Image Quality and Framebuffer Analysis for Available/release build Games *Read the first post*

It wasn't better to use 1152x640p at this point? I'm pretty sure the gap was less evident with more proportional distribution of the pixels....

 

In my opinion vertical only scanning usually looks superior. In the case of Reach, it's nearly unnoticeable without pixel counting.

 

The hardware handling the upscale would have been free though. With 640p, they'd have to software upscale.

 

I don't think they are using the hardware scaler in PS3. IIRC the hardware scaler only scales the horisontal resolution and the game must be rendering in on of the follwing resolutions: 960x1080, 1280x1080, 1440x1080 or 1600x1080.

I think they are using software scaling if rendering 1024x720

 

Right, Sony only exposes the horizontal scaling feature, but they can also add to the list of acceptable input resolutions. The pixel height shouldn't matter except that the only expected outputs from the console are 480i/p, 576i/p, 720p, 1080i/p. The 1080 resolutions were a quick fix for 1080i televisions, but at some point Sony could have added more resolution support.

Anyways, was just a theory because they ought to overlay the HUD last should they choose to bite the bullet with memory and software scale.

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As an aside, you'll note that the above widths have "simple" scaling factors to hit 1920.

960 -> 2
1280 -> 3/2
1440 -> 4/3
1600 -> 5/4

Similarly, 1024 requires 5/4 scaling to hit 1280.

 

In order to use the hw scaler the game must render 1080 lines. They render in 1024x720 so I believe they sw upscale to 1280x720 for 720p output.

EDIT: B3D article about PS3 HW scaler: http://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/16/

 

There's nothing in that which says that RSX is incapable of horizontal scaling of other resolutions. Only that as of the time of that article (2007) that Sony had only exposed/supported horizontal upscaling to 1920 horizontal resolution.

Nothing prevents Sony exposing/supporting horizontal scaling of <1280 horizontal resolution to 1280 horizontal resolution. In fact, as AlStrong noted it's quite interesting that Crysis 2 would only need a 5/4 horizontal upscale similar to one of the standard 1080p horizontal scaling options.

Perhaps that's one of the reasons that Crytek went for 1024 for PS3 rather than using the same horizontal resolution as the X360 version. Free upscaling.

[EDIT] - bolded bits have to fixed to be more accurate.

Regards,
SB

 

Yep, the basic point is the control serves little to no purpose in the digital era. A good test pattern for sharpness will allow you to see the impact of the control. No number or particular percentage is right all the time...you'd have to set it properly yourself. Also be careful of the control being just placebo if you can't make heads or tails over whether you're seeing extra lines being added. And now you can critique games again.

 

Fix'D

 

Probably I understood what going on here... well it's just my presumption, by the way I thought the most blurried it's caused to 1080p upscaling of 1024x720p, I have seen something of that in GTA IV on the ps3 or in a lot of different games; 1024x720p upscaled to 720p it's pretty bizzare to be so blurried, but in 1080p (how standard setting or forced the 1080 deselecting 720p, I don't know how works in crysis 2 ) is really more probable.

 

I think you're mixing up horisontal lines with horisontal resolution.

The article mentions 4 different rendering resolutions only for use with the HW scaler:

960x1080 = 1080 horisontal lines with a horisontal res of 960 pixels per line
1280x1080 = 1080 horisontal lines with a horisontal res of 1280 pixels per line
1440x1080 = 1080 horisontal lines with a horisontal res of 1440 pixels per line
1600x1080 = 1080 horisontal lines with a horisontal res of 1600 pixels per line

(these are upscaled to 1920x1080 with the HW scaler according to the article)

So if you're rendering at 1024x720 you cannot use the HW scaler. If you could use other resolutions than mentioned above to upscale to 1920x1080 "for free" as you say then there would be 1080 i/1080p support in every game but there isn't.

 

Are you sure? I have readen not so much time ago, 1024 res give free upscaling on the RSX, without cost & better result than a software solution...

 

Yeah it should be horizontal resolution not lines in that one line. You'll notice I mention horizontal resolution in the other areas. Fixing my post now.

And again there is nothing preventing the horizontal scaling at less than 1080 vertical resolution. You are reading far too much into the limitations that existed back in 2007 due to an immature implementation of scaling on RSX.

Nowhere did I mention hardware scaling of verticle resolution, except in my typos. But there is nothing to prevent scaling from 1024x720 to 1280x720 just like you can with 1600x1080 to 1920x1080 (both 5/4 upscales for horizontal resolution). Well other than software limitations or lack of exposure by Sony. Which again, since 2007, there's nothing to prevent Sony from enabling horizontal scaling for 720p as it would then help multiplatform developers to maintain platform parity.

Regards,
SB

 

You misunderstand. We're not talking about vertically upscaling 720 to 1080 at all, just simply horizontally upscaling 1024x720 to 1280x720. All that matters is feeding the scaler the proper (i.e. exposed by sony) horizontal resolution.

In other words, there's nothing stopping Sony from introducing (for example) the following resolutions: 640x720, 960x720, 1024x720, so that devs can still render to 720p and use the hardware scaler to output 1280x720.

 

I think you misunderstand what I mean. I'm not argumenting whether it is possible or not with horizontal scaling with RSX at the resolutions you mention. What I'm saying is Sony is only allowing 960x1080, 1280x1080, 1440x1080 or 1600x1080 in order to use hardware horizontal scaling with RSX to 1920x1080 according to that article in B3D. What the exact reason for that is, you'd have to ask Sony.

 

2007 was a long time ago... The 1080 exposure was just a quick fix. Again, nothing is stopping them from adding more to the SDK. I feel like we're going in circles here because you don't believe Sony has changed a thing in four years on this particular point.

I'm trying to keep an open mind here about what we're seeing with the scaled HUD in C2. Why bother doing a software scale after you've applied the hud when you can do a perfect 1:1 overlay after you've scaled the front buffer? It's a small difference in ordering that ultimately doesn't mean much from performance or memory other than blurring the HUD into the final frame.

Sending a 1024x720 front buffer (obviously including the hud) for GPU scaling means they don't waste extra cycles or memory, and that would easily explain why the HUD is scaled.

 

Can anyone here comment on the IQ of the recently released Tomb Raider Trilogy on the PS3? I'd love to have a proper HD version of TR Anniversary on consoles, and the 360 port was a huge disappointment in that regard. (still the 600p-ish res that all the other TR games on the 360 have despite the very modest visuals. It didn't even run particularly well)

 

Should be 720p without doubts... would be pretty bizzare if it isn't.

 

I'm not so optimistic to be honest (having played the horribly messed up HD remake of the first Prince of Persia game certainly didn't help). I guess I'll just have to take the plunge and buy it today.

 

The review on eurogamer seem pretty positive...