Question about PS3 and 1080 P to 720P

[Acert93]

Though I do wonder what the deal is with the last question I ask in my 'new' edit.

Good luck, like getting blood from a rock. This is what I know: The Spring update offered some minor relief, with more significant relief this fall in regards to predicated tiling and such, although supposedly some of the updates (minor?) scheduled for 2006 slipped to Q1 2007. Since Dave doesn't answer my PMs ( ), my info comes from someone who works for a company like the ESRB who chats directly with developers (and has been spot on in the past). But getting any more specifics has been near impossible due NDA and a number of threads / questions on this issue in the past on this forum seem... to get the silent treatment

There is a lot... kind of out there. Gamerfest had a lot of good information, and brought up some issues (unknown to most of us) and resolutions/wip and such. I was kind of surprised that drawcall overhead was such a big issue considering this was something resolved to a degree in the Xbox1 early on in API updates. People rave about MS tools, but it does seem that Xenos (or, probably more fairly, the early launch) has posed some growing pains. i.e. 90nm hardware very early, but mature software APIs to follow (which their alpha kit strategy kind of emphasizes). I think the last we heard, officially, was some issues with predicated/automatic (never got a clear answer on any distinction?) tiling outside of needing to do an early Z pass and that (at some point early in 2006) there were still some issues with MEMEXPORT (streamout) and also datastreaming from Xenon while using tiling.

Of course Dave could come in here and clarify all my foggy memory and misteps

My question: When will we see the first game do a totally manual tiling engine? Ok, maybe I am being greedy... when will we see the first renderer that was built to be specifically, "Xenos-tile friendly"? The lack of exclusives and emphasis on middlware/multiplatform makes me wonder!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

You have to have multiple resolution support anyway (to support SD resolutions) so it's not like you're really saving that much effort.

Wouldn't you just downscale the 1080 image? Okay, you'd have to handle the HUD differently to make it useable on SD, but you wouldn't write multiple engines optimized for each resolution, surely? SDTV isn't going to get 8xMSAA and loads of fancy shaders beyond 720p and 1080p. Is it?

 

[London Geezer]

Wouldn't you just downscale the 1080 image? Okay, you'd have to handle the HUD differently to make it useable on SD, but you wouldn't write multiple engines optimized for each resolution, surely? SDTV isn't going to get 8xMSAA and loads of fancy shaders beyond 720p and 1080p. Is it?

We keep hoping that will happen but for some reason i am losing faith lately........

 

[hey69]

Hey guys heres a question that idont really know the answer to- obv PS3 has a selling point at 1080P which doesnt really hype anything for me or rather i dont really care about it much- but my question is i have a new 42 inch samsung plasma- Ive been told that 1080p doesnt really matter on 42 inch plasmas unless ur sitting 5 feet away (im sitting the normal 10 feet in my room) Anyways point being that I will be using 720P for the games that are native in 1080P when i use 720P and there downscaled i guess will they look just as good? as in will they make them for 720P also? sorry its prob a dumb question but i dont really know the answer- I know games on my 360 that are set in 1080i look just as good in 720p to me, Anyways thanks

IS your plasma full HD 1080P btw? i very much doubt it (but then again, i dont know how rich your are ) so actually, it isnt really a concern for you i guess, since most HD ready plasmas are 1024x768 anyway. SO 720P will also be rescaled by your TV to 1024x768 (without you actually really noticing it)

 

[London Geezer]

IS your plasma full HD 1080P btw? i very much doubt it (but then again, i dont know how rich your are ) so actually, it isnt really a concern for you i guess, since most HD ready plasmas are 1024x768 anyway. SO 720P will also be rescaled by your TV to 1024x768 (without you actually really noticing it)

... He did say

obv PS3 has a selling point at 1080P which doesnt really hype anything for me or rather i dont really care about it much- but my question is i have a new 42 inch samsung plasma-

Besides, Samsung don't have any 1080p Plasma's last time i checked so i guess that answers your question.

 

[Rangers]

What you're refering to is Phil Harrison's statement that 360 can't render a 1080p scene 'normally' due to the 8+8 MBs required for both front and back buffering (and that doesn't even cover all the data costs).

But then again, 360 isn't about 'normal' rendering to begin with!

That said though, for a 4xMSAA 1080p frame we're talking about 7 tiles (and a lot of main memory footprint).

Personally I'd like to know how the mastery of Xenos' tiling techniques is progressing with devs; I feel as if we haven't really talked about it in nearly a year, since the initial tiling vs non-tiling designed engines debate took place.

Personally I dont know that we know if PS3 is intrinsically better at 1080P than Xbox. The EDRAM tiling cost as the tile count rises is the issue, but the EDRAM is for framebuffer bandwidth which it seems to me is going to hit a 128bit GPU like RSX at 1080P extra hard as well, compared to any 256bit GPU. I wouldn't even rush to declare a winner.

I find it ironic in this marketing blitz over 1080P that these are two machines that are specifically crippled at 1080P more than normal. One by virtue of a 720P targeted EDRAM and one by virtue of low mem BW. It does point up microsoft's architecture strategy as having unintended consequences though (aka they played up how the console specific part targeted 720P, and that's great, then suddenly the resolution playing field shifted unexpectedly on them, and they cant necessarily react as well as a non-targeted part could have)
________
Laguna Heights Condo Wong Amat

 

[hey69]

... He did say



Besides, Samsung don't have any 1080p Plasma's last time i checked so i guess that answers your question.

you sure are helpfull today. slow day at work .... ?

 

[London Geezer]

Shifty...

The game looks sharp running on standard sets and obviously gets sexier as the resolution increases, with 1080p being the pinnacle. We're especially pleased with the game's frame rate, which has gotten considerably more stable in the months since we've seen it. There are still inconsistencies at this point, especially when running at 1080p, but they're not too bad. We're crossing our fingers that the final game winds up with a rock-solid frame rate.

Which i guess means that the framerate is more stable at 720p or lower res, meaning that the res changes internally according to the output resolution, improving the framerate. Meaning that 480i people might just get shafted like they did with the 360 and get no free SSAA and all that.

But that's just one game so you never know.

 

[London Geezer]

you sure are helpfull today. slow day at work .... ?

You have NO idea.

 

[Rolf N]

What you're refering to is Phil Harrison's statement that 360 can't render a 1080p scene 'normally' due to the 8+8 MBs required for both front and back buffering (and that doesn't even cover all the data costs).

Scratch the front buffer, add the z buffer. The 360 doesn't need the front buffer in edram, and I'm sure PH was/is aware of that, but rendering without a z buffer is ... limiting.

But then again, 360 isn't about 'normal' rendering to begin with!

That's a given.
It's all a question of how many tiles. Just one (degenerate) tile per frame is the optimal and "normal" case. 1080p without a depth buffer fits there, 1080p with depth does not.

 

[Carl B]

Scratch the front buffer, add the z buffer. The 360 doesn't need the front buffer in edram, and I'm sure PH was/is aware of that, but rendering without a z buffer is ... limiting.

That's a given.
It's all a question of how many tiles. Just one (degenerate) tile per frame is the optimal and "normal" case. 1080p without a depth buffer fits there, 1080p with depth does not.

I don't paint myself a Xenos expert, so I'm happy to admit having been unawares of some architectural aspect or another, but could you go over a little more why the front buffer isn't required to be resident? I ask mainly because in the tiling chart in Dave's Xenos article both front and back buffers are included in total data costs, which leads me to believe that's at least how it's intended to work.

 

[Dr. Nick]

My question: When will we see the first game do a totally manual tiling engine? Ok, maybe I am being greedy... when will we see the first renderer that was built to be specifically, "Xenos-tile friendly"? The lack of exclusives and emphasis on middlware/multiplatform makes me wonder!

I'm surprised that no one has done that yet especially if they work for MGS. If SCE devs had the Xenos I wouldn't be surpised if they weren't getting performance from predication that they would have gone manual. Everybody keeps saying how difficult to get stuff up on the PS3 but developers have shown that they are willing to stick to it until they get what they need. I'm not quite sure devs(Bungie excluded) are willing to do the same on the 360 though.

 

[PeterT]

I don't paint myself a Xenos expert, so I'm happy to admit having been unawares of some architectural aspect or another, but could you go over a little more why the front buffer isn't required to be resident? I ask mainly because in the tiling chart in Dave's Xenos article both front and back buffers are included in total data costs, which leads me to believe that's at least how it's intended to work.

Why would you put the front buffer into the edram? It's neither written to nor read during all the time it takes to render a frame, so that would be a huge waste of valuable high-bw edram space.

[edit]That's a bit unclear. What I meant is that it's not required for the 3D rendering, unlike the back and z buffers which may (or in the z case will) be read and written to multiple times per pixel. (depending on overdraw and the amount of alpha blending)

 

[AlNom]

I ask mainly because in the tiling chart in Dave's Xenos article both front and back buffers are included in total data costs, which leads me to believe that's at least how it's intended to work.

Actually, the excel charts only count the back-buffer. Only the equation for the total frame buffer accounts for the front-buffer.

In the calculations:

Back Buffer =Pixels * FSAA Depth * (Pixel Colour Depth + Z Buffer Depth)

He uses 32bit Z and colour depth.

 

[Carl B]

EDIT: Ok nevermind, thanks Alstrong (and Peter and Zecken) - critical lapse in thorough reading on my part wrt that chart.