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Bungie Explains Halo 3's Resolution
For some folks artisitic merit or financial success of Halo 3 isn't what's really important: it's about how many pixels are on the screen. After there were some complaints about the 'truth' of the game's HD nature Bungie posted a missive on their site clarifying the output process for Halo 3's visuals. "Halo 3 uses not one, but two frame buffers - both of which render at 1152x640 pixels. The reason we chose this slightly unorthodox resolution and this very complex use of two buffers is simple enough to see - lighting. We wanted to preserve as much dynamic range as possible - so we use one for the high dynamic range and one for the low dynamic range values. Both are combined to create the finished on screen image. This ability to display a full range of HDR ... gives our scenes ... a steady and smooth frame rate, which in the end was far more important to us than the ability to display a few extra pixels."
Is it a fun game, or not? Debate that question if you must, but skip the minor technical details. It reminds me of the original Xbox's CPU -- some people swore it was a Celeron, some said a P3. I say what ends up being played on the screen is all that really matters.
3 buffers! That'll show em.
What's the actual resolution being output? 640p?... What is happening in the 360 when it's supposedly outputting 1080p?
I was expecting an article about how the game ends, and was prepared to make an epic post about a bunch of dots...
The article stole my joke!
I haven't had a chance to play Halo 3 yet, so I can't say anything about the game as a whole, but I'm glad to see they're more concerned with a steady frame-rate than killer visuals. I'd rather play a game at 320x240 with acceptable FPS (which I did back in the days of the original Unreal when I didn't have an accelerator) than play at 1024x768 at 20. Anything under 30 FPS irritates me to no end.
Those who care about this can wait for the PC version which I'm sure will allow you to pump the resolution to 1600x1200 (or possibly more by editing the .ini files) and zip along in glorious DirectX 10 goodness with their $500 video cards. Of course, by the time it comes out for the PC it will look dated (like Halo 2) and the people with the high-end rigs will be playing something else.
But if you really want it, it's coming.
All the complaints about Halo 3's resolution reminds me of all the "pixel peeping" that goes on when it comes to digital cameras. Everyone gets hung up on tech specs to the point that they stop looking at the image in question.
Halo 3 looks nice, and plays great. That's all that matters to me. I'm certainly willing to forgo some extra pixels in favor of a smoother experience.
Well, the output is true HD. The combining of the frame buffers as an interlacing technique to get that really pretty imaging is innovative and gives us a high framerate. So, it's playable, pretty, and the interleaving of the two framerates looks good (great, actually, at 1080p on my 42" Samsung)
I've no complaints.
From the article:
"In fact, if you do a comparison shot between the native 1152x640 image and the scaled 1280x720, it's practically impossible to discern the difference. We would ignore it entirely were it not for the internet's propensity for drama where none exists. In fact the reason we haven't mentioned this before in weekly updates, is the simple fact that it would have distracted conversation away from more important aspects of the game, and given tinfoil hats some new gristle to chew on as they catalogued their toenail clippings."
I have to save that last line - to be used at some point in the future, that's too funny to let die...
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
I think it happened right around the time that HDTV became available, but at some point resolution--previously a technical term--somehow became a buzzword related to quality. It's gotten to the point where I can't stand hearing people talk about 640p or 1080i or whatever, because it just comes off as marketing spew and e-penis-waving.
I think the same exact trick was used to keep the framerate up in Project Gotham Racing 3.
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
I love how with noscript on I they forward me to a page that claims their site requires javascript with no content. Then when I refresh I get the entire page of content with no warning and no hint of what javascipt was required.
Fire the web developer.
Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with what they did, but I wouldn't be saying "extra". They are sacrificing pixels for FPS, not excluding "extra" pixels. I didn't know that 640p was standard and 720p was "extra".
I totally disagree. I really thought the story was under developed. The Flood converted Covenant ship was really the only major addition to the Halo story line in Halo 3 and I felt the introduction was weak at best. As for game play. It wasn't balanced at all. I flew through each mission, when it came to getting inside the Ark, I was able to just drive by 90% of the obstacles in front of me, there was nothing really stopping me. The hardest part of the game was the Scarabs and once you had the tanks taking out their generators was relatively easily done from a distance. The game does not live up to the hype. Sure it's pretty, but you know what, it really wasn't all that FUN.
Gears of War and BioShock are both displayed at a native 1920 x 1080 in progressive scan on my cousin's 360 Elite. The lighting in both games is amazing, as are the visuals, and the gameplay.
The real problem is Halo's graphics engine, which has been too demanding of the graphics card/processor since Halo 1. They're not going to admit that their graphics engine is slow or that the 360's graphics card can't crunch through double-bufferred 1080p using an engine that is maintained at Microsoft.
It goes to show that third-party developers have a better handle on getting the most out of the 360's PC hardware than Microsoft.
We all know it's nit-picky to count pixels, but I am glad that someone called them on this. this 'NextGen' of consoles was supposed to be the HD-era of console gaming and here we are getting our corners cut secretly!
:)
I remember Peter Moore saying that this generation will also eliminate the jaggies. the anti-aliasing is better in these new consoles but not enough to eliminate aliasing. The marketers can spout lies upon lies before release because no one ever calls them on it later, so I say GOOD JOB and KEEP IT UP!
so they cut corners to get a good frame rate. good grief! if this Gen of consoles were really the HD-era, then every game should be able to do 60fps at 1080p, period. I don't blame Bungie for this though, it's squarely MS's bucket of lies. Also, I am no Sony fanboy - for the PS3's price, it should have no jaggies and every game running 60fps at 1080p as well as my laundry. Guess we'll have to wait until next generation for the NextGen... until then, we're all suckers - albeit having fun with exceptional gameplay
certified elipsis abuser
Halo 3 is a really, really fun game. The visuals are not breathtakingly beautiful, but so what? Which would you rather have, a game that is an embodiment of HDR aesthetics, but often struggles to be smooth, or a game that has good graphics, and can easily handle anything the game throws at it? I'll take the latter. The last thing I want is a slow game.
People complain too much about stuff like this. What do you want, a fun game, or one where 90% of the resources were put into the graphics? In my experience, the games that try to be real time works of art suck.
And it's incredibly fun to play. Also, since it's extremely accessible to a wide audience, it's the type of FPS that I can play with my brother; we rarely play matchmaking/etc. without each other.
My only complaint is what would seem like a 4:3 aspect ratio whenever you play split-screen with someone else. It'll use the whole screen with four people. I'm hoping for an autoupdate that allows full use of the screen, but I'm not holding my breath.
My PC does HD gaming!
Real HD.
Like 1080p HD and 720p HD. not just one wacky pseudo-resolution.
I can play in any resolution I like.
That doesn't mean I don't like the idea of the xbox 360 and halo3.
I just think it's a total fucking cop-out for Microsoft to release their flagship game product on their flagship HD console product in anything less than full HD resolution. This hints at severe hardware limitations in the console hardwre.
So, is the console capable of pushing enough frames out at full HD resolutions? What would happen if Halo3 ran one framebuffer at full HD? Would it stutter? Would it falter? Would it overheat the console and crash?
They're using their grammar skills there.
Well, the Oracle did verbally admit that he assumed the ark was a Shield World. That's from Ghosts of Onyx.
Unfortunately halo 3 already looks dated compared to half-life 2 and I spent $200 on my vid card last year. I often play them on the same 37 inch flat hdtv that I play xbox 360 games. Comparing good pc games (even 2 year old ones like half-life 2) is kind of moot, the 360 doesn't even come close.
Multiplayer gameplay is a different issue but then and again it's a ton of fun playing counterstrike source with a much greater flexibility in terms of teams. However it can get hectic since you can die far too easily in a game like CS.
Hmmm... Pie...
Why do we need this anyways? Why would I want to be blinded like in real life? It's a VIDEO GAME. I want to see what I'm shooting at!
1152x640 = 737280 pixels. Not even 1 Megapixel worth of fill rate per frame. Not quite the 2 Megapixels (1920x1080 = 2073600) of "Full HD in progressive scan" a Next-Gen console should be able to output.
The trade-off between a lower resolution and a solid frame rate is completely understandable and I'd take the same decision to preserve playability over graphics any day of the year. But "just a few extra pixels" is just plain idiocy, since we're talking less than half resolution here, guys. The truth is far simpler: either the 360 is not powerful enough for that or the Halo 3 engine is not so great.
- Otaku no naka no otaku, otaking da!!!
Didn't Microsoft DEMAND that all games must meet 720p to qualify as a 360 title?
Didn't they guarantee that they were ushering in the HD era?
I guess that didn't apply to their own internal titles.
Bioshock looks better all around, has far more detail, oh, and runs natively at 720p without any problems. Why can't Halo 3? I don't get it.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
This is actually a rampant problem on the xbox 360. I used to own one, and one of the first things I noticed about the machine was that images which should be crisp on your display were actually blurry around the edges. This odd phenomenon occurs everywhere, from the 360 dashboard, to the game menus and fmv's, to the in game graphics themselves. It seemed likely to me that this was because the machine is rendering things at a low resolution, and they trying to upscale by 20-30% in both x and y directions, which causes distortions in the image because it isn't a sensible division, like 100%. Every single game i've played has this problem, except settlers of catarn. If you are reading this and you have a 360, go download the demo of this off live arcade and try it out. Notice how crisp and clean the visuals are? The game is rendered from the get go in your native resolution, nwhich results in a sharp image with no distortion. You also never see any stretching, because if you're using an unorthodox screen shape (I used my monitior, which is 5-4) it will use your exact resolution as the buffer size. This post it entitled 'fuck upscaling,' because the fuzzy blur you get from every game the machine plays gives me a headache after about 2 hours play. If they want to reduce the resolution then fine, but just output whatever you render, don't upscale. I had to sell my 360, and one of the reasons was because of badly defined visuals. It should be the first thing people consider after high frame rate, in my opinion.
"If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever." - George Orwell, 1984
"and in a multiplayer game framerate is king above all else."
Umm, sure. You keep saying that when you play on a 450+ms ping.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The people complaining about the resolution aren't trying to knock Halo 3.... They're taking aim at the platform it runs on. The developers should be applauded for picking playability over raw resolution, but the platform should have handled the graphics at a higher resolution without slowing down the game.