RSX and 1080p games.

[Graham]

Digi-guys shows a realtime 1080p demo of Wardevil:Enigma.

I can't remember where, but one account I read from the E3 show floor indicated the 1080p demo would show some slowdown in parts. And it apparently is currently not using motion blur, depth of field or anti-aliasing - all things that eat up bandwidth very quickly.

So if they are [apparently] already having trouble hitting 1080p60 (or 30?) in a limited scope demo, without bandwidth eating effects enabled, then things certainly don't look good for the title to stay 1080p60.

Of course it's still very early in development so naturally things will speed up. Maybe these things will ballance out. At the end of the day it's a development tradeoff.


I'd wonder what effect 2x the memory usage for the backbuffer will have on such titles.
Would 4x aa at 1080P even be feasible? at least 80mb? Thats a pretty enormous chunk of your 256mb.

 

[Tars Tarkus]

GT5 running in 720p, with 4x FSAA, 60fps that has visual assets that are WAY beyond PS2 GT4 and PS3 GTHD, would be fine with me.

I think what nAo is suggesting is that you could actually be better off at 1080p. PS2 relied on poly count for detail. PS3 will rely on textures for definition? I haven't worked professionally in 3d graphics since making corporate training films and such with an Amiga and Newtek's Toaster but you could make a spinning cube primitive have a jaw dropping effect by what you mapped to it. Reducing the poly count of individual models, I assume, releases computational power that can be employed to spawn...more texture defined entities. Just a thought.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

What effects were missing?

The Blowing dust on the Grand Canyon stage.

I also couldn't understand Why GT HD got so much conference time, it was bit funny to see very unimpressive footage that long and see/hear Phil Harrison boasting it proudly

 

[zed]

I also couldn't understand Why GT HD got so much conference time, it was bit funny to see very unimpressive footage that long and see/hear Phil Harrison boasting it proudly

all mastorbatory bullshit on sonys part,
the main reason is 1080p is something the xb360 cant do, and whilst the cell might be more powerful than what they have in the xb360, its not really something that u can easily show to the layman. 1080p though is,its in your face even duffus can easily see it.
(also theres also the fact where a ms guy said 1080p was impossible on a ps3)

 

[Crossbar]

By downsampling I was assuming the PS3 woud do it, a simple Bilinear resampling from 1080p to 720p, which should provide reasonable quality especially for textures at 2 samples per pixel. That's acutally an unknown for PS3 at the moment - how does it deal with different resolution outputs? I guess this could be part of the OS reserved SPE function, scaling for different outputs.

Just of curiosity does anyone have a set of pictures of the same scene in 720p without AA, with 2XMSAA, with 4XMSAA and 1080p without AA, (maybe this has been discussed before in some thread?)

Would it be a fair approximation to downscale the 1080p picture to 720p in Photoshop or Explorer and compare to the original 720p pictures?

EDIT: approximation of PS3s downscaling that is.

 

[!eVo!-X Ant UK]

Warhawk is 720p with 4XAA

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Just of curiosity does anyone have a set of pictures of the same scene in 720p without AA, with 2XMSAA, with 4XMSAA and 1080p without AA, (maybe this has been discussed before in some thread?)

Would it be a fair approximation to downscale the 1080p picture to 720p in Photoshop or Explorer and compare to the original 720p pictures?

There lies the rub! You can't compare a 720p image and 1080p image on monitor to consider how it'll look for PS3, because you need a 1080p native set, or something capable of 1:1 pixel relationships (at least 1920x1080 and with margins), to appreciate the benefit. It's not an easy thing to simulate. But yes, if you get a 1080p image (or any image even) and go into photoshop, you can do a Bilinear resize down to 720p (0.66 scale) to get the downsampled impression, and then a Pixel resize of the source to 720p to see what rendering it in 720 would look like. Sort of. You'd really need a 1080p game output to scale.

I expect 1080p downsized would look better than 720p at 2xAA, as that level of AA doesn't do a great deal to reduce the jaggies. 720p @ 4xAA is something else. And also you'd still find you'd get better texture quality from the downsampled 1080p than the AA'd 720p. But then you might have less shader power to render those textures so they wouldn't be as impressive. And ultimately, you'd need to consider them on a large HD set. You'd want a...40" 720p set, and a 40" 1080p set, and compare the results, because upscaling a 720p image to 1080p on the TV will make a difference too. Infact there's too many variables!

I guess another way of thinking of it is deciding how you use your PC. Do you play games at 800x600 with AA, or higher resolutions without? Where's the comfortable spot? I think higher res is important for greater detail and clarity, lower res affords you the chance to try and whap those jaggies on the noggin. Real SD TV broadcasts are low res at high AA, and they don't suffer much from jaggies but do lack detail. Small figures have pinkish blobs for faces.

Edit : From the GTHD E3 demo, here's some screenies. As they're 720p, I think downscaled by IGN, and I think there was no AA in the GTHD demo (anyone confirm this?), these pics should give an idea of the IQ of downsampled 1080p images. Which I think very good.
http://uk.media.ps3.ign.com/media/713/713809/imgs_1.html
If you then resize these pics to SDTV (720 pixels across), you see IQ on SD sets on downsampled 1080p is Awesome!

 

[darkblu]

What effects were missing? I haven't really paid much attention but it looked pretty identical to GT4 from quick glance.

yes, the assests that were there were identical*. it's the particle and pos-effects that were absent. and if you further compare that to the early conceptual footage from last year (see Shifty's link - 'next page') where they had DOF and stuff - GTHD from this E3 is outright underwhelming.

* some of the textures even may have been the higher-res master-source originals from gt4, as they had too much definition for SD material.

At any rate, I don't know why people were expecting anything more - PD has not exactly set any precedents for their ability to make techdemos/showcase the new hardware.
GT2k for PS2 was exact same thing as GTHD - previous gen assets with slight upgrades running in higher resolution.

was GT2K a step down from GT2 effects-wise?

The only difference is that this E3, there was no RidgeRacer on PS3 to completely embarass GT's showing like what happened at TGS 1999.

there's a RR on the 360, though, and it indeed embarrasses GTHD visually (even without any fancy massive-fillrate effects). of course it's not running at 1080

 

[dskneo]

Warhawk is 720p with 4XAA

uhmm.... i thought it was 1080p, the so called "Full-HD" they spinned at GDC

 

[Shogmaster]

Resistance has large polygon count and interactive environment and can be 1080P no problem. Actually, if game is 720P/60fps, then 1080P/30fps version can have same per pixel power for lighting and effect and also 2x polygons.

What the hell does Resistance's geometry complexity got to do with rendering at higher resolution? The game was nice, but was distinctively lacking in lighting/graphical effects (including HDR). I think that's the kind of compromise we'll see to have games running at 1080p on RSX.

 

[mckmas8808]

uhmm.... i thought it was 1080p, the so called "Full-HD" they spinned at GDC

They never said that?

 

[dskneo]

They never said that?

they did. its in one of the gdc videos. The first time we saw warhawk being played..

 

[ban25]

1080i or 1080p make a difference when games are moving, but it makes an even bigger difference when images are static.

I think what many forget is that 1080p is great for the PS3 built in Browser, for instance. Even if not a single game would use it, the PS3 XMB, photos, videos, and so on, will look a lot better on a nice big screen. I for one won't mind if I one day get a nice TV that I can use for both browsing and gaming, watching tvs, downloaded movies, and so on.

And if Linux PS3 will really happen (I'm going to remain sceptical, because I want it too much), then 1080p is another great blessing.

Don't forget the web browser.

 

[Titanio]

they did. its in one of the gdc videos. The first time we saw warhawk being played..

They never said 1080p specifically. I argued it at the time, but "full HD" may mean 720p to one person as much as 1080p does. It's not a universal codeword for 1080p.

 

[Megadrive1988]

man, when the next leap in television happens beyond HDTV, be it UHDV (ultra high definition video) or UDTV or what have you, in 15-20 years or so, they better have just ONE standard for North America. one resolution, one framerate. everything introduced at once. everyone is on the same playing field. like when they introduced color television before I was born.

 

[Asher]

They never said 1080p specifically. I argued it at the time, but "full HD" may mean 720p to one person as much as 1080p does. It's not a universal codeword for 1080p.

I would say it is a codeword in Sony's case. They started this "full HD" nonsense at last year's E3, knowing that Xbox 360 only supported 720p/1080i. "Full HD" implied the PS3's 1080p capability.

 

[aldo]

they did. its in one of the gdc videos. The first time we saw warhawk being played..

Are you sure you're not thinking of WarDevil?

IGN -
Gran Turismo HD -- Full 1080p
WarDevil -- 1080p
Madden 07 -- 1080i
Mobile Suit Gundam -- 1080i on show floor
Resistance: Fall of Man -- 720p, aiming for 1080 in either form

• (an Insomniac designer says that the game can run at 1080 in the current build, but the team is weighing the trade-off in system power consumption at that res ... basically, they can do it, and now it's all up to what's best for the game.)

MotorStorm -- 720p on show floor, will stay at 720p but will get to (and hopefully be locked at) 60fps
Warhawk -- 720p on show floor
Heavenly Sword -- 720p on show floor
Eye of Judgment -- 720p
Genji 2 -- 720p
F1 '06 -- 720p, planning for full 60FPS but not necessarily any resolution bump-up
Virtua Tennis 3 -- 720p, planning for 1080i
Sonic the Hedgehog -- 720p
Untold Legends -- 720p

You could be right though, I'm not sure what information is accurate or complete:

ArsTechnica - After talking to the man giving us the [Motorstorm] demo he assured us they were shooting for 1080p as the final resolution for the game, although the demo we were playing now was only running in 720p.

-aldo

 

[SugarCoat]

They never said 1080p specifically. I argued it at the time, but "full HD" may mean 720p to one person as much as 1080p does. It's not a universal codeword for 1080p.

yes they did, and i quote Phil Harrison from December of 05:

"..-PlayStation 3 is the only format that has 1080-progressive, which is the true definition of HD, so it's really premature to be talking about the HD era."

[era being in reference to the Xbox360 launch and its supported formats]

So shush. They absolutly did spew that 1080p is where HD starts, the only "true HD". Now its revealed that the bulk of media will be in 720p and people suddenly have amnesia.

 

[aldo]

yes they did, and i quote Phil Harrison from December of 05:

[era being in reference to the Xbox360 launch and its supported formats]

So shush. They absolutly did spew that 1080p is where HD starts, the only "true HD". Now its revealed that the bulk of media will be in 720p and people suddenly have amnesia.

ummm... I believe Titanio was commenting about the HD claims for Warhawk, not Sony's HD claim. You may want to go back and check the context before you start shushing people.

-aldo

 

[kyleb]

IGN -
Gran Turismo HD -- Full 1080p
WarDevil -- 1080p
Madden 07 -- 1080i
Mobile Suit Gundam -- 1080i on show floor
Resistance: Fall of Man -- 720p, aiming for 1080 in either form

* (an Insomniac designer says that the game can run at 1080 in the current build, but the team is weighing the trade-off in system power consumption at that res ... basically, they can do it, and now it's all up to what's best for the game.)

MotorStorm -- 720p on show floor, will stay at 720p but will get to (and hopefully be locked at) 60fps
Warhawk -- 720p on show floor
Heavenly Sword -- 720p on show floor
Eye of Judgment -- 720p
Genji 2 -- 720p
F1 '06 -- 720p, planning for full 60FPS but not necessarily any resolution bump-up
Virtua Tennis 3 -- 720p, planning for 1080i
Sonic the Hedgehog -- 720p
Untold Legends -- 720p

Nobody is actually doing interlaced rendering, are they?