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

[Betanumerical]

Actually I thought it was 1080p with 0xAA. But now I am not sure. It does look pretty sharp though. And ya there is a dithering effect on the transparency like the hair. It's not too bad when playing at 1080p though.

Hopefully this is not present in the finished game. Other then that it looks stunning.

 

[ultragpu]

I'm playing FF13 demo now.

Actually I thought it was 1080p with 0xAA. But now I am not sure. It does look pretty sharp though. And ya there is a dithering effect on the transparency like the hair. It's not too bad when playing at 1080p though.

Nice, I heard you can control the camera while in battle, does it feel enjoyable to you? Also does the demo switch to 1080 automatically? How does 720p compares if you haven't tried yet? Sorry bout all the questions.

 

[homerdog]

mmm... it seems noticeable only on their hair.

I've seen that same dithering pattern on transparencies in other games. Fallout 3 comes to mind. Even the screenshots of The Hunter on PC show it on the foliage.

 

[PeterT]

There are tons of screengrabs up on gamersyde now.
So, between the interlacing-like hair (or all alphablended textures?) artifacts and the surprisingly high quality of the edge AA can anyone tell what they're actually doing?

 

[inefficient]

Nice, I heard you can control the camera while in battle, does it feel enjoyable to you? Also does the demo switch to 1080 automatically? How does 720p compares if you haven't tried yet? Sorry bout all the questions.

You don't control the camera in battle mode. Or at least I didn't see any option or reason to. There is not enough "game" in the demo to say much about it. The monsters in the demo don't present much of a challenge or require any strategy to beat.

I've tried 1080p and 720p modes now. By default the game will play at 1080p since all the cinematics are 1080p native. But you can also force it to play at 720p. I took some off screen photos and compared. 1080p and 720p look identical. So it must be rendered at 720p and then upscalled to 1080p.

Looks like 4xAA. Though honestly, I could give up some AA if I could get a more solid frame rate though. It noticeable drops frames in parts. Though vsync is on so there is no tearing.

 

[ZeroRay]

The director mentioned that the demo has frame drops and promised that it would be eliminated in the final version. What I'm wondering is if there is an install for the demo as there was when the RE5 demo disc came out in japan.

From what I've seen, the game is one of the cleanest looking games on PS3. I'm thinking 1280 x 720 4xaa or it might even be using a 1080 buffer with AA.

 

[inefficient]

The director mentioned that the demo has frame drops and promised that it would be eliminated in the final version. What I'm wondering is if there is an install for the demo as there was when the RE5 demo disc came out in japan.

From what I've seen, the game is one of the cleanest looking games on PS3. I'm thinking 1280 x 720 4xaa or it might even be using a 1080 buffer with AA.

No install.

And ya it is very clean and sharp looking. Especially compared to 720p 2xQAA games like RE4 and KZ2.

 

[ZeroRay]

So superb image quality, fast load times and it's all streamed from the disk. The Crystal Tools engine might surpass Capcom's MT Framework if the 360 version of the game holds up well.

 

[ultragpu]

You don't control the camera in battle mode. Or at least I didn't see any option or reason to. There is not enough "game" in the demo to say much about it. The monsters in the demo don't present much of a challenge or require any strategy to beat.

I've tried 1080p and 720p modes now. By default the game will play at 1080p since all the cinematics are 1080p native. But you can also force it to play at 720p. I took some off screen photos and compared. 1080p and 720p look identical. So it must be rendered at 720p and then upscalled to 1080p.

Looks like 4xAA. Though honestly, I could give up some AA if I could get a more solid frame rate though. It noticeable drops frames in parts. Though vsync is on so there is no tearing.

Thanks inefficient, looks like I'll be enjoy it with 1080p then since my TV is native at that, well..in about a year sadly.

 

[joker454]

Those shots are weird. It's almost as though there are interlacing artifacts present.

It looks like they are using 'alpha to coverage' instead of 'alpha blend' on the hair. Alpha to coverage is faster than alpha blend and you don't have to worry about sorting, but it has some artifacts. More msaa helps minimize the artifacts. They are easy to spot when looking at pics on a pc monitor from close up, but from 10 feet away on a tv the artifacts can be acceptable depending on the game.

 

[catisfit]

From the descriptions it sounds like a2c (at least I've heard a2c described as dithering/interlacing before). Memory is hazy but I recall a2c in BF:BC, GTA4, Sega Rally, among others.

 

[Gradthrawn]

Nice, I heard you can control the camera while in battle, does it feel enjoyable to you?

You don't control the camera in battle mode. Or at least I didn't see any option or reason to.

Just checked, you can control the camera in battle with the Right Stick. But like inefficient said, probably won't need to, default angles are good enough IMO. It is cool to pan it to zoom in for closer angles sometimes, though.

 

[ultragpu]

Just checked, you can control the camera in battle with the Right Stick. But like inefficient said, probably won't need to, default angles are good enough IMO. It is cool to pan it to zoom in for closer angles sometimes, though.

That's a nice addition to me actually, since I'm one of those who likes to pan around and check every angles out.

 

[2real4tv]

Madden 2010, are these upscaled(1920x1080)?

http://xbox360.ign.com/dor/objects/14270629/madden-nfl-10/images/madden-nfl-10-20090420030045379.html?page=mediaFull

 

[grandmaster]

Looks like a fairly obvious 720p -> 1080p upscale to me.

 

[Graham]

It looks like they are using 'alpha to coverage' instead of 'alpha blend' on the hair. Alpha to coverage is faster than alpha blend and you don't have to worry about sorting, but it has some artifacts. More msaa helps minimize the artifacts. They are easy to spot when looking at pics on a pc monitor from close up, but from 10 feet away on a tv the artifacts can be acceptable depending on the game.

That would be my guess. The jpg compression in those screen shots makes it difficult to tell, but I'd say it's 2xAA scaled down from a higher resolution.

For those interested:

Alpha to coverage works by hijacking MSAA. When using alpha blending, the alpha value output by the shader is used to control the blend operation. However with alpha to coverage enabled*, the alpha value is used as a threshold value to specify how many MSAA samples to fill. So, for example, with 4xAA, an alpha value of 0.5 may only fill 2 of the 4 samples. 0.25 may only fill 1, etc.
However, this isn't all - most video cards apply a dither to the threshold, so you get adjacent pixels using slightly differing thresholds. This produces the ugly noise effect. DX 10.1 apparently lets you customize this pattern (see humus' post here).

The other point, most video cards perform some form of gamma corrected MSAA resolve, so while you may only be filling 2 of the 4 samples, the end result may not appear as exactly 50% due to the approximate gamma curve applied (this is the curve I once worked out is used by an 8800 for mssa - you can see it's a 4 part linear approximation).

The advantage is you get fake transparency through MSAA resolve, and retain depth testing per msaa sample. The disadvantage is that in the worst case scenario, for a single 2x2 pixel quad, assuming no overdraw, potentially (for 4x msaa) 64 pixels can be processed.
When you use Alpha to coverage, you have to be very careful to keep your alpha high contrast, otherwise performance can tank. Basically, you can get worse-than-supersampling performance from alpha to coverage if you do it wrong.

AtoC is also used for foliage a lot. A lot of racing games used AtoC for car windows. 50% transparent without blending. Etc.

*On some cards you can have both alpha to coverage and alpha blending enabled at the same time.

 

[AlNom]

Great explanation, Graham

 

[Richard]

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.

 

[homerdog]

Graham, thanks for the explanation! Would anyone happen to know what Far Cry 2 is using on the foliage (alpha blend, AtoC)? Because it doesn't look very jaggy at all, at least on the PC version.

 

[MazingerDUDE]

these shots are from the newly released UFC 2009 demo,

http://www3.telus.net/public/dhwag/UFC_PS3.jpg

http://www3.telus.net/public/dhwag/UFC_360.jpg

can anyone tell me what AA method the 360 version is incorporating?