Xbox360, so where the hell is the AA?

[101]

Xbox360, so where the h**l is the AA?

Remember how the 10MB "embedded" cache right on package of the Ati GPU was supposed to offer "free" (as in non-nitpicking virtually free) anti-aliasing on all xbox360 titles? No? here's some links...
http://www.techreport.com/etc/2005q2/xbox360-gpu/index.x?pg=2
http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2005/06/10/richard_huddy_ati/1.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050519-4929.html

Now my question is this, where is it? Granted I have only played 2 games so far. Project Gotham 3 has horrible aliasing, from the car models to the guard rails on the very first level, and not only does Perfect Dark not have AA enabled, it's not even VSYNCED! You have got to be kidding me.

What the hell happened? You can't blame rushed schedules for not enabling a graphic feature that is supposed to be "free" in the first place. So what is to blame? and why has no one said anything about this in any reviews? Thoughts?

 

[Powderkeg]

Why do I not believe your post?

Maybe because I own a 360, as well as PGR3 and PDO...

 

[fallguy]

The few games I played sure didnt look like they had AA. King Kong, and CoD2 were pretty jaggie.

 

[Bill]

This makes my concerns about the EDRAM being a possible waste of transistors all the more suspect.

The whole benefit as far as I can tell was supposed to be alleviating the bandwidth concerns of AA.

 

[Tap In]

The few games I played sure didnt look like they had AA. King Kong, and CoD2 were pretty jaggie.

on a demo disk or the fnal release?

my final release games look creamy smooth

 

[maaoouud]

What sort of tv sets are you guys using? Don't HDTV resolutions help with the jaggies?

 

[Guden Oden]

This makes my concerns about the EDRAM being a possible waste of transistors all the more suspect.

Bill, you were explained repeatedly why these so-called "concerns" of yours were bullshit - by developers who are working on the hardware even - and you still refuse to learn or reconsider. Amazing.

To get full AA at 720P rez you need to tile the screen, and to tile the screen you need to buffer the entire scene geometry so polys can be divided up into their respective tiles. And to do that effectively the engine has to be written with this procedure in mind. And dev systems didn't have the tiling ability until relatively late in the process, hence launch/early games will not use tiling, nor full AA.

It has nothing to do with eDRAM being a "waste" or any crap like that. It's just that games haven't been written to take full advantage of the hardware - yet.

 

[Powderkeg]

What sort of tv sets are you guys using? Don't HDTV resolutions help with the jaggies?

Panasonic 36" flat screen SDTV.

I suspect those complaining have only played KIOSK demos. I've got PGR3, PDO, Kameo, and CoD2 and all of these games are clearly using AA.

 

[Farid]

For thoses interested by the technical explanation of why some launch games, and some engines do not use the AA feature read this thread:

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=25474
(The Framebuffer discussion starts a few pages into the thread)

But simply put, as explained by Dave's article, 2X MSAA is free if the engine is compatible with the tiling technology of the C1 framebuffer.
Some launch games, simply couldn't tweak their renderer enough to make it compatible.

 

[kyleb]

If they are rendering at high res then it will look pretty AAed on a SDTV just from the downsampling. I can't seem to find any real in-game PGR3 shots unfortunatly, but I have played some on a 50" rear projection LCD and it showed quite a bit of aliasing though I think the reports of 1024x600 with x2aa sound about right from what I saw.
I haven't got to play any PDZ yet, but apparently it will show quite a bit of alising on a HD display judging from shots like these. I also heard about the lack of vsync in PDZ; and while I suppose a lot of people don't mind I can't stand tearing so I'm really curious if it is an all the time thing or if the game just looses sync occasionally.

 

[PARANOiA]

This makes my concerns about the EDRAM being a possible waste of transistors all the more suspect.

If only ATI read the Console Forum on Beyond3D, they could have saved themselves some money.

 

[Farid]

What sort of tv sets are you guys using? Don't HDTV resolutions help with the jaggies?

What do you mean by help?
Help as in make the aliasing more apparent or help as in it makes less visible?

And actually, SDTV should have less aliasing, since the TV renders an interlaced frame (+ deflickering filter) which on its own reduce a bit the aliasing.
Plus the game either downsample the 720p backbuffer, which result into a nice supersampled 480p/i frontbuffer, or it directly renders into a 480p MSAA backbuffer (PGR3).

 

[scooby_dooby]

I would say your TV is not properly set up. Every game I've played(cod2, nhk2k6, kameo) has 2xAA for sure, I would say Kameo probably has 4xAA

i saw pd0 on an lcd at the midnight launch part and it looked extremely clean as well, when they went to splitscreen though there were horrible jaggies, not sure what that's all about

 

[pakotlar]

What do you mean by help?
Help as in make the aliasing more apparent or help as in it makes less visible?

And actually, SDTV should have less aliasing, since the TV renders an interlaced frame (+ deflickering filter) which on its own reduce a bit the aliasing.
Plus the game either downsample the 720p backbuffer, which result into a nice supersampled 480p/i frontbuffer, or it directly renders into a 480p MSAA backbuffer (PGR3).

Actually, from all current reports, the Xbox360 internally renders @ 480p/widescreen SDTV res when connected to an SDTV. Check out gamespot's Xb0x360 connection analysis. You can clearly spot the res drop when moving to composite cables (notice especially, the jaggies on the edges of the jerseys).

edit: The tacit implication: Jaggies are more apparent when Xbox360 is played on SDTV and [probably] EDTV.

 

[Powderkeg]

If they are rendering at high res then it will look pretty AAed on a SDTV just from the downsampling. I can't seem to find any real in-game PGR3 shots unfortunatly, but I have played some on a 50" rear projection LCD and it showed quite a bit of aliasing though I think the reports of 1024x600 with x2aa sound about right from what I saw.

Care to point out this horrific aliasing?

 

[Farid]

I don't know what you're trying to demonstrate, Powderkeg, but those pictures won't help you, seeing how they are in 800x449.

 

[pakotlar]

I don't know what you're trying to demonstrate, Powderkeg, but those pictures won't help you, seeing how they are in 800x449.

Lol. The reduction wouldn't do much as far as jaggies are concerned, even if the framebuffer were 1280*720 w/o AA. As it stands, PGR3 is using 2xAA on a 1024*579 framebuffer [to avoid tiling]. Verification? Screen grabs via dev kits.

edit: Once again, reduction from 1024*579 to 800*449 is 39.5%. That would come out to less than 1.5x SSAA. Have you ever played a game running 800*600 with 2x ordered grid SSAA? It is a jaggy mess. Look at the pictures Powder posted again.

edit2: And you can clearly see AA in effect on the horizontal edges of the windshield frame. Top portion has very noticeable antialiasing.

 

[PARANOiA]

The problem with AA is it's often hard to identify the severity of the problem with simple screenshots. In motion, things tend to look much worse. The only people who can accurately judge if there is AA applied are those with final boxes.

Surely one of the major review sites mentions AA in their final reviews?

 

[therealskywolf]

So....you aren't playing it at 480i on a HDTV are you?

Or you are not basing it of the kiosks demos right? Becase...PDO and PGR3, AA all teh way.

You picked bad games to "pick on".

 

[Powderkeg]

I don't know what you're trying to demonstrate, Powderkeg, but those pictures won't help you, seeing how they are in 800x449.

OK,

http://img2.kult-mag.com/photos/00/00/63/00/ME0000630047_2.jpg

Native resolution. You can see a minor amount of jaggies, but you can also clearly see the AA at work.