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Xbox 360 adds 1080p Support
jayintune writes "2old2play has received news from the TGS (Tokyo Game Show) that Microsoft plans on releasing an update that will enable 1080p support on their Xbox 360 console. From the article, "users can expect 1080p upscaling immediately on current games and DVDs while native 1080p on compatible HD DVD titles." What could this mean for Sony now that MS has 1080p as well?" Now honestly, show of hands: who has their console (not PC!) connected to a display device capable of 1080p? Who plans on buying a device capable of 1080p?
The primary problems is that games for consoles usually are only made for that console for about 3~4 years. So the price drop on 1080p displays has to drop in that time frame to give me a bit of time to enjoy it.
A secondary problem I see is that consoles are consoles. They're supposed to be a standardized unit in which I can assure myself that everyone is having the same playing experience. This seems to no longer be true with the different models of Xbox360 or PS3 they are planning. And, frankly, it turns me off a bit. Is it a good thing that consoles are becoming more like computers? And if it is, why aren't we just buying a special USB controller from these companies and running everything on our computers?
My work here is dung.
I recently bought a 50" Samsung DLP TV that has full 1080p support (no upconversion cheating etc). However, I have my 360 set on 720p instead of 1080i even because the 360 is NOT very good at upconverting signals into 1080 anything. I suspect their 1080p upconversion will be the same. My tv is much better at upconverting 720p to 1080p than the 360 is at upconverting from 720p to 1080i. This is especially noticeable on my NBA 2k6 game where the 360 upconversion is much more grainy and aliased looking than the one my TV does. I'm guessing that those of us with 1080p TVs will have to wait 4-5 years until the "next-generation" of consoles comes out that actually fully support it. Many of the games don't look really nice on my TV because it is large enough to magnify any flaws in the graphics and makes most games look more aliased since there just isnt enough resolution being pushed to the TV to look smooth.
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." - Tennyson
1080 lines of resolution, progressive scan (shows every line in every frame). You can thank me later.
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
No-one in Australia transmits anything at 1080p. ABC and SBS "HD" are 576p, although they have almost no "real" HD content - most all of it is upsampled SD. Seven is also 576p, although I think their "HD" broadcasts actually have 1080i sources. Both Nine and Ten broadcast in 1080i (even sport, which kind of sucks).
Translation: I work at McDonalds and wish I could afford cool stuff, but I can't so I make up stories about how rich I am online to satisfy my desires.
I have serious doubts that true 1080p is really practical in this generation of consoles. The reason being, the more resolution you push the higher the bandwidth and the higher the memory cost. I think developers that produce 1080p games will really be producing 720p games and letting the console up-sample. And that ultimately does little for quality. Lets look as some numbers
On a console running at 1080p you have 1920x1080 pixels x8 bits (for non floating point HDR) That means 15.8 meg per frame buffer. A game typically has multiple buffers it renders to (especially for post processing effects) so there is almost 32meg consumed just so you can display an image. If you are using true floating point HDR one of those buffers would be 32meg.
If you are rendering at 720p a frame buffer is 7 meg for 8bit and 14 for 32bit float HDR.
There is also an impact on fill rate. The 1080p requires more than twice the fill rate. That means (when fill-rate bound) the frame rate must be cut in half or the effects being used must be reduces.
On the PS3 with a practical fill rate of 15GB/s to local video memory, you can overdraw a 1080p scene at 60fps only 16 times. That has a serious impact on use of particle effects, multi-pass rendering, and post processing. At 720p that overdraw rate increases to 36 times.
On an xbox360 the eDRAM affords a greater fill rate (64GB/s) so it could better handle the demands of 1080p but it has to contend with the 10Meg limit on the eDRAM. This means a 1080p scene would require a 4 pass tiled rendering and a 2 pass for scene post processing.
So basically I don't think we will even see true 1080p games without those games reducing their visuals significantly. I would rather have a slick looking 720p at 60fps than a 1080p that looks last generation.