Over the course of the PS2' s life, there have been very few games that even offered progressive scan. When playing games like this on an HDTV set, it can really, really look bad. Much worse than it does on a normal TV. With progressive scan (480p) it draws all 480 lines in one scan, like 640x480 on a VGA monitor. It looks much nicer.
Enter Gran Turismo 4. The developers originally said that they' d be able to have widescreen, but not progresive scan since they wanted to push the limits of what the PS2 can do, and offering 480p would would eat up way too many of the PS2' s extremely limited resourses. But then the game was delayed and now Gran Turismo not only offers widescreen 480p, but also 1080i high definition as well! It is quite clever how they did it. The resolution really isn' t more than 480p, but it just redraws the 480p image rapidly and interlaces it to provided more detail. It' s pretty clever, even if the true resolution is only 960i. But take a look at these (very large) comparison shots. There is quite a bit of difference!
This game looks to break the graphical barriers of the PS2 by a long shot, and even goes further than many Xbox games. Xbox has a few games that run at 1080i, but they can get a bit choppy and drop frames, etc when they do, and the detail seems to be a bit less in order to compensate. But here we have tons of polygons and 1080i from the freakin' PS2! The only test now is to see if it still runs at 60fps while in 1080i.
Congrats Sony. You did something that I approve of for once!
Nintendo, it' s your turn to offer a high definition game for the Gamecube! Wait, that won' t happen since Nintendo no longer includes the digital A/V port on new GC' s. :(
< Message edited by Joe Redifer -- 12/27/2004 4:43:13 PM >