Your thoughts on HD resolution - GOOD and BAD things about it

YO!
Since most of us have been seeing HD games for quite some time now, what problems or advantages have you noticed?

I' m talkin about console games mostly since High Res is pretty new for Us - console gamers.

Let' s not talk about " are HD games innovating enough" - it' s all about visual clarity and detail.

-Enough with introductions -

GOOD

I' ve noticed that games are crisp (not just crisp - very crisp), clean and nicely detailed.

-Games like strategies are possible cause developers can place enough detail on screen.

-Characters and everything looks incredibly real , surfaces and shit like that.

-Fonts, menus and images all look very nice

BAD

-every texture with lower resolution is very visible and looks terrible,

-Framerate problems are much more common - meaning that almost every game has some framerate issues (at least minor ones).

-Some games look empty - like there isn' t enough geometry detail.

Good:
The visuals. Everything simply look much much better, if you have a HDTV that is.

Bad:
The costs. Not just the cost of a new HDTV, but development costs as well.
Higher resolution requires more disc capacity which complicates things.
Bad graphics become even worse.

I' ve never seen a HD game on a SD screen but some have said that the games look kind of bad. For example, the text in some HD games become very hard to read on SD monitors. If true, then that' s bad too.

GOOD:
_Very nice clarity. Up until a month ago I been playing on a rather old TV and thought games looked nice. Then when I got a HDTV everything looked so damn nice. Details that I didnt even know existed suddenly popped up everywhere in every game.

_Like stated above games look quite litterally vastly improved over seeing them on a SD TV.

BAD:
_There' s negatives about gaming in HD?

going from hd to sd is like going through withdrawll


Not that I would know about that.


Thats why I play it smart and stay in sd, hd only causes headaches if you have to have an sd tv.

Change is inevitable. Except from a vending machine.

Viva La Revolution! erm, I mean Viva La Wii!

Ovarall, I think HD is one of the greatest recent innovations in tv and gaming. I do see your point though Gangsta. Anything that' s less than perfect really stands out in HD.

I don' t agree about the framerate issues, though. Not that they' re non-existent, but I don' t believe it' s any more of a problem than in past generations (all the way back to the Commodore 64 days). I think we, as gamers, are just being much more critical nowadays. I still remember slowdown in Contra, Shinobi, Metroid, Castlevania, Sonic, and all the other games back then. I think we' re just a lot more jaded as we get older and " wiser" .

I see your point , but it seems to me like most DC pr PSX AAA titles didn' t have any framerate hiccups , yet every game for 360 has at least some minor drops in framerate - I' m not saying it' s terrible and ruins anything - it' s just a new trend that I think appeared with HD - but hopefully will be solved soon (360 is a pretty new system)

I guess it' s stupid to blame HD resolutions for that - it' s more of a coding issue.

Back in the 2D days I didn' t know what slowdown was :)

I just say its bullet time by accident... I caused alot of slowdown in sonic with the debug mode and placing objects allover the screen.

HD resolution is great. It' s a benchmark for consoles that show us we' ve reached such a point. I agree though that we' re paying the hefty price on performance, HD is very expensive for a graphic card. The generation after (i.e. ps4 and xbox3) will push 1080p to all its glory the same way xbox pushes 480p.

GOOD - Has capability of being " teh awsum" .

BAD - Both the developers and the hardware are still " teh suk" . Xbox360 isn' t quite powerful enough to run games in full 1080i resolution. All games run at 720p or lower and are upscaled due to the wimpy graphics card inside the machine. And developers have problems preventing stuttering framerates. If the Japanese developed for the system like they develop for the PS2, they could probably solve the stuttering framerate problem, but American programmers just aren' t as good. PS3 will be better at HD than the Xbox360.

SURELY YOU KNOW THE 360 IS MORE POWERFULL THAN THE MERE PS3!?

ahem.

Change is inevitable. Except from a vending machine.

Viva La Revolution! erm, I mean Viva La Wii!

ORIGINAL: ]GaNgStA[

...but it seems to me like most DC pr PSX AAA titles didn' t have any framerate hiccups , yet every game for 360 has at least some minor drops in framerate...

I swear, Gangsta, you see what you want to see. Soul Caliber, Legacy of Kain, Quake III, Hell, even DOA on the Dreamcast experienced slowdown with certain amounts of action on screen. That' s just the way it is, was, and always shall be as long as developers push the current hardware to it' s limit. PS3, and Wii will have it. Capcom, Konami, Square/Enix, Bioware, Bungie! Doesn' t matter. They will ALL have it.

ORIGINAL: ]Gangsta[

...it' s just a new trend that I think appeared with HD - but hopefully will be solved soon (360 is a pretty new system)

Riiiight. As I pointed out, slowdown has been around for as long as I can remember (I' m thinking 8 bit systems, here). It will never be " solved" as long as programmers attempt to maximize the hardware that' s available.

ORIGINAL: ]Gangsta[

Back in the 2D days I didn' t know what slowdown was :)

Then, you turned a blind eye to it!

yet every game for 360 has at least some minor drops in framerate

That' s fucking bullshit.

PDZ, Burnout Revenge, Ridge Racer 6, PGR3, GRAW, Kameo etc all have capped framerates meaning they can' t go higher OR lower. None of those games as well as a couple of others have no framerate issues running in 720p.

DoA4 has slight (and it is VERY slight) framerate drops, usualy when a character is punched/kicked/thrown into a wall. Other than that it runs at 60.

Call of Duty runs at 60, but again suffers slight drops when there' s a lot going on onscreen.

The games that DO have problems are Quake 4, Far Cry, Oblivion, NFS:MW and most notably Moto GP 06 (which has serious framerate issues)

Games like Hitman, Tomb Raider, Tony Hawks etc are hardly worth mentioning, although in 1080i both Tomb Raider and Hitman have noticable drops.

It' s hardly and inherent issue with the machine and more of a developmeny code issue. It should be taken into consideration that for many developers (pretty much all) the games out for the machine already are their first for a console that has multi-core architecture.

ORIGINAL: Joe Redifer

GOOD - Has capability of being " teh awsum" .

BAD - Both the developers and the hardware are still " teh suk" . Xbox360 isn' t quite powerful enough to run games in full 1080i resolution. All games run at 720p or lower and are upscaled due to the wimpy graphics card inside the machine. And developers have problems preventing stuttering framerates. If the Japanese developed for the system like they develop for the PS2, they could probably solve the stuttering framerate problem, but American programmers just aren' t as good. PS3 will be better at HD than the Xbox360.

Wow, Joe, I never thought I' d say this, but you' re just talking out your ass!

What games are you playing for the 360, because 4 out of the 10 games that I own are 1080i. And how is the graphics card wimpy? How do current PC cards compare? I think the 360 card is at the higher end, right?

As far as Japanese developers being better than American developers, maybe they are, but what do you think of European develpers? Personally (and this has to do with taste) I like western developed games more than Japanes games. It has to do with the style and artistic direction more than anything.

And you' re saying that the PS2 didn' t suffer from framerate issues?! Are you kidding me? Maybe you played some magical PS2, because I simply didn' t see the perfection of which you speak.

I guess we' ll all see, once the PS3 is released. Then, when the framerate issues, and jaggies appear some people will have conveniently forgotten this conversation. Meanwhile, I will just continue enjoying Prey (which has no framerate issues at all).

What games are you playing for the 360, because 4 out of the 10 games that I own are 1080i. And how is the graphics card wimpy? How do current PC cards compare? I think the 360 card is at the higher end, right?

360' s GPU kills anything currently available on PC, it' s just a shame that the system doesn' t have 1GB RAM like most modern desktops because more RAM allows for sharper textures.

As far as Japanese developers being better than American developers, maybe they are, but what do you think of European develpers? Personally (and this has to do with taste) I like western developed games more than Japanes games. It has to do with the style and artistic direction more than anything.

The thing about Japanese developers is that they don' t develop shader heavy games like their western equivelents. They even struggle to work with western built engines as highlighted by NAMCO' s inability to get to grips with the Unreal Engine 3.0.

What the Japanese ARE good at is delvering 60fps.

Meanwhile, I will just continue enjoying Prey (which has no framerate issues at all).

Kicks ass doesn' t it! It' s 10x better than the port of Quake 4!!!

ORIGINAL: Majikdra6on

Kicks ass doesn' t it! It' s 10x better than the port of Quake 4!!!

Yeah, Prey is awesome! Have you guys played online? How is it? I played, briefly, but I don' t do online too much.

ORIGINAL: Chee Saw

ORIGINAL: Majikdra6on

Kicks ass doesn' t it! It' s 10x better than the port of Quake 4!!!

Yeah, Prey is awesome! Have you guys played online? How is it? I played, briefly, but I don' t do online too much.

The online is great but everybody needs a good connection for there to be no lag.

Like Quez i have a 8Mb ADSL and so i never have any lag as long as i or he hosts our games, but he doesn' t have Prey and i only know a couple of people who do (i know loads who have the game on PC though) so i doubt i' ll give too much attention to the online half of the game.

What games are you playing for the 360, because 4 out of the 10 games that I own are 1080i.

How do you know the games are running NATIVELY a 1080i? Project Gotham runs natively at less than 720p, and is upscaled to whatever the Xbox is set at.

Upscaling ≠ running natively in that resolution.

ORIGINAL: Joe Redifer

How do you know the games are running NATIVELY a 1080i? Project Gotham runs natively at less than 720p, and is upscaled to whatever the Xbox is set at.

Upscaling ≠ running natively in that resolution.

You' re right. I don' t have the equipment to check to see what resolution a video game is running at. But I have the most important sensors. My eyes. The games simply LOOK awesome! Will PS3 look even better? We' ll see, but in the meantime I' ll be playing Oblivion with my eyes bleeding!

If the Japanese developed for the system like they develop for the PS2, they could probably solve the stuttering framerate problem, but American programmers just aren' t as good. PS3 will be better at HD than the Xbox360.

I agree - and this has nothing to do with performance power - it' s about polished/optimised code.

GPU in 360 was looking like amazing hardware on paper - I' m still waiting for it to proove any superiority over current High End PC cards (Gears of War might do the trick , or Mass Effect, but by the time they are released PC' s will have new cards)

CheeSaw - I' ve spent crazy amounts of time with DoA2 for DC and SC - I haven' t experienced slowdown or frame drops, same goes for most titles I played for PSX.

Some games might have had it, but most did not.

I don' t know about 2D since I was too young to know about the slowdown and honestly games were so fresh that I didn' t care probably - I just wanted to play them no matter what.

ORIGINAL: ]GaNgStA[

I don' t know about 2D since I was too young to know about the slowdown and honestly games were so fresh that I didn' t care probably - I just wanted to play them no matter what.

That' s what I' m sayin' Gangsta. Why the microscope, nowadays. It just takes the fun out of it.

It' s funny; people read on the internet that PGR3s resolution was under 720p, and everybody got all up in arms. If the game was released, and no one had read about it, I GAURANTEE that not one person could' ve told the difference with their naked eye! The game looks FANTASTIC! So what' s the problem? I' ll tell you what the problem is... the microscope! People want to know about Frames Per Second, and HDR Lighting, and RAM and everything else, but they don' t just want to play games... " no matter what" , anymore.

It' s all good, though. I enjoyed the Xbox, then the PS2, and now the 360. Come November, it' ll be the Wii. You all can take your " Framerates" and shove ' em!

If people just wanted to " play the games" then we wouldn' t have any newer consoles than the NES. Why upgrade graphic and sound power when only the games matter? That is your reason for the " microscope" , especially for a system like the Xbox360. There isn' t much out for it that is decent as far as gameplay is concerned right now, and people want to make sure they got what they paid for.

I' m not saying that improvements aren' t great. Hell, I' m a graphics whore, myself, but I don' t need to know how many times anti-aliasing something uses, or how many frames per second it runs at to know if it looks good or not. I use my eyes.

As far as good games, gameplay wise, you know that is very subjective. I love first person shooters, so I think the 360 is a little slice of heaven. You, being a FPS hater, would most likely NOT enjoy the pickings from the 360 thus far.

Actually, I kind of understand why YOU' re all into the tech and stuff, seeing as how you' re an A/V man (although I think it' s more A than V if I' m correct). I' m just glad that I can enjoy the next-gen right NOW, as opposed to wondering whether the PS3 or Wii is gonna come in and pwn the industry, or something.

But, cmon Joe. Even you have to admit that the Live Arcade games are pretty fun!

I don' t yet own an Xbox360. I was going to get one for MotoGP but decided not to once I heard about the framerate issues. I use my eyes for framerate purposes as well. I can easily tell the difference between 60fps and 30. I am a big racing game fan and yes, I would buy Project Gotham 3. I am glad the games look amazing to you as that gives me more hope for when I buy my system. I just have one request: Fewer war simulators, please!

Xbox360 isn' t quite powerful enough to run games in full 1080i resolution. All games run at 720p or lower and are upscaled due to the wimpy graphics card inside the machine.

It' s not the hardware. It' s the game engine that' s the problem. The hardware is new. The more developers learn, the better they can create game engines.

You' ll probably find that the first year of PS3 games will also suffer the same issues that plague the first year X360 games. Especially launch games.

Devs will be put through massive time crunches and immense amounts of pressure just to get the games done for launch. That means not much time can be devoted to optimization or bugfixes. So they not only have to learn how to program for the hardware but they also have to figure out how to get the best performance out of it.

I still think anyone hoping for 1080p 60fps for all PS3 games with antialiasing/filtering is going to be sorely disappointed. It' s just not going to be possible this time around unless you severely degrade the visual quality of the game.