Halo 3 IQ discussion * - Stay civil and polite folks!

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palamede

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Hi guys,
I hope this topic is not in the wrong forum.
However, for those of you that have tried Halo3, I have a few questions : is the game using bump/normal/parallax mapping on rock textures (especially in the first level) ? They look kind of flat, but I once noticed there seems to be some when the light is skimming those rocks (it looked awesome).
Also, do the smoke+hdr effects tax the system a lot ? They look outstanding when riding the warthog through caves (tsavo highway).
Thanks for your answers.
 
NRP said:
Ok. This is just a load of crap. I see this type of post all the time about how Halo 3's graphics are a disappointment - almost always by people who seem to have a strong opinion on the issue but haven't played the game. PLAY THE GAME! The graphics are outstanding
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Played the game. Just finished the campaign actually.

I can't recall any moment where I stood back and said "Wow". Now, I'm playing on my 20" LCD so there's little escape to hide the jaggies, but the only surprise I encounted throughout the campaign was how poor it looked.

- Significant aliasing.
- Bi-linear filtering in many levels. Very muddy textures overall, it really is a throwback in this aspect.
- Very, very dated character models/faces. They look like upgraded Halo2, not next gen. Still low-res normal maps - cripes the humans faces really are barely improved.
- Lack of motion blur, which could have helped the framerate appear smoother. When you have to turn very quickly and hit small targets over a wide area, the jerkiness inherent to 30fps is very apparent - not nearly as much in Gears for example.

The HDR is nice, but again it's certainly not a new graphical effect, Bungie just went nuts in some scenes when you're coming from a dark area into a bright one and really jacked it up for a moment. Looks good, but the rest of the artifacts just detract from the overall aesthetic.

So, to sum up: Doesn't hold a candle to GoW/Bioshock in the graphics department IMO. Heck, I would go so far as to say the single-player campaign isn't even as enjoyable as GoW, and certainly not Bioshock.

I'd actually have to with ARS on this one. For single player, I'd give it around a 7-8.
 
Hardknock said:
halo3.jpg


I'm sorry but it's almost borderline insane to say this is only a slight upgrade from Halo 2.

These are all in-game screenshots btw.
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Uh, no they're not. They're downsampled super-high res development shots which would be Halo3 if it ran at 1900x1200 with 32aa, full anisotropic filtering, and no colour banding or low-res normal maps in evidence.

In other words...with all of the current negatives about Halo3's appearance removed, it looks amazing! :rolleyes:

Halo3 simply does not look anywhere NEAR that good. The very fact you have to go to bullshots to indicate how "good" it looks speaks for itself.
 
Dave Glue said:
Uh, no they're not. They're downsampled super-high res development shots which would be Halo3 if it ran at 1900x1200 with 32aa, full anisotropic filtering, and no colour banding or low-res normal maps in evidence.

In other words...with all of the current negatives about Halo3's appearance removed, it looks amazing! :rolleyes:

Halo3 simply does not look anywhere NEAR that good. The very fact you have to go to bullshots to indicate how "good" it looks speaks for itself.
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Uhhh all that was added was AA.
 
Dave Glue said:
Halo3 simply does not look anywhere NEAR that good. The very fact you have to go to bullshots to indicate how "good" it looks speaks for itself.
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it does look that good in motion on an HDTV (sans some aliasing)

the lighting, art, colors, shadows, textures, geometry, scale, AI, effects are ALL there and in motion while focusing on the 50" TV look amazing together.
 
xekrn said:
Dude lay down the crack pipe. They ARE in-game shots taken from the theater mode which is totally running in realtime.
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...and which adds post-processing when the screen shot is taken.

Screenshots should be screenshots. If they looked great as-is, why the need to downsample them or add AA?
 
Dave Glue said:
Perhaps - it could be a result of downsampling, but I was playing around with the screenshot function and I noticed the mip-map barrier was longer in the screenshot, almost like it had anisoptropic filtering. Tried it a few times, definite difference.
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Bungie themselves have said it adds nothing more than AA. What more do you want?

Dave Glue said:
...and which adds post-processing when the screen shot is taken.

Screenshots should be screenshots. If they looked great as-is, why the need to downsample them or add AA?
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Ugh. Why not? We've posted several shots off peoples TV but you're not happy with those either. I can't believe you're making such a huge issue about added AA. Ridiculous.
 
Dave Glue said:
...and which adds post-processing when the screen shot is taken.

Screenshots should be screenshots. If they looked great as-is, why the need to downsample them or add AA?
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The only post-processing effect added by the theater mode mechanism on these shots is AA and yes I admit Halo3 lacks some AA in several situations.

But you know what, what you said before is these shots are development shots, which is totally bullcrap.
 
RobertR1 said:
Is there more AA in those shots? absolutely but the rest of the games still looks like that. As for the off screen shots, well, they are how you'd see them on that TV. I also find that my 50inch plasma does a better job of hidding "jaggies" than my Dell 24inch widescreen monitor. What the reasons are? i have no clue.
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Because it's blurring the image. It doesn't have near the sharpness of your Dell display, there will be some colour bleeding which can help to hide jaggies. Same reason why a 640x480 game will look better on a 36" SDTV as compared to a 19" LCD.

Seeing it on an LCD monitor is going to give the most accurate representation of the image, at least in terms of resolution.

As I'm playing on a 20" LCD monitor 2 feet from it, that's perhaps why I'm more critical of the aliasing/lack of anisotropic filtering than some here.

It's not as if the difference between these shots and in-game is like going from 2xaa to 4xaa for pete's sake people - you're taking a downsampled shot with pixel-perfect AA (even 16XX on a Geforce 8800 doesn't look that perfect), reducing the screenshot size further, and of course viewing it on a high-res PC monitor who's native res is likely well above 1280x720 (like mine, 1680x1050).

Going from...no AA, and bilinear filtering. That's a huge jump in quality, for any game on any platform. It's especially true in Halo3, since there are a lot of wide open vistas with buildings that jut out at odd angles, the lack of AA isn't nearly as noticeable in a game like BioShock for example.

Here's a screenshot with no AA or post-processing, unfortuantely it was 1024x574 (?) for a web page, but this is far closer to the image I see (only worse as it's stretched to fill the screen) than the shots posted.

 
xekrn said:
But you know what, what you said before is these shots are development shots, which is totally bullcrap.
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Please explain to me what exactly do you think development shots are? All they are is the game being rendered on the development PC in extremely high res then downsampled most of the time.

In effect, the shots posted so far are indeed "development box" shots- they're not "real time", because that's not what the game looks like when you're playing it. I've zoomed in those shots - there is not a jaggy _anywhere_. It's not "just AA" - it's anti-aliasing at a level a $500 graphics card couldn't hope to do.

Again though, with the screenshot function I've noticed the texture filter is superior. It could just be an aspect of the screenshot function downsampling from a higher res than adding AA, and as such the mip-filter gets moved back a bit, who knows. But both filtering and jaggies are improved (massively) with the screenshot as opposed to gameplay.
 
22psi said:
Adding AA to photomode is no different than many other games that have photomode.
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Which would be fine if there was a clear distinction between "photomode" and "screenshot". As evidenced by this thread, people obviously disagree with the level of distinction. :)

People weren't exactly fine with photomode once they found out those promotion shots for PGR3 were all photomode, and the actual gameplay looked decidedly inferior.
 
Tap In said:
it is godly in any mode and I'd wager on any Hidef display.
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Uh, this _is_ a high res display - higher than yours actually. It's what I play all my 360 and PC games on, so it's not like Halo3 is getting an uneven playing field. It's a brand new Samsung 20" LCD, which actually has fantastic colour reproduction and is crystal clear, best monitor I've ever owned. Far sharper display than your average LCD TV, and certainly plasma.

I've certainly seen consoles on large TV's in stores (and yes, they were set at 720p). On a plasma the aliasing could be hidden perhaps, but I'd be very surprised on a 30+" TV, as aliasing in next-gen titles without AA is very apparent to me.

My PC roots probably has something to do with this as well, AA and aniso are old hat there and you're just not used to the ground turning to mush 2 feet in front of you. Other games can get away with it, it's the nature of Halo3's art direction though that makes it really pop out at me.
 
Halo 3 has normal mapping on rocks and surfaces and HDR (great hdr at that ) but the game really suffers from blinear texturing and bad aliasing , its pushing alot of shaders and effects but its abit too much for the 360 to push all these effects at once, hence the lack of AA
 
These posts are originally from the Big Halo3 thread. Mind you there's some missing context, so don't start to pick apart every single post in here, ok?

Moreover, I want everyone posting in here on their best behaviour. If you feel you're getting heated up, don't hit the post button in here.

Be polite and civil, try to go beyond the usual one-liners and flesh out your responses to minimize misunderstandings, etc.

P.S. Sorry for hijacking your thread Geoson, but it kind of fits together.
 
Dave Glue said:
- Lack of motion blur, which could have helped the framerate appear smoother. When you have to turn very quickly and hit small targets over a wide area, the jerkiness inherent to 30fps is very apparent - not nearly as much in Gears for example.
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I'd just like to point out that there is in fact plenty of motion blur in Halo 3, and aliasing is really no worse than with Bioshock.

Are you using component cables with that LCD? If so, try VGA.
 
I just wanted to add - to all the people who said it is Halo 2 in HD: buy a new telly, new glasses or hook your set up the way it's supposed to be...

It looks amazing (HD projector @ ~120").
 
Halo 3 looks good, it just :

1. Does'nt look as good as what bungie said it would.
2. Does'nt show off 360's muscle.
3. Gets hammered by Bio Shock and Gears.

Its a over average game with average graphics. And thats very bad considering its susposed to be 360's FLAG SHIP title.
 
almighty said:
Halo 3 looks good, it just :

1. Does'nt look as good as what bungie said it would.
2. Does'nt show off 360's muscle.
3. Gets hammered by Bio Shock and Gears.

Its a over average game with average graphics. And thats very bad considering its susposed to be 360's FLAG SHIP title.
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wow, I thought I was alone on this!!

I think (as stated earlier) the ars review is spot on - I think bungie concentrated too much on the online aspect, which is great for the MINORITY of gamers.
 
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