Oct 21 / Ozymandias

Clarifying Thoughts on High Definition Game Rendering

game-hardware, game-industry, playstation-3, xbox-360

I was talking to Bruce Dawson, one of our senior software design engineers here, about some questions I had around 1080i and 1080p. Frankly, I was particularly curious about why Sony has continued harping on 1080p as being “TrueHD”, especially since the 360 has enabled 1080p output as well (coming soon to homes near you!) I was trying to figure out if I was just missing something, and his emailed answer was particularly clear and helpful to me, and since there’s nothing confidential here I thought I’d share it with you.

The really interesting statistic that popped for me is how much less time a game console has to render a 1920×1080 scene versus a 1280×720 scene. (Remember this is on the same console, whichever one you like. This is not a comparison of different console’s rendering capabilities to each other.) Simply put, for a 1080i/p game the console has 55% less time per pixel to render any special effects, anti-aliasing, illumination, etc. than for a 720p game. Yes, even Resistance has fallen off the bandwagon and admitted they can’t hit 1080i/p as previously claimed. (It also helps explain why Gran Turismo HD is so underwhelming.)

Anyway, Bruce’s text is below. Hope it helps clarify a few things for you!

Many developers, gamers, and journalists are confused by 1080p. 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. Some facts to remember:

2.25x: that’s how many more pixels there are in 1920×1080 compared to 1280×720

55.5%: that’s how much less time you have to spend on each pixel when rendering 1920×1080 compared to 1280×720—the point being that at higher resolutions you have more pixels, but they necessarily can’t look as good

1.0x: that’s how much harder it is for a game engine to render a game in 1080p as compared to 1080i—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.

1280×720 with 4x AA will generally look better than 1920×1080 with no anti-aliasing (there are more total samples).

A few elaborations:

Any game could be made to run at 1920×1080. However, it is a tradeoff. It means that you can show more detail (although you need larger textures and models to really get this benefit) but it means that you have much less time to run complex pixel shaders. Most games can’t justify running at higher than 1280×720—it would actually make them look worse because of the compromises they will have to make in other areas.

1080p is a higher bandwidth connection from the frame buffer to the TV than 1080i. However the frame buffer itself is identical. 1080p will look better than 1080i—interlaced flicker is not a good thing—but it makes precisely zero difference to the game developer. Just as most Xbox 1 games let users choose 480i or 480p, because it was no extra work, 1080p versus 1080i is no extra work. It’s just different settings on the display chip.

Inevitably somebody will ask about field rendering. Since interlaced formats display the even lines on one refresh pass and then the odd lines on the next refresh pass, can’t games just render half of the lines each time? Probably not, and even if you could you wouldn’t want to. You probably can’t do field rendering because it requires that you maintain a rock solid 60 fps. If you ever miss a frame it will look horrible, as the odd lines are displayed in place of the even, or vice-versa. This is a significant challenge when rendering extremely complex worlds with over 1 million pixels per field (2 million pixels per frame) and is probably not worth it. And, even if you can, you shouldn’t. The biggest problem with interlaced is flicker, and field rendering makes it worse, because it disables the ‘flicker fixer’ hardware that intelligently blends adjacent lines. Field rendering has been done in the past, but it was always a compromise solution.

vincent

Most of you are SOOOO off…

Rendering 1920x1080p = rendering 60 fps at 1920×1080 (at 1 frame per TV scan Hz)

Rendering 1920x1080i = rendering 30 fps at 1920×1080 (with the 1 frame split in odd lines displayed each 2 Hz, and the even lines displayed each other 2 Hz).

So, YES 1080i is 50% easier on the GPU than 1080p, IF THE GAME RENDERS 60 FPS in 1080p!

So, what does that mean? Displaying 1080p isn’t any harder than displaying 1080i on the graphics processor until you want more than 30 fps (which wouldn’t do anything good in 1080i anyways).

So stop the bullshit everyone and just get it!! I’m sick and tired of reading and hearing crap about this.
vincent

oh I forgot to say that ALL TVs are based on 60Hz scan, be it interlaced or progressive, which is why interlaced needs two Hz for 1 frame, while progressive can have 1 frame per Hz.

Don’t even stard with PAL *** and 24p projectors.
vincent

Oh, and to the Transfix stupid a*s just up of me,

- 720p can be 720p at 30 FPS, and 720p at 60 FPS.

- 1080i and 1080p at 30 fps are BOTH the same. In fact, 1080i can result in BETTER motion because the content can be made so 60 fps are used to create the 60 fields. Yes you get stepping, but you have 30 more fps than in 1080p30.

In videogames they never do this. They split 1 frame into odd and even lines scans and then use 2 Hz to display the 1 frame. This results in a cap of 30 fps for 1080i games.

Any digital display device (LCD, DLP, any PANEL), with sufficient pixels (ie 1920×1080, even if it doesn’t accept 1080p), will display the 30 fps of 1080i as 30 real frames, without interlacing. Which completely eliminates the stepping problem.

So buyer beware : DO NOT LISTEN TO THESE SMARTASSES! If your display HAS 1920×1080 PIXELS and accepts either 1080i or 1080p, it still DOES 1080p (unless it’s a scan-based display like a CRT).
Someone

Good Sir, could you please DELETE all PS3 fan-boy’s posts in order to keep this place clean?

Thank you.
Isaiah

Ok guys, just wondering about this whole 720 vs. 1080i/p stuff. Correct me if I’m wrong but is HD resolutions like DVD/movie aspect ratios 720 equals 1:85:1 and would it be safe to say that 1080 is like 2:35:1??? Just wondering. And why if the 360 is native 720 can’t I get just a generic widescreen on my regular tv. DVD’s display in wide screen on it so why not games??? The Lost Planet displays in widescreen, but the rest of the games don’t. Just wondering…
Ironhorse

who cares as long as developers continue to make great games!!!
Garulon

Can you have flicker on LCD or Plasma displays though, given that they aren’t raster devices?
Dave

If you assume a constant level of hardware, any improvement in resolution = more pixels = less power available to process them–and this is as true for SVGA vs. XGA as it is for 1080 vs. 720. Try any game on a computer with a marginal graphics card, and you will find a point where higher resolution = worse performance.

The point however is that computing power increases on a fairly regular basis, and as it does, it allows you to sacrifice performance for improved resolution because you now have enough hardware to do both.

Were this not so, we’d all still be playing games at 640×480.
Parker

"Jesus Christ! Are you people morons? No offense. 720p is better than 1080p."

I nearly fell out of my chair laughing! You cannot be serious. Is this really Major Nelson, or someone pretending to be him?
Casey

Wow, if that was Major Nelson I must say I’m never going back to his site again. And possibly hacking my 360… way to treat your user base a**.
doobiwan

Heh heh Sony fanboys are funny

Thanks for that, I found it really interesting. I never realized the ‘p’ boys were still only rendering 30fps.

Being out of diapers and having a feel for the historical antics of companies like Sony and IBM, the hype train is really annoying. It’s time for them to put up or shut up.

Although I’ll also chip in with a "720p FTW" if it means better detail / effects. My eyesights so bad I couldn’t tell the difference anyway
http://thehaxor.net tskiller

This is why im a pc gamer. Ive had 1920×1280 resolution for years, and with none of this ZOMGZOMGZOMG PIPIPIPIPIPIPI shenanigans goin on.
Conscientious Observer

Nice…1080P…re-mystified. That didn’t take long.
Malleus NX01

For all you guys with the "480p>720p>1080p for gaming" comments:

I think you have missed the point. The point is that currently at least with the consoles 720p is the sweet spot. Meaning you get a higher resolution which looks better than 480p but also you have the ability to throw in all the effects that you have to scale back with 1080p.

Really this is all nit picking. Gears of War looks incredible at 720p so thats really all that matters practically. You can continue to argue about it but at this stage in the game its a waste of time. The logic makes sense to me as I think it would to any rational person. Also last I checked great graphics wasnt the end all be all of video games. ;)
Isaiah

Alright ladies!!! Would someone care to answer MY questions and quit bitching around like little school girls!!! My question was this:

Ok guys, just wondering about this whole 720 vs. 1080i/p stuff. Correct me if I’m wrong but is HD resolutions like DVD/movie aspect ratios 720 equals 1:85:1 and would it be safe to say that 1080 is like 2:35:1??? Just wondering. And why if the 360 is native 720 can’t I get just a generic widescreen on my regular tv. DVD’s display in wide screen on it so why not games??? The Lost Planet displays in widescreen, but the rest of the games don’t. Just wondering…
idiot

after reading the posts my questions are:

why on my t.v in 1080i everything looks great (except the little tearing or stepping?) but on 720p which supposedly is more fluid looks horrible? It doesn’t even compare to 1080i on my t.v.

So I’m wondering because I am an idiot! Does this really matter if developers are not even using the hardware to full capacity? Aren’t we a few years early for gaming to take advantage of high definition anyways?

I’m so confused. I was just hoping to find out which resolution is perfect for gaming. My brain is shutting down now. Anyone have any criminal justice questions?
NIno_fs

One thing I find baffling about the 180i/p vs 720p debate is no one brings up that you mya not actually see the difference. What I mean is mentally you will know you are displaying a higher resolution and therefore your mind may be tricking you into thinking it looks better.

To understand what I mean you will need a computer with a high res monitor. And a computer game. This can be tricky because sometimes you will see a "jaggy" and think it is pixelation when it is actually in the resolution of textures or something like that. I find that at 1280×1024 I can just barely pick out pixels and that is with my eye as close as possible to the screen(19"). At 1600×1200 I can’t pick them out but does that matter?

I said the only way I can see a pixel is getting my eye within 3.5" of the screen, when are you ever that close to a tv?

So I submit to everyone here 720p is = to 1080p because at normal viewing distances with standard television sizes your eye does not have the resolution to pick out individual pixels. And since at 720p you can put in better effects 720p is superior.
John

1080p is overatted for small screen sizes.

The best TVs for picture quality… which I believe are the Pioneer Plasmas or the Panasonic Industrials max out at 1366×768.

A 1080p Westinghouse… or even a 1080p SXRD (which I guess is much more debatable) can’t hold a lick to the smoothness and direct-view nature of a premium plasma screen.
Sulphuric Acid

Major Nelson: "Jesus Christ! Are you people morons? No offense. 720p is better than 1080p."

No its not – 720 is SOMMETIMES better than 1080 because when using 1080 the games engines are not advanced/fast enough and therefore have to cut out some of the clever stuff that makes the game look good. If the game/Xbox was able to render 1080 within the deadline and was advanced enough that the clever stuff didnt need disabling then 1080p is DOUBLE the quality of 720p (over 50% (1 million) additional pixels of detail).
eawil2000

John, there are quite a few people over at the AVS forum that would disagree with your statements.

NIno_fs, the resolution benefit depends GREATLY upon the size of the TV.

Malleus NX01, I agree with your statements. Gameplay is king, 720p gives a good mix of resolution and graphical fideltiy for this generation. Many of us, however, just want the most for our system. That’s really what it comes down to. We’re just trying to figure out how to get everything to work the best we possibly can.
Siroh

Isaiah,

720x and 1080x output at the same native ratio on all televisions that support them. 720x is at 1280×720 and 1080x is 1920×1080. If you divide both the first numbers by the second numbers you get 1.7777 repeating, which means they have the same ratio. The only difference is the size of the image, which on a large television makes it look better. (No point to a 1080p 17" wide television unless it sits less than a yard away from you). I don’t know why your 360 is limited to non-widescreen, the only thing I can say is double-check your system area in the dashboard and see if you have extra options under display.
Sulphuric Acid

Major Nelson said: "Have you read any of the posts? I suggest reading them again. It clearly tells you why 720p is an overall better resolution. I talk to many developers and they say the same thing too. Are you a developer? No. Get over it please. 720p is better if you like it or not. Good thing people like you don’t post comments on my site. Again, don’t take it personally. I just want everyone to get that in their small brains that 720p is BETTER than 1080p. Please check out a few of my previous blogs if you need even further explanation (which someone like you needs)."

Actually I do post on your website and I am a PC software developer, and my field of work is with Video codecs and scaling/interlacing methods – so I think I know what I am talking about. 720 is BETTER visually than 1080 when the game cannot run its advanced engine algorithms when in 1080 because they take too much time.
Sulphuric Acid

Major Nelson said: "I just want everyone to get that in their small brains that 720p is BETTER than 1080p. Please check out a few of my previous blogs if you need even further explanation (which someone like you needs)."

All repect for you has been lost, how dare you implicate everybody as stupid with small brains; how dare you assume that I dont have a clue what I am talking about.
Siroh

Oh and please let Bruce know that some of us found the article illuminating. I like seeing things like this because I want to understand the basic facts that the marketing guys would have me gloss over when I read news about console systems.
Siroh

And why do you assume this is actually Major Nelson? I could type in Bill Gates and then type http://www.microsoft.com, and that’s how it would show up.
Sulphuric Acid

If its NOT Major Nelson (I hope it isnt) then I do apologise.

To clarify, I am saying that for the majority of console games that dont have the next-next gen engines; 720 is visually better than 1080.

In all other aspects of the video world 1080 is superior to 720 (even though your eyes are not able to pick up much difference between 720 and 1080). Generally 1080 is only really needed for large screens (60"+).

Interlacing and progressive scan is a whole other kettle of fish.
***Sigh*** and people actually believe you

Your OWN DAMN PRODUCT supports 1080p. If it’s such a useless format why support it. If your hardware can’t support it while looking good why make the option.

1080i take 1/2 the RENDERING time but needs the same size FRAMEBUFFER. Just because you have that may pixels to show doesn’t mean you RENDER all of them all of the time. Just render every other pixel with an off set then write it to the frame buffer. Viola you spent 1/2 the time rendering.

Maybe, just maybe the Sony hardware cost more because they have special processing units that allow for 2x or 4x AA on 1080p?

OR is 480p the way to go? Maybe Wii should stop caring about resolution?
Sulphuric Acid

***Sigh*** said: "1080i take 1/2 the RENDERING time but needs the same size FRAMEBUFFER. Just because you have that may pixels to show doesn’t mean you RENDER all of them all of the time. Just render every other pixel with an off set then write it to the frame buffer. Viola you spent 1/2 the time rendering."

As far as I know, the game has to render 1920×1080 on each pass, the Xbox display chip then does the interlacing which throws away 1/2 the pixels.

Could be wrong, but that would explain why what you said cant happen.
SquirrelPhister

Isaiah:

"Ok guys, just wondering about this whole 720 vs. 1080i/p stuff. Correct me if I’m wrong but is HD resolutions like DVD/movie aspect ratios 720 equals 1:85:1 and would it be safe to say that 1080 is like 2:35:1??? Just wondering. And why if the 360 is native 720 can’t I get just a generic widescreen on my regular tv. DVD’s display in wide screen on it so why not games??? The Lost Planet displays in widescreen, but the rest of the games don’t. Just wondering…"

Aspect ratio has nothing to do with screen ratio. The ratio is just a description of how wide a screen is compared to it’s height (with height always represented as 1). 1.85:1 means the screen is 1.85 times as wide as it is high.

2.35:1 is wider and more commonly used for action movies. These are both ratios for film and are not used for videogames.

Analogue standard definition is in 4:3 (1.33:1) ratio and high definition resolutions (both 720p and 1080p/i) are in 16:9 (1.78:1). So if you are connecting your 360 to a standard TV it will only do 4:3 ratio. Most of the games are designed to be played in 16:9, and these may have letterboxing (the black bars at top and bottom) when you play them on 4:3 TVs.

Once again, ratio and resolution are completely independent of each other.
SquirrelPhister

720p is better than 1080p for videogames. what?! am I crazy? more pixels equals better right?

in theory that would be correct. but in practical terms it is not.

okay, who here thinks they are going to be playing games on their PS3 or 360 in 1080p resolution and 60fps?

guess what, you’re wrong.

the ATSC (the group that defines digital television transmission systems) only supports 1080p at 24, 25 and 30 frames per second. That’s right, no 60. That means there are no HDTVs that will support higher 1080p frame rates than 30. that’s why everyone is saying that 1080i (which is locked at 60 interlaced fields per second) is the same as 1080p. For all practical purposes, it is.

True monitors can go much higher than this, for frame rate and for resolution, but we’re talking about consoles, which are designed for TVs and HDTVs. So, let’s focus on that.

HDTVs (in general) support the following resolutions:

720p at 24, 30 and 60fps

1080i at 30fps (60 interlaced fields)

1080p at 24 and 30fps

Now, it comes down to the type of game you are playing. If you are going to play Final Fantasy, a game which will not have lots of action and movement, a higher resolution with lower frame rate might be ideal. But go play Call of Duty 2 on Xbox 360 which runs at a silky smooth 720p60, and then tell me that you would rather have a slower frame rate.

IT’S ALWAYS A TRADE OFF!
SquirrelPhister

idiot:

"why on my t.v in 1080i everything looks great (except the little tearing or stepping?) but on 720p which supposedly is more fluid looks horrible? It doesn’t even compare to 1080i on my t.v."

I’m just guessing here, but your TV is probably 1080i native. HDTVs all have a ‘native’ resolution that they convert all other resolutions to before displaying them (although most 1080i TVs can supposedly do 480p natively)

for example, I have a 720p TV. that means it ALWAYS displays 720p, no matter what resolution you put into it. If you input a 1080i signal, it has to deinterlace and then re-scale it from 1920×1080 to 1280×720. My set does a pretty good job of scaling (although I notice a delay for 480i videogames) but a set which is 1080i natively is going to look kind of ugly upscaling 720p, because it has to blow the picture up and add extra pixels to fit the resolution.

and 720p is only smoother than 1080i if you’re talking about 720p60 and 1080i30. most TV shows and movies are shot at 24 progressive frames per second, so this is all kind of moot for those things. Sports prefer higher temporal resolution, so 60fps is ideal. That’s why ESPN prefers 720p. They COULD shoot 1080i with 60 interlaced fields every second (like old-school NTSC analogue systems), but this would look blurrier than 720p when displayed because you’re only refreshing half the picture at a time.
Nino_fs

to eawil2000:

I admit that on a big screen you could see the pixels but the bigger the screen the farther you sit from it, in general.

So yes if I set a 30" screen to 720p and then sat as close to it as I am to my computer screen I would see pixelation but who sits that close?

my average tv viewing distance is 6 feet I am not sure how big the pixels would have to be to be seen but at that distance they would need to be rather large.

Another thing that should be considered when deciding to boost resolution or not is the ratio of what you gain to what you lose. There are 2.25 times as many pixels in 1080p as in 720p but you only get pixels which are 33% smaller. That added resolution is a big burden for a relatively small gain.
John-Paul

This is so sad… it makes me sad to be a gamer when "this" is what they are acting like.

You want a PS3? Buy one. You want an Xbox360? Buy one.

Either way you’ll probably enjoy it. Why can’t that be enough. Why does this "hey lets all s**t on the system I don’t want" mentality get worst and worst with each generation??

Pathetic. I would think the Xbox fanboys (me included) would be too busy playing their system to care what others think… and I would think the PS3 fanboys could spend their time researching the system and discussing it with other fans instead of feeding flame wars.

Now that’s what I’m talking about, I could care less what other people think of the 360.. I love the hell out of it. But I really have to stop reading this system wars crap or my head is going to explode from the rampant stupidity.

*goes to play Splinter Cell D.A.*

Woot! I ranked 19th on one of the co-op stages but can’t shave another 30 seconds off my time to get first no matter how hard I try! Grrrrrr.
Sulphuric Acid

SquirrelPhister – those standards are changing, including the new HDMI v1.3 chips which support 1080@60.
David

Bottom line is that for games 720p will almost always be the best resolution, for movies 1080p is the holy grail. As for the comment that MOST component connections won’t accept 1080p, none will. Component doesn’t have the bandwidth. But it’s less a technical issues than an issue regarding how the human eye works. For computer generated graphics, 720p with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering will always be better than 1080p without. This is evidenced by the fact that very few people can tell the difference between a 720p and a 1080i picture. Once consoles become so powerful that they can apply 4xAA and 4xAF and STILL run at 60fps, then we might actually have a debate on our hands.
David

My last sentence should have read "Once consoles become so powerful that they can apply 4xAA and 4xAF and STILL run at 1080p/60, then we might actually have a debate on our hands." Hey, the memory goes at my time of life. Live with it, I have to.
gspawn

BTW: In case anyone’s still stuck in the mode of "1080p is the holy grail" mode… uhhh… ya might wanna keep in mind that 1080p isn’t the be-all, end-all of HD. Despite being held up as one by the next-gen DVD people of the moment (Microsoft AND Sony included).

Displays, devices, and software for definitions blowing 1080p out of the water are coming down the pipe at a pretty decent pace. Are they really going to hit the consumer market anytime soon? Er, considering about 90% of the television market still own SDTVs, HDTV hasn’t really hit the consumer market in a big way either. Relatively speaking.

1080p is a big number now… but not a particularly big number in the long run, and not a particularly potent number for game developers regardless.

Plus, if you missed it, 360 can upscale to 1080p for basically free (when not native signals) while a lot of major PS3 titles promised in 1080p (Resistance) turn out to be shooting for lower end resolutions (Resistance ships at 720p), and PS3 will (more than likely) also be doing more upscaling and less native rendering. The be-all end-all is that both systems have basically the exact same capability when it comes to 1080p, that this capability only matters to a tiny sliver ofthe market, and that everyone does need to take an STFU pill and get back to gaming.

And to another post- someone mentioned how 360 games are still at 720p a year after launch… well, look at all the 720p titles on PS3. Same thing. Again.
***Sigh*** and people actually believe you

Gspawn

1080p was not invented by Sony or MS. It’s a recommendation made by ITR-U and poted by the SMPTE(society of motion piture technical engineers)

It took many years to develop and 1080p is the end all of HDTV for North America. The standard does have a slighty higher resolution in the recommendation for PAL based aspect ratios.

It alows for monitor makers to make cross compatable monitors. No will release a new standard for many years. It takes to much work to get everyone to agree. There are also compelling technical limitations to being limited to 1080p for the content creatation side.

30fps is more than sufficent for smooth motion. Animated cartoons are at 12-15 fps. Only on computers where frame rate is variable is the 60 FPS number necessary. It lets you drop a large number of frames while keeping game play smooth.

OZY- Sorry for being so hard in my first post. In all honesty you didn’t write the quoted text. It’s actually quite balanced since the Xbox Team took the time to include 1080p. Not many people would point out flaws in their product. Though having written rendering engines it’s not so hard.
http://www.limbermen.com/Bruce Bruce

I’d be realy curious as to how many people actually have 1080p capable TV’s, or are likely to, over the next 2-3 years. This is a debate that has little relevence in the real world/current mass market. You will notice the xbox 360 and PS3 both support 480i/p. While it’s hardly a selling point, it’s a fact that a lot of people will be connecting their units to TV’s that can only handle these resolutions.

And there is so much more to good graphics than just the resolution, I almost can’t believe how much people are fixating on it. I guess maybe because it’s easy to quanitify something like a pixel count.

The graphics gurus of the past always understood colour was more important than res. for creating great images. If you look at the latest and greatest Plasmas, they are still trying to push the theoretical colour count up (into the billions now) along with contrast ratios, dynmaic range etc.

About games, all things being equal, the graphics engine is where it’s really at. Just look at what Lorne Lanning did with Strangers Wrath on the original xbox.

I have to say though, stating that 1080p is meaningless (or something to that effect) is not only a cunning pro-xbox marketing ploy, it’s just plain wrong. The PS3 is not just a gaming machine. It’s a also blu-ray movie player. Seems pretty smart to me that Blu-Ray and Hi Def output have been mated into a single unit (the PS3). They are synergistic technologies, and of course games will benefit from having these features working together towards the common goal of creating a great gaming experience.
Robot Monster

Lets see some 360 games that actually run at 60fps standard-def before worrying about upping the resolution!

Not even Doom runs at 60fps on the XBox 360…
Andrew

My TV has 1366 x 768 pixels, so what resolution is it natively? 720p or 1080i? Thanks!
Greg Loscombe

I think most people are missing the point a bit. 1080p is a good thing for the industry as a whole. The image quality will be far far better than current SDTV’s, and is still a good step up on 720p. For today, its all thats needed.

Now the best part – a single standard… none of this Pal50, Pal60, 4:3, 16:9, NTSC-(j, etc). What we will have is 16:9, 1920*1080 @ 60 fps. Digital connects (which carry 7.1 audio too) in the form of HDMi, so we can at last kiss goodbye to overscan (and safe screen areas that developers will be glad to get rid of).

From a games point of view, no more "my tekken on pal50 plays completely different to the ntsc one". No more stupid safe screens or screen adjusts (thats my biggest thumbs up when I think about my LCD monitor, no screen adjusts with DVI). Fingers crossed from a film point of view we get rid of 24, 29.97, 50, 60 fps and just get a standard of 60 sorted in the above res. Then life will be sweet.

Sony in my book should get a medal for pushing for blueray as standard, an HDMi connect, and 1080p. MS, dvd drive, analog connect via a none standard xbox only port and 720p. Garbage. 360 is half assed in every respect.
Chris

After reading about which is better 720p, 1080i or 1080p, does anyone know how Microsoft plans on getting a 1080p signal to the HDMI port on tv’s that support it because they do not accept 1080p through component!! The 360 hooks up component right???
Sulphuric Acid

Andrew said: "My TV has 1366 x 768 pixels, so what resolution is it natively? 720p or 1080i? Thanks!"

Your TVs native resolution is simply 1366×768 which has no short name like 720p has (1280×720). A 768 resolution screen is simlar to 720.
Tainted Taint

John: Wow. I mean…wow. That’s got to be the most uninformed post of the day.

"The best TVs for picture quality… which I believe are the Pioneer Plasmas or the Panasonic Industrials max out at 1366×768."

So..you expect us to believe that a 720p native screen looks *better* displaying a 1080p signal than a screen with a 1080p (1920×1080) display? Are you retarded? The 1080p screen will give you a 1 to 1 pixel mapping, i.e. you get to see all your image data. The 720p screen will effectively drop half those pixels during the scaling process.

Comments like your make baby Jesus cry.
Tainted Taint

Oh and to Andrew and Sulphuric Acid, re: 1366 is what natively…it’s 720p. The reason it’s a slightly higher resolution vertically and horizontally is to counteract overscan, which broadcasters refuse to give up, even in the digital era we live in now. So you can proudly tell your friends you have a 720p set.
http://www.limbermen.com/Bruce Bruce

Tainted Taint, don’t cry! While your sentiment seems logical on the face of it, you are still falling for the paradigm that it’s all about resolution. This is totally wrong.

A TV that has 1 to 1 pixel mapping for 1080p (for arguments sake) does not automatically mean it will have a better picture than a TV that needs to down-scale the image. Expensive HD plasmas in the 42 inch range are a classic example. Plasmas, unlike LCD’s, are much more limited in terms of how small you can make the pixels. The main reason for this is that a pixel in a plasma display actually emits light (it’s a small light-bulb filled with gas) whereas a LCD pixel simply blocks light. This is why Plasmas produce a much better black. They can literally turn off, whereas the LCD pixel must simply block the back-light to the best of its ability.

The point is, unless there is a significant advance in plasma technology, you will not see a 42 inch plasma that can support 1080p natively.

So for arguments sake, does this mean a 42 inch LCD that has native 1080p support will produce a better picture than a Hi Def 42 inch plasma that must down-scale? Absolutely not. Viewing angle; contrast ratio; dynamic range, color reproduction, motion blur are just some of the other factors regarding picture quality that have nothing to do with resolution.
http://www.limbermen.com/Bruce Bruce

ps. 42 inch plasmas top out at 1024*768 which means their aspect ratio is 4:3, not 16:9. They achieve the wide-screen effect by making the pixels elliptical rather than spherical.

Quality plasmas (like top end Panasonics/Pioneers) have superior scalers (compared to cheaper brands) so that while the 1-to-1 pixel mapping may not be possible, they do a very good job of retaining the correct proportions. If you are going to be using your TV primarily as a computer-screen, then 1-to1 pixel mapping will become more important because you are likely to be reading a lot of text. If you are using the screen for home theatre and console games, then do yourself a big favor and actually view the end-result before making a decision. 1-to-1 pixel mapping may be great but sitting in a dark room with a glowing grey screen that is supposed to be pitch black totally sucks (IMHO).
GameRfun

Can’t we all agree that 720p and 1080p look great in their respective domains (and no one likes interlace flicker)? I just wish all games would run at a locked 60fps. Yes, the human eye can only detect less than 30fps, which is great for 2D games. But, 60fps are needed for 3D games due to parallax effects. In a first-person shooter at 30fps, rotation of 90 degrees won’t cause problems with an enemy only two feet away, but the same rotation of 90 degrees will have drastic effects on an enemy 50 feet away. I would want a game 720p@60fps over 1080i anyday.
***Sigh*** and people actually believe you

GameRfun

You are incorrect to state that 3d games need a faster frame rate than 2d.

Parallax error had nothing to do with the need for more frame rate unless you are running in stereo display mode.

Parallax error is also inversely proportional to the distance of the viewed object. In other words, the error get smaller the farther the viewer is from the object.

The real problem in moving rapidly in a 3d envirnment is that computers just aren’t powerful enough to render everything and keep game interaction up at an aceptable rate. Hence in computational expensive scenes such as explostions with lots of enemy AI and many sounds you drop frames.

That why the gears or war demo can look so good. They are using in game graphic engines with out having to poll the hardware for input. You can notice an immediate change in graphics quality when they shift to the playable scenes. There IS more to it than that there are many other tricks make make the cutscenes look good.

In essence you want a system that never gets below 30fps. By having 60fps you hope that you loose only 1/2 of your maximum frame rate thus ensuring a smooth gameplay experience.

It’s beginning to feel like I need my own blog

Clarifying Thoughts on High Definition Game Rendering

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