The technology of Alan Wake *spawn [Archive]

nightshade

19-Apr-2010, 11:10

Mod: Spawned from the Analysis thread, this game is generating a lot of talk and so needs its own space.

Well, much of the post processing appears to be done in 720p though.
I don't think they're doing 720p resolution post processing...its madness cause even most of the PC games like to do away with full res post process. And to top that this game has volumetric lighting, doing things like those in full res is an overkill & even the modern graphics card struggle doing it [think Metro 2033 & Stalker's performance when enabling the highest quality lighting]

Morkins

19-Apr-2010, 11:14

I don't think they're doing 720p resolution post processing...its madness cause even most of the PC games like to do away with full res post process. And to top that this game has volumetric lighting, doing things like those in full res is an overkill & even the modern graphics card struggle doing it [think Metro 2033 & Stalker's performance when enabling the highest quality lighting]

I think some parts of the post processing are 720p... I don't know honestly... Forget what I said.

2real4tv

19-Apr-2010, 11:14

Don't understand why the low rez. When using complex lighting effects on the 360 does eDRAM become an achilles heel? Would like to see DF article on it.

Shifty Geezer

19-Apr-2010, 11:19

No. I don't know exactly what is rendered at what resolution. I just think relying purely on the opaque geometry buffer is a bit dated when you consider modern engines... There is simply too much going on elsewhere...That's true of every game, and taking that view, this thread wouldn't exist! For understanding game rendering tech on these boxes, looking at the rendering resolution is a big factor. Hence for this thread, we take the rendered resolution as being the framebuffer resolution used for rendering the bulk of the opaque geometry. Otherwise it'd be impossible to get a clear position for discussion. eg. A game with the 3D rendered at 540p, upscaled to 1080p and then with a native 1080p UI overlaid, would not be a 1080p game and would not be comparable to a game rendering in native 1080p. For discussing nitty-gritty details, like comparative alpha-blended particle framebuffer resolutions, there are the Tech Thread and individual threads.

Thanks Shifty. But when the final image is 540p (upscaled by the Xbox to 720p): does it even make sense that one of the "intermediate" buffers is > 540p?Yes, the UI framebuffer. Upscaled low-resolution UI's look horrible, and as they are cheap to render, a native UI makes perfect sense. Also note that the response says 'render targets' and not 'framebuffers'. Some of these are going to be textures at maybe 512 x 512. You can also render larger than the output resolution and downscale for improved quality, although that's expensive. The Snowblind Studios engine on PS2 did this, adding 2x supersampled antialising and creating an incredibly clean look for the hardware.

AlStrong

19-Apr-2010, 11:21

Indeed... shadowmaps could be rendered to a 1024x1024 buffer for instance. I'd be very surprised if their shadow implementation didn't take advantage of 4xMSAA too...

Don't understand why the low rez. When using complex lighting effects on the 360 does eDRAM become an achilles heel? Would like to see DF article on it.

Lighting -> shaders -> per pixel issue. eDRAM + tiling is a geometry re-processing @ tile boundaries issue.

They do mention deferred lighting, but the number of simultaneous render targets is a bit of an unknown. It would be interesting to see how many tiles they require...

Morkins

19-Apr-2010, 11:27

That's true of every game, and taking that view, this thread wouldn't exist! For understanding game rendering tech on these boxes, looking at the rendering resolution is a big factor. Hence for this thread, we take the rendered resolution as being the framebuffer resolution used for rendering the bulk of the opaque geometry. Otherwise it'd be impossible to get a clear position for discussion. eg. A game with the 3D rendered at 540p, upscaled to 1080p and then with a native 1080p UI overlaid, would not be a 1080p game and would not be comparable to a game rendering in native 1080p. For discussing nitty-gritty details, like comparative alpha-blended particle framebuffer resolutions, there are the Tech Thread and individual threads.

Yes, the UI framebuffer. Upscaled low-resolution UI's look horrible, and as they are cheap to render, a native UI makes perfect sense. Also note that the response says 'render targets' and not 'framebuffers'. Some of these are going to be textures at maybe 512 x 512. You can also render larger than the output resolution and downscale for improved quality, although that's expensive. The Snowblind Studios engine on PS2 did this, adding 2x supersampled antialising and creating an incredibly clean look for the hardware.
Got it.

udauda

19-Apr-2010, 11:29

"In the end all are combined to form one 720p image, with all intermediate buffer sizes selected to optimize image quality and GPU performance. All together the render targets take about 80 MB of memory, equivalent in size to over twenty 720p buffers."

Dear fellas, would this Inferred lighting (http://graphics.cs.uiuc.edu/~kircher/inferred/inferred_lighting_paper.pdf) technique have anything to do with what the developer said? (multiple low-res buffers combined together to achieve pseudo-AA effect in 720p?)

HollovVpo1nt

19-Apr-2010, 11:32

Got it.

Got what? There still isn't a definitive answer.

Shifty Geezer

19-Apr-2010, 11:35

Got what? There still isn't a definitive answer.Yes there is. 960x540 rendering of the main polygon visuals, accounting for the visible step sizes you'd get when upscaled to 720p, with 720p UI overlays and an assortment of buffer sizes during rendering. The framebuffer resolution question as asked and used on this board has a clear answer for the current unreleased engine.

i nerini del buio

19-Apr-2010, 11:35

i don't get one thing.
is the 960*540 res. upscaled by the engine or xenos?

Laa-Yosh

19-Apr-2010, 11:43

I think everyone can agree that in an ideal world, every single screen space buffer would have the same resolution (and the same amount of AA as well!), be it 720p, 1080p, or just 480p. This would ensure the best possible image quality overall.

Now, if any of the intermediate buffers or passes is rendered at a lower resolution, then it will definitely detract from the global IQ. The question is how the gains resulting from such performance optimization of this buffer measures up to the perceivable loss of IQ due to the lack of resolution.

In the case of Alan Wake, the videos so far show a remarkably aliasing-free image, which is still a rarity on this generation. It also complements the movie-like post processing and camera work.
But sharpness is lost as well, especially compared to something like God of War 3 which is also quite clean but detailed too. It would obviously look significantly better if everything was rendered at 720p; then again it'd look even better if it was 1080p with 16xAA, too...

i nerini del buio

19-Apr-2010, 11:46

laa-yosh, found this pic on gaf

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4039/4534392916_31ab1b4caf_o.jpg

indeed it looks aliasing free (almost)
very blurry, though

night gameplay looks better because of the low contrast (i guess)
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4030/4533756213_3f7ed5cbba_o.jpg

HollovVpo1nt

19-Apr-2010, 11:50

Yes there is. 960x540 rendering of the main polygon visuals, accounting for the visible step sizes you'd get when upscaled to 720p, with 720p UI overlays and an assortment of buffer sizes during rendering. The framebuffer resolution question as asked and used on this board has a clear answer for the current unreleased engine.

Yeah, that's true. I guess that it can be added to the list as 540p then. Still I'd love to see these tests done again by DF.

Laa-Yosh

19-Apr-2010, 12:10

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4039/4534392916_31ab1b4caf_o.jpg

night gameplay looks better because of the low contrast (i guess)
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4030/4533756213_3f7ed5cbba_o.jpg

These pretty much settle it, definitely 540p and blurry indeed.
I guess 720p and 4xAA really is too good to be true for this gen.

2real4tv

19-Apr-2010, 12:13

These pretty much settle it, definitely 540p and blurry indeed.
I guess 720p and 4xAA really is too good to be true for this gen.

?? There is already released games that accomplish that.

Quaz51

19-Apr-2010, 12:14

Got it.

it's the same answer than Bungie for Halo3. 540p confirmed for the scene rendering :)
but it's a good reponse, well done
you can't reduce visual of a game just to one element and AW will be surely a good exemple of this

Laa-Yosh

19-Apr-2010, 12:17

?? There is already released games that accomplish that.

Not at the complexity of Alan Wake.

i nerini del buio

19-Apr-2010, 12:18

I guess 720p and 4xAA really is too good to be true for this gen.
do you mean with alan wake's tech under the hood?

there are some pretty impressive games out there running 720p with some anti-aliasing too.
halo reach has some great lighting in a sandbox environment @ 720p res, for example.

i just don't understand the remedy's choice of dropping so low the resolution, i am an image quality whore :smile:

ultragpu

19-Apr-2010, 12:28

They are just describing pretty much every game out there, and it isn't really and explanation! Games frequently use mixed resolution framebuffers, like quarter-resolution particle buffers on PS3, and then combine everything into the final output. "720p" here means outputting a 720p composite of mixed-rendering framebuffers, without any clue as to what's rendered at 720p native or not. Everything so far is pointing towards a 960x540 main rendered opaque geometry framebuffer, what we gamers consider the game resolution, with a 720p native HUD/UI overlaid. This official response is a PR-phrased explanation of what they mean by 720p given that the game was described as 720p, and as usual '720p' is used when the output is 720p irrespective of the render resolution.

Much appreciated Shifty, I keep hearing about the quarter resolution of particle buffer in KZ2 and now I see what's going on.

DonaldDuck

19-Apr-2010, 12:29

From what I remember, the XTS version of RE5 implemented 720p MSAAx4 (with the amount of AA applied changing dinamically) and Heavenly Sword pushed the same on PS3 some years ago. Nevertheless, the engine seems to handle a huge amount of transparencies and alpha textures... maybe the reason for the 540p render size is found there.

Now, I´m very curious about the evolution of the engine during all this time. From being a ambitious technical showcase for expensive hardware on PC to the more cautious console version, there´s quite a change in my opinion, and the developer for sure had to change their mind (and the goals of the project) a bit . I wonder if the different versions of the engine have differed very much during all these years.

The developer said that the engine was reworked several times during the process of creation. Is it reasonable to think that one of these changes could happened in the last months? Could the moderate resolution be forced for the annoying screen tear reported during E3? Now the game seems to be very stable.

A post-mortem analysis of the engine will be really, really interesting. I hope DF will do it.

Bye

Quaz51

19-Apr-2010, 12:35

for comparison it's the same resolution, AA and visual style than Forbidden Siren on the PSN
it's the same choice

Laa-Yosh

19-Apr-2010, 12:39

Reach hasn't been confirmed to be 720p yet, in fact it's quite likely to be something less, and without AA too.

The low res in AW might be because of the lighting, or even the framebuffer sizes (80MB is a lot to spend on this, going full 720p could have taken away too much from textures...). Or it's just the tiling, who knows.

DonaldDuck

19-Apr-2010, 12:40

for comparison it's the same type of resolution, AA and visual style than Forbidden Siren on the PSN
it's the same choice

And the same genre.
It´s a funny coincidence, though.

More questions: Is the engine using the same resolution for cutscenes (real time or not) and in-game? Are the cutscenes, from what we know, real-time rendered, or just prerecorded?

HollovVpo1nt

19-Apr-2010, 12:41

HollovVpo1nt

19-Apr-2010, 12:42

And the same genre.
It´s a funny coincidence, though.

More questions: Is the engine using the same resolution for cutscenes (real time or not) and in-game? Are the cutscenes, from what we know, real-time rendered, or just prerecorded?
The vast majority are pre-rendered with post processing elements, and in 720p.

fusy

19-Apr-2010, 12:45

As far as I know this game was originally meant to run on Pc. That'd explain why they needed to find some compromise to make it performing well on a weaker hardware.
Plus, it's kind of an open world game, many things to handle on screen, no wonder the developers had to shape the whole creature in order to run nicely on a console. The result is a great looking game, thanks to the developers' skill.

This game is a work of art, whether you want to admit it or not.

messyman

19-Apr-2010, 12:46

Also I think they use a more detailed character models for cutscenes if I'm not mistaken.

HollovVpo1nt

19-Apr-2010, 12:49

Also I think they use a more detailed character models for cutscenes if I'm not mistaken.

Yes, they do. A la Uncharted. During those cutscenes the game loads.

nightshade

19-Apr-2010, 12:52

Also I think they use a more detailed character models for cutscenes if I'm not mistaken.
Yes higher quality shading as well as higher poly models.Almost same as UC2 which uses higher quality skin shading but same poly model for cutscenes. (for Drake atleast)

Kameradschaft

19-Apr-2010, 12:55

What I dont get is the following tho: The 360's OS/Scaler is the one responsible for upscaling. Remedy said the signal that goes to the scaler is 720p. So before the 360's scaler even touches it, it's a 720p signal. But becouse the geometry asset is 540p, it'll be listed that way? Right?

Yeah but how can the signal that goes to the scaler be 720- when the framebuffer is at 540p? if the game runs at 540p then the signal to the scaler must've been 540p and then the 360 upscales the image to 720p, 1080i/p e.t.c. Isn't that right?

I'm confused. :roll:

HollovVpo1nt

19-Apr-2010, 12:59

Yeah but how can the signal that goes to the scaler be 720- when the framebuffer is at 540p? if the game runs at 540p then the signal to the scaler must've been 540p and then the 360 upscales the image to 720p, 1080i/p e.t.c. Isn't that right?

I'm confused. :roll:

Thats how it should be I know. But Remedy said that the 360's OS is responsible for upsclaing, but the input signal is 720p before beeing scaled. In theorie, if the 360's OS is set to 720p, then the game wouldnt have to be upscaled to get there.

i nerini del buio

19-Apr-2010, 13:02

maybe they're just upscaling in-engine using some ad-hoc code, so that the framebuffer is actually 720p without x360's scaler working

nightshade

19-Apr-2010, 13:09

Or it could be that they are doing software scaling.

fusy

19-Apr-2010, 13:14

assurdum

19-Apr-2010, 13:15

assurdum

19-Apr-2010, 13:17

DonaldDuck

19-Apr-2010, 13:27

Prerecorded.

That simplifies things. From a subjective perspective, the material released from the site seems a bit too blurred. I´ve to admit that the last bunch of releases have repeated the low resolution buffer for geometry too often :-(. MSAAx4, motion blur and a low resolution buffer don´t mix too well but in any case the nature of the script and the argument support that "flou" look I suppose.

Some could argue that it´s a bit towards David Hamilton style, if just you know the artist.

Is it really a "technological" reason behind the last released subHD games? Not in the case of FFXIII (XTS), thinks DF. What about SC:Conviction and Alan Wake? Two similar settings (to a degree), similar resolution. Is it a trend? Too complex engines? Is the long development process a coincidence? May be these games """rushed""" in some way?

Neb

19-Apr-2010, 13:31

"Modern renderers don't work by rendering everything to a certain final on-screen resolution, but use a combination of techniques and buffers to compose the final detail-rich frames, optimizing to improve the visual experience and game performance.

Alan Wake's renderer on the Xbox360 uses about 50 different intermediate render targets in different resolutions, color depths and anti-alias settings for different purposes. These are used for example for cascaded shadow maps from sun & moon, shadow maps from flashlights, flares and street lights, z-prepass, tiled color buffers, light buffers for deferred rendering, vector blur, screen-space ambient occlusion, auto-exposure, HUD, video buffers, menus and so on. In the end all are combined to form one 720p image, with all intermediate buffer sizes selected to optimize image quality and GPU performance. All together the render targets take about 80 MB of memory, equivalent in size to over twenty 720p buffers."

there's not a single word that suggests that the game runs at 540p, on the contrary. I don't understand how you guys are not getting this. o.O

The contrary. Their comments avoids saying native res and says the obvious that applies to all games. Different buffer sizes like shadowmap res, PP etc. Their response is well written but clearly in a manner to confuse the non tech oriented people in an attempt to avoid touching final native res/framebuffer.

Some example with say Far Cry 2. Lets say I set it to 1440x900 res which will be framebuffer size. The amount of pixels to display graphical data. Now I have shadowmap res at 2048x2048, reflection map at 1024x1024 and say HDR render target at 1024x1024 and PP at 1280x720. Still the native res is 1440x900 and the other effects res are downscaled or upscaled by engine and/or can be stretched/cover into a larger area without loosing quality. Now my GPU then finally uscales it to my monitors native res of 1680x1050.

I mean I promise you there is no game with shadowmap buffer the same size as frame buffer! :P

fusy

19-Apr-2010, 13:34

Old quote. Just read the previous post.

old quote? that's the last message we got from the actual creator of the game, which should mean more than simple suppositions. But it looks like you lot are eager to demonstrate the game being sub-hd and thus discredit Remedy's statement. :roll:

Neb

19-Apr-2010, 13:35

maybe they're just upscaling in-engine using some ad-hoc code, so that the framebuffer is actually 720p without x360's scaler working

It is still uscaled though why avoid using the good 360 scaler and instead loose shader perfomance?

nightshade

19-Apr-2010, 13:38

fusy

19-Apr-2010, 13:47

The contrary. Their comments avoids saying native res and says the obvious that applies to all games. Different buffer sizes like shadowmap res, PP etc. Their response is well written but clearly in a manner to confuse the non tech oriented people in an attempt to avoid touching final native res/framebuffer.

I understand the console limits, the compromises devs need to make in order to release a decent final product and all, but what do we ACTUALLY know about the engine and/or tricks they're using? we're judging videos and pictures here, while those who could actually played the game thought that the game ran at 720p. now, where they fooled? maybe, if so, then the people from Remedy are genius.

The way I see it is that their tech allowed them to build up the final picture by combining different resolutions, which to our eyes will look as a magnificent 720p image.

Now, no one at this point can state that this game is 540p, until there'll be clear evidence that proves it. Both 540p and 720p supporters are 50% wrong and 50% right, imo.

Laa-Yosh

19-Apr-2010, 13:53

Two similar settings (to a degree), similar resolution. Is it a trend? Too complex engines? Is the long development process a coincidence? May be these games """rushed""" in some way?

There's only so much performance and memory to be exploited, but the expectations for higher and higher visual fidelity won't take that into account. Add in the general audience's complete unawareness and total lack of interest about the actual resolution, and the way for the developers is clear - trade off pixel density for new features.

Neb

19-Apr-2010, 13:55

I

The way I see it is that their tech allowed them to build up the final picture by combining different resolutions, which to our eyes will look as a magnificent 720p image.

Of course the game does lots of effects and looks great IMO. Though it will never give the same clarity as a would 1280x720 pixels do. Less pixels means less clarity especially the bigger the display size is. But they do what they can with given hardware and bluriness should not be much of concern as some of the more popular titles have been sub-HD or used Quincunx that also blurs frames. And becouse it is uniform it doesn't stand out until you compare it to other non sub-HD or Quincunx affected titles... but why compare? :)

Now, no one at this point can state that this game is 540p, until there'll be clear evidence that proves it. Both 540p and 720p supporters are 50% wrong and 50% right, imo.

Counting the polygon steps seems to indicate ~540p and Remedies statement avoids touching the framebuffer res. It all points to sub-HD res. But either way the other highlights of the engine and game should not be discarded. I mean some of the most popular games like COD5/6 are sub-HD (1024x600) and people like the IQ.

Neb

19-Apr-2010, 14:02

Indeed...It happens everytime whenever a game's native reso is found to be subHD. Normally the first response from devs is that they output at 720p & people take that as the native reso...or in some cases they like to play with words confusing the fans, as the Remedy dev did this time.

Yup and I dont blame them as it causes internet rage on many parts and puts other achievements in the graphical department and gameplay in the shadows.

I mean I promise you there is no game with shadowmap buffer the same size as frame buffer! :P
Correct you are, master Yoda :)

:bows: :)

i nerini del buio

19-Apr-2010, 14:11

It is still uscaled though why avoid using the good 360 scaler and instead loose shader perfomance?
maybe to have better scaling quality than x360 scaler's?
just guessing, i'm no expert :smile:

corduroygt

19-Apr-2010, 14:26

A better scaler (The best method I know is bicubic) would cost even more performance though. Can one use the 360 scaler only just before outputting or can it also be used when constructing the framebuffer?

Laa-Yosh

19-Apr-2010, 14:43

Most games are rendering the HUD elements in 720p, so they have to scale the framebuffer on their own so that it can be combined with them...

AlStrong

19-Apr-2010, 14:46

The hardware scaler is the last step.

I would be extremely curious if they ended up using FP16 for HDR lighting...

brain_stew

19-Apr-2010, 14:48

Would anyone like to translate that into English for the dummies like myself?

Its 540p. :wink:

If it's upscaled, I don't understand the significance of 720p. Becouse from what I understand, the Xbox 360 OS does upscaling. That means the original output should be less than that.

If it in indeed is 720p upscaled, then what would happen if I set my 360 in 1080p mode? It'll upscale the already upscaled 720p image?

Yes, just like most "sub-HD" 360 games, COD4 is a perfect example of a game that works like this. Its done so that the HUD remains sharp and readable.

nightshade

19-Apr-2010, 14:56

The hardware scaler is the last step.

I would be extremely curious if they ended up using FP16 for HDR lighting...
80MB framebuffer, A2C for foliage & given how Xenos doesn't support alpha blending in FP16.
Yea FP16 can be a possibility..you never know. [However I don't see a broader of color palate in Alan Wake...but then maybe that's just me]

assurdum

19-Apr-2010, 15:18

old quote? that's the last message we got from the actual creator of the game, which should mean more than simple suppositions. But it looks like you lot are eager to demonstrate the game being sub-hd and thus discredit Remedy's statement. :roll:
:???: Said the game is 540p discredit the Remedy 's statement? The quote was posted before than yours for this I said 'old' & judging the matters not talking clearly of 720p native but some parts etc etc; to me seems an implicit admission of 540p rendering.

HollovVpo1nt

19-Apr-2010, 15:22

nightshade

19-Apr-2010, 15:28

camer999

19-Apr-2010, 15:33

Could they be doing it like ratchet and clank (low native res) then using AA to reconstruct 720p? Could that be why all the people that previewed the game never commented on on blurryness or the look of upscaling? Could that also be why remedy said that it combined to make a 720p image or all thempost processing makes it simply seem like 720p?

LightHeaven

19-Apr-2010, 16:21

I mentioned the case of Ratchet & Clank games few pages back, it could work out essentially the same way ie. rendering at subHD & then reconstructing the image with AA @720p. Though I am not exactly sure how this happens.

But all I can say now is...Patience ! We'll get to know everything about the game when the time comes.

Could they be doing it like ratchet and clank (low native res) then using AA to reconstruct 720p? Could that be why all the people that previewed the game never commented on on blurryness or the look of upscaling? Could that also be why remedy said that it combined to make a 720p image or all them post processing makes it simply seem like 720p?

But reconstructing a 720p image wouldn't imply that you shouldn't be able to tell the final image wasn't actually rendered in 720p? Or it will have a upscaled look, only better?

How was Ratchet resolution determined anyway? By pixel counting, or the developer had a lecture about it or something like that?

jlippo

19-Apr-2010, 17:44

I think that Remedy should give a lecture on the tech. Although this is all interesting, I fail understand how the game outputs 720p without beeing affected by the 360's scaler and at the same time have 540p geometry. I'm missing the step from 540p to 720p. There has to be something in between. I doubt it's a custom scaler beouse the 360's scaler would require less recources.
Simplest way is to use 540p image as a texture and render it into 720p buffer with 2 triangles filling the screen.
In the same pass do everything else you need, like a hud.
I mentioned the case of Ratchet & Clank games few pages back, it could work out essentially the same way ie. rendering at subHD & then reconstructing the image with AA @720p. Though I am not exactly sure how this happens.
I'm pretty sure that every buffer that leaves eDram must be resolved into a main ram, this would mean that you cannot access the sub-samples with shaders for a reconstruction.
I'm sure someone here can confirm if this is right or wrong. ;)

Billy Idol

19-Apr-2010, 17:53

Question to the guys who played Siren(PS3): how is the actual image quality of this game (as it has the same resolution+AA) on a LCD screen??

Rolf N

19-Apr-2010, 18:17

Question to the guys who played Siren(PS3): how is the actual image quality of this game (as it has the same resolution+AA) on a LCD screen??It's pretty good overall. Textures aren't that sharp, which you can easily blame the low resolution for. The film-grain effects and overall low contrast hide that pretty well.

I don't think the game does anything remarkable tech-wise. The virtual absence of edge jaggies is quite pleasant in itself though.

I consider it kind of the dirty secret of all game graphics that no matter how limited they are, as long as they're consistent, you'll get used to it within 10 minutes anyway.

Kameradschaft

19-Apr-2010, 18:31

But reconstructing a 720p image wouldn't imply that you shouldn't be able to tell the final image wasn't actually rendered in 720p? Or it will have a upscaled look, only better?

How was Ratchet resolution determined anyway? By pixel counting, or the developer had a lecture about it or something like that?

Well R&C: Tools Of Destruction had very good IQ at least on my set and didn't looked blurry or sub-HD at all..also the impressions from the ones that have seen the game in action like blim from gamersyde said it looked great when demonstrated on a big HDTV.

The most confusing part in Remedy's answer is that whole bit about feeding the 360's scaler with a 720p signal..I guess we have to wait and see the game in action on our sets to judge, though I'm sure and hope that digitalfoundry will have an in-depth analysis on the game really soon.

Billy Idol

19-Apr-2010, 18:33

Well R&C: Tools Of Destruction had very good IQ at least on my set and didn't looked blurry or sub-HD at all..also the impressions from the ones that have seen the game in action like blim from gamersyde said it looked great when demonstrated on a big HDTV.

The most confusing part in Remedy's answer is that whole bit about feeding the 360's scaler with a 720p signal..I guess we have to wait and see the game in action on our sets to judge, though I'm sure and hope that digitalfoundry will have an in-depth analysis on the game really soon.

R&C: TOD had an extremely good IQ, even on the beamer setup, but R&C: CiT had some noticable aliasing issues (especially the Clank sections!)...I think that they have changed something for the new R&C?!

Kameradschaft

19-Apr-2010, 18:43

R&C: TOD had an extremely good IQ, even on the beamer setup, but R&C: CiT had some noticable aliasing issues (especially the Clank sections!)...I think that they have changed something for the new R&C?!

Yeah having played the demo for CiT recently I was thinking the same thing - what happened to the IQ of the game? assuming it's running at the same engine as the ToD it's really weird that CiT's IQ is definitely blurrier and there are a lot of jaggies...it looks like a sub-HD (which it is) but with a blur effect on top of it.

As you said maybe they changed something in the CiT version of the engine.

Rolf N

19-Apr-2010, 18:50

The most confusing part in Remedy's answer is that whole bit about feeding the 360's scaler with a 720p signal..Software compositing. 540p geometry meets 720p HUD.

It appears there's an assumption going around that all scaling on the Xbox 360 has to be performed by "the" scaling logic in Xenos. This is not the case. And why would it be? There's nothing that prevents you from rolling your own software scaling on the CPU.

SG79

19-Apr-2010, 18:55

Yeah having played the demo for CiT recently I was thinking the same thing - what happened to the IQ of the game? assuming it's running at the same engine as the ToD it's really weird that CiT's IQ is definitely blurrier and there are a lot of jaggies...it looks like a sub-HD (which it is) but with a blur effect on top of it.

As you said maybe they changed something in the CiT version of the engine.

The blurry look was gone in the final game but the game still aliased a bit more than TOD, so perhaps they used 2X MSAA instead of QAA in the final game?

Given the dark nature of AW, much like Siren, I don't think the low res will necessarily harm the overall look considering what they're doing with the game overall. Siren's IQ was actually pretty good despite the low resolution and most importantly, it ran extremely well without any hitches. I'd take that over 720p with a finicky frame rate.

i nerini del buio

19-Apr-2010, 19:10

Software compositing. 540p geometry meets 720p HUD.

It appears there's an assumption going around that all scaling on the Xbox 360 has to be performed by "the" scaling logic in Xenos. This is not the case. And why would it be? There's nothing that prevents you from rolling your own software scaling on the CPU.
AFAIK halo3 does that, i could be wrong though :grin:

camer999

19-Apr-2010, 19:16

I was thinking when they say a 720p image comes out, do you think they mean that all the resolutions of the effects and geometry averaged=720p. That would be a large play of words by them but it seems possible.

Shifty Geezer

19-Apr-2010, 19:21

No. They mean any framebuffers lower than 720p are upscaled to 720p, and 720p buffers applied over the top (UI), prior to XB360's output chip getting its hands on them. There will be no video scaling by Xenos on a 720p display, but it will upscale to 1080 on such displays.

fusy

19-Apr-2010, 19:44

What I dont get is the following tho: The 360's OS/Scaler is the one responsible for upscaling. Remedy said the signal that goes to the scaler is 720p. So before the 360's scaler even touches it, it's a 720p signal. But becouse the geometry asset is 540p, it'll be listed that way? Right?

the 720p input gets elaborated in a way to guarantee the best performance and visuals. so if there's too much to handle, graphical compromises come into play.
Personally, saying this game runs at 540p is not a fully correct statement.

Krabardaf

19-Apr-2010, 19:49

I believe Remedy has been clear enough in its message.

In the end all are combined to form one 720p image
I won't take many risks assuming that this sentence mean that the color buffer is 720p, if so "the game is 720p", right?
Now, there's still room for some doubt, but i'm pretty confidant that the games will run at 720p.

Cyan

19-Apr-2010, 19:57

It's all very confusing. I find it hard to understand without developers of the game telling us what they have done especifically, and clearing up any doubts people may have. There's an article in a russian web page that tries to deal with the subject of resolution. They point out that the only component of the engine running at 540p is the opaque geometry:

Once the web came two ten-minute excerpt from Alan Wake of HD-quality and relevant screenshots lovers take Pixels stated that the resolution is 960x547 in the game with a four-MSAA.

Remedy hastened to comment on the situation, noting that the actual resolution of the game is still 720p. However, technical experts from Gametrailers and Beyond3D fully apprised of the situation. Further quote from Gametrailers:

"Framebuffer (framebuffer) indeed demonstrates the native resolution of 720p. The user interface is rendered in 720p, as well as some post-processing effects (motion blur, noise filter, depth of field, SSAO, and so on). At the same time, opaque geometry rendered in the resolution of 547p, then the software can scale to 720p, and then added to the framebuffer.

«C technical point of view, referring to the native resolution of 720p, Remedy is not lying. Just the developers did not tell the whole truth. Real framebuffer is really in 720p - just resolution framebuffer and use, referring to the resolution of games. On the other hand, in this case, the framebuffer consists of several components, some of which are rendered in a resolution below 720p ».

Beyond3D believes that resolution of the game you need to take permission, which rendered opaque geometry, but the source also agree that in the framebuffer Alan Wake a lot of other components in 720p, so clearly say what the game resolution is difficult.

That is why Alan Wake - a unique case. In this case, we can not say that the game runs in 547p, but also to say that the native resolution of 720p in the game - also not quite correct.

Optimization ... optimization never changes ...

http://www.gametech.ru/cgi-bin/show.pl?option=news&id=12408 (http://www.gametech.ru/cgi-bin/show.pl?option=news&id=12408#comments)

nightshade

19-Apr-2010, 20:00

Personally, saying this game runs at 540p is not a fully correct statement.
Why not ? In normal words that IS the game's native resolution & it's the primary "thing". Whenever you talk of native resolution of a game you are directly referring to the opaque geometry resolution, like for eg. when you change the resolution in a PC game you are changing the opaque geometry resolution...you don't refer to the resolution of effects or post process, those are secondary things.

I find it strange that its only now that people are showing concerns over the resolution of effects & post process being different from the native resolution of a game, its even more strange when you see people think that its something confusing & new. Frankly speaking when has there been a game that uses synonymous resolution for everything ?

fusy

19-Apr-2010, 20:19

Why not ? In normal words that IS the game's native resolution & it's the primary "thing". Whenever you talk of native resolution of a game you are directly referring to the opaque geometry resolution ,like for eg. when you change the resolution in a PC game you are directly mentioning the opaque geometry resolution...you don't refer to the resolution of effects or post process, those are secondary things.

I find it strange that its only now that people are showing concerns over the resolution of effects & post process being different from the native resolution of a game, its even more strange when you see people think that its something confusing & new. Frankly speaking when has there been a game that uses synonymous resolution for everything ?

that's a bit reductive of an argument. the geometry buffer suggests that it's 540p, okay, but you can't deliberately just exclude the other aspects such as effects like lightings or post processing that may actually display at a higher resolution. It's like looking at the Gioconda and say that the figure is smiling, while the other person tells you that it is not. Who's right? both are right and wrong, imo.

JB9861

19-Apr-2010, 20:28

Neb

19-Apr-2010, 20:35

that's a bit reductive of an argument. the geometry buffer suggests that it's 540p, okay, but you can't deliberately just exclude the other aspects such as effects like lightings or post processing that may actually display at a higher resolution. It's like looking at the Gioconda and say that the figure is smiling, while the other person tells you that it is not. Who's right? both are right and wrong, imo.

But shadowmap, PP etc res wont change how many pixels exist onscreen. If framebuffer is 960x540 then that is the amount of pixels available, the main resolution. If shadowmap res is higher or lower wont change amount of pixels nor image sharpness, just shadow detail and/or quality radius.

About shadowmaps, PP etc having different resolution goes for almost all other games. This is nothing new. Shadows is one thing that tends to be higher (more pixels) than 1280x720. IIRC FC2 on consoles has 1024x1024 shadowmap res, 512x512 reflection map res etc.

zed

19-Apr-2010, 20:40

IMO from my reading of their statements they are doing sub 720p, and the screenshots certainly look like they are.
Then again they havent said "We do not do bullshots" have they? ;)

nightshade

19-Apr-2010, 20:41

that's a bit reductive of an argument. the geometry buffer suggests that it's 540p, okay, but you can't deliberately just exclude the other aspects such as effects like lightings or post processing that may actually display at a higher resolution. It's like looking at the Gioconda and say that the figure is smiling, while the other person tells you that it is not. Who's right? both are right and wrong, imo.
Well native resolution in general term is none other than opaque geometry resolution, its the prime resolution of the rendered image..every other effect is directly affected by this resolution & which is why its consider as the main resolution. A lot of games do shadow & reflection mapping at resolution like 1024*1024 while pulling off 2048*2048 textures at some places & doing a quarter resolution post processing...while the actual native resolution of "opaque geometry" is 720p.

What would you consider when someone asks you about the native resolution of a game that fulfills all the conditions mentioned above ?

EDIT: I honestly running out of words to explain/debate any further because I don't have much technical knowledge, so I'll like to rest the case for now until experts show their view over this.

fusy

19-Apr-2010, 20:54

But shadowmap, PP etc res wont change how many pixels exist onscreen. If framebuffer is 960x540 then that is the amount of pixels available, the main resolution. If shadowmap res is higher or lower wont change amount of pixels nor image sharpness, just shadow detail and/or quality radius.

About shadowmaps, PP etc having different resolution goes for almost all other games. This is nothing new. Shadows is one thing that tends to be higher (more pixels) than 1280x720. IIRC FC2 on consoles has 1024x1024 shadowmap res, 512x512 reflection map res etc.

yes, of course. but we have an "if" there.
once ascertained, it'll be set down in black and white. now, would you go so far as to state that this game has to be considered 540p? hmm..

Shifty Geezer

19-Apr-2010, 21:12

... They point out that the only component of the engine running at 540p is the opaque geometry:Which is what we're talking about when we talk about render resolutions. ;)

Shifty Geezer

19-Apr-2010, 21:22

yes, of course. but we have an "if" there.
once ascertained, it'll be set down in black and white. now, would you go so far as to state that this game has to be considered 540p? hmm..Yes, because every game we've counted resolution on has been treated this way. It is the standard measure. The only thorough alternative is to list 50 different rendertarget resolutions for every game, which is absurbed and and doesn't give any useful comparison. This isn't about applying a number to how good a game looks - "It's only 540p so it looks worse than a 720p game". How good a game looks is subjective and dependent on many factors. It's about comparing engines. Take two similar games and compare the opaque geometry complexity and rendering quality, and you'll have a reasonable comparison of what rendering performance the developers have extracted from the hardware.

Furthermore, the opaque geometry makes up by far the glut of a player's visual experience. There'd be no point rendering particles, UI, smoke etc. at 2160p if the opaque geometry is being rendered at SD resolutions no AA. The game overall will have poor IQ and look rough. If there are cutbacks to be made in buffer resolutions, it'll be made in particles, shadows and so forth that don't have as prominent an appearance in the final image. Aiming for high opaque geometry resolution and high AA is a smart target if you want your game to look good on an HD set. There's a good argument to be made for lower resolutions as long as you crank up the AA (real-life SDTV looks better than computer games), but achieving that high AA is as much a challenge as rendering to a high resolution.

camer999

19-Apr-2010, 21:25

^Shifty, I was thinking no one has commented on it until B3D found out so is their use of post-processing working really well for them? For example the guy on neogaf called Blim-blim, he is used to seeing upscaling and the lack of sharpness, etc, he didn't notice though.

nightshade

19-Apr-2010, 21:26

Thanks for summing it up shifty...you the man ;)

Shifty Geezer

19-Apr-2010, 21:27

You can apply post-processing anywhere along the chain. It depends on what exactly they are doing! Adding film grain can be done on the upscaled 720p which will improve the sense of higher quality a notch versus upscaling noise applied at 540p. I'd need to know what they are doing in post-processing to guess if the resolution is affecting perceptible quality though.

fusy

19-Apr-2010, 21:59

Yes, because every game we've counted resolution on has been treated this way. It is the standard measure. The only thorough alternative is to list 50 different rendertarget resolutions for every game, which is absurbed and and doesn't give any useful comparison. This isn't about applying a number to how good a game looks - "It's only 540p so it looks worse than a 720p game". How good a game looks is subjective and dependent on many factors. It's about comparing engines. Take two similar games and compare the opaque geometry complexity and rendering quality, and you'll have a reasonable comparison of what rendering performance the developers have extracted from the hardware.

Furthermore, the opaque geometry makes up by far the glut of a player's visual experience. There'd be no point rendering particles, UI, smoke etc. at 2160p if the opaque geometry is being rendered at SD resolutions no AA. The game overall will have poor IQ and look rough. If there are cutbacks to be made in buffer resolutions, it'll be made in particles, shadows and so forth that don't have as prominent an appearance in the final image. Aiming for high opaque geometry resolution and high AA is a smart target if you want your game to look good on an HD set. There's a good argument to be made for lower resolutions as long as you crank up the AA (real-life SDTV looks better than computer games), but achieving that high AA is as much a challenge as rendering to a high resolution.

it makes sense, but I still find questionable the source where the results are based on, unless the actual game/demo was analyzed, that I don't know.
if it can already be really proved that the opaque geometry is actually rendered at sub-hd resolutions, then those hd-not-hd debates don't make any sense anymore

nightshade

19-Apr-2010, 22:10

it makes sense, but I still find questionable the source where the results are based on, unless the actual game/demo was analyzed, that I don't know.
if it can already be really proved that the opaque geometry is actually rendered at sub-hd resolutions, then those hd-not-hd debates don't make any sense anymore
Those screenshots indicate a 720p HUD,720p cutscene & 540p gameplay. Its fair to assume that the source is legit.

Laa-Yosh

19-Apr-2010, 22:13

Personally, saying this game runs at 540p is not a fully correct statement.

It's more then adequate, considering that the visually most important parts are indeed rendered at 540p. There's no real difference compared to any other sub-720p game out there so let's not try to make this one an exception.

Laa-Yosh

19-Apr-2010, 22:16

yes, of course. but we have an "if" there.
once ascertained, it'll be set down in black and white. now, would you go so far as to state that this game has to be considered 540p? hmm..

Is COD4 640p or 720p? Is Halo3 720p? GTA4 on the PS3?

Or is Killzone 2 1440p because they do some stuff on a 2x multisample buffer?

Don't treat this game differently just because of some personal bias, please.

Laa-Yosh

19-Apr-2010, 22:18

it makes sense, but I still find questionable the source where the results are based on, unless the actual game/demo was analyzed, that I don't know.

Plenty of official and evidently 540p screenshots are already out on the internet.

LightHeaven

19-Apr-2010, 22:26

Don't understand why the low rez. When using complex lighting effects on the 360 does eDRAM become an achilles heel? Would like to see DF article on it.

If by having a 540p main buffer (lets put it this way :P) they are already hitting 80mb+ just in render targets i can only imagine how that would sky rocket with a higher res.

It seems to me that they choose to have better looking transparency and volumetric effects than having the geometry outputed at a higher resolution.

If that was a good choice we will just to wait and see it XD

Morkins

19-Apr-2010, 22:28

It's more then adequate, considering that the visually most important parts are indeed rendered at 540p. There's no real difference compared to any other sub-720p game out there so let's not try to make this one an exception.

I wouldn't call it the MOST visually important parts of a game. Not anymore. Too much is going on during the post processing phase to say that. I mean, Alan Wake is certainly proof that even at a very low resolution, a game can still look absolutely outstanding.

For the purposes of this thread and the resolution it is concerned with, yeah, opaque geometry framebuffer is all that matters. But saying that it is the MOST visually important part is something I don't completely agree with. Certain a very important part, but most is a bit of a stretch to me when talking about modern engines. I mean, if it was really the most important part and they were ending up with a worse looking game visually, they would not have dropped the resolution to 960x540.

Laa-Yosh

19-Apr-2010, 22:31

I did not say that the resolution was the most important; but that what's the most important - the scenery, characters, lighting, shadows and so on - are all rendered at 540p. I don't care if they add noise at 720p, that's not an important element of the final image.

fusy

19-Apr-2010, 22:32

Is COD4 640p or 720p? Is Halo3 720p? GTA4 on the PS3?

Or is Killzone 2 1440p because they do some stuff on a 2x multisample buffer?

Don't treat this game differently just because of some personal bias, please.

there's no personal bias whatsoever. I just think that when you put the hands on the actual game, you'll be able to firmly state whether it is X or Y. Otherwise no one would be arguing about it, no?
Even if it's not relevant I've had my fair dose of experience with bullshots and doctored videos and I'd tend to be prudent and be 100% sure before confirming something as definitive.
I'm not question the PC's here, but I do have my reasons not to draw conclusions so fast.
that's just it.

LightHeaven

19-Apr-2010, 22:33

Well R&C: Tools Of Destruction had very good IQ at least on my set and didn't looked blurry or sub-HD at all..also the impressions from the ones that have seen the game in action like blim from gamersyde said it looked great when demonstrated on a big HDTV.

The most confusing part in Remedy's answer is that whole bit about feeding the 360's scaler with a 720p signal..I guess we have to wait and see the game in action on our sets to judge, though I'm sure and hope that digitalfoundry will have an in-depth analysis on the game really soon.

Thats what i was thinking... Ratched is so clean that i didn't even think it was sub 720p until i saw this thread XD

Hopefullly remedy has done something similar with Alan Wake.

Shifty Geezer

19-Apr-2010, 22:36

For the purposes of this thread and the resolution it is concerned with, yeah, opaque geometry framebuffer is all that matters. But saying that it is the MOST visually important part is something I don't completely agree with.What is even as important, let alone more important? Particle buffer resolution? Do blocky pixels on explosions/smoke stand out more than blocky pixels on object edges? Bloom buffer? Do you need to gaussian blue on a 720p native buffer instead of upscale 1/16th resolution? Shadow buffer? If the shadows are silky smooth but you characters have chunky edges, that's less jarring than smooth edges and chunky shadows?
I mean, if it was really the most important part and they were ending up with a worse looking game visually, they would not have dropped the resolution to 960x540. Without any idea what the bottleneck is, you can't make that call. However, a look at every game out there that prioritises opaque geometry buffer above all other buffer resolutions shows it's recognised as the most important buffer to have a high resolution on if you want crisp visuals. Reining back the resolution on the main render target is going to create a blocky or smooth result that will be immediately noticeable.

Putting it another way, how would you budget your memory and bandwidth? Would you rather have:

1) 1280x720 opaque geometry buffer and a 960x540 particle/shadow/whatever-you-choose buffer
2) 1280x720 particle/shadow/whatever-you-choose buffer and a 960x540 opaque geometry buffer

(If you answer 2, you'll need to say what buffer you'd prioritise above the opaque geom one!)

Shifty Geezer

19-Apr-2010, 22:39

there's no personal bias whatsoever. I just think that when you put the hands on the actual game...but I do have my reasons not to draw conclusions so fast.
that's just it.Don't confuse the current round of discussion with a critique of final game quality. This is spawned from the Pre-release thread with good reason, and we're only talking about the current showings of the current engine. This makes no suppositions about the final game people will get to play, or whether it'll feel high quality or not. It's a very cold, analytical consideration of the render target resolutions being used in the current (showcased) build.

fusy

19-Apr-2010, 22:45

Don't confuse the current round of discussion with a critique of final game quality. This is spawned from the Pre-release thread with good reason, and we're only talking about the current showings of the current engine. This makes no suppositions about the final game people will get to play, or whether it'll feel high quality or not. It's a very cold, analytical consideration of the render target resolutions being used in the current (showcased) build.

okay then that changes everything. sorry for misunderstanding
thanks

Afrikan

19-Apr-2010, 23:49

Thats what i was thinking... Ratched is so clean that i didn't even think it was sub 720p until i saw this thread XD

Hopefullly remedy has done something similar with Alan Wake.

I didn't know that either.

I believe this is the only Sony published PS3 series this gen that is not 720p and up. right?

Heinrich4

20-Apr-2010, 00:14

Maybe they are seeking at all cost better AA than largest native resolutions(to avoid screen tearing ?), im particularly not appreciate this.I prefer at least 720P even with a lower resolution in somethings like we see in particle effects in Killzone 2.

Interesting article about this:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-not-so-high-definition-article

(540P is way to do 4*MSAA in 10MB eDRAM space,and is something like 800x600P with 4xfsaa whem i played some pc games ,many details are lost even in high)

Sigfried1977

20-Apr-2010, 00:28

I only played the demo of a Crack in Time, but I finished both Tools of Destruction and Quest for Booty and the first thing that popped into my head was whether I accidently disabled 720p/1080p in the PS3 system settings. The blurry image was immediately apparent to me.

Dungeonscaper

20-Apr-2010, 01:14

Some more screenshots

http://www.ps3news.com/images/img_20544-3.jpg
http://www.ps3news.com/images/img_20544-2.jpg
http://www.ps3news.com/images/img_20544.jpg

(((interference)))

20-Apr-2010, 01:51

Oh wow, so it's only 540p then, that's going to provide yet more console war ammunition. I always wondered how they managed to do 720p 4xAA whilst having so much going on.

That being said, the game is easily the best looking 360 title to date (can anyone think of a close competitor?) and the complete lack of aliasing along with all the post processing effects give it a very cinematic, realistic quality to the visuals compared to most other titles even though they run at higher resolutions (similar to the visual realism of KZ2).

And despite being 540p AW's IQ is better than COD or Battlefield, so I don't think it's a big deal (apart from the fact we were told it was 720p).
I meain, I wouldn't mind seeing Halo 3 or Reach running in 540p with 4xAA, IMO much much better than 640p no AA. For me 'jaggies' destroy the suspension of disbelief like nothing else.

Dural

20-Apr-2010, 02:20

2real4tv

20-Apr-2010, 02:30

resolution starts to become a bigger factor the larger your tv is...is that a good assumption?

JB9861

20-Apr-2010, 02:32

That being said, the game is easily the best looking 360 title to date (can anyone think of a close competitor?) and the complete lack of aliasing along with all the post processing effects give it a very cinematic, realistic quality to the visuals compared to most other titles even though they run at higher resolutions (similar to the visual realism of KZ2).

What do you mean by lack of aliasing? Its there.

Alucardx23

20-Apr-2010, 03:33

What do you mean by lack of aliasing? Its there.

Yeah "lack of aliasing" because it has 4x Antialiasing. :smile:

Morkins

20-Apr-2010, 03:37

Yeah "lack of aliasing" because it has 4x Antialiasing. :smile:
There is definitely still some aliasing in certain areas. But it isn't that bad. Certainly better than a number of 720p native games have been.

Alucardx23

20-Apr-2010, 04:56

Well many people on this board have wondered how a game that targeted sd resolutions and went crazy with post-processing and shaders would look and it looks like that is what we got here. Pretty disappointing though; too bad they couldn't have done 720p with AAA.

So it would be like the requirement for HD gaming never happened and the developers can use hardware power however they want. I hope that this was the right decision, I expect from Alan Wake the best post processing and shaders effect for consoles.

fkid

20-Apr-2010, 06:26

Recent screenshots @ http://www.ps3news.com/XBox-360/amazing-new-in-game-alan-wake-xbox-360-images-arrive/

I am by no means an expert on counting pixels, but looking at these, I instantly feel something is wrong. Having played many, many games on the 360 and PC in recent times (at different resolutions of course), Alan Wake seems to have very little aliasing, but still looks to be sub-720p and an overall blurry mess. This either means there is some heavily used blurring filter in play throughout the entire game experience (no, that does NOT make it more cinematic, like films or Twin Peaks) or it's simply not 720p material and they went for AA rather than resolution.

This game may have impressive volumetric effects, shadows, and lighting, but these screenshots are thoroughly disappointing, especially with so many years of development and to anyone who was looking forward to playing Alan Wake on the PC. I realize that it looks better in motion, when running or shooting baddies -- but we all know there will be a lot of slow walking or stopping to enjoy the nature or scenery. When that happens, the blurry nature of the visuals will bother me a lot. Am I the only one?

nightshade

20-Apr-2010, 06:42

And despite being 540p AW's IQ is better than COD or Battlefield, so I don't think it's a big deal (apart from the fact we were told it was 720p).
I meain, I wouldn't mind seeing Halo 3 or Reach running in 540p with 4xAA, IMO much much better than 640p no AA. For me 'jaggies' destroy the suspension of disbelief like nothing else.
It won't work out with a game like Halo, that's a vibrant looking game with high contrast edges everywhere while Alan Wake has an extremely muted color palate even no AA would've looked fairly "jaggie free" for the most part given the color space & further blur cause due to upscaling. The thing is lower the resolution the uglier it gets in bigger sets no matter how much AA you pour in because there's simply isn't many pixels on screen.

(((interference)))

20-Apr-2010, 07:30

It won't work out with a game like Halo, that's a vibrant looking game with high contrast edges everywhere while Alan Wake has an extremely muted color palate even no AA would've looked fairly "jaggie free" for the most part given the color space & further blur cause due to upscaling. The thing is lower the resolution the uglier it gets in bigger sets no matter how much AA you pour in because there's simply isn't many pixels on screen.

Alan Wake isn't that gray, there's plenty of color in the daytime scenes
http://images.gamersyde.com/image_alan_wake-12275-759_0008.jpg

The other post-processing effects/blur also going on in Alan Wake would also make Halo look better as it looks a bit sterile and last-gen as it is compared to games like Gears and KZ2. The trend in graphics is definitely towards heavy use of post-processing effects.

And to me, the fact that Bungie's environment art is largely based around straight edges and geometric shapes but the engine has no form of antialiasing or edge smoothing whatsoever is incredibly stupid. I would much rather see them take the 40% reduction in pixels to gain 4xAA and copious amounts of alpha heavy and post processing effects like we see in AW.

nightshade

20-Apr-2010, 07:33

Alan Wake isn't that gray, there's plenty of color in the daytime scenes.
Did I ever said its gray ?
I just said Alan Wake isn't a vibrant looking game cause of muted color palate & low contrast edges.

And btw I haven't noticed any object motion blur shader in the game yet, all I've seen is just a camera motion blur..but maybe thats just cause of the videos.

ultragpu

20-Apr-2010, 11:39

Heinrich4

20-Apr-2010, 11:55

There really should be a good balance between all those rendering buffers and I definitely agree the main priority should be the geometry buffer. It is the HD era after all and I just hope devs don't follow the sub-hd trend as things would only get blurrier time after time. I don't know about you guys but personally I'd prefer a 720p 0xaa game than a 540p 4xaa game generally speaking, I feel like the higher res buffer would naturally help to ease the aliasing anyway or am I wrong?

Im agree.Its HD era and 720P 0*fsaa dont bother me more than blurry image in 540P with 4*fsaa (and probably 4*msaa certainly dont hide all jagguies at this resolution...) despite all post-processing effects.

IamSancho

20-Apr-2010, 12:30

Did I ever said its gray ?
I just said Alan Wake isn't a vibrant looking game cause of muted color palate & low contrast edges.

The low contrast and muted color palate(and some of the things people are moaning about in the screens) could be attributed to Videogamerzone.de(who has leaked all of these screens) being biased against 360 and going out of their way to make the 360 version of games look worse than PS3.

Proof of this you say? Glad to! lol

Well it seems the main things they mess with are brightness and contrast, most likely In-Game and maybe other methods. It's obvious in any of the leaked Screens that the Hud is brighter and shows signs of having both the contrast and brightness changed farther from normal than should be.

Aside from seeing that in the difference between official shots and the leaked screens(of course ignoring some of what CAN be attributed to lower resolution), the main damning evidence is that they HAVE done it before.

See this link http://forum.alanwake.com/showpost.php?p=70705&postcount=1313to the proof of that with Dante's Inferno.

Isn't it funny how the same website that produced these blurry, color muted and low contrast screens(that some peopel here and on GAF are saying is exactly what Wake will look like) shows the exact same kind of visual problems on the 360 version of Dante's Inferno Compared to ps3? Especially in light that Digital Foundry and Lense of Truth have both shown that both versions of that game are IDENTICAL.

Ok, that's my 10 cents. BTW, I'm not criticizing the pixelcounters work or that it's 540p base resolution. I'm disputing the quality of videogameszone.de's screens because some people around here and on GAF seem to assume that is 100% what the game will look like when playing it. That's Bullcrap. :grin:

nightshade

20-Apr-2010, 13:25

There really should be a good balance between all those rendering buffers and I definitely agree the main priority should be the geometry buffer. It is the HD era after all and I just hope devs don't follow the sub-hd trend as things would only get blurrier time after time. I don't know about you guys but personally I'd prefer a 720p 0xaa game than a 540p 4xaa game generally speaking, I feel like the higher res buffer would naturally help to ease the aliasing anyway or am I wrong?

Between 720p/no AA & 540p/4*AA ? Its a trade off seriously....you get to choose between:

1) crisp image with uniform amount of jaggies everywhere on screen.

2) Blurred image with less jaggies overall...but horrible jagged edges in some areas that have lots of thin objects.

In most cases I'll go with option 1 cause subHD doesn't mixes well with big TV sets.

Kameradschaft

20-Apr-2010, 13:48

DF in their really interesting article (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-alanwake-sub-hd-blog-entry) that's up now at Eurogamer said that last year's footage (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/tech-analysis-alan-wake-trailer-blog-entry) were definitely native 720p...so were also the gameplay bits in that video 720p? and if yes I guess it was Remedy's decision to lower the resolution for better performance but that much lower? Doesn't make much sense since they didn't add - at least from what we've seen - any new graphical effects (like object motion-blur) though I must say that the frame-rate is definitely better in the latest videos.

nightshade

20-Apr-2010, 13:58

Laa-Yosh

20-Apr-2010, 14:11

It's not such a simple trade-off at all...

If you're using MSAA, you only calculate 1 shading sample per pixel, the rest of the work is to determine the coverage for the current triangle. The difference in fragment shader load between 540p and 720p is about 1 to 2, and it is more then significant. Going to the higher res would nearly cut the framerate in half, even if it meant avoiding tiling and such.

So no, you don't get to choose. You get various bottlenecks and performance figures, and you have to balance the features against each other. Alan Wake's probably putting the lighting first, rendering very expensive pixels in the fragment shader, but it's still left with enough resources elsewhere to add 4xMSAA and the extra memory consumption.

nightshade

20-Apr-2010, 14:13

Well then what about last year's video which was 720p/ 4*MSAA ?
You had console esque things like low level texture filtering & such....though I am not denying that it could be from the PC with low level texture filtering too.

Kameradschaft

20-Apr-2010, 14:18

They must've started to have some problems in some of the area later in the game. But what I don't understand is why lower the resolution throughout ? Why not just keep it variable with 720p for those areas which worked well (like last year's gameplay) and consort to subHD when in the areas that were a problem to do at 720p ?

Yeah I guess they could do this to maintain superior IQ at least in some areas, other options could've been something like 640p with 2xAA or 720p with no AA but I guess they wanted to keep the 4xAA no matter what.

Of course Remedy had their reasons to go that low but it's still weird mainly because they had other options that maybe were better than a 540p w/4xAA especially when displayed at HDTV's bigger than 40".

corduroygt

20-Apr-2010, 14:20

What I don't understand is why not let the 360 scale the 540p into 1080p. It would be a pixel perfect scaling 1:4 and would look better than 540p first scaled to 720p then to 1080p.

AlStrong

20-Apr-2010, 14:27

What I don't understand is why not let the 360 scale the 540p into 1080p. It would be a pixel perfect scaling 1:4 and would look better than 540p first scaled to 720p then to 1080p.

Possibly the HUD.

Kameradschaft

20-Apr-2010, 14:35

Possibly the HUD.

Correct me if I'm wrong but games like MW2 & Halo 3 for example don't have also 720p HUD? for example in MW2 isn't the signal that goes into the 360 GPU scaler 600p and then gets upscaled at whatever resolution you have set? the difference with AW is that the signal that goes to the GPU scaler is 720p.

goonergaz

20-Apr-2010, 14:50

Sorry if this has been mentioned - or I'm missing something - but with all this talk of 'I'd rather have 720p with 0aa' - wasn't the whole point of the X360 hardware architecture that games would get 2xaa for 'free'?

Laa-Yosh

20-Apr-2010, 15:29

Again, this issue is also quite more complicated then that.

What if the game isn't running in FP10, but FP16 or some other format for HDR rendering? Or at 60fps? Or it uses deferred shading / lighting?

Some of the modern rendering technologies used in today's games weren't even invented when MS designed the X360, their engineers had completely different concepts in mind. We're actually pretty close to the originally intended end of the console's life cycle, had the PS3 been a stronger competitor I'm sure we would've seen a new Xbox emerge for this holiday season - so the hardware is now getting pushed past its perceived limit, and this will only continue.

If games today wouldn't be expected to use dozens of lights with HDR, perfect shadows, SSAO, sharp textures, all kinds of post processing and so on, then I'm sure we'd see a lot of them with 2x-4xAA. But there's only so much you can do with the system and it seems the audience doesn't care about AA on the X360 that much, so it's a lower priority.

nightshade

20-Apr-2010, 15:51

Again, this issue is also quite more complicated then that.

What if the game isn't running in FP10, but FP16 or some other format for HDR rendering? Or at 60fps? Or it uses deferred shading / lighting?
Yes it does uses a deferred renderer, and as we all know it automatically demands more memory. And I guess they may be using FP16, the A2C transparency somewhat hints toward this since hardware alpha blend is not supported by Xenos when doing FP16....am I doing it right ? :roll:

liolio

20-Apr-2010, 17:30

Cyan

20-Apr-2010, 17:35

Between 720p/no AA & 540p/4*AA ? Its a trade off seriously....you get to choose between:

1) crisp image with uniform amount of jaggies everywhere on screen.

2) Blurred image with less jaggies overall...but horrible jagged edges in some areas that have lots of thin objects.

In most cases I'll go with option 1 cause subHD doesn't mixes well with big TV sets.I would never say that I think that 720p is worse than 540p, quite the opposite, it isn't even slightly debatable, but 720p no AA in comparison with 540p + AAx4 isn't that great.

I see it as an interwoven choice made by the developers knowing that it was the best image quality taking into account all the features they wanted to add to the game, attempting to preserve and accomplish their IQ goals.

Rendering at 960x540p + AAx4 means that the game is actually rendered at 3840x2160.

Does it mean that it's rendered at UltraHD? Perhaps it isn't, but it's certainly 2-3 times better than 1280x720p no AA.

liolio

20-Apr-2010, 17:53

Ike Turner

20-Apr-2010, 17:55

Rendering at 960x540p + AAx4 means that the game is actually rendered at 3840x2160.

.

Err no. This isn't SSAA.

Cyan

20-Apr-2010, 18:33

That's quiet a bit of a stretch :wink:
Err no. This isn't SSAA.
Sorry if I didn't explain what I was trying to say very well, in my opinion it's just that it is difficult to do. I think numbers might explain the features of the game better than I, and I was saying 2160p for borders goes far beyond that (720p no AA).

Two images recently published show the game running at 720p (?). Either way the game looks fine, a bit less blurry in these pics though:

http://i43.tinypic.com/288tdhh.jpg

http://picload.org/image/rilrgi/alan.jpg

fusy

20-Apr-2010, 18:52

if those pics aren't bullshots or cutscenes, then that's 720p. are you sure those are recent pictures? This game is full of mystery o.o

messyman

20-Apr-2010, 19:12

http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/image/article/107/1070128/alan-wake-20100218084206752.jpg

That one is probably a promo shot. Laying HUD over existing photo.

Also, if you look at the HUD you can spot some distortion/noise. Something that is not present in the videogamerszone.de's pictures.

HollovVpo1nt

20-Apr-2010, 19:13

@ Cyan, the second image is a bullshit I think. That same screenshot can be found with no HUD.

Shifty Geezer

20-Apr-2010, 19:14

Two images recently published show the game running at 720p (?). Either way the game looks fine, a bit less blurry in these pics though:
The AA looks beyond 4xMSAA. I believe these are promotional shots.

Kameradschaft

20-Apr-2010, 19:24

Sorry if I didn't explain what I was trying to say very well, in my opinion it's just that it is difficult to do. I think numbers might explain the features of the game better than I, and I was saying 2160p for borders goes far beyond that (720p no AA).

Two images recently published show the game running at 720p (?). Either way the game looks fine, a bit less blurry in these pics though

The second picture is an old picture with the HUD tacked on but the first picture looks like it's from the same source as this (http://pds17.egloos.com/pds/201004/17/09/a0037809_4bc9115b3403f.jpg) one that was counted as 540p - also the IQ looks almost the same...:???:

HollovVpo1nt

20-Apr-2010, 19:26

The AA looks beyond 4xMSAA. I believe these are promotional shots.

The first one is not. What I find odd is that some pixelcounters have counted the pixels and said it's 640p, Quaz and other counted 540p and another user above has counted 720p :S

http://picload.org/image/rilrdo/dfnbsfd.jpg

Also, supposedly this might be a direct feed screenshot from the IGN Insider trailer of Alan Wake: Building the Thriller, the most recent trailer for Alan Wake (after it's gone gold).

Due to the amount of motionblurr it's impossible to pixelcount, unless we have some veterans here :P

http://i41.tinypic.com/15dqq83.jpg

messyman

20-Apr-2010, 19:34

The life meter looks different tho.
It has a grunge/dirty look it to it.

messyman

20-Apr-2010, 19:35

I don't know, but maybe the life meter will get a grungy look to it when his life is not full or something.

Alucardx23

20-Apr-2010, 19:45

Alan Wake with post processing effects turned off and on.

http://cache.g4tv.com/ImageDb3/190071_S/Watch-Alan-Wakes-Look-Evolve-.jpg
http://cache.g4tv.com/ImageDb3/190069_S/Watch-Alan-Wakes-Look-Evolve-.jpg
http://img341.imageshack.us

jlippo

20-Apr-2010, 20:03

Alan Wake with post processing effects turned off and on.
The top image looks more like an albedo only, theres a lot more missing than post processing.

dragonelite

20-Apr-2010, 20:04

The first one is not. What I find odd is that some pixelcounters have counted the pixels and said it's 640p, Quaz and other counted 540p and another user above has counted 720p :S

http://picload.org/image/rilrdo/dfnbsfd.jpg

This is a shot from halo 3
To be exact they got it from this post
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1070972&postcount=282

I know because i wanted to know how to count pixels.:wink:

nightshade

20-Apr-2010, 20:18

The top image looks more like an albedo only, theres a lot more missing than post processing.
Indeed, I took a closer look at the before shot and eventhough its the same gemetry,textures & models.....I see a lack of shadows & a flat point light, you don't add things like lighting & shadowing in a post process filter. Its almost as if its Alan Wake with base geometry & Textures with make do lighting, nothing else !

This is a shot from halo 3
To be exact they got it from this post
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1070972&postcount=282
I know because i wanted to know how to count pixels.:wink:
Ha !! You & me my friend are one & the same :p

Alucardx23

20-Apr-2010, 20:29

The top image looks more like an albedo only, theres a lot more missing than post processing.

My bad didn't make that part clear.

Statix

20-Apr-2010, 20:42

I would never say that I think that 720p is worse than 540p, quite the opposite, it isn't even slightly debatable, but 720p no AA in comparison with 540p + AAx4 isn't that great.

I see it as an interwoven choice made by the developers knowing that it was the best image quality taking into account all the features they wanted to add to the game, attempting to preserve and accomplish their IQ goals.

Rendering at 960x540p + AAx4 means that the game is actually rendered at 3840x2160.

Does it mean that it's rendered at UltraHD? Perhaps it isn't, but it's certainly 2-3 times better than 1280x720p no AA.
I'm guessing you would have preferred for this entire generation of games to be run at SD resolutions then, if perhaps 4-8x AA were a prerequisite to address edge aliasing. Because 540p is approaching pretty closely to the SD resolutions we saw last generation with the Xbox 1 and PS2.

corduroygt

20-Apr-2010, 21:02

I would never say that I think that 720p is worse than 540p, quite the opposite, it isn't even slightly debatable, but 720p no AA in comparison with 540p + AAx4 isn't that great.

I see it as an interwoven choice made by the developers knowing that it was the best image quality taking into account all the features they wanted to add to the game, attempting to preserve and accomplish their IQ goals.

Rendering at 960x540p + AAx4 means that the game is actually rendered at 3840x2160.

Does it mean that it's rendered at UltraHD? Perhaps it isn't, but it's certainly 2-3 times better than 1280x720p no AA.

You are very, very off.

First of all 3840x2160->960x540 = 16x SSAA
1920x1080->960x540 = 4xSSAA

Second, MSAA is far less demanding than SSAA, that's why it's used in the first place despite its issues, so you can't just say 960x540 with 4xMSAA is equal to full 1080p noAA, not even close.

Second, according to your logic above that says MSAA~SSAA (which is false), a typical game such as UC2 running at 1280x720 with 2xAA would be equivalent to 960x540 with
(1280x720*2)/(960*540) = 3.56x AA.

960x540 4xAA is certainly not 2-3 times more demanding as 720p noAA, I'd say they're comparable and there are too many other factors involved.

Scott_Arm

20-Apr-2010, 21:02

nightshade

20-Apr-2010, 21:36

The AA looks beyond 4xMSAA. I believe these are promotional shots.
Are you talking about both images or only the 2nd ? The first one is just too blurry to even get some decent edges for counting pixels, shouldn't it be crisper if its 720p. (is it even 720p ? cause I for one can't count the pixels there with all the blur, I'm still intermediate in counting pixels)

joker454

20-Apr-2010, 21:45

960x540 4xAA is certainly not 2-3 times more demanding as 720p noAA, I'd say they're comparable and there are too many other factors involved.

Generally speaking, that part of your post really depends on the hardware. On 360 you are right the two might be comparable, any losses due to extra geometry processing are offset by less pixel shader execution since it's a unified hardware setup, so perhaps they are comparable. On PS3 though definitely not since 4xmsaa on rsx is very slow hence why many have been doing research into spu based aa.

The other point missed especially on a game like Alan Wake which apparently has tons of post process related buffers is that the size of the buffers gets tuned to the opaque buffer size. So if you bump the opaque pass up to 1280x720 then you may have to bump up many of the post process buffers as well to maintain desired image fidelity and effect. So even if one made the argument that 960x540 4xmsaa was directly comparable to 1280x720 0xmsaa, indirectly they aren't with the latter likely somewhat slower since I'd expect many of it's post process steps to be more expensive due to changes in their buffer sizes.

Neb

20-Apr-2010, 22:22

MSAA is not SSAA, perfomance penalty is not even close and IQ quite a bit better with SSAA vs say 8xMSAA/TSAA. Also from my time with PC games having MSAA enabled vs disabled has never been a big penalty bar a few games with upwards 50% framerate hit (7900/8800/48xx). 800x600 4xMSAA vs 1280x720 are fairly close perfomance wise in several games. Though 960x540 has about ~35k more pixels than 800x600.

LightHeaven

20-Apr-2010, 23:09

resolution starts to become a bigger factor the larger your tv is...is that a good assumption?

I think so.

And as it seems remedy isn't ashamed to show their game even on a ultra big setup:

http://img255.yfrog.com/img255/3382/h90.jpg

If that's what they are using to show the game to the press, and they still can tell the game is upscaled then i guess the game IQ may end up being really good XD

upnorthsox

20-Apr-2010, 23:30

I think so.

And as it seems remedy isn't ashamed to show their game even on a ultra big setup:

If that's what they are using to show the game to the press, and they still can tell the game is upscaled then i guess the game IQ may end up being really good XD

Neither is Nintentdo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzfJUHVrWhs

(((interference)))

21-Apr-2010, 01:24

Yeah I guess they could do this to maintain superior IQ at least in some areas, other options could've been something like 640p with 2xAA or 720p with no AA but I guess they wanted to keep the 4xAA no matter what.

Of course Remedy had their reasons to go that low but it's still weird mainly because they had other options that maybe were better than a 540p w/4xAA especially when displayed at HDTV's bigger than 40".

540p 4xAA will look better than 640p 2xAA, COD MW1/2 run at 600p 2xAA and the IQ of Alan Wake is definitely better than COD.

I've never seen a console game with variable resolution depending on workload, would be interesting though - but I suppose the consistency of the visuals would suffer between areas.

And what's this about Remedy using their own software solution to do the 720p scaling rather than rely on Xenos? Why would they do that?, can't Xenos do even Lanczos resampling for 'free' Which would be very hard to better with a software scaler without your framerate plummeting.

corduroygt

21-Apr-2010, 02:38

Generally speaking, that part of your post really depends on the hardware. On 360 you are right the two might be comparable, any losses due to extra geometry processing are offset by less pixel shader execution since it's a unified hardware setup, so perhaps they are comparable. On PS3 though definitely not since 4xmsaa on rsx is very slow hence why many have been doing research into spu based aa.
Yeah I was more thinking about traditional PC GPU's, which are all unified shaders for a while. PS3 is a different beast, but even there you could use MLAA to make up for the GPU deficiency, and for comparison sake we say it's equivalent to 4xMSAA (it's better in regular edges but has issues with subpixel and shimmering), so still nowhere as bad as 4xSSAA.

The other point missed especially on a game like Alan Wake which apparently has tons of post process related buffers is that the size of the buffers gets tuned to the opaque buffer size. So if you bump the opaque pass up to 1280x720 then you may have to bump up many of the post process buffers as well to maintain desired image fidelity and effect. So even if one made the argument that 960x540 4xmsaa was directly comparable to 1280x720 0xmsaa, indirectly they aren't with the latter likely somewhat slower since I'd expect many of it's post process steps to be more expensive due to changes in their buffer sizes.

The other buffers can be less resolution than the opaque. Most people are more sensitive to overall image blurriness compared to low res secondary buffer effects.

LightHeaven

21-Apr-2010, 02:56

Neither is Nintentdo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzfJUHVrWhs

Nice video, but that's not actually from nintendo to show to the presses how awesome their game looks XD

joker454

21-Apr-2010, 03:14

The other buffers can be less resolution than the opaque. Most people are more sensitive to overall image blurriness compared to low res secondary buffer effects.

For sure, but often the buffers are sized to a multiple of the opaque buffer hence why they may still end up larger if one went with 1280x720 for opaque. I'm not so sure anymore how sensitive people really are to blurriness, it's a very confusing topic. Quincunx is by far the worst offender when it comes to blur, more so than sub hd games, but many seem oddly fine with it. Or I had mentioned way back how all PS3 720p games look blurry on 1080p tv's compared to their 360 counterparts because the PS3 depends on the tv's scaler which is usually junk and results in lots of blur, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone that can see the difference even though to me it's as clear as night and day. I'm starting to think that some see blur as more cinematic somehow, it's weird. It must be the aliasing that bugs people with sub hd games, not the blur, because plenty of 720p games exhibit blur.

Statix

21-Apr-2010, 03:15

540p (960x540) is actually a significant jump in pixels from 480p (720x480). 480p is 2/3 the number of pixels of 540p. Plus you're getting 4x MSAA. 720p is definitely a massive increase in pixels from both.

Oh, I wasn't saying 540p wasn't a step above 480p, just that it's a pretty meager step relative to the full 1280x720 benchmark that we expect from and were promised this generation. If I were told before the current consoles launched that games would be standardized at 540p rather than 720p, regardless of the 4xAA, I would not have been a happy HDTV owner.

Speaking of which, did any games last generation (Xbox, PS2, Gamecube) utilize 4xAA at all? Or did they all max out at 2xAA? I can't seem to recall.

Quincunx is by far the worst offender when it comes to blur, more so than sub hd games, but many seem oddly fine with it. Or I had mentioned way back how all PS3 720p games look blurry on 1080p tv's compared to their 360 counterparts because the PS3 depends on the tv's scaler which is usually junk and results in lots of blur, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone that can see the difference even though to me it's as clear as night and day.
Well, I wouldn't go that far. It's debatable actually how much of an impact quincunx has on image blur, at least varying on each individual game and implementation; I've played Resistance 1/2 and Killzone 2, and those are all relatively clean, sharp looking QAA games. Whatever the case, QAA generally isn't as bad a full-on blur-filter, as you can see from the screenshots someone posted detailing the QAA edge pattern in this forum.

I agree that many multiplatform games exhibit an extra layer of blur on the PS3 versions, or at least they used to, but I think that is down to a blur filter being applied or a PS3-specific optimization that leads to a slight performance increase at the cost of some screen sharpness (something that the Bioshock devs alluded to when they addressed the apparent "blur filter" of the PS3 version of Bioshock).

corduroygt

21-Apr-2010, 03:34

For sure, but often the buffers are sized to a multiple of the opaque buffer hence why they may still end up larger if one went with 1280x720 for opaque. I'm not so sure anymore how sensitive people really are to blurriness, it's a very confusing topic. Quincunx is by far the worst offender when it comes to blur, more so than sub hd games, but many seem oddly fine with it. Or I had mentioned way back how all PS3 720p games look blurry on 1080p tv's compared to their 360 counterparts because the PS3 depends on the tv's scaler which is usually junk and results in lots of blur, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone that can see the difference even though to me it's as clear as night and day. I'm starting to think that some see blur as more cinematic somehow, it's weird. It must be the aliasing that bugs people with sub hd games, not the blur, because plenty of 720p games exhibit blur.

I guess my TV has a decent scaler, and I don't think the TV scalers mess up for 720p->1080p since it's a really easy process, most TV's suck much worse when it comes to upscaling SD or interlaced content. Last time I compared games on PS3/360 head to head was Fifa 10, and PS3 uses QAA as well as relying on the TV's scaler, but the difference was very minor for me, probably because Fifa is not a game that relies on texture detail. There was little difference, compared to GTA4 which I thought was really blurry on the PS3. Strangely, although Conan is 576p, I don't remember it as a blurry experience, maybe because it's been 2 years since I played it though.

Still I enjoyed GTA4, and Alan Wake being 540p should not be a detriment to its enjoyment.

F34R

21-Apr-2010, 03:35

Morkins

21-Apr-2010, 03:44

I'm new to all this, so forgive the newb question. What would be a likely explanation for the blurry appearance from the screens and video...? Does that question fit within the scope of this topic? Basically, what technology is being employed to give that look, or is it simply due to sub-hd res being upscaled?

There is definitely a post processing motion blur in the game giving it some of the blur intentionally. But a fair amount of it is from the 540p opaque geometry buffer being upscaled. And some of it is due to the jpg image compression from online hosting on some of these websites(not saying that is all of it, just some of it).

F34R

21-Apr-2010, 04:13

Thanks Morkins... Not knowing much, that's what I was leaning to believe lol. Thanks for the reply.

patsu

21-Apr-2010, 05:18

Nice video, but that's not actually from nintendo to show to the presses how awesome their game looks XD

If you're looking for a prior example, I believe Uncharted 2 (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/95112-Sony-Premiering-Uncharted-2-in-Movie-Theaters) and Killzone 2 were both demoed on a theater screen.

I don't see why people want to complain about sub HD resolution. It's not the first title to do that, and has a unique presentation. People should be happy with the developers' choices. The developers should be given the freedom to explore, and they will always try to make the best decision for their games (e.g., give the game a unique look).

tuna

21-Apr-2010, 06:29

I guess my TV has a decent scaler, and I don't think the TV scalers mess up for 720p->1080p since it's a really easy process, most TV's suck much worse when it comes to upscaling SD or interlaced content. Last time I compared games on PS3/360 head to head was Fifa 10, and PS3 uses QAA as well as relying on the TV's scaler, but the difference was very minor for me, probably because Fifa is not a game that relies on texture detail. There was little difference, compared to GTA4 which I thought was really blurry on the PS3. Strangely, although Conan is 576p, I don't remember it as a blurry experience, maybe because it's been 2 years since I played it though.

Still I enjoyed GTA4, and Alan Wake being 540p should not be a detriment to its enjoyment.

FIFA 10 on the PS3 can output 1080p if you disable 720p.

LightHeaven

21-Apr-2010, 06:45

If you're looking for a prior example, I believe Uncharted 2 (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/95112-Sony-Premiering-Uncharted-2-in-Movie-Theaters) and Killzone 2 were both demoed on a theater screen.

I'm not saying that it was the first time someone did that. All i'm saying is that if remedy is ok to demoing their game with such a big screen with people playing not that from it, shows that they have confidence in how great this game looks.

I mean, its a controlled presentation, they could have shown the game on a regular screen and keeping people from a certain distance.

All i'm going is that sub hd or not, presentations like this could point to the game having a very good iq.

patsu

21-Apr-2010, 06:57

I track back to your sub-thread. The screen looks like a board room projector/LCD screen ? I jumped in half way thinking that they showed it in a theater too. If they are showing the demo to a large number of people, they have no choice but to show it on a large screen in a large room (or auditorium).

Of course the game will look good. Didn't they spend a lot of time developing this game ? If they go with a sub-HD resolution plus other advanced visual elements, then that would be the best choice for their game in their expert opinion.

Tap In

21-Apr-2010, 07:22

Of course the game will look good. Didn't they spend a lot of time developing this game ? If they go with a sub-HD resolution plus other advanced visual elements, then that would be the best choice for their game in their expert opinion.

exactly

steveOrino

21-Apr-2010, 07:32

I don't see why people want to complain about sub HD resolution.

Well since its different strokes for different folks....

It wont bother some people but it will bother me because I like IQ, I just do. Its not a requirement for me mind you but if you have a ton of press hyping the visuals (quotes of, it might be the best of this gen or the best of the xbox, etc) of this game long before it was known how the final product turned out and it falls short, there will be disappointment.

These current generation consoles (xbox/ps3) were also advertised as HD game platforms so when you have sub HD content on your HD capable console people feel a bit short changed.

But like I said above, some wont care, fine. Personally, I will and so will others. But if the argument is "graphics dont matter, game play does" then what was the point of these current gen consoles?

patsu

21-Apr-2010, 07:48

If the game goes HD, it means the developers will have to spend more time optimizing. In the end, they may run out of time polishing other elements. If they are not consistent, astute players like yourself will be able to notice those gaps anyway. ^_^

There may be other games that raised the bar in the technical department, but it doesn't necessarily mean that more is better. It depends on other artistic elements as well.

I do agree it's a personal preference...

I just noticed that this is a technical thread (i.e., pushing the envelope, identify shortfalls stuff). So I'll bow out. I have always thought that B3D readers are too harsh on game graphics.

Billy Idol

21-Apr-2010, 08:21

Ha ha...what happend to this thread?
People here are really trying to "stealth" convince me that 540p+4xAA is a technical achievment??
And that the IQ at 540p+4xAA is much much (...) better than with 720p+QAA :lol::lol::lol:
Remedy made this decision, because they think that counting all in and looking at the overall quality - 540p+4xAA gives the best result (and I trust them)!
But I really don't believe that they made this decision by choice and I don't think that they are absolute happy with it.

If 540p+4xAA+some extra "bling" is a better decision for the overall graphics: I think we have to see more of Alan Wake.
I myself think that I first have to see it live and play it to judge the overall graphics - but looking at the published screens+vids so far: I think that it looks great!

Billy Idol

21-Apr-2010, 08:28

With respect to the indifferent resolution situation we have (some screens 540p, some 720p): could it possible be that for instance day light gamplay = 540p and night gameplay = 720p?
Would this even make sense?

menmau

21-Apr-2010, 08:53

Speaking of which, did any games last generation (Xbox, PS2, Gamecube) utilize 4xAA at all? Or did they all max out at 2xAA? I can't seem to recall.

From what I can recall Project Gotham Racing 2 used 4xAA.

Anyway I expect AW does not dissapoint me.

Billy Idol

21-Apr-2010, 08:54

2real4tv

21-Apr-2010, 09:06

Glad they changed the running animation:

gTCakNb5llg

Will the 360 version have the dynamic weather?

assen

21-Apr-2010, 09:29

Well since its different strokes for different folks....

It wont bother some people but it will bother me because I like IQ, I just do.

These current generation consoles (xbox/ps3) were also advertised as HD game platforms so when you have sub HD content on your HD capable console people feel a bit short changed.

Personally, I will and so will others. But if the argument is "graphics dont matter, game play does" then what was the point of these current gen consoles?

So do you enjoy the current Perfect Dark remake on XBLA? It's a N64 game at 1080p / 4xAA / 60 fps. Gorge yourself on IQ.

Laa-Yosh

21-Apr-2010, 09:49

I agree that the game looks good and the compromise in resolution is probably worth it because of the other features... But let's not get to the point where we deny that the game looked a LOT better when it was at full 720p, okay? More pixels are definitely better if it's about 540p or 720p.

messyman

21-Apr-2010, 10:00

Glad they changed the running animation:

gTCakNb5llg

Will the 360 version have the dynamic weather?

According to this, the dev has the control over the weather, but maybe not the entire game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e-cit4OM8w

Skip to 2:13.

assurdum

21-Apr-2010, 11:12

For sure, but often the buffers are sized to a multiple of the opaque buffer hence why they may still end up larger if one went with 1280x720 for opaque. I'm not so sure anymore how sensitive people really are to blurriness, it's a very confusing topic. Quincunx is by far the worst offender when it comes to blur, more so than sub hd games , but many seem oddly fine with it. Or I had mentioned way back how all PS3 720p games look blurry on 1080p tv's compared to their 360 counterparts because the PS3 depends on the tv's scaler which is usually junk and results in lots of blur, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone that can see the difference even though to me it's as clear as night and day. I'm starting to think that some see blur as more cinematic somehow, it's weird. It must be the aliasing that bugs people with sub hd games, not the blur, because plenty of 720p games exhibit blur.
It's time to distinguish personal perception to reality here. I understood to be defensive about the sub hd games, not means bad IQ or bad developers, but really blame the QAA even worsen it's ridicolous now. Loss of details of the QAA is pretty similar between HDMI & component cable definition. & come on now compared even 1080p downscaling to 720p in a full HD on the ps3. Where are finished to gaf here? We are in a technical forum.

Weaste

21-Apr-2010, 11:18

I've never seen a console game with variable resolution depending on workload

WipEout HD - 1280x1080 <-> 1920x1080?

HollovVpo1nt

21-Apr-2010, 11:22

Guys, is it confirmed yet that this screen is in 720p?

http://i43.tinypic.com/288tdhh.jpg

If so, it's the same location as the 540p screenshot: On the boat. So what could have caused this?

assurdum

21-Apr-2010, 11:25

Guys, is it confirmed yet that this screen is in 720p?

If so, it's the same location as the 540p screenshot: On the boat. So what could have caused this?
From what I have understood it's a promotional screen.

HollovVpo1nt

21-Apr-2010, 11:28

From what I have understood it's a promotional screen.

No it's not. It's from the same set of screens as the german website

assurdum

21-Apr-2010, 11:31

No it's not. It's from the same set of screens as the german websiteNot means necessary it's not. Shifty said that in a previous post If I remember correctly.

HollovVpo1nt

21-Apr-2010, 11:37

Not means necessary it's not. Shifty said that in a previous post If I remember correctly.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1422769&postcount=130

The first image is direct-feed gameplay, the second image is promotional.

assurdum

21-Apr-2010, 11:43

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1422769&postcount=130

The first image is direct-feed gameplay, the second image is promotional.
It has been explained a lot previously. The game from what we have now it's surely 540p. Could have an option, to change, who knows but these few screens are probably promotional; even remedy has implicit admit the resolution. What's wrong to accept it's 540p native? The engine is pretty impressive.

HollovVpo1nt

21-Apr-2010, 11:47

It has been explained a lot previously. The game from what we have now it's surely 540p. Could have an option, to change, who knows but these few screens are probably promotional; even remedy has implicit admit the resolution. What's wrong to accept it's 540p native? The engine is pretty impressive.

There is absoletely nothing wrong with accepting that it's 540p native. Do I not accept it then? The 720p screencap I posted was gameplay, and I'd like to know how that is possible. That's all :/

messyman

21-Apr-2010, 11:49

I thought pixel counting was done on a more obvious aliasing? Or it doesn't really matter?

Kameradschaft

21-Apr-2010, 11:55

Well since its different strokes for different folks....

It wont bother some people but it will bother me because I like IQ, I just do. Its not a requirement for me mind you but if you have a ton of press hyping the visuals (quotes of, it might be the best of this gen or the best of the xbox, etc) of this game long before it was known how the final product turned out and it falls short, there will be disappointment.

These current generation consoles (xbox/ps3) were also advertised as HD game platforms so when you have sub HD content on your HD capable console people feel a bit short changed.

But like I said above, some wont care, fine. Personally, I will and so will others. But if the argument is "graphics dont matter, game play does" then what was the point of these current gen consoles?

You're overreacting...even if it was 480p do you think that PS2, XBOX or GC could produce a game with the visual quality of Alan Wake? I don't think so and asking what was the purpose of the current consoles is somewhat arrogant considering we could never play games like Halo 3, ΜW1/2, GTAIV, Conviction, Alan Wake e.t.c. even at sub-ED resolutions on last gen consoles - they could simply not be the same experiences...resolution isn't everything.

Back on topic there's something fishy about the HUD in the supposed 720p screen..maybe it's photoshopped from the 540p screen?

Shifty Geezer

21-Apr-2010, 12:01

The first image is direct-feed gameplay, the second image is promotional.How do you know the first image is direct feed gameplay? Is it labelled as such? The second image in the same batch is PR. The first image is too blurred and compressed to be sure, but given that the partner image is PR, and the other gameplay content shown is 540p, it seems contrary to logical thinking to see one unprovable exception as discrediting all other evidence.

HollovVpo1nt

21-Apr-2010, 12:07

Back on topic there's something fishy about the HUD in the supposed 720p screen..maybe it's photoshopped from the 540p screen?

I highly doubt it. The brightness and sharpness it identical to the 540p screens and others posted by the german website. Also, that screenshot doesn't look that good either, so I doubt they'd use it for promotional reasons. Tis is a promotional screenshot of that location:

http://images.eurogamer.net/assets/articles//a/1/0/5/1/8/1/5/2132412784_full.jpg.jpg

Compare that to the one I posted..

HollovVpo1nt

21-Apr-2010, 12:09

How do you know the first image is direct feed gameplay? Is it labelled as such? The second image in the same batch is PR. The first image is too blurred and compressed to be sure, but given that the partner image is PR, and the other gameplay content shown is 540p, it seems contrary to logical thinking to see one unprovable exception as discrediting all other evidence.

The first image and the scond image don't even belong to the same batch, they were simply posted together. I know the first image is gameplay becouse it was posted by the german website among all the other direct-feed screenshots.

assurdum

21-Apr-2010, 12:17

The first image and the scond image don't even belong to the same batch, they were simply posted together. I know the first image is gameplay becouse it was posted by the german website among all the other direct-feed screenshots.
I'm not want to persist with that matter but you understand it isn't enough to said these screens change completely the 540p statement? I think it's pretty obvious are promotional or something of similar.

Shifty Geezer

21-Apr-2010, 12:21

There is definitely a post processing motion blur in the game giving it some of the blur intentionally. But a fair amount of it is from the 540p opaque geometry buffer being upscaled.I think we should stick to calling it the framebuffer getting upscaled. If the opaque geometry framebuffer is being rendered at 540p, it's kind of a waste of resources to render other less notable layers of content like particle buffer at a higher resolution. The one layer needing to be 720p for cripsness is the UI. Everything else that is being composited into frame is highly probably being rendered at 540p. Strip away the UI, and the backbuffer will be 540p. This is upscaled to 720p, upscaling all the rendered pixels, and composited with the UI before being output.

We shouldn't start talking about the 'opaque geometry buffer' when 'framebuffer' is a well established means of discussing just this.

Also as an important caveat, I'm only going with 540p on the trusted research of B3D's pixel counters. We are not an infallible organisation, and our findings shouldn't really be spread around as such. As ever, the theories are supported by our reasonings, and anyone questioning the determined resolutions can look through the reasonings to see any logical fallacies. So far, with the information we have, 540p upscaled is the conclusion. Should it become apparent that the source material was dodgy or doctored or such, that will be liable to change. And of course, the analysis of the rendering method has sod-all to do with the final quality of the game as a game or whether it's good-looking or not. Personally I think it looks fabulous, and this interest is not at all founded on an interest in how to utilise the limited hardware of the consoles to create different looking games.

Kameradschaft

21-Apr-2010, 12:26

The first image and the scond image don't even belong to the same batch, they were simply posted together. I know the first image is gameplay becouse it was posted by the german website among all the other direct-feed screenshots.

Well it's true that the first screen looks awfully similar to the 540p one and it's really hard to say that it's a PR screen, it's too blurry for that - on the other hand is the 720p count reliable? motion blur (?) is blurring the whole screen.

HollovVpo1nt

21-Apr-2010, 12:26

I'm not want to persist with that matter but you understand it isn't enough to said these screens change completely the 540p statement? I think it's pretty obvious are promotional or something of similar.

*Sigh* Look, for the last time I'm not trying to convince everyone that the game is 720p after all somehow magically. I am aware that there orginal image was counted as 540p and I accepted it. All I'm asking is how it's possible that the image I posted is 720p while other assets are 540p. Also, so far all the promotionsal screenshots with HUD's:

- Have Japanese huds
- Have a counterpart without HUD

The image which I posted can not be found without HUD, plus that screenshot was taken by the German website like all the other ones. If you don't beleive me, then don't. But at least assume the picture is gameplay and not promotional.

My question: Assuming the screenshot I posted is a legit, direct-feed screenshot (which it is according to me), how could it be possible that it's 720p, while other screenshots of the same location are 540? Is it possible that the engine renders different objects at different resolutions? Or is that far-retched?

Quaz51

21-Apr-2010, 12:30

Guys, is it confirmed yet that this screen is in 720p?

http://i43.tinypic.com/288tdhh.jpg

If so, it's the same location as the 540p screenshot: On the boat. So what could have caused this?

bad edge choice, bad counting = false

Quaz51

21-Apr-2010, 12:30

I highly doubt it. The brightness and sharpness it identical to the 540p screens and others posted by the german website. Also, that screenshot doesn't look that good either, so I doubt they'd use it for promotional reasons. Tis is a promotional screenshot of that location:

http://images.eurogamer.net/assets/articles//a/1/0/5/1/8/1/5/2132412784_full.jpg.jpg

Compare that to the one I posted..

oversampled screenshot

HollovVpo1nt

21-Apr-2010, 12:33

bad edge choice, bad counting = false

All I needed to know.

Billy Idol

21-Apr-2010, 12:34

oversampled screenshot
Thanks for clarifying!

Kameradschaft

21-Apr-2010, 12:34

I'm not want to persist with that matter but you understand it isn't enough to said these screens change completely the 540p statement? I think it's pretty obvious are promotional or something of similar.

Well he has a point though, the two screens look like they are from the same source:

http://i43.tinypic.com/288tdhh.jpg

http://i43.tinypic.com/1441qut.jpg

edit: so pixel counting not reliable in "720p" shot, thanks Quaz51. :)

Quaz51

21-Apr-2010, 12:37

I think we should stick to calling it the framebuffer getting upscaled. If the opaque geometry framebuffer is being rendered at 540p, it's kind of a waste of resources to render other less notable layers of content like particle buffer at a higher resolution. The one layer needing to be 720p for cripsness is the UI. Everything else that is being composited into frame is highly probably being rendered at 540p. Strip away the UI, and the backbuffer will be 540p. This is upscaled to 720p, upscaling all the rendered pixels, and composited with the UI before being output.

We shouldn't start talking about the 'opaque geometry buffer' when 'framebuffer' is a well established means of discussing just this.

Also as an important caveat, I'm only going with 540p on the trusted research of B3D's pixel counters. We are not an infallible organisation, and our findings shouldn't really be spread around as such. As ever, the theories are supported by our reasonings, and anyone questioning the determined resolutions can look through the reasonings to see any logical fallacies. So far, with the information we have, 540p upscaled is the conclusion. Should it become apparent that the source material was dodgy or doctored or such, that will be liable to change. And of course, the analysis of the rendering method has sod-all to do with the final quality of the game as a game or whether it's good-looking or not. Personally I think it looks fabulous, and this interest is not at all founded on an interest in how to utilise the limited hardware of the consoles to create different looking games.

i agree. all the others buffers (Motion vector, ambiant lighting, Z-pass, particle buffer, deffered buffer ...) surely have the same resolution (540p) or less
probably just the HUD is 720p and maybe some filter like noise filter (but apparently AW don't have noise filter like SH)

Laa-Yosh

21-Apr-2010, 12:42

There was a time when the game was running at 720p, so your screenshot could have been made at that point. Although it still looks too blurry... Edit: yeah, Quaz has just confirmed it's a case of picking the bad edge for the counting.

This apparent decrease in the resolution is probably also one of the reasons why the issue gets so much attention. Some people might feel that Remedy has tried to cheat them or something.

Billy Idol

21-Apr-2010, 12:44

Are those 720p caps with 4xAA??
If I remember correctly: 720p+4xAA needs 3 tiles?!
This sounds like a dramatic change to the whole engine if true?

Shifty Geezer

21-Apr-2010, 12:51

This apparent decrease in the resolution is probably also one of the reasons why the issue gets so much attention. Some people might feel that Remedy has tried to cheat them or something.This si something Nintendo alone seemed to have got right by not giving numbers. Both MS and Sony went into this generation with promises of HD quality that the hardware just wasn't up to supporting. They should have just kept their mouths closed and not bandied numbers around that people would then take as promises and grumble about! Last gen had upscaling games and no-one complained, because they didn't know. There's no need to care about resolutions outside of tech interest when all that matters is whether you like the end results or not, which should be decided by looking at them instead of measuring numbers!

Developers should abandon talk of resolutions and AA, and just say if they are aiming for high image quality, or just ignore the issue and talk instead about a 'cinematic experience' or 'realism'.

Laa-Yosh

21-Apr-2010, 13:02

It's not just the platform holders' promises, but previous screenshots and ingame movies were all 720p; see the DigitalFoundry preview.
Personally, I still think it's too blurry, but we'll see how it looks on a TV. I'm not much of a horror fan though so I hope there'll be a demo of some sorts...

Billy Idol

21-Apr-2010, 13:02

This si something Nintendo alone seemed to have got right by not giving numbers. Both MS and Sony went into this generation with promises of HD quality that the hardware just wasn't up to supporting. They should have just kept their mouths closed and not bandied numbers around that people would then take as promises and grumble about! Last gen had upscaling games and no-one complained, because they didn't know. There's no need to care about resolutions outside of tech interest when all that matters is whether you like the end results or not, which should be decided by looking at them instead of measuring numbers!

Developers should abandon talk of resolutions and AA, and just say if they are aiming for high image quality, or just ignore the issue and talk instead about a 'cinematic experience' or 'realism'.

Do you really think that it is the hardware's fault?
I mean, we have HD games - each dev can make this choice!
Or do you think that the ever demanding gamer (=me) are guilty - who always wants more and more extra bling for the same money!
The problem is that we will never know how a 1080p+4xAA Alan Wake Xbox360 version will look like in comparison to the actual game - so we will never have the informations Remedy has, which means that we have to accept their decision.
The only thing we can do, is compare different games to each other - which is simple a highly subjective task!

Mastperf

21-Apr-2010, 13:32

assurdum

21-Apr-2010, 13:39

2real4tv

21-Apr-2010, 13:44

This story become to absurd to more absurd...the game it's 540p not dynamic resolution from what we know now. Really it's time to talk of the others technical aspect and go on.

He's talking about gameplay from an old trailer.

assurdum

21-Apr-2010, 13:46

Try not to take things so personally. His opinion about QAA isn't worth a useless argument that derails the thread.
Please don't take my post for what it isn't. If we want to discuss about the difference of QAA blurriness and subhd it isn't a problem. I think it's right to talk of this difference even here; but try to pass an individual opinion for a technical observation to me it isn't correct & I have reported my opinion. Sorry for the ot however.

assurdum

21-Apr-2010, 13:56

He's talking about gameplay from an old trailer.
From what I know the game last year was 720p 2xmsaa for this showing the 720p. Then remedy opted for the 540p & 4xFSAA.

PointMan

21-Apr-2010, 13:57

This story become to absurd to more absurd...the game it's 540p not dynamic resolution from what we know now. Really it's time to talk of the others technical aspect and go on.

He's referring to the PC version that was previously in development as we all know. Probably in resolutions higher than 720p to boot. I vividly remember Remedy demo this game on PC years ago at an Intel event on an overclocked GPU.

Only now on 360 hardware do we see the native resolution at 540p, screencaps and bullshots were all from the PC build, the same way Capcom kept sending out PC bullshots of Lost Planet 2 and passing them off as 360 screens because they hadn't/haven't confirmed the existence of a PC port.

assurdum

21-Apr-2010, 14:01

PointMan

21-Apr-2010, 14:04

No worries mate :)

Dave Glue

21-Apr-2010, 14:23

Well if the lower res bothers you so much, then just wait for the PC ver-

Oh...yeah.

Alucardx23

21-Apr-2010, 14:28

I think we should stick to calling it the framebuffer getting upscaled. If the opaque geometry framebuffer is being rendered at 540p, it's kind of a waste of resources to render other less notable layers of content like particle buffer at a higher resolution. The one layer needing to be 720p for cripsness is the UI. Everything else that is being composited into frame is highly probably being rendered at 540p. Strip away the UI, and the backbuffer will be 540p. This is upscaled to 720p, upscaling all the rendered pixels, and composited with the UI before being output.

Could there be a case where the opaque geometry framebuffer is being upscaled to 720P and then combined with the other higher resolution post processing effects? I was thinking about this, because what’s the point of upscaling the image to 720P using CPU resources, isn’t the upscaler on 360 free?

At least that’s what I think when I read this statement.

"Alan Wake's renderer on the Xbox360 uses about 50 different intermediate render targets in different resolutions, color depths and anti-alias settings for different purposes. These are used for example for cascaded shadow maps from sun & moon, shadow maps from flashlights, flares and street lights, z-prepass, tiled color buffers, light buffers for deferred rendering, vector blur, screen-space ambient occlusion, auto-exposure, HUD, video buffers, menus and so on. In the end all are combined to form one 720p image, with all intermediate buffer sizes selected to optimize image quality and GPU performance. All together the render targets take about 80 MB of memory, equivalent in size to over twenty 720p buffers.""

Rangers

21-Apr-2010, 14:29

He's referring to the PC version that was previously in development as we all know. Probably in resolutions higher than 720p to boot. I vividly remember Remedy demo this game on PC years ago at an Intel event on an overclocked GPU.

Only now on 360 hardware do we see the native resolution at 540p, screencaps and bullshots were all from the PC build, the same way Capcom kept sending out PC bullshots of Lost Planet 2 and passing them off as 360 screens because they hadn't/haven't confirmed the existence of a PC port.

How do you know all the AW screencaps were from the PC build? And how do you know the same for Capcom's LP2 shots? Also LP2 is PC, PS3 and 360, not only PC/360.

My fear is that Remedy made a dumb technical decision somewhere, at least dumb in the sense that now people are freaking out over the 540P. Even if for all we know 540P 4XAA looks better than say 720P 0XAA here. Now, if the game couldn't come close to running at 720P on Xbox with these level of graphics, I can accept that. But if at some point it was 720P on Xbox, it was running ok, and they changed it, say to just make it run a little better, that bothers me.

But it is pretty funny how in all these cases nobody really knows the res until a pixel counter comes along. I mean nobody was saying AW looks like low res or bad before this. The same pretty much goes for most sub HD games.

Anyways I'll be interested in the sales, I hope it sells well because it still looks great on balance and I hope to see Joe Public not care about the resolution, which I think is a safe bet.

Shifty Geezer

21-Apr-2010, 14:32

Do you really think that it is the hardware's fault?
...
Or do you think that the ever demanding gamer (=me) are guilty - who always wants more and more extra bling for the same money!Yes, these combined. These are finite boxes with limited RAM, bandwidth, and processing capabilities. They just plain can't do everything! Very few games manage 720p 4xMSAA 60fps. There are compromises all over the place. Sure, some developers will manage to eek out more performance from the hardware than others, but it's unrealistic to expect every game to hit some high levels of IQ, especially when what's going on under the hood that isn't visible in the rendered graphics can be so varied. eg. Uncharted 2's controlled environments and streaming means it has a very different visual budget than Alan Wake, even if superficially they seem very similar (the protagonists even look the same!). Thus it would be wrong to extrapolate, "Uncharted 2 is 720p with 2xMSAA, so Alan Wake should be to." Anyone blaming the developer for not trying or not managing enough is not judging them failure, because there just isn't enough information to go on. We have no idea what the limiting factors are or the compromises, whether the code is optimal or not.

The disucssion around Halo3's resolution had the benefit of public papers on their choice of HDR, so we knew where the limitations were and could decide whether we considered their choices the right tradeoffs or not. But here we have nothing other than a resolution and the rendered pixels. It is quite possible that no amount of further investment or design could improve the resolution keeping everything else as it is, because the XB360 is just being maxxed out. If you want high quality visuals at high resolutions with high IQ, you need to use rendering hardware that isn't 5 years old with only 512MBs total RAM to work with!

Rangers

21-Apr-2010, 14:38

Too be fair also, Remedy is a very small team compared to some of these other studios. Around 50 people. Though, they had a long time on the game as well.

Lycan

21-Apr-2010, 14:43

Trejser

21-Apr-2010, 14:46

Pardon my ignorance, but if the game was running at 720 p not so long ago, how could Remedy have changed it ? I mean is there a "switch" to modify resolution that could be turned on and off at will, even at the latest stage of development ? :smile:

This could have been pc version with 360 controller/UI, it's nothing new in the industry :)

PointMan

21-Apr-2010, 15:00

@ Ranger

I was following the PC version of AW first, maybe that's how I'd never seen an actual 360 screen, After 5 years and next to no info other than this light weakens that man, or everything he had written in novels were coming to life... it get very tiring following such things religiously.

You didn't see the tremendously huge high res LP2 screenshots coming from Gamersyde that Capcom sent out to them, they were like 2160p - (exagg) lol.

Also yeah often times the layman simply can't tell the difference in terms of the resolution being sub-HD or not but you got to admit that something would be iffy if the game looked like that 720p screen that Quaz dismissed as up there. The hud is flawless, the image is so-so.

I hope it's not the case.

PointMan

21-Apr-2010, 15:05

Too be fair also, Remedy is a very small team compared to some of these other studios. Around 50 people. Though, they had a long time on the game as well.

Team Ico are a small team also, I hope they come through with The Last Guardian technically. Ambitious projects like AW and TLG usually take a turn for the worst somewhere down the pipeline.

Also I'm new here, I've been learning a lot from you guys and hope to learn a whole lot more. Thanks.

HollovVpo1nt

21-Apr-2010, 15:05

This could have been pc version with 360 controller/UI, it's nothing new in the industry :)

Only difference is that previews mention the 360..

Scott_Arm

21-Apr-2010, 15:15

Hopefully digital foundry can do an interview about the game engine. There's no way of knowing their decision making process without more info. Obviously if they could do everything they want at 720p with MSAA, they would. The one thing we know is they needed MSAA for their use of A2C. If they'd decided to stick with 720p, they would have had to cut something else, and maybe they felt it would have looked worse. We'll never know because we'll never get to see that game.

Laa-Yosh

21-Apr-2010, 15:19

I'm talking about this movie:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/tech-analysis-alan-wake-trailer-blog-entry

Back in the August of 2009 the game has been 720p.

And pixel counters aside, sooner or later it would've became clear that the final release was blurrier then the preview movies.

Trejser

21-Apr-2010, 15:21

Only difference is that previews mention the 360..

I thought we were talking about DF 720p native video :)

EDIT: Yeah :)

Lycan

21-Apr-2010, 16:00

Svensk Viking

21-Apr-2010, 17:12

dragonelite

21-Apr-2010, 17:15

Can someone explain to me who don't get the technical stuff, what is really the problem with what Remedy is doing? If the game turns out looking better with low res + extra "bling", what is it that irritates people?

That remedy told the game was 720p and they dont do bullshots.
And a massive influx of new members who want confirmation on the 540p claims.

Rangers

21-Apr-2010, 18:33

That remedy told the game was 720p and they dont do bullshots.
And a massive influx of new members who want confirmation on the 540p claims.

Link?

Still think it's funny by far the most attention AW has got is this, by people rushing to deride the game now. If AW had remained 720P I imagine the main AW thread would still have tumbleweeds in it.

assurdum

21-Apr-2010, 18:38

Link?

Still think it's funny by far the most attention AW has got is this, by people rushing to deride the game now. If AW had remained 720P I imagine the main AW thread would still have tumbleweeds in it.
I think it refers to the previous statement of the remedy's forum.

Rangers

21-Apr-2010, 18:40

Which very few people would know about unless they were really searching it out as a result of this controversy...not causing this controversy.

dragonelite

21-Apr-2010, 18:45

I think it refers to the previous statement of the remedy's forum.

Yeah it heard it on the forum i dont believe it myself i mean every game does it. Making bullshots:roll:

A other question i had if remedy dropped the 4xmsaa to 2xmsaa instead of resolution how would that influence the alpha 2 coverage? Because remedy said that with 4xmsaa they get like 5x sampling on the alpha2coverage would dropping msaa to 2xmsaa mean they get like 2~3 times sampling.

nightshade

21-Apr-2010, 18:58

A other question i had if remedy dropped the 4xmsaa to 2xmsaa instead of resolution how would that influence the alpha 2 coverage? Because remedy said that with 4xmsaa they get like 5x sampling on the alpha2coverage would dropping msaa to 2xmsaa mean they get like 2~3 times sampling.
720p with 2*MSAA is still very effective in hiding the A2C artifacts [See Just Cause 2,Farcry 2 & FF13], 960*540/4*MSAA may be better at covering up the artifacts due to the 5 samples but its not just those 5 samples, its also the blur caused due to upscaling since everything seem to be less artifacting if you apply a blur to it. (think GTA4 PS3)

dragonelite

21-Apr-2010, 19:05

720p with 2*MSAA is still very effective in hiding the A2C artifacts [See Just Cause 2,Farcry 2 & FF13], 960*540/4*MSAA may be better at covering up the artifacts due to the 5 samples but its not just those 5 samples, its also the blur caused due to upscaling since everything seem to be less artifacting if you apply a blur to it. (think GTA4 PS3)

Okey thanks for the answer. That's probably the reason why Bad company 2 snow foliage looks so nasty at times.

Neb

21-Apr-2010, 19:09

Pardon my ignorance, but if the game was running at 720 p not so long ago, how could Remedy have changed it ? I mean is there a "switch" to modify resolution that could be turned on and off at will, even at the latest stage of development ? :smile:

Continued to adapt engine to hardware to get the best balance and still realise their vision. IIRC the older videos had lots of framerate problems and tearing. About tearing dunno if the explanation by Rememdy is fully trusthworthy as in videos being out of sync. Who would release such stuff, why would it affect most if not all AW videos etc. Going 540p could have been the step to stabilise framerate and tearing while maintaing all the effects intact.

About comment "We dont do bullshots" that can be true if they refer to SSAA with PC version that is now on hold but the engine is fully functional. :P

Rangers

21-Apr-2010, 19:16

Continued to adapt engine to hardware to get the best balance and still realise their vision. IIRC the older videos had lots of framerate problems and tearing. About tearing dunno if the explanation by Rememdy is fully trusthworthy as in videos being out of sync. Who would release such stuff, why would it affect most if not all AW videos etc. Going 540p could have been the step to stabilise framerate and tearing while maintaing all the effects intact.

I would rather deal with some tearing, optimized out as best as possible, than 540P. However, how late in development can a resolution change really be made?

Seems since PC games run at countless resolutions, it cant be obscenely difficult.

Alucardx23

21-Apr-2010, 19:19

@ Shifty Geezer (http://forum.beyond3d.com/member.php?u=5090)

Can you answer mi question or it doesn’t make any sense ? :smile:
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1423052&postcount=214

nightshade

21-Apr-2010, 19:22

Seems since PC games run at countless resolutions, it cant be obscenely difficult.
I guess it is difficult. Since you just can't lower the res & say "Good to Go"...cause once you do the change its final therefore you gotta check through the whole game to make sure its right.

Rangers

21-Apr-2010, 19:32

On a PC game though, you can choose from many resolutions, all native?

Shifty Geezer

21-Apr-2010, 19:37

Could there be a case where the opaque geometry framebuffer is being upscaled to 720P and then combined with the other higher resolution post processing effects?Yes, depending on what the post-processing effects are. Things like colour grading aren't going to make any visual difference if applied at 720p or 540p and upscaled, but there will be a processing cost, whereas actually drawing pixels in post (eg. grain), rendering in 720p will add fidelity. Without any idea what post effects are being applied, typical use suggests post effects will be being applied on a 540p backbuffer. Regards the dev quote...
These are used for example for cascaded shadow maps from sun & moon, shadow maps from flashlights, flares and street lights, z-prepass, tiled color buffers, light buffers for deferred rendering, vector blur, screen-space ambient occlusion, auto-exposure, HUD, video buffers, menus and so onThe HUD is probably the only thing not being upscaled. The cost of upscaling (probably on GPU rather than CPU) is needed to maintain fidelity in the UI. If they didn't care about a blurry UI, which really does look rough, then they could have composited a 540p UI and had Xenos upscale through the principle video pipeline as normal. If they want a 720p UI, there's no other choices beyond render a 720p backbuffer or upscale a lower-resolution backbuffer to 720p via software before overlaying UI.

Shifty Geezer

21-Apr-2010, 19:42

Seems since PC games run at countless resolutions, it cant be obscenely difficult.They may well be able to set a render resolution by changing a few variables, but the whole balance of the rendering engine would be impacted. Setting resolution to 720p may cripple some finely-tuned aspects of the engine, rather than just introduce a bit of turning. Remember these developers are working on sub-millisecond budgets of processing time, whereas a PC developer can't care about such efficiencies due tot the range of hardware that may be playing their game. In the PC's case, the solution is to provide options and let the user decide, which is an inefficiency and complexity the consoles can do without. Supporting 1080i has already proven a nuisance!

Neb

21-Apr-2010, 19:51

On a PC game though, you can choose from many resolutions, all native?

All native unless game has support for SSAA (Arma 2) or even upscaling, IIRC UT3 with "screen percentage".

Laa-Yosh

21-Apr-2010, 20:21

On a PC game though, you can choose from many resolutions, all native?

Yeah; but if you don't have enough VRAM on your graphics card, then the game will start to drop into single digit frame rates - even on a PC game.

The difference is that you can buy a new graphics card with more VRAM on a PC. Consoles are kinda struck with what's included, so devs can't just go around changing resolutions whenever they feel like it. They set memory requirements and then have to stick with it.

Or they can also set it lower and add upscaling as a last minute fix, but then they get roasted on the tech/gaming forums of the internet...

joker454

21-Apr-2010, 20:30

It's time to distinguish personal perception to reality here. I understood to be defensive about the sub hd games, not means bad IQ or bad developers, but really blame the QAA even worsen it's ridicolous now. Loss of details of the QAA is pretty similar between HDMI & component cable definition. & come on now compared even 1080p downscaling to 720p in a full HD on the ps3. Where are finished to gaf here? We are in a technical forum.

There is no personal perception here whatsoever, it's purely technical. Quinqunx blurs the image, that's what it does. If you don't think so then read the tech docs but rest assured, it blurs it. Likewise for tv upscalers, most are cheap and blur the image. Again if you don't think so then do the research, there is a reason there is an entire market for external upscalers because the ones in tv's are typically terrible. I'm going to guess that you don't see the blur, something that astonishes me because it's so obvious to my eyes. But then again I suspect that I'm in the minority and that most people really aren't anywhere near as sensitive to blur as they think they are (during play), and I'd wager that some even prefer it.

Pardon my ignorance, but if the game was running at 720 p not so long ago, how could Remedy have changed it ? I mean is there a "switch" to modify resolution that could be turned on and off at will, even at the latest stage of development ? :smile:

Yeah I find it hard to believe that they could just change it given all those render targets. Seem like it would take some planning to get all that working just right. Then again maybe they had it all working for 720p, couldn't meet performance goals, then just downsized everything. I hope they do a tech summary someday, I'm curious as to what's going on behind the scenes.

EDIT: Actually now I'm thinking it may have never been 720p. They are using so many render targets, meaning that for performance they would have wanted to batch those as much as possible, piggy back as many off the same shader as possible. So for best performance they probably would have had to use four mrt's as often as possible. But 10mb of edram isn't enough to hold four 1280x720 mrt's. Maybe they tried 1280x680 at some point with three mrt's but that didn't cut it for performance, so then they just dropped resolution even lower so that they could use four in the 10mb of edram.

Alucardx23

21-Apr-2010, 21:32

Yes, depending on what the post-processing effects are. Things like colour grading aren't going to make any visual difference if applied at 720p or 540p and upscaled, but there will be a processing cost, whereas actually drawing pixels in post (eg. grain), rendering in 720p will add fidelity. Without any idea what post effects are being applied, typical use suggests post effects will be being applied on a 540p backbuffer. Regards the dev quote...
The HUD is probably the only thing not being upscaled. The cost of upscaling (probably on GPU rather than CPU) is needed to maintain fidelity in the UI. If they didn't care about a blurry UI, which really does look rough, then they could have composited a 540p UI and had Xenos upscale through the principle video pipeline as normal. If they want a 720p UI, there's no other choices beyond render a 720p backbuffer or upscale a lower-resolution backbuffer to 720p via software before overlaying UI.

Thanks for the answer, so does that mean that Final XIII is also upscaling the image on CPU for the same reason as Alan Wake?

JB9861

21-Apr-2010, 22:57

Uncharted 2's controlled environments and streaming means it has a very different visual budget than Alan Wake, even if superficially they seem very similar (the protagonists even look the same!). Thus it would be wrong to extrapolate, "Uncharted 2 is 720p with 2xMSAA, so Alan Wake should be to." Anyone blaming the developer for not trying or not managing enough is not judging them failure, because there just isn't enough information to go on. We have no idea what the limiting factors are or the compromises, whether the code is optimal or not.

Alan Wake can be a fine looking game irrespective of resolution. Games in similar situations turned out just fine. However, I'm not going to consider Alan Wake better than a Resident Evil or an Uncharted that is meeting the expectations of IQ, fidelity, and complexity people come to expect.

assurdum

22-Apr-2010, 00:18

There is no personal perception here whatsoever, it's purely technical. Quinqunx blurs the image, that's what it does. If you don't think so then read the tech docs but rest assured, it blurs it. Likewise for tv upscalers, most are cheap and blur the image. Again if you don't think so then do the research, there is a reason there is an entire market for external upscalers because the ones in tv's are typically terrible. I'm going to guess that you don't see the blur, something that astonishes me because it's so obvious to my eyes. But then again I suspect that I'm in the minority and that most people really aren't anywhere near as sensitive to blur as they think they are (during play), and I'd wager that some even prefer it.

Wait a minute , I haven't said the QAA or 1080p downscale to 720p not cause blurriness, but simply the subhd it isn't comparable to QAA or a dowscaling in a blurriness (in a decent tv). Said this it isn't technical matter but subjective perception. Just that.