Image Quality and Framebuffer Speculations for WIP/alpha/beta/E3 games *Read the first post*

Graham said:
A lot of racing games used AtoC for car windows.
I find that a little hard to believe - and not only because I've never seen any title do this.
There's also no point - car windows are trivial to depth-sort, have minimal pixel-coverage and no overdraw issues, have no texture-details that need to be antialiased(unless they are cracked/broken), and dithered windows look f###-ugly (see PS1 generation where this was omnipresent).

But you got me curious - what title does this?
 
This is the best I can do, not having a way to grab HDMI. The PS3 version looks like it has bigger models, that's just because of how my TV scales. It zooms a little and crops a little, nothing i can do about it unfortunately.

From those pictures it "appears" that if the X360 is rendered at 720p and PS3 at 680p, that rather than just rendering the same scene at different resolutions, they just cropped it to 680p.

Anyone handy with photoshop want to take a 720p image and just crop it to 680p and see if you'd end up with that size discrepency?

Other than that. Wow the PS3 image looks horrible. Just look at the aliasing around the feet and arms. Those are by far the worse.

And if that is entirely due to X360 using component cable, then I'm never getting an X360 with HDMI. :p

My eyes are bleeding. :)

Regards,
SB
 
Component cable.
no. both were HDMI.

From those pictures it "appears" that if the X360 is rendered at 720p and PS3 at 680p, that rather than just rendering the same scene at different resolutions, they just cropped it to 680p.

Anyone handy with photoshop want to take a 720p image and just crop it to 680p and see if you'd end up with that size discrepency?

Other than that. Wow the PS3 image looks horrible. Just look at the aliasing around the feet and arms. Those are by far the worse.

And if that is entirely due to X360 using component cable, then I'm never getting an X360 with HDMI. :p

My eyes are bleeding. :)

Regards,
SB
The cropping was because that's how my TV scales 720p. It occurs even w/ my DirecTV DVR too. That's why I try to force 1080p whenever i can (as long as it doesn't hurt frame-rate). Unfortunately if you try to force 1080p in UFC 2009 it outputs 480p.

I had some posts on it before
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1198173&postcount=682
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1198180&postcount=684
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1198189&postcount=687

But yea. It does look like its either a lower res or that the AA isn't present (or both). The pics arent really pixel perfect as the fighters were moving. but i tried to choose a scene where their movement was minimized & turned up my ISO as far as i could.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I'm really interested to see what UFC runs at now. MazingerDUDE's shots suggest the PS3 version uses 4xMSAA (which is rare and unusual by itself for a PS3 game) but I would find it odd if they chose to go slightly sub-HD and yet use 4xMSAA instead of something lower and go full 720p.
 
I'm really interested to see what UFC runs at now. MazingerDUDE's shots suggest the PS3 version uses 4xMSAA (which is rare and unusual by itself for a PS3 game) but I would find it odd if they chose to go slightly sub-HD and yet use 4xMSAA instead of something lower and go full 720p.
During the fighter intros/announcement & during the announcing of the winner the PS3 version def looks better w/ more high-res textures & AA like in MazingerDUDE's screen-grabs (though it does incur a perceptible frame-rate hit). It's just during the actual fighting that it looks either at a lower res or aliased (the frame rate for fighting gameplay is also smooth). I suspect it uses 2 diff setups for each.
 
During the fighter intros/announcement & during the announcing of the winner the PS3 version def looks better w/ more high-res textures & AA like in MazingerDUDE's screen-grabs (though it does incur a perceptible frame-rate hit). It's just during the actual fighting that it looks either at a lower res or aliased (the frame rate for fighting gameplay is also smooth). I suspect it uses 2 diff setups for each.

I disagree. It looks the same at all times.
 
I really couldnt notice aliasing issues on my screen (PS3 version). I am surprised by the image quality thambos posted.
 
I really couldnt notice aliasing issues on my screen (PS3 version). I am surprised by the image quality thambos posted.

Yeah, it looks nothing like that on my screen either. Very clean image, hard to see any jaggies until really up close (<1 inch).
 
During the fighter intros/announcement & during the announcing of the winner the PS3 version def looks better w/ more high-res textures & AA like in MazingerDUDE's screen-grabs (though it does incur a perceptible frame-rate hit). It's just during the actual fighting that it looks either at a lower res or aliased (the frame rate for fighting gameplay is also smooth). I suspect it uses 2 diff setups for each.

Just played. The textures are exactly the same ingame than intro. But true, the fighter when moving are a little bit aliased (very hard to notice however), maybe decrease AA method ingame but for the rest I haven't noticed nothing personally.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I disagree. It looks the same at all times.
Your post made me further suspect the HANA scaler. So i decided to give it one more go. I made sure both the HDMI inputs had the same contrast, color saturation, sharpness, color balance, & brightness. Then I went into the 360's menu and changed it to 720p output. The results did look a little worse, but there's still a difference from what i can see. Another interesting thing i noticed when taking these shots is that in the 360 version the guy on his knees is casting a shadow on the guy on his back; which isn't in the PS3 version. In MazingerDUDE's screen-caps his glove has lighting on the bottom of his glove in 360 but not in PS3. If anything can be drawn between those.

360 720p output PS3

this is a HANA scaled 1080p for comparison

Here's a comparison of the fighter intro and gameplay. I can see the AA in the intro but not during gameplay. Sorry some have a little blur, max ISO on my digicam is 400 & they were moving around quite a bit. I held block down to try to get it as still as i could though. note: these had the 360s HANA scaler outputting 1080p.

stats 360 PS3

intro 360 PS3

blocking 360 PS3

Anyway, it will be interesting to see some real lossless frame-grabs to compare my TV to. I'm starting to think i should invest in a clearance 720p plasma to play on, if the 720p graphics are really getting borked bad by my gallevia's genesis scaler.
 
Another interesting thing i noticed when taking these shots is that in the 360 version the guy on his knees is casting a shadow on the guy on his back; which isn't in the PS3 version.

Maybe they forgot to put that in or its not in the demo?Anyway, I don't think it stands out as much as the all around better shadows on PS3. As for jaggies it looks smooth to me but I also sit at the recommended 8 feet from the tv.
 
I find that a little hard to believe - and not only because I've never seen any title do this.
There's also no point - car windows are trivial to depth-sort, have minimal pixel-coverage and no overdraw issues, have no texture-details that need to be antialiased(unless they are cracked/broken), and dithered windows look f###-ugly (see PS1 generation where this was omnipresent).

But you got me curious - what title does this?

Ok I probably shouldn't have used 'a lot' maybe 'one or two' :mrgreen: It just (to me) seems a very cheap, effective way to deal with car windows and other transparent objects that aren't temporary and may mix with other transparent effects (eg, smoke), which often have to otherwise be sorted with all other transparent drawing.
I'm think PGR4 does this on external views.
Also, You won't get dithering with a well chosen constant alpha.

Btw, ETQW also used alpha-to-coverage for the LoD transitions which meant the artefact wasn't in-your-face while still alleviating the popping.

I forgot about that :) It's one of those techniques that has some very odd-ball uses :yes:
 
Back
Top