My Moto GP 360, retail game review:

[expletive]

This isn't really a problem. Take Doom 3's widescreen mode (PC) which just changes the view ala anamorphic widescreen; it stretches the rendered image, but the image is rendered such that it is meant to be stretched. It's the typical method for widescreen games (before HDTV resolutions).

Yep its definitely not a problem but is this really preferable though to native widescreen?

The bottleneck may not necessarily be the GPU as Acert already speculated, so by definition, it wouldn't matter if they reduced the resolution.

If thats the case, i'm getting tired of this unnatural aversion to vsync on the 360!

It's pretty much SSAA for most displays but otherwise a native resolution of which PC monitors can make use.[/QUOTE]

So youre saying that scaling down to 720 has similar results to SSAA?

Not so by any means. Rendering at higher than your output resolution is preferable if you have the peformace to spare, and rendering at lower than your output resolution can also be preferable if your prerformace isn't there at native. Rendering at your output resolution can be the best choice, but often times it is just a golden chalice rather than the carpenters cup..

Why?

 

[Lysander]

eurogamer

Meanwhile, on a technical level, GP '06 is phenomenal. The circuits are near-perfect facsimiles and the eye candy's as textured as it is tasty - from rubber laid down through sharp braking to the juddering gravel traps, and slight bumps in Extreme mode's civvy streets unseating you easily and asking a more deliberate approach. Extreme's tracks look particularly magnificent, as it goes, with a much broader range of trackside detail, while environmental effects like rain and fog are handled competently and prefaced by some of the prettiest clouds around.

Of course this is to say nothing of the bikes themselves, which are done up to a level of detail barely fathomable by old-days Xboxen. When we visited THQ a while ago we were walked through the detail to an almost nauseating degree - right down to the way the carbon fibre mesh had been modelled - and developer Climax's observation that where the game had to pretend before it can simply fill in the gaps now seems astute. There's more detail here than perhaps you'll ever appreciate, but the game engine rarely stutters under the weight of it - even with 20 riders on the track - and there are only barely noticeable level-of-detail effects between this and what you might imagine is Climax's optimal level of detail. It's one of the most detailed racing games we've ever seen.

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=65411&page=1

So game is rendered at 1280x1024p and than part of image (upper and lower) is cut out?

 

[kyleb]

No, did you not see the screenshot? The 1280x1024 is rendered so that it's aspect ratio will appear correctly after the frames are resampled to 16:9 resolutions by the 360's internal scaler.

 

[AlNom]

My point is, the screenshot I linked shows x2aa.

oh I see now.

Right, the fence pickets definitely show some AA action going on there..

Hm...actually that is an interesting choice of rendering. A resolution of 720p at 2xAA would still require two tiles anyway, and if the game isn't necessarily GPU bound in terms of resolution, one might as well make full use of the 10MB per tile. Or if outputting to 1080i, one could render internally at ~1920x680 (rounded to the nearest 10).

And just because I was curious, by the same calculations and assumptions, one could also render to 2048x1280 with 2xAA and use the same number of tiles of 1080p. But I digress.

So youre saying that scaling down to 720 has similar results to SSAA?

Yup, that's pretty much what SSAA is.

This is achieved by rendering the image at a much higher resolution than the one being displayed, then downsampling (shrinking) it to the desired size, using the extra pixels for calculation. The result is smoother transitions from one line of pixels to another along the edges of objects.

It is probably not a signifant amount of AA, but again, if the game is not GPU bound and the rendering is making use of two tiles... Hard to say "why not?"

Oh and the internal scaler will be doing all the work for outputting to the display (which apparently, is quite excellent), so your question about native resolution is kind of a moot point (as kyleb pointed out).

 

[kyleb]

Why?

I think you have the answer to that one, why do you mistake native resolution for some Holy Grail?

 

[expletive]

I think you have the answer to that one, why do you mistake native resolution for some Holy Grail?

Probably because i have a native 720p projector so when youre talking about HD Sports on television, gimme an all digital path and pixel perfect with no scaling.

What would be considered a loss of detail or sharpness in the home theater world seems to be a positive side effect here...

 

[kyleb]

Scaling from a higher resolution can be beneficial to live recordings compared to recording at the native display resolution as well, and that holds especially true in the case of display technologies which make use of sub-pixel control.

 

[RobertR1]

I just bought this game but now I'm not sure if I should open it...
But to those who had played it...
Is it fun to play???
Is it worth the 60 bucks???

Play the Demo off Live first. If you like it, then open the game. If the demo doesn't appeal to you, then return it. The gameplay in the Demo is the same throughout the game.

 

[TheChefO]

Scaling from a higher resolution can be beneficial to live recordings compared to recording at the native display resolution as well, and that holds especially true in the case of display technologies which make use of sub-pixel control.

Scaling is much more forgivable with live content. Not so much with computer generated high contrast poly edges. Scaling can ruin the graphic display. I'm in the same boat as Expletive with 720p native projector (seems to be the only way to get large screen native 720 at the moment). I can tell you from first hand experience anything not rendered at the native res looks like garbage. The only caveat to this is if you have an image with massive amounts of aa. Otherwise it's no contest. Downsampling is much better than upscaling but still, I agree with expletive, it is not desired.



ps - xbox 1 games look like garbage in comparison to 360 as well because of this scaling.

 

[kyleb]

Scaling is much more forgivable with live content. Not so much with computer generated high contrast poly edges. Scaling can ruin the graphic display.

Crappy scaling hardware can ruin anything; but in the case of computer generated of any sort, proper down sampling from a higher rendering resolution will inherently provide better image quality than rendering at the native resolution of any given display.

I'm in the same boat as Expletive with 720p native projector (seems to be the only way to get large screen native 720 at the moment). I can tell you from first hand experience anything not rendered at the native res looks like garbage.

But what you are missing here is that rendering the same thing at higher than your native resolution would look even better.

The only caveat to this is if you have an image with massive amounts of aa. Otherwise it's no contest. Downsampling is much better than upscaling but still, I agree with expletive, it is not desired.

I already explained how expletive was wrong on that a few posts back.

ps - xbox 1 games look like garbage in comparison to 360 as well because of this scaling.

You are overlooking many factors in your example here.

 

[AlNom]

Aye... even hooking up my PC to a regular SDTV and rendering at 1024x768 versus 640x480 shows a vast improvement.

 

[TheChefO]

Crappy scaling hardware can ruin anything; but in the case of computer generated of any sort, proper down sampling from a higher rendering resolution will inherently provide better image quality than rendering at the native resolution of any given display.

But what you are missing here is that rendering the same thing at higher than your native resolution would look even better.

I already explained how expletive was wrong on that a few posts back.

You are overlooking many factors in your example here.

Higher res downsampled will not always provide a superior image. I work in graphics all day. I know the affects that downsampling can provide in higher detail for sampling but if the image being scaled is not 4 times larger than the native display, you will have ugly jaggies in your image. Besides I don't expect a top notch faroudja chip in a console for scaling do you? Yes a higher res image will have more information than a lower (native) res image but that doesn't mean the image is more visually pleasing as artifacts rear their ugly head(s).

Perhaps we are running into preference here as I don't like the inherently jaggie picture that I get from running a resolution outside of a 1 to 1 pixel match on a fixed pixel display.