More info about RSX from NVIDIA

[KimB]

cool thanks . Sounds a little ati's temporal fsaa

No, not really.

Just thing about it this way: if you simply render a larger screen and downsample, the sample positions will always be in an ordered grid. If you instead set up your framebuffer just as you would with multisampling (pixels with subsamples located at arbitrary positions), you can move those samples around and get a better final result.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

So they're not inbetween frames, but the same frame displaced a little to left/right, and up/down? Uniformly? If not it sounds rather like MSAA, taking samples from irregular positions).

 

[KimB]

Well, that's the way the V5 does it, but it's not the most efficient way. Much more efficient is to treat it like a higher-resolution buffer (like today's cards do under MSAA), and just recalculate the color at each sample position.

But, in the end, it's still supersampling, and though going for something other than ordered-grid still won't make it efficient performance-wise. You'll still get a better-looking result at the same performance by going for MSAA in addition to other methods for taking care of texture aliasing.

 

[Tap In]

The question then is simple . Is the ps3 powerfull enough to out put at 1080p with hdr and produce the same lvl of graphics that the xbox can put out at 720 p ?

anyone?

 

[c0_re]

The question then is simple . Is the ps3 powerfull enough to out put at 1080p with hdr and produce the same lvl of graphics that the xbox can put out at 720 p ?

What would be the point of gearing your game towards 1080p when less than 1% of the population has a 1080p TV, thats the question you need to be asking.

Development costs are the most important thign to keep in mind when concidering what the target resolution will be.

I'm not saying you won't see games in 1080p but they will be upscaled from 720p ala GT4 1080i. Programming for 1080p is a waste of time, money and bandwidth.

 

[London Geezer]

The question then is simple . Is the ps3 powerfull enough to out put at 1080p with hdr and produce the same lvl of graphics that the xbox can put out at 720 p ?

anyone?

If it can do 720p with 4xAA, then it should be fione with 1080p with no AA.
Besides, if AA can't be enabled with HDR, they'll only be able to enable HDR with 1080P, so they sort of get AA when scaling down to 720p.

So, in the end it's either 720p with AA but no HDR (or with HDR but no AA), or 1080p with HDR and a sort of AA when displayed at 720p, but no AA when displayed at 1080p.

 

[mckmas8808]

So, in the end it's either 720p with AA but no HDR (or with HDR but no AA), or 1080p with HDR and a sort of AA when displayed at 720p, but no AA when displayed at 1080p.

Aarrgghh. To-many-choices. Boom *head explodes*

 

[London Geezer]

So, in the end it's either 720p with AA but no HDR (or with HDR but no AA), or 1080p with HDR and a sort of AA when displayed at 720p, but no AA when displayed at 1080p.

Aarrgghh. To-many-choices. Boom *head explodes*

Not really.

In the end (and this is assuming that HDR and AA still won't work together on RSX, which could change), it all depends on what TV you have.

If you have a 720p, it would be preferred to have PS3 games internally rendered at 1080p with HDR, so that you get free AA when scaling down to 720p. If it's interlally rendered at 720p, it's either AA or HDR.

If you have a 1080p, it's very unlikely that AA will be enabled at all, HDR or not.

Or maybe NVIDIA will find a way to enable HDR and AA simultaneously and everyone will be happy.

 

[KimB]

I don't think we'll know what the resolutions will be until the console is released. It's possible that developers will not push above 480p resolutions, for instance. It all depends upon how long the typical pixel shaders end up being (though, in truth I would expect 720p, at least, to be standard, as the RSX should be capable of that with shaders of average length ~100 instructions).

 

[randycat99]

Oh Jeezus, here we go again! When your hdtv downscales 1080 from your PS3 to show 720 on your screen, BAM, there's your AA. It'll be a moot point whether the GPU supports AA or not.

uh, even if all games were output at 1080p, most HDTVs won't accept it.

...and you've determined this how? Many here would disagree with you in that 1080p input is fairly well supported, even though it does not correspond to the standard broadcast formats (nor is it particularly well documented). Pretty much you can count on majority support or a whole lot of enthusiast hdtv owners will be extremely pissed that they need to buy a whole new hdtv just to take full advantage of HD-DVD/BR encoded material. Understandably, early model and absolute bargain basement hdtv's may be the ones that end up at fault here (but that doesn't stop one from simply utilizing 720p or 1080i, instead).

Even if you meant 1080i, most HDTVs can't even natively display 720p, they scale it to 1080i so I'm not sure why you suggest they'd scale everything down to 720p.

No, I meant 1080p when I said it the first time. You will also be surprised to find that native 720p (or thereabouts) pretty much dominates hdtv offerings - pretty much any LCD, plasma, or DLP. The ones that would scale to 1080i would be the CRT variety.

The reason I specified scaling down to 720p is because that is the situation most people will be in with an LCD/plasma/DLP hdtv (also do note specific the wording of the post I was replying to). Hence there is not much reason to worry about AA if you are on these common variety of hdtv for the scenario we are discussing here. You'll get pretty much just that (albeit, not with all the bells, whistles, and buzzwords). Worrying about degree or quality of AA is similarly dubious in relevance, since if you are downscaling to 720p, you can't very well complain about utmost image quality since you aren't utilizing the full 1080 of the source onto the display output, anyway.

The bottomline here is that this is just not going to be a big issue, at all, though some will endeavor to make it one simply because it highlights one console brand over the other. If a game outputs to 720p, likely you will get your AA as part of the game output. If the game outputs in 1080p, you will get AA as part of the downscale process on your garden variety LCD/plasma/DLP. If you happen to be on a 1080i CRT, you'll still get a bit of AA effect via the interlacing process. If you are that "1% percentile" that has a real 1080p hdtv, it's probably going to be a real kick-ass set with some kick-ass image processing built-in, as well. 1080p will assuredly look very good on it, and you will more likely be happy seeing any 1080p program material on it, and complaining how "lesser" 720 style feeds are a drag. Pretty much any way you go, the result will be a good outcome. Those that are getting stuck here are simply intent on finding an issue to worry over (or to formulate an arbitrary justification for one console over another where no real justification is required).