[B3D Article] "Ripping off the veil: The mysterious PS3 hardware scaler exposed"
- Thread starter Arun
- Start date
A more simpler answer is the software APIs in the OS are not yet ready /shrug
Looking at the Vista driver fiasco you can't underestimate the effort to roll out a new OS.
No, what I'm referring to is not technical difficulty, but more of how you arrange things nicely in a new complicated picture. "Why is this thing which worked greatly in WinXP malfunctioning in Vista?"
1. PS3 has a new high-level OS
2. http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37396
3. http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showpost.php?p=921582&postcount=142
The pictures were rendered at their native resolutions and then upscaled. I left out AA cause I thought it would be closer to how a game would look.
It demonstrates the software issues involved. There's a software interface between the hardware and the games software. If that's not working properly, even though you have the hardware present, you can't use the hardware properly. Thus lack of scaling doesn't mean lack of scaling hardware.
Looking at the various big slabs of silicon in PS3, I don't find the existence of a scaler hard to believe. It's perplexing why the implementation of scaling isn't completely there, but there's several factors that could be playing a part. As everyone has said, Sony are reknowned CE goods producers and ought to know better, so perhaps they do? Perhaps they didn't forget to deal with scaling, but had other issues implementing it how they designed?
The idea that they deliberately ignored scaling because they want to sell HDTVs is bunk. After all, the concern here isn't quality on SD sets, but on input-limited HDTVs. And those play HD movies just fine IIRC, so not scaling of games doesn't factor one jot into BRD playback.
Right I get it's a software issue but are you guys saying that the problems with Vista and PS3 are directly related because they are using Nvidia, or is this just a general "things can be complicated " kinda grasp at an explanation.
If the hardware is there in an effective manner then the software become relatively easy (see MS delivering this 1 year before and functioning well, on a new software platform).
I hate being verbose
"New software platform" may not be really new for the whole Windows lineage codebase...
That's what I'm saying. We can't yet pin it down to any one aspect by the info we've got.
It depends a lot on what the hardware in there is, when it was decided on, what plans may have changed, and other things as well. eg. If it's the SCC doing the job, what SCC hardware is already out there implementing scaling? Did Sony decide on a last minute whim to include SCC where originally they were going to use the OSSPE, or a different scaling component altogether? Are they using the OSSPE but didn't get the OS working properly in time (as we already know through lack of multitasking)?Dave Baumann said:
As the Vista issues demonstrate (though for sure that's a rather antagonistic analogy by One), you can have ages to work on a hardware/software combination and still screw it up. The fact MS got it right first time (and did they, seeing as there's no downscaling for SDTV as was anticipated?) shows good planning and implementation, rather than that it's a doddle to get everything working as expected first try. You can't point to XB360 doing it right and conclude that anyone can get it right without other issues making life difficult, especially on a very different system.
The Vista analogy is frankly meaningless in this case as we are dealing with a closed platform with a number of components selected, set, and in some cases built, by the same company making the software, with relatively narrow targets in mind - Vista is built in order to be both secure whilst still having provisions for having a much wider range of interoperability, internal and external hardware configurations all from vendors other than the software vendor.
Sure, the Vista analogy is far from a good one. But it does still loosely illustrate that 'time in development' and 'presence of hardware' cannot be trusted to give correct results. There are complications to the Vista<>nVidia interface that's causing problems. Likewise there could be complications in the PS3<>scaler causing problems. The point to One's argument was that you can't assume that if the hardware was in there, it'd be working correctly from day one, or enabled completely when it is enabled. And that's an argument I agree with.
Render at 960x1080 then use a scaling filter that is vertically and horizontally orthogonal. One such scaler is ACDSee 5.0's bicubic resize. You can also draw a few vertical and horizontal single-pixel wide lines on the image before scaling to test that only horizontal resolution is affected. There should be no vertical "smearing".
Mintmaster
Veteran
Oh, okay. That's perfect. Which game is it?
I'm pretty sure your method is fine then. It might be helpful to manually add some white dots or parallel white lines in the black background (before scaling) to make sure you're not getting any vertical blurring in the 960x1080 version as phat suspected. Personally, I don't think you are losing any vertical resolution, and it just seems like it.
EDIT: Whoops. Is there an echo in here?
Well isn´t their scaler a complete different solution as opposed to the Sony solution? HDMI output / Analog Scaler. And we still had to wait a while before they patched 1080p
Oh, okay. That's perfect. Which game is it?
I'm pretty sure your method is fine then. It might be helpful to manually add some white dots or parallel white lines in the black background (before scaling) to make sure you're not getting any vertical blurring in the 960x1080 version as phat suspected. Personally, I don't think you are losing any vertical resolution, and it just seems like it.
EDIT: Whoops. Is there an echo in here?
It`s not a game , it`s an offline render. The model is shamlessly ripped from Dark Messiah though.
I tried the program with the bicubic filter phat suggested and the results were not much different.
I don`t think there is resolution lost in the scaling. The 960 has just bigger pixels to begin with, which is showing around edges.
The textures though are filtered in the render because I think games textures are filterered resolution independentl as well (correct me if I`m wrong).
I think he is. I tried scaling the 1920x1080 picture to 960x1080, then back up, and the difference in vertical resolution/detail compared to his 960x1080 image is huge.
960x1080 2.0 pixel aspect scaled
This is what that image would look like without any loss in vertical resolution. There is unfortunately what is effectively 2x horizontal AA added because I scaled down your image horizontally using a rectangular averaging window (the least processing I can do in ACDSee) before scaling it back up. My reference rectangles show that there is only loss of resolution horizontally.
This is my first time using image shack. Let me know if it's not working.
