The Halo 3 Cutscene Library has been upgraded with 1080p versions, thanks to Cody Miller and the Master Chief Collection. (Some scenes are not available in 1080p or 2160p; for those, you'll have to make do with 720p. Sorry.
640p vs. HD The high definition argument initially came about as a result of some dedicated "jaggie counters" who claimed that Halo 3 rendered vertically at 640 pixels instead of 720. Since the game doesn't actually run in 720p--technically the picture is scaled from 640p to the user-configured preferred resolution--these folks and countless others claimed that Bungie had deceived the gaming populace into buying a game that wasn't really HD. Therefore, they wanted Bungie to, among other things, remove any mentions of HD, 720p and higher resolutions from the game and other relevant materials.
Halo 3 720p
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Absolutely true, and it's hardly the first time this has been done. Several high profile games don't render at 720p, Project Gotham and Tomb Raider both render 600 lines and Perfect Dark 640. I'm not saying it is copacetic, but lots of people miss the point. Does it look good enough, does it look like you were told it would look, does it cause any real problems when playing? Personally I don't have a problem with it, but I have a nice enough 1080p display and use HDMI for connecting the two. It looks fuzzy,
I'd rather play a game at 320x240 with acceptable FPS (which I did back in the days of the original Unreal when I didn't have an accelerator) than play at 1024x768 at 20. If you're a sniper, you have to see what you're sniping, and high resolution helps you spot targets from farther away. It's like having normal vision vs. uncorrected myopia [wikipedia.org].Re: (Score:2)by LKM ( 227954 ) writes: Case in point: The Jericho demo. The game looks awesome on my PS3. Unfortunately, the framerate is constantly below 30 fps, which makes the game absolutely unplayable. It's actually motion-sickness-inducing.Wait for the PC version... (Score:5, Insightful)by rtechie ( 244489 ) writes: on Monday October 01, 2007 @12:32PM (#20812703) Those who care about this can wait for the PC version which I'm sure will allow you to pump the resolution to 1600x1200 (or possibly more by editing the .ini files) and zip along in glorious DirectX 10 goodness with their $500 video cards. Of course, by the time it comes out for the PC it will look dated (like Halo 2) and the people with the high-end rigs will be playing something else.But if you really want it, it's coming.SharetwitterfacebookRe: (Score:2)by MooseMuffin ( 799896 ) writes: You're crazy if you think Microsoft is letting Bungie put out a PC (read: vista only) version before 2010.Re: (Score:2)by rtechie ( 244489 ) writes: Considering porting to PC involves little more than a recompile (really, Halo is a DirectX game using standard interfaces, it's basically a Windows game already) I think it will be faster than that. QA, performance tweaking, packaging and market copy, and most time-consuming of all, copy protection are generally what eat up the porting effort. Expect it in late 2008, later if they want cross-platform online play.Re: (Score:2)by MooseMuffin ( 799896 ) writes: You misunderstand. It could be done a whole lot faster than that, but it won't because Microsoft won't let it. This is their 360 system seller and they're sure as hell not undermining that by making it available on another platform. You really think that Halo 2 didn't see its PC release until 2.5 years later because of the amount of work involved?Half-Life 2 (Score:2)by Nazmun ( 590998 ) writes: Unfortunately halo 3 already looks dated compared to half-life 2 and I spent $200 on my vid card last year. I often play them on the same 37 inch flat hdtv that I play xbox 360 games. Comparing good pc games (even 2 year old ones like half-life 2) is kind of moot, the 360 doesn't even come close. Multiplayer gameplay is a different issue but then and again it's a ton of fun playing counterstrike source with a much greater flexibility in terms of teams. However it can get hectic since you can die far tooRe: (Score:3, Informative)by Kalriath ( 849904 ) writes: Actually, you're wrong. Xbox Live is a multiplatform service - it's available on Vista, and Xbox 360. Yeah, the name's a misnomer.The PC version (as with Halo 2) is generally able to do local multiplayer, and Xbox Live (renamed just Live). Internet play is out of the question (I guess you could VPN up some games, or actually collect lists of IP addresses, though).Re: (Score:2)by nschubach ( 922175 ) writes: "multiplatform"You can get this game in any platform...as long as the platform is Microsoft.Re: (Score:2)by Kalriath ( 849904 ) writes: Hey, multiplatform and omniplatform is not the same thing. You wouldn't be trying to redefine "multiple" now would you? Windows and the 360 are indeed two platforms (therefore multiplatform is correct).Re: (Score:2)by Kalriath ( 849904 ) writes: Well, it's already out (unless you meant Halo 3). I can't actually play it on the one Vista installation I have as Nvidia are too lazy to release drivers that work with 3D, but according to the Halo 2 page on Microsoft's site, you only need a silver subscription (free) to use the game server browser (which is the exact opposite of the Xbox 360). So multiplayer gaming is still free, and they've tacked in Friends Lists and Chat to the game through it. The Gold subscription lets you use the matchmaking systemPixel Peeping Video Game Style (Score:5, Insightful)by ScotchForBreakfast ( 1060672 ) writes: on Monday October 01, 2007 @12:34PM (#20812727) All the complaints about Halo 3's resolution reminds me of all the "pixel peeping" that goes on when it comes to digital cameras. Everyone gets hung up on tech specs to the point that they stop looking at the image in question.Halo 3 looks nice, and plays great. That's all that matters to me. I'm certainly willing to forgo some extra pixels in favor of a smoother experience.SharetwitterfacebookRe: (Score:2)by triffid_98 ( 899609 ) writes: Right, because if they'd only shot the Halo 3 footage in RAW format, there would be way more dynamic range. All the complaints about Halo 3's resolution reminds me of all the "pixel peeping" that goes on when it comes to digital cameras. Everyone gets hung up on tech specs to the point that they stop looking at the image in question. You're missing the point... (Score:2)by ivan256 ( 17499 ) writes: The people complaining about the resolution aren't trying to knock Halo 3.... They're taking aim at the platform it runs on. The developers should be applauded for picking playability over raw resolution, but the platform should have handled the graphics at a higher resolution without slowing down the game.Re: (Score:2)by default luser ( 529332 ) writes: I don't think this is a pixel-pushing performance problem. I believe they're hitting the limits of 12MB EDRAM:2 working framebuffers plus 1 complete output buffer plus one 32-bit Z-buffer make for fully-used EDRAM:1152x640 pixels * 4 Bytes/pixel * 3 buffers + 1152x640 Z * 4 Bytes/Z = 11.25MB.The same buffer configuration with full 720p resolution uses up 14MB of ram. Sure, you can move your framebuffer outside of the EDRAM, but you'll see a significant performance hit.Hmmmm (Score:1)by phoenixwade ( 997892 ) writes: Well, the output is true HD. The combining of the frame buffers as an interlacing technique to get that really pretty imaging is innovative and gives us a high framerate. So, it's playable, pretty, and the interleaving of the two framerates looks good (great, actually, at 1080p on my 42" Samsung) I've no complaints.From the article:"In fact, if you do a comparison shot between the native 1152x640 image and the scaled 1280x720, it's practically impossible to discern the difference. We would ignore it entireRe: (Score:1)by Ramble ( 940291 ) writes: The two frames are not interlaced. You're just assuming the output of the framebuffer is added together to give some kind of large resolution. It's not, the game plays at the res stated in the article, all the time.Re: (Score:2)by adavies42 ( 746183 ) writes: We would ignore it entirely were it not for the internet's propensity for drama where none exists. In fact the reason we haven't mentioned this before in weekly updates, is the simple fact that it would have distracted conversation away from more important aspects of the game, and given tinfoil hats some new gristle to chew on as they catalogued their toenail clippings.
Gears of War and BioShock are both displayed at a native 1920 x 1080 in progressive scan on my cousin's 360 Elite. The lighting in both games is amazing, as are the visuals, and the gameplay.The Xbox 360 will display every game at whatever output you choose. On your cousin's elite, he's apparently set it to 1080p. That doesn't mean that games change how they render. It just means that when the framebuffer passes through the on-board scaler chip prior to heading out the the TV, the image is upscaled to 1080p rather than 720p or whatever else you may choose. The two games you mentioned, Gears and Bioshock, actually render internally at 720p (or more precisely, 1280x720, since designations like "720p" don't make sense until the output is heading to a TV). Bungie made the decision to render at 1152x640 using a two-pass method (actually a two-buffer method) to render low-dynamic range and high-dynamic range lighting. The two buffers are then merged for the final picture. There's actually a Powerpoint on Bungie's HDR lighting method floating around the internets somewhere, if you feel like investigating why they did this. Anyway, the end result is mostly the same -- the 360's hardware scaler chip is quite good, and only the OCD pixel counters will ever notice that the game is natively rendered at 640p rather than 720p or 1080p. 2ff7e9595c
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