Xbox 360 1080p – Why Not?

[Megadrive1988]

why would anyone want 1080p Xbox 360 games? framerates would be horrible, even with the 256 GB/sec internal bandwidth on the EDRAM daughter-die.


developers are having enough trouble getting good framerates at 720p :/

 

[ERP]

why would anyone want 1080p Xbox 360 games? framerates would be horrible, even with the 256 GB/sec internal bandwidth on the EDRAM daughter-die.


developers are having enough trouble getting good framerates at 720p :/

It all depends on the game.
If I was writing Tennis or a fighting game, I wouldn't see too much challenge in getting High reolutions working. There just aren't that many simple to render games any more though.

 

[-=P3tRaN=-]

why would anyone want 1080p Xbox 360 games? framerates would be horrible, even with the 256 GB/sec internal bandwidth on the EDRAM daughter-die.


developers are having enough trouble getting good framerates at 720p :/

we are still at the begining. try to have this in mind.

 

[Hardknock]

Do any 360 Games render to 1080i?

DOA4 is 1080i, don't know of any others...

 

[Bohdy]

DOA4 is 1080i, don't know of any others...

I see this claimed every now an again, but how can you know this?

And don't say "it says on the box".

Interlaced rendering on a next-gen console is really unlikely, as is 1080p rendering on 360 at this point.

 

[ERP]

I see this claimed every now an again, but how can you know this?

And don't say "it says on the box".

Interlaced rendering on a next-gen console is really unlikely, as is 1080p rendering on 360 at this point.

Just because the output is interlaced doesn't make it rendered as such.
If it's 1080i, it's likely rendering internally to a 1920x1080 buffer.

 

[Bohdy]

Just because the output is interlaced doesn't make it rendered as such.
If it's 1080i, it's likely rendering internally to a 1920x1080 buffer.

Well, of course. Which is why I covered both bases by saying that 1080p rendering was also unlikely. I just don't see why any dev would render in 1920x1080 (on the 360) right now, when barely anyone would appreciate it. Especially a game like DOA4.

 

[Acert93]

Well, of course. Which is why I covered both bases by saying that 1080p rendering was also unlikely. I just don't see why any dev would render in 1920x1080 (on the 360) right now, when barely anyone would appreciate it. Especially a game like DOA4.

More people have HDTV's with 1080i as the "native" format than 1080p, yet this hasn't stopped Sony from trumpeting 1080p and encouraging developers to aim for 1080p. Sure, few people can appreciate it, but it doesn't stop them.

 

[LightHeaven]

Well apparentely 1080p on 360 is not just a distant dream anymore...

On its pre tgs brief Ms announced that the Fall Update will include Full 1080p support for both games and movies.

 

[Bohdy]

Well apparentely 1080p on 360 is not just a distant dream anymore...

On its pre tgs brief Ms announced that the Fall Update will include Full 1080p support for both games and movies.

@60fps? If so, how?

 

[Cheezdoodles]

@60fps? If so, how?

My bet is on rendering at 1080i and deinterlacing.

 

[pipo]

Source: http://kotaku.com/gaming/xbox-360/shane-kim-talks-360-1080p-game-output-201816.php

If you missed the news check out the full press release on the jump, but in a nutshell Microsoft announced the Japan price and date for the HD-DVD add-on for the Xbox 360. More importantly, they announced that the fall software update for the console will allow the console to output game and movie content in 1080p resolution. That's right I said movies and games.

The interview was exactly 10 minutes long, so naturally I spent nine minutes trying to figure out just how a console with no HDMI out would gain 1080p output with a software update.

Kim was clear that the console could support true 1080p out.

"If it is running at 720p we will up-res it to 1080p, if it it's already 1080p then we can display it in 1080p," he said. " This is a great example of our console's ability and the great advantage of being a software company."

Kim said that while the console will soon support 1080p out, it will not have an HDMI out.

"We have the ability to output either through VGA or component. We have no HDMI announcement now," he said. "We do have the capability to deliver the software and, if needed, the hardware."

I pointed out that some movie studios have said they will use HDMI output as a form of copy protection and Kim acknowledged that if a studio uses that scheme then HDMI will indeed be required.

While Kim expects that some third-party game developers will create 1080p games, he said that 720p will likely remain the norm.

"We believe 720p is the sweet-spot for high definition," he said, adding that Microsoft Game Studio titles will, for now, continue to be created at 720p.

 

[cthellis42]

I was just about to post a different link, but that one's better. ^_^


It seems we understand less than we thought we did, or this is less "true 1080p" than they're indicating.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Does 1080p have to be 60 fps to count as that standard? Could they support 1080p @ 30 fps and lower, and still have it a valid 1080p? That's just a matter of deinterlacing a 60hz 1080i renderer and outputting at no extra BW, so would fit in with the current hardware and yet class as a 1080 resolution progressive output. What's the likelihood of any 1080p media being 60 Hz, games or movies or TV prgrammes? Not much I imagine, so without full 1080p, it'd be an adequate solution and no-one would miss the lack of 60 Hz output.

 

[expletive]

My bet is on rendering at 1080i and deinterlacing.

There is no rendering at an interlaced resolution (unless you call 1080i 1920x540p) so they'll be rendering at 720p and scaling or somehow rendering at 1080p. There's no benefit to rendering at 1920x540p over 720p AFAIK so i dont see a reason for anyone to do it.

Does 1080p have to be 60 fps to count as that standard? Could they support 1080p @ 30 fps and lower, and still have it a valid 1080p? That's just a matter of deinterlacing a 60hz 1080i renderer and outputting at no extra BW, so would fit in with the current hardware and yet class as a 1080 resolution progressive output. What's the likelihood of any 1080p media being 60 Hz, games or movies or TV prgrammes? Not much I imagine, so without full 1080p, it'd be an adequate solution and no-one would miss the lack of 60 Hz output.

Agreed, HD movies are 1080/24p natively so in the movie department youre shoehorning the native content to your displays frequency anyway. As far as games go, I cant imagine anything next-gen running at 1080/60p on this gen's hardware so i think they would be ok with 1080/60i.

 

[cthellis42]

Does 1080p have to be 60 fps to count as that standard? Could they support 1080p @ 30 fps and lower, and still have it a valid 1080p? That's just a matter of deinterlacing a 60hz 1080i renderer and outputting at no extra BW, so would fit in with the current hardware and yet class as a 1080 resolution progressive output. What's the likelihood of any 1080p media being 60 Hz, games or movies or TV prgrammes? Not much I imagine, so without full 1080p, it'd be an adequate solution and no-one would miss the lack of 60 Hz output.

The hardware can actually work like that? Wouldn't that make a whole LOT of previous "hardware limitations" effectively not exist, since you could always make a really SLOOOW game? I thought things were a bit more intrinsic than that.

At any rate, I certainly wouldn't expect anything but 2D arcade-type games (or slow-moving things like card/tile games) to be putting out 1080p at 60+ fps this gen, no. "Hardware limitations" or no.

 

[Asher]

Bit confusing to me, as I thought they made it very clear that the video scalar is 1080i only max...

 

[expletive]

Bit confusing to me, as I thought they made it very clear that the video scalar is 1080i only max...

I dont recall them ever explicitly citing the hardware limitations of the chip, just that THEY werent supporting 1080p at the time. Given the chip's possible WebTV heritage i wouldnt be surprised if it didnt support it and theyve come up with some firmware/software hack but if that chip is rooted in the video chain there needs to be some level of support to even convert it to analog and pass it along.

 

[Sethamin]

There's no benefit to rendering at 1920x540p over 720p AFAIK so i dont see a reason for anyone to do it.

Not only is there no benefit, it doesn't even make sense. How would you render every other line into your framebuffer? It's possible, I suppose, but you're already doing most of the work to render all lines, but then you'd have to throw half of them away. Interlacing typically happens in the TV encoder and is not something you take advantage of during rendering.

Agreed, HD movies are 1080/24p natively so in the movie department youre shoehorning the native content to your displays frequency anyway.

Interesting tidbit: for movies encoded at 24 fps, they typically output to 50/60 Hz displays by simply showing the same frames more than once. For 50 Hz displays, they show every frame twice and show every 12th frame 3 times, and for 60 Hz displays, they show every frame twice and every other frame 3 times. This is the reason why you get strange artifacts from interlaced content, as sometimes with this scheme you end grabbing the fields from two different frames. Hence you have 3:2 pulldown and progressive players which fix this problem.

Sorry, totally tangential.

 

[Bohdy]

For 50 Hz displays, they show every frame twice and show every 12th frame 3 times

Actually these days they just speed 24fps up to 25 and display the fields separated at the resulting rate of 50hz. It's why PAL DVD's usually have a lower runtime than their NTSC counterparts