[Junkstyle]

Call of Duty2 demo was running with no FSAA and Trilinear filtering...looked like crap if you are a PC Gamer. Does anyone know why they dont use Anisotropic Filtering at least? Is it performance or something else?

[Junkstyle]

sorry i posted this in the wrong forum topic

[Chalnoth]

Might have been the hardware that they were running, but I shudder to think of the implications if they're not using final hardware yet.

Other than that, I thought that Microsoft was "mandating" 720p with 4x FSAA, and that the Xenos could do 4x FSAA at that res with no penalty?

[Junkstyle]

Originally Posted by Chalnoth

Might have been the hardware that they were running, but I shudder to think of the implications if they're not using final hardware yet.

Other than that, I thought that Microsoft was "mandating" 720p with 4x FSAA, and that the Xenos could do 4x FSAA at that res with no penalty?

There might be some pixel effects like HDR that messes with FSAA. I"m not sure if the same effects mess with Anisotropic filtering. The main thing that bothered me was the trilinear filtering. But all that PR stuff about FSAA "for free" is nice but worthless if the games don't use it. The frame rate seemed pretty smooth. I am kindof doubting they turned off both FSAA and aniso for performance reasons but maybe they did.

[Rys]

It's not penalty free by any means, rather the penalty can likely be hidden just like on a PC accelerator (do other stuff to hide the cost). Moving this to Console, too.

[Chalnoth]

Originally Posted by Rys

It's not penalty free by any means, rather the penalty can likely be hidden just like on a PC accelerator (do other stuff to hide the cost). Moving this to Console, too.

Well, of course, a stance I've stated many times. What I meant was that the Xenos was supposed to have enough memory bandwidth that there is no penalty from the additional memory bandwidth impact that FSAA will require on the console.

And HDR can't be the issue, because the Xenos (like the X1k series) is supposed to support MSAA on FP16 (and FP10) rendertargets.

If MSAA was turned off for performance reasons, the most likely culprit would be memory space concerns. But that wouldn't explain why they'd turn off anisotropic filtering, which should have a pretty small performance hit.

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by Chalnoth

Might have been the hardware that they were running, but I shudder to think of the implications if they're not using final hardware yet.

As these are demo kiosks and the hardware's being manufactured and boxed as we speak, that's extremely unlikely.

Could COD currently be on FP16 as opposed to FP10, seeing as it's a launch title? And if they didn't develop the predicated tiling as launch titles are unlikely too, with the added tiling cost of FP16 perhaps the hit for AA was too much?

[Carl B]

It's already been mentioned in a couple of threads that the majority of the 360 launch games are forgoing the optimal AA tiling scheme and making due with more traditional methods for now. And in some cases that means little or no AA. Allard indicated that for a game to make optimal use of the eDRAM AA, the game engine must be built from the ground up with the tiling-scheme in mind.

[AlStrong]

It is kind of too bad there isn't enough eDRAM for 720p + 2xAA even... CoD2@60fps would have looked even a lot nicer with 4xAA.

[Mefisutoferesu]

Hmm, I'm confused, I thought the Xbox 360 couldn't support FSAA? Or perhaps it's only restricted to MSAA when HDR is being used in some form? Or is that wrong as well?

[scooby_dooby]

Also keep in mind the demo's for these games are not certified, and they are not the final games.

What's wierd is, many people playing COD on the kiosks complain of some slowdown, hwoever in 1UP's in-depth hands on with a copy of COD they have in their office, they specifically noted it never once suffered from any slowdown.

So obviously there are different versions out there, and the ones on the Kiosks seem to be older, at least COD2.

Really seems stupid though, why even release playable demo's if they are going to leave a sour taste in people mouths, dumb dumb dumb....

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by Mefisutoferesu

Hmm, I'm confused, I thought the Xbox 360 couldn't support FSAA?

Huh?! XB360 support FSAA (full-screen antialising) with the multisampling method (MSAA) in all framebuffer types AFAIK. That's FP10, FP16, 2xAA, 4xAA, etc. The only limit is how well the game performs. There's no hardware restrictions to using certain format combinations.

[Mefisutoferesu]

Bah, well, I'm fool then. Thanks Shifty.

[BlueTsunami]

Over at GAF there was a thread stating that the Walmart reps do not know how to set up an Xbox360. This being the case, there was a kiosk with only 480i enabled (Locked) on a 720p native Flat Panel. You can imagine what the game must have looked like

[valioso]

according to major nelsons blogcast, he said that the MS representatives are still going around trying to optimize the kiosks.

[Mefisutoferesu]

Oh, that should explain some of the comments floating around that the games looked fuzzy and such. Well, most people already thought so, but at least now there's confirmation.

[Shifty Geezer]

A 480 output upscaled to a 720p native LCD will look pretty rough I imagine. Though how'd they fluff the setup? Surely the console is already set for the 720p display when the display kit is sent out, and MS are supplying both console and display? Likewise how'd Walmart fluff up the cables when surely MSonly provide the right cables for HD output?

[SteamedRice]

Originally Posted by valioso

according to major nelsons blogcast, he said that the MS representatives are still going around trying to optimize the kiosks.

does this mean when we get the xbox360 that we need an MS rep to "TRY" and opimize ours too? -_-

[valioso]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

A 480 output upscaled to a 720p native LCD will look pretty rough I imagine. Though how'd they fluff the setup? Surely the console is already set for the 720p display when the display kit is sent out, and MS are supplying both console and display? Likewise how'd Walmart fluff up the cables when surely MSonly provide the right cables for HD output?

stupid people are everywhere.

[expletive]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

A 480 output upscaled to a 720p native LCD will look pretty rough I imagine. Though how'd they fluff the setup? Surely the console is already set for the 720p display when the display kit is sent out, and MS are supplying both console and display? Likewise how'd Walmart fluff up the cables when surely MSonly provide the right cables for HD output?

Widescreen 480p uses about 1/3 the pixels of 720p. 4:3 480p uses even less and would cause the display to stretch the image. Depending on the display, i think its pretty safe youll lose quite a bit of detail at 480p. Depending on the display, the scaling solution inside could also add to the problem.

Of course the absolute disaster is someone setting it up to run at 480i, 4:3.

EDIT:agree though that this process should have been completely 'on rails' leaving no room for human error. This is could turn out ot be a mess, especially if these are the same kiosks going EVERYWHERE.

[Tap In]

I'm sure it's just a mater of going around making sure the right cables were used by the Wal-Mart employees (Component) and that the dashboard is set to output at 720p.


no biggie

[Junkstyle]

Microsoft trusted mininum wage employees at Walmart to set up their kiosks? Whoops! The kiosk I saw at EBGames had a widescreen attached to it all one piece sorta deal. It didn't seem like there was anyway to screw it up.

[expletive]

Originally Posted by Junkstyle

Microsoft trusted mininum wage employees at Walmart to set up their kiosks? Whoops! The kiosk I saw at EBGames had a widescreen attached to it all one piece sorta deal. It didn't seem like there was anyway to screw it up.

How COD2 look on that one?

[Junkstyle]

Originally Posted by expletive

How COD2 look on that one?

Was 720 widescreen fine. I actually thought the FPS were smooth. The big detractor for me was the trilinear filtering. I just dont know why they didn't use Anisotropic. I mean this is ATI hardware we are talking about, anisotropic should be fast with little performance hit.

[PG2G]

Don't demos normally get submitted months in advance? I'd be suprised if the kiosk demos were anything near the final builds.