New gen not powerfull enough article

[D]

From Insertcredit I got this site:
http://insomnia.ac/

This is a nice article http://insomnia.ac/commentary/not_powerful_enough/
I always suspected this, but never had any details.
Are his calculations correct?
He talks about 1080P alot, but I guess for 720P his article is remotely true.

[Never_Scurred]

that article was balls.....fuck all this HDTV 1080 p nonsense and lets go back to when all that mattered was the game and whether or not you could see it. maybe all this will make sense when someone comes along and standardizes it all so we can go back to not caring about minutae and just plug up our tv's to our consoles and play. Like it should be.

[GeneralWong]

From Insertcredit I got this site:
http://insomnia.ac/

This is a nice article http://insomnia.ac/commentary/not_powerful_enough/
I always suspected this, but never had any details.
Are his calculations correct?
He talks about 1080P alot, but I guess for 720P his article is remotely true.

Best article I've read in a long time and he totaly convinced me.

[Dave_K.]

I think Icycalm is right on the money, its all marketing hype.

[Daigohji]

I got bored of his ranting about halfway though. While I'm of the opinion that the coming gen of consoles should have had their horsepower focused on areas other than HD, the way he dismisses the 360's capabilities based on one launch title are pathetic. That's like trying to sum up the PS2's capabilities based solely on Fantavision, or the PS1's based on Riiiidge Racer.

[Icarus]

Sony needs to sell more HDTVs somehow.

[Strider77]

I bought a 360 before I had an HDTV and played ninja gaiden black and ridge racer 6, kameo and DOA4. I wasn't so convinced that HD was going to be all that. I bought a HDTV about 2 months later and i have to say I never want to go back. I was AMAZED at ninja gaiden black in HD. Now I fuly expect these new systems to crank out more complex structures and models, but I do not want anything less that progressive at this point.

If I catch anyone on here bitching about filtering/scaling ect on here and then saying HD is no improvement or trivial at best (we aren't talking about low res on HD problem mind you), I will call this out. Sometimes I think some folks are trying to console themselves from what they don't have.

HOWEVER..... I have been very underwhelmed for the most part for this next gen's start. But that's been the 360 and the 360 is an american made system with mostly american developers. I am an ass when it comes to US developers. I think they are crap for the most part and will/can shuvle out crap... but it'll sell b/c of violence, bitches, or a trending soundtrack. Plus half of the titles are multiplatform and that almost always means certain death b/c that means all versions are going to cater to the lowest common denominator out of the systems they are going to with minor upgrades to textures or effects.

After a year we are starting to get some games that look pretty nice. Lost Planet looks nice. Some parts of splinter cell DD are pretty decent (although i have mixed feelings on that game... UBI shanghai blows the big one) and gears of war will look nice. I am pretty sure after about 5 months of the PS3 being out we will see some very nice looking stuff out of japan it could be sooner. We'll see some nice stuff on the 360 also but it's taken a year to get there.

I don't think HD is the culprit for lackluster improvements this gen, it's been lazy (or incompetent) developers (EA games) thinking they can scrape by with just boosting up the res to HD.

or the PS1's based on Riiiidge Racer

hey I LOVED that game.... goofy announcer and all. The black car was a BITCH to beach.

[Never_Scurred]

If I catch anyone on here bitching about filtering/scaling ect on here and then saying HD is no improvement or trivial at best (we aren't talking about low res on HD problem mind you), I will call this out. Sometimes I think some folks are trying to console themselves from what they don't have.
.

Whats up...

[JJG]

HD is very trivial, and hardly worth $600 let alone $400. You are on a site full of people who love a game genre which is about 90% 2D and low res. Graphics should always be second to gameplay but that doesn't seem to be the case with this new next gen.

Also aside from the consoles costing rediculous amounts, HD is expensive as well. I still turn on my dreamcast and am amazed by the graphics on that. Screw shelling out over a grand to brag about owning a next-gen console.

[Strider77]

I am not arguing low res is bad or 2D either.....

I am arguing that HD is a significant improvement in resolution ESPECIALLY on 3D games. Guilty Gear is pretty nice looking in progressive so 2D games would see a great improvement also if someone bothered to make one in HD. That and it's not the fact that these systemes output HD... it's a lack of effort to do anything other than amp up the res.

You are on a site full of people who love a game genre which is about 90% 2D and low res.

Then why even care about this thread or next gen systems at all if graphix are unimportant. This thread's title and that article's point is that next gen visuals are NOT good enough.

I have well over 400 games, 99 percent are imports. They span from 16 bit all the way up. I LOVE my old school stuff and 2D along with it, don't get me wrong. I went threw alot of effort to get my older low res stuff looking great on my HDTV. But I am not one to say lets stay stuck in the past.

HD is an improvement and one that I like and my main point is I think that article is a rant and bitchfest on someone who doesn't have an HDTV or can't afford one so he's consoling himself. HD is an improvement and a worthy one, but I do not believe for a second it's the cause for lackluster looking games on this next gen. Hell the only next gen system is the 360 and like i said I have no faith in US developers for getting down to the metal with systems.

Long story short I refuse to except the excuse that HD is evil and the cause of poor games or visuals. It HELPS the visuals but it's up to the developers to take advantage of more than the new res limits. Besides I also thinks its stupid to compare 1st gen games as a systems potential. That's like saying I should judge the DC by Blue Stinger or the PSX with Toshinden. On top of it he is trying to compare 1st gen games to reality/film. If he was expecting that or doesn't understand high resolution does not equal photo realism [there are A LOT more factors involved] he has no buisness trying to write professional articles. What am I to expect film quality visuals out of a PS2/gamecude/Xbox b/c they are capable of the same progressive res of a dvd?

[JJG]

But you are saying that improving the res is not trivial as far as enjoying a game. I'm saying res is trivial and not worth paying crazy amounts of money for.

[elvis]

I've been working for film, TV, special effects, animation and other folks for quite some time now. Icycalm is bang on the money. When you spend some time dealing with real high definition output and real 3D, coming back to consoles and even "cutting-edge" $10,000 workstations, you see quickly how they pale in comparison.

The Xbox 360, PS3, DirectX10 - all of it makes me yawn. They're so far from realitme and truly life-like graphics it's not funny. I'm not trying to come across as overly arrogant here. It's just that the marketing droids are going nuts over their respective consoles' capabilities when really, they're nothing to get excited over at all. There's still 20 years of catchup to go before they hit film quality.

And for all those reasons and more, I don't generally play 2D games. The vast majority of 3D titles push their entire budget towards a game engine, and things like plot and fun are lost (there are of course notable exceptions to the rule, but the majority of EA-style tripe out there speaks for itself).

I find too many people get caught up in this hype-wave of graphics and forget the gameplay. I have young nephews who will retire previous generation games when the next-gen sequel arrives because "the new graphics are better". The whole idea of playing a game for years (or in my case decades) because it is truly *FUN* is quite foreign to them.

[Strider77]

But you are saying that improving the res is not trivial as far as enjoying a game.

this thread is about visuals... I'm only arguing about visuals here and HD deffinately improves that. Sure to be honest I enjoyed Ninja Gaiden more the second time b/c it was in HD than the fist. It had the same great gameplay/challenge AND it made an all ready fatastic looking game look even better. That doesn't mean I didn't have a blast the 1st time though. It just means I got the whole package improved the second time around.

Plus like I said if everyone here is arguing visual improvement is not important, it's gameplay, that's a great way to think. I agree for the most part, but if I can have both, I'll take it in a heartbeat. But if it's only gameplay your worried about, then why agree with this guy at all. He's bitching that HD is causing improvement in the rest of the visuals (such as more complex structure/character models) to be impossible.

As for the cost.... well thats a matter of opinion and budget. Alot of folks spend a hell of alot a money on low res set ups. Mushi and Ibara on PCB? Thats ALOT of money to spend just to have the display and res the way you want it. So is buying a cab, or buying a monitor and XRGB ect. I spent about 1200.00 on my HDTV and all the equipment and cords ect to have my cake and eat it to. I love it and do not regret it... low res looks outstanding, better even than it ever did on my older sony crt (it was nice also).

They're so far from realitme and truly life-like graphics it's not funny.

There's still 20 years of catchup to go before they hit film quality.

I NEVER expected this from these next gen machines. Thats a pretty tapll order to go from last gen (xbox being the best) to film/real quality visuals, an unrealistic expectation even. Plus after being exposed to all that graphic quality in your environment your saying DON'T go HD?! You just said how much better all that profession equipment looked and now you say why bother making a step towards that?!

I'm not worried about you sounding arrogant.......

I still turn on my dreamcast and am amazed by the graphics on that.

ditto... 100 percent with that and I was doubly amazed when i saw my DC threw my HDTV via a VGA/transcoder. The DC was an incredibly made little peice of hardware for it's time. I love it...

[azmun]

I am arguing that HD is a significant improvement in resolution ESPECIALLY on 3D games...so 2D games would see a great improvement also if someone bothered to make one in HD...it's a lack of effort to do anything other than amp up the res.

Not to defend this guy or anything but I must have completely read the article different from you. We talk about improving graphics and image quality. Yes. But apparently there are different approaches to this. What he is saying is that better graphics here means it's "closer to photorealistic" . That was in the footnotes. And I don't think he is against higher res per se. Rather, other factors should be considered. For 3D games, special effects, higher/more polygons would help improve the graphics. For 2D games, maybe it's sprites. Consider SF3: Third Strike and GGX. The former has much more fluid animation, the later higher res. Which has better graphics? You can argue both ways.

Then why even care about this thread or next gen systems at all if graphix are unimportant. This thread's title and that article's point is that next gen visuals are NOT good enough.

I too care about graphics (although that's secondary). Personally, I'm not impressed with what I've seen. They could definitely be better. Whether or not the main reason for this is that developers are forced to use high res which is apparently very demanding on the systems and that the systems may be inadequate to handle the additional requirements for processing power I don't know. But I do have my own theories why this generations' games aren't that big of an improvement over the previous ones.

I have well over 400 games, 99 percent are imports. They span from 16 bit all the way up. I LOVE my old school stuff and 2D along with it, don't get me wrong. I went threw alot of effort to get my older low res stuff looking great on my HDTV. But I am not one to say lets stay stuck in the past.

I dunno why but having my old systems/games running on HDTV (or higher res) has never appealed to me. However, I do think some of the newer games do look a bit better on this setup since they were intended or originally designed with higher res in mind.

HD is an improvement and one that I like

HD can be a huge improvment. However, IMHO this is more evident in movies and videos.

Long story short I refuse to except the excuse that HD is evil and the cause of poor games or visuals. It HELPS the visuals but it's up to the developers to take advantage of more than the new res limits. Besides I also thinks its stupid to compare 1st gen games as a systems potential. That's like saying I should judge the DC by Blue Stinger or the PSX with Toshinden.

In any case, I don't agree with Microsoft or Sony exerting their muscle and requiring developers to design games on higher res. Why not give flexibility? Then we could really compare what differences may exist if all that processing power will be used instead to push polygons and other special effects as opposed to simply higher res.

In the US, Soul Calibur is considered 1st gen. It happens to have one of the best graphics to this day for the DC, granted the system had a relatively short life span. But I doubt if there could have been any significant improvments.

[Strider77]

I picked up gears of war today....

That game puts all doubt in my mind aside as far as this gen actaully being a proper leap forward. It's the lazyness of developers. That game is in high def and is not holding out on any of the rest either.

This is my point... I don't see why everyone is saying do away with HD. WHY?! It DOES make a difference. It is NOT why the games thus far have been mild improvements, it's lazyness. Like I said gears of war really is pumping out great visuals on many levels. And please don't post follow up with "I played it and it's graphix suck" just from playing a lame store demo. This game really does shine on the 360.

We can have HD and complex effects/structures in this next gen. Everyone can nay say all they want but it's not b/c of HD. I have said before myself to others I'm sick of the next gen games only bumping up the res and that's very much true. But it's not b/c of it being in HD... why does everyone think this?

Come on... has no one seen the crappy habbit of multi-console games NOT taking advantage of better hardware other than some lame extra light sourcing or mild bump mapping ect. They almost NEVER increase the actual polly count. This is especially true with US developers. A good portion on the 360 titles have been lame up ported games. I only saw a few dozen titles on the original xbox that were doing something that couldn't be reproduced on the GC or somewhat competently on the PS2.

If everyone wants to point the fingure at HD resulution as the issue go ahead. But I bet everyone who is are praising the Wii for it's spectacularness...

Don't get me wrong I love the way nintendo is making their approach this gen. They have something really fresh and I'm releaved that a console creator is actually focusing on being innovative and gameplay. What irks me is how everyone is gonna praise it for looking slightly better than an xbox then turn around and bitch about how the other systems suck b/c the graphics aren't good enough.

The 360 is a powerful machine and so will be the PS3 (overpriced as it is). I just don't get why everyone thinks it's HD resolutions is whats causing games thus far looking lackluster in all other departents.

I guess in the end it doesn't matter though. To each his own. I certainly am happy with the results of HD, and after getting a XRGB2+ to hook up all my old low res stuff to the TV I can have my cake and eat it to. i get the perks of 480p, 720p, 1080i, VGA, and all lower interlaced ect resolutions via my transcoder/xrgb2+. On top of all of that I get my scanlines back and picture quality that is better than s-video, composite ect via RGB for all my old systems. The only one I caan't right now is my PC engine but I will be modding that soon for RGB.

This doesn't mean I think or expect everyone to go out and get a HDTV or feel like they need to. I just expect folks to realize it's not HD resolutions that are keeping back those other departments in the visuals.

[Never_Scurred]

Gears of War. Looks good in HD. witnessed it with my own eyes tonight at a game party. Thats the next best thing to seeing Killzone playable on an HD.
I actually agree with Strider on the worth of HD for overall quality enhancement. I mean who doesn't want a good looking picture? My beef with it is the fact that it feels like you need to read a book to undestand how all these resolutions work out when it never used to be that complicated.

[Strider77]

My beef with it is the fact that it feels like you need to read a book to undestand how all these resolutions work out when it never used to be that complicated.

I can see that, that's alot of foolishness with the industry to. Especially with connections, VGA, DVI analouge/digital, and now all that HDMI nonsence.

[neorichieb1971]

I think the article was about why 480i DVD visuals look better than 720p game visuals.

When the wii comes out you will start to see to some extent how lower res games gives some horse power to the games themselves. The difference in processing power required to bump res from 720p to 1080p was said to be in excess of 50%. There is obviously a trade off in graphics realism and HD has nothing to do with that. Turning Galaga into a 1080p game doesn't make it like the ID4 movie does it?

[Strider77]

why 480i DVD visuals look better than 720p game visuals

that comparison make zero sence though, a dvd player is doing nothing to create the visuals. it's just recorded and not realtime. a 360 could pull that off and have the res at 750p.

i can deffinately believe there is some hourse power being sucked from the system doing HD. but i can't see how anyone could bitch about or deny gears of wars visuals. that game looks great and is in HD. both are VERY doable.

[JJG]

The next-gen systems are not as powerful as they should be, it's as simple as that. The leaps in graphics from PS2 to PS3 or from Xbox to Xbox 360 are not as great as next gen advancements used to be. Take a look at the jump from NES to SNES or N64 to DC and you'll understand.

[neorichieb1971]

why 480i DVD visuals look better than 720p game visuals

that comparison make zero sence though, a dvd player is doing nothing to create the visuals. it's just recorded and not realtime. a 360 could pull that off and have the res at 750p.

i can deffinately believe there is some hourse power being sucked from the system doing HD. but i can't see how anyone could bitch about or deny gears of wars visuals. that game looks great and is in HD. both are VERY doable.

The point is that people are paying for HD as its the lowest common demoninator chosen by MS and Sony. If you don't use the Hd facilities of the machine and use composhite you still paying $60 for the game, cannot read the text in it either. The article suggests that if DVD at 480i looks so much better than DOA4 on XB360 at 720p, why pay all that.. why not shoe horn that visual prowess into the 480i TV system which DVD playback proves there is room for improvement in 480i.

I undertstand the concept of the argument, im not agreeing with it 100%. Resolution does more for a game than 120fps would do for example.

[Acid King]

The next-gen systems are not as powerful as they should be, it's as simple as that. The leaps in graphics from PS2 to PS3 or from Xbox to Xbox 360 are not as great as next gen advancements used to be. Take a look at the jump from NES to SNES or N64 to DC and you'll understand.

That's a bullshit comparison though. With the 16 to 32 bit you had a dimensional leap, going from 2d to 3d graphics. Every generation is just going to be a marginal leap from now on since all it is in filling in details that you couldn't have before. And exactly how powerful SHOULD they be? It's like you're complaining that technology hasn't reached the point it should have. I mean, the PS3 is goin to be 500+ dollars and Sony are STILL going to be losing money on it. Games are not, if ever, going to be photorealistic. The amount of detail, the amount of modeling and work that would have to be put into them on top of of the processing power needed would be ridiculous and unnecessary. As for a better comparison of the power of the 360 of the Xbox, take Morrowind for Xbox and compare it to Oblivion for 360. Anyone that doesn't think Oblivion is leaps and bounds above Morrowind graphically (arguably as much of an improvement from Mario 64 to Sonic Adventure) is most likely suffering from severe cataracts.

As much as I like Icycalm, the comparisons between the screens from the movies and the game screens are pointless. It's like putting a photo of a person next to portrait done by an 8th grade art student. We are only as good as our talent and our tools allow us to be and both will always be limited.

I think the very real and valid point Icycalm makes is that developers are expending too much processing power on upping resolution when they could be doing more detail in the actual graphics. The fact that it's wrapped up with talk of photorealism and the statement "not as powerful as they should be" is what makes the article contentious. [/u]

[JJG]

My argument wasn't the 16 to 32 leap...

It was the 8 to 16 and the 64 to 128.

[icycalm]

Sup guys.

My point is that the PS3 and the 360 are possibly* not powerful enough to handle HD resolutions, and still deliver photorealistic graphics. That's what the "should" in the title of the article refers to. It's not that the consoles themselves are not powerful enough for me, or that they are not a significant leap forward. They ARE a significant leap forward. But they don't seem able to do justice to the higher resolutions. And lots of power will be wasted, which could be put to better use elsewhere.

Gears of War looks great of course. My point is it could look much much better at 480p, but with a shitload more polygons and effects. Same goes for any other title you'd care to mention. The improvement would be visible on a 480i TV, or on a VGA monitor (a la Dreamcast) or a 480p progressive-scan TV.



*As I mention in the article:

There is a fair chance I am wrong in the previous statement, and third- or fourth-generation PS3 and Xbox 360 games end up being a huge leap forward compared to what we are seeing now. This will only come about if academics and game developers come up with algorithms that make efficient use of the multi-core architecure of the new systems. If this happens, no one can predict with any amount of certainty what the net processing power gain will be. It could simply be significant, or it could be huge. I would love to see this, but I am not optimistic about it.

[Inkvisitor]

The ultimate goal is ofcourse to get both old and new systems to look great. And the only way I can see that happening right now is by getting both a HDTV and SDTV. I think having a match of hardware and TV resolution is more important than visual quality. If the picture is grainy or noisy that will kind of outweigh any dissapointment I may have on the quality of textures or effects.

I'm not sure how old games will look on the PS3 but it seems to be official that those games will be shown in their original resolution. That would mean switching videocables between HD and SD ? Or maybe it will be possible to have it hooked up two ways with both HDMI and Component/RGB ?

The problem as I see it is not the resolutions themself. I rather have a game with less effects and polygons running in the right native resolution than a game that is grainy but with lots of eyecandy. Sure you can argue that we should never have moved on to HDTVs in the first place.

[D]

It is a great article and the point is that effects & polygon count can do more than hi-res can. Take texture mapping for example.
You could make a Virtua Racing run at 1080P. Would it look any better than the original Virtua Racing? Not that much. Texture mapping in this case being an effect of wrapping bitmaps on a polygon. ( disclaimer: I'm sure it is officially not called an effect, but for the arguments sake let's assume it is) I think especially anti-aliasing is very important. If the DC only had that extra. If only the DC had a dedicated anti-aliasing processing unit, that would've made a huge difference. Still I also believe that anti-aliasing also makes graphics look less crisp and some of us are very anal about crisp graphics, me included, but if done properly (as with all things).
Great article and a great discusion. I like all of the different views that everyone has, yet I feel that most of us are on the same team/page.
There is no hate against HD at all. The fact is that MS and Sony need to market it as HD or people won't buy it. People are hardware horny because that is the only thing to look out for nowadays. The games since PS1 and Saturn have been the same. With the DC indeed we suddenly had 480i/p graphics which made a huge difference. We will never have such a leap ever again.
Are there any games on the DC that have anti-aliasing at all? Probably not
EDIT: hmm, just checked this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-aliasing
And judging from those pics I'd say that some DC games do utilize anti-aliasing, like the walls in the tunnels in Tokyo Xtreme racer 2 and also similar graphics in F355, right? Somebody shed a light a light please, I'm dying to know.
I'm just pissed about the the net in Virtua Tennis 2 not having some kind of anti aliasing effect of some sort or they could fixed it in another way. It really stands out from the rest of the game, you can clearly see the in this game. If anti-aliasing is used in the DC it is only used for distant objects and not for closeby objects. Somebody set me straight plz.

[Strider77]

The point is that people are paying for HD as its the lowest common demoninator chosen by MS and Sony. If you don't use the Hd facilities of the machine and use composhite you still paying $60 for the game, cannot read the text in it either. The article suggests that if DVD at 480i looks so much better than DOA4 on XB360 at 720p, why pay all that.. why not shoe horn that visual prowess into the 480i TV system which DVD playback proves there is room for improvement in 480i.

I undertstand the concept of the argument, im not agreeing with it 100%. Resolution does more for a game than 120fps would do for example.

well with that arguement the xbox and gamecube are guilty of the same thing since they run in progressive and the folks who can view progressive are the minority....

With the DC indeed we suddenly had 480i/p graphics which made a huge difference

and with the VGA box there was a stagering difference in quality, so I guess the DC shoulda just had standard old 480i only b/c it could have boosted the effects and poloygons and effects more if it hadn't wasted all that hoursepower on a increased resolution that is only useful to the minority.....

Besides now that gears of war is out this whole arguement is lame. I don't care what anyone says (obviously I do or I wouldn't be posting ) but that game looks VERY next gen. It looks fantastic in SD and even more amazing in HD. I showed it to buddies that know NOTHING of HD on a standard TV and they were amazed then the following day they saw it on a HD tv and commented that it looked way better then the day before without me asking about it. They brought up the difference without any outside influence.

Folks can say what they want but I VERY happy to have games in HD, because I can see a difference and games like gears of war look amazing in all regards.

That guy who wrote that article is "full of things I deem as invalid" and what he needed to bitch about was how the freakin' developers need to stop shoveling past gen games on the new systems with bumped up res and nothing more. Besides I thinks it's really funny how folks are claiming to know everything the next gen systems are capable when only one has been out to judge and 2 still on the way, with only 1st gen titles to go buy. Sure soul calibur looked great but so does gears or war now.... and games always getter looking as a systems life cycle moves forward (for the most part I'm sure someone can ALWAYS find an exception but everyone here should be smart enough to get my point here).

[icycalm]

That guy who wrote that article is full of shit

Thanks. You just reminded me why I stopped posting here.

[Strider77]

Are there any games on the DC that have anti-aliasing at all

I thought they all did, that was the thing all the DC fanboys use to attack the PS2 with (let the record show I am a DC and SEGA fanboy). Remember the whole "jaggies" thing on PS2 when it came out. I thought it had to do with it's video chip.. could be wrong on the how but I'm pretty sure it was aliasing on most games.

Thanks. You just reminded me why I stopped posting here.

if you can't take a different opinion then i'm glad you don't

I see where you guys are coming from, i honestly do. i don't think anyone is stupid b/c of it. But at the same time I totally think that article at this point in time is full of shit and I think I've done a pretty decent job as to WHY.... it wasn't like I just said "you're all full of shit" 1st then never bothered to explain why I thought the way I did.

[Strider77]

Gears of War looks great of course. My point is it could look much much better at 480p, but with a shitload more polygons and effects. Same goes for any other title you'd care to mention. The improvement would be visible on a 480i TV, or on a VGA monitor (a la Dreamcast) or a 480p progressive-scan TV.

plus with this statement we should all be playing games in 280p b/c that way we'll get MORE juice out of the systems. Hell lets go to the LOWEST res we can get. 480p is sucking juice to, and a relatively relavent amount on the DC and past gen examples when you take in consideration scale of processing power between last gen and this gen.