Bungie: Halo 3 resolution cut for HDR lighting

Nintendos wii is not in hd and everybody bashes nitnendo. Halo 3 isnt full hd (i dont care if its only 80p less its still not full hd) and everybody says to stop bashing microsoft? Come on if thats not fanboyism i dont know what is.

i dont know what to say .. Blu-Ray FTW or Cell FTW?

I can say that Halo 3 looks pretty good at 640p...

but to all those who are saying "its just 80p whats the big deal" please just do the math before you talk. 1280x720 is 25% more pixels than 1152x640. That means 25% sharper. Thats very much a noticeable difference. The fact that the box says 720p and 1080p on the back... when in reality its being upscaled even to 720p doesnt seem like the height of honesty to me.

I just hope Xbox360 games can eventually do great effects and textures at 720p.

Whiny people.

If this really ruins your Halo 3 experience, you need to grow up. All these people who are complaining know nothing about making games. Bungie decided to come up with an innovative way of creating a great graphical look for the game. There's know discernible difference between this and an additional 80p, especially when you factor in the scaler of the 360, but the lighting effects are phenomenal. People just need to stfu a bit more and enjoy the game.

This is just a general limitation of pre-DX10 graphics APIs. Something has to get yanked to get HDR working right. Half-Life 2 disabled FSAA for example, Bungie went with a resolution limitation. Man, do I love DX10 for getting around that problem. Now, for someone to actually USE it...

You lie!

Its not just 80 px. Its over 100,000 pixels. Bungie is covering it up by saying its just 80 vertical pixels. But its a lot more.

F A K E!

I really think that Bungie did this because of the RROD scandal that could go through if they made the game look amazing.

If 30% of halo players got red rings... man, bad publicity

Though I didn't really notice any graphics problems on my 42" 1080i lcd (maybe the interlacing and fast-paced action blurred the jaggies), I was kind of impressed that they rendered the entire screen twice to make a composite image. That seems like some wasted cycles right there, but I guess that's how the frame buffer works (though on the PS3, that would've been 4 different images, if I recall correctly from the technical talk =P).

I wonder if it's possible to only render part of a frame buffer (with the rest invisible) for composite overlays and bring the resolution up with the extra power. Maybe that's what DX10 is supposed to bring?

Regardless, I find all this talk of maxed graphics potential hilarious. It's like nobody can remember the optimization that has occurred for every console ever. I'm sure Jet Moto 2 maxed out the hardware potential for the PSX when it first came out, but by that I mean that everything was cooking at 100%. Yet somehow games continued to look better throughout the console's lifetime. The APIs will get better, compression will get better, etc., and soon we'll have 1080p open-field 40-attackers-at-a-time 20-mile-draw-distance Xbox games, and PS3 games for that matter. The Wii is the only thing that won't be doing this, as it didn't really have that much graphics "potential" from the get go (things are only going to look so good, since most of the GC graphics tricks have been discovered already, I would imagine).

@Granted

unfortunately, WarHawk is not laggy due to lack of millions of people playing...(I have WarHawk for my PS3), the rest I agree with--it is more of a graphical powerhouse than Halo3, but then even Bungie states that that wasn't their goal with Halo3 (to showcase 360 graphics). If they had wanted to make a REALLY beautiful game, I'm pretty sure that they could have.

at the people complainging about the numbers on the box, PLEASE NOTE THAT IT SAYS THAT IT SUPPORTS 720P, 1080i, 1080P. NOWHERE DOES IT STATE THAT IT *runs* at those resolutions. duh.

so does this mean i can play halo 3 on the wii? ahaha. =]

the 360 runs tons of games at 720p ("real HD") resolution just fine. has been for two years now, some at 60fps even.

HDR is an advanced graphical technique, like coaxing normal mapping from the original xbox was...it is NOT a set expectation or requirement from this generation of game consoles. it surely WILL become a standard, but it wasn't when the 360 and PS3 debuted.

of all the pixel counters that have suddenly come up on joystiq the past couple days....it's more than safe to say that 100% of them enjoyed Bungie's impressive use of realtime HDR *much earlier* than they "noticed" the loss of 80lines of vertical resolution playing Halo3. if they've even seen it at all (brandboys).

that was Bungie's call to go the extra mile and use non-standard HDR at a resolution cost, then go standard 720p and have razor sharp but traditionally lit graphics.

the expectation for the latest evolving graphic tricks at full HD, at a rock-solid framerate, is purely set by you. (or Sony's marketing if anyone wants to chug through Lair at 1080p or witness the awesome "AI" and screen tearing in the gorgeous Heavenly Sword)

i'll say this, people HAVE noticed jaggies in Halo3, but that's not because of the resolution drop, it's the lack of Anti-Aliasing. 720p alone wouldn't fix that so what many people here complain they 'see' is something else entirely.

using TWO frame buffers is a novel approach to get Halo looking as good as it does, and i for one, am glad they made that design decision. Madden is noted for running at 720p at a crisp 60fps but the lighting looks decidely normal. dotcounters rejoice.



.

Seriously... if you care about this at all... you're a sad... sad dork

There are a lot bigger problems with Halo 3's graphics than the resolution. The resolution didn't bother me and frankly I didn't notice it. The textures of the Arbiter and human characters were awful and were barely better than the awful ones used in Halo 2.

I was a bit disappointed with the game but it was still pretty solid. I blame the hype for my disappointment. It's not a 10/10 game. I still feel the urge to play through it on harder difficulties which is rare with most other games. I also plan to play multiplayer of course.

sacrificing a rather pointless amount of pixels in order to optimize lighting

yeah, i can go with that

I'm admittedly ignorant regarding the 360 Hardware, but as a PC gaming enthusiast, I'd make a quick note: Is the 360 capable of HDR + Antialiasing simultaneously? I don't know much about the HD TV world, but in the PC world, the 7th series Nvidia cards weren't able to do HDR and antialiasing at the same time, leaving a choice between fantastic (but IMO far overboard) lighting, and smooth edges.

Could any noticeable level of jagginess or lack of a "smooth" look to Halo3 be because of the lack of antialiasing, rather than a marginal reduction in actual resolution?

Irregardless, to my eyes, games look best when they're running at a great average framerate, at an "acceptable" resolution. I'd take a game that has less eye candy but a solid visual look with consistent framerates over something thats going to chug along during intense action sequences.

If Halo 3 is pushing a solid average framerate, at a relatively high resolution, with advanced lighting such as HDR running, can anyone really complain without making themself looking terribly stupid?

"you could argue we gave you 1280 pixels of vertical resolution"

Yes you could, but you would be wrong.

Resolution means how many pixels you see, it has nothing to do with how you render your images. you can draw your pixels many times for many many reasons: HDRI, Fog, gas, multi-pass, defired rendering, transparency or just plain overdraw. Esentialy there are no modern games that don't draw at least some pixels twice. In fact it considered to be a bad habit, so multiple passes is nothing to brag about, its a necessary evil that is best to avoid for performance reasons.

if you count the number of passes you draw, my game (www.quelsolaar.com) would be running in about 5000P

HDR is very nice looking, but in this generation of GPUs it is very very processor intensive and IMO, not worth the sacrifice. With Halo 3 supporting split screen multiplayer, I definitely would have rather had higher pixel count than HDR. If you play 4 player split screen that drops you to 576 x 320 pixels. That's barely bigger than the screen on an iPhone or PSP. Last time I checked, PSPs weren't exactly the height of high definition gaming.

"WAHHH!" If you don't like it, play another game.

Fanboys really have jack shit to do all day don't they?

What!? No, The Lighting in Halo 3 is probably one of the weakest points of the game graphics wise!

Fantastic game but that can't be all there is to it, unless they went really overboard with texture sizes or something.

Needs more bloom.

http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=224

Gears is better.

I've been playing Halo 3 on my 27 inch Olevia 527v and haven't noticed the jaggies you guys keep mentioning. Oh I'm playing in 1080i.

Between RROD and having to pay for your online experience, you dumbasses will just about put with anything microshaft does to you! Enjoy!

Know what? Sometimes I love Bungie, and other times I hate them. Halo 3 is a first person game right? If so, why does the chief not have SUNGLASSES built into his extremely high-tech advanced armor? I really love having to squint; Both because the HDR is blinding me, and to avoid seeing the jaggies left by a lack of Anti-Aliasing (Not the resolution that is causing jaggies for anyone wondering. That's a lack of AA's doing).

In Bungie's defense, it seems like they've enabled "Wait for vertical sync" and still managed to keep the frame rate pretty damn steady. For reference, go to Oblivion and then turn that feature on, and watch your frames per second go from 30 to 15 instantly. It's not the easiest thing to pull off without a hitch.

If only the friendly AI was better...why oh why is the friendly AI so terrible....why Bungie..Why

Oh and I forgot to mention, but a couple hundred thousand pixels is a pretty big deal on a fixed pixel display. No big deal if you are rockin the CRT or other forms of rear projection, but for us flat screen users, it's a fairly big pain in the ass. To it's credit, Halo 3's textures and atmosphere look pretty good when you stop to enjoy them, but the jaggies take their nicely mapped textures and F(#$ them six ways from Sunday.

My preference would be more samples of AA, and less HDR (which is what I do in games that make you choose, such as Oblivion on the PC) but it's too late now. It's no use crying over spilt milk. I really doubt Bungie is going to cave and say "You know what? Download this file to increase the native resolution"

HDR lighting looks neat but it seems to simulate how a camera sees the world moreso than a human eye. It's basically "dial-an-aperture" with some light bloom. When was the last time you walked outside and saw a glowing white tree?

The other day whilst polishing off Halo 3 in co-op I drove smack dab into a tree because it looked like a shimmering tower of light, ie, open space, the sky, until I got close to it.

We just expect more from a game that is hype upped!

"Also the fact that Nintendo has changed focus and let the core gamers take the back seat."

You've just now noticed this? It started happening like eleven years ago.

Resolution? Bah. Now, seizures. That's where the REAL money is.