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

[Gitaroo]

Damn that sucks, bet the 360 was native 720p right?

no, its 768p when you turn off Motion blur, however its not the best looking version

read

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-tekken6-resolution-game-blog-post

for full detail, PS3 576p with 2XMSAA off gets pick as the best IQ mode, even over the much higher res 768p on 360. Cuz it doesnt loose texture sharpness when you turn off MB. With MB on, the 360 version runs at the same res as PS3 however.

 

[COPS N RAPPERS]

It helps but it's hard to say how much beneficial the 2xaa is for ps3's build, considering how up-scaling is on ps3, in theory you mix that in with 2xaa and you actually get a very burly blend.

which is obviously why they sharpened the textures, but having seen over a dozen of these tekken 6 shots it seems like texture sharpening isn't going to aid very much in all aspects.

i still don't see how toggling motion blur would effect resolution or AA, mass effect1 on 360 had the option and didn't have to force any compromises. even mass effect2's is one again incorporating it. (hopefully as an option just as before)

if it was for FPS purposes than still, i think i would rather have 720p 2xaa 30fps with motion enabled. (having the fps as the only drawback for enabling mo-blur)

 

[assurdum]

It helps but it's hard to say how much beneficial the 2xaa is for ps3's build, considering how up-scaling is on ps3, in theory you mix that in with 2xaa and you actually get a very burly blend.

which is obviously why they sharpened the textures, but having seen over a dozen of these tekken 6 shots it seems like texture sharpening isn't going to aid very much in all aspects.

i still don't see how toggling motion blur would effect resolution or AA, mass effect1 on 360 had the option and didn't have to force any compromises. even mass effect2's is one again incorporating it. (hopefully as an option just as before)

if it was for FPS purposes than still, i think i would rather have 720p 2xaa 30fps with motion enabled. (having the fps as the only drawback for enabling mo-blur)

Nope, 576p at the end with 2xMSAA seem the best choice for the IQ ; on the 360 the 768p miss more details paradoxical. But you are right: me too prefer 720p 2xMSAA on the ps3 & 768p on 360 than this useless animation motion blur...

 

[SG79]

It helps but it's hard to say how much beneficial the 2xaa is for ps3's build, considering how up-scaling is on ps3, in theory you mix that in with 2xaa and you actually get a very burly blend.

which is obviously why they sharpened the textures, but having seen over a dozen of these tekken 6 shots it seems like texture sharpening isn't going to aid very much in all aspects.

i still don't see how toggling motion blur would effect resolution or AA, mass effect1 on 360 had the option and didn't have to force any compromises. even mass effect2's is one again incorporating it. (hopefully as an option just as before)

if it was for FPS purposes than still, i think i would rather have 720p 2xaa 30fps with motion enabled. (having the fps as the only drawback for enabling mo-blur)

Read over the DF feature and check out the screens. MSAA doesn't induce frame blur unlike QAA or temporal, and it's not like they increased the texture res. on the PS3. The filtering took a dip on the 360's blur-less mode.

Lastly, 30Hz for a fighting game is insanity defined. It's a genre that you'd need as precise controls as possible and 30Hz doesn't provide that. Not to mention that animations and the overall look won't be as smooth.

In fact, I believe there have been only 3 major fighters in history that had 30Hz and they were VF1, Tekken 1&2. Everything else, including 2D, has been 60Hz.

 

[Nesh]

Read over the DF feature and check out the screens. MSAA doesn't induce frame blur unlike QAA or temporal, and it's not like they increased the texture res. on the PS3. The filtering took a dip on the 360's blur-less mode.

Lastly, 30Hz for a fighting game is insanity defined. It's a genre that you'd need as precise controls as possible and 30Hz doesn't provide that. Not to mention that animations and the overall look won't be as smooth.

In fact, I believe there have been only 3 major fighters in history that had 30Hz and they were VF1, Tekken 1&2. Everything else, including 2D, has been 60Hz.

I think Tekken 2 was more than 30fps

 

[Dr. Nick]

When it comes to 3d fighting games 60fps is more important than resolution. Ask the fighting game community if they would tolerate a 30fps fighting game and watch whats happens. There is a reason why despite the possibility of creating a game that is graphically more appealing developers of most fighting games have decided to continue pursuing 60fps.

 

[Alucardx23]

no, its 768p when you turn off Motion blur, however its not the best looking version

read

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-tekken6-resolution-game-blog-post

for full detail, PS3 576p with 2XMSAA off gets pick as the best IQ mode, even over the much higher res 768p on 360. Cuz it doesnt loose texture sharpness when you turn off MB. With MB on, the 360 version runs at the same res as PS3 however.

I may be wrong but isn’t the PS3 the one that has the same texture filtering regardless of having motion blur on or off, the 360 with motion blur on and 576p has better texture filtering that the PS3 version, but losses that advantage when you turn off motion blur.

 

[Alucardx23]

When it comes to 3d fighting games 60fps is more important than resolution. Ask the fighting game community if they would tolerate a 30fps fighting game and watch whats happens. There is a reason why despite the possibility of creating a game that is graphically more appealing developers of most fighting games have decided to continue pursuing 60fps.

I totally agree, I play Soul Calibur 4, Tekken DR and Virtua Fighter 5, all of them running at 60fps, and I would not change in any way better graphics for slower framerate. Fighting games are all about precision, there are some moves that you only have 1 frame to connect and with a fighting game running at 30fps you would have less frames of animation to recognize that move. In a fighting game the more fluid you can make the image the better, that’s why I support variable motion blur on Tekken 6.

 

[2real4tv]

I am still not understanding how the 360 looks the same with a higher rez for tekken?

 

[Alucardx23]

I am still not understanding how the 360 looks the same with a higher rez for tekken?

Well it’s because it lacks the better texture filtering that the Motion Blur mode supports and because Namco does a weird thing, the image is rendered internally at 1365x768 but then its downscaled by software to 720P, and that makes the image more blurry. That’s the part that I don’t understand couldn’t Namco just let the 360 take the 1365x768 image and upscale that to 1080P?
They did the same thing with Soul Calibur 4.

SC4 Face-Off
For one thing, the game is running internally with a whopping great 40 per cent resolution increase on the Microsoft console, with a native framebuffer of 1365x960 versus the standard 1280x720 on the PlayStation 3. The Xbox 360 version also has an extra layer of lighting effects completely absent on the PS3 game - though the effect is rather subtle. They only manifest in the form of a touch of bloom and a good old-fashioned lens flare mostly apparent on the pre-fight animations.

So the Xbox 360 version is tangibly superior, right? Wrong. Well, it's not as superior as it could've been, that's for sure. Right after rendering Xbox's higher resolution image, Namco's coders then scale it back down again to 720p! Neither version has any anti-aliasing effects but the idea in using the Xbox 360's higher resolution is to downscale the larger image in order to smooth off edges and reduce 'jagginess'. In theory, this should produce a smoother-looking game for Xbox 360 owners - but as you can see from the video, you have to wonder if the effort was really worth it.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/xbox-360-vs-ps3-face-off-round-14-article?page=2

 

[Kasersky]

Namco does a weird thing, the image is rendered internally at 1365x768 but then its downscaled by software to 720P, and that makes the image more blurry. That’s the part that I don’t understand couldn’t Namco just let the 360 take the 1365x768 image and upscale that to 1080P?

actually it might, DF for some reason only did captures at 720p.

 

[SG79]

actually it might, DF for some reason only did captures at 720p.

It's actually the same situation as SCIV (double scale) when you output it at 1080p.

I may be wrong but isn’t the PS3 the one that has the same texture filtering regardless of having motion blur on or off, the 360 with motion blur on and 576p has better texture filtering that the PS3 version, but losses that advantage when you turn off motion blur.

Probably a poor choice of wording, because the two blur modes on the consoles look identical from those screens aside from the typical gamma output difference.

Either way, if you haven't seen the arcade version running, you'll definitely want to run it with the motion blur on.

 

[Alucardx23]

It's actually the same situation as SCIV (double scale) when you output it at 1080p.



Probably a poor choice of wording, because the two blur modes on the consoles look identical from those screens aside from the typical gamma output difference.

Either way, if you haven't seen the arcade version running, you'll definitely want to run it with the motion blur on.

My comments about the 360 texture filtering do not come from me looking at pictures and coming to that conclusion, they come from the digital foundry article, so you can see below that they don’t look identical with motion blur turned on.

"Removing the motion blur filter frees up a lot of resources, and Namco has chosen to deploy these in two different ways on each console. Xbox 360 gets an enormous resolution boost to 1365x768, while the PS3 gets 2x multi-sampling anti-aliasing. In terms of overall image quality across the two modes and two consoles, the PS3 gets the nod in "blur off" mode thanks to decent enough upscaling based on an anti-aliased image, while in default mode with the motion blur active, the 360's enhanced texture filtering gives clear image quality advantages. "

"Both configurations fit well inside the 10MB eDRAM. The 1024x576 is kind of a strange choice, as it's only around half the pixels of the 1365x768 and the cost of the blur filter comes nowhere close to the performance gained from the resolution decrease, and they are not eDRAM limited either. The resolution reduction itself is not something I consider strange, but a reduction this large means they have something else going on than just the motion blur. The better texture detail you are seeing could mean they have enabled anisotropic filtering for the lower resolution."

http://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry/

 

[liolio]

actually it might, DF for some reason only did captures at 720p.

I asked the same thing about Sc IV and got an answer .
The game is render @768p a lot of tv native resolution is 768p but that doesn't mean that they accept 768p signal as a valid entry.
The 360 output @720p no matter what, tv can only be fed @ 720p thus capture are likely to be @720p

 

[Alucardx23]

I asked the same thing about Sc IV and got an answer .
The game is render @768p a lot of tv native resolution is 768p but that doesn't mean that they accept 768p signal as a valid entry.
The 360 output @720p no matter what, tv can only be fed @ 720p thus capture are likely to be @720p

Yeah but why the double scale, I mean cant the upscaler take the 768p image and upscale it to 1080P or downscale to 720P? Wouldn’t that result in a better image quality?

 

[djskribbles]

I'm guessing the 360 only accepts 720p and/or 1080p input resolutions so the game must either output 720p or 1080p (via software scale) regardless of rendering resolution. So because 1366x768 is closer to 720p, and considering the fact that the 360 has a good scaler, making the game output to 720p then using the 360's scaler is probably the most ideal method. I'm not familiar with how the 360 scales at all, but that would be my guess.

 

[KyoDash]

In fact, I believe there have been only 3 major fighters in history that had 30Hz and they were VF1, Tekken 1&2. Everything else, including 2D, has been 60Hz

Virtua Vighter 1 is 30fps, as is Toshinden 1&2 on PSone, with 3 having an option to toggle between 30/60fps, but both Tekken 1&2 run at 60fps.

Back to Tekken 6. I'm not so sure why Namco have made the 'no blur mode' to render at 1020x576, considering Bloodline rebellion ran at 1024x768 with all the effects the final PS3 game has, minus the optional motion blur.

Maybe they are doing some extra processing with regards to individual geometry to achive the blur, which would take quite a lot more processing power when compared to a much simpler post process effect. This could explain why Namco are having trouble doing 1280x720 with blur, but not why they render in 1024x576 without blur on PS3.

It's all a little strange, and rather dissapointing. It's basically PAL Standard Definition only on PS3.

 

[SG79]

My comments about the 360 texture filtering do not come from me looking at pictures and coming to that conclusion, they come from the digital foundry article, so you can see below that they don’t look identical with motion blur turned on.

Well yeah, that's why I said poor choice of wording, and grandmaster likely referred to the blur mode having an advantage over the blur-less mode. I did say that the screens show nothing that would suggest better texture filtering on the 360 with motion blur on compared to the PS3 code.

Back to Tekken 6. I'm not so sure why Namco have made the 'no blur mode' to render at 1020x576, considering Bloodline rebellion ran at 1024x768 with all the effects the final PS3 game has, minus the optional motion blur.

Actually, the BR update has the motion blur but if the resolution is indeed as you say, perhaps the minor frame rate dips were remedied by lowering the resolution further. It happened while switching arenas basically.

It is technically a 2 year old game, so yeah, it's a little disappointing. It's not quite PAL SD if you count the extra 320 lines of vertical resolution The bigger anomaly is botching the extra resolution on the 360's standard mode.

Btw, what's your source on the arcade version's resolution?

 

[Alucardx23]

Well yeah, that's why I said poor choice of wording, and grandmaster likely referred to the blur mode having an advantage over the blur-less mode. I did say that the screens show nothing that would suggest better texture filtering on the 360 with motion blur on compared to the PS3 code.



Actually, the BR update has the motion blur but if the resolution is indeed as you say, perhaps the minor frame rate dips were remedied by lowering the resolution further. It happened while switching arenas basically.

It is technically a 2 year old game, so yeah, it's a little disappointing. It's not quite PAL SD if you count the extra 320 lines of vertical resolution The bigger anomaly is botching the extra resolution on the 360's standard mode.

Btw, what's your source on the arcade version's resolution?

Oh I’m sorry a though that when you said "Probably a poor choice of wording, because the two blur modes on the consoles look identical from those screens aside from the typical gamma output difference." you meant that the two blur modes on the consoles look identical. I’m just saying that the 360 version with motion blur on has better texture quality than the two modes on PS3, because when they are talking about better texture filtering they are only talking about the 360 version in comparison with the PS3 one, so that doesn’t make the two versions identical with motion blur on.

 

[grandmaster]

actually it might, DF for some reason only did captures at 720p.

Nope. DF only published captures at 720p. If there was anything worth talking about at 1080p it would have been covered.