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[Trustus Jones]

Been reading over at the bizzare creations forums and looks like someone has final review code and here is an interesting comment he posted.

I've played the final review build of PGR3.

It is smooth, very smooth, but it's not sixty frames. I was unsure at first, but upon getting Ridge Racer into the office, it became obvious PGR3 wasn't running at sixty.

Still, I wouldn't get wound up about it. PGR is still the best looking game on the Xbox 360.

Interestingly, not only does the game not run at sixty frames, but it doesn't run at 720p either. Well, menus are output at 720p (1280x720) but the in-game races are 600p (1024x600).

http://www.bizarreonline.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8750&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=90

Here`s a pic he captured direct from the graphics buffer so he seems legit in his case.

http://img399.imageshack.us/my.php?image=gotham0ik.jpg

 

[Mrbob]

Upscaling FTW? 600P???

I may get this game even though I'm not a fan of the car racing genre. The Live component sounds awesome.

 

[Funky Papa]

Interestingly, not only does the game not run at sixty frames, but it doesn't run at 720p either. Well, menus are output at 720p (1280x720) but the in-game races are 600p (1024x600).

Oh dear...

 

[raYne]

It is smooth, very smooth, but it's not sixty frames. I was unsure at first, but upon getting Ridge Racer into the office, it became obvious PGR3 wasn't running at sixty.

Oh noes!

IBG

Spoiler

(In Before Gek)

 

[cybamerc]

It would certainly explain why so many screens of Xbox 360 games look blurry.

 

[DaCocoBrova]

That's an odd resolution.

 

[Trustus Jones]

It would certainly explain why so many screens of Xbox 360 games look blurry.

He did say that all the other 360 games were outputting a proper 1280x720 image though.

When you take a screengrab, the resolution of that screengrab is the same as what the GPU is generating. All 360 games so far have punted out screenshots of 1280x720 except Gotham, which punts out screengrabs of 1024x600. Oh, except when in the menus of course, at which point 1280x720 grabs are generated.

 

[jett]

What.

 

[cybamerc]

He did say that all the other 360 games were outputting a proper 1280x720 image though.

The ones he tested anyway.

 

[GitarooMan]

Boy, this is really bizarre (no pun intended) if true, what an odd resolution. I wonder if they were just having so much trouble getting 30fps that they had to drop the res to get it....well, if true, there goes MS's talk about every game having to be 720p.

 

[Lord Error]

Not that surprising (if true)... Same thing has been going on with this gen consoles, at least the PS2 and GC. Various resolution shortcuts to make the game perform better.

This kind of res wouldn't look that great on LCD TV.

CRT TVs for the win...

 

[Borys]

What a weird res... lower than the standard mid-range 1024x768 PC res... 1.7 ratio?, strange.

Either a fake or an embarassment.

Where's Shog and his followers :lol ?

 

[Mrbob]

I'm wondering if this will be a common practice next gen for 360.

Render at 480P/600P and have the 360 chip scale it to 720P.

 

[teepo]

I'm wondering if this will be a common practice next gen for 360.

Render at 480P/600P and have the 360 chip scale it to 720P.

that'll really piss me off.

 

[123rl]

That's very weird if true...it's 1.70:1 - not even a widescreen ratio :lol

 

[Jerkface]

Quick we better jump to a few more conclusions before they clear it up!

 

[Beer Monkey]

That's very weird if true...it's 1.70:1 - not even a widescreen ratio

Repeat after me.

Pixels are not always square.
Pixels are not always square.
Pixels are not always square.

Resolution does not determine aspect ratio.

 

[raYne]

Quick we better jump to a few more conclusions before they clear it up!

"xbox 1.5"?
"wait for the real next-gen"?
"x360 maxed out before it's even released"?
"MS is hiding something"?

...am I missing any more possibles?

 

[teepo]

Repeat after me.

Pixels are not always square.
Pixels are not always square.
Pixels are not always square.

Resolution does not determine aspect ratio.

every 700x480 game i have played that had a aspect ratio of 16:9 looked streched as hell and not nearly as sharp when compared to the normal 4:3 mode. i'm looking at you shadow of the colossus and just about every current gen title.

 

[123rl]

Repeat after me.

Pixels are not always square.
Pixels are not always square.
Pixels are not always square.

Resolution does not determine aspect ratio.

Fair point I know a lot of plasmas have 1024x768 but those displays still have a minimum of 720 pixels vertically and it's the horizontal pixels that are scaled up from 1024 to 1280x720 material. I don't think you get displays that scale both horizontal and vertical to such a large degree because you just don't get material in that resolution

tbh I can't think of ANY display that has a 1024x600 display...I've never even heard of it before.

 

[Beer Monkey]

every 700x480 game i have played that had a aspect ratio of 16:9 looked streched as hell and not nearly as sharp when compared to the normal 4:3 mode.

Actually, all of the three current consoles typically render 640x480 for both 4:3 and 16:9. So you get square pixels in 4:3 mode and rectangular pixels in 16:9 mode.

 

[Mrbob]

Here are some more posts by the same guy for those who didn't take the time to read the rest of the Bizarre thread:

Sure, it upscales and displays correctly on a TV so you won't notice, but internally the game isn't generated at 1280x720 it is generated at 1024x600.

The game still looks better than anything else in the world though.

When you take a screengrab, the resolution of that screengrab is the same as what the GPU is generating. All 360 games so far have punted out screenshots of 1280x720 except Gotham, which punts out screengrabs of 1024x600. Oh, except when in the menus of course, at which point 1280x720 grabs are generated.

It is final build. Of course, you don't have to believe me, but it is.

You don't know what you're talking about.

Every generation of console will have trouble keeping the frame rate up when it has all its effects and other spangly abilities turned on. This is just the way things work.

Remember when PS2 came out? Remember the hype surrounding it? Remember when its games started coming out at thirty frames? Remember how everyone trolled but eventually stopped moaning as soon as the whole next-gen thing had died down.

It'll be the same in five to ten years time when the next Xbox arrives and people are yet again being treated to fantastic visuals but frame rates still hover around thirty frames.

A new, more powerful console doesn't automatically mean no more 30 frame games and never will.

Well, it's unlikely GT5 will be out for the PS3's launch. Give Bizarre another year and I'm pretty sure they could get sixty frames out of it. That said, in a year's time they'd face exactly the same dilema - either make the game as detailed as it can regardless of frames, or do what you can with the game running at a solid sixty frames.

The signal going to the TV is 720p, but the source resolution is 1024x600. This is what the game is being generated in. Screenshots are grabbed from the graphics buffer inside the machine, so these always show the exact resolution that the source is running at, regardless of what is happening on route to the TV.

The guy isn't out to get MS. Just mentioning what seems to be the truth on the issue. The game is rendered a little lower to hit launch.

 

[Worm_Buffet]

This is a nothing short of a catastrophy. I won't even be able to look at the game now without being reminded of its appalling nonoptimality. Yuck! I mean, it's a realistic racer ffs. What does it have to offer except for technical perfection?

 

[gofreak]

Questions were asked some time ago (by me) about various X360 games and their native rendering resolutions - given that we were seeing 1024x576 shots for lots of games (and some were direct from the dev, classed as framebuffer grabs). The reason for my suspicion was at the resolution for the shots of those other games, they'd fit neatly into eDram with 2xAA without tiling (1024x600 does too)...

Not that this corroborates anything necessarily.

It doesn't look it at a glance, because of the "1024" but it's only 2/3 the resolution of 720p. The others would be a little less so even, if they're actually rendering at those resolutions.

 

[gollumsluvslave]

This is pretty damning for Microsoft IMO

One of the main selling points for 360 is High Def - 720p minimum, and one of their main titles should not have passed certification...

I wonder if any other devs might try to get away with this now?

Of course the guy in the Bizarre forum said it was the *review* build, which does not necessarily mean Retail...

 

[Jerkface]

"xbox 1.5"?
"wait for the real next-gen"?
"x360 maxed out before it's even released"?
"MS is hiding something"?

...am I missing any more possibles?

Don't ask me man, we need a psychoanalyst to think like "them"

 

[Mr. Lemming]

I wonder if the whole resolution / frame rate / whatever stuff are allowed to be patchable.

 

[gofreak]

I wonder if any other devs might try to get away with this now?

There are lots of 1024x576 screenshots floating around for what it's worth. The shots from the Inis Engine were at that resolution - the dev provided them and said they were framebuffer grabs. Lots of others too - but whenever I brought it up I was told that the websites were probably resizing them.

 

[gollumsluvslave]

There are lots of 1024x576 screenshots floating around for what it's worth.

I'd be interested to get some official word on this

1024x600/576 upscaled to 720p is *not* 720p

My understanding was that X360 games have to *render* at a minimum of 720p.

Of course Xbox.com is predictably vague:-

You’ll see all Xbox 360 titles at 720p and 1080i resolution in 16:9 widescreen, with anti-aliasing for smooth, movie-like graphics and multi-channel surround sound.

You will see 720p, but this a fine piece of deception if it turns out to be true...

 

[Mefisutoferesu]

You think perhaps the reason for 600 instead of 576 horizontal pixels is to account for the various non-standard HD resolutions the 360 outputs for PC monitors and the 768p HDTVs?

 

[Blimblim]

There are lots of 1024x576 screenshots floating around for what it's worth.

That's because Gamespot resizes anything more than 1024 in width. No idea why they do that.

 

[gohepcat]

This is a nothing short of a catastrophy. I won't even be able to look at the game now without being reminded of its appalling nonoptimality. Yuck! I mean, it's a realistic racer ffs. What does it have to offer except for technical perfection?

You are joking right? PLease tell me this is a joke post

 

[eso76]

This kind of res wouldn't look that great on LCD TV.

CRT TVs for the win...

Huh, wouldn't it look the same ? it's the console itself doing the upscaling and it's outputting a 720p image in any case.

So the game will look something like this

upscaling from

well, it's not as sharp but sometimes a little blurriness can help recreating a CG look (also see, the London PS3 tech demo...had it been perfectly sharp it wouldn't have looked as impressive) and i always thought making 720p mandatory for all games was never a wise choice anyway.

 

[Helznicht]

Doubt it. Its been stated the scaler can both scale up and down. There is no reason to render at anything but 720p other then tech issues.

Looks like PGR3 needs to go back in the cooker and let RR6 have the racing crown for launch. This indeed SUCKS!

But this RULES! :lol

 

[MingisDew]

this inst that strange at all. you can capture 1.2 footage on a PC at 1.0 and then just interpret the footage back to 1.2. No harm no foul no quality loss and the resolution is still the same. if you dont believe me, try it.

 

[monkeymagic]

Maybe Shogmaster can analyse this and let us know his verdict is as he did with GT4's 1080i...

Originally Posted by Shogmaster:

By looking at the evidence, it's clear that GT4 is not doing true 1080i, no matter what Sony is saying in their press material. It's doing what looks like 640x1080i internally and then stretching it horizontally x3 (basically showing the same pixel 3 times in a row horizonatlly). That's far from true 1080i (1920 horizonal pixels). It's not even rendering as many pixels as 720P (1280 pixels x 720 pixels vertically).

In a single frame (60th of a second), GT4's "Hivision" potentially has to crank out 345,600 new pixels (640x540), while a true 1080i 60FPS game would have to crank out 1,036,800 new pixels (1920x540), and 720P 60FPS game would have to crank out 921,600 new pixels (1280x720).

345,600 vs. 1,036,800. That's only a third of true 1080i. I think folks here were right to be skeptical, no?

 

[Gek54]

33% drop in the resolution...

 

[Blimblim]

One thing that's strange with this image is that you can very clearly see that the building's textures get blurry not so far from the viewpoint (so there would be a texture pop-in like in the X05 build). This is a problem that was said to be fixed by Bizarre so either they lied, or that guy is not playing the final build of the game.

 

[gofreak]

In fairness, the guy posting isn't very well established on the Bizarre forums, though he doesn't sound like he has an axe to grind or anything. Hopefully Bizarre will comment.

 

[Shogmaster]

Maybe Shogmaster can analyse this and let us know his verdict is as he did with GT4's 1080i...

OMFG, I have "fans". X_x

 

[jedimike]

Very shady by MS. It's not even about how the game looks. It certainly looks very good. I'm more pissed about MS trying to deceive it's customers. It was always in the back of my mind that MS could abuse the frame buffer. They can easily take lower res games and AA the shit of them so they appear decent to the average gamer.

 

[HomerSimpson-Man]

That's a funny resolution, eh still higher res than my crappy tv.

 

[Lord Error]

Huh, wouldn't it look the same ? it's the console itself doing the upscaling and it's outputting a 720p image in any case.

So the game will look something like this

You didn't stretch it quite enough horizontally (you have to use non-proportional stretch)

Yes, I think it will look better on CRT just because CRT is a lot more forgivable to resolution and doesn't let you as easily pick out individual pixels and picture sharpness the way LCD does.

Man oh man do I expects tricks like this to be used in next gen games. Think about it, why devs wouldn't do it? For 90-95% of people, that 600p buffer is still going to be downsampled to their TV. Same with not using AA for example. Most people will never know if the game doesn't use AA in it's original 720p buffer, as they will play it downsampled and auto-AA-ed on a regular TV.

 

[IJoel]

Big disappointment if this turns out to be true.

 

[Big Takeover]

One thing that's strange with this image is that you can very clearly see that the building's textures get blurry not so far from the viewpoint (so there would be a texture pop-in like in the X05 build). This is a problem that was said to be fixed by Bizarre so either they lied, or that guy is not playing the final build of the game.

I agree with with you. I'm sceptical of this guy's build.

One of your Italian speaking commenters on xboxyde, P40L0, translated part of the conversation in your recently posted "Italian presentation by ?" video. What was said was this:

"The third video has a beta PGR3 version (very recent) running no HD720p but with standard resolution upscaled in a SAMSUNG HDTV. The game is in debug mode and is launched from the console's hard-disk."

So, as of recently, publicly shown builds were openly discussed as not yet running in 720p. Until somebody with a pressed copy and some credibility steps forth, I will remain quite skeptical.

 

[The Faceless Master]

pgr3 not running at 720p doesnt matter anyway, most people are gonna play it on a 4:3 tv that does 480i

 

[mrklaw]

This is a nothing short of a catastrophy. I won't even be able to look at the game now without being reminded of its appalling nonoptimality. Yuck! I mean, it's a realistic racer ffs. What does it have to offer except for technical perfection?

joke or not, this is kind of how I feel. I'm sure it'll be a great game, and a worthy sequel to PGR2. But if this is true I'll always know it could look a little better. The gamer will be happy, but the graphics whore inside will be disappointed.

and lets face it, a certain percentage of a next-gen purchase is to satisfy the tech/graphics whore in all of us.



As for whether its the final build or not - does it matter? They might be turning on some new textures in later builds, but your frame buffer resolution is pretty fundamental, no?

 

[Borys]

Can anyone explain to me why the weird res? Why not 1024x768? That's all I ask.

 

[eso76]

You didn't stretch it quite enough horizontally (you have to use non-proportional stretch)

Yes, I think it will look better on CRT just because CRT is a lot more forgivable to resolution and doesn't let you as easily pick out individual pixels and picture sharpness the way LCD does.

Man oh man do I expects tricks like this to be used in next gen games. Think about it, why devs wouldn't do it? For 90-95% of people, that 600p buffer is still going to be downsampled to their TV. Same with not using AA for example. Most people will never know if the game doesn't use AA in it's original 720p buffer, as they will play it downsampled and auto-AA-ed on a regular TV.

yeah, it's not quite 1280 horizontally, but i didn't want to change the proportions. Besides, maybe the game will be stretched to 1220whateverx720 with small black bars at both sides, who knows : )

(LCD - CRT) Ah, ok, if that's what you meant then i can't not agree

yup, if anything, playing the game on a standard definition tv should return a completely clean and jaggies-free image.

Several games this gen rendered at lower resolutions, not only on ps2 and gamecube.
I think wrekless was blurry because of this, and i think Riddick used some kind of dynamic resolution, ie adjusting res according to what was on screen.

 

[eso76]

One thing that's strange with this image is that you can very clearly see that the building's textures get blurry not so far from the viewpoint

Yep, that's what's worrying me about that picture in fact.