Quote:
Originally Posted by sperry
...yet. I figure by the time the prices comes down enough for me to consider buying a PS3, the game manufacturers will have figured out how to run at 1080p/i.
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They know, but most of them force 720p anyway. It's a matter of compromise or time for most devs. The lower the res, the more cycles they have left for other visual details. Or the less work they have to bother with trying to get the game to run at a decent framerate.
For example, Oblivion on the XB360 can be run at 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, or 1080p, depending on what you set through the dashboard. All 360 games will run at whatever res you specify. The trade-off here is that the dev has to ensure that the game is
optimized to run in high res, which sometimes means that other details (such as distant texture or mipmapping detail) will be sacrificed.
On the PS3, the forced max for Oblivion is 720p. Sony did not enable the system to scale the resolution to the user's max preference - resolution is forced by the software. This is what made possible the extra detail in Oblivion's distant land textures that all the Sony fanboys have been acting so proud of.
Since Bethesda knew that the game would only run at a max of 720p, they were able to squeeze a bit more detail out of the available cycles.
One of the problems with Sony's implementation is if you have a TV that is 1080i compatible but not 720p (like a 32", 4:3 CRT HDTV), you're boned. The system will not allow upconversion and therefore forces you to run at 480p. I know
I'd be pretty pissed if I had dropped $600 on a system that would only run at last-gen resolutions.
So the real problem here is Sony's. They need to release a firmware update that allows full user specified resolutions. While the software devs may want to decide for us that running at only 720p is a fair trade for a little extra texture detail, most of us who have the capability of running 1080i/p would gladly give up a little detail for the higher resolution. Years of shooters on PC have made it clear that if you can't tell an enemy apart from a tree due to crappy res, you may as well not play.
Microsoft has this one right; Sony needs to play catch-up.
Scott, I'm sure you already get all this, but I felt like venting about Sony a little, for those who may not be up on this silly stuff.
End rant. Not that I'm going to buy a PS3 any time soon anyway. . .
