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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.
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.