1080i support for XBox360. How?

[Shogmaster]

Maybe I'll get a 46"+ 720p DLP RP, but blacks suck for anything other than CRTs for dark games like Doom 3 so I'm probably just going to stick to my 19" CRT monitor so I can play X360 games @ 720p with letterboxing on it.

Black levels on a DLP aren't to bad. Brightness is fantastic as is contrast.

Tell that to my buddy who had to jack up brightness way way up on his DLP set to see the dark parts of Halo 2! When things get dark, it's hard to distinguish the action on anything other than a CRT without jaking up the brightness setting.

Letterboxing on a 19" screen?

Seems a bit small to me.

It's 12 inches from my face. It's plenty big.

 

[kyleb]

I put it down to laziness. Anyway, fixed frames is bad in this age of 3d games. The hardware will be idling more often and load balancing levels costs extra time and effort.

If by "fixed frames," you're referring to vsync, then that's just stupid. There is not now, nor has there ever been, nor will there ever be a 3d console game that doesn't vsync.

There are lots of console games that don't use vsync, the Splinter Cell series is one noteable example. I also recently saw tearing in Psychonauts and Bloodrain2. I wish they all used vsync, but I guess some developers choose to forgo triple buffering in favor of extra memory space and hence dissable vsync.

 

[Dural]

Maybe I'll get a 46"+ 720p DLP RP, but blacks suck for anything other than CRTs for dark games like Doom 3 so I'm probably just going to stick to my 19" CRT monitor so I can play X360 games @ 720p with letterboxing on it.

Black levels on a DLP aren't to bad. Brightness is fantastic as is contrast.

Tell that to my buddy who had to jack up brightness way way up on his DLP set to see the dark parts of Halo 2! When things get dark, it's hard to distinguish the action on anything other than a CRT without jaking up the brightness setting.

You sure it isn't just his set? I haven't had to change the brightness on my dlp projector yet due to bad black level.

 

[Shogmaster]

Maybe I'll get a 46"+ 720p DLP RP, but blacks suck for anything other than CRTs for dark games like Doom 3 so I'm probably just going to stick to my 19" CRT monitor so I can play X360 games @ 720p with letterboxing on it.

Black levels on a DLP aren't to bad. Brightness is fantastic as is contrast.

Tell that to my buddy who had to jack up brightness way way up on his DLP set to see the dark parts of Halo 2! When things get dark, it's hard to distinguish the action on anything other than a CRT without jaking up the brightness setting.

You sure it isn't just his set? I haven't had to change the brightness on my dlp projector yet due to bad black level.

The same with my brother in law's DLP projector. Dark Halo 2 scenes were murder.

 

[Sandwich]

I put it down to laziness. Anyway, fixed frames is bad in this age of 3d games. The hardware will be idling more often and load balancing levels costs extra time and effort.

If by "fixed frames," you're referring to vsync, then that's just stupid.

Well I didn't. I refer to vsync as vsync. Please read.

Your little dream of "load balancing" levels so that they will always naturally run at a constant framerate is nonsense...

I'm was saying it's NOT possible. Read carefully.

 

[function]

I ask this because I assume there's a huge framerate difference for coding for progressive and interlaced. Progressive output games can have fluctuating framerates, while interlaced games will have to be locked to either 15, 30, or 60fps. No fluctuating framerates. Right?

Both progressive and interlaced can have fluctuating frame rates, or be locked. If Vsync and double buffering is used, frame rates will be integer divisions of the refresh rate, regardless of interlaced / progressive. Tripple bufferring requires more memory for frame buffers and increases latency between input/world updates and display.

Some games now seem to use double buffering with vsync, but drop the vsync as and when the frame rate drops below what has been decided as the standard allowing the frame rate to drop by as little as possible at the cost of tearing.

 

[TrungGap]

According to the TCR's devs only need to target 720p. The outboard display chip is responsible for scaling the image. It can scale up to 1080i or down to 480i/p. Microsoft made this decision in order to support ALL HDTV's without requiring specific developer support for each display mode, as was the case with XBox 1. Many older HD displays are limited to supporting only 1080i or only 720p.

This would suck...but I guess it's better than having dev not supporting different mode. As you mentioned, it's a real problem in xbox1, especially for those with HD TVs that accept specific signal through different connectors (and doesn't have the ability to convert it).

So does this mean most of the time, developers will be testing the targeted resolution (SD TV) to make sure it's acceptable...and HD TV people will not be getting the extra benifit of higher resolution? (ie finer lines in maps, smaller text and whatnot).

 

[scooby_dooby]

According to the TCR's devs only need to target 720p. The outboard display chip is responsible for scaling the image. It can scale up to 1080i or down to 480i/p. Microsoft made this decision in order to support ALL HDTV's without requiring specific developer support for each display mode, as was the case with XBox 1. Many older HD displays are limited to supporting only 1080i or only 720p.

Wouldn't 720p to 1080i be scaled down??

I'm under the impression 720p is a higher resolution than 1080i, no?

i think this is a great thing, now you can get the resolution output that matches your TV instread of relying on whatever the Dev's decided to support.

I'm just happy that 100% of 360 games will be true HD(720p) and support wide screen, that's awesome. Now they just have to make the games look GOOD at those resolutions and we'll be all set!

 

[BlueTsunami]

According to the TCR's devs only need to target 720p. The outboard display chip is responsible for scaling the image. It can scale up to 1080i or down to 480i/p. Microsoft made this decision in order to support ALL HDTV's without requiring specific developer support for each display mode, as was the case with XBox 1. Many older HD displays are limited to supporting only 1080i or only 720p.

Wouldn't 720p to 1080i be scaled down??

I'm under the impression 720p is a higher resolution than 1080i, no?

i think this is a great thing, now you can get the resolution output that matches your TV instread of relying on whatever the Dev's decided to support.

I'm just happy that 100% of 360 games will be true HD(720p) and support wide screen, that's awesome. Now they just have to make the games look GOOD at those resolutions and we'll be all set!

1080i is a higher resolution than 780p....780p just a has a image that is scanned progressivley, opposed to a 1080i image thats scanned Interlaced....so it would be scaled up?????.....

>.>

 

[Dave Glue]

If by "fixed frames," you're referring to vsync, then that's just stupid. There is not now, nor has there ever been, nor will there ever be a 3d console game that doesn't vsync. TVs are made to scan at specific rates no matter what people might prefer. Hell, I'd like it if my TV refreshed at 85 Hz... won't happen within my lifetime.

WTF? Have you even been playing console games recently? There are many that have obvious tearing. Lots of console games these days don't use vsync, it's just another way to squeeze out a little more consistent framerate.

It's a tradeoff, some people are just more sensitive to it than others.

 

[scooby_dooby]

1080i is a higher resolution than 780p....780p just a has a image that is scanned progressivley, opposed to a 1080i image thats scanned Interlaced....so it would be scaled up?????.....

>.>

right, my bad.

 

[PARANOiA]

The same with my brother in law's DLP projector. Dark Halo 2 scenes were murder.

There are a few dark scenes because there's a "torch" button Press the white button on the controller.

 

[Frank]

Your little dream of "load balancing" levels so that they will always naturally run at a constant framerate is nonsense...

I'm was saying it's NOT possible. Read carefully.

Do you mean it's not possible with the current first person shooters?

It's really easy to have a constant frame rate. But it depends on your visuals if that is useful. And if you really want to, you can just remove stuff from your scene until it does display in the allotted time. It would probably look awful if you did that, though.

Then again, if you take enough time to tune and balance everything, you could do it. But that would probably cost more money than is allowed. I think making the graphics look nicer is a more popular way to spend the budget.

Edit: there is no penalty if you draw a part of the frames too fast.

 

[Shogmaster]

The same with my brother in law's DLP projector. Dark Halo 2 scenes were murder.

There are a few dark scenes because there's a "torch" button Press the white button on the controller.

When I touched that button during that scene, the Arbiter just turned invisible. Didn't help much with seeing crap.

 

[Sandwich]

Your little dream of "load balancing" levels so that they will always naturally run at a constant framerate is nonsense...

I'm was saying it's NOT possible. Read carefully.

Do you mean it's not possible with the current first person shooters?

Edit: there is no penalty if you draw a part of the frames too fast.

Exactly, cap low enough and you have your constant framerate. Like Doom3 caps out at 60fps which will limit a fast machine. I don't see the point though. You can never have too many frames.

 

[London Geezer]

You can never have too many frames.

Yes you can. Especially when monitors only allow you to see so many frames at any given time, there definately is something like "having too frames".

Quake3 at 900fps... what's the point?!

 

[Sandwich]

You can never have too many frames.

Yes you can. Especially when monitors only allow you to see so many frames at any given time, there definately is something like "having too frames".

Quake3 at 900fps... what's the point?!

Quake3 is a very old game. It's not an issue, where no serious game developer is going to want to create such primitive game today.
Still 900fps doesn't hurt you either. Then there's players who swear they notice the difference even if the fps is way beyond their monitor's refresh rate. No good reason for capping.

 

[London Geezer]

You can never have too many frames.

Yes you can. Especially when monitors only allow you to see so many frames at any given time, there definately is something like "having too frames".

Quake3 at 900fps... what's the point?!

Quake3 is a very old game. It's not an issue, where no serious game developer is going to want to create such primitive game today.
Still 900fps doesn't hurt you either. Then there's players who swear they notice the difference even if the fps is way beyond their monitor's refresh rate. No good reason for capping.

No good reason for capping, sure, but my point is that there IS a point when more fps is useless.

 

[Sandwich]

No good reason for capping, sure, but my point is that there IS a point when more fps is useless.

Debatable. I'm inclined to believe hardcore players who claim to be able to tell the difference between 100 or 200fps.

3 possible factors:

1. Suppose you have a monitor capable of displaying your fav rez at 85Hz. Now you have a game rendering 85 frames/sec.
The frames are on average 11.76ms old, when the front and back buffer swap during vertical retrace.
Now you lower AA levels and you get 200fps. The frame you see was begun only 5ms ago. Therefore less lag.
The difference shouldn't be noticeable in a time demo, but in the games you are at the controls, possibly noticing the lag between pressing a key and seeing it happen.

2. it's not inconceiveable that certain (physics) models used in game, become more accurate with more iterations per second.

3. with excess fps, the game is responding more accurately to your keyboard and mouse input between the visible frames.

The influence of these factors may only be minor, but it is quite possible, the difference makes a game feel "smoother".
Some players may be more sensitive than others. Others may simply be able to react faster.

 

[London Geezer]

Well, for the sake of argument, there is a point - not sure which point - when increasing the framerate does nothing. Might be very high, but in the end it only needs to be as fast as our brain, and our brains are not infinitely fast.
100fps is already quite high. 200fps is sky high and i really don't know what the point is in going to 400fps and such.