Tomb Raider: Underworld

[user542745831]

Hey ShootMyMonkey,

could you possibly please explain why Tomb Raider Underworld renders at 1280 x 720 on PS3 while it renders at 1024 x 576 on Xbox 360?

And why is motion blur missing on PS3 and PC while it is very noticably there on Xbox 360?

Thank you in advance.

 

[Arwin]

Didn't you just partly answer your own question?

 

[user542745831]

That is your second counterquestion as answer on this forum within just one minute .

So, they could achieve higher rendering resolution because of missing motion blur?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think they chose the lower rendering resolution due to eDRAM limits, but the upside of that was they were able to add motion blur. I doubt they chose to add motion blur to one version and then picked a lower resolution to enable it.

 

[ultragpu]

How much resources do motion blur or "color grade motion blur" or "object based motion blur?" take for consoles? I might get abit confused here with all the different blurs, but if done right wouldnt that give an illusion of faster framerate as well "Crysis"?

 

[Neb]

How much resources do motion blur or "color grade motion blur" or "object based motion blur?" take for consoles? I might get abit confused here with all the different blurs, but if done right wouldnt that give an illusion of faster framerate as well "Crysis"?

Any motionblur would make things look smoother if enough is used properly. Subtle use to make things look smoother is a great implementation like in Crysis or KZ2. The use of motionblur in GTA3 to hide ugly framerate is not!

Obviously proper object motion-blur a la' Crysis style or (Lost Planet?) is not cheap vs regular high quality motionblur. It takes a larger perfomance hit switching it on/off in games that supports object motion-blur. I assume the reason why barely any games have this feature, on consoles atleast and limited on PC.

But object motion-blur in games is something really special if of good quality. makes animations look much smoother and realistic aswell as general moving objects, particles etc. I assume this is noticable in the xbox360 version (alteast for main character).

 

[ultragpu]

Any motionblur would make things look smoother if enough is used properly. Subtle use to make things look smoother is a great implementation like in Crysis or KZ2. The use of motionblur in GTA3 to hide ugly framerate is not!

Obviously proper object motion-blur a la' Crysis style or (Lost Planet?) is not cheap vs regular high quality motionblur. It takes a larger perfomance hit switching it on/off in games that supports object motion-blur. I assume the reason why barely any games have this feature, on consoles atleast and limited on PC.

But object motion-blur in games is something really special if of good quality. makes animations look much smoother and realistic aswell as general moving objects, particles etc. I assume this is noticable in the xbox360 version (alteast for main character).

Perhaps it would be more feasible on Ps3 version if TR UW is coded for it exclusively by abusing those SPUs. Which method of motionblur was used in Killzone2 again?

 

[deepbrown]

Didn't the 360 and PS3 versions have different developers? CD for X360 and Nixxes for PS3? Could that explain the differences in the versions?

Can someone go over this tiling for me. There are some X360 games at 1080p and 4xAA...

 

[vazel]

When people said the PS3 version didn't have motion blur on NeoGAF someone kept providing this link to a developer on the game saying otherwise. So which is it, does the PS3 version have motion blur or not?

 

[Arwin]

When people said the PS3 version didn't have motion blur on NeoGAF someone kept providing this link to a developer on the game saying otherwise. So which is it, does the PS3 version have motion blur or not?

Interesting. Also, another interesting comment in that post:

I think that's also a given considering that it is multiplatform and one of the platforms is not guaranteed to have a hard drive, so that sort of thing became a concern for us. Disc space limitations of only around 6.8 GB on a 360 DVD only became an issue for a grand total of two days towards the end of the project. The strangest thing, though, was just how often we were hitting memory capacity limitations on 360 and NOT on PS3. That still has people scratching their heads.

This also seems to suggest that whichever teams did the PS3 and 360 versions (it has been suggested they have been done by different developers), they seem to have been working closely together at the very least.

 

[Neb]

Perhaps it would be more feasible on Ps3 version if TR UW is coded for it exclusively by abusing those SPUs. Which method of motionblur was used in Killzone2 again?

Dunno looks like regular motionblur when playing but some kind of object motionblur in cutscenes?

 

[Rangers]

Can someone go over this tiling for me. There are some X360 games at 1080p and 4xAA...

Well if you want to have enough tiles I guess, you can have as high a resolution as you want.

 

[betan]

Can someone go over this tiling for me. There are some X360 games at 1080p and 4xAA...

I'm not sure what you are asking. You need to tile for 720p 2xAA and above. It requires engine support.

 

[pjbliverpool]

When people said the PS3 version didn't have motion blur on NeoGAF someone kept providing this link to a developer on the game saying otherwise. So which is it, does the PS3 version have motion blur or not?

There was some discussion around this point in another thread here at b3d with one of the developers (ShootMyMonkey).

Yes both console versions have the motion blur but the shaders were too long to fit into the DX9 limitations on PC and hence that, plus a few other minor effects had to be cut out.

Obviously the game has no DX10 path which would have circumvented this issue.

 

[deepbrown]

Can someone go over this tiling for me. There are some X360 games at 1080p and 4xAA...

Well if you want to have enough tiles I guess, you can have as high a resolution as you want.

OK I understand now. So CD avoided tiling because it was too much effort, instead choosing sub-HD? No that's not right is it. They tiled to get 2xAA, but it's easier to tile to a sub-HD res than 720p ?

 

[deepbrown]

When people said the PS3 version didn't have motion blur on NeoGAF someone kept providing this link to a developer on the game saying otherwise. So which is it, does the PS3 version have motion blur or not?

Apparently that's shootmymonkey. Which confuses the hell out of me.

 

[Betanumerical]

OK I understand now. So CD avoided tiling because it was too much effort, instead choosing sub-HD? No that's not right is it. They tiled to get 2xAA, but it's easier to tile to a sub-HD res than 720p ?

I'm pretty sure 1024 x 576 + 2xAA fits into the EDRAM with no tiling.

 

[deepbrown]

I'm pretty sure 1024 x 576 + 2xAA fits into the EDRAM with no tiling.

OK. I understand now.

 

[GuestLV]

The strangest thing, though, was just how often we were hitting memory capacity limitations on 360 and NOT on PS3. That still has people scratching their heads.

PS3 = HDD swap?

 

[Arwin]

If they don't understand themselves, that's kind of unlikely unless the OS does it automagically without telling you and fakes additional RAM. It seems more likely something to do with texture compression formats and how they are handled, but even that's weird. Perhaps it is something to do with the 360 side of things, the way it handles a certain format or way of rendering, but I haven't a clue. Unless it's actually more bandwidth related as its known I think there's a bandwidth issue somewhere in the 360's pipeline, that maybe causes memory not to be freed up sooner.

It's all guessing though when they themselves don't know!