Neverending Upscaling/Resolutions/AA etc Thread #3 (Rules Post #1!)

Why would they not feature 2xAA for Mirrors on PS3? Or at least Quincunx? Obviously the PS3 can do it and the fps seem decent enough in the demo without AA to turn it on wouldn't make it a big hit in performance.

Killzone 2 will apparently feature Quincunx AA, so it is hard to imagine Mirrors not being able to use some form of AA.

 

Different engines. The KZ2 engine might perform very, very well on the PS3, which affords the developers some headroom to activate FSAA.

The engine for Mirror's Edge might not perform as well on the PS3, which means that disabling FSAA was a sacrifice they (the devs) felt was necessary to optimize the framerate.

 

You may as well ask why a whole host of PS3 cross-platform titles don't use AA. You aren't comparing like with like - Killzone 2 was developed for PS3 exclusively, Mirror's Edge uses an engine that seems to work better on Xbox 360. With regards the hit in performance, PS3 Mirror's Edge does indeed have marginally more screen tear than the 360 version in like for like scenes in the code as it stands, so introducing further processing may indeed impact the performance. 720p60 comparison vid is now up on my blog.

 

Quincunx takes a little more work than basic 2xAA, and even minimal AA can turn many situations from good framerate to bad.

 

That is odd since PS3 was lead platform for Mirrors, although the engine was UT3 which started on 360.

 

What is also interesting is lack of AA on 360 games. If AA is essentially free, then why do games like Dead Space which on PS3 feature no AA, but also on 360.

 

Really? I was under the impression 2x Quincunx gives the quality of 4x, but the performance hit of standard 2xAA.

 

You just kicked over the hornets' nest. As far as I can tell, Quincunx is universally loathed here.

I don't have a problem with it. Didn't RFoM use it? And I thought that that game looked perfectly fine. But everybody here seems to deplore it for softening images, amongst other reasons.

 

I have heard that argument before about it adding a slight blur, though I have never seen any comparisons to prove it.

 

I wouldn't say 2xQ AA (Quincunx) is universally loathed. Resistance 1 has Quincunx. Same with Killzone 2, Facebreaker... I believe that Far Cry 2 on PS3 uses it also (although I'm not 100% sure; need high-quality screengrabs to make the determination). All of these are fine, clean-looking games.

 

The problem is that when you compare QA with MSAA, what edge-advantage you get with QA becomes insignificant compared to the fact that the entire texture is blurred, effectively losing detail. In the games being lauded - eg RFoM - we don't have MSAA, or indeed no AA at all, as a comparison.

In cross-platform releases, cartoon-style games like Sega Superstar Tennis and Facebreaker work OK with QA, whereas the likes of Assassin's Creed, Need for Speed: ProStreet etc just look a lot worse, or at best diminished compared to MSAA. Sometimes - as is the case with Need for Speed - the game actually looks as though it's running in a lower resolution as I demonstrated with the shots posted earlier in the thread.

 

Wouldn't AA reduce the number of steps? Cause they seem to be exactly the same nujmber on both. They just look sharper on the PS3.

 

MSAA doesn't reduce the number of steps, lowering resolution and upscaling does that. I wrote a quick tutorial on MSAA in the stickied thread if you'd like to have a read.

 

Will check it out, thanks.

 

Framerate discussion moved to the following thread: http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=48001

 

Thanks for the info, very interesting post. Would it be possible to use Quincunx on the 360, thus effectively reducing the amount of memory necessary for a native 720p image fitting on the eDRAM, if it guarantees AAx2+720p for all games without the need of tiling?

It would be a welcome addition -UE3 games and so on-, and, with tiling, games could probably feature AAx4 easily.

 

It will never be guaranteed 720p+*xAA, games these days have taught us that it's never even guaranteed 720p+0xAA. Snap out of thinking the AA on the Xbox360 is free...

Also, seeing how UE3 has pretty poor support for AA, I highly doubt it could do QAA.

 

What I'm trying to explain is the fact that Quincunx is better for the 360 in some cases since its memory print should be minor than traditional MSAA, thus fitting the whole framebuffer on the eDRAM without the need of tiling.

For instance, UE3 is not console friendly at all and most UE3 games looks the same, but without tiling they could apply some AA and whatnot to make the engine look a little better

 

There has never been QAA implemented in a 360 build of a game even when the PS3 build sported it. Doesn't that make you wonder?

 

Slight change of topic; has anyone pinpointed Fallout 3 yet on the 360? I've been hearing it has 2xAA while the PS3 has 0xAA (from my judgement, the latter is true, but I haven't seen the 360 build). Correct?