Rechecking Beyond3D pixel counters

Try setting your PS3 output to 480 and then using the scaler in your TV to blur the images and - most importantly - turn your TV's sharpness all the way down. I think you'll get what you're looking for.

 

Plus that fence on VF5 may actually be 2D too.

 

After entering the 'next-gen' (which is not that next gen anymore) a few months ago, and playing a few games... and after checking Alstrong's sticky thread with resolutions and AA settings... i firmly believe that my (and everyone's) TV plays a much bigger part into the final IQ than most people seem to believe.
I thought one game was running with insane amounts of AA - turns out it was low res and upscaled.
I thought one other game was running at 1080p - turns out it was low res with tiny amounts of AA.
I thought another game had no AA - turns out it does.

So i just stopped bothering. Much easier.

 

You should write "Zen and the Art of Console Gaming" l-b

 

PS3 version? Xbox version has MSAAx4 according to your list.

 

365:

The "good AA" you posted looks blurred. I was giving you a way to make your TV blur HS a bit.

You can tell HS is AA'd from the color gradations at the boundary. Compare to your Bayonetta screens and you'll see single pixel abrupt color changes that you don't see on your HS screens.

Now I'll grant you the HS AA doesn't minimize jaggies as much as you'll see in some games, but I believe DeanoC pointed out that's not from lack of AA but lack of linear blending in the colorspace. Indeed you see some oddity with colors at those AA'd edges.

 

Since you were talking about Heavenly Sword, I figured you were talking about the PS3 version. You also only identified Bayonetta as being 360 in your post. Feel free to be clearer next time.

 

Seeing as your assumptions would require thread readers to go back and lookup the resolution and AA modes or somehow to have memorized them, I think it's unclear actually. I assumed you were posting PS3 shots.

 

It is MSAA in HS! It's just not resolving to the typical results.

Consider a conventional 2xAA on a white/black edge. White is (255,255,255) in RGB space. Black is (0,0,0). 2xMSAA would average the two producing mid-grey (128,128,128), which you'd see. In the case of HS, the intensity extends beyond standard (255,255,255) intensity. Thus if you have a super-bright white triangle from a sunlit surface, with a sample of equivalent intensity RGB (1024,1024,1024) (HS doesn't represent colours in terms of RGB components), and a second black sample of (0,0,0), the MSAA average will be equivalent to (512,512,512) which is beyond the dynamic range of RGB, resulting in a white average.

What you seem to be wanting is a more subjective analysis of AA levels. In an HDR game where MSAA cannot resolve higher intensities below white, you will get the equivalent of zero AA on some edges. However, where the dynamic contrast isn't beyond the resolving step, you'll get the full MSAA interpolation. How exactly could you qualify that in a technical analysis though? "This game is 4xMSAA, but sometimes looks 0xAA"? If you follow that route, you'd also have to say of other games, "this game has no AA, but looks like maybe 2xAA, even 4xAA in places." That's non-technical!

So here we just stick to the facts about the engine. Current hardware and engines tend to have AA faults with HDR that means you don't always get the full benefit of the MSAA steps even though it's implemented. C'est la vie!

 

I'm not sure where you're going with this. The pixel-counters are working from high-quality direct grabs. Their measurements are accurate (pending correction from other pixel counters!). Several people have attempted to explain in different ways why you can't tell a game's AA level, like HS, just from looking at it. There's nothing wrong with questioning people, but I'd have thought by now you'd see where you were going wrong?

 

Upscaling has nothing to do with AA.

 

And Bayonetta has no AA!

 

365, all your comments indicate you like the blur of upscaling. Just output 480p, turn "sharpness" all the way down and let the upscaler blur for you. Also, you don't have any active contrast or color stuff running on your TV, right?

 

Uh...

365, I would like to be wrong, but under your insistence I seem to see some kind of "PS3 hate" (because of sentences such as "the same strange (I can even say 'terrible') AA I can see in Heavy Rain and GoWIII E3 2009 Demo", and the overall spirit of your words)... You're almost saying that an anti-aliased edge looks worse ("sharper") than an aliased one, and that makes no sense.

I hope you understand, now (if the problem is that you don't understand, not that you don't want to accept facts).