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78 Comments
- KyleKaplan, on 11/07/2007, -7/+37I must agree with one of the comments in the article itself and mention that 1080p/60 (1080/60p) is NOT the same as 1080i/60 (1080/60i). 1080i has 60 fields but only 30 complete frames, while 1080p has 60 full frames showing the full 1920 x 1080 pixels 60 times a second, this is a very BIG difference. With 1080p/60 (1080/60p) shows TWICE the number of pixels on the screen per any given time at least 1/30th of a second. Please feel free to correct me if I have made any technical errors!
- nreynolds, on 10/12/2007, -7/+31i'm going to digg you down because you're trying to make a point and you've never even heard of 1080p
- postal21, on 10/12/2007, -0/+20Also, upon reading all of these posts, it seems nobody is for sure what the ***** they are talking about.
Everyone seems to think they are right, nobody has sources to what they are saying... im so confused. wtf. - postal21, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15Remember the days when TVs were simple?
Hook-up the device in the correct input/output. BAM.
These kind of things used to be relegated to computer hardware.
Oh how times of changed... mostly for the good, but wow, I feel bad for the non-techie consumer trying to find what they want/need for their television experience. - greymaxcat, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16The level of detail in most high def games will fly by and not be noticed... Game makers need to find a good balance between what they can do and what they need to do...
- EntropyMan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11If 1080i is half the bandwidth of 1080p, that should give you a clue that it is outputting half the number of pixels per second.
From a rendering perspective, if you want fields A and B to match perfectly, you would want them scan out of the same 1920x1080 framebuffer (i.e., rendered all at once). This would look better on a better monitor that reconstructs a full frame from two fields. But this would seem to result in 30hz overall scene update, not 60.
Field rendering goes the other way, knowing that the two fields are 1/60th second apart and each should be advanced in time 1/60th second from the previous. That's a form of temporal antialiasing, but not a great one. It's more of a compromise to handle limited bandwidth and/or slower monitors.
But the bottom line is that great graphics should aim for a rock solid 60hz (or whatever sync your monitor refreshes at). If you don't finish a full frame before the DACs are ready to scan out, you drop a frame, causing a visual glitch. And developers (vis-sim) have been working with locked framerates for years. One thing it really needs, though, is a real-time OS. So I don't blame game developers for not achieving rock solid framerates, however I do blame them for claiming that 205 frames per second is any better than 60 on a 60HZ monitor--at any resolution. - lundo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10As a support professional in the world of broadcast video let me clear some things up. In the current accepted specs for ATSC, the only HD resolutions accepted are:
720p23.976 (frames per second)
720p24
720p30
720p59.94
720p60
1080i59.94 (fields per second, 540 lines per field)
1080i60
1080p23.976 (frames per second)
1080p24
1080p29.97
1080p30
1080p60 is NOT in the spec. A few televisions offer support for this res but very very few. So in most cased you can have video games at 1280x720 at 60 FPS or 1920x1080 at 30 FPS. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9I'm no Grammar Nazi, but DAMN!!
- Gerz1219, on 10/12/2007, -8/+15If I understand correctly, the video card has to render the same amount of pixels, regardless of whether the signal will be interlaced or progressive. At the end of the article, it's explained that a scene can't be split into two different fields (which would theoretically speed up 1080i rendering) because any drop in frame rate will produce unsightly artifacts. This means that all of the pixels for a scene have to be rendered at the same time, and conversion to 1080i or p is the last step as the scene is being output to a monitor. Still kind of hazy on this.
- spikes, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8I have to ask, where do you find these magical 1080p60 news broadcasts?
- oepapel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"a while back i wondered how long it would be untill raycasted/raytraced 3d graphics processers would come out. then we could have 100% shader textures without raster bitmaps. and also no vsynch terring. im sure GPU's as they are now can handle that kind of rendering in at least 1024x768x16... since 32-bit color is kinda fake in a way. its really 24-bit with alpha."
There are very good reasons why you won't see this type of game system any time soon...
The first reason is that you are forgetting the first rule of 3D graphics: prerender everything you can! Another way of looking at this is: Why render something 60 times a second when you can prerender the same item once and store a texture of it? The quality will be identical but you saved a lot of processing time. The same goes for bitmap fonts instead of vector fonts. Rendering cycles are in just too high demand to spend on something that can be done in advance.
Second, Raytracing is an unbounded algorithm. The number of bounces that a ray takes as it bounces around the scene is highly dependent on the composition of the scene and therefore can't be guaranteed. If you can't guarantee the complexity, you can't guarantee a framerate. Even if you use hardware that is overkill for 99% of the types of scenes that you expect, there will be one scene that will cause a "hiccup" and those are death to a new gaming system. You could limit the # of bounces but that would introduce nasty artifacts. Also, the "Everything interacts with everything" approach means that parallelization is much harder than the superposition model used today.
Third, raytracing is an approximation to reality. It's just one approach. It is not the be all and end all and it suffers from some limitations of it's own. I don't know of a raytracing system on the planet that uses a quantum model of the photon in it's calculations. In fact, the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle shows that you CAN'T model a single photon precisely. Current raytracers all work under the classical model and therefore fail to model things like interference patterns. They produce images that appear too "clinical". They need to use hacks to change this behaviour (that is, if they bother at all).
As for 16bit being "good enough", you need to look at some side by side comparisons of composited scenes. 16bit color only has one bit of alpha so composited items have horrible jaggies at their edges. And 5 bits per channel color causes nasty banding without additional diffusing processing.
If you have all the time in the world than raytracing may work for you but it is really not suited to realtime rendering. - dave2112, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9@ Flynnz
You make a good point conceptually. I consider myself Joe Average, and my TV is 1080i. I really can't see much of a difference between that and 720p, and frankly I don't care. I want to sit down on the couch, grab a beer and watch football. Seriously, I don't care. It looks better than my crappy old TV and I enjoy the picture quality just fine.
If 99% of the people can't tell the difference does it really matter?
Just my $0.02. - lundo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Nowhere in my post did I argue anything, I was just posting relevant facts. I would love to see 1080p60 as part of the spec. But don't expect your local broadcaster to start producing content in these formats anytime soon. No broadcast production gear has 1080p60 support.
- KeiichiMorisato, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5We had to wait almost a decade to get HD.
Then as we're slowly getting those local TV stations and other networks to begin offering their fare in HD, they're choosing 1080i so they can play the numbers game with the consumer and get their desired more useless channels for the same bandwidth as 1080p.
I'm glad that ESPN made the decision to use 720p. We have LCDs and other displays that are natively progressive yet we have to put up with horrible legacy that is interlaced video.
On top of that not all channels utilize MPEG4 encoding.. using MPEG2 instead and you can see those HORRIBLE macro blocks.
Back to the games topic: if you have 1080p demand it! You can play Half-Life in 1600x1200 with >60fps on your computer.. why not these next-gen machines? They certainly seem to have the graphics cards to handle it. - lukas88, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"55.5%: that’s how much less time you have to spend on each pixel when rendering 1920x1080 compared to 1280x720—the point being that at higher resolutions you have more pixels, but they necessarily can’t look as good"
It seems like this point is bogus to me. If the hardware is advanced, then it will still be able to process the 1080 image fast enough to deliver a better performance (than say, less advanced hardware running 720). That is REALLY the big question, the ability of the hardware, not the actual resolution. Even my junk-ass computer can attempt to run F.E.A.R. in 1920x1080, it just clunks along at like 5 fps. I play the same game in my brother's 2000 dollar computer (that i made him, but that is not the point) with geforce 7800 GTX and all the other bells and whistles and it flys along at any resolution. and trust me, IT LOOKS BETTER at 1920x1080 then it does at 1280x720.
If we were talking about a resolution upgrade without a hardware upgrade, yes this point is true. But the real question is not only the resolution, but the processing power that drives it. - ICSU, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7no pictures/videos? Oo
- oepapel, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6"I found it funny how IGN (I think) said that games that were 1080p had slow framerates? If its 1080p it has a fast framrate."
What? 1080p is not a framerate, it's a resolution. Separate and apart from that is how many times per second it can throw that resolution to the screen. That's called framerate. All else being equal, more pixels per frame (resolution) means less frames per second. That's because the two numbers need to multiply together and fit within the available bandwidth. Bandwidth can be thought of as:
Bandwidth = FrameRate * Resolution
Since Bandwidth is a constant, increasing one of the other two numbers will cause a decrease in the other.
That's why 1080p (higher resolution) causes a lower framerate. - oepapel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"ATSC spec dictates what broadcasters are going to use. So that means that manufacturers of production gear are going to follow that spec. The end result is that video content is going to follow that spec, and film is already only 24FPS. That leaves game consoles as the only probable provider of 1080p60 content."
Manufacturers are not limited to the ATSC spec, even if they support it. Modern TV's and computer monitors are converging to the point that the only difference between a TV and a monitor is the presence of a decoder. And we all know that computer resolutions are already pushing 4K pixels (2560 x 1440) at (at least) 60fps. No computer monitor would think of having a refresh of less than 60fps. Dell and Apple both make one.
"I would like to see 1080p60 added to the ATSC spec but it might already be too late. For a broadcaster to upgrade to a HD production workflow it takes lots of money and time to retool. With the FCC deadlines for digital broadcast looming over their head most large market stations and major providers have already purchased HD Camera's, Editor, Playback servers, CG's, Switchers, ATSC encoders and transmitters. They are not going to turn all this over in a year or two for one added format to the spec."
Probably. And that's why people will seek other distribution mechanisms. Broadcaster's inability to adapt could well be their downfall. Internet delivery is still in it's infancy and is still severely bandwidth limited but it has one advantage that broadcast doesn't: It can deliver exactly the resolution that best matches each customer. Having 20 options of resolution or codec for their content is something that broadcasters will never be able to provide.
As for production costs related to 1080p/60, there are several production quality cameras that can do this now. Any production workflow that is HD capable should be able to handle 1080p/60 as well. These things are expensive and only a moron would not future proof their workflow. In fact, the decision today on broadcast format (720p or 1080i) can be made rather late in the workflow and it's usually a business decision based on cost, not a technical limitation. There is no way today to broadcast 1080p/60 (at least in the U.S.) but that doesn't mean the content can't be produced.
There are already production studios that are 1080p/60 from front to back. They scale down in post production for distribution over the internet but they realize that a day is coming relatively quickly where all their content will be distributed in full resolution. Look at the MacBreak podcast if you don't believe me. - m00nstone, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4It's insane that PS3 proponents rave on about 1080p gaming like it's some kind of edge. I'm interested in any console that has the name Playstation on it. But, come on people, 1080p vs. 720p will not go down in history as a pivotal moment in gaming history.
It will be lucky if it gets a footnote. - lundo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Oh and reference
http://www.atsc.org/standards/a_53e-with-Amend-1-and-2.pdf
Page 28, Table A3 - PayneX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Jeez.
We should have been rid of interlacing, if only so that all these "uhh no! you're wrong!" comments will go away. - LocalH, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Actually, if a game is going to support 1080p60, then 1080i60 support is free (since the video encode can pull the interlaced frames from the progressive framebuffer).
- boran, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Quake 1 can run 320 by 240 as well as 1600 by 1200, what does the resoluion matter ? Any 3D game is not bound by resolution in terms of content. Quake 1 at 1600 by 1200 wont look great, but it'll look better than 320x240 and I doubt the creators had that much work to make it work at 1600x1200 since it's all textured polygons we're talking about.
Saying that you can have less content when going 1080 vs 720 is only possible imho in 2D bitmap-based games where you need to have every pixel as data. but rendering is resolution independent.
So where exactly does higher res cost more ? - drakonite, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3..and greatly increase the processing required. Not to mention vector formats do not work well for photo-y images, which most game textures tend to be...
- PYREX, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3the point he was trying to make is that BECAUSE you have to render so much more the system has less time to add effects and clean up. so you end up w/ crisper resolutions but bland visuals.
- MrStylz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I disagree that it won't make a difference. The games will emerse you into the game and it's environment that much more. While on the actual gameplay it may not make a ton od difference, so much anymore is about placing the user into the game.
To make a real world example, compare Madden to HD football. In HD the crowd is in the background, but it's much different than the fuzzy people you get from SD. You can make out individuals and their colors. If you translate this to madden, being able to have lifelike grass, puddles of rain, realistic crowds, and a fully anatomical player it will make quite an impact. - PYREX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@Steve
depends on what you mean by 30 and 60. if you mean Hz then your right. if you mean FPS then youre wrong. a FPS is a FPS. just that in i it takes 2 swipes to render it.
anything that's outputting at 1080 that's internally rendered at 1080 is 1080p. the i and p is only in reference to the output throughput of the cable.
think of it like this. you have a large triangle which you have shaders & AA applied to. it passes over 40 pixels. it's not going to render 1/2 the triangle then the other 1/2 and do the shader & geometry calculations twice. it does it once, and then it's split to fit over a 1080i cable. - EatingPie, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"You've made several."
Actually, he didn't (first post on page was correct).
With 1080p (and 480p and 720p), GAMES can give you 60 *discrete* frames per second... ie they are running at 1080p/60... 60fps.
MOVIES, otoh, do NOT benefit from 1080p/60, they run at 1080p/30 and just send every frame twice. It's 30fps because there are 30 discrete frames per second with 1080p film content, but each frame flashes on screen twice to maintain the 60hz refresh. Got that? :) If I flash the same picture on the screen twice, how many *discrete* frames per second is that? 1. So with movies in 1080p, you get 30fps, even though you're maintaining a 60hz refresh.
Now, that raises a question. How will games be rendered? They can be cranking at a full 1080p/60 (2 unique frame every 30th of a second) or 1080p/30 (1 unique frame every 30th of a second).
The article implies that the consoles are rendering at 1080p/30 and just shooting out every frame twice... giving an effective rate of 30fps.
-Pie - oepapel, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4"As a support professional in the world of broadcast video let me clear some things up. In the current accepted specs for ATSC, the only HD resolutions accepted are:"
I hear this kind of argument all the time. There is an implicit bias. HD=ATSC broadcast.
It's true that ATSC broadcast only uses those specific HD resolutions but the world of HD goes far beyond ATSC broadcast!
HD can come from your cable provider (On Demand or digital channel), over the internet, from a portable video player, from your game console, or your HDDVD/BluRay player. None of these sources need or want ATSC "blessing". TV's are no longer tied to broadcast.
If a TV offers 1080/60p input then that is a standard. Whether or not ATSC can supply that is irrelevant. - lundo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Producing content at 1080p60? Who's doing that? Only one camera that I can think of is currently doing 1080p60 and that the Tompson/Grass Valley LDK 8000, and that is one super expensive camera. Heck even though Sony's high end HD studio cam's (HDCF950) chipset process at 1080p60 it only outputs 1080i60 or 1080p30 via HD-SDI or Dual Link HD-SDI.
And with most current studio you can't just upgrade to 1080p60. What editor are you going to use. Hell the Avid Symphony Nitris system doesn't edit 1080p60. I work with this kind of equipment every day. The use of 1080p60 is not nearly so easy at you think it is. - lundo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4@oepapel
You are correct the world of HD display does go beyond ATSC, and I'll also repeat that my statement was not a argument of any kind.
But I would say that the ATSC spec has very direct relevance to the world of HD video display. ATSC spec dictates what broadcasters are going to use. So that means that manufacturers of production gear are going to follow that spec. The end result is that video content is going to follow that spec, and film is already only 24FPS. That leaves game consoles as the only probable provider of 1080p60 content.
I would like to see 1080p60 added to the ATSC spec but it might already be too late. For a broadcaster to upgrade to a HD production workflow it takes lots of money and time to retool. With the FCC deadlines for digital broadcast looming over their head most large market stations and major providers have already purchased HD Camera's, Editor, Playback servers, CG's, Switchers, ATSC encoders and transmitters. They are not going to turn all this over in a year or two for one added format to the spec. - oepapel, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5"and why do you NEED to watch the news at 60 frames per second? What a ***** up."
It doesn't matter why he wants it. It only matters whether or not he's willing to pay for it.
"Also, this is NOT a lost revenue stream, it's just one nerd wanting to spend 4 grand to watch the news "at 60 frames per second". I can guarantee it would cost more for the equipment to make and run these services than it would earn from the very small amount of people that would use it."
Wow! I had no idea you had a business degree. But for the sake of argument, let's consider the fact that businesses routinely perform "loss leader" style sales strategies because what is only wanted by a few nerds today will be demanded by the general public tomorrow and whoever gets in on the ground floor is far and away the most likely to succeed. Add in the fact that equipment gets cheaper over time so what is not profitable today is really unimportant. Plus, early adopters are used to paying a premium for their nerdy habits.
"There aren't even that many people who have HDTV's to begin with. Once a meaningful amount of the market actually has HDTV, then you can talk about investing in this moon technology of "SUPER ULTRA MEGA HIGH RESOLUTION NEWS BROADCASTS"; until then, just shut the ***** up."
Where do you live? Everyone I know has an HDTV. Many are already thinking about their next one. Do some market research.
"Stop glorifiyng your nerd technology to be more important than it really is. Spend less time on World of Nerdcraft and more time in reality and maybe you dumbasses will realize that."
The best way to fail as a business is to try and tell your customers what to do. Instead, successful businesses listen to and respond to the customers needs. - toaplan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2What are you talking about? shader textures are still stored as raster bitmaps, and if you're talking about procedural shaders you wouldn't bother with textures in the first place. Raytracing (which is not the same as raycasting) still has to render frames so you'd still have tearing (of which vsync is the the opposite of, since you're synchronizing to the vertical blanking rather than switching fields in the middle of a display frame). If you don't consider alpha a color component that is fine, but it simplifies the logic of rendering if you think of them all as channels rather than colors. GPU's aren't really optimized for raytracing even though you can use it for that through various tricks.
- Flynnz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@dave2112
you're not alone. I cant tell you how many times I would go to a friends house after they wanted to show off their new HD (insert 360, cable, sat here) and they didnt even have it set to HD, just default SD. Most had it like that for months, and even more really couldnt tell the difference after I properly set it up for them. Also from talking with some people I know who work at places like Bestbuy...they say the same thing. Most people can not tell when something is running in HD. The main thing people notice or care about is color, and contrast. (which is why all those stores ramp that ***** up to the point where I think the picture looks terrible...but thats another story)
With that said I can easily notice the difference between 480i/p and 1080i/p...however I have a hell of a time telling the difference between 1080i and 1080p. Unless there is a high contrast repeating area like stadium seats or a car grill. If they are side by side..yeah I could probably tell the difference if I looked really hard....but the fact remains that most people can't notice enough to even worry about it. or justify the cost that comes with it. - anonym41414, on 10/12/2007, -12/+14You've made several.
First, 1080/60p is basically a myth. The comparison we need to make is between 1080/30i and 1080/30p.
The 1080/30i format splits the screen into two fields, an odd and an even field. Odd scan lines belong to the odd field, even to the even field.
The screen draws one field, then 1/60th of a second later draws the other field. So every 30th of a second, you get both fields.
The 1080/30p format, on the other hand, draws every scan line in order, all at once, every 30th of a second.
So: same number of pixels in a frame, same number of frames drawn per second. For video games, there is absolutely no difference between 1080/30p and 1080/30i. You're seeing the same thing drawn to the screen in two different ways. (Well, there's one practical difference: 1080/30p video stutters more than 1080/30i video.)
Now, it's a totally different story when you're recording with a camera. A 1080/30i camera records in fields. That it, it records one field, then 1/60th of a second later it records the other field. On playback, this means that the two fields on the screen at the same time are actually slightly offset in time from each other. When dealing with fast motion, like sports, the interlacing produces visible artifacts. That's why progressive scan is better for sports than interlaced video.
But for video games, it's no difference, because the game renders each frame then splits it up into two fields. Not like video at all. - aznboi04k, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1i don't understand why people want 1080i/p game. most monitor don't have enough pixel to support it! i rather run at 720p with AA, more details, special effects and smoother frame rate.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I agree with you about games vs. hd football, but that was a bad example.
Football and sports games are about the last things you care about making immersive. Hell, you can distill football down into a grid of LED's and a 4 way controller with one button. Milton Bradley did it best in the 70's. - toaplan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I think the trouble is connecting to the right inputs and functionality, not to understand the technology as such. More pixels make for a prettier image. I think the location of the HD switch on the xbox 360 component cable is needlessly hidden, as is the option of a progressive scan DVD player I bought a few years ago to enable 480p and digital sound out through debug menus (it was a masterpiece of UI design with a remote control button that entered a sequence of 24 debug screens with odd options in every one of them, way to go Malata!). The PS2 menu for enabling digital audio out is also hard to find. I think a substantial amount of people with HD tvs have them hooked up exclusively to 480i inputs thinking that component cables takes care of the settings for them.
- SteveChisnall, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3However, IIRC, 1080p/30 IS equivalent to 1080i/60 when you are looking at the number of calculations that must be made per second, isn't it? Please correct me if I'm wrong.
- JackAxe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Creating games for higher resolutions requires more art production and time; Hence the game costs more to produce. So cost is an issue for console games, since HDD is still not widespread.
But on the other hand, 1600x1200 "was" the big thing on PCs several years back. So at least they've been doing the whole higher-rez thing for some time, so now that consoles are catching up, they've arleady had a few years under their belt working on hr-content. My current screen runs natively at 2560x1600, so the developers have bigger fish to fry than 1080p. - DigeratiPrime, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1i said fonts not textures, oh well.
- kfconme, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1From the SharpUSA website:
"The 'i' stands for interlaced and 'p' stands for progressive. 1080i and 1080p/720p represent two different methods used to display HDTV video on a screen.
When video is interlaced, a single video frame only draws every other line. If you numbered each horizontal line in a 1080i frame from 1 (as the top line) to 1080 (as the bottom line), each successive video frame alternates between drawing the odd-numbered lines and the even-numbered lines. Therefore, a display supporting a 1080i format may draw all of the odd-numbered lines (totaling 540 lines) in one frame, and then draw the 540 even-numbered lines in the next frame. This format is used by CBS and NBC.
A display supporting 1080 or 720 progressive format will sequentially draw all 1080 or 720 lines in each frame. You will notice a difference in picture depending on whether the program is being shown using the progressive or interlaced method. ABC and FOX use the 720p format.
All of Sharp's LC-TV models, with the exception of the LC-15L1U-S, are able to display a 480p signal (progressive scan). Many models, including some 20" models and all 26" and larger models, can display a 720p/1080i signal. Sharp's current 45" AQUOS models and the new 65" LC-65D90U can display a 1080p signal, the highest resolution in the DTV spectrum." - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"Regarding 24 fps film-source material presented in conventional 1080i60 form, the deinterlacing process that achieves this goal is usually referred to as "3-2 pulldown reversal". The importance of this is that, where film-based content is concerned, all 1080-interlaced signals are potentially 1080p signals given the proper deinterlacing. As long as no additional image-degradation steps were applied during signal mastering (such as excessive vertical-pass filtering), the image from a properly deinterlaced film-source 1080i signal and a native-encoded 1080p signal will look exactly the same."
From wikipedia - kfconme, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I've read/seen that 720p is very close to 1080i and 1080p is on its own wave length. the 720p/1080i simply looks like a smoother, less sharp 1080p.
I bought a 720p 27" Sharp Aquos for my room a year ago and it supports 1080i, yet is classified as a 720p. And even on some sites as 720p/1080i !
1080p is "newer" technology and is on most of the newer Aquos line as well as many others. cramming more pixels in the screen is always nice, but it also matters on the size of the screen, and as said, the processor speed. no matter what, it looks like heck the closer to the screen you get and the bigger the screen you have is.
in conclusion, 1080i and 1080p are very different, and if given the chance to see, you will notice right off the bat how sharp the image of 1080p is in comparison. - asdffds, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1To sum this article up, more pixels is harder. Obvious, and maybe the current gen consoles can't handle 1080 (while keeping things pretty), but that doesn't mean it's worse, just that they can't handle it.
- reanimationxp, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0a vector is basically a very high resoultion series of polygons when rendered. what you're asking would slow the game down not speed it up, because you'd essentially be scrapping a static raster image (raw data, very little processing to display it) and instead using a high-resoultion series of polygons (ton of vertexes) which then need to be rendered to be viewed as pixels on the texture (very cpu intensive compared to displaying static data as part of an image).
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1The developers are having trouble with it because the Xbox360 can't handle rendering quickly at that resolution.
Score another point for ATi. - lepton, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11080i likely means 1080i/60. You would render a 1920x1080 frame every 1/30th of a second. The game machine would show one field of this in the first 1/60th, and the other field in the next 1/60th. To avoid flicker you would have two buffers, one to display the two fields while you used the other to render the next frame (and you have 1/30th of a second to do it.) In fact in all of these schemes you would double buffer.
1080p likely means 1080p/60. You would render a 1920x1080 frame every 1/60th of a second.
Therefore 1080p has the same resolution as 1080i, but you would have to render twice as many frames per second, placing twice the load on the processors to show double the frame rate for smoother motion. 1080i/30 is 30 frames per second, 1080p is 60. - LocalH, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1If you think that 1080i60 and 1080p60 would look identical when both compressed to a 19Mbps MPEG-2 stream, you're crazy. 1080p30, maybe, but not 1080p60.
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