TheBigFatJ said: LordTheNightKnight said: TheBigFatJ said: fazz said: TheBigFatJ said: Further, higher resolution does not imply 'lower draw distance' or 'fewer polygons'. Actually, it does. Did anyone bother on checking the link that GranTurismo posted? Those screens are native 1920x1080. Then the converse is true as well -- lower resolution implies longer draw distances. Ego, Wii games have the longest draw distance of this generation. Do you see the problem with the logic here? Rendering engines aren't that simple. If you're not running into a bottleneck, you don't have to make a tradeoff. Chances are, the bottleneck they ran into here was with the framebuffer so it is very unlikely that they were trading resolution for draw distances. As you no doubt know (since it's common knowledge), the 360 has a built in hardware scaler and scales the rendered resolution to targets as selected by the user. Two of those targets are 1920x1080. It says little about the native resolution of the game and I think the beyond forums have pretty solid evidence as to the resolution being rendered. You're twisting words. The comment is about lower resolution on the same system. Learn how a framebuffer works. It has to manage the fouth wall of the game. More graphics can use it up. Yet esolution can also use it up, since some of the tasks of the frame buffer require watching every pixel on screen at all times.* Ergo, more resolution means more pixels to watch, and more of the framebuffer is eaten up. Less resolution means there is more room in the framebuffer to deal with a greater amount of graphics.   *The most well known of these tasks if anti-aliasing, but there is also one that sees what textures are on screen, and what isn't visible is not fully rendered, which saves bandwidth. This is expecially important in a game with a free camera, which any FPS has by defintion (or else it would be a rail shooter). I know how a frame buffer works. I wrote a 3D engine from scratch. Oh, look -- I was right and you were wrong: http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&cid=12821

How does that prove you right? It doesn't even relate to your previous comment, nor to my reply. The comment you made, and I replied to was about DRAW DISTANCE affecting the resolution. How does Bugnie's reply, which was about LIGHTING affecting resolution, prove you right and me wrong?

Halo3 more impressive than HS?Yeah kids whatever....

Diomedes1976 said: Halo3 more impressive than HS?Yeah kids whatever....

@ sieanr

I thought this was a technical discussion rather that a fanboy discussion.

IMO the technical limitations with regard to the XBox 360's most important Microsoft game, are:
1) Not really rendered in a HD resolution (below minimal 720p HDTV specifications), while the XBox 360 is marketed as a full 720p HDTV console.
2) No AA, which is often advertised as being free on the XBox 360.

Fanboy arguments on how popular the Halo franchise may be or not IMO isn't really relevant to this thread. In no way does game popularity debunk concerns regarding technical limitations, which thus are interesting to discuss as well.

@ sieanr

Technically I think the PS3 is powerful enough to render a game like Halo 3 in 1080p at 60 FPS together with additional effects, with twice the content, higher quality 7.1 audio and localization on a single disc.

But that would be a mammoth undertaking and involve a complete game engine redesign from scratch. Maybe 3rd generation PS3 (SPE optimised, harddrive caching and texture streaming enabled) first and second party game engines will start to perform at such levels.

sieanr said: Andir said: sieanr said: that last pic is clearly a skybox, and the second is likely one as well. That's funny, cause I clearly thought the Halo shots were skyboxes too. Then you clearly cant differenciate between rendered geometry and a blurry, flat skybox

 And apparently, neither can you.

MikeB said: @ sieanr And before MikeB pops in here to say the PS3 could pull this off, it cant. Technically I think the PS3 is powerful enough to render a game like Halo 3 in 1080p at 60 FPS together with additional effects, with twice the content, higher quality 7.1 audio and localization on a single disc. But that would be a mammoth undertaking and involve a complete game engine redesign from scratch. Maybe 3rd generation PS3 (SPE optimised, harddrive caching and texture streaming enabled) first and second party game engines will start to perform at such levels.

 True that later PS3 (and likely 360) games could do that, but for now, this is how far developers can push the systems.

Andir said: sieanr said: Andir said: sieanr said: that last pic is clearly a skybox, and the second is likely one as well. That's funny, cause I clearly thought the Halo shots were skyboxes too. Then you clearly cant differenciate between rendered geometry and a blurry, flat skybox  And apparently, neither can you.

How so? I was referencing the farthest mountains in the distance with regards to the second pic.

1. There are PS3 titles that are below 720p as well, so this is also a problem the PS3 has.

2. Look into how this game is being rendered to understand why it lacks AA. Beyond3d has several threads going on about Halo 3s rendering engine - so for someone so concerned about these issues maybe you should look into it there. I suggest reposting some of the things you've stated here, such as lower res because of DVD and desire to avoid RROD.

I'd say that a fanboy argument is also claiming the PS3 can render Halo 3 at 1080p and with 60fps, ect. This is even better when the PS3 can't do two rendering passes like the 360, meaning its impossible for the PS3 to exactly duplicate what the 360 is doing in Halo 3. But thats just me, maybe I'm crazy.

Still waiting for you to talk about Lair, a game developed by a former Amiga developer, robbing the player of 120 pixels.....

 

@ sieanr

XBox 360 to PS3 ports don't count, a Wii game engine and 480p game art ported to the PS3 may well result in a 480p game for the PS3 without investing a lot of additional work, so it would probably make more sense to port the game to the PS2 and let the PS3 emulate it.

Halo 3 is made by a Microsoft owned company, the most high profile game the XBox 360 will likely ever get until maybe at some point a Halo 4 gets released, a project with endless resources and more development time than anything currently on the market for the XBox 360 and PS3 today. IMO it's hard to compare expectations of a game like this with a cross platform (so far less platform specific optimised) far lower budget 3rd party game.



I regularly read Beyond3D, I understand Bungie's claims on why Halo 3 cannot run in 720p and without AA on the XBox 360, but I don't agree. I think the game could have been made to run just as well and look better in 720p. Also on Beyond3D people are questioning Bungie's clarifications.



120 pixels?

LordTheNightKnight said: MikeB said: @ sieanr And before MikeB pops in here to say the PS3 could pull this off, it cant. Technically I think the PS3 is powerful enough to render a game like Halo 3 in 1080p at 60 FPS together with additional effects, with twice the content, higher quality 7.1 audio and localization on a single disc. But that would be a mammoth undertaking and involve a complete game engine redesign from scratch. Maybe 3rd generation PS3 (SPE optimised, harddrive caching and texture streaming enabled) first and second party game engines will start to perform at such levels.  True that later PS3 (and likely 360) games could do that, but for now, this is how far developers can push the systems.

IMO you are overestimating the technical possibilities of the XBox 360. 7.1 audio and fitting all of that content on a single disc is technically impossible on the XBox 360.

IMO there are also too many hardware limitations to make a FPS game like Halo 3 running at 1080p/60FPS feasible on the XBox 360. IMO 720p is the optimal resolution for XBox 360 FPS games, pushing for 60 frames per second will probably prove to be quite a challenge and I wouldn't be surprised UT3 will eventually be 30 FPS on the 360, though Epic would be the best developing company to make this happen.