Explain graphics output: consoles vs pc

neocon · 13 Nov 2007 at 22:28

Do consoles really output at 1080p or do they output at 720p and upscale it?
I mean, if you select 1080p over 720p are you changing the textures used in the game?

I have heard people boasting about 1080p , being full hd.

PC's can genuinely output 1080p (or equivalent) and use larger texture files.

I didnt put this in the console section as to aviod fan flaming.

Nymins · 13 Nov 2007 at 22:41

New games are designed in 1080p (the new big titles anyway). So im guessing its proper full 1080p HD. If it was upscaled it probably wouldn't look to great.

neocon · 13 Nov 2007 at 22:44

so its downscaled to 720p?

but how could console cope with such huge textures?

RobertN · 13 Nov 2007 at 22:44

think most (not all) are rendered at 720p then upscaled using a scaler chip like the ones in lcd screens

Psyk · 13 Nov 2007 at 22:50

Well it's not directly related to the size of textures. Textures in a game are going to be scaled in all sorts of ways depending on the surface they are on, how far away it is, etc.

Whether it's 720p or 1080p is really just about the amount of pixels it outputs. Upscaling something from 720p to 1080p means you are increasing the amount of pixels in some way, but not actually adding more detail/information eg. you might double some pixels up. If a console is really outputting say 720p, the graphics hardware is actually working out specifically what the colour values of all 1280x720 pixels should be.

Texture size only comes into it in an indirect way. There would be little point in outputting high res images when your textures look crap in the first place. For example if you grab an OpenGL port of Doom you can whack up the res as high as your comp will go but the game will still look like doom, just the edges will be less jagged.

I doubt console games use different textures for different resolutions. As they are a fixed spec, if it can run using the high resolution textures at a high resolution output, it will obviously be able to run the same high res textures at a lower output res. It might be a bit pointless if the output res isn't high enough to see much of their detail, but since your game is already running as fast as it needs to, there's no reason to use lower detail ones.

On a PC however, if your machine is struggling to run a game at a decent speed so you've put the resolution down quite low, you might as well use lower detail textures to give you a greater speed boost, since you probably wouldn't notice the difference anyway.

dbmzk1 · 13 Nov 2007 at 23:10

The vast majority of console games are currently 720p.

MHayes · 14 Nov 2007 at 00:01

The textures are the same res regardless, you just see more of em. Having a larger screen resolution does give you an advantage in games because you can see more.

On a PC the setting in the game determin what it outputs, when it goes fullscreen the windows settings are ignored. so it is rendered at whatevrer you set it, (in my case 1920x1200. :cool:

) I can set it at 1680x1050 in crysis to get better frames, as the graphic card only renders what you see it has to do a lot less work. So the monitor does some scaling here but it is the same ratio so not so bad.

1920x1200 = 2304000
1680x1050 = 1764000

and 720p is even less.

The 360 and PS3 can do 1080p. I am pretty sure that it is the same as the PC It is just rendered at that, no upscaling involed, it only occurs when you have a odd resolution screen or a low res screen or you dont set it correctly, but I got a Dell 2407 and it doess 1:1 pixel mapping so even though it is slightly taller than a 1080p screen i can get borderds at the top and run it at native res.

mmj_uk · 14 Nov 2007 at 01:02

dbmzk1 said:
The vast majority of console games are currently 720p.

Quite a few aren't even that sadly, Halo 3 is the first which springs to mind it's 640p iirc, PGR3 which is quite an old game now was only 600P.

If you select say 1080P the image is just upscaled internally and looks quite nasty (jaggies), 720P seems to be the average though very few game I've played output true 1080P I can only think of Tekken which as a result looks ace.

FrostedNipple · 14 Nov 2007 at 01:11

whats the difference between 1080p and 1080i ?

badbob · 14 Nov 2007 at 01:13

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlace

Darkwave · 14 Nov 2007 at 01:18

FrostedNipple said:
whats the difference between 1080p and 1080i ?

1080i only renders half of the scene between frames where 1080p renders the full scene in the same frame, as far as I know anyway. This is why it's better to watch things like fast sport television in 1080p.

MR.B · 14 Nov 2007 at 08:07

I'm quite shocked at how little people know about this, would have thought it was common knowledge...

Facts:

Consoles do not change texture resolution, or graphics detail, in any way when 720p or 1080i/p are selected as the output. It is purely a resolution change.

Nearly every X360 game is rendered at 720p res - 1280x720 pixels, some are very slightly lower res (Halo 3, PGR3 for instance). When 1080i/p is selected the 360 simply upscales to this resolution, it does not render at this res. Unless of course the game actually renders at 1080p - 1920x1080, and i dont know of any that do yet on 360.
Developers have the choice to either render a game at 720p res with better looking graphics and/or higher frame rates, or 1080p with lower graphical details and/or lower frame rates.

Some PS3 games are rendered at 1080p res, but there is little point as few people have true 1080p TV's, AKA "Full HD" TV's. Most current HDTV's have a 720p resolution screen and can just accept a 1080p signal which they then scale down to 720p res.