HD games not HD?

[galson]

Awhile ago I was browsing the net and ran into this thread on Beyond 3D Forum. It seems very interesting, I recommend reading it to every Xbox360 and PS3 fanboy/troll/whatever. As we know, the HD starts with 720p, but many games aren't even rendered in that resolution, they are upscaled only. I think many gamers aren't too familiar with it, so I decided to post it here.

The most known example of not being HD is Halo 3, which runs in 1152x640 resolution. This fact was laughted at probably by every Sony fanboy out there, but they even don't know that not all PS3 games are truly HD also. Here's a few examples of native resolutions of current gen games:

Full Auto 2: 1920x1080 AA 4x, bad framerate - PS3
NBA Street: 1920x1080 AA 4x (30-60fps) - 360
LocoRoco Cocoreccho 1920x1080 MSAA 2x - PS3
Tony Hawk Project 8: 1040x584 AA - 360
Tony Hawk Project 8: 1280x720 - PS3
Virtua Tennis 3: 1920x1080 AA 2x - PS3, 360
XMB: 1920x1080p - PS3
Dashboard: 1280x720p - 360
Perfect Dark Zero: 1138x640p - 360
Halo 3: 1152x640p - 360
Call of Duty 3: 1120x630p - 360
Ninja Gaiden Sigma: 1280x720p - PS3
Project Gotham Racing 3: 1024x600 - 360
Tomb Raider: 1024x600 - 360
Ridge Racer 7: 1920x1080 no AA - PS3
NBA 07: 1920x1080 - PS3
NBA 08: 1920x1080 - PS3
Tony Hawk Proving Ground: 600p - PS3
Tony Hawk Proving Ground: 720p - 360
GRAW2: 720p - PS3
GRAW2: 720p AA 2x - 360
Super Rub a Dub: 1600x1080 - PS3
GTHD: 1440x1080 - PS3
Super Stardust HD: 1280x1080 - PS3
Skate: 1536x864 - PS3
Skate: 1280x720 AA - 360
Bioshock: 1280x720 - 360
Harry Potter: 1280x720 MSAA 2x - PS3
Pixel Junk Racers: 1920x1080 - PS3
Heavenly Sword: 1280x720 AA 4x - PS3
Blast Factor Demo: 1920x1080 - PS3
The Darkness Demo: 1024x576 - PS3
Resistance: Fall of Man: 1280x720 MSAA 2x - PS3
Motostorm: 1280x720 MSAA 2x - PS3

After all this talk from MS and Sony about 'all games in HD' this seems really ridiculous. It seems we've been cheated on since the beginning :>

I wonder what you think of it.

[Fadingz]

*laughing at Call of Duty 3 and Halo 3*

[Chrono Archangel]

Somehow I feel you cant blame either Sony or Microsoft. It is really the game developpers that should be to blame here.

Anyway, I'm a Wii fanboy so I dont really care This just proves that graphics are good enough that you dont really need 1080p for the perfect gaming experience.

[BigIg]

Gameplay > Graphics > Resolution

[Thanakil]

Gameplay > Art Design > Graphics > TV you use > Resolution.

Good gfx is useless if the game lack completely of good art design, sometime a game got really good gfx but the same still looks very... Blend... And empty of originality, kinda like Oblivion... Using mods you can even increase Oblivion gfx further, but the game still feel completely unoriginal.

On the other end, there's game with low gfx but lots of originality and who look simply gorgeous because of it, which is great.

As for HD, I dont wanna pay 1700$+ for a TV, so anything over 720p doesnt matter to me.

[Fadingz]

don't forget sound & music (the downfall of FFX-2 LOL)

[runawayprisoner]

Most of the PS3 games on that list either render at 720p or above, with the exception of like... two titles? The Darkness and Tony Hawks Proving Ground. A LOT of 360 games are not even up to 720p, though:

Tony Hawks Project 8
Perfect Dark Zero
Halo 3
Call of Duty 3
Project Gotham Racing 3
Tomb Raider

^= Just from the list alone. Not trying to flame anything. Just wanted to point out something so obvious that you should have noticed before you made a statement regarding the PS3 being in full HD or not. It seems most of its current games are at 720p or higher. With the exception of Tony Hawks Proving Ground and The Darkness, of course. You stated it yourself that HD starts at 720p, no?

Anyways, what the game is rendered at is very subjective, and it has not really been confirmed that the games on the list are indeed rendered at the appointed resolutions. Heck... you could somehow bypass the hardware scaler of the 360 and get the natively rendered frames at those exact resolutions?

[Thanakil]

Perfect Dark Zero was released back in November 2005 tho, same thing for Project Gotham Racing 3. Can't really blame them for something like that 2 years later. Especially since, if I remember right (could be wrong since I dont care too much about the bigger HD) the higher options of HD were unlocked quite a bit after the release of the console, isnt it? I think the console was released with HD at first, but the higher reso were only unlocked through a patch later on.

Call of Duty 3 Tony Hawk 8 and Tomb Raider Legend are games that were ported over many many consoles, even PS2/GC, I wouldnt expect them to be quality ports taking advantage of the console to be quite honest.

Halo 3, that's another story, such a hugely advertised game being released NOW, when the 360/PS3 brag so much about True HD, SHOULD have been properly using HD... That's a really weak move from Bungie.

[galson]

@runawayprisoner
I never made a statement of PS3 being full HD or not (yeah, I said 'truly HD', but I didn't mean 1080p by that), unless you take 720p as full HD as well. Yeah, most PS3 games seem to be 720p natively, that is enough for me as I'm not going to buy a 1080p TV anytime soon anyway. The quoted text doesn't list games that are not HD, just shows what native resolution they are rendered in and clearly states that some of them are NOT HD, despite both MS and Sony's statements that ALL games on both X360 and PS3 will be HD (meaning at least 720p). Somehow they neglected to mention whether they will be rendered in at least 720p or just upscaled to it. I don't blame devs, they haven't stated anything

As for how to distinguish the resolutions, just read the thread I posted link to earlier and you'll learn more. It basically involves very detailed picture analysing, counting pixels, etc. And it's really not that hard to tell the difference between image rendered natively in 720p and upscaled to such resolution. Look here for more. The resolution in Halo 3's case has been confirmed by Bungie themselves.

[ChankastRules]

The next-gen consoles are not really powerfull enough for AA and HD, it doesn't matter if they have a lot of processing power if the graphics card cannot handle the increased fillrate for 1080p.. so I think we'll keep seeing upscaling,,, unless you have a very high-quality HD-TV and disable all filters.. you'll not see an enormous difference though.

[runawayprisoner]

I am still wondering how they found out the true resolution of GTHD, though. It is definitely at least 1440 pixels horizontally, but don't tell me they counted that much... because that's insane. Won't deny the thing about Halo 3, though. I even stated in another thread that Bungie could have done so much better with Halo 3.

[Condor San]

Originally Posted by Thanakil

Gameplay > Art Design > Graphics > TV you use > Resolution.

Good gfx is useless if the game lack completely of good art design, sometime a game got really good gfx but the same still looks very... Blend... And empty of originality, kinda like Oblivion... Using mods you can even increase Oblivion gfx further, but the game still feel completely unoriginal.

On the other end, there's game with low gfx but lots of originality and who look simply gorgeous because of it, which is great.

As for HD, I dont wanna pay 1700$+ for a TV, so anything over 720p doesnt matter to me.

well said!

Tom Clancy double Agent was a disappointment for me. Beautify models and surrounding, but the game play sux (not my type with stealth.. kill.. stealth... drag body... stealth.. run around... stealth... find objective all over the place... kill a few... stealth)

I rather play Romance of the Three Kingdom 3 one the Snes if one ask me to choose between Tom Clancy double agent for the 360 or the SNES for Rotk.

[hushypushy]

My "HD" TV, a 30" CRT, isn't sharp enough for me to distinguish a good 480p from the 1080i I run it at.

I don't really give a crap if the resolution is up to par, it's more about framerate and how they utilize the resolution.

[Cid Highwind]

Originally Posted by hushypushy

My "HD" TV, a 30" CRT, isn't sharp enough for me to distinguish a good 480p from the 1080i I run it at.

I don't really give a crap if the resolution is up to par, it's more about framerate and how they utilize the resolution.

Seconded. Running the games in the default resolution is nice, but on the other hand I'd rather have some good effects and nice shaders doing their work with textures than having a full HD resolution. What's the point of full HD games when you're going to look at bland textures and low poly models?

Also,
art direction >>>> graphics/resolution

That's the reason why a game like Jet Set Radio still looks stunning by today's standards, and new games just look bland and uninspired.

This does confirm to me that it will be nice to get that monitor I've set my eyes on which can display images at their true resolution. It's good to have the option to let it not scale in favor of having a crisp image. Or do the consoles scale it themselves?

[Hard core Rikki]

Originally Posted by Fadingz

don't forget sound & music (the downfall of FFX-2 LOL)

Sound and music dont show up on game cases, so they don't count. At best you just throw a known musician name on it and hope someone will notice or care.

Smoother fps with sharp ENOUGH image is all that I care for, given a regular or bigger tv. most people enjoed ps2 even with the supercrappy cabling. just getting the better ps2 cable wouldve provided quite the upgrade in sharpness and color accuracy already, and yet...

[galson]

Originally Posted by runawayprisoner

I am still wondering how they found out the true resolution of GTHD, though. It is definitely at least 1440 pixels horizontally, but don't tell me they counted that much... because that's insane. Won't deny the thing about Halo 3, though. I even stated in another thread that Bungie could have done so much better with Halo 3.

Believe me, there are such insane ppl Well anyway, resolution doesn't make the game and as long as it looks good it doesn't matter what res it's rendered in. Hell, Resident Evil Zero and Remake both look wonderful to me even today. I just wanted to let you know that we -AGAIN- have been promised golden mountains by Sony and MS, hah typical. At least 360 has hardware upscaler in its GPU, unlike PS3 which does it via software (hence Ninja Gaiden Sigma looks worse in 1080p that 720p IMO, it's rendered in 720p in both resolutions FYI). And Sony instead of doing something with crappy AA boasts themselves with the full HD thing. I'd honestly rather have games in lower res and good AA than in higher and crappy AA or no AA at all. But I guess it'll always be: Playstation = jaggies.

[runawayprisoner]

There are quite a few games on the PS3 with AA, or should I say, most of them belong to Sony. The ones you are complaining about (low-res and no AA) are mostly those from publishers like Activision and 2K games. And what? Sony did deliver their games at at least 720p... but Microsoft... I'm not sure about that. After Halo 3, I can say be quite sure that MS hasn't kept their promise.

Oh yeah, and there IS a scaler on the PS3. It's a horizontal scaler. And there is an article somewhere on B3D. If that's the logic behind this, games such as Ninja Gaiden Sigma and Heavenly Sword cannot be upscaled from 720p to 1080p. Heck... if software scaler was easy, Sony would have included it in their firmware updates. Now that I think about it, the PS3 list for 1080p games are more like fanboy rants than anything with concrete proof. Counting pixels on some blurry screen doesn't really convince me. You know. Especially after knowing that the PS3 has no real hardware scaler but a horizontal scaler... and that its games have to be upscaled through software, which is not really... true since Sony could have done that easily in their firmware updates. The option to upscale PS3 games is not even in debug firmwares. If they use a software upscaler, the PS3 RAM will kill it... as it has to store both 720p and 1080p frames at the same time. I think it has been stated before that a software scaler was not feasible with the PS3? Now I really DO have to question the nature of the above list.

Edit: And THIS article from Beyond3D supports my logic.

P.S.: So much for trying to debunk PS3's 1080p games. Ninja Gaiden Sigma may look worse because it is still using low-res textures... (I can confirm this. ) which is the same case for Rainbow Six Vegas. However, games like Heavenly Sword and GTHD look fantastic. Jaggies... maybe... but with that many dots on the screen, you can barely notice it. And I wonder where Lair is on the list. They don't want to mention a 1920x1080 game with MSAA 2x?

[hushypushy]

Does anyone have a compelling argument for the anger against these companies for their "almost HD" games other than "they told us we'd be getting real HD so wtf." ?

[Hard core Rikki]

if games dont compel people to get hdtvs, no way hd can be a selling argument. ps3's bluray loses here, and the wii turns a better choice in such a case. a coincidence?

[galson]