Sony PS3 NG Sigma uses FAKE 1080p

[Giga_Death]

This is from another forum, I thought it was quite funny.

Still waiting for the proof of Sigma being upscaled. Still waiting.

So why didn't you believe sigma is really 1920*1080 when you were defending the horizontal upscaling.

Games are developed in a native resolution. Ninja Gaiden Sigma was developed in native 1280x720. Not 1920x1080, but this was probably changed later in development to 960x1080 to make 1080p output possible.

1UP recently took the opportunity to derail the development team's progress and coerce Sigma director, Yohsuke Hayashi, into sitting down and giving us the inside scoop on what we can expect out of the game.

. . .

1UP: On the technical side of things, what's the highest resolution Ninja Gaiden Sigma will support and why?

YH: Well, this game is going to support 720p, and that is because we have determined that this is optimal resolution to get the best quality images out of the PS3. There are companies out there that are developing games at 1080p, and the problem is that they're really pushing the limits of the hardware at that resolution, and I think that if you examine it objectively you will see that in order to get the best balance of performance and image quality then 720p is your only choice. I think that the companies that are making a big deal out of making games at 1080p are either underestimating their ability to get their games to run well at that resolution, or they're basically just using that as an advertising gimmick. I'm confident that if you want to make the best-looking game you can on PS3, then 720p is your only choice.

The basis for the debate that TN changed from 720p to fake 1080p to hype up their game and fool stupid people that they have "untapped the power of the cell":

For high quality scaling you want to be sampling from a half-dozen lines or more. The Xbox 360 can do this. This new feature means that games that have previously only supported 720p can now, sort of, be modified to support 1080. When these games detect a display that can’t support 720p they can switch to using a 960x1080 buffer. This is only 12.5% more pixels than 1280x720 so the increase in fill rate and memory consumption should be manageable. Then they can tell the PS3 to stretch this buffer to 1920x1080 at display time and voila, 1080 support.

Its in the coding of the demos to scale, the ps3 cant fully scale ps3 games right now, it can only scale them horizontally
so older games wont scale right now because the ps3 scaler is either non existant, or not fully activated
right now it seems all scaling is done by software.

I ran a few tests myself and nothing scales but some demo's (which are coded to scale horizontally), Sony takes games now and makes them 960x1080, the software then takes the 960 and scales that to 1920x1080 so the ps3 only has to do half the work to scale games to the resolution you want, if the game wasnt designed in this resolution it currently cant scale so a 720p native game is stuck at 720p because its not 960x1080.

Demo is native 1080p and runs at 60 fps.

Even though it is 1080p, it is not FULL 1080p (1920x1080)

Remember the whole deal about upscaling to 1080p with a resolution of 960x1080? Yeah, that's what this game runs at. We get a level of detail that is closer to 720p.

I can definitely tell the difference between non 1080p and full 1080p, as I play games on the PC in 1920x1080 on my 42" LCD all the time. (this isn't FSAA making it appear this way either)

Key among these is new support for a resolution of 960x1080. This results in a framebuffer with relatively few more pixels compared to the more standard 720p, and as a result enjoys a computational cost (fillrate cost) comparable to the one associated with 720p framebuffers to begin with (921,600 pixels for 1280x720 compared to 1,036,800 pixels for 960x1080). At the same time, it benefits from eligibility to be horizontally scaled by the resident hardware scaler.

Additional 1080 rendering modes also supported now include 1280x1080, 1440x1080 and 1600x1080. These modes, similar to 960x1080, are capable of being upscaled by the hardware into 1080p/i.

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

http://www.beyond3d.com/articles/ps3scaler/graph2.png

For this solution, since it scales only horizontally, the game can output resolutions in either 280x1080, 960x1080, 1440x1080 or 1600x1080 and be scaled to 1920x1080. However, this scaling is based on supported resolution of the game itself so it requires developer input.

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Basically they gave only horizontal scaling because it has the same front/back buffer and RAM costs as 720p does. So you have a 960x1080 resolution, double the horiz. scale, and boom, 1080p. Anything below that is a cinch. I think the reason they did it this way was to prevent lazy developers (yeah EA I'm looking at you) from going full-on vert+horiz and ending up with horrible framerates.

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Sony probably made a decision to just get the console out and worry about the internals later. As proof by the lack of scaling, jaggies, slow browser, and unfinished on-line store.

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It seems that a lot of developers are opting to develop their games at 720p because the performance hit at 1080p is huge. With the addition of a horizontal scaler, studios can now render games at 960 x 1080 and horizontally stretch the output to 1920 x 1080, which has the same computational costs and memory requirements as 720p. This seems like a good solution to the problem of 720p games that will not display on 1080i televisions without being downgraded to 480p; get rid of 720p. However, you would think that with access to both a horizontal and vertical scaler in the PS3, that Sony would leave the choice of resolution up to the developer and simply have the system software scale the output to match the television, just as the Xbox 360 does.

Thinking about Sony's promise to deliver on 1080p gaming. . . Sony seriously underestimated just how difficult and expensive it would be for studios to develop 1920x1080p for the PS3.

If it really "can't be proven" then, as a Sony fanboy, you have nothing to worry about do you? Maybe 1up will ask Hayashi himself and not a subordinate (so they can't claim "translation error" or something) - 1920x1080p or 960x1080p? Actually that is a good question. TN probably won't answer cos they don't want to lie and show the ps3 not to be the "supercomputer" Sony claims.

If it's true, this will demoralize Sony fanboys who fell for the 1920x1080p hype and shut them up once and for all.

Think about it like this, games like Gears of War, Resistance and Motorstorm are 1280x720p and 30fps. Here we have a game with equal or better graphics (debatable given the style and nature of the games) at (sopposedly) 1920x1080 running at 60fps.

There are two conclusions here.

Conclusion 1: Developers like Guerilla and Insomniac are extremely inept because they can only do 1280x720p at 30fps. Whilst Team Ninja can somehow do 1920x1080P/60FPS with equivalent graphics - more than twice the performance of Gears. No console has ever showed such a leap in performance from 1st gen to last gen games.

Conclusion 2: TN is using a 960x1080 resolution upscaled to 1920x1080p. FAKE 1080p.

My bets are on the latter, looking at all the evidence pointing to this conclusion.

[Kotatsu Neko]

This is just stating the obvious frankly and I'm stunned that anyone believed the Sony hype that high end games could render to a full 1080p buffer. The PS3's GPU is a previous generation GeForce and slower than the 360's GPU, and how many 360 games look like they could handle a jump to 1080p...?

(the correct answer is almost none)

[Number45]

I'm not sure how this is getting thrown at Sony, surely Team Ninja/Tecmo are doing the publicity for this one? Looks gorgeous either way...

[Hohum]

I can't read any of that... far too tedious a subject. Why do people even care that much? Oh, and so much for consoles being easier to grasp than PCs anymore. There is so much crap related to displaying an image from a next-gen console that I think I would be physically sick if I attempted to set one up, and I'm no technophobe either.

[Kotatsu Neko]

I'm not sure how this is getting thrown at Sony, surely Team Ninja/Tecmo are doing the publicity for this one? Looks gorgeous either way...

Sony are actively pushing developers to support 1080p (even if it means upscaling) as they believe it's a useful weapon in their favour.

[mackemansj1]

I can't read any of that... far too tedious a subject. Why do people even care that much? Oh, and so much for consoles being easier to grasp than PCs anymore. There is so much crap related to displaying an image from a next-gen console that I think I would be physically sick if I attempted to set one up, and I'm no technophobe either.

What like plugging it in and turning it on **** way to much work there.

[Number45]

Sony are actively pushing developers to support 1080p (even if it means upscaling) as they believe it's a useful weapon in their favour.

Perhaps. But to direct this at Sony, who are neither responsible for the technical achievements or the marketing for this game, is harsh.

[charlesr]

Can anyone tell the difference? If you have to get confirmation from the devs, then surely you can't really tell? So who cares?

[Pavey]

Boring boring. Another thread about screen resolutions.

Who gives a f***, play the damn games.

(just venting a few weeks worth of anger, as sick to the back teeth of screen resolution talk. In every section of this forum, it's the same people talking f***ing screen resolutions)

[C']

If it really "can't be proven" then, as a Sony fanboy, you have nothing to worry about do you?

Who are you talking to?

Was this a PM you've posted on the forum by mistake?

[Bleeders]

Who gives a ****, really? Looks nice enough to me from what I've played of the demo.

[mackemansj1]

well i remeber the uproar of pgr3 made with its upscale when sony and tn is using 1080p as a selling point then they should be held accountable if it is indeed fake 1080p.

[Swallow]

wtf is this thread about? I understand the resolution talk, but no-one's bothered about more boring Ninja Gaiden, surely!?

****!

[J0e Musashi]

Who cares anyway? I mean really. I'm with Pavey, just play the freaking things!

[kernow]

whatever joe, you were in neo-geo chat yesterday posing because you bought a 1080p tv, please don't lie now.