Yes GG multiple lock on only works with a laser upgrade. So I found some hidden paths yesterday that took me to some new levels and boss battles. Some meh some great. I love one against a giant robot gorilla where in free mode you switch from flying to a walker to avoid attacks, it feels like I am in a transformers movie.

I still find the game to be all over the place with quality. The levels have gotten so much harder and now dodging is very necessary but I am trying to aim so my focus gets divided. Because motion and analog are two different inputs I don't coordinate as well. Even switching motion off I find myself wanting to aim at stuff away from where I am moving so I want the controls on. No matter what I do it doesn't feel right.

GAF on NX is pretty interesting, I thought it would be hated but it's like a 55/45 split between love and hate the idea.

A 540p handheld makes sense, it can easily double up for scaling to 1080p.

Vita has a 540p screen and most people say its great.

Okay here is a post from one of GAFs more technically minded posters

Thraktor on NX said:

A few thoughts:

• Seems I was completely wrong on the whole hybrid thing. I'm still a little confused by a few of the points, not least of which is the detachable controller parts, which don't seem like a Nintendo kind of thing at all (too easy to break or lose), but I suppose Nintendo gonna do what Nintendo gonna do, and being predictable isn't exactly their thing.
• NX won't use the Tegra X1. Even aside from the comment in the article that they're being actively cooled (which wouldn't fly in a handheld, particularly a Nintendo handheld), there's no reason to use an off the shelf chip when the NX would be expected to sell literally an order of magnitude more units than every other Tegra device combined. Nintendo will be getting a custom Tegra chip.
• If they're using a custom Tegra chip, and are still using an X1 in dev kits, that would suggest that the custom chip is a 16nm Pascal-based Tegra (which might also partly explain the launch delay, if they're waiting for yields to improve).
• If they're actively cooling the X1, then the target performance for the custom chip has to be higher than can be achieved on a passively cooled X1. That means 300+ Gflops. That's not much for a home console (although we'll get to that later), but it's a hell of a chip for a handheld, literally better than the best case scenario I would have considered a few months ago. It would be a big generational leap from Vita even on a 720p screen, or on a 540p/480p screen you'd be in the ballpark necessary to get decent quality XBO/PS4 ports.

There are a few different ways of going about the "handheld" mode versus the "home console" mode from a hardware perspective, which may be worth looking at:

1. The dock is "dumb", and games running in home console mode and handheld mode both run entirely on the Tegra chip in the handheld unit, running at the same clock speeds in both cases. In this case we'd probably be looking at a 720p screen in the handheld, and obviously identical graphics regardless of which mode you're in. This would have the advantage of making things a lot easier for developers, as there's only one hardware config to worry about.
2. The dock is "smart", with extra computational components inside (GPU, RAM, maybe a full SoC). In this case the "home console" mode could in theory match or exceed PS4 and XBO, as Nintendo could put arbitrarily powerful hardware in the dock, although the total system could get very expensive.
3. The dock is "dumb", but when games run on the dock in "home console" mode, the SoC runs at higher clock speeds. There are basically two different sub-scenarios for this:
   
   (a) The SoC is passively cooled in both scenarios. In this case you could have it running at low clocks for about 2W power draw in the handheld mode, and clock it up to draw about 5W in home console mode. The case of the device would get pretty warm in home console mode, but as you're not holding it that shouldn't be too much of an issue. In a pretty much best case scenario this might allow you to double your GPU performance in home console mode, allowing for slightly prettier graphics or higher resolution.
   
   (b) The SoC has a ~2W power draw in handheld mode, and is passively cooled, but is actively cooled in home console mode, and hence can hit far higher TDP (tens of Watts, anyway). In this case you need to actually get a fan and heatsink into the mix somehow. The simplest way of doing it would be to fit the fan in the handheld unit, but only turn it on when docked (so it's still silent for handheld use). The issue is that you're going to end up with a seriously bulky handheld unit, which will detract from the main selling point of being able to take your games on the go.
   
   The other possibility is that you design some insane cooling dock system which is able to dissipate a serious amount of heat from the handheld without leaving users with burns when they pick up the handheld immediately after use. I can't imagine any way in which they could implement this which would be at all actually practical.

If I were betting on what Nintendo's doing (then I would have lost a lot of money already), I'd put my money firmly on scenario 1, as I don't think scenario 2 would be practical from a financial point of view and I don't think scenario 3 would be practical full stop.


That said, it's worth taking a flight of fancy on the crazy extreme scenario just for curiosity's sake. I should preface this by emphasising that I absolutely don't think it's going to happen, but that it's an interesting hypothetical extreme case to consider. A couple of months ago I wrote a post examining a hypothetical TN1 Tegra chip which would be used in both a Nintendo handheld and a home console, running at much higher clock speeds in the latter. My analysis concluded that it didn't make much sense, as even if it was theoretically feasible, there weren't any benefits. Nintendo could get better performance for their money in each device by using separate chips. Of course, my analysis was based on an implicit assumption; that the handheld and home console are two physically different devices. However, if the reason that Nintendo wants a single SoC that can work both in a handheld environment and a home console environment is that they want a single device to do both, then it gets a little more interesting.


For under $40* (which is a lot for a handheld SoC, but cheap for a home console SoC), Nintendo should be able to get a TN1 with an 8-core A72 CPU, a 512 "core" Pascal GPU and a 256-bit LPDDR4 interface. Running the CPU at about 700-800MHz and the GPU at around 300MHz should be doable for a passively cooled handheld*, and running the CPU at 2.4GHz and the GPU at 1.2GHz should consume about 25W* for decent home console mode performance. That puts GPU performance at about 300 NV Gflops for handheld mode and around 1.2 NV Tflops for home console mode, which would suit a system which is designed around 540p output in handheld mode and 1080p output in home console mode. RAM becomes a little more complicated, as you need enough of it (and importantly with enough bandwidth) for the system not to be memory-starved in home console mode. Pretty much the only way to do that without guzzling too much power in handheld mode is to use a 256-bit wide LPDDR4 memory system, which means four LPDDR4 chips (which might be a bit of a squeeze in the handheld form factor, and obviously add to the cost).


Of course, as previously mentioned, I can't see any way of overcoming the engineering challenge of properly cooling a 25W chip while docked, while still keeping the system slim and portable while in handheld mode. Nonetheless, it's an interesting hypothetical to consider, in that aside from the cooling difficulty, Nintendo could use a single SoC that can perform admirably in a ~2W envelope in a handheld, while also stretching up to compete with PS4 and XBO in an actively cooled environment (and one which is still pulling a very low power draw for a console).


*While I've done my best to estimate costs and power draw for these chips, there are big margins of error to my calculations, so take them with a heaping pile of salt.

Thraktor, Blu and some others are well respected on GAF for their tech knowledge.

Dvader said:

gamingeek said:

Did you try inverting the sticks to match motion? That way you move with the stick and use the motion control for more fine tuned aiming.

I don't want my brain to explode, it's always been up is down and down is up.

But I remember when you played Zombi U and said that you could no longer have that stick setup. I had the same problem with Wii U. With shooters, the sticks have to be literal, up is up down is down. I bet if you tried that it would make the game easier for yourself, especially as that is how the gyro aiming works. Practice with it.

Anyhow on NX:

"Those controllers seem more like an evolved wiimote+nunchuk for me: you hold each half in each hand. I bet they have motion sensors and probably even IR pointing capabilities. That would enable Just Dance on the go, for example."

Remember when Ubi said the new Just Dance was coming to all motion controlled machines?

BTW...I just found out that you can use a Super Nintendo controller to play Genesis, NES and GBA games on the Retron 5. This is badass....I never thought to try. Let's face it the Snes pad blows the Genesis one away.

gamingeek said:

GAF on NX is pretty interesting, I thought it would be hated but it's like a 55/45 split between love and hate the idea.

A 540p handheld makes sense, it can easily double up for scaling to 1080p.

Vita has a 540p screen and most people say its great.

VITA IS GREAT!!!

Vader. why don't you want carts? Honestly, that's my favorite thing I've heard about this system. This isn't like N64 carts or something....modern day carts have tons of storage space. Not to mention the improvement to loading times.

How would updates work?  An internal memory card like the DS?

travo said:

How would updates work?  An internal memory card like the DS?

SSD drive.

I don't care about a screen. I will use it as a normal console so the screen is useless to me.