The Neverending Upscale Discussion Thread * Summary=#457

I find this sentence incrediably funny.

If they did, it would be one of the first times that I've seen a game developer put limits on the software because of overheating issues, on top of all other factors

 

There are 3 parts to such findings.

One is the technical side which goes into why? benefits? etc... This sort of talk should be absouletly promoted.

Second being the small niche of die hard PQ enthusiasts. Nothing wrong with this either. Everyone should have their preference.

The last but most dominant side is the propoganda fuel for fanboys. This will literally make some people feel better/make their day. While it may seems silly to most, fact is, this niche exists just like many others. Their sole goal will now be to carry the "640P" banner for quite some time. This is the saddest group. They have no intention of buying or playing the game due to their bias but their joy in such a matter (trivial as it may be) will radiate for quite some time.

All said and done, Bungie has addressed the issue so credit to then. If this is a "hot topic" even a month from now, I'll be surprised.

The end argument remains though, for those who are sane, were 80P sacrificed a proper trade off to get the lighting, which is arguably the best in console games to date, acceptable?

 

I'd say it is a tradeoff on both sides
They sacraficed resolution and AA for the Lighting.

Some monitors (esp. computer monitors) will magnify jaggies and the game may look like legoland.

Some monitors, on the other hand, (esp. big screen TVs, according to the various posts here) tend to hid the Jaggies and the problem simply goes away, making the game look very good.

So there's an upside and a downside to doing this. Was it worth the tradeoff? I don't think we will ever know as we don't know how the game will look if we took out the LDR frame.

 

The information was fair in its discovery and dissemination. Quaz is hardly responsible if other sites take it out of context. Unless you can suggest some way to prevent that? I don't think eliminating the world's ignorance and bias is feasible.

 

To our new users: You might want to read the console forum FAQ here: http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=40204

We don't allow personal attacks in this forum, we don't allow blatant trolling, and frankly we don't allow noobs like you to even do marginal trolling (okay, I admit, old-timers might occasionally get away with a marginal troll if they wrap some good tech and a long history of contributions around it). Yes, we're funny that way. But that's the way it is and we'll cheerfully cancel your brand new account and delete your posts if you don't discuss the issues at hand reasonably and from a technology basis.

Other than that, glad to have you! No, really . . .those who can follow those rules really are welcome here. Give us a try, we're only ogres, generally, when the floodgates of digg or /. or whatever are opened upon us.

 

I think at this point you can go look at our Technology Politics & Ethics subforum if you want to pursue this line of conversation. You've made your opinion known, and pursuing this aspect beyond this point in this thread would be thread-crapping/derailment. Really, I hope you do. I'm dying to know what the staff should have done with this information submitted in an open forum by a non-staffer? Squashed it? Anyway, not here. Go there if you like and start a thread on why supressing tech info is good and the duty of all right-thinking individuals: http://forum.beyond3d.com/forumdisplay.php?f=58

 

I'd love to help, but counting pixels isn't really my thing. I sit around nine feet from my TV, which is barely close enough to tell a visible difference between 720p and 1080p, and even then it varies by source material. I'm well aware that upscaling happens.. Despite what my television tells me, I'm under no delusions that the game runs at 1080p, nor other games that likewise show 1080p on the TV's input. Even the PS3 upscales some of it's games (which I find interesting, given it's other shortcomings in regards to scaling). Transformers, for example. Clearly 720p or lower, but my TV says it's receiving a 1080p signal from the PS3.

I didn't come here to start a fight. I came here to question what was told to me by the rest of the internet, as opposed to what I saw with my own eyes, and I learned something in the process (namely, that Bungie released bullshots to reviewers). Was I wrong? Yes, and no. I was wrong that the game was natively 720p, sure. But I don't think I was wrong in asking for verification to what I thought, at the time, was a legitimate observation about the screens I was looking at. The answer I got was certainly unexpected, but not uninformative.

Now, that said, I don't think I have anything more to add to this particular discussion.. I asked a question, and it was answered. Now, I hope ya'll won't mind if I hang around and read some of these other threads.. I've been gone a while, and it seems I have some catching up to do.

 

This is a technical forum, let Bungie do their own spin/PR. We were discussing all games with scaling, it just happens to be Halo 3 month.

Next time Bungie wants to trade off res, AA and AF for lighting, they should talk it about before release. I agree they made the right choice, they just tried to slip by us.

 

Sure, stick around.

To the rest of you: The man said his piece at reasonable length and without much heat, then moved on. Profit from the example

 

Jedi Geo's already addressed this, but I think it's an important point to drive home, specifically *because* this thread is getting the attention it is.

But, can you describe the "spin" that was put on it here? As far as I can tell, there's no spin at all. If NASA finds something that would be controversial, are they not to discuss or publish? If you read Quaz's posts, I'd say they are the model of dispassion, and extremely methodical in their approach.

I think yes, we all of us realize what this information does to a lot of the forums out there - but that's not our problem. Our concern is making sure that doesn't happen here. Are you saying that the information itself is to blame and it shouldn't be pursued, vs maybe perhaps the idea that a lot of individuals wrapped up in games on other forums (and some on this one, true) are just immature?

Jedi it's not about balance - there's not a scale of cosmic justice out there in terms of the video gaming industry. Needless to say, if there is something 'not right' about MGS4 or GT5 vs their claims upon release, you will be sure to find the best discussion of the matter here. This whole Halo 3 thing has been one of many tangents discussed here; it's simply the fact that it applies to an issue of relevance to such a large segment of the Internet that this has blown up like it has. Look around the console tech forum though and you'll see this thread was par for the course in terms of topic material.

This is a ridiculous statement, though, I hope you realize that. This is a forum for technology enthusiasts, and the discussion centers on rendering technology a lot of the time. No one here in this thread is disparaging Halo as a game, or saying it looks bad. If you truly don't care, why post on the subject? But what you're otherwise suggesting is honestly shockingly anti-curious.

It'd be nice to have, simply from a reference standpoint. But it's not about fanboys and face slapping - I hope you realize that.

PS - Don't feel you're being picked on per see Jedi, I've of course read your other posts and truthfully I do understand the forces that drew you here. This post is almost more directed to a lot of the visitors who no doubt share your sense of grievance, it simply uses your post as the setup to address what I'm sure a lot of people are feeling.

 

Not to mention this thread is two months old and we were quietly and happily geeking out on the issue long before the rest of the internet woke up one day and decided we were rabble-rousers and kitten snufflers.

 

This is sad, it's like some hostile politicians fight in a lab where scientists found something new...

Please don't mess up this thread - at least keep your mind cool even if you are a fanboy (you know the whole world is watching this thread now - oops, maybe half of it)

 

Actually, I do remember hearing about PGR3's resolution issues way back in the day, when I was still Sony's man through and through. At the time, I thought it was funny, although I had to admit that I didn't really see the difference. Ironically, PGR3 was the first title I bought when I picked up a 360. And I still say they do the best motion blur of all the racing games I've played. Then again, they're practically the only one that uses anything resembling real motion blur in-game...

I'm assuming that's been discussed somewhere.. off to Search..

 

Finally, Bungie tells us the resolution of this game! It's 640P!

Quite frankly, I don't care. Most people don't even have HDTVs. I think it was too early for games to go high resolution anyway.

However, I do think it shows that the hardware this generation is not very strong. If you have to give up having ANY anti-aliasing just to have decent lighting that sucks.

The PS3 of course would allow you to have a larger frame buffer for all of these things plus AA. But then you would not have as much memory for textures.

 

Can't you use both pools of memory on the PS3 for textures / graphics stuff?. But other then that yeah I agree with you, the OS on the PS3 takes up more ram. How much more was it again? 24mb?.

 

I was talking about how having multiple frame buffers on the PS3 for AA, HDR, and a full 720P resolution would take up a bunch of memory. Basically, it could do all of this when the 360 might not be able to (because of only having 10MB of EDRAM) but then the PS3 would not have as much memory for textures.

Basically, I'm realizing the limitations of all of these consoles.

 

i just thought of something here... for the PS3 version, why would they use 1536x864 with no AA? wouldn't it have been better to go the 360 route with 1280x720 and AA? i would have preferred this personally, even if it was just 2xAA.

 

Transparency is always good. The vast majority of customers don't even know what 720p and 1080p are, except a vague notion that one is better. It's not for the benefit of those customers that the information should be out there, but rather for those of the reviewers and technical press, so they can keep heads and tails of such matters without having to invest hours of personal investigation for each title.

Since something being fully 1080p doesn't make it automatically look better than a game at 720p, it's not like graphical judgements will revolve solely around resolution. Scaling methods and results, at that point, would just be another comparison the way we've always had regarding AA/aniso methodologies, etc. Why, then, is there any reason to mask it, or let everyone "assume" things one way, simply because you can fill in one check box or another?

Transparency is always better.

 

Why would a company talk about such prior to release only for a negative (one that would be massively exagerrated for obvious reason) buzz to be created?

letting the game out, seeing how it's adopted by the public and then getting into the details is fine and common practise. Atleast bungie came out and officially said something. I wouldn't expect that from many other dev studios.

 

The question is actually why did they (or MS) release true 720p shots to all those reviewers in advance?