Support NeoGAF

[SneakyStephan]

Are you seriously trying to paint this as a negative? It was brilliant.

are you kidding me, who cares what it looks like when you stand still or in a screenshot when it looks blurry in motion during gameplay

Mercenary was advertised as variable resolution. It's also a different studio.

ah you are right, my bad

 

[ProfessorMoran]

Guerrilla just shot themselves in the foot.

I don't know how much the rest of you know about Dutch culture (I'm an expert), but honor and shame are huge parts of it. It's not like it is in America where you can become successful by being an asshole. If you screw someone over in Holland, you bring shame to yourself, and the only way to get rid of that shame is repentance.

What this means is the Dutch public, after hearing about this, is not going to want to purchase their next (RPG) game, nor will they purchase Killzone Shadowfall. This is HUGE. You can laugh all you want, but Guerrilla has alienated an entire market with their 1080p wizardry.

Guerrilla, publicly apologize and cancel Killzone Shadowfall or you can kiss your business goodbye.

Lmao.

 

[dark10x]

are you kidding me, who cares what it looks like when you stand still or in a screenshot when it looks blurry in motion...

ah you are right, my bad

It's s dynamic resolution. It doesn't ALWAYS drop while moving. The end result is still much better than what you'd get if you just rendered at a lower resolution all the time. It's smart design.

 

[yankeehater]

Seriously?

1080p is defined as 1920 pixels horizontally x 1080 pixels vertically with an aspect ratio of 16 : 9. Thats 2,073,600 pixels that has to calculated within the time bugdet for a frame, in case of 60fps thats 16.6ms. As I understand GG uses a method to calculate that same amount of pixels in the timeframe for 2 frames by some sort of interlacing 2 half pictures-> which means in 33.3ms.

Just for comparison purposes I did a little calculation:

960 x 1080 pixels = 1,036,800 pixels, problem is that the aspect ration is 8:9 not 16:9 which makes comparison a little bit difficult.

After an extrapolation to an aspect ratio of 16:9 I got the following result:

1,036,800 pixels equals a rounded resolution of 764p (approx. 1358 x 764 pixels)

You get the feeling ...

Wow that is really surprising.

 

[JB1981]

The multi is so blurry and games have had unplayable lag as of late. Very disappointing

 

[chubigans]

Ummm no. More like, they showed you two samples, told you both were 1080p and even though you knew something was off, you rolled with it anyway and looked for some other reason to justify the difference in image quality. A little closer to the placebo effect, hence my statement about resolution. IQ is subjective, resolution is not.

It is not a placebo effect. Why are people using this as an example of why resolution doesn't matter? How hard is it to understand why exactly we were fooled?

(1) Devs say "it's 1080p native."
(2) Using our eyeballs, it looks sharp. Counting the pixels vertically, like we do with all images to get an accurate count, shows 1080p. Nothing seems off here.
(3) Yet in motion, it's overly blurry. No one could quite figure out why, so a lot of us chalked it up to bad AA implementation.
(4) DF says months later that it was rendered at half the horizontal res, but using advanced rendering techniques that "fill in the gaps" to produce a faux-1080p image.
(5) Finally everything makes sense about what we've been seeing the entire time.

720p scaled up to 1080p will always look like a blurry image. It will never not be obvious. But if games could utilize the type of rendering done here, I think we'd be getting much more interesting results regarding picture quality instead of the ol' 720 to 1080 scaling.

I understand why GG wouldn't put that news out there so openly given the "resolution wars" but it's a shame we found out this way and feel mislead, since it's a very interesting rendering technique.

 

[dark10x]

720p scaled up to 1080p will always look like a blurry image. It will never not be obvious. But if games could utilize the type of rendering done here, I think we'd be getting much more interesting results regarding picture quality instead of the ol' 720 to 1080 scaling.

I understand why GG wouldn't put that news out there so openly given the "resolution wars" but it's a shame we found out this way and feel mislead, since it's a very interesting rendering technique.

Exactly. It's a much more interesting solution than dropping to 720p.

 

[SneakyStephan]

It's s dynamic resolution. It doesn't ALWAYS drop while moving. The end result is still much better than what you'd get if you just rendered at a lower resolution all the time. It's smart design.

I agree in that it's way more important to keep framerate steady but in the end it's just going to be used as a bandaid to salvage a framerate that would drop regularly, instead of as a way to keep the game running smoothly in those 1 percent of gameplay cases where their well designed well tuned game would drop fps.

It was used in wipeout as well (a game where you really can't have fps drops) but the res dropped a lot of the time
devs always have to go for more eyecandy and this is just another bandaid then

Exactly. It's a much more interesting solution than dropping to 720p.

I wouldn't call what basically amounts to image compression and extra blur in motion as an interesting solution
yet another bandaid, why can't developers just design their game to run at 1080p 60 fps on a closed platform, why lower your expectations?

To me it just looks like you're commending some cleverly designed crutches.

 

[ElTorro]

Exactly. It's a much more interesting solution than dropping to 720p.

1080π is the kind of hipster tech-wizardry one expects from Sony while 720p is more of a tried and true working man's resolution.

 

[Havel]

I agree in that it's way more important to keep framerate steady but in the end it's just going to be used as a bandaid to salvage a framerate that would drop regularly, instead of as a way to keep the game running smoothly in those 1 percent of gameplay cases where their well designed well tuned game would drop fps.

It was used in wipeout as well (a game where you really can't have fps drops) but the res dropped a lot of the time
devs always have to go for more eyecandy and this is just another bandaid then


I wouldn't call what basically amounts to image compression and extra blur in motion as an interesting solution
yet another bandaid, why can't developers just design their game to run at 1080p 60 fps on a closed platform, why lower your expectations?

To me it just looks like you're commending some cleverly designed crutches.

I think what we need to remember here is that Shadowfall is just a launch game. The singleplayer looks amazing, miles better than MP, and already runs at 1080p with a variable 30-60fps.

 

[SEGAvangelist]

1080π is the kind of hipster tech-wizardry one expects from Sony while 720p is more of a tried and true working man's resolution.

/dead

 

[Xbudz]

The PlayStation Blog said the following:

Therefore, they intentionally misled us.

Next time a PS4 game claims 1080p:

 

[benny_a]

1080π is the kind of hipster tech-wizardry one expects from Sony while 720p is more of a tried and true working man's resolution.

 

[EL CUCO]

1080d-ouche

 

[chubigans]

Next time a PS4 game claims 1080p:

This type of upscaling isn't common and was created using Guerrilla's engine/rendering techniques, as far as I'm aware.

 

[DodgyGeezerFella]

I always thought there was something off about KZ MP, whenever the frame rate takes a hit, you can see this weird fuzzy image, i think its the dithering mentioned. This explains it !

 

[walltowall]

It is not a placebo effect. Why are people using this as an example of why resolution doesn't matter? How hard is it to understand why exactly we were fooled?

(1) Devs say "it's 1080p native."
(2) Using our eyeballs, it looks sharp. Counting the pixels vertically, like we do with all images to get an accurate count, shows 1080p. Nothing seems off here.
(3) Yet in motion, it's overly blurry. No one could quite figure out why, so a lot of us chalked it up to bad AA implementation.
(4) DF says months later that it was rendered at half the horizontal res, but using advanced rendering techniques that "fill in the gaps" to produce a faux-1080p image.
(5) Finally everything makes sense about what we've been seeing the entire time.

720p scaled up to 1080p will always look like a blurry image. It will never not be obvious. But if games could utilize the type of rendering done here, I think we'd be getting much more interesting results regarding picture quality instead of the ol' 720 to 1080 scaling.

I understand why GG wouldn't put that news out there so openly given the "resolution wars" but it's a shame we found out this way and feel mislead, since it's a very interesting rendering technique.

I said a little closer to a placebo effect. Perhaps my point was missed because it only comes into full view every other frame.

Anyways, I get what you're saying and I agree to an extent but you know as well as I do that both Sony and GG we're being deceptive on the true resolution. Saying that you understand why they chose to mislead through silence because of all the crap that Xbox One games get/got rubs me the wrong way.

All in all, it did not hurt my enjoyment of the game, or rather lack thereof.
And yes, it very interesting tech.

 

[Dictator93]

I always thought there was something off about KZ MP, whenever the frame rate takes a hit, you can see this weird fuzzy image, i think its the dithering mentioned. This explains it !

reductions in framerate would lead the delta between each frame in terms of new or different pixels to increase, there by increasing/making more obvious mistakes in the interlacing.

TAA techniques are actually really smart ideas if you have a high and stable framerate/ for background elements which do not parallax much. Either that, or you use a really computer shader to prevent as much of the artificating as you can.

 

[Caayn]

Next time GG claims 1080p:

Fixed.

So far GG is the only one to pull this trick, let's not suddenly blame every dev of doing it. Although it's a lesson that we shouldn't just take the devs word for it when it comes to the resolution.

 

[Bluenova]

Guerrilla just shot themselves in the foot.

I don't know how much the rest of you know about Dutch culture (I'm an expert), but honor and shame are huge parts of it. It's not like it is in America where you can become successful by being an asshole. If you screw someone over in Holland, you bring shame to yourself, and the only way to get rid of that shame is repentance.

What this means is the Dutch public, after hearing about this, is not going to want to purchase their next (RPG) game, nor will they purchase Killzone Shadowfall. This is HUGE. You can laugh all you want, but Guerrilla has alienated an entire market with their 1080p wizardry.

Guerrilla, publicly apologize and cancel Killzone Shadowfall or you can kiss your business goodbye.

So good!! Ahahaha

 

[chubigans]

I said a little closer to a placebo effect. Perhaps my point was missed because it only comes into full view every other frame.

Anyways, I get what you're saying and I agree to an extent but you know as well as I do that both Sony and GG we're being deceptive on the true resolution. Saying that you understand why they chose to mislead through silence because of all the crap that Xbox One games get/got rubs me the wrong way.

All in all, it did not hurt my enjoyment of the game, or rather lack thereof.
And yes, it very interesting tech.

Well I should clarify that I understand why GG didn't, but that doesn't mean I agree with it. Just a crummy situation all around.

 

[ps3ud0]

Seriously?

1080p is defined as 1920 pixels horizontally x 1080 pixels vertically with an aspect ratio of 16 : 9.

Wrong, 1080p doesnt define any aspect ratio nor the amount of vertical lines - its why 1024x768 TVs could be sold as 720p...

ps3ud0 8)

 

[andycapps]

It is not a placebo effect. Why are people using this as an example of why resolution doesn't matter? How hard is it to understand why exactly we were fooled?

(1) Devs say "it's 1080p native."
(2) Using our eyeballs, it looks sharp. Counting the pixels vertically, like we do with all images to get an accurate count, shows 1080p. Nothing seems off here.
(3) Yet in motion, it's overly blurry. No one could quite figure out why, so a lot of us chalked it up to bad AA implementation.
(4) DF says months later that it was rendered at half the horizontal res, but using advanced rendering techniques that "fill in the gaps" to produce a faux-1080p image.
(5) Finally everything makes sense about what we've been seeing the entire time.

720p scaled up to 1080p will always look like a blurry image. It will never not be obvious. But if games could utilize the type of rendering done here, I think we'd be getting much more interesting results regarding picture quality instead of the ol' 720 to 1080 scaling.

I understand why GG wouldn't put that news out there so openly given the "resolution wars" but it's a shame we found out this way and feel mislead, since it's a very interesting rendering technique.

Exactly. I knew something was off with it but I assumed that it was because they were using different anti-aliasing techniques in multiplayer. Campaign looks crisp, multiplayer looks good but to me appeared to have vaseline smeared over the image.

 

[Quadtriangle]

Let it be known that the person who posted this drivel of a "article" also was going around GAF stating that thief is 10fps on the ps4. So I recommend you take this with a pinch of salt, but glad to know that resolution finally matters to the xbox fans who have been spouting from their mouth that "it's about the gameplay and not 1080p". We shall revisit resolution when titanfall comes out and then you can explain to the rest of us "it's about the gameplay and not 1080p".

 

[danwarb]

Wrong, 1080p doesnt define any aspect ratio nor the amount of vertical lines - its why 1024x768 TVs could be sold as 720p...

ps3ud0 8)

They could be sold as "HD ready" or 720p compatible.

The positive for this, against scaling from the equivalent resolution, is the much sharper image when there's no movement. The negative is less consistency across the frame, and the blurry look in motion. We'll probably see it lots.

 

[Kinyou]

Let it be known that the person who posted this drivel of a "article" also was going around GAF stating that thief is 10fps on the ps4. So I recommend you take this with a pinch of salt, but glad to know that resolution finally matters to the xbox fans who have been spouting from their mouth that "it's about the gameplay and not 1080p". We shall revisit resolution when titanfall comes out and then you can explain to the rest of us "it's about the gameplay and not 1080p".

Pretty sure that wasn't leadbetter. And people have a right to be a little pissed because GG/Sony lied, not much to do with console war

 

[Insane Metal]

Guerrilla just shot themselves in the foot.

I don't know how much the rest of you know about Dutch culture (I'm an expert), but honor and shame are huge parts of it. It's not like it is in America where you can become successful by being an asshole. If you screw someone over in Holland, you bring shame to yourself, and the only way to get rid of that shame is repentance.

What this means is the Dutch public, after hearing about this, is not going to want to purchase their next (RPG) game, nor will they purchase Killzone Shadowfall. This is HUGE. You can laugh all you want, but Guerrilla has alienated an entire market with their 1080p wizardry.

Guerrilla, publicly apologize and cancel Killzone Shadowfall or you can kiss your business goodbye.

Bahahahahaha this never gets old. Love it.

 

[lmbotiva]

Is resolution now important? I tought it wasn't according to the xbox one multiple games threads here on GAF, oh well, at least single player is native 1080p and that's all i care about

 

[walltowall]

Let it be known that the person who posted this drivel of a "article" also was going around GAF stating that thief is 10fps on the ps4. So I recommend you take this with a pinch of salt, but glad to know that resolution finally matters to the xbox fans who have been spouting from their mouth that "it's about the gameplay and not 1080p". We shall revisit resolution when titanfall comes out and then you can explain to the rest of us "it's about the gameplay and not 1080p".

So what you're saying is console wars matter more to you than a dev and publisher being deceptive?

 

[gaming_noob]

Is resolution now important? I tought it wasn't according to the xbox one multiple games threads here on GAF, oh well, at least single player is native 1080p and that's all i care about

So what you're saying is 1080p is important. Oh ok.

 

[lmbotiva]

So what you're saying is 1080p is important. Oh ok.

Sarcastic post, get it.....?

 

[KOCMOHABT]

This opens the door at many more extreme rendering methods such as:

- Instead of rendering every other column, randomize that shit, same pattern as random noise...
- Based on shader load, decide how much of the next frame you're going to render. 50% (as in KZSF) to 100% variable. Every pixel that's rendered is selected at random.
- You can improve the random selection by making sure transparencies are rendered 100%.

This technique would be very interesting, I'd wager most people won't be able to distinguish it from 1080p if you're rendering 90% of the pixels and making up the other 10% from the previous frame. I hope more developers look into this option.

since you need to combine your image with a weighted version of the previous one, making it random is not a good idea, since you would like to fill only the pixels you have not touched the last frame.

 

[Xbudz]

So far GG is the only one to pull this trick, let's not suddenly blame every dev of doing it. Although it's a lesson that we shouldn't just take the devs word for it when it comes to the resolution.

Whitney's quote still stands.

 

[danwarb]

Is resolution now important? I tought it wasn't according to the xbox one multiple games threads here on GAF, oh well, at least single player is native 1080p and that's all i care about

I thought it was the most important thing of all, according to typical xbox one threads. Has it not been a big deal?

 

[RedSwirl]

Pretty much. People want 60 Fps but apparently without any sacrifices.

It might be inflammatory and elitist to say this, but the people who want that really should just go PC. There are always going to be sacrifices somewhere on consoles. At least with today's consoles. You just deal with it and accept it as the average consumer's solution, like a Ford over a Ferrari.

 

[dorkimoe]

Is this really that important of a detail?

edit: I hate to sound like a jerk. But I mean, really?

No

This game just proved that. It was amazing looking until people found this out.

It's just like those blind taste tests. Or the placebo pill tests. Soon as you find out it wasn't full 1080 it's news and people pretend they noticed a difference

 

[Wasp]

Shadow Fall does indeed look very blurry in multiplayer compared to single player, but I still think it has better IQ than Battlefield 4 which looks really rough and low res on certain maps with high contrast lighting due to bad aliasing.

 

[TyrantII]

3:2 pulldown refers to a way of stuttering the way fields are sent to map from 24fps film to ~30fps NTSC.

It has basically nothing to do with this discussion.

Of course it does.

NTSC 3:2 pulldown

The only big differences are that instead of the images being baked in, in KZ they are calculated, and that it's along the vertical axis.

 

[Coolbgdog12]

No

This game just proved that. It was amazing looking until people found this out.

It's just like those blind taste tests. Or the placebo pill tests. Soon as you find out it wasn't full 1080 it's news and people pretend they noticed a difference

Wrong. why do people keep saying this? I noticed mp looking worse day 1. I just chalked it up to the AA implementation.

 

[MidgarBlowedUp]

My question is, can the technique can be improved upon?
If so, and we can get a cheaper match of refresh rates to frame rates ala 60, then I welcome it.

 

[vpance]

A thoughtful post from sebbbi, Trials HD dev, on B3D

1080i is much better than 720p in most cases if you use good software deinterlacing algorithm. Inside the rendering engine you know exactly how much each pixel has moved from the last frame, so you don't need to analyze the movement on screen like TV sets do. The result is much better. Stalker game used similar approach last gen.

Also refreshing every single pixel per frame is not always the wisest thing to do. Most pixels (in a 60 fps game) could just be reprojected (+ color tinted) without any noticeable image quality difference. This is exactly what modern video compression algorithms (including BluRay) do. There will be games that use similar rendering techniques in the future. It's completely dynamic how big percentage of the screen these styles of rendering engines will recalculate every frame (as the error metrics will dictate that). The final output of course will be 1080p, but some low contrast areas might sometimes be more blurry (because the human eye doesn't notice the difference in motion). Enlarged screenshots however would look partially blurry (just like BluRay screenshots look like).

 

[Discusguy]

Let it be known that the person who posted this drivel of a "article" also was going around GAF stating that thief is 10fps on the ps4. So I recommend you take this with a pinch of salt, but glad to know that resolution finally matters to the xbox fans who have been spouting from their mouth that "it's about the gameplay and not 1080p". We shall revisit resolution when titanfall comes out and then you can explain to the rest of us "it's about the gameplay and not 1080p".

As a Xbox fan waiting for the titanfall bundle. I have always cared more about 60fps than rez.

 

[GamingIsDead]

No

This game just proved that. It was amazing looking until people found this out.

It's just like those blind taste tests. Or the placebo pill tests. Soon as you find out it wasn't full 1080 it's news and people pretend they noticed a difference

I think you're being purposely dense. Go look in the killzone multiplayer thread there was plenty of people saying the IQ look poor and blurry way before this news came out.

 

[ElTorro]

A thoughtful post from sebbbi, Trials HD dev, on B3D

I wonder then why this approach hasn't been used more frequently in the past.

 

[gaming_noob]

Sarcastic post, get it.....?

I see nothing sarcastic about that post mayne.
But anyhow, I haven't touched MP for Shadow Falls and only played Single player for a few minutes. It is the best looking game I've witnessed in person. If it's slightly lower res on MP I would imagine the game still looks pretty phenomenal.

 

[Terbinator]

Could the GG solution be something MS could explore with ESRAM?

Anyone? With some more research and improvement perhaps it's something MS could work into their toolset?

 

[Chobel]

I wonder then why this approach hasn't been used more frequently in the past.

Maybe it works better with GPGPU?

 

[danwarb]

My question is, can the technique can be improved upon?
If so, and we can get a cheaper match of refresh rates to frame rates ala 60, then I welcome it.

I wouldn't doubt that. I welcome it too.

 

[Doel]

All I know is the multiplayer is awesome. So I don't care.

 

[AgentP]

I wonder then why this approach hasn't been used more frequently in the past.

Because it takes work and resources while dropping the res is trivial and free.