Anyone know the cause of the texture pop in Halo2?

[ralexand]

nm?

 

[Alpha_Spartan]

That's likely a side effect of the textures being cached from a slower medium, namely the hard drive.

 

[darkblu]

IIRC it wasn't just a texture pop, it was an everything pop. in which case i'd arrtibute that to faulty object LOD subsystem (could be streaming, or any kind of general mis-management)

 

[Simon Templar]

From what I recall is is because of an overly agressive LOD system and the limited memory the original xbox had (64 mb).

 

[ralexand]

From what I recall is is because of an overly agressive LOD system and the limited memory the original xbox had (64 mb).

Thanks for the replies guys. I wonder will next gen hardware have a similar problem.

 

[Bobbler]

Thanks for the replies guys. I wonder will next gen hardware have a similar problem.

It would depend on the game. But I don't imagine the hardware will be pushed that hard until late in the generation (just like the Halo 2 example) -- you won't see it unless the game tries to do too much with the hardware its given.

 

[ector]

The reason is that they went for (almost) zero load times after the first one.

The result is that the scenes are still loading the last stuff while their first frames are being displayed.. I would be happy with a black screen for that 0.5 second instead of seeing ugly popping though.

 

[Dr. Meaty]

I've noticed the same thing in COD2 on xbox 360, but someone on this forum told me that the PC version has the same problem. It's kind of a bummer. I guess it's understandable with the amount of stuff happening on the screen at one time.

 

[mech]

I've got two Xboxes, and it's very noticable on one (which is a lot older) and non-existant on the other. I'd say it has something to do with loading the textures off the DVD drive.

 

[AlNom]

The reason is that they went for (almost) zero load times after the first one.

The result is that the scenes are still loading the last stuff while their first frames are being displayed.. I would be happy with a black screen for that 0.5 second instead of seeing ugly popping though.

I've got two Xboxes, and it's very noticable on one (which is a lot older) and non-existant on the other. I'd say it has something to do with loading the textures off the DVD drive.

That's exactly it. Modded Xbox's with Halo 2 on loaded on the HDD do not show this problem.

 

[pipo]

I also hear it's better on the X360 with the emu.

 

[bouy]

I notice some pop up on the Xbox 360 as well, but it's not as bad when it does happen which is a lot less frequent than I remember on the Xbox.

It does look nicer with the AA, I used to cringe when playng it on my xbox on my 2405FPW (back when it was 480p), now it looks nice at 720p.

 

[Bohdy]

Bungie attributed these artifacts to their predictive loading system not keeping up with the scene changes.

 

[Pozer]

Simple fix. Open up your xbox and replace the ATA-33 IDE cable (that connects the dvd drive, hard drive, and motherboard) with a ATA 100/133 cable ($2 online). I did that on my launch xbox and it went away. Also got faster load times to boot.

 

[swaaye]

I thought XBox used PIO4. Cable shouldn't make any difference....

 

[cbarcus]

Primarily in cutscenes?

I played Halo 2 for a couple hours some time ago, and I recall that the pop up was primarily during the cutscenes. Why Bungie didn't just use FMV for the cutscenes is beyond me, as it would have really improved the story telling. Actually the only reasons I can think of for not using it would be disk space (lack of) or dynamically generated graphics (player influenced).

 

[Pozer]

I thought XBox used PIO4. Cable shouldn't make any difference....

Stopwatch doesn't lie. That maybe true on different motherboard revisions, but my v1.0 had a significant increase in load times.

 

[ralexand]

I played Halo 2 for a couple hours some time ago, and I recall that the pop up was primarily during the cutscenes. Why Bungie didn't just use FMV for the cutscenes is beyond me, as it would have really improved the story telling. Actually the only reasons I can think of for not using it would be disk space (lack of) or dynamically generated graphics (player influenced).

They better not do cgi.

 

[AlNom]

They never have, and they probably never will in future games.

I thought the cut-scenes in Halo 2 looked great for real-time rendering (sans popping). They had some good use of depth of field. The consistency between cinematics and gameplay in terms of graphics is something I feel helps keep the player immersed.

 

[mech]

I've been trying to finally finish off Halo 2 lately, and the cinematics look absolutely stunning through my 36" HDTV. Can't wait to see how actual Xbox 360 stuff looks through it