I'm sure there's plenty of people on HN with first hand experience developing for the various PlayStation models. I only know what I've read about the experience and technical tear downs. So maybe one will swoop in dropping knowledge bombs and tell me I'm wrong.
The original claim was 3D worked on the PSX because of "efficiency" of the code. While I'm not claiming games on the PSX were inefficient, the hardware was designed specifically to do real-time 3D rendering. It's not like the PSX could only do 3D because everyone somehow had super deep mastery of the system.
To my understanding the PSX was a big change in console development. While consoles always had some dedicated hardware (blitters, audio DSPs, etc), development was a lot of beam racing. There were no frame buffers, code ran as graphics were being drawn to the screen and during the VBI.
The PSX was more like a modern system where you had a CPU and a GPU (albeit fixed function) with an OpenGL-ish drawing model. It was a far more capable 3D machine than PCs of the time that had to do all 3D work on the CPU with no acceleration.
Tomb Raider on the PSX was impressive because the console only cost $300. While I'm sure Tomb Raider on the PSX wasn't inefficiently coded, the design of the PSX console contributed as much to its existence as the code. Quake on the PC on the other hand could only exist because of the developers' deep system mastery pushing generic hardware to its limits (before GPUs were prevalent).
The original claim was 3D worked on the PSX because of "efficiency" of the code. While I'm not claiming games on the PSX were inefficient, the hardware was designed specifically to do real-time 3D rendering. It's not like the PSX could only do 3D because everyone somehow had super deep mastery of the system.
To my understanding the PSX was a big change in console development. While consoles always had some dedicated hardware (blitters, audio DSPs, etc), development was a lot of beam racing. There were no frame buffers, code ran as graphics were being drawn to the screen and during the VBI.
The PSX was more like a modern system where you had a CPU and a GPU (albeit fixed function) with an OpenGL-ish drawing model. It was a far more capable 3D machine than PCs of the time that had to do all 3D work on the CPU with no acceleration.
Tomb Raider on the PSX was impressive because the console only cost $300. While I'm sure Tomb Raider on the PSX wasn't inefficiently coded, the design of the PSX console contributed as much to its existence as the code. Quake on the PC on the other hand could only exist because of the developers' deep system mastery pushing generic hardware to its limits (before GPUs were prevalent).