Revolution will not support HD (official)

[pegisys]

they might end up with the best graphics out of all the consoles on regular tv's if the gpu is on the same level with PS3 and X360, going by the kinda framrates I get on my pc at 640X480 compared to 1280X1024, thats alot of power that can be use for something else

 

[Shark Sandwich]

Why do people keep saying this? A console that is capable of HD output doesn't have to cost any more than one that is incapable of HD.

if course it has to:

* components that are able to output HD cost more
* you have to pay some royalties to who owns the IP
* if you want HD to be something else than a gimmick on your console, you'll need more fillrate so a more expensive GPU.. (like ERP said 720p need 300 % the fillrate of 480p..)

i don't think SD is a bottleneck.

First of all, if they're going to support 480p (which I hope to God they do), they're going to have to have some sort of component video output anyway. Otherwise they're stuck with 480i, and I think everybody can agree that sucks. So if it's going to support component output anyway, it shouldn't cost any more money to enable HD.

Sure HD requires more fillrate. That's why it should be up to the developers to decide whether they want to use HD or SD.

If Nintendo were to say "we want you to use 100 percent of our GPU's power to make an SD picture look as good as it possibly can", then I could understand that. Being an HDTV owner I would be disappointed, but I could understand it. What they're saying, though, is "HD is more expensive than SD, to consumers and developers." The only way this could make sense is if they mean "HD content costs more to develop, and that cost will be passed on to consumers, so we won't allow HD at all". They can't possibly be saying that the hardware itself is more expensive, because it's obviously not.

 

[Magnum PI]

I have witnessed the worst debate in history. *shakes head* I thought this board was for the thoughtful and enlighted. Nintendo not having HD support only hurts them, it does not help at all. Comments like the following make no sense.

you need to go out of you enthusiastic gamers club and do a reality check, you are of the same kind of people who didn't stop telling nintendo was doing a fatal mistake when not supporting online on console, which has still to prove it is more than a niche..

same for HDTV, the reality may not please you, but only a tiny minority have it, and it will take a lot of time until a major part of the installed base of tv set is updated to HD...

look at the facts from another angles and you could imagine that:

* the huge majority doesn't have HDTV sets and don't intend to buy one in the near future so don't care about HDTV compatibility.

* in the end it may help for nintendo to have a lower BOM, and to be able to sell the console cheaper than the competition while still making a profit of it, that's the little kind of details that can make sense..

when i see there is still a lot of games with framerate problems, i think it makes sense to ask for solving the framerate problem first instead of having gazillion pixels on screen.

it may be simply that nintendo isn't making revolution for you, fortunately sony and microsoft might be creating consoles that better suits your tastes.

 

[darkblu]

I'm talking about why AA's important now. Where before then did I say it's 'the be all and end all'? Um...I didn't

you didn't, i implied it from everything you said (and keep saying). i just cannot accept the claim that it is the single most important rendition quality factor.

It only needs a little imagination to see AA is more important than HDR or other tricks.

see, you deem that particular technique (i.e. HDR) a trick, whereas for many developers and content crators it's a fix to a gross hack in the original rendition pipeline that those guys had to put up with for quite some time. now they have the chance at a way better (read: easier and more efficient) lighting expression, but no - they should burn that fillrate/bandwidth for higher res instead.. apropos, remember Carmak's .plan from some years ago, where he was expressing his hopes and expectation toward the upcoming hardware - float buffers were mentioned among the top there, but neither he nor any other dev ever expressed a wish for 'higher resolutions'. which is basically what we are getting served now with this whole HD crusade, long live the marketing departments.

Imagine GT4 as is on the PS2, only with added HDR. You'll have nicely lit pixels, but jaggy edges and shimmer and so forth.

i used HDR just an example of bandwidth taxation. look at it from this perspective (i'll use your GT example): GT 3 and 4, as they are, use some fill-rate taxing techniques, particularly in replay mode. now, imagine that you had a similar game, *pick you favorite crappy ps2 racer here*, but without all those DOF, highly dynamic reflection maps and the rest of the GT4 fill-rate goodness, _yet_ at a higher resolution. which would you pick?

Now imagine GT4 as is on the PS2 but with 16x supersampling. No jaggies, no shimmer. No matter how well lit a scene is, or how high quality the textures are, or how many polys you've got, if you've got jaggies and shimmer it's gonna look poor, especially stretched over a modern large-screen TV.

so what you're basically saying is that GT1 should look superb at an 4x4 higher res when compared to GT4?

FF-X is a classic example of where jaggies and shimmer totally destroy the visuals, That game would look a lot more like a cartoon with decent AA, but as it is it's a series of stepped lines

sorry to disappoint you, but for every finite reslolution there exists content that will look jaggy and shimmering and moire and you-name-your-most-hateful-undersampling-artefact. you don't belive that HD will get you rid once and for all of those, do you?

Saying 'no HDTV' suggests to me only minimal AA on SDTV

which may not be a bad thing (tm). why don't we wait and see what _else_ do they have in their GPU sleeves before ctrying tears for the lack of HD?

Like I say, no matter how many other rendering features they have, even real-time raytracing, no antialiasing at SDTV is going to look very poor next to XB360 and PS3.

why no AA? i believe you said 'minimal', to which i replied.

And if they have the power for AA, they have the power for HD, so not including it suggests to me IQ will suffer.

the power to do HD equates to _SSAA_, not AA per say. for what it's worth, Revolution may have 16x MSAA at SD and still not be able to produce HD.

 

[Geeforcer]

I really don't see not having HD as a option can be construed as being a good thing, particularly for console that will hit the market a year and a half.

 

[jvd]

I really don't see not having HD as a option can be construed as being a good thing, particularly for console that will hit the market a year and a half.

Its def not a good thing . However it may not be as bad as people make it out to be .


at 640x480 you would easily have enough fillrate for 6x fsaa , heck ati could most likely make a 12x fsaa usable at that res with a r520 lvl card .

For those that have ntsc tvs it may be better than 720p 4x down sampled .

Dunno though. Would have been nice if they did 720p though

 

[Ozymandis]

If the graphics are really good then it doesn't matter that it doesn't support HD.

Yes, it does matter. Having a higher resolution offers more clarity to the image. That is a big part of the graphical "wow" factor. It's like Ps2 fans who tried to say that texturing didn't matter. There are multiple aspects of 3d... the Revolution starts out behind the other two just because the output will be inferior.

Plus, we're talking about systems that will still be going in 2010/2011. A system that only support 480p at that point? Ewwww.

 

[Fox5]

Nintendo didn't use bump mapping either.. doesn't mean GC couldn't do bump mapping if a developer wanted to use it.

Nintendo did use it in limited amounts.
Luigi's Mansion had some use of it.
Mario Kart Double Dash did.
And I think Pikmin 2 had a fairly extensive use.
Wario Ware used it.
Nintendo just didn't use it all over the place, and usually not even to the best effect.

And if they have the power for AA, they have the power for HD, so not including it suggests to me IQ will suffer.

That's only true if you're talking about super sampling, otherwise you can very well have the power for AA and not for HD. Aren't most current AA implementations bandwidth limited? In that case, edram might very well make high levels of AA possible in all games, but in my experience with PCs, even 6xAA is not enough at 640x480. I'd say you need at least 1920x1080p before you can consider AA not really necessary, and even then my experience with that is on fairly small screens compared to TVs.

BTW, imagine if the top end connection for revolution turns out to be svideo, that would suck. Afterall, they did drop the digital out port on gamecube.

I think the point was that, when designing games for HD, you "need" to make higher-resolution textures and more detailed models. Nintendo is trying to keep the focus on making fun, simple games and keeping development costs low.

I know it's a lame reason to not even support HD, but I think this is Nintendo's idea.

That's a lame argument, since you have to put more effort into making a game look good at low res than you do at high res.
Anyhow, higher res is a good way to make use of extra system power without requiring extra design resources since it's a purely technical thing.

It's the same philosophy Nintendo has had since the N64 days and even earlier.

NES was the first console I remember with decent dedicated graphics hardware.
SNES had some killer hardware, mode 7 and the FX chip.
N64....doesn't the expansion pack the high res mode it support contradict this?(though I think that was purely a nintendo of america thing, nintendo of america, like sega of america, has consistently shown more sense in approaching the american market than the japanese branch)
And gamecube did support 480p, yet it was designed to compete with ps2, a system that often didn't even get 480i.

I'm sure rev will go over great in Japan, where they have nintendo nostalgia, and it might do decent in America. A low price point could give it a good niche market, or even make it the ideal second console.

Really a shame to have a console in 2006/2007 coming out that only does 640x480, yes I was gaming at 4x that resolution back in 1999.

 

[Evil_Cloud]

I'd say, just wait for the specifications of the system before you critize Revolution for not supporting HD. Something might compensate this.

I don't really care about HD, I'd rather spend more cash on games than on expensive equipment that I don't need. My current television does it job just fine (big, nice looking, 60/50hz). Unless I need a replacement I am not going for HD.

 

[Magnum PI]

Plus, we're talking about systems that will still be going in 2010/2011. A system that only support 480p at that point? Ewwww.

2010/2011 revolution sales are not as important for nintendo as 2006 sales..

if sales projection happen to be true and a big part of household are HDTV equipped, the nintendo console after revolution will probably support it.

 

[Ozymandis]

Plus, we're talking about systems that will still be going in 2010/2011. A system that only support 480p at that point? Ewwww.

2010/2011 revolution sales are not as important for nintendo as 2006 sales..

if sales projection happen to be true and a big part of household are HDTV equipped, the nintendo console after revolution will probably support it.

You missed my point. Consoles need to be reasonably future-proof because the life cycle is so long. It can be argued that HDTVs haven't gotten that much market penetration yet, but in 2010 that argument will no longer be valid.

I like my consoles to stay reasonably current through their entire life cycle. Can only speak for myself, of course. I'm suprised anyone would defend this move, though. There are minimal reasons not to support HD, and plenty of reasons to do so.


Edit: how is it going to HURT sales in 2006 if Revolution supports HD?

 

[mckmas8808]

if sales projection happen to be true and a big part of household are HDTV equipped, the nintendo console after revolution will probably support it.

Magnum they don't have that much time to wait. The really good projections start in 2007 (In 2007, almost 50 percent of all U.S. households will own an HDTV and in 2008, a whopping 68.1 percent, according to the CEA.)

By then the NR would have shipped. So its going to be too late Nintendo.

 

[mckmas8808]

Not to get too far off topic but do you guys agree with the following quote made by Iwata?

Nintendo's use of flash memory rather than a hard disk was very much intentional. The company believes that kids as young as five years old will use the Revolution and could damage a built-in hard disk. Additionally, Iwata points to longevity, reliability and cost as being part of the decision to go with flash.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Now imagine GT4 as is on the PS2 but with 16x supersampling. No jaggies, no shimmer. No matter how well lit a scene is, or how high quality the textures are, or how many polys you've got, if you've got jaggies and shimmer it's gonna look poor, especially stretched over a modern large-screen TV.

so what you're basically saying is that GT1 should look superb at an 4x4 higher res when compared to GT4?

Nuh! course not, just as 16 bit (Amiga etc) untextured vectors wouldn't be better than PS2 (jaggies and all) even at 1000x supersampling. It's a matter of tradeoffs. You get decent looking lighting and texturing, and decent IQ.

Let me ask you two direct questions. If you had a choice, would you prefer Elite from the Amiga (filled vectors) as rendered then but at 16x FSAA, 1080p/i, or Elite rendered with a photorealistic raytracer without any AA at 480p?

Me, I'd take the photo accurate renderer.

And the same question with a different level of visual representation -
GT4 with it's current renderer at 16x FSAA, 1080i/p on your widescreen HDTV, or GT4 with photo-accurate raytracing at 480p but with all the jaggies and shimmer it currently has stretched over your widescreen HDTV, which would you want?

This time I'd take the AA'd renderer.

It's a case of which area is the 'weakest' and needs the most improvement. This generation the most outstanding limitation with the hardware is lack of AA.

sorry to disappoint you, but for every finite reslolution there exists content that will look jaggy and shimmering and moire and you-name-your-most-hateful-undersampling-artefact. you don't belive that HD will get you rid once and for all of those, do you?

No, AA gets rid of that. The argument with HD is that hardware that is capable of HD is capable of better AA by supersampling.

the power to do HD equates to _SSAA_, not AA per say. for what it's worth, Revolution may have 16x MSAA at SD and still not be able to produce HD.

True, but that's not as effective. Knowing the hardware is capable of HD would encourage me to hope to Rev support 2x SSAA on SDTV. But of course, as I said, maybe they have all the AA capabilites we could hope for and are just limiting output options. Nintendo have said 'you'll look at Rev's graphics and go Wow'. Unless they mean a 'Wow! I haven't seen those sorts of jaggies since FFX!' they're expecting the results to be impressive

 

[Cobra101]

No HD = no gaming goodness on my Samsung DLP.

Sorry Ninty.

 

[mckmas8808]

Nintendo have said 'you'll look at Rev's graphics and go Wow'. Unless they mean a 'Wow! I haven't seen those sorts of jaggies since FFX!' they're expecting the results to be impressive

I'm sorry but I want to hear numbers. Saying people will go 'wow' is just kiddish. I said wow when I played God of War. I said wow when I played GT4. So whats their point. :?

 

[cthellis42]

All I'll say is that's a helluva thing to forgo for until 2010 and beyond. :?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Nintendo have said 'you'll look at Rev's graphics and go Wow'. Unless they mean a 'Wow! I haven't seen those sorts of jaggies since FFX!' they're expecting the results to be impressive

I'm sorry but I want to hear numbers. Saying people will go 'wow' is just kiddish. I said wow when I played God of War. I said wow when I played GT4. So whats their point. :?

Personally I'd rather see results than numbers. All the numbers in the world mean squat if what you actually see is pants. If I look at Revolution and go Wow! I'll be happy.

Of course, for people that want to argue about these things and decide winners and losers in the console 'wars' before any platform has even been released, subjective statements aren't as much ammunition as big numbers

 

[Geeforcer]

I'm suprised anyone would defend this move, though. There are minimal reasons not to support HD, and plenty of reasons to do so.

Nintendo could announce that Revolution will only support wireframe rendering and there would be people going "Wow, what a great idea! I never been a big fan of textured polygons anyway; they only detract from what's really important: the gameplay!"

 

[randycat99]

...and 4-bit massive primary colors!