*split* multiplatform console-world problems + Image Quality Debate

[joker454]

How on Earth are you not aware that resolution is probably the single biggest metric gamers know anyhting about? Besides frame rate, it is probably the only thing they can speak about without sounding like IGN staff writers. Subtle stuff like AA solutions, AF, AO, etc. are just buzzwords, but everyone with half a brain know what resolution is. They know their TV is 1080P and PC gamers all know their native monitor resolution. Your sudden surprise that resolution is a known metric is more surprising. Gamers were nitpicking 540P, 600P, 640P, 704P, 720P, etc. all this last gen. Suddenly they don't understand that 1080P is higher than 720P?

I'll assume you know what I meant and save myself some typing.

 

[BoardBonobo]

I'm just curious how something like resolution went from being largely unimportant to being the definitive metric.

It always was a discussion point through the last generation. We were just slipping into the HD era with promises from both Sony and MS about HD gaming. It never really appeared and we had a generation of smoke and mirrors and tricks.

You would have to be blind not to see the reason why actually hitting 1080p as standard is such a big issue this generation. It's a little pathetic as well that after all the lofty comments about how easy the new generation will be to develop on.

Unless it's just a software and tool chain issue then MS could be in for a really
rough ride this coming generation. Resolution will be the big thing for people moving across generations and image quality for people making their first leap into console gaming.

 

[temesgen]

It always was a discussion point through the last generation. We were just slipping into the HD era with promises from both Sony and MS about HD gaming. It never really appeared and we had a generation of smoke and mirrors and tricks.

You would have to be blind not to see the reason why actually hitting 1080p as standard is such a big issue this generation. It's a little pathetic as well that after all the lofty comments about how easy the new generation will be to develop on.

Unless it's just a software and tool chain issue then MS could be in for a really
rough ride this coming generation. Resolution will be the big thing for people moving across generations and image quality for people making their first leap into console gaming.

Bingo, its very much like when digital cameras started to replace film cameras - everyone was trained to look at the number of megapixels when buying a camera. Never mind all the other factors that go into a camera taking good pictures that is what consumers focused on and years later we have >15 megapixel cameras in the marketplace and all the other factors that make up good pictures is rarely discussed.

Resolution is a catchall phrase that consumers use, we've been trained to buy on specs and this is the big one in gaming.

 

[Bagel seed]

I think there's a lot of revisionist history and straw manning going on here. On this board, resolution, AA, etc, always mattered. That's how B3D gained a ton of popularity this gen.. people came here to find out. Whether or not they could tell what res a game was on their own wasn't the point. They knew there was a difference and they wanted actual numbers. Dunno how you can speak for everyone else on earth so comfortably as though. Paint broad strokes much?

One more thing. During the DRM debacle days, there was a lot of talk on this board from some how none of it mattered, it was only forum warrior crying. Lo and behold, it actually did matter in the real world, via shitty preorders or whatever, enough for the 180.

 

[Vic]

That's one game though, it would be like taking one game last gen that ran 30fps on one and 60fps on the other and extrapolating an entire generation based off that. I'm not a console gamer so I'm not following events in great detail, but are there many other multi platform games that are 720p on xb1 and 1080p on ps4? If there are then yeah there may be some concern there.




I'm going purely by their test numbers which suggested an average of 150mb/s or so. If that's true then it will be a wash. I'm a bit odd like that as I prefer to go by actual profiled data rather that forum posts. On that note I don't really go by exclusive games either, with exclusives I find everyone just sides with their political party and nothing new is really learned there. With any exclusive game I can predict to 95% accuracy exactly which posters here will side with which game, without even ever looking at said game.

Exclusives are a big reason why a lot of people go for a particular console.

So are the big multiplatform games like COD, FIFA, Assassins Creed. The fact that an old-engine COD game is 720p is worrying for MS. As their tools improve, multiplatform games should get better. But if PS3 exclusives looked better than their 360 equivalents, imagine what PS4 ones will be like compared to XB one.

No amount of damage limitation is going to handle the vast amount of PR games like COD and Battlefield carry.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Resolution has mattered to us here as B3D is focused on the technology, and the number of pixels rendered is an important aspect of that, affecting performance mostly and of course image quality.

But one of the things we've always discussed about it was how little it actually matters to customers. The jump from 480p to 720p was barely noticeable to them and the jump to 1080p will be even less important.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Exclusives on the PS3 usually looked better because of the superior artistic talent of Sony's internal studios. Technology has merely enabled them.

So Microsoft needs superbly talented studios far more than better hardware.

 

[joker454]

But one of the things we've always discussed about it was how little it actually matters to customers.

Yup.

Bingo, its very much like when digital cameras started to replace film cameras - everyone was trained to look at the number of megapixels when buying a camera. Never mind all the other factors that go into a camera taking good pictures that is what consumers focused on and years later we have >15 megapixel cameras in the marketplace and all the other factors that make up good pictures is rarely discussed.

Resolution is a catchall phrase that consumers use, we've been trained to buy on specs and this is the big one in gaming.

That's an interesting point, however I could honesty say that if I ask 20+ console owners that I know, be they friends, family or whatever, they will have no clue what resolution current games run at (non dev friends of course). If I were to say to them "Hey is that game 720p?" they would likely respond with "What?" and a confused look. To add to the confusion those that do know about resolution will think every game is 1080p anyways, since that's what the back of the box says and that's what their tv says. That happened all the time this past gen, and it happened a ton in the SD to HD tv transition where people were hooking up their coax sd tv signal to their new flat panel and thinking they had hd 1080p. It's like Laa-Yosh has said in the past where ps3 folk thought their COD game was at 1080p. That has happened many a time since after all their ps3 dashboard is in 1080p, their tv says 1080p, therefore so are all the games (same with the 360). They don't read these types of forums to know any better.

Well Crytek are extremely talented, but so far, does Ryse look as good as Killzone?

See, that's a question I've learned to avoid on forums

Down the line, will Forza look as good as the next GT?

That's a far more interesting question, the "down the line" aspect of it. Give it a few years and we'll see.

 

[RudeCurve]

*split* console things

I honestly cannot see any difference in this vid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XqWRACk2zY&feature=player_embedded

+1...If someone told me both were running on the same console but hooked up to different TVs with different sharpness settings I wouldn't have any trouble believing that.

 

[BoardBonobo]

Interestingly overt article on Eurogamer

Resolutiongate!

 

[zed]

It always was a discussion point through the last generation

theres a wacking stickyfied great thread thats been there for years at the top of this forum,
so all of a sudden 'its only just suddenly become important' ha

on topic -
WRT COD ghosts & the 1080p vs 720p i.e. 2.25x more pixels
To answer my question, no last gen there was nothing even close to the 125% difference, Call of Duty: Black Ops has 21% more pixels seems to be about the greatest. Definitely something fishy going on

 

[joker454]

theres a wacking stickyfied great thread thats been there for years at the top of this forum,
so all of a sudden 'its only just suddenly become important' ha

That thread exists because people can't tell what resolution games are at by looking at them on their tv. Hence the existence of the resolution thread. You don't need threads asking about frame rate or weak textures because you can just look at your tv and see that.

WRT COD ghosts & the 1080p vs 720p i.e. 2.25x more pixels
To answer my question, no last gen there was nothing even close to the 125% difference, Call of Duty: Black Ops has 21% more pixels seems to be about the greatest. Definitely something fishy going on

It is a bit odd, only other guess is if they went differed then maybe they couldn't get their g-buffers to work within esram so the quick fix was to just drop to 720p? Then again they must have had dev kits for some time, you'd think they would have sorted that by now. It is a bit of a mystery.

 

[Cyan]

theres a wacking stickyfied great thread thats been there for years at the top of this forum,
so all of a sudden 'its only just suddenly become important' ha

on topic -
WRT COD ghosts & the 1080p vs 720p i.e. 2.25x more pixels
To answer my question, no last gen there was nothing even close to the 125% difference, Call of Duty: Black Ops has 21% more pixels seems to be about the greatest. Definitely something fishy going on

Well, when the PS3 came out there were some ports that made the PS3 look like it was from the GC/Xbox/PS2 generation.

Call of Duty 3, Clive Barker's Jericho -which had about that 125% difference in pixels, not to mention it was blurry as hell on the PS3 and had a Quincunx AA to round off the tragedy-, Bayonetta was crazy, especially the difference in the framerate. And so on and so forth....

 

[fearsomepirate]

We'll see how much resolution really matters. COD always ran sub-HD this generation, dipping down to 540p for BlOps1 on the PS3.

 

[Cyan]

How on Earth are you not aware that resolution is probably the single biggest metric gamers know anyhting about? Besides frame rate, it is probably the only thing they can speak about without sounding like IGN staff writers. Subtle stuff like AA solutions, AF, AO, etc. are just buzzwords, but everyone with half a brain know what resolution is. They know their TV is 1080P and PC gamers all know their native monitor resolution. Your sudden surprise that resolution is a known metric is more surprising. Gamers were nitpicking 540P, 600P, 640P, 704P, 720P, etc. all this last gen. Suddenly they don't understand that 1080P is higher than 720P?

The resolution isn't that easy to discern though if you don't know the numbers. I have a few native 1080p games on the Xbox 360, like Sacred 2, Super Street Fighter 2 HD, Geometry Wars.... etc, and I recently purchased a full HD TV. They certainly look crisp but I don't see a huge difference to be honest.

I am surprised about the fact that joker454 mentions this forum when this has been an oasis of peace compared to others. I used to frequent a forum and type things in a place which were -and still is- comprised of PS fans and the situation was very very different. Even the moderators began to ban Nintendo and Xbox fans for no apparent reason til they practically destroyed the place because there weren't differing opinions anymore, at some point. I stopped writing there, I wrote something today though, but I don't want to write there anymore.

Now I agree with you that maybe it is the time for Xbox fans to suffer some hardships, like Sony did and Nintendo... and everyone. I think one day we shall go beyond the mountains of hardship and find the vast plains of comfort again.

But what joker454 has described is very real, not so much in this forum but in others. That made think twice and thrice and ... before buying a PS3, and I have never had one because of some of the stuff you had to read.

It was the generation of the excuses. Maybe it is just me but more than 95% of the multiplatform games -no matter how good the port was- looked slightly blurrier to me in their PS3 version. Yet if the differences were tangible developers would be accused of being lazy devs.

Parity was also something that they tried to achieve but I am glad that they are looking for disparity this gen, compared to the last generation where they went a bit too far with the parity sometimes after the criticism they had to face.

It has been 8 years having people saying that the PS3 would evolve in such a way that the Xbox 360 would fall back behind when developers learnt to tame and master the PS3 hardware, yet it wasn't the case in the end because the Xbox 360 games evolved technically over the years. Some devleopers say that the PS3 is more powerful, Carmack said recently that the Xbox 360 is more powerful, but in the end they were very similar, capabilities wise, give or take.

Now some of that same people have been creating a lot of drama around the Xbox One.

They way those people talked these days, getting a PS4 is the solution to every problem... Creating FUD, the weird kind.

Are Microsoft chasing you down with a pack of hounds? Get another console! Is the CIA using Kinect along with Microsoft and sending dark helicopters to hover over your house/flat and spy on you? Get another console! Are hackers using Xbox One tracking capabilities and sending you emails from some foreign nation you cannot pronounce and asking you to help their prince/princess transfer a million euros? Get another console... !!! A nuclear warhead landed in your backyard... One of your acquaintances who is a Xbox One users might be a drug dealer with a pit bull & an AK-47.... You saw the last Dead Rising 3 trailer and tonight the zombies are walking down your street and want your brain -- GET ANOTHER CONSOLE !!! It shall solve all your problems!

This is the kind of message I got in certain forums and sites. Some of the jokes regarding the difference in resolution between CoD: Ghosts on the PS4 and Xbox One are funny though.

 

[Scott_Arm]

People didn't know games were sub-HD until they were told last gen, or at least that was the case for many people. That doesn't necessarily mean they won't be able to spot the difference between 1080p and 720p. Some people will, depending on their tv and the viewing distance, or just having a trained eye. My guess, is that will be the minority of people.

On top of that, you'll have an increase in the fidelity of textures, post processing, lighting, shadows, shading, transparencies, etc, which will make games look much better even if they're still 720p. Next-gen 720p is going to look a lot better than last-gen 720p. Will the difference be good enough for a lot of people? Probably. Some of them might only be able to see the difference between 1080p and 720p when looking at the side by side. Some of them might see X1 screenshots and say to themselves, "good enough."

How is that going to affect the sales of COD? There is definitely a sub-set of the overall gaming population that buys COD where resolution will be a big deal. I'm not sure how big a percentage that really is. A lot of people buy COD and a lot of them are very casual gamers. It's a fast game, mostly close quarters. If the online features work well, and there are no complaints about it looking bad or "choppy", then I don't know how much the resolution will matter, especially if the post AA is able to hide some of the jaggies.

 

[2real4tv]

That thread exists because people can't tell what resolution games are at by looking at them on their tv. Hence the existence of the resolution thread. You don't need threads asking about frame rate or weak textures because you can just look at your tv and see that.

For a PS360 owner like me, I used it to determine which version to buy. Better IQ and performance should give you the better experience, although the difference was small most of the time. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference unless they are side to side.

It is a bit odd, only other guess is if they went differed then maybe they couldn't get their g-buffers to work within esram so the quick fix was to just drop to 720p? Then again they must have had dev kits for some time, you'd think they would have sorted that by now. It is a bit of a mystery.

Especially since they seem to have exclusive deals with Microsoft.

 

[DrJay24]

BTW Beyond3D has an official frame rate thread, so apparently people can't tell frame rates either.

 

[Cyan]

Interestingly overt article on Eurogamer

Resolutiongate!

T'was an interesting read, and I learnt some things I didn't know about their mono driver and that Ubisoft have been complaining too about the SDKs -I hope AC IV has been ported decently-.

After all, the grim and the dark are not all that's going on here. Things can only improve from now on at least, according to the article. Especially when developers learn how to harness the hardware and Microsoft free up that additional 10% of resources.

Time will tell.

 

[temesgen]

I am surprised about the fact that joker454 mentions this forum when this has been an oasis of peace compared to others. I used to frequent a forum and type things in a place which were -and still is- comprised of PS fans and the situation was very very different. Even the moderators began to ban Nintendo and Xbox fans for no apparent reason til they practically destroyed the place because there weren't differing opinions anymore, at some point. I stopped writing there, I wrote something today though, but I don't want to write there anymore.

So hypocrisy is PS fan thing... There have been plenty of comments by both platform holders fans which stretch the limits of rational discussion, lets not characterize the insanity as all one way traffic. And for the record that site you are talking about was pretty up in arms when it was announced the PS4 wouldn't play MP3s and when DF first announced the memory reserve they were pretty up in arms as well. True Story...

WRT COD I'm looking forward to seeing the AO on the XB1 as well interested to see if the PS4 version retains the blurriness we saw in the DF scans. On a related note has anyone read of any Kinect related features being included in the game? All I've seen so far is discussion of graphics: current gen to next gen, next gen to PC.....