AF and the 360 revisited

[Acert93]

MS, when asked about Vsync and AF a number of months ago, noted that they expected these issues to improve with the fall software lineup. I have not had an oppurtunity to play all the fall titles, but the couple I have played seem to do better in these regards. It also seems the storm of controversy has died down and we have witnessed this becoming either an "accepted and annoying reality" or has indeed become less of an issue (or a combination of both).

I would like some feedback from Xbox 360 owners with fall retail games -- your thoughts and observations?

I am not too interested in demos as many demos as of late have been older code and had performance issues not present in the final release. This is true of all games and platforms, but it really isn't fair to comment on AF in, e.g., Motorstorm (which has some pretty bad texture filtering at times) when the game is obviously not done AND has steadily improved in IQ. So if we can stay OT, lets keep the discussion to finished retail games on the 360. Thanks!

 

[AlNom]

Gears of War seems to be ok. I only really remembered to look for AF issues once during the entire time though. During cut-scenes, the graphics were turned to the max of course, but during gameplay, there was no lack of it. Sometimes it might be a little tricky to tell with DOF and the smaller hallways and things like that. The ground'll be hidden in the distance just due to objects here and there or by the lighting conditions. It also didn't seem to be an issue with Dead Rising either. In the open grass area (center of the mall area), it's pretty clear.

Image tearing is something I didn't see, but that would probably require multiple people's experiences. It's not exactly easy to discern to me with the motion blur turned on while turning the view camera.

No AF issues in Doom or Dig Dug though.

 

[chroniceyestrain]

Gears and Splinter Cell both have Vsync issues. Gears keeps sync most of the time, but it does lose it in bigger scenes and in some cutscenes. I haven't played Splinter Cell, but if you watch the review on game trailers you can clearly see that there is a lot of tearing.

 

[jlippo]

Gears of War seems to be ok. I only really remembered to look for AF issues once during the entire time though. During cut-scenes, the graphics were turned to the max of course, but during gameplay, there was no lack of it.

Not sure if GoW used AF, but it didn't seem to use Trilinear mipmapping in most of the scenes, there are quite visible lines where mip levels change and pretty impressive aliasing which come with it.
In some scenes it doesn't matter what method they use because of very good art direction.

 

[Graham]

I noticed some pretty average filtering in gears, but then I run in SD.
There was definitly some AF going on, but it looked to have no interpolation between miplevels, as there were visible bilinear like filtering lines.

On the other hand, the rainbow 6 vegas demo (multiplayer at least) looks superb, and is very sharp and very well filtered. But this may be because the demo appears to be rendering in high res, then sampling down for SD, while gears appears to be rendering in SD as there are significant jaggie problems (grumble).

 

[woundingchaney]

Gears and Splinter Cell both have Vsync issues. Gears keeps sync most of the time, but it does lose it in bigger scenes and in some cutscenes. I haven't played Splinter Cell, but if you watch the review on game trailers you can clearly see that there is a lot of tearing.

I dont have SpC but I have MUA, Gears, R6 for the 360 this holiday and I havent seen Vsync being an issue in any of them.

 

[kyleb]

Gears does loose vsync in on occasion, not nearly as much as Double Agent does though.

 

[jpr27]

I know that F.E.A.R. seems to have some issues with Vsync and collision issues. AF and textures in the Xbox 360 version really disappointed me. I know I was spoiled by playing and having the PC version but seriously this game should of really shined seeing as it was based on the same engine as Condemned was (which was bad for a first gen game and they had time to refine the engine as well). They should of released it later and poslished it more (although the effects were very well done) to help show what we all know that the 360 is capable of (ala GOW) and coming closer to the PC version graphics wise.

The sad thing is for those who either didnt get F.E.A.R. for the PC due to their system limitations are really missing out on a great game not to mention an excellent Multiplayer. I think the developers and publishers should of waited and polished the title more. Seeing as the title came out on the Xbox 360 just before the big hitters (GOW, RS Vegas, and COD3 to name a few), this title has been overlooked by gamers who didnt get a chance to enjoy it on their PC due to the other huge titles.

Personal Note here. I think that F.E.A.R. has a very strong Multiplayer component (although there could be some changes and tweaks like any other MP game and the fact that you have to create a new game after one ends is a blunder and is rumored to be fixed in the future) its still a shame many people are not playing it online. On Xbox Live with the inclusion of voice and game types such as Slo-Mo in DM, TDM, and CTF, really make this game one of my top MP games for the 360 (IMO) with the current crop of games. Even if you own it on PC, I would suggest people give it a rent ( if you dont own) and tell me what they think of the Multiplayer (likes and dislikes etc.) because I think many people are missing out on an underestimated MP aspect of a great Single Player Title.

I hear they are also including downloadable content (not to mention fixes of course) for the title such as more MP maps and other Instant action scenerios (which is a nice addition over the PC) but we will have to wait and see if this truely comes to light.

 

[silhouette]

Not sure if GoW used AF, but it didn't seem to use Trilinear mipmapping in most of the scenes, there are quite visible lines where mip levels change and pretty impressive aliasing which come with it.
In some scenes it doesn't matter what method they use because of very good art direction.

This is a closed system. Why don't they use this adaptive tri-linear in Xb360? (i.e. if z of the pixel is close to mip-map boundaries, use bilinear, if z is close to middle of two mip-map boundries switch to trilinear). I remember ther performance cost was not that big compared to straight bilinear in this case.

 

[Tap In]

Gears does loose vsync in on occasion, not nearly as much as Double Agent does though.

allegedly, Gears is designed to Vsync except at times when the engine needs to drop it for frame rate.

CoD3 seems to be looking pretty good in this regard as well.

 

[scooby_dooby]

I don't notice any drop in vsynch in gears, and DOuble Agent is not bad, you can see it but or some reason it's kinda subtle, probably because it's such a slow game.

The last game I played that was really bad in this regard was Saint's Row, since then everything has been pretty solid.

I don't really notice AF that much, but due to the complete lack of bitching about it in the past few months, it seems as though this is no longer a big issue? Or maybe people just realized PS3 has similar issues and decided to stop whining about it....

 

[Mintmaster]

Are there any devs here that can explain why triple buffering isn't used? This really doesn't make any sense at all to me.

Is 0.7% of the memory really that precious?

 

[Dave Glue]

Are there any devs here that can explain why triple buffering isn't used? This really doesn't make any sense at all to me.

Is 0.7% of the memory really that precious?

If it spills out of the EDRAM, then yes.

 

[kyleb]

But the EDRAM is just for the buffer you are drawing to, keeping space for a spare in main RAM should be cake.

 

[swanlee]

They patched Saints Rows recently to allow you to turn Vsync on if you wanted to. I tried it out and it worked well, ZERO screen tearing, FPS can chug at times though with Vsync on.