Slashdot Mirror
Xbox 360 Not Hi-Def Enough?
News for nerds writes "One of the features touted for Xbox 360 is its requirement for games to be 720p and 1080i HDTV resolutions, dubbed The HD Era by Microsoft. Today it's revealed and discussed in the official forum of Bizarre Creations, the Project Gotham Racing 3 developer, that in the final review build for PGR3 the in-game races are actually rendered in 1024x600 to get constant 30fps/2xAA. The game is stretched to 720p (1280x720) in the upscaler, which is faking HD at best." As always with late-night forum mutterings, imbibe with a grain of salt.
What if the XBOX 360 was intended as the main gaming platform for a company for the next five years and they touted it to be incredibly powerful and include high definition support and then they couldn't even manage to make games run on that "high end" hardware today at more than 30fps without toning down the quality?
Oh wait. That's exactly what is happening.
No, Halo isn't upsampling, you're just expecting too much from a meager 1.5x change in resolution. The actual resolutio n difference between 480p and 720p is only 50% extra. It's really not that much. The jaggies on the pistol are obviously due to polygon clipping or some other phenomena, since they happen in exactly the same place no matter the resolution.
If you look more carefully at the chunky wires, you can clearly see that the xbox 360 ones are higher resolution. It looks about consistant with what I'd expect from half again the resolution.
There is no doubt in my mind that Halo 2 is shown at 720p, the problem is that Bungie admitted they used an imperfect analog capture card to take the 360 screenshots, while they had a digital feed of the original xbox. The analog capture card obviously degraded the quality a bit, making the already slim advantage all the more slim.
I think another contributing factor to the wires is that they aren't being antialiased in the 360 screenshot. Obviously they're not polygonal. Makes sense, considering how many polygons they'd use up, and the original xbox's limited capacities. It is possible that all the wires are really a semitransparent texture, or perhaps they're done similar to how cables are done in HL2.
What if you considered that it might just have something to do with the quality of the programming?
So you're saying Bizarre are bad coders? Have you ever actually played one of their games? Specifically any of the games in this series, going back to the original Metropolis Street Racer on Dreamcast.
Bizarre have always gotten the most out of the hardware they're working on, even if it's early in the console's lifespan. There are, even today, few racing games on the Xbox that look as good as the first PGR, and that was a first-wave title.
Let's assume you're right, and that Bizarre is not getting much out of the Xbox 360. That would suggest, at best, that the system is incredibly difficult to program for. If some of the best and most experienced racing game coders in the world cannot manage true HD on the system, what hope does anyone else have?
I think it's more likely that the 360 is just underpowered. That's the price you pay being first to market. The max res the 360 even supports is 1080i, and you don't even hear MS talking much about games that'll utilize that - all the talk I've heard has been about 720p, and now we're hearing that even one of those games, from a great developer, won't even really make that res. Something ain't kosher here.
By now you've already heard how Xbox 360 puts you at the center of the most powerful games on the planet--hence the "360," as in 360 degrees (geometry students will recognize that as the number of degrees in a circle).
So that's who this is being marketed to? People who are so stupid and ignorant and uneducated that you have to explain to them what the "360" refers to? What, did we just fall out of the sky? (Meteorological students will recognize that as the big blue thing above our head when we're outside).
So you're saying Bizarre are bad coders? Have you ever actually played one of their games? Specifically any of the games in this series, going back to the original Metropolis Street Racer on Dreamcast.
What, you mean the same Metropolis Street Racer that had to be recalled in the UK because the developer left a bug in there that meant that you lost half your accumulated Kudos points every time you completed a certain type of race - making game completion impossible? The same Metropolis Street Racer that was due for release with the console on 9th September, 1999, but didn't actually see a release until 3rd November, 2000?
You're right. They aren't bad coders. Just sloppy. And yet I still love 'em.
My Mind Is Rewired. Is Yours?
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Kinda off topic, but yup: The List
More info here.
I just ran by Best Buy and stopped for five minutes to observe a couple of people playing King Kong on a 360 that was in a glass case. It was on a high-def widescreen setup. It SUCKED. I think I saw these effects already in Metroid Prime. Nintendo is right: We can't really do to much if all we do is up the glitz ante and polygon count. What's the point of the hi-def if it's not getting me better games?
As if the graphics weren't crappy enough, the game didn't look like any fun either. Hellooooooooo...
And now, for a sig that's a complete copout.
I mean, if the stupid game will barely fit on a DVD... or even worse, require Blu-Ray... where is all the talk about super-high speed memory busses and uber-fast drives with ginormous buffers?
This is engineering, folks, and there's always a tradeoff in engineering. All that HD ain't free. And most people won't even care if it's 480p or 720i.