Xbox 360: First Look at Final Hardware

Back to front sorting doesn't really have advantages perse, it's just something you do when you have to for various reasons. Front to back sorting maximizes Z-culling, the problem is that other forms of coherency might be more important (sorting by texture and shader for instance).

 

What i thought then ... kinda...

 

Well in a Dev. interview Bizarre said they will be using 2xAA at 720p only, and 4xAA at the lower 640x480 resolution. So i guess there is some serious performance hit (both at 30 fps!).

 

Boris Schneider-Johne (Xbox Product Manager Germany) responded in his private blog that the 1080i is missing cause they have configured it via a VGA connector. 1080i is possible and will be displayed in the setup when connected through the component cable. He also said that every Xbox360 game will be 2xAA enabled (minimum) in the finales stages of development. AA is also possible at 1080i but as everyone here asumes this will happen with a little performance slowdown cause of the tiling which will happen.

http://www.dreisechzig.net/wp/archives/304

 

Based on Dave's article it seems that both 720p and 1080i require 2 tiles at 2xAA. However at 4x aa, 720p requires 3 tiles and 1080i 4 tiles. Is his statement regarding 1080i at 4x aa, because it seems like there should be no adiitonal tiling penalty between 720p and 1080i for 2xaa.


J

 

Forget tiling blah blah blah... why does the X360 animation in nearly every title except Kameo suck? As a day one purchaser, I am concerned.

 

Kameo has good animation?

I think NBA2k6 has pretty cool animation. Still a bit stiff but i'm not sure we'll ever get rid of the stiffiness.

Haven't seen much to judge the animation to be honest. In the end, animation is vastly a developers' task to get right, not something that's limited by the hardware (see for example Jak2&3 on PS2, which had some AMAZING animation). Although i can think of a way or two to get "hardware limited" when doing animation...

 

Thanks. So he actually confirms that there is either AA or some other effect (DoF, Motion Blur) but not both of them. Funnily he calls them both AA...well M$ bullshitting once again:

(sorry for my bullshit translation)

 

No he doesn't, and that's certainly not the case. The more "effects" you use, the greater the expense, but that's a seperate issue.

 

Yes he does. He distinguishes between them by saying "either AA or Motion Blur...". Cheep excuse if you ask me.

(or as i wrote, some kind of Anti-Aliasing , like Motion Blur which of course is no AA at all, but he takes that for serious as it seems...)

 

Are you saying that 'effects' that would be implemented by the EDRAM pile up on the "expense", or just effects that the Xenos would handle on the main die?

J

 

Well, aa and motion blur and out-of-focus field of view do have similar effects; you do not see jags.

 

More effects, anywhere, are going to be more expensive than fewer or none. On the daughter die there is a lot of bandwidth to cater to that, but computationally there is still an expense. Things done on the main die obviously cost like any other shader (and I do believe motion blur, DOF etc. are implemented in shaders?).

 

Well, my crappy Babel-Fish powered version says:

"Still another little thing is wrong: In the final version each play will have a form of anti- Aliasing (in addition, Motion Blur or the described "Field OF Depth..."

So IMO, it looks like it's AA+Motion Blur/Depth of Field, and "not AA or Motion Blur/Depth of Field"...

Can some nice person that speaks fluent german/english be nice enough for a more accurate translation?

Here's the specific quote:

"Noch eine Kleinigkeit ist falsch: In der Endversion wird jedes Spiel eine Form von Anti-Aliasing haben (kann aber auch Motion Blur oder das beschriebene “Field of Depthâ€￾ sein, das ist in den Programmier-Spezifikationen sogar zwingend vorgeschrieben. Dank des Struktur des Grafikchips ist klassisches 2X ode 4X Anti-Aliasing praktisch “umsonstâ€￾ zu haben."

 

No prob.

According to them MS requires either AA, DoF or Motion Blur in the final game (so not in addition to AA)...

That's what the quote says anyway.

 

I don't have the exact wording on the requirement off hand, but I believe they require at least 720P and some form of AA. They do not specify exactly what (or didn't last time I read the submission docs) you might get away with just motion blur ot DOF, but I wouldn't want to take the chance of getting bounced on it, especially not around launch time.

 

Interesting...I wonder why this "clarification" didn't leak/surface sooner?

Thanks for the translation.

 

Perphaps this AA or DoF or Motion Blur stuff is MS wanting to ensure "jaggies" are not visible with X360 games. As long as one is doing one or the other MS would be happy if this were the goal.

edit:
err...given previous posts seems the above is stating the obvious.
end edit:

I've no idea as to whether it's possible to selective AA or not in the case of AA being used in combination with one of these effects. Sort of like how apha "stuff" didn't get AA until just recently. Though this seems a quirk in the HW perhaps a software means exists to have the same effect when one wants to. If not...costs just pile up like normal I guess.

 

I think that you can assign diferent antijags technics for different blocks of pixels on the same frame, but you can not cumulatively put all technics on the same set of pixels.