nVidia's Jen-Hsun Huang speaks out on X-Box 2 possibility.

[maskrider]

I thought they may have left that out as computer interlaced only displays are negligible nowadays and they will use TV encoders whenever they want to have a TV out.

Actually maybe I expressed myself wrong. I was referring to subpixel offsets (which are needed to render the two interlaced fields - offset 0.5 pixel relative to each other).

If you meant actually rendering scanlines interleaved (eg. by leaving empty lines in between), I don't think it's so common no.
GS does offer a mode for this, but it's basically just a register mask for odd/even lines, which means your effective fillrate is cut in half if you use it, so I don't think it's all that usefull.

That means there is no fill-rate advantage for only rendering odd and even fields than progressive, it is just a way to save memory.

 

[Tagrineth]

No, I think all previous generation could do true 480i. They didn't need to figure out anything to enable 480i, they would simply have to switch to that screenmode. But that would require double the memory and fillrate, unless they used field rendering. Many of the consoles in the 80's could not do interlaced, they were hardwired for 240p. For those it would be impossible to output 480i. Most likely they ended all frames with a full line, and where unable to end a frame with a half line.

Final Fantasy VIII is one PSX game I can think of that boots in 480i (start it up and look how sharp the game's initial screens are), and N64 is definitely capable of >240 lines in Interlaced...

I don't know about Saturn, but one still older console which can do 480i for sure is SNES; its hi-res mode goes up to 512x448, and is flicker-free (example: play Secret of Mana and go to any of the status menus, those are all max res).

 

[CaptainHowdy]

My god these conversations go to the strangest places.

 

[Tagrineth]

My god these conversations go to the strangest places.

Welcome to Beyond3D...

 

[Gunhead]

Good, Tags! Back to topic:

Of course the XBOX2 GPU will be made by Bitboys with their Xtreme Box Architecture.

(Or, at least they can try to get their SVG into a Smartphone someday...)

 

[Ug Lee]

Sorry for the crappy explanation, I'm not very good at expressing myself in English (or any other langue, some might claim ) I tried to explain it like I would explain it to an idiot, but I failed (that does not mean I consider you an idiot, I don’t), instead it came out like it was explained by an idiot...

I understood it quite well.

Also that being the case with PSX games in 240, what about 'high res' games like Rapid Racer? Any idea what's going on there?

 

[Crazyace]

Pretty much all consoles offer the option of interlaced or non interlace video.
Both involve displaying 262 lines every 60th of a second ( 1 field ), with the interlacing shifting odd fields up into the gaps to give an effective 525 line ( including non visible - about 480 visible... ) display

Even on the Genesis one of the Sonic games used interlaced mode in the two player version to squeeze 2 playfields into the display.

On saturn VF4 and DOA, on PSX T2/T3/DOA RapidRacer/TurboProp racer and the high res RR demo packed with RR4 all supported interlaced ( Sometimes 640x480 displays )

1M Vram( on PSX ) is enough for a 640x480 display if it is updated a 60Hz, as you draw the even lines while the odd are displaying etc...