Halo 3 IQ discussion * - Stay civil and polite folks!

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thambos said:
Have any of you encountered frame rate problems? I have a friend who emailed me saying his game stutters sometimes. I have yet to experience this in either single-player or multi-player.

Just curious if it could be a problem w/ his 360 or if I just haven't played the game enough. He has the standard edition & the disc isn't scratched.

Thanks :smile:
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I have had no no stuttering at all save from when a new area is being loaded. I'm on my second playthrough on Heroic now so maybe I will see some now. Still smooth after the first lvl, though.

On the subject of Bungie's design choice to push HDR instead of higher res or AA/AF; could they have made this choice to provide a visual benefit that would be effective and give a "next-gen look" in both SD and HD?
 
Laa-Yosh said:
Oh yeah, I'm 100% sure that if Halo3 would run at 720p native, with framerate issues, it'd get the same amount of flak as well.
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TBH, I'd be one of the first in line with a pitchfork in one hand and a torch in the other. It can be debated how much other issues can effect the experience of a game, but for this type of game especially bad framerate = bad gameplay.
 
There is some very slight stutter from time to time when the game loads, this is no different than in Halo 1 or 2.
 
I notice small stutter with only me on a map and turning, and single player is the same but will get worse when heavy action or loading happens.
 
Todd33 said:
I don't think anyone should reply in a technical thread about IQ with "it's no big deal" and the like...
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This isn't the technical sub-forum. One should be able to express their opinion in a general sense in this forum without being accused of a cover-up/PR talk.

As I said (multiple times) I would have prefered they dropped the lighting down a notch to enable either AA or higher res. I disagree with this decision Bungie/MS made in this regard.

However, it is what it is and most people playing the game would not have noticed the lower resolution as many NG games have been uncovered to run at sub 720p resolutions before Halo and will likely continue afterward.

If Bungie were hyping the game as a 1080p game where the majority of the market were not rendering at such a resolution and it fell short of this tech achievement (ahem), I could understand the backlash. As is, the usual suspects are doing their best to voice their predictable opinion(s).
 
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I agree that saying it's "no big deal" is completely fine; it's a personal opinion and everyone's entitled. Frankly it also happens to be my opinion.

But... the forum in its entirety is a technical forum; even a lot of the technical threads dealing with specific games get put in this section, as it's a logical match. Honestly the way the Halo 3 thread wound up in console tech was an exception to the norm, but I think part of that was because it was so contentious when it began two months ago that the mods wanted to put it in a generally calmer, more heavily moderated sub-forum. People should remember it started out part of a more general Halo 3 thread here in this section before things got too crazy in there, it got hacked off and moved-out, and had its name changed to something more general.

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Anyway my own opinion is that Bungie did the right thing for their title. My friends who own it, who are normal that know little about graphics, feel like it's "watching tv" it looks so real. So... for someone like that, what's anti-aliasing or upscaling matter without seeing right next to it the 720p, anti-aliased alternative?

Bungie did the right thing, because they wanted the lighting model to be the defining aspect of their engine, and so they pursued it to its conclusion, cutting out (unfortunately, yes) aspects that would have prevented them in reaching it. And the result has been more or less universally praised. And certainly if I were them I would never have brought up the term 640p beforehand - that would have been catastrophic in terms of MS PR. In fact, I think ultimately they've handled it in a classy manner, though they do play down the IQ hit the 640p/lack of AA produces.

Now... we (the forum) obviously are cut from a different cloth than these friends of mine, and where others settle on the result itself, we often analyze what's missing, why it's missing, how it was reached, and what the alternatives might have been. That's because the technology itself is what interests us. To me, the developers did their job and produced the game that best matched their vision.

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PS - This isn't a PR thread; let's not degrade it to one! Let's everyone starting to bring up "right" and "wrong" in terms of Bungie's claims try to keep those aspects out of this thread, and simply focus on the IQ alone.
 
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Carl B said:
I agree that saying it's "no big deal" is completely fine; it's a personal opinion and everyone's entitled. Frankly it also happens to be my opinion.
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From a game POV, it's no biggie. All that matters for the game is what's on screen. But from a tech POV, any and all games upscaling are an interesting topic, showing the design decisions made by on hardware and software affecting performance and what's attained. In this one case, just as an example, we see the affect of 10 MB eDRAM and no FP16 HDR + alpha on the choices available. Different titles give us different things to consider about the hardware.
 
Laa-Yosh said:
Your argument would work only if Bungie would have been the first developer releasing such a game, but this whole thread is full of dozens of other high profile games, some of these X360 launch titles, others PS3 flagship games. Letting them get away with this has justified this practice already and made the issue irrelevant.
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Out of curiousity, what other PS3 flagship games of Halo 3 caliber are rendered internally at less than 720p? I was under the impression that PS3 can render in only 3 resolutions: 720p, 1080p, and that weird 960x1080p resolution that is scaled up to get 1080i?
 
I finally got to play my copy last night, got to the highway part.

Frankly I was not impressed overall, the lighting through the trees was cool, but that wore off quickly. Once you get inside the low res and lack off AA makes busy areas like the dam look muddy. Some of the grating on the floor looks horrible as you walk towards it. This would have been acceptable as a launch title and in some ways it looks like PDZ. I don't fault the hardware, just the decisions of Bungie.

If the only choices were:

640P no AA 30fps
or
720P 2x AA 20fps

Then they chose wisely, but why not:

640P no AA HDR
or
720P 2x AA Bloom or less fancy lighting.

I'd pick the 720P.

Even ignoring all that the character animations and facial animation were garbage, Half-Life 2 from two years ago makes Halo 3 look bad. Of course my opinion will draw the wrath of the MSDF, but so be it. If KZ2 takes a step backwards from Resistance then I will say the same.
 
specwarGP2 said:
Out of curiousity, what other PS3 flagship games of Halo 3 caliber are rendered internally at less than 720p? I was under the impression that PS3 can render in only 3 resolutions: 720p, 1080p, and that weird 960x1080p resolution that is scaled up to get 1080i?
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It can render at any resolution they want. Only thing that matters is what resolution provides the best trade-off between appearance & performance. If a game can be rendered at 1080p but the framerate is forced to drop to 15fps then the decision to use 720p or some other less orthodox lower resolution could be made. It remains to be seen how much the RSX can offload to the cell. But the RSX alone isn't powerful enough to run complex 3D w/ all the bells & whistles at 1920x1080 from what I've been reading on this forum. I by no means am an expert, I'm just referencing what i understand other people much more in the know here have expressed. :smile:
 
Laa-Yosh said:
Your argument would work only if Bungie would have been the first developer releasing such a game, but this whole thread is full of dozens of other high profile games, some of these X360 launch titles, others PS3 flagship games. Letting them get away with this has justified this practice already and made the issue irrelevant.
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How is it "letting them get away with it"? The true resolutions have been posted for these games, and regardless it was only fairly recently that we had a method for consistently and accurately proving the actual resolution of some games. Most reviewers and interviewers probably just didn't know.

Halo3 will obviously draw more attention due to the fact it's the most popular FPS game on the planet by a wide margin, so the attraction from the more mainstream press on this issue is understandable. Also, we have the method now beforehand - most other games have been out for months/years before we discovered their true res.

So...is there significant fallout? No, the vast, vast majority of comments I read are along the lines of "I don't care", which further makes me scratch my head about how this nebulous army of "fanboys" could have affected the reviews or sales of Halo3 in any way if the true resolution was known weeks beforehand.

Why is 640p vs 720p a "PR nightmare", but the strong suspicion (and eventually confirmed) that it would have no AA isn't? When people found that out, yes - there was discussion on technical boards and some people were dissapointed....and?

Do you actually believe the majority of Halo3 players could even tell you what's the resolution most 360 games run in?

Edit: and it's very disappointing to see Bungie getting singled out on Beyond3D as well just because of some people's platform preferences.
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How many people are doing that, really? It's Halo3, of course people are going to single out this game right in its first week of release, especially considering it's sold more in that time than most - if not all - 360 games to date.
Not to mention that anything beyond the technical aspects of this issue just doesn't belong here anyway.
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Once the facts are known about the true resolution, then naturally the discussion will slightly deviate to discuss _why_ the decision was made to go this route, and additionally why Bungie decided to release screenshots obfuscating the issue.
 
Laa-Yosh said:
Honestly, why do you have to post your negative impressions into every single Halo3 thread, several times? We get it, you don't like the game, now can we move on?
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He's posting his impressions of the image quality, in a thread related to image quality. What exactly is the problem here?

If you think Halo3 looks great and aren't interested in further comments on the matter, there's a whole slew of other threads on this form last time I checked.

Edit: I see from another thread that you don't even have a 360 - have you even played the game?
 
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So I decided to do some tweaking on my Pio 5070 last night. After about 20mins of trail and error I was able to adjust the TV to eliminate most of the AA issues. Now I connected the 360 to my Dell 2405 and the jaggies are obviously there. However, since I play on my plasma, I'm quite happy with it.

AA is the only thing I notice between the pictures uploaded vs in game and even that is reduced now dramatically.

If someone else has a Pio 5070, let me know and I'd be happy to post my settings and you can try it out for yourself. Ofcourse this benefit other games also, like Forza2.
 
Dave Glue said:
why Bungie decided to release screenshots obfuscating the issue.
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I think it is well established that Bungie hadn't nailed down whether they would enable MSAA late in development. By association this means they hadn't committed to tiling.

There is actually a wide selection of media from Bungie (everything from 1080p with/without MSAA, supersampled shots, sub-720p shots, etc). To make the assumption -- as you are -- that they intentionally released 720p shots without MSAA with the explicit goal to deceive any inquiry is assuming the conclusion you desire.

So, are you going to prove this?

I am also curious why the dozens of other games no rendering natively at 720p or 1080p aren't held to the same standard of notifying people of this issue.

Where are the other developers stepping up? Bungie is the only developer to even conceed this issue. And the only other developer I can think of who has received flak over the resolution issue is Bizarre Creations.

Dave, what do you expect from developers? Does this standard apply to all games/developers equally? Or is it only for big releases right before the game is released?

It is easy to complain--lets hear meaningful solutions.
 
Joshua I don't think it's ultimately a big deal, but I also don't understand why you're going out of your way to defend Bungie on the screenshot issue. 'Fake' screenshot's have always been a cause for scrutiny/call-outs on this forum, and certainly the 640p decision at Bungie would have been locked up months ago - I don't think any sort of would-be indecision is a viable case on their part.

It's also a little unclear what you might have in mind by "meaningful solutions" - solutions to what? :p

@Todd: The last sentence in post #190 could definitely be considered baiting in nature.
 
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joker454 said:
What size and type of tv are you playing the game on out of curiosity?
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I did your test yesterday, and there was definitely a difference from LCD to Plasma....but I'm still not getting a plasma, so I am going to do a test on an LED DLP later this week to see if there is a big difference. On my Sharp I have the ability to go below "0" Sharpness, so I dropped it to -1 and I got a slightly better picture. I don't want to go all AVSForum in here, but I'm sure most peoples TVs are just out-of-the-box settings.
 
haha at the people that are blurring up their TV. Although I would suggest lowering the stock sharpness setting(and lowering to the lowest setting or disabling altogether any extra edge enhancement settings your tv may have) it's not a good idea to lower sharpness too much.
 
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