HD gaming, is it hype?

HD gaming reminds me of PC gaming, good, but a bit artificial. Have you tried watching a DVD movie on a monitor? Right compare that to watching it through a RGB socket on a 28=36" CRT and you'll get an idea where dirtydog and I am coming from. For example play the latest Star wars movie...

CRT has loads of life left in it, we're being forced to buy new products that we do not need at all.
 
Play the latest Star Wars on a decent sized LCD/Plasma and the picture difference will be very noticeable.

I used to have a 100 hz 32" widescreen jobby, and my LCD is on par with it for DVD's, and mine isn't an expensive model.

I've seen a 360 on a similar TV to my old model and the difference between that and my LCD is even more noticeable. SDTV are fine, until you get a HD then you will really see the difference.
 
Ok i got me madcatz vga cable and all works fine, and yes it does look much better on a monitor than a standard tv, everythings sharper will have to put up with the borders untill i get a tft monitor.

My next question as it runs in 60hz which don't bother me as u don't notice it in game, will it do any harm to my monitor playing games in that ?
 
Bernard said:
Play the latest Star Wars on a decent sized LCD/Plasma and the picture difference will be very noticeable.

I used to have a 100 hz 32" widescreen jobby, and my LCD is on par with it for DVD's, and mine isn't an expensive model.

I've seen a 360 on a similar TV to my old model and the difference between that and my LCD is even more noticeable. SDTV are fine, until you get a HD then you will really see the difference.
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yes there's a difference, but not everybody likes it, Ive heard people say they dont like the processed look,or it looks too glossed over to be life like. Plasmas and LCDs are improving all the time though, if they were really that good there would be no need to bring out improvements.
The main reason for me to buy one would be to get a bigger screen to improve the experiance, not for HD (which is still going to cost yet more money when its available)
 
Dont lump plasma in with LCD ;)

Plasma processing is much more mature than LCD, with the ability to display infinitly more colours/tones and more importantly proper blacks! Generally plasma colours are more like CRT but the images have the crispness you'd expect of an LCD.
 
Uh, speaking as a graphics researcher, graphics haven't really moved that much in the last 5 years. Shader technology itself may be interesting from a implementation point of view, but we are still looking at the same tired techniques of optimized meshes, multiple view dependant level of detail for texture mapping etc that we have since the first Half-Life.

The artists / level designers / architects design all the layouts, run them through a big monte carlo radiosity solver, dump all the data out in bitmaps and the latest graphics cards chuck them onto the same scan line rendered polygons. Just because the surface normals are specified with a script instead of a specified texture / value doesn't mean that you aren't using the same overall algorithms.

When they decide to start implementing in hardware the algorithms that allow ray tracing, and eventually radiosity, in hardware, will we see the next "jump" in graphics. Until that time, what you see is the output of thousands of powerful computers, texture mapped onto your own crappy low polygon models. And making a model have more polygons can only increase a models' photorealism until your realise that it is the same rendering engine as before, and that by developing a new one for each and every game, companies waste billions of pounds / dollars.

The scripts might be able to be run more quickly now, to produce a higher resolution image for dumping to the screen - but its the same technology!

But *wink* that could all change soon :)
 
davewhite04 said:
CRT has loads of life left in it, we're being forced to buy new products that we do not need at all.
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HD TV is the current standard at least it is in the US and probably Japan, that is why the 360 is HD enabled, it is being forced on us to a certain extent by console manufacturers, there is no denying that it has advantages when it comes to clarity of picture, however until a console is powerful enough to create a genuinely lifelike image a little bit of the CRT's antialiasing will help a picture out in my opinion. I am not going to buy a £700 pound TV because Microsoft say I should, I may consider it when I see (for eg) a racing game on my CRT that looks as good as Top Gear or a Motorsport program.

Maybe it's the colour palette that needs to be increased or lighting effects that needs to be improved.

Does the 360 take any sort of performance hiy at higher resolutions?
 
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Sweetloaf said:
Does the 360 take any sort of performance hiy at higher resolutions?
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In theory no, because all games are meant to be rendered internally at 720p and then up or downscaled as per the display which is used. However, from what I've read here and elsewhere, it seems that some games do run smoother at a lower resolution - which IMO shouldn't happen with a games console and is getting into (bad) PC territory.
 
I was playing kameo and pgr3 all night last night on rez 1280x1025 on me pc monitor and i can't recall seeing any probs, ran smooth and looked much better.

Kameo for me really stood out, the details you missed out on via the tv was amazing.
 
dirtydog said:
Just to reiterate, of course I acknowledge that a given game is going to look better at 1280x720 or 1920x1080 than at 640x480 or 720x576 :) Do people take my point though, that the standard definition resolution is not what's preventing real-life quality graphics. Television and film already looks perfectly real and lifelike, so the 'low' resolution is not the problem but processing power. The big selling point of the next-gen consoles seems to be the higher resolutions, and content seems secondary. I hope I'm doing a good job of explaining myself here :)
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Totally wrong. The xbox has a lot of content. Also games like PGR3/kameo/PDZ/Condemned/DOA4 DO look a lot better than previous generation consoles. Why do you keep trying to pick faults, mentioning the 360 - as if other consoles in the past have launched with amazing line ups? The 360 lineup has been the best lineup i've seen (inc ps1 and ps2). The killer app of the xbox is live and in a month or so we'll have Gears of War, Alan Wake etc. Kamoe looks absolutely amazing and to say it doesn't really is plain ignorance. There are scenes in Kameo where you step back and think; "wow this really is next gen.".
 
Sweetloaf said:
HD TV is the current standard at least it is in the US and probably Japan, that is why the 360 is HD enabled, it is being forced on us to a certain extent by console manufacturers, there is no denying that it has advantages when it comes to clarity of picture, however until a console is powerful enough to create a genuinely lifelike image a little bit of the CRT's antialiasing will help a picture out in my opinion. I am not going to buy a £700 pound TV because Microsoft say I should, I may consider it when I see (for eg) a racing game on my CRT that looks as good as Top Gear or a Motorsport program.

Maybe it's the colour palette that needs to be increased or lighting effects that needs to be improved.

Does the 360 take any sort of performance hiy at higher resolutions?
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Are people forgetting that Sky are launching HD tv this year oh and telewest are already trialing it? People are buying HD tv's because they want to be able to get sky when it's released, oh and make use of it with their new consoles.
 
No one is knocking the 360 or even questioning HD displays I realise that people will buy them for HD Sky brodcasts however we are discussing this on a gaming forum! HD displays are not currently the standard. The thread is really about the reasons why HD gaming does not bring us closer to photo realism or even much better graphics in games, I realise that this is not the be all and end all of gaming but the point being made is that if a program on current SD TV can look more lifelike than a HD Xbox 360 what is being done to increase realism over high resolutions?

I'm sure Kameo looks incredible in HD it has a cartoon like element to it so photorealism was never the goal, however games like PGR3 are attempting to mimick real life and HD is not neccesarily the best way to do this a SD TV is already capable of photorealism.

The Xbox360 is great and I'm sure HD TV's are as well, it is down to the choice of the individual we are simply questioning the need for a HD display for better graphics. Another example for you would be to go and watch something like Final Fantasy Advent Children on DVD on a SD telly then tell me that it doesn't look as good as an Xbox360 game on a HD TV. I think you will find FF Advent children is more impressive graphically on the Standard telly, the Xbox 360 is not capable of putting out images like that at any resolution and yet my 28" CRT TV is capable of displaying them!
 
Robert said:
Totally wrong. The xbox has a lot of content. Also games like PGR3/kameo/PDZ/Condemned/DOA4 DO look a lot better than previous generation consoles. Why do you keep trying to pick faults, mentioning the 360 - as if other consoles in the past have launched with amazing line ups? The 360 lineup has been the best lineup i've seen (inc ps1 and ps2). The killer app of the xbox is live and in a month or so we'll have Gears of War, Alan Wake etc. Kamoe looks absolutely amazing and to say it doesn't really is plain ignorance. There are scenes in Kameo where you step back and think; "wow this really is next gen.".
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If those games do look better it isn't only because they are HD, which was my point. If they'd been restricted to one resolution only and the devs had fully optimised the game for say 640x480 or 768x576 (PAL resolution) they could have used even more detail, no?
 
yep, I agree. PGR3 looks stunning on SD, so much better than any previous gen game. Thats not down to to the resolution of the display as I'm playing it in 480P. Its down to increased levels of detail and AA, the irony being that the AA on 480P does actually remove the jaggies leading to sharper lines than in HD.

Also, re sky....they are only broadcasting very limited TV for now - basically movies (which are 12 months old by the time they get to sky) and sports. You will have to pay a higher subscription aswell for the priviledge (plus the cost of the set top box). Obviously that situation will change over the next few years but dont buy a HDTV thinking you'll soon be wathing maintream programming in HD........plus theres a lot of sets out there which people think are HD which wont even plug into the sky box!
 
I dont know if the component issue has been cleared up yet has it? From what I read it will have components but a lot of the protected content will only be viewable through HDMI.
 
All I can say is I saw PGR3 and CoD 2 running on lcd HD in my local Game and drooled. I saw the new 360 ridge racer on TV earlier running in HD and drooled again. Forget all this "is it hype?". PC quality graphics & sharpness at 61" with a booming 5.1 from the comfort of your own sofa doesnt seem like hype to me.
 
Hmmm. Strange one. I have a Philips 36" CRT TV. My 360 looked awesome on it. Games looked better than the Demo booths I saw. Much better colour range and the lack of sharpness made the games easy on the eye.
Then I got my 40" Samsung HD LCD. ( I am doing a house extension and bought the lcd for that) Things are much sharper, no ghosting and sooo Bright.

The real question for me after was this. "Is it jump worth upgrading from a good CRT for 360 gaming " Answer = NO. I am not precious about this. The LCD was going to be bought anyway. I am well happy with it. However, I would be gutted if I had bought this screen just to play 360 on.
Not worth the hype. But gadget freaks never listen to advice anyway.
 
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