The VDP 2 serves as the Sega Saturn's background processor. Certain special effects such as texture transparency and playfield rotation and scrolling (up to five fields at any given time) are handled here.
Both the VDP2 and VDP1 32-bit video display processor have direct access to the both SH2s, as well as direct memory access (DMA) to both the main and video RAM.
Background engine
Four simultaneous scrolling backgrounds
Uses 8x8 or 16x16 tiles or bitmap display per background
Programmable memory access controller for VDP2 VRAM
Two simultaneous rotating playfields
VDP2 can rotate VDP1 framebuffer position while scanning out to display for rotation effects
Color RAM supports 15-bit (32768 colors) and 24-bit (16.7 million colors) display modes
Programmable priority at the per-background / per-tile / per-pixel levels
Background color tinting/fading, and transparency effects
Background blur effect (gradation) to simulate distance
Programmable display resolution:
Horizontal sizes of 320, 352, 640, 704 pixels
Vertical sizes of 224, 240, 256 scanlines, non-interlaced
Vertical sizes of 448, 480, 512 scanlines, interlaced
(Only PAL consoles support 256 and 512 scanline displays)
Hi-Vision (EDTV) and 31 kHz (VGA) display support:
