Xbox360, so where the hell is the AA?

[pakotlar]

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?

Yes, several reviews have mentioned AA in COD2 and Kameo.

 

[maaoouud]

Vysez, I meant help as in less aliasing occurring.
The reason I ask is because HDTV is just starting to pick up here in Sweden so I haven't seen the improved quality myself (I have seen HDTV sets but with horrible signal/source).
However I am acutely aware of what higher resolution means on the pc, in fps and racing style games in particular, and I thought that it should have a somewhat similar effect on higher resolution tv sets.

Never mind interlacing/progressive scan, interlacing rarely bothers me and I have found that I often prefer it since my eyes find the displayed picture to be more calm (although I woud have thought progressive would be far better... I've never actually had the opportunity to do a comparision on the same hardware/source between the two so my personal impression may well be wrong regarding i/p scan).

So to restate the question more clearly. Doesn't the higher resolution of HDTVs translate into smoother graphics (as in lines, curves, texturepatterns etc.), less blocky/aliased, than that of SDTVs?

I am familliar with downsampling which can produce, in my oppinion, superior picture even while loosing information. However given the kind of picture seen on most tv outputs from pcs (ignoring poor signals) to SDTVs I don't know if it would indeed help in producing a better or equal picture compared to HDTV sets.

 

[Branduil]

For my money I think that AF is a much more important feature than AA. Which makes me quite disappointed that I haven't seen anyone talking about the lack of it. Has anyone seen an explanation as to why AF has not been implemented in any game, as far as I can tell?

 

[robofunk]

First off PGR3 is rendering at 720p. However debug kits can take screenshots at any number of resoutions.
http://www.bizarreonline.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=163193#163193

There might be 2xAA going on at 720p, the problem is that this doesn't apply to reflections so I think this is the aliasing people are talking about. Here's a good example of reflections getting in the way of anti-aliasing.

 

[tahrikmili]

Can MSAA be applied to reflections at all? Isn't it applied only to the object edges?

 

[pakotlar]

First off PGR3 is rendering at 720p. However debug kits can take screenshots at any number of resoutions.
http://www.bizarreonline.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=163193#163193

AFAIK Bizzarre did NOT manage to implement predicated tiling into PGR3. Since they are employing at least 2xAA, the MAX res the Xbox360 could possibly be rendering is 1024*576 (for 2xAA). Again, the Xbox can output at whatever res it whats (with the arbitrary limit of 1080i), but internally the max res it can push @ 2xAA is 1024*576. A framebuffer size of 720p would require 14.0MB @ 2xAA. One thing to note: with a decent scaler, you will most likely not be able to tell the difference between 576p and 720p (56% fewer pixels). Much less of a difference than between 640*480 and 720p (~300% fewer pixels).

edit: Screengrabs, unless scaled, will always be @ the internally rendered resolution. Once again, the Xbox360 is capable of outputting 720p, no matter what the internal res is (though there may be restrictions on this as well). The Bizzarre dev wasn't lying when he said it outputs @ 720p. It does. He didn't say anything about what res it was rendered at. Of course if they did manage to implement predicated tiling, the scenario changes. Though 576p is a great tradeoff imo.

 

[101]

Those shots of PGR3 are not representative of what I see on my TV, which is a 61" LCOS 720 native. There is very clearly moiré on the gaurd rails and other examples that really make it obvious. I think as suggested it might disable the AA when it's run at 720, I'll have to try it out.

However, I've been playing Condemned all night and it looks wonderful. Not only is MSAA clearly enabled, but it looks like the transparency AA is running as well. Very nice game as well. I think Monolith really nailed it with this and FEAR this year. Actually I think I spotted some familliar assets from FEAR in Condemned.

EDIT: Okay I tried both output formats, and actually stopped the car and got up and stared at the screen. It is running 2xAA in both modes, but it really looks bad in motion. I guess I haven't played a racing game without 4xAA in years as I never got into them much on xbox1, PC only. Condemned must be running 4x because the difference is night and day compared to PD0.

 

[Hardknock]

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?

Kameo is using AA to the fullest, it's extremely hard to find jaggies in this game. PGR3 is using 2x AA straight from the developers mouth. Haven't played PDZ so I can't comment. But from your PGR3 comments I can tell you don't know what you're talking about.

 

[Bill]

Though 576p is a great tradeoff imo.

I'm not sure I wouldn't mind all games being rendered that way. Lets face it, it decreases the graphics strain, enabling better visuals. Yet upscaled to 720P would still be worlds better than 640X480.

PS3 will be forced to follow suit or be at a disadvantage if that becomes the norm.

Also, I understand all about the predicated tiling. I just find it odd that at least first parties couldn't or didn't implement this in launch titles. Sure they didn't have final hardware, but couldn't they have planned ahead? I guess maybe not.

I wonder if the 576P+2XAA will become the norm, although not what MS intended? I think it sounds good to me.

 

[shortround]

Are you guys on drugs? Antialiasing does not mean all jaggies disappear instantly. It just reduces them.

 

[tahrikmili]

For my money I think that AF is a much more important feature than AA. Which makes me quite disappointed that I haven't seen anyone talking about the lack of it. Has anyone seen an explanation as to why AF has not been implemented in any game, as far as I can tell?

PGR3 seems to have some AF, just check the road textures.. It's something better than simple trilinear..

 

[Branduil]

PGR3 seems to have some AF, just check the road textures.. It's something better than simple trilinear..

Maybe the road does, but when I played the demo I noticed the grass textures definitely do not. I just think it's strange that such a relatively simple effect is not being used as much as possible.

 

[one]

This thread should be moved to the new sub-forum.
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=15

 

[Phil]

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

Ditto. Had my first go on the Xbox360 yesterday and have seen CoD2. They are quite jaggy. Nothing I'd find personally disturbing personally, but something I have noticed none-the-less.

 

[ims]

Nothing I'd find personally disturbing personally"

Why would you be "disturbed" about some jaggies in a videogame anyway.

Damn PGR3 looks really sweet must say. Pity I wont be able to get hold of a blox360 until after xmas though :|

 

[trinibwoy]

Must say I was extremely disappointed with the demo kiosk in Best Buy. But how the hell are we supposed to evaluate the system before buying if that's the best they can do?

Also the games at this particular kiosk sucked ass. King Kong had zero collision detection - characters feet were even passing through the floor And CoD2 just felt wrong and totally inferior (control wise) to the PC. The fact that it was jaggy heaven didnt help much - shouldn't Microsoft ensure that all these stores setup kiosks properly? Makes me wish the PS3 was coming out at the same time to give some competition so they would have their shit together.

 

[therealskywolf]

Are you guys on drugs? Antialiasing does not mean all jaggies disappear instantly. It just reduces them.

True. But hey....lol They will never get it.

 

[Titanio]

Are you guys on drugs? Antialiasing does not mean all jaggies disappear instantly. It just reduces them.

2xAA clearly won't, as some of the launch titles demonstrate, but some others do not appear to be using any AA.

4xAA should clear up most I think.

True. But hey....lol They will never get it.

Yup. MS probably will never get it.

"Well, you know what, with Xbox 360, the age of the jaggies is over" - Peter Moore

Oh, E3 2005...what an age of innocence.

 

[Guden Oden]

Also, I understand all about the predicated tiling.

I'm not so sure about that...

I just find it odd that at least first parties couldn't or didn't implement this in launch titles. Sure they didn't have final hardware, but couldn't they have planned ahead? I guess maybe not.

Obviously you are not a programmer in the games industry... Try reading some accounts of the level of stress and pressure to finish any large project today on time, much less one that HAS to meet a launch deadline for completely all-brand-new hardware that works different to anything released so far.

Programmers not only have to wrestle with the in-order, dual-thread, triple core main processor whose performance will suck if you program it the wrong way. It might be worth mentioning games traditionally have done EVERYTHING in ONE thread, because that was simply faster and easier than trying to divide it up. Fewer context switches on the CPU that thrashes the caches and kills performance, no juggling trying to synchronize threads, and no risk of creating any dreaded race conditions by mistake, and so on. Then, everything has to be debugged as best they can too of course, not a small task might be added.

Then on top of that, there's the GPU with its issues, like the "too-small" eDRAM and undoubtedly other quirks that all hardware has, but will be new since it is an all-new product that will be programmed closer to the metal than in a PC.

Launch games always suck. Did you see the launch games for the SNES? R-Type 2 for example was a flickery, sagging mess that slowed down pretty much whenever more than 5 guys were flying around the screen. Then, when programmers start to get a grasp of the hardware, things get way better. R-Type 3 was a particulary large jump from its predecessor.

Next xmas, games will be out for x360 that will put these to shame, and the ones the christmas after that will crush the launch titles and make them look like dog crap in comparison. Just you wait.

 

[Bill]

I notice several of the people here are judging off kiosks.

The kiosks were very unimpressive compared to the full system, as one who's played both.