Activision's CoD3 and THP8 not hitting 720p

by Justin Murray { Nov 13th 2006 at 4:25PM }

Someone call Activision and let 'em know that 720p means 1280x720, please. Games-Aktuell, a German gaming outlet, has discovered that Call of Duty 3 and Tony Hawk's Project 8 are not running at a 720p high-def resolution.

When the tests were run, CoD3 was shown to be running at 1040x620 pixels and THP8 at 1040x584 pixels. The pixel drop reflects a resolution drop of 30% and 34%, respectively. The resolution drop could be assumed to help keep framerates up, but THP8 reportedly has framerate problems. So what's up?

Activision Germany told Cynamite.de that they weren't aware of the problem and are looking into it. Lower resolution is not something that normally just happens by accident, but given the recent quality assurance problems with CoD3, these resolution problems may just be another woeful mistake. If intentional, why the resolution drop in THP8 when the 360 is clearly powerful enough to handle something like Gears of War just fine?

We've included a machine-translated link of the original German post.

Tags: 360, Activision, Call of Duty, Call of Duty 3, CallOfDuty, CallOfDuty3, CoD3, Project 8, Project8, THP8, Tony Hawk, Tony Hawk 8, Tony Hawk's Project 8, TonyHawk, TonyHawk'sProject8, TonyHawk8, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox360

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Dustin @ Nov 13th 2006 4:32PM

Is this just Xbox 360 or is it PS3 also?

teatime @ Nov 13th 2006 5:36PM

When will people realise that color depth, contrast and brightness are all massively more important than resolution.

You can barely tell the difference between 1080 and 720 at best, especially on quality televisions.

Also, I wish Joystiq would get over their 'OH LOLZ YOU CAN DRAW ON THE WII' thing, every post yesterday featured some sort of graffiti'd Wii.

iceatcs @ Nov 13th 2006 4:34PM

so far from this post, just xbox 360. since germany like me can't get ps3 yet.

but dunno if it will be going same thing on PS3.

David @ Nov 13th 2006 4:37PM

how would they "test" it to find out what native resolution it's being rendered in?

unless they are directly reading the frame buffer in order to see how many pixels are being loaded, but I don't think that is possible.

By the time it reaches the xbox 360's AV out it has become 720p no matter what it was rendered at internally. And I believe microsoft has native 720p as a requirement for certification.

I call BS

the godfather @ Nov 13th 2006 4:44PM

sounds like poor coding to me

ts8lemonade @ Nov 13th 2006 4:45PM

THP8 is such a horribly bad game. It's so slow compared to previous THPS games and it suffers immensely from frame rate problems.

Evan @ Nov 13th 2006 5:47PM

A game rendered at those resolution, and upscaled to 720P, would not pass Microsoft's requirements.

Microsoft's Technical Certificaion Requirements state:
"When the player has selected high definition output, games must use a minimum frame buffer size of 1280×720."

40inch man @ Nov 13th 2006 4:52PM

it is explain why THP8 is more blurring than any other 360 games on my 40inch. I thought it might be one of their special filter rather use AA engine.

Lame!

Oh well, I will have a look on PS3 with rent this game to see weather that I should sell this game for PS3.

J.Goodwin @ Nov 13th 2006 4:53PM

The same stuff made the rounds about PGR.

If the game looks good, no one gives a crap what it's rendered at.

Community-Based Song Lyrics @ Nov 13th 2006 4:56PM

Oddly enough, the framerate problems could very well be due in part to the lower resolutions. If the 360 has to do scaling away from what is supposed to be its native resolution, that can cause the game to take a performance hit - even if it is scaling to a lower resolution.

Sounds like a case of bad coding to me. I don't know if it is fixable or not, or what the technical details, but it is plausable that the game has been performing worse because of the lower resolution. Weird, huh?

Mike Jones @ Nov 13th 2006 5:11PM

MS and ATI and the the lies. 30% less resolution. That's funny since they said this earlier

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/05/25/ati_xbox_360_london/

ATI revealed this afternoon that every single Xbox 360 game will be required to run at a minimum of 720p resolution with 4x Anti-Aliasing.

Speaking at a press conference in London, ATI technology specialist Rene Froeleke told journalists that Microsoft had specified that games must run at the 1280x720 resolution at 4xAA with no slowdown. Every single game will be supported at this graphical specification, which we think is great news for gamers playing on big-screen TVs.

When questionned as to why the minimum wasn't 1080p, Rene responded that most of Europe hadn't even reached 720, let alone 1080.

Because of the embedded DRAM architecture of Xbox 360, the AA was described as 'Absolutely free'.

Yeah they really came close to that one. They are lucky if 1 out of 4 games is 4X AA. Sorry to see such great hardware reaching it's peaks so soon :(

lol lol lol

Hey Alex @ Nov 13th 2006 5:16PM

From the reviews I've read, the PS3 version is slightly more flawed than the 360 version. They say the frame rate is actually worse on the PS3 version.

(source: Gamespot)

nick @ Nov 13th 2006 5:20PM

Is it Microsoft and ATI's fault if a programmer uses an alternate resolution?

DWells55 @ Nov 13th 2006 5:22PM

This is rediculous. PGR3 only ran at 1024x600 as well. An upscaled image is not the same as a natively rendered image, and I personally feel cheated by Microsoft. Microsoft has responded that "people can't tell the difference and don't care what is being done to produce great visuals." So not only did Microsoft insult my vision, they decided to assume I'm an idiot.

If upscaling something was enough to make "the HD era" Microsoft claims with the 360, then why does anyone need HDDVD or BluRay? By Microsoft's "upscaling = HD Era" logic, I should just be able to take all my VHS tapes, pass them through a HD scaler and call it a high definition video source. Upscaling doesn't add detail and it's not the same. Especially when the source resolution is less than that of what a large majority of people are capable of running PC games at.

This whole "looking into it" thing is a load of crap. You've got crappy developers who are cutting corners because htey can't optimize their darn engines. THe PGR3 engine was new, and what did the developers do? Cut corners to make the game run better. The THP8 demo is new, and they - cut corners! Same for the new CoD3 engine. Here's an idea - rather than rush your products filled with bugs and inferior rendering resolutions, spend the extra time to make your game run right before you force us to put down $60.

Microsoft needs to crack down on this. If the images coming off the framebuffer are not at least 1280x720 reject the game for publishing. No more of this smoke and low quality mirrors BS that leaves me with a blurred image on my 57" set. Microsoft is really letting me down with my 360. There's the lackluster VGA support, improper game resolutions, lack of DVI/HDMI, crashing, etc. Get your crap together.

Kevin Whipps @ Nov 13th 2006 5:25PM

Add that to my list of disappointments with THP8. Crashed on me twice so far.

DWells55 @ Nov 13th 2006 5:40PM

@14. teatime
"When will people realise that color depth, contrast and brightness are all massively more important than resolution.

You can barely tell the difference between 1080 and 720 at best, especially on quality televisions.

Also, I wish Joystiq would get over their 'OH LOLZ YOU CAN DRAW ON THE WII' thing, every post yesterday featured some sort of graffiti'd Wii."
------------------------------------------------------
Sure, color contrast and depth and such do matter. However, it's no justification for developers cutting corners with having 24% less detail on teh screen than 720p. It's just not fair to those of us paying full prices for games.

I cna personally see a noticable difference between 720p and 1080p on larger sets, particularly with text and still images.

Also, a lot of people found the Wii Whiteboard amusing. It's not like they were making a bunch of seperate posts for the sole purpose of showing it off. It would have gotten old really fast (kinda like Vlad's "Picture It" graphs.

Optimus Prime @ Nov 13th 2006 5:42PM

"When will people realise that color depth, contrast and brightness are all massively more important than resolution."

For the most part, devs cant control these parameters. If you buy a wlmart HDTV with no contrast and no colour accuracy, then thats your problem and beyond their control.

Double H @ Nov 13th 2006 5:50PM

Wow, Optimus, I was unaware that where I buy my TV had a direct correlation to the contrast and color accuarcy of the set! What other elitest self serving words of wisdom can you shaer with us?

DWells55 @ Nov 13th 2006 5:54PM

Microsoft updated their requirements to saying that the game must display in 720p. Therefore making upscaling acceptable. Just like how Halo 2 runs in 720p. No, it's just upscaled 480p. Not even close to the real thing.

And, both Microsoft and Bizarre refused to deny that PGR3 was 1024x600, instead avoiding the question entirely. 360 games are being rendered at less than HD, and it's absolutely rediculous.

There's three games now running less than HD:
THP8
PGR3
CoD3

AG @ Nov 13th 2006 5:58PM

Now who believes Xbox 360 really can play games in 1080p?

I didn't before and I especially don't considering this new news. Once again, this is why I am waiting for the PS3.

Justin @ Nov 13th 2006 6:00PM

Guess this just cements my experience - THP8 is one of the _worst_ games I've played in recent memory. It's horrible - environments are completely cramped, your game & skater aren't saved at all during the tutorial (so when I went to play through the rest of the tutorial, I had to recreate my skater. wtf?), character designs are hideous. I'm trading it in for Dead Rising... or ANYthing else. Anything's gotta be better than this.

SymetriX @ Nov 13th 2006 6:04PM

I'm usually a stickler for resolution and whatnot, but I have to admit I haven't noticed a problem with Tony Hawk or Project Gotham, and they're probably some of the better looking games I've played.

Of course, then Gears of War comes out and makes everything else look like Pong, but I'm sure it won't be long until other developers start taking full advantage of the hardware (didn't Epic have several years of a head start developing for the 360, and even lobby for higher memory?)

Tony Hawk does slow down occasionally, but the re-written game engine plays very well. I do kinda wish they'd go back to levels again, instead of the continuous world, but that's just me.

Tim Marman @ Nov 13th 2006 8:19PM

Game looks fine to me. I just wish they'd fix the ranked matches...

Sonic_Extreme @ Nov 13th 2006 6:26PM

wow the article states the test versions of tony and cod3 ran at those resolutions.ummmm to me the work test version means is a beta copy and definatly not retail final versions. But anyways I am still going to buy COD3 cause it damm looks way better than 2 and I loved 2 alot. As for tony well not my cup of tea anymore.

Ghost Box @ Nov 13th 2006 6:48PM

It's just lazy, sloppy coding plain and simple.

I hate to be the one who says it, but I don't forsee that this new generation of gaming will be any different from the last.

Nothing has changed. You will have the same elite developers making great games, a slightly larger minority of developers making good games, and then there will be everyone else.

Turning out the same garbage that fills the walls of every game store.

Microsoft should withhold certification

Joe SMith @ Nov 13th 2006 7:20PM

This one raises a huge "so what" response from me. I am playing COD3 and I think it looks awesome. If it isn't at true 720p, I could care less. I have no interest in Tony Hawk, but ditto if it looks good.

Why do you guys give a fuck about resolution numbers? Look at he game and if it looks good and plays well, who cares? This is the same site that is full of people bragging about how awesome Wii is going to be -- in 480p.

It's not about specs.

bL33d @ Nov 15th 2006 5:24PM

If the 360 cant render any game at 720p you bet ur ass the ps3 cant either it is amazing to me how many people dont know anything about hardware...

The 360 has 512mb of ram compared to the ps3's 256mb and teh 360 has a x1900gpu whil teh ps3 has a 7800gpu which is a class behind the x1900!

People the ps3 was only delayed because of bluray problems the hardware is the same as it woulda been a year earlier if it was released.

COD2 was on 1080 on the 360 and from what i've heard cod3 is in 720p on both 360 and ps3.

Dont just go to playstationworld to get ur info readup on hardware and learn the facts.

Paulypies @ Nov 13th 2006 7:56PM

I get the impressin with at least THP8 that this could be because it was rushed out for its usual november release date. The game feels messy with loads bugs (being randomly thrown across the world anyone?) the performance of the game is also all over the place (and supposedly even worse on the PS3 according to gamespot) something that should have been ironed out and properly optimised. Also like PGR3 (i don't know about COD3) THP8 is all stretched vertically when running at 1280 x 1024 over VGA (NB, at least the demo is, someone please correct me if i'm wrong about the full version). kinda just seems like things that would have been sorted out in testing a while before release. I don't think its down to the hardware, THP8 isn't an amazing looking game and there are a lot more visually complex titles out on the system. it's still great fun though, just feels rushed

The Man @ Nov 13th 2006 8:47PM

Funny how THP8 for the PS3 has framerate issues. I guess that new PS3 hardware cant stand up to the 360 thats been out for a year.

The closing comments from the IGN review of THP8

"It's certainly disappointing that the PlayStation 3 is so far behind the Xbox 360 game. Framerate issues are apparent at every other turn, and the lack of online play really hurts. Project 8 is a worthy game to pick up, just preferably not on this system."

anonim1979 @ Nov 13th 2006 10:24PM

PS3 vs. Xbox 360 Comparison HD [1280x720]

Tony Hawk 8
http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=14934&type=wmv&pl=game

Identical but PS3 has much worse framerate

Tiger Woods
http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=14942&type=wmv&pl=game

PS3 version has worse some trees made of 2 textures in X shape.

cerberus414 @ Nov 13th 2006 11:25PM

Whoa Whoa Whoa
PEOPLE STOP NOW!!!!
JESUS CHRIST
Just because one lousy article comes up, especially in German, doesn't mean its true. You guys take everything for granted. You realize how many lawsuits would be filed right now against Microsoft if this was the case, but I think it's not. False advertising is illegal. I mean, you go on Dell.com and you customize a computer. You get it and you go to "dxdiag" to see if the specs are right. They might be, but what if it was tweaked? It isn't because companies don't want to deal with all the complaints and lawsuits. Same applies to Microsoft, it's a lot easier to just have 720p native than do the bootleg shit.

Also think of it this way. Games for computers at 1280x1024 for PCs existed for centuries. I have a PC with a GeForce 4 4200 and it runs Half Life 2 smoothly at 1024x768. Are you telling me that a 3 core CPU + a nex-gen GPU (Unified Memory) can't handle a game at 720p? I think it's a bunch of nonsense. Microsoft confirmed that 1080p is native (if the game is) so please stop the argument. I think it was just a lame article to get people's attention just like the EGM magazine issues where they claim Devil May Cry 4 on 360 only. It's just a good way to get the rankings up quickly. Trust me and don't worry. Plus who cares, if game is good and looks good, numbers are meaningless, right?

Jarin @ Nov 13th 2006 11:28PM

For what it's worth, the reason they do this is that 1040x624 with 2xMSAA is the highest you can run at on Xbox 360 without having to split into multiple tiles, due to limited VRAM.

To suggest it's just "poor coding" is, to be quite honest, ignorant. I don't expect you'll too many other games for a while with the visuals of COD3, at the same frame rate.

There's no way you can tell the difference just by looking, which makes it all the funnier when people say "I personally feel cheated by Microsoft". And I don't mean to suggest that people are ignorant of the difference, merely that the eye really cannot tell.

anonim1979 @ Nov 13th 2006 11:44PM

PS3 vs. Xbox 360 Comparison HD [1280x720]

RR6 sometimes LOOKS BETTER on X360 than RR7 on PS3!
See compatation here:
http://dreamgamers.blogcindario.com/2006/11/00018-rr-6-xbox-360-versus-rr-7-ps3.html

Tony Hawk 8
www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=14934&type=wmv&pl=game

Identical but PS3 has *much worse framerate* [and some effects like water trail is missing on PS3]

Check IGN and Gamespot reviews:
"It's certainly disappointing that the PlayStation 3 is so far behind the Xbox 360 game. Framerate issues

are apparent at every other turn, and the lack of online play really hurts. Project 8 is a worthy game to

pick up, just preferably not on this system."

Tiger Woods
www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=14942&type=wmv&pl=game

PS3 version has worse textures and some trees made of 2 textures in X shape.

THE TREES ON PS3 VERSION ARE MADE FROM 2 TEXTURES!!!! IN X SHAPE!
WHAT A PAST GEN!
PS3 is lacking GPU power to display farther trees LOL!

PS2.5! FTL!

Screenshots from 2 earlier movies See here PS3 vs. Xbox 360 Comparison HD [1280x720]:
[cheap 2textures in X shap trees on PS3 and AF is worse on PS3]
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q262/anonim1979/tw-2.jpg

i138.photobucket.com/albums/q262/anonim1979/tw-1.jpg

[water trail missing - the rest is the same only framerate on PS3 is much worse]
http://i138.photobucket.com/albums/q262/anonim1979/thp8-1.jpg

i138.photobucket.com/albums/q262/anonim1979/thp8-2.jpg

i138.photobucket.com/albums/q262/anonim1979/thp8-3.jpg

cverse @ Nov 13th 2006 11:47PM

Okay, here's the low-down guys. Poster #17 is 100% correct when he says that the Microsoft TCR specifically states that games must render at 1280x720 to in HD output mode.

HOWEVER, the big publishers such as Activision and EA have clout with Microsoft, and get a certain number of TCR exceptions per title. Basically they can weasel themselves out of a violation here or there. This is not specific to Microsoft and the 360 btw, Nintendo and Sony both have similar agreements with the major publishers. I guarantee you many people at Activision and Neversoft knew well in advance that the game broke the frame buffer TCR, and Microsoft caught the violation in the pre-cert and final certification build. This was one they were able to negotiate around, however.

Keep in mind that the intent of the certification system is to ensure that all games that are released for the console meet a certain level of quality. The big players get a few free passes on it because the console companies know that (in theory) the big publishers already have a certain level of quality, so they don't recieve quite as much scrutiny as titles from smaller developers. I just think it's a bit funny that you can expect that a game from a smaller company to be more stable than a title from a big house, for this very reason.

As for the legitimacy of this article...I know for a FACT that THP8 is rendered at the resolution listed. While I don't know definitively for COD3, it wouldn't surprise me that two titles from the same publisher would get passes on the same TCR violation.

I just find it a little stupid that Microsoft will pass games which aren't outputting in 780p, but NOT let Gears of War have team ladder matches.

Also as an aside, in response to the original post:
"If intentional, why the resolution drop in THP8 when the 360 is clearly powerful enough to handle something like Gears of War just fine?"

I will just say, not all tech is the same.

Nick @ Nov 14th 2006 2:53AM

Jarin, the fact is that it is poor coding practices that lead to the need to cut the resolution.

Game engines designed for the Xbox 360 (properly) should support tiling. Tiling splits the frame buffer into 2-3 chunks so that they can be operated on piece-by-piece in the 10MB eDRAM. That eDRAM is a daughter die on the GPU that has 256 GB/s bandwidth; it is used to perform AA, z-buffer, and alpha blending operations for "free". When a game isn't running at 720p, it usually means the developer failed to implement tiling (that was the case with PGR3).

Assuming both game engines support tiling, the developers still failed to tweak the game to the point that they didn't have to slash the resolution for the sake of the fps count. Some slowdown in CoD3 is pretty understandable, but a game like THPS 8 not being able to hit 60 fps is pretty pathetic.

Since THPS 8 is a skating game, presumably with lots of rails, fences, and the like, I'm going to assume they wanted to cut down on the jaggies as much as possible. That means they wanted to use that free 4xAA provided by the eDRAM. In turn, that likely means they cut the resolution because their engine wasn't designed with tiling in mind.

Regardless of the true culprit, Activision has failed at giving their development studios the resources (time, money, and quality personnel) to produce games on-par with the competition. In short, Jarin, it does come down to poor coding practices.

Nick

pedro @ Nov 14th 2006 8:06PM

quote "0. Now who believes Xbox 360 really can play games in 1080p?

I didn't before and I especially don't considering this new news. Once again, this is why I am waiting for the PS3.

Posted at 5:57PM on Nov 13th 2006 by AG 0 stars"

Well nearly every PS3 title announced is 720P or lower, very very few PS3 titles are going to be 1080P, probably about as many as on the 360.

ricarva @ Nov 14th 2006 5:47AM

Let's remember that noone (Microsoft, Activision or any credible third party) has confirmed these findings yet, that we don't know how cynamite.de tested for it, and that it might or might not reach across all versions/platforms.

That being said, if it turns out being verified, it would definetelly indicate sloppy implementation on Activision's part. Again, if in CoD3 this workaround could be understandable (even if questionably acceptable...), in THP8 it's completelly ridiculous!

Another interesting issue that arises is: if they could choose, whould gamers prefer to have full 720p and choppier frame rates? (Though my opinion is that we SHOULD BE GETTING FULL 720P AND OPTIMAL FRAME RATES! NO CUTTING CORNERS!!!)