Hmm...I was really thinking these past months, a lot of the graphically superior games on PS3 (Heavenly Sword, Killzone 2 and a bunch of others), seem to be in 720p. With the exception of Lair of course...however, it does have framerate hiccups. I was wondering if this is the choice of the developer to develop games in 720p for smoother framerates...for example (30fps or 60fps). From what I know, Killzone 2 runs at 30fps, which is not that surprising given the amount of objects and characters on screen. My question to the techies: is this 720p and 30fps for games like Killzone 2 the absolute best that u can squeeze out of the PS3's hardware or through improvements on dev kits and developer's knowledge on the PS3 that these set boundaries can overcome? My friend, who's a console supporter, claims that the absolute best the 360 and the PS3 can both render, is 720p and not the much talked about 1080p. Now not that I say he's wrong, but wasn't Sony really advertising 1080p? If PS3 can only upscale 720p to 1080p for games and cannot render native 1080p without upscaling, that is kind of disappointing.
Is Killzone 2 at 720p the best PS3 can handle?
- Thread starter Geoson
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Why? A games success shouldn't depend on some stupid marketing bullet point. Forcing developers to target a certain resolution will only make them scale back visual effects which in the end doesn't lead to improved visual quality, but it will give you the stupid marketing bullet point, so idiots can spam forums over some artificial perceived superiority.
Well, 1080p definetely looks sharper. I'm regretting having two 1080p screens in the house when most of my console gaming is going to be at 720p for the next few years. I really don't think 1080p it's a stupid marketing point, hopefully it will be the standard next generation though. 
If I had the choice between scaled back effects or higher resolution, personally I'd take the higher resolution.
If I had the choice between scaled back effects or higher resolution, personally I'd take the higher resolution.
AlphaWolf, I fully understand your point. But the thing is, computers can already output 1600p graphics, I know consoles are behind in the technology all this time and will for some years until full photorealism is achieved. However, PS3 is marketed to be able to do 1080p for games. Sony has said this before, and I think what they meant is doing it without compromises.
At 1080p there are more than two times as many pixels to fill, and thus the framebuffer takes up more than two times as much memory as well.
Let's take a game that uses up all the memory and all the fillrate of the RSX at 1080p. If this game would instead run in 720p only, it could use more textures (and in the case of KZ2 where the defered rendering requires a rather large G-buffer, this means tens of megabytes more). It could - if it's not CPU or vertex limited - run at 60fps instead of 30. Or it could use more particle effects, more rendering passes, and so on.
So in short, a game developer can always do better and faster graphics at 720p than at 1080p. Thus it's an obvious choice for most of them...
Let's take a game that uses up all the memory and all the fillrate of the RSX at 1080p. If this game would instead run in 720p only, it could use more textures (and in the case of KZ2 where the defered rendering requires a rather large G-buffer, this means tens of megabytes more). It could - if it's not CPU or vertex limited - run at 60fps instead of 30. Or it could use more particle effects, more rendering passes, and so on.
So in short, a game developer can always do better and faster graphics at 720p than at 1080p. Thus it's an obvious choice for most of them...
That is where you're obviously wrong; see my previous post as well. If your resources are limited, then using a higher resolution will require compromises. And consoles will always have limited resources.
No. Sony wanted to hit a marketing bullet point. There's always limitations of what you can do at a given resolution.
Fortunately developers are smart enough to know what makes their product look better. If a developer can make the game look the way they want at 1080p thats great, but other game developers may require certain other considerations, such as a higher frame rate, particle effects etc. and find their product will look better by downscaling the resolution to achieve those other goals. You can't hold every developer to a standard based on a marketing bullet point.
Just because you can render at a higher resolution, it doesn't mean that you should.
barring bandwidth issues:
1080p = 6.75*480p
NV2A fillrate = 0.932 GP/s
C1 or RSX fillrate = 4.0 GP/s = ~4.3*NV2A fillrate
If that's the case, then I would say "Did MS and Sony make a grave mistake!?"
Both consoles have a lower fillrate @1080p relative to the size of the final image that is on the original Xbox...that is not a good news to me at all...that translates as to why Killzone 2 is pretty much impossible to do, the level of detail, physics etc @1080p.
Thanks AlStrong, now I see how my friend says none of the next-gens are capable of rendering true 1080p.
ihamoitc2005
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ihamoitc2005
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1080P
Next gen consoles have no probelm with 1080P. Resolution choice is like frame-rate choice. We see many developers choose 30fps to have more effects with less difficulty and optimizing tricks. But with good optimizing and tricks maybe they can have same graphics with 60fps in version 2 of the engine. Same for resolution. Already some games are 1080P on next gen consoles and have great look. Some even have 1080P AND 60fps on Xbox360 and PS3.
So, 1080P no problem.
Next gen consoles have no probelm with 1080P. Resolution choice is like frame-rate choice. We see many developers choose 30fps to have more effects with less difficulty and optimizing tricks. But with good optimizing and tricks maybe they can have same graphics with 60fps in version 2 of the engine. Same for resolution. Already some games are 1080P on next gen consoles and have great look. Some even have 1080P AND 60fps on Xbox360 and PS3.
So, 1080P no problem.
First of all I'd strongly recommend the search function as the topic isn't exactly new, and most of the replies seems to be similar already.
Your friend is wrong BTW.
The absolute best both PS3 and 360 can render is at 600p. ;p
You see, higher resolution has it's disadvantages and advantages, but a claim like 360/PS3 cannot do native 1080p is a joke.
As ihamoitc2005 points out it is a choice like framerate.
Having seen both CoD4 and GT5P I'm not going to complain about either.
I heard a game developer can always do better and faster gfx at 480p at least as far as pixel shaders go.
I seriously don't know why people hate 480p. Today, for the first time, I tried Resistance in 480p and it looked and played great, admittedly left me somewhat disappointed as it didn't have better AA.
I still dream of a 480p-only game (possibly a plarformer) just to see what they can achieve.
Does that prove anything though?
I expect current-gen games to use fillrate bandwidth much more efficiently than the previous-gen ones.
Betanumerical
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I wouldn't judge a console on its (first gen?) games, even in the first gen we are seeing some graphically impressive 1080P games, SSD:HD and GT:5P are great examples. Both run at 60FPS.
Compromises will nearly always be made to achieve 1080P / 60FPS or a combination of both.
So in short no, both the 360 and PS3 can natively render and output games in 1080P.
Well, 1080p definetely looks sharper. I'm regretting having two 1080p screens in the house when most of my console gaming is going to be at 720p for the next few years. I really don't think 1080p it's a stupid marketing point, hopefully it will be the standard next generation though.
If I had the choice between scaled back effects or higher resolution, personally I'd take the higher resolution.
I guess it depends on the size of the TV what kind of resolution you prefer, but for me 720p is just right and I hope that when next gen arrives that they will not try to do 1080p the new standard but let the devs decide what suits them best. For me, higher poly counts, better AA and most of all better lighting/shadowing have higher priority than resolution.
-tkf- said:
Exactly...
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