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

Good captures of the PS3/360 version of Skyrim.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-skyrim-texture-problems-on-xbox-360

(Click on the images)

hmm... LOD issue on PS3 in shot 13. Lower draw distance by the looks of it. Shadow offset issue in shot 18 as well, which may explain why the shadows are missing in some scenes.

Shot 5... yikes. The lighting just looks completely screwed. Then in shot 6, it's the opposite with 360 textures looking more washed out though it's not quite lined up right, so I wonder if there's something funky going on with their tonemapping (if that's the issue).

Good enough for counting?
Looks like 720p.

hm.... shot 18 actually looks like an edge post-process on 360, not MSAA, which would explain why it seems no AA in a lot of places there (failed edge detection). Shot 27 is probably the best example of it.

I wonder if they switched from 4xAA (first trailer) to one of the FXAA profiles (less aggressive ED than PS3 version).Though I might have just been fooled by compression, plus sometimes FXAA produces rather MSAA-like gradients (2x or 4x), but of course, in motion is another thing entirely.

Weird how alpha items (e.g. foliage, misc paper-thin items, some snow decals, and the sort) don't get detected at all.

If this is FXAA then I really don't see the reason to use it over MLAA on PS3.

Given the extensive HDD caching and streaming, it's plausible they're doing quite a bit with decompression. Who knows how they've got the engine setup, but FXAA is just a post-process shader that doesn't cost extra memory. I've already discussed some reasoning earlier, but this is pretty off-topic.

From an image quality standpoint, FXAA does try to minimize edge contrast issues that MLAA doesn't, so it's not a 1:1 comparison (for choosing either). It does quite a job on the foliage too, albeit with rather aggressive ED it seems.
 
Yeah, it's worse than QAA IMO. If this is FXAA then I really don't see the reason to use it over MLAA on PS3.

FXAA on PC version looks great. Might be different precision and quality between implementations/versions.
 
If this is FXAA then I really don't see the reason to use it over MLAA on PS3.
The console FXAA preset blurs actually very little (unless you tune it to blur more). I have done lots of analysis on it, and you basically can't see difference in texture quality even at 2x zoom. If the texture has very high contrast edges, it will soften them, but in these screenshots everything is blurred. FXAA doesn't do that (unless you mess something up pretty badly, like do it in linear space instead of gamma, or use half pixel shifted texture coordinates).

It looks more like the textures are half res on PS3 version and there's no anisotropic filtering. Maybe it is also running on lower resolution and upscaled?
 
It looks more like the textures are half res on PS3 version and there's no anisotropic filtering. Maybe it is also running on lower resolution and upscaled?

It's definitely 720p (someone sent me some bitmap captures and found a good edge to look at :p).

Some of the environment textures do look lower res (like grass, some rocks). Shot 16 does seem to point to worse texture filtering by the bridge and by the rocks on the right side (one of those bad angles for filtering).

hmm.... :s
 
Ok, for someone paratrooping into this thread I just read about 3 pages where a couple posters were insisting the PS3 version looked better but the last 2 posts actually list a number of specific items that are in lower IQ. So are the previous posts all looking at ars quality pre-release footage or what is going on here? Wait for the DF article?
 
So Al, 360 version is definitely not 4xMSAA? It does look very sharp, not alot of jaggies, I think FXAA would soften IQ a bit, even in best case.
 
So are the previous posts all looking at ars quality pre-release footage or what is going on here? Wait for the DF article?

Well, the capture footage up until now has been plagued with compression galore, be it youtube or low bandwidth consumption for galleries. Combine that with motion artefacts and it's easy to not notice the difference in detail compared to something more drastic as the texture LOD bugs.

It really doesn't help when the sites do their own resizing, like the 800x450 "full size" images. I mean, you wouldn't compare blu ray to DVD in such a BS manner to show off the nitty gritty details. *shrug*


So Al, 360 version is definitely not 4xMSAA? It does look very sharp, not alot of jaggies, I think FXAA would soften IQ a bit, even in best case.
Yeah, it's definitely a post-AA, and given the use of FXAA on PC, it's hard to imagine it being anything other than the 360-optimized version of it - just a drop-in shader.

They can tweak for blur via edge detection quality, but I mean, the colour palette and lighting/shading isn't particularly noisy or high frequency, so I'm not surprised you don't see where the edge detection has failed. Plus, FXAA does a little something to reduce edge contrast IIRC.

I've had access to a bunch of uncompressed capture, so I can see the failed edges more clearly there, which mostly consist of the alpha textures or other transparency effects underlapping some object etc. The first person view of the sword tends not to get detected on the brighter edge (right side usually) as well though the darker side (left-side) usually does...

FXAA need not blur much. Have you seen Timothy Lottes comparisons with different settings?
 
So now i dont understand why PS3 implementation is different and more proper for 'console FXAA'.

And PC version of FXAA also blurs image quality and affects alphas like 'it should'.
 
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hello aistrong big fan of your work. so currently it's not known what type of aa the 360 and the ps3 version of skyrim uses? i dont know much of this but judging by these stills
360_010.jpg.jpg


PS3_010.jpg.jpg


the edge of the sword is much more jagged on the 360 than the ps3, but the ps3 version looks like it has that blur coat, strange indeed.
 
I have read this article they published at Eurogamer.... http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-skyrim-texture-problems-on-xbox-360

....and I won't install the game when I get it but I will probably install it to a USB device.

I am curious... has this option been tested enough when Eurogamer journalists say the game ignores the USB?

Some people are reporting that when you install Skyrim to a USB device the DVD disc stops spinning after a couple of minutes, which is the whole point -- avoiding the loudness of the DVD. This means that the USB device installation is working properly.

If the USB flash drive was ignored you couldn't play the game after removing the HDD.

In Gears of War 3 the disc keeps spinning for about 5 minutes even if you have installed the game...because it features the new format MS implemented in recent times. The fact that the game still uses the HDD when the USB is plugged in could be a matter of using the space reserved for Xbox 1 backwards compatibility if a HDD is detected.
 
the edge of the sword is much more jagged on the 360 than the ps3, but the ps3 version looks like it has that blur coat, strange indeed.

I have a couple posts above that discuss it, but it looks like the console specific versions of FXAA (they've been tailored for each GPU). It does seem like the PS3 version is using a more aggressive edge detection, hence a stronger blur whereas on 360 it's less aggressive, so prone to more failed ED just like the sword.
 
I have a couple posts above that discuss it, but it looks like the console specific versions of FXAA (they've been tailored for each GPU). It does seem like the PS3 version is using a more aggressive edge detection, hence a stronger blur whereas on 360 it's less aggressive, so prone to more failed ED just like the sword.

I'm kinda curious to know why exactly this choice on the ps3 over 360... maybe bethesda thought the bit higher resolution of texture on the ps3 was enough to don't notice the difference? Because in the previous screenshots the global effect it's really hideous, nothing so different to a sub hd upscaled res...
 
maybe bethesda thought the bit higher resolution of texture on the ps3 was enough to don't notice the difference?

Well, from what assets I have available now, I haven't seen evidence of the PS3 sporting higher resolution textures, bugs aside on either console.

It wouldn't make sense to cripple one platform intentionally anyway. Anyways, it might be a performance thing.

KKRT said:
it doesnt to have sense, especially when non bluring version from what i remember from Timothy Lottes' blog is cheaper.
Well, I wonder if it's just the early exit that is turned off (saves perf on RSX), which results in a lot more blurring. It's no secret how branching perf is on the G7x line. But it's not like the implementations (lately) are completely identical (to accommodate being ALU-bound on RSX etc).

The 360 may just have a more aggressive early exit, which ends up being faster and sharper at the expense of edge detection. Or it's that plus the other differences in the shader that are tailored for performance reasons first, not image quality.


I know that, but its strange that PS3 and PC FXAA are alike
*shrug* Similar, but not identical. Don't know what settings they chose.

It may just be a combination of the blur and actually lower resolution textures (here and there) for PS3. Comparing MSAA to FXAA on PC, the textures do get blurred, but nowhere near as much as what we see between the console implementations in the Eurogamer gallery (I have the bitmaps).

their Oblivion port was really outstanding.
Well, FWIW, Oblivion PS3 was handled by 4J Studios. [edit: clarified]
 
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