PS3s Hardware Scaler

Pug · 22 Feb 2007 at 13:40

... finally rears its head.

http://www.beyond3d.com/articles/ps3scaler/

360 boys are running out of ammo fast

(As a anti-fanboy gesture - finished GoW on my 360, have to say awesome experience, first true next gen game i've played imo...)

Wyrdo · 22 Feb 2007 at 13:43

Pug said:
360 boys are running out of ammo fast

james.miller · 22 Feb 2007 at 13:44

hmm. so it does have one then. makes you wnoder why a) they didnt give access from the beginning and b) why they've only given access to horizontal scaling right now.

very odd.

JUMPURS · 22 Feb 2007 at 13:45

Yeap i've always said it would have a scaler, just not accesable just now. Its all good.
It is actually being used in games as of now, iirc Sonic is a game which uses it and i am not sure if VF is also.

Pug · 22 Feb 2007 at 13:46

wyrdo said:

it was slammed at downsampling to 480 when a 720p game was played on a HDTV that didnt support 720p, only 1080i.

I think its strange they only brought this about now, would've been better to have released it when they relased the dev machines, but hey ho

Wyrdo · 22 Feb 2007 at 13:49

Ah that, wasn't really a big issue for lots of people in the UK though.

JUMPURS · 22 Feb 2007 at 13:50

james.miller said:
hmm. so it does have one then. makes you wnoder why a) they didnt give access from the beginning and b) why they've only given access to horizontal scaling right now.

very odd.

It was possibly they where worried about the software in the firmware controlling it. So they are only starting to allow access to it gradually when they are confident.
They possibly felt 480p was better than a ruined screen if the software count't control it right.

JUMPURS · 22 Feb 2007 at 13:51

wyrdo said:
Ah that, wasn't really a big issue for lots of people in the UK though.

Cos they PS3 isn't officially out here??

Yeah was mainly Japan and America the issue was, think the US more so.

ic1male · 22 Feb 2007 at 15:07

Ah, so this explains why you need a 720p display to run MotorStorm. If your screen can't do 720p, the game defaults to 480p and it's because there was no scaler to take it up to 1080i/p like the Xbox 360 has.

Bit of a mess, really. There's no uniformity which is generally a Microsoft (Windows) trait.

JUMPURS · 22 Feb 2007 at 15:10

I think that will be different for the US/UK release of motorstorm, since the dev kit is out now

ic1male · 22 Feb 2007 at 15:14

Well that's what I'm hoping Jumpurs but I'm not holding my breath. Another example being a proper PSN-integrated friends list in Euro Resistance but that's probably still going to be its own-coded list.

FrankJH · 22 Feb 2007 at 16:58

ic1male said:
There's no uniformity which is generally a Microsoft trait.

Uniformity in the x360's power supply breaking on a lot of units

Seriously Im only kidding, I just couldnt resist (and yeah I know I had to edit your comment)

I thought there was something strange when this first reared its head as a problem - glad its nearly sorted and hopefully we should have games without the requirement of patches very soon (after all this is a console, a game shouldnt require any updates)

Demon · 22 Feb 2007 at 20:15

Yeap i've always said it would have a scaler, just not accesable just now. Its all good.

I don't think anyone doubted it had a scaler, no-one could figure out if it worked, and reading the article, the whole scaling thing still sounds half-assed, after all this time and development, developers have to put all the leg work in if they want it to scale.. clearly the scaler is broken and needs molly coddling and working around to get anything out of it.. although some functionality is better then others..

and it's not 'free' as such, as a 720p game has to be re-written to render at 960*1080, which means a few more percent processing power, then the magical hardware scaler can scale this upto 1080i/p.. seems a shame to have to possibly drop frame rate/graphics to 'help' the scaler do it's job.

However, it shouldn't really affect too many people, as all new HDTV's support 720p/1080i..

wannabedamned · 22 Feb 2007 at 20:29

Both consoles have one then, Good good.

Could have done with knowing this while it was being used as fanboy Ammo