Activision's 360 games not running in full 720p?

[Jesus2006]

...as this site uncovered:

http://www.cynamite.de/xbox360/news...e_activision_spiele_laufen_nicht_in_720p.html

Translated from german:

The "Games-Aktuell" magazine found out that the testversions of Call of Duty 3 were only running @ 1040x624 pixels, while Tony Hawk's Project 8 only had some 1040x584 pixels resolution. Compared to the native 720p resultion 1280x720 the war-shooter is lacking about 30% of resolution, whereas the skateboarding game loses 34 percent. With HD accessories like beamers this results in a decrease of overall quality.

By reducing resolution, the framerate would increase in most cases. While CoD3 runs absoultely flawless most of the time, Tony Hawk still has some heavy lagging.

Cynamite.de asked Activision Germany about this. There this issue was not known up to now. But we were promised that this would be investigated. We stay tuned for you...

Guess this is because of EDRAM? And what about the PS3 versions of these games, also having these problems?

 

[hey69]

tony hawk en marvel games where 1080P if i'm not mistaken.

CoD3 . sadly nobody has any real information about it, cause it launches together with usa launch of the ps3 i think .(next week)

 

[Graham]

I would wonder about the use of the word 'running'.

These two shots at gamespot are as about as comparable as I can find:
(gamespot seems to be one of the only places who take thier own captures and don't just recycle PR shots)

That said the resolution on both isn't ideal (1024x576) and both are fairly heavily compressed. Although both look to have the same level of compression (one would also expect they were both captured with the same hardware)

360 shot,
PS3 shot.

Neither is exactly ideal. They obviously played different characters for both reviews, and focused on different areas of the game, so there were no shots that were from the same place/character from both versions... :/

my opinion both look to lack AA, but the 360 shot looks like it's been downsampled from a higher resolution. Then again the review said the PS3 looked sharper. Dunno.

Either way we can only make assumptions about what resolution each version of the game runs at (probably including the original post you are quoting).

I think it's probably safe to say if the 360 is rendering at 1040x584, it is at least using AA.?

[edit]
as far as i can tell both 1040x584 and 1040x624 with 2xaa would fit in 10mb....

 

[Clockwork]

I find this unlikely. Especially in regards to Call of Duty 3. A quick comparison between it and Call of Duty 2 on my 46"Toshiba DLP (native 1280x720) produces results that would negate what they are saying.

I could be wrong, but COD3 looked sharper and less jaggy to me. This would lead me to believe (once again this is strictly my opinion) that this is not the case.

 

[Hardknock]

COD3 looks leaps and bounds better than COD2 and at a solid 60fps to boot. Kinda surprised if this is true.

I've also heard rumblings that DMC4 isn't rendered at full 720p. I guess Sony and MS are getting a bit more lax on the 720p standard for this gen?

 

[Skrying]

COD3 looks leaps and bounds better than COD2 and at a solid 60fps to boot. Kinda surprised if this is true.

I've also heard rumblings that DMC4 isn't rendered at full 720p. I guess Sony and MS are getting a bit more lax on the 720p standard for this gen?

I think they might be realizing that the resolution isn't the end all be all of game graphics. To the typical consumer they do not care if its 720P 1080P or lower or whatever, they just want a good looking and smooth game. If you can achieve more effects and other important areas by lowering the resolution slightly then its worth the trade off to me.

 

[rounin]

Besides, the last time I checked, MS was the only ones to set a standard and allow people to break them. As far as I know Sony never did promise anything on resolution.

 

[nonamer]

It's really interesting how MS "required" all games to run at 720p with 4xAA. Apparently, about a month before launch they got a phone call from the developer relations guy saying that'll kill nearly every game in development and probably will continue to do so for a couple years to come at best. Have we yet to see a game with 720p and 4xAA? This is shaping up to be the biggest blunder under the "highly exaggerated tech promise" category so far.

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

It's really interesting how MS "required" all games to run at 720p with 4xAA.

AFAICR, they never said 4x, they said 2x. That too, they don't say it needs to be hardware-driven 2x MSAA -- just that it has to be visually equivalent to that. And if undersampling and stretching to fit can fool the testers in the TRC process, then so be it. It's obviously not something that will work for everybody, even if it ever really worked for anybody to begin with. ... That was a weird sentence.

 

[INKster]

It's really interesting how MS "required" all games to run at 720p with 4xAA. Apparently, about a month before launch they got a phone call from the developer relations guy saying that'll kill nearly every game in development and probably will continue to do so for a couple years to come at best. Have we yet to see a game with 720p and 4xAA? This is shaping up to be the biggest blunder under the "highly exaggerated tech promise" category so far.

I think they require 1280x720p + 2xAA, not 4x.

Anyway, if this turns out to be true, it could be a major PR disaster, not only to Activision, but also Microsoft.
Not to mention that the Xbox 360 would then be seen as the "cheat machine", in order to reach the level of performance of the Playstation 3.

I hope this is not true, for their sake (and mine, i have a Xbox 360 and was planning to buy CoD 3 ).

 

[Tap In]

....
I hope this is not true, for their sake (and mine, i have a Xbox 360 and was planning to buy CoD 3 ).

trust me... I have CoD3... you'll sleep at night just fine if you buy it. :smile:

the game looks amazing at 1080i and 60fps

 

[nonamer]

AFAICR, they never said 4x, they said 2x. That too, they don't say it needs to be hardware-driven 2x MSAA -- just that it has to be visually equivalent to that. And if undersampling and stretching to fit can fool the testers in the TRC process, then so be it. It's obviously not something that will work for everybody, even if it ever really worked for anybody to begin with. ... That was a weird sentence.

Nope:
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/05/25/ati_xbox_360_london/

ATI revealed this afternoon that every single Xbox 360 game will be required to run at a minimum of 720p resolution with 4x Anti-Aliasing.

Speaking at a press conference in London, ATI technology specialist Rene Froeleke told journalists that Microsoft had specified that games must run at the 1280x720 resolution at 4xAA with no slowdown. Every single game will be supported at this graphical specification, which we think is great news for gamers playing on big-screen TVs.

When questionned as to why the minimum wasn't 1080p, Rene responded that most of Europe hadn't even reached 720, let alone 1080.

Because of the embedded DRAM architecture of Xbox 360, the AA was described as 'Absolutely free'.

They've missed by a mile here. From every gaming having it "required" to not a single one so far is pretty embarrassing.

 

[Tap In]

They've missed by a mile here. From every gaming having it "required" to not a single one so far is pretty embarrassing.

some games are 4x AA 720p.... perhaps someone with more info than me (and time) will tell us which ones.

 

[INKster]

trust me... I have CoD3... you'll sleep at night just fine if you buy it. :smile:

the game looks amazing at 1080i and 60fps

Too bad i will only buy it because Activision didn't release a PC version.

1600 x 1200 with 6xAA and 8xAF (and the best control scheme) is much better than any 720p/1080i+gamepad for a FPS in my book, and CoD2 looked amazing on a X1900.

 

[nonamer]

some games are 4x AA 720p.... perhaps someone with more info than me (and time) will tell us which ones.

I hope it's more than just Geometry Wars or some other simple game like that. I haven't heard anything about a serious game supporting it.

 

[crosseye]

Nope:
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/05/25/ati_xbox_360_london/



They've missed by a mile here. From every gaming having it "required" to not a single one so far is pretty embarrassing.

Actually nonamer, MS came out and clarified that statement. It seems ATI didn't really know all that was going on. MS has said games need to have 2x OR another solution similar. UE3 doesn't play nice with AA, but it uses other effects to achieve similar results.

 

[Hardknock]

I think they require 1280x720p + 2xAA, not 4x.

Anyway, if this turns out to be true, it could be a major PR disaster, not only to Activision, but also Microsoft.
Not to mention that the Xbox 360 would then be seen as the "cheat machine", in order to reach the level of performance of the Playstation 3.

I hope this is not true, for their sake (and mine, i have a Xbox 360 and was planning to buy CoD 3 ).

The cheat machine? We don't know the resolution that COD3 on the PS3 runs in. And from all reports the PS3 version is 30fps while the 360 version is 60fps.

If they indeed lowered the resolution it has absolutely nothing to do with trying to reach the level of PS3.

 

[Fafalada]

That too, they don't say it needs to be hardware-driven 2x MSAA -- just that it has to be visually equivalent to that

That's not what they stated in PR - that's what they stated in XDK (which most people haven't had access to ).

At any rate it should be obvious it's a bendable rule (eg. UE3 titles, which are nowhere near being equivalent to any use of AA), but then so was the VSync-rule on PS2 after Konami decided they didn't need it...

 

[INKster]

The cheat machine? We don't know the resolution that COD3 on the PS3 runs in. And from all reports the PS3 version is 30fps while the 360 version is 60fps.

If they indeed lowered the resolution it has absolutely nothing to do with trying to reach the level of PS3.

If true (that's nearly one third less resolution than true 720p), we'll never know if that's the case, will we ?

We don't know the resolution, but we know the fps rate difference, and i doubt that Activision would have a game's shipping version with half the frames per second on one machine and full 60fps on another, given similar amounts of RAM and fairly similar hardware capabilities.
A brutal 50% drop in frames per second is a lot more "visible" than a lowered resolution to end-users.

 

[AlNom]

I hope it's more than just Geometry Wars or some other simple game like that. I haven't heard anything about a serious game supporting it.

I'm fairly sure that Dead Rising has 4xAA (and LP for that matter). I haven't checked out any other games recently though.