[360] Alan Wake - Still awake

[Shifty Geezer]

I've wondered this for quite a while...When you lower the resolution on a PC game, the framerate instantly becomes higher...And apart from that, you can enable many other graphical extras and have it playable

Seeing that many 360 owners still has a SDTV(myself included), would it be hard for a game developer to give us something extra?

Originally, prerelease of this generation, it sounded like SD user would get the same 720p output downscaled, providing supersampled AA for extra IQ. Sadly this hasn't happened. I'm pretty sure the Xenos downscaling doesn't downsample 720p for SD users, because we had early games where the SD output was without any extra AA in effect. SDTVs would benefit most from higher IQ to offset the lower resolution, although a faster, stable framerate would be nice too. It'll be interested what Alan Wake does, whether they downscale the upscaled 720p or resample the 540p FB to a TV resolution. There's no investigation into SD output by the world's pixel-counters, which perhaps there should be now we know such a large percentage of gamers are still on it. How much of a good/raw deal are they getting?

 

[Svensk Viking]

Originally, prerelease of this generation, it sounded like SD user would get the same 720p output downscaled, providing supersampled AA for extra IQ. Sadly this hasn't happened. I'm pretty sure the Xenos downscaling doesn't downsample 720p for SD users, because we had early games where the SD output was without any extra AA in effect. SDTVs would benefit most from higher IQ to offset the lower resolution, although a faster, stable framerate would be nice too. It'll be interested what Alan Wake does, whether they downscale the upscaled 720p or resample the 540p FB to a TV resolution. There's no investigation into SD output by the world's pixel-counters, which perhaps there should be now we know such a large percentage of gamers are still on it. How much of a good/raw deal are they getting?

IQ=Image quality??

I may not be a code-head, but I can't see why anyone would upscale, and then downscale to an even lower resolution

Wasn't the low resolution part of the reason that the XBOX 1 could handle ports of demanding PC games btw?

 

[dragonelite]

Got this from a other forum new footage i was told.
spoiler warning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTb8jkld-SM

 

[scently]

Got this from a other forum new footage i was told.
spoiler warning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTb8jkld-SM

If don't like spoilers, DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT WATCH THIS.

But, wow this game is really, seriously awesome.

 

[ShadowRunner]

They could have made it run at 1280 x 720 with 4xAA though. They could have made it run at 60fps, 1920 x 1080 with 4xMSAA...

Not with everything else equal. The game runs at the resolution it does because thats the best they could manage without sacrificing graphics. Its a performance issue, they felt resolution was worth sacrificing to achieve the level of graphics they wanted, they couldnt achieve higher resolution because of they did not have the extra performance to do so.

 

[LittleJohnny]

Not with everything else equal. The game runs at the resolution it does because thats the best they could manage without sacrificing graphics. Its a performance issue, they felt resolution was worth sacrificing to achieve the level of graphics they wanted, they couldnt achieve higher resolution because of they did not have the extra performance to do so.

I think he knows this and it's why he made that statement. I guess the question is are they balancing the resolution and graphics correctly, could they optimize the code so that it runs the way it looks now at 720p or are devs getting away with dropping the res slightly in the last minute crunch?

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

First Alan Wake review from spanish mag, 93/100!



The .gif and such on that link look incredible!

http://i44.tinypic.com/10frmft.gif

http://i41.tinypic.com/qp1l35.gif

http://i44.tinypic.com/34nl2yr.gif


My personal first must purchase of 2010.

Does lower resolution look better the smaller the window gets?

 

[AlphaWolf]

I believe they just saw at what resolution the 360 was setup while people were playing gears 2. I do know some people that had their 360 setup at 480p with a 1080p hdtv they forgot to change the settings good thing i told them.

This.

I know about a dozen people with HDTV's that have never actually seen HD content, they just put their SD feed in stretch mode and think they've got the latest tech. I gave up trying to convince them long ago.

 

[assen]

The game plays great from what people says, but it is a bit disappointing given that we are already in 5th year of current generation.

The 5th year doesn't mean anything.

In the first year of the generation, people are running engines of the previous generation; this is where you can expect the most 1080p titles, because, frankly, there's little for the GPU to do.

The more time passes, the more interesting stuff can developers come up with.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

IQ=Image quality??

Yep

I may not be a code-head, but I can't see why anyone would upscale, and then downscale to an even lower resolution

Simplicity. If Xenos already handles downscaling, you send it a 720p feed and let it resample to the desired output resolution. If not using the inbuilt scaler, it'll be interesting what Remedy do, whether render SD res or ressample/crop their 540p render.

 

[(((interference)))]

Originally, prerelease of this generation, it sounded like SD user would get the same 720p output downscaled, providing supersampled AA for extra IQ. Sadly this hasn't happened. I'm pretty sure the Xenos downscaling doesn't downsample 720p for SD users, because we had early games where the SD output was without any extra AA in effect. SDTVs would benefit most from higher IQ to offset the lower resolution, although a faster, stable framerate would be nice too. It'll be interested what Alan Wake does, whether they downscale the upscaled 720p or resample the 540p FB to a TV resolution. There's no investigation into SD output by the world's pixel-counters, which perhaps there should be now we know such a large percentage of gamers are still on it. How much of a good/raw deal are they getting?

Don't 360 games running in SD get 4xAA at 480p?

I originally played both Gears 1 and Halo 3 on a SDTV and for Halo 3 in particular the IQ was far better than on my 1080p set, there was virtually no aliasing in SD in H3.

So i'm sure SDTV users get higher IQ levels

 

[Svensk Viking]

Yep

Simplicity. If Xenos already handles downscaling, you send it a 720p feed and let it resample to the desired output resolution. If not using the inbuilt scaler, it'll be interesting what Remedy do, whether render SD res or ressample/crop their 540p render.

Would ressampling be the "best" theoretically?

Just for curiosity, I have read many times that SD gets kind of a free AA, what does people mean with that? Is it just that the blurrier picture blurs the aliasing?

 

[nintenho]

NBA Street actually let you choose to have the game in 30 fps/1080P or 60 fps/720P. I thought that was neat but I'm sure the majority of gamers who have the option would prefer to go with a higher frame rate.

 

[N_B]

Would ressampling be the "best" theoretically?

Just for curiosity, I have read many times that SD gets kind of a free AA, what does people mean with that? Is it just that the blurrier picture blurs the aliasing?

I only know that original Xbox games get free AA because 480p 4xAA fits perfectly into eDRAM, so it's no extra cost. Different devs/games must make different decisions about how to configure the SD output because Gears is 960x720 in 480p, while Sacred 2 is 1366x768 in 480p (from res list).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Don't 360 games running in SD get 4xAA at 480p?

Only if the devs choose so.

I originally played both Gears 1 and Halo 3 on a SDTV[/QUOTE]If on a CRT, aliasing is much reduced anyway. Thus just SDTV res with normal AA could have looked very good on an SDTV.

Would ressampling be the "best" theoretically?

It'd get slightly clurrier, ut as SD res I doubt it much matters!

Just for curiosity, I have read many times that SD gets kind of a free AA, what does people mean with that? Is it just that the blurrier picture blurs the aliasing?

I don't know the current state. What I remember is when XB360 launched, there were a few article that compared it's HD output with its SD output, and hugely disappointing, the SD output didn't gain any AA so looked rubbish. As an SD user at the time I was hoping the PS3 would downsample and give superb IQ, but it didn't really work that way, and in the end I quickly bought a monitor with HDMI in.

I have no idea what the current state of SD output is. AFIK there's no automatic AA anywhere along the line, and you'll get whatever the developers create, which could well be exactly the same as their 720p out only on a smaller framebuffer. This should improvement framerate in a lot of instances though. Does anyone know of any investigations into the SD output of these machines?

 

[liolio]

There's no investigation into SD output by the world's pixel-counters, which perhaps there should be now we know such a large percentage of gamers are still on it. How much of a good/raw deal are they getting?

I just shift from my old SDTV to a new 1080p display yesterday. I'm pretty happy of the result but it's not without trade-off, I don't how are renderer games in SD (sacred2 aside) but the "perceived" aliasing is way lower on my sdtv. My old display was a CRT tho so it was pretty much a details "erasor" a better reference would be a LCD SDTV.
Anyway I suspect that even on a proper SD quiet some details would be lost, I play geometry war 2 yesterday and was amazed at how it looks "for real" as on my previous display most details and particles was lost in what looks like a flashy neon blur
On the other I can understand how one could favor blurriness to some pesky artifacts and various form of aliasing. I'm actually going through mass effect 2 and the game impressed me more while I was playing on my sdtv as because whether I got some SSAA for free or it was only the result of the overall lost of details on my display the whole thing looked smoother. Now I realize that while some textures are fine at SD resolution there are lacking details on a hd display, at first aliasing bother me while "looking" the game now that I play it's ok or I got accustomed to it.
Anyway even SD user would benefit from some SSAA for free I would not say that they get a good deal, the games are clearly not design for SD and it affect gameplay imho, yesterday I realize how easier it is to aim in ME2 on my new display, I see clearer and I'm sure it will be the same with most games, with most weapons when you "zoom in" the zoom is almost never enough for SD resolution, even non that distant encounters looks like puddle of pixels and it's a bit tougher to aim at them properly (still I suck at most games anyway ).

 

[Billy Idol]

The problem is: why bother with something, reviewer wouldn't even recognize?
I don't believe that reviewer play on SDTV, thus they would not realise cahnges at all and thus they would not advertise it and thus ...

 

[scently]

Some really nice offscreen footage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0OzaqSATL4

 

[Rangers]

I have a bit of a fear that AW isn't looking to sell so well, based only on it's Amazon sales ranking, and a certain sales site's preorder numbers...

I think a nice demo would help them. IIRC it helped Splinter Cell a lot, boosting it high in the Amazon charts after release.

Also the youtube is 404'd but I see a lot of people raving about that footage...any mirrors?

 

[dragonelite]

I have a bit of a fear that AW isn't looking to sell so well, based only on it's Amazon sales ranking, and a certain sales site's preorder numbers...

I think a nice demo would help them. IIRC it helped Splinter Cell a lot, boosting it high in the Amazon charts after release.

Also the youtube is 404'd but I see a lot of people raving about that footage...any mirrors?

The press is starting to hype up the game embargo goes to may 5th i heard. Still think a demo from the dream tutorial would have been nice or something like splintercell where the demo didn't spoil a thing.