if the PS1's GPU had implemented some sort of sub-pixel precision and edge antialiasing? Do you think the lack of floating-point vertex coordinates would have been noticeable? (I'm assuming the 'jitter' means the sudden jumps when polygons move slowly).
> Or is it that it isn't a problem of PS1 but a problem of games
Yes, this is what I wanted to emphasize.
My intent wasn't to say that the 'lack of z-buffering' statement was incorrect (it's still true), but that there's a fundamental issue behind it, the visible/hidden surface determination, and now it depends on the developer's implementation. I believe this is overlooked on non-technical sites.
With this, I just wanted to make it more informative for the reader. I don't think the question is if the PS1 has a z-buffer or not. Sure, z-buffering is a solution, but there's the reasoning behind it that I wanted to transmit it to the reader.