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."

Comments

BFD

[Eponymous Crowbar]

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.

Fun should come before visuals, but...

[TriezGamer]

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.

Wait for the PC version...

[rtechie]

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.

Pixel Peeping Video Game Style

[ScotchForBreakfast]

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.

but NextGen was supposed to be the HD era!

[captain_cthulhu]

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 :)