5th year of Xbox 360 : The Unreal Engine Effect.

[Scoobes]

selnor said:

TheLastGuardian said:

 

That's ok news for xbox owners, but seriously, the ps3 is leaps ahead when it comes to Anti Aliasing. The xbox 360 maxes at 4 times MSAA, the ps3 is capable of much more than (16 times MSAA), More advanced than most high end computers, all thanks to the cell. For instance, uncharted 2 is flawless. Here read this article

 

http://gamer.blorge.com/2010/01/05/ps3-smoothing-beyond-that-of-high-end-pc-graphics-card/

 

 

 

LOL. The 360 can do x16 if it wanted as well. The point is to do that costs HUGE resources on Cell and leaves alot less resources for parts of the game. Why do you think KZ2 opted for 2xQSAA instead of the superior 2xMSAA? QSAA gives more than half the performance cut, but leaves textures blurred. U2 also is only 2xMSAA. The first 4 MSAA entire Full Screen game is Alan Wake.

The 360 does 4xMSAA free. Thats the point. PS3 would use considerable resource from Cell to do 4xMSAA, meaning less can be used for other things. Thats why it's so great that the 360 has a specially built chip just for AA. It means the entire system is never compromised.

And it's not much more than 16 MSAA as you quote. It's MLAA, which is software driven. Less reliable and many issues of further blurr. Less performance hit like QSAA but worse image on textures, shadows etc. Only good for polygon jaggies.

From Digital Foundry:

PS3 is curious, however, in that it has hardware support for two widely used AA techniques. We've discussed MSAA already, but quincunx AA is the other most frequently implemented technique. Unique to the NVIDIA hardware, it uses approximately the same amount of resources as MSAA but produces superior edge-smoothing at the expense of adding a blur to the entire screen. The use of quincunx and the impact on overall image quality varies game by game - intricately detailed textures will suffer much more than a more flat, anime style of art. However, this Assassin's Creed comparison of 2x MSAA up against quincunx demonstrates both the edge-smoothing advantages and the detail blur.

Sounds like 2xMSAA would use up the same resources as 2XQCAA and with superior edge smoothing. Like you said though, the devs have to compromise with blur. Sounds like they used 2xQCAA and were prepared to take the hit on texture detail.

Also, that 360 chip isn't restricted to just improving anti-aliasing. I'm pretty sure Bungie used it to do HDR on Halo 3, which was actually consequently blamed for the sub-HD resolution as the 10MB proved a bit too small for this particular task.