Nintendo To Displace Revolution??? News

Despite the lack of figures it's been known for some time that the Revolution won't be powered to the levels of Xbox 360 or PlayStation3, but last weeks claims by Reggie Fils-Amis that third-party ports for the next-gen system "...can be as easy or as complex as a team wants it to be..." will have had many pondering as to how that can be accomplished.

A recent patent filed at the US Patent Office, number 6,971,957, describes how Nintendo aims to utilise Displacement Mapping techniques to cut down on the processing power required to generated high quality models. Displacement Mapping is a technique where a high-quality mesh physically transforms (displaces) a lower-quality object. Using the technique, a displacement map can be placed over a mesh of only a few hundred polygons and still look as comparable to a model consisting over thousands, even millions, of polygons. What this means in effect is that by using displacement mapping, Revolution games could look as good as Xbox 360/PlayStation3 titles without the need for high-powered processors such as CELL.

Techniques to create an illusion of depth such as Bump Mapping, have merely faked an impression of depth; what Displacement Mapping does is actually create that depth, and was a technique used WETA Digital to create the Cave Trolls in Lord of the Rings. The next-generation of systems will be the first to take advantage of the technique, with Microsoft filing for a similar patent with regards to the Xbox 360, so never mind this round of the console wars being the "HD-era", it could instead be the age of displacement.

Whether this patent is the smoking gun to Fils-Amis' claims will have to be seen when titles for the Revolution are unveiled in 2006, but it certainly continues to build up the intrigue around the next-gen system.

We'll have more on Revolution shortly...