FPS Flame War 2.0: Halo 3 Upscales from 640p
I would like to start out by saying I think this is one of the silliest things to get upset about. As much as I hate to say it, Halo has been a flagship product for the Xbox and as such it is to be given a certain amount of respect. Much like Bioshock, the release of Halo 3 is destined to be nitpicked by every hater, flamer and what ever other flavor of discordian ragamuffin the internet has to offer. Bioshock received criticism for trivialities such as the widescreen issue, and now Halo is getting the same service.
Users at the Beyond 3D Forums did some sleuthing and discovered that halo always runs at a 640p. How did they discover this little detail? By running the game on an LCD screen, creating a high-contrast acute angled line with respect to the top of the screen, and then counting the pixels with a high definition camera. You heard me correctly. By counting the pixels on the screen, they were able to determine that the game runs at a lower resolution and upscales after the scenes have been rendered.
Now before anyone freaks out about this like the widescreen issue I will be explaining some of the potential reasoning behind this. First of all, Halo 3 is primarily going to be played online. By keeping consistent hardware and resolution between all players results in near-identical player performance. Consistent performance means fair game play. Secondly, lower resolution means faster fill times, which means that scenes can be more complex while maintaining a high frame rate. Finally, larger resolutions means a larger frame buffer, which means less memory for textures. 728,320 unused pixels of frame buffer memory means an additional 11 256x256 uncompressed textures. I'm not going to say any of the reasons are the ones that Bungie decided to use, but remember that they probably did it with performance in mind.
Halo 3 only runs at 640p [gamerawr!]
Asterick
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 28 September 2007
· Comments (11)
Other stuff like this: bungie, halo, microsoft, omg fanboys, xbox
Hmm. Good explanation. Here's another one: I've got a 50" 1080p plasma TV I bought 2 weeks ago, and Halo 3 looks phenominal on it. Don't worry about upscaling, just appreciate that it looks beautiful during multiplayer... ESPECIALLY beautiful when you're playing back that multi-explosion triple kill in the Theater!
Oddly enough, whenever I eventually get around to buying Halo 3, online play will be the last thing on my mind...
Online co-op, maybe, but I'm mostly in it for the story mode.
Yes, this is a silly thing to get upset about. If you want to complain about Halo 3, as with 1 and 2, complain about the boring gameplay and the terrible singleplayer campaign.
Holy, what will they complain about next? I've had it a couple days and so far, I haven't been disappointed by a single thing. The online play is absolutely awesome (and one of the few games I have that doesn't lag on my crappy Clearwire connection), and the single player lives up to (and surpasses, in my opinion) the first two.
Bungie, it seems, have owned up to why Halo 3 renders at 640p - they do to ensure that they can keep the full dynamic range of the lighting.
As performance compromises go, that's rather acceptable, I think. Lighting makes all the difference when it comes to human vision!
why are you defending microsoft asterick? while they claim that their console is HD, it's funny to see such killer app upscaled like this. justice you say? maybe you should look into the pc hardware sometimes.
What will be next? Some idiots complaining about Tetris, argueing that the blocks should have rounded egdes?
oh, and wiit:
console != pc
completely different philosophy.
Technically, 640p is still high definition. Standard definition television runs at 320 x 480i
And I'm not defending Microsoft, I'm defending Bungie.
Asterick,
Good thoughts.
Thank you for all your hard work, someone needs to buy you a new 360 for all your work here!
Oh not me...but someone does!
Since I don't hear anyone complaining about H3's visuals, I'd say this is more damaging to the "games need to be 720p or higher" argument than it is to Bungie, Microsoft or Halo.
This one's interesting. Yesterday I was playing Halo3. I was standing on a cliff overlooking the dam at the end of the first level. Anyway, I wondered to myself: "Hmm, I can't really make out the details much on the dam. I can't even tell the enemies apart without using the scope. This would really benefit from 1080P." Turns out it could have used 720P first. Anyway, that's precisely the type of situation where the resolution affects gameplay. That doesn't happen very often in Halo, thankfully, so it's not a big issue.
Also, kudos to Bungie for telling us about the issue, I just wish they wouldn't be dicks about it.