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Senior software design engineer clarifies "TRUE HD"

Posted Oct 24, 2006 at 1:56AM EST by QJ Staff

Listed in: PS3 Tags: Engineers, Insomniac Games, ODD, Ozymandias, playstation 3 updates, Sony

Resistance: Fall of Man developers recently admitted the game won't be hitting the 1080 target. Despite Insomniac Games' statement that such is the case because they're saving runtime dynamic memory for characters and environment, some still won't let up and throw stones at our beloved Sony.

To be quite honest about it, we don't know anymore the REAL score between the 720p, the 1080p or even the1080i. It was a good thing though that we came across one article over at Ozymandias. One of the company's senior software design engineers, Bruce Dawson, discussed and game a few clarifications regarding the matter.

"They think that 1080p is somehow more challenging for game developers than 1080i, and they forget that 1080 (i or p) requires significant tradeoffs compared to 720p," Dawson explained. He further shared that it doesn't actually matter what your preferred console is, rendering 1920x1080 compared to 1280x720 will still result to a 55.5% less time per pixel.

The engineer then revealed that when you really think about it, any game could be made to run at 1920x1080...for a price. It may allow you to show more details but running complex pixel shaders will definitely suffer. When it comes to TV's frame buffers, it is true that 1080p is a higher bandwidth connection than 1080i. But one has to remember that the buffer itself is identical. "ItÂ’s just different settings on the display chip," he quipped.

A couple of other clarifications that Dawson made are as follows:

2.25x: That's how many more pixels there are in 1920x1080 compared to 1280x720
1.0x: That's how much harder it is for a game engine to render a game in 1080p as compared to 1080iÂ—the number of pixels is identical so the cost is identical.
There is no such thing as a 1080p frame buffer. The frame buffer is 1080 pixels tall (and presumably 1920 wide) regardless of whether it is ultimately sent to the TV as an interlaced or as a progressive signal
1280x720 with 4x AA will generally look better than 1920x1080 with no anti-aliasing (there are more total samples)

Bruce Dawson believes that such discussions would inevitably end up about field rendering. He doubts this is possible as it requires to maintain a solid 60fps. Since interlaced formats display the even lines on one refresh pass and then the odd lines on the next refresh pass, missing just one frame would certainly create a disaster.

There. After knowing all that jazz, we can't help but still remember fans reactions at certain PS3 demo kiosks. They all seem happy and satisfied with what Sony's next-gen baby has to offer. At the end of the day, one has to remember that the industry exists and thrives because and for the fans. So if they are liking it, by all means, let us not talk about resolutions anymore and just bring it on!

Via Ozymandias

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Hey, the two imbeciles above, why don't you just click the Ozymandias link and read what he had to say earlier about 1080p. Does this douche really have a honest rep still? Here, let me copy and paste what he had to say earlier:

"the PS3 has roughly the same pixel-pushing capabilities as the Xbox 360. Don't need to take my word for it, it'll be obvious soon enough over the next year." --correct, the PS3 launch games do look as good as second generation 360 games, if not better

"In fact, I'll stick my neck out and predict that that you won't see any 1080'x' games for the PS3 this year..." -- I understand he's not stating this as 100% fact, but he still stated this in a blog about 1080p...as an engineer.

"...the few that come out with 1080'x' support are either going to be simple classic arcade ports that don't need to render complex scenes (think the original Battlezone), or will give up a lot of in-game visual effects and simply won't look very good..."

WRONG! This is the kicker in my opinion. In a statement like this, he makes 1080p sound like it's poo poo. Oh wait, Microsoft announced glorious 1080p. Okay! never mind! It's totally okay now to like 1080p.

1 year is a difference between concept and proof. But during that year they all shot off their mouth and instead got burned by the end result.

# PS3 outdated — CSFFlame 2006-10-24 04:52

This is what happens when they use an outdated graphics chip on a "next-gen" console...

Why is this not a surprise?

a modified 6800GT is not strong enough to do all this stuff they are bragging about.

# Outdated? — Guest 2006-10-24 05:41

Since when is RSX an outdated GPU? Stop acting like a fanboy please!

RSX and Xenos (the 360 GPU) are on par with each other in terms of power (as stated by developers). So RSX is as outdated as the 360's GPU (in otherwords, not at all).

Resistance had to drop to 720p for good VALID reasons, the key reason being the RAM available, and perhaps performance to some degree (a point I and other gamers raised here MANY times regarding 1080p, where we've said RAM is the real issue and not Blu-ray, despite being attacked by fanboys!!!).

Lair and RR7 are both 1080p, btw.

The fact is, 1080p requires more RAM and more fillrate, resources which could have gone towards making the game look and run better at 720p. That's not to say I have anything against 1080p, but it doesn't come for free, so I would rather see 720p with the extra fillrate going towards extra and/or better effects than simply a higher resolution.

# addon — ffaldkja 2006-10-24 06:15

To add onto ANNIE BODY, Resistance was able to run smoothly with high framerates in single player at 1080p, but due to the RAM multiplayer fell below what they wanted it to perform.

# why are people complaining? — ContrAss 2006-10-24 06:31

Nobody at Sony ever said every game will be 1080p.

Besides, If Cliffy B. came out and said Gears of War could be done at 1080p then what would you all say? Ted Price and Co. is optimising the game for the best overall expirence, and what you all tend to forget is that it resistence is still a launch game.

# ??? That's not what Ted actually says; — Guest 2006-10-24 08:28

http://blogs.ign.com/Ted-Insomniac

"But when we began making our final discs we made the decision to release at 720p. Why? Native 1080p (versus 720p scaled to 1080p) uses much more VRAM than 720p. When we finished up a few of our bigger levels at the very end of the development process we realized that we would have had to steal VRAM from some of our characters and environments to run in native 1080p"

"In fact, much of the non direct-feed (i.e. handheld cam) footage of Resistance floating around on the net has been of 1080p TVs using Resistance%u2019s 720p signal. "

# Doesn't matter — Guest 2006-10-24 09:19

It doesn't matter if the game is 720p or 1080p, it's stil going to rock. Remember, this is a first-gen game, so in a year or two, all PS3 games will look better and more will run at 1080p. Nothing to worry about. Sony is still king.

# First gen means nothing now. :| — Guest 2006-10-24 23:46

Many of the PS3 'first-gen' games have been in developement for as long as second gen 360 games, because of the delay of up to 9 months from the original spring launch, with some games having as much as 6 months developement time on FINAL hardware. Hence PS3 games and 360 games are comparible, both in terms of quality and developement time.

Also, in a year or two, ALL PS3 games will not look better, SOME PS3 games will look better, since it's down to the talents of the developers, where some are much better than others.

The PS3 is not immune from poor/average games.

# that excuse only works for 1 reason — Guest 2006-10-25 03:51

sorry games4james, but your excuse isn't the slightest bit concrete. Yes the games were in development, yes the developers have been working on it for a long time and yes there was a delay of majestic proportions but all that reasoning is voided for a simple fact:

The 360 was pre-maturely launched and Microsoft had no other choice but to ask publishers to release games early.

Say what you will, but I look at the games and I see far from many polished as a next-gen title. And whatever there is to say about Sony%u2019s delay, the console still has not been released, and thus they ARE in fact launch titles.

# console gamers + resolution discussion = bad — Guest 2006-10-25 05:40

I've decided console gamers shouldn't be allowed to discuss the performance impacts of varying display resolutions. They seem to babble on, thinking that displaying over twice the pixels somehow doesn't hurt performance, and that 1280x720 somehow isn't an extremely precise resolution that no game ever developed has needed to surpass in order to function and be completely playable.

There hasn't been one game advertised for PlayStation3 that 360 can't pull off, and the impacts of 1080p against performance and overall visual quality are going to be huge on both systems.

Any PC gamer knows that after a certain point, having a greater number of pixels is pointless. It doesn't improve gameplay, slows down framerate, and generally disappoints the player, with negligible benefit.

Please learn the impacts of video resolution on gaming hardware before posting inane opinions and fanboy rants, please.

# Excuse? Did you read my post? — Guest 2006-10-25 05:46

>"sorry games4james, but your excuse isn't the slightest bit concrete"

I see, so you acknowledge that the delay has been beneficial to PS3 launch games, and yet you see my post as an excuse?

May I suggest you read it again, but without viewing it as an attack on the PS3 and it's games, but as an assessment on the current state of it's 'first gen' games.

These PS3 launch games are not typical first gen games. More or that later...

>"The 360 was pre-maturely launched and Microsoft had no other choice but to ask publishers to release games early."

The 360 was no more pre-maturely launched than the PS2, XBox or GC. Did you see the launch games for the PS2 in Japan? They were rather poor, worse than almost any other console at launch, and yet was the PS2 rushed? Nope!

MS set a target to design and launch a next-gen console before the end of 2005, and they succeeded. Sony set a target for spring 2006, and they failed to meet it, hence the delay.

I've followed console developement and launches closely for numerous generations, and the 360 was no more rushed than any other console, with final hardware available to developers a few months before launch (as with other consoles before it).

Hence first gen launch games on ALL previous consoles typically had a few months dev time at most on final hardware. For the PS3, the delay has resulted in at least 6 months dev time on final hardware for it's launch games, significantly more than EVERY other console before, including the PS2!

>" the console still has not been released, and thus they ARE in fact launch titles."

Eh? Of course they are launch titles, were did I say they were not?

The point I'm making is that you can't pretend PS3 launch games are typical first gen games like those seen on the Playstation, Saturn, N64, DC, PS2, XBox, GC, 360 etc, since NONE of those consoles were delayed to the point of having final hardware available to developers 6 MONTHS before launch.

If (in a parallel univerve) the PS3 was delayed by yet another 2/3 years, then the launch games would be even better (don't you agree?) and there will be more available, but again, you cannot compare such 'first gen' games to those on others console and pretend it's the same and that 2/3 years doesn't mean anything, because it's does, and should be taken into consideration was comparisons are made.

So again, this is not about excuses, but about asking gamers to think first before making such comparisons. :|

# way to go googel... — Guest 2006-10-25 08:34

...for completely missing the point of what games4james was saying.

he's not making excuses googel, he's right and made a good point about why launch games on the ps3 have had far more developement time than launch games of other consoles, and so we should keep this in mind when comparing them to games on other consoles.

so great posts games4james, a bit long perhaps, but still good.

# Actually — SteveTao 2006-10-25 22:34

All 1080P games on the PS3, the 360 CAN'T pull off. So you're so wrong. Lol.

# Like you would know Steve... — Guest 2006-10-26 04:01

...since you're one of the dumbness fanboys on these forums.

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