PS3 and Automatic Scaling.

[ERP]

Erm, why?
If Sony controls the swap, they would control the frontbuffer, hence there should be no additional memory(aside for slightly larger FB), and no additional latency needed.
Hacking around the game processing would give the penalties you mention - but again I don't see why you'd need more then one buffer, nor would it necessarily introduce extra latency (of course the time taken out could slow the game itself down).
Granted - the latter is an incredibly ugly(and potentially unstable) way to do it - I'd sooner see them release game specific patches instead.

Assuming you want to support any rendering effect, you have to leave the frontbuffer (as the app sees it) available to the app, so it can only be a source, not the dest.
On the "swap" you would want the app to be able to continue immediately, so you'd start a parallel scale it to your "OS front buffer". I guess depending on where you block it could just add the latency cost of the scale. Although unless you can do the scale in the VBL time, the OS buffers would have to be double buffered aswell.
I guess technically you just have to chase the raster, so the scale could take the whole frame, with a single buffer.

 

[Fafalada]

Assuming you want to support any rendering effect, you have to leave the frontbuffer (as the app sees it) available to the app, so it can only be a source, not the dest.

I wasn't talking about scaling in-place. By "controlled FB" I meant OS would control allocation and decide dimensions of the FB.

Although unless you can do the scale in the VBL time, the OS buffers would have to be double buffered aswell.

Or you could just cross fingers and hope people don't notice the tearing too much - that's what most 360 games already do anyhow.

I guess technically you just have to chase the raster, so the scale could take the whole frame.

Actually that could be interesting since it'd eliminate memory overhead - assuming they could do it without tying up an entire core for duration of the frame.

 

[EricVonZipper]

Hmmm....so I guess any 720p games will render @640x480. Well I shouldn't have to worry about frame rate. Hopefully the PS3 can handle 480p.

I couldn't find any scalers that take a 720p and make it 1080i...there are plenty for 480i ----> 1080i , but I rather scale 720p not 480i.

There are software scalers http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&q=software+video+scalers&btnG=Search

So Sony should be able to do a scaler in software if need be?

 

[ninzel]

So can we agree that this might go down as one of the stupidest moves we've seen?

 

[ERP]

So can we agree that this might go down as one of the stupidest moves we've seen?

To be fair it's exactly what PS2 and Xbox1 do.
Xbox360 just behaves more like a CE device in this case.

 

[Carl B]

So can we agree that this might go down as one of the stupidest moves we've seen?

It's stupid, but not too big of a deal I don't think... in the grand scheme of things 1080i-only CRT sets will be a footnote in the history books of HD. And I say this as someone who's own HDTV is in the above category!

But ERP's right, this will likely only effect early (or cheap) HDTV adopters, and someone like myself has constantly had an itch to upgrade my set. Well, maybe now I have a reason... it's shocking how undisappointed I am in all this.

Ideally though as was mentioned, Insomniac should just release a patch for 1080i support. Get on that Insomniac! And PS3 itself will assuredly get numerous functionality upgrades in the next year itself.

 

[MBDF]

Wouldn't the easiest way to do it be this:

RSX sends a 3MB 720p frame to an SPU which converts it to 1080p? this could be done using the reserved SPU. It doesn't seem to why Sony cant release a firmware update allowing this to be done... then the games that have allready been out can be patched or whathaveyou.... maybe that's not even neccesary.

Ideally though as was mentioned, Insomniac should just release a patch for 1080i support. Get on that Insomniac! And PS3 itself will assuredly get numerous functionality upgrades in the next year itself.

I agree.

 

[mozmo]

Wouldn't the easiest way to do it be this:

RSX sends a 3MB 720p frame to an SPU which converts it to 1080p? this could be done using the reserved SPU. It doesn't seem to why Sony cant release a firmware update allowing this to be done... then the games that have allready been out can be patched or whathaveyou.... maybe that's not even neccesary.


I agree.

Aren't there issues with SPE's being able to read direct from vram, I remember reading about how spe's are crippled in read speed from vram? So I'm assuming to do this in software you'd need to copy the framebuffer from vram into the cell memory pool first, upscale with a spe and output the final result into the cell memory pool, then copy the final 1080p from cell memory back into vram for the ramdac/hdmi chipset to output to display.

Sounds messy and potentially a performance killer. Nice one.

 

[Fafalada]

So I'm assuming to do this in software you'd need to copy the framebuffer from vram into the cell memory pool first...

No - scanout can happen from any memory, so FrontBuffer doesn't need to reside in VRam at any given time.

 

[Onix]

A dev (I believe from Insomniac?) mentioned something about a scaler being in the PS3 ... but they didn't have access to it?


Does anyone know what that means?

 

[PARANOiA]

To be fair it's exactly what PS2 and Xbox1 do.
Xbox360 just behaves more like a CE device in this case.

To put it into context, what's the HD penetration rate at the launch of the PS2/Xbox vs the PS3's launch. This is a silly move and frankly annoying.

 

[MBDF]

Could the EE and GS chip do the scaling?

 

[Onix]

The embedded RAM on the GS is not large enough to scale HD.

 

[Onix]

Actually can the PS2 output graphics from main RAM? That may hold enough?

I was always under the impression it had to output from the GS's EDRAM. If that is the case, unless Sony changed the EE-GS chip in the PS3 ... I don't think it can be used as a viable scaler.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Xbox360 just behaves more like a CE device in this case.

Thats probably because its display chip is more or less from a CE device.

 

[Fafalada]

This is a silly move and frankly annoying

To be fair, most of CRT HDTVs that are limited to 1080i only aren't really HD compliant in the first place (usually have like half the actual horizontal resolution). It has more to do with TV makers breaking standards then anything else, although I agree it's an annoyance nonetheless.

The embedded RAM on the GS is not large enough to scale HD.

It doesn't need to be - GS's CRTC can output scaled signal (as demonstrated by GT4 1080i mode). Given that they are looking for fastest way to get rid of PS2 hw in there, I doubt they'd try to utilize it for PS3 in any way though.

 

[DeanA]

No - scanout can happen from any memory, so FrontBuffer doesn't need to reside in VRam at any given time.

This isn't true... scanout can only be from VRAM on PS3.

Dean

 

[quest55720]

To be fair, most of CRT HDTVs that are limited to 1080i only aren't really HD compliant in the first place (usually have like half the actual horizontal resolution). It has more to do with TV makers breaking standards then anything else, although I agree it's an annoyance nonetheless.


It doesn't need to be - GS's CRTC can output scaled signal (as demonstrated by GT4 1080i mode). Given that they are looking for fastest way to get rid of PS2 hw in there, I doubt they'd try to utilize it for PS3 in any way though.

Not to insult you fafalada that is really weak. Sony knew there are a lot of TVs like this but still decided to do this. I think it is very unacceptable on a 600 dollar peice of hardware. What about people who have TVs that have poor scalers? Sony is a TV maker and should know all of this first hand. If 100 dollar dvd players and ce devices can upscale so should a high end piece of electronics. Worse of all sony did not let people know about this a head of time. Can you imagine the anger of people who come home with a new PS3 and find out they can't play it at hd resolutions? They had no warning what so ever and that is unforgivable. This is why sony must be knocked off the throne they think they can crap on the customer and get away with it. I have never seen a company try to screw over its fan base any more than sony has with the PS3.

 

[pipo]

This isn't true... scanout can only be from VRAM on PS3.

So there might be some thruth in that 32MB (GDDR3) OS allocation.

Let's hope they'll fix this.

 

[Platon]

So there might be some thruth in that 32MB (GDDR3) OS allocation.

Let's hope they'll fix this.

Never heard of that, so in addition to the 96MB of system RAM also 32MB of VRAM are reserved? Who said that?...