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How will PS3 handle multiple resolutions?

3

3rdman

Member
Today DeanoC (heavenly Sword) posted the following at B3D...

Originally Posted by zidane1strife
Well, my point was not that it was running at that framerate but that it was considered plausible and not impossible. So a game with 1080p 60fps FP16 HDR, Depth of Field, Motion Blur, heavy particle effects, cloth animations/physics, havok physics, thousands of ai controlled characters, and impressive geometry/textures/effects is considered plausible. With all the talk of RSX b/w starvation/scarcity you would think it would naturally choke with all of that at the same time going on at such a high framerate, that is that all of that at the same time would not be possible or would be nigh impossible due to b/w constraints.
Click to expand...

DeanoC responded with:

Well that was a long time ago... We constantly adapt as we learn what makes this thing tick...

We are definately not using FP16 HDR anymore, Marco implemented a cool method to get the same results using INT8. Faster and with MSAA, Winner

1080p? could still happen but I reckon 720p will be the standard but we will see. Just can't see us burning precious memory, fillrate and bandwidth for something only a few people can use...
Click to expand...

So my question is this...Does the PS3 utilize some kind of 360-esque scaler? How will it handle 1080i without affecting the framerate? How big a hit (if any) will there be for people like me with older 480p/1080i CRT sets?
 
This is what's killing GAF. Seriously, stop talking about tiny pixels and resolutions, talk about the games.

There are other boards for his nonsense.
 
Too soon to tell but I wouldn't be surprised if it was done the same as the 360 (or very similar) - 720p as standard with some games supporting 1080i as well - and the console able to scale everything with very little impact on quality

Although I'll not make the mistake I made with the 360...I believed the childish crap about the 360 will only look good on a HDTV, and that on a normal TV it looks just like an Xbox. It looks fucking amazing scaled down to 480i and, as HD is still too expensive, I'm more than happy to stick with 480i for a long time
 
My speculation.. they will do it like on Xbox and PS2. Support for the various resolutions in the game menu or it asks when you boot up the game and hopefully saves the setting to the memory card/stick/HDD/whatever
 
It has been said many times that 1080p was just for the trailer. I believe 720p will be the standard for many years. Then someday GT6 will appear and it will have the option for 1080p or who knows 2048p :)
 
littlewig said:
This is what's killing GAF. Seriously, stop talking about tiny pixels and resolutions, talk about the games.

There are other boards for his nonsense.
Click to expand...

Talking about visuals, one of the most important aspects of any game, is "killing GAF"? Don't make me brand you.
 
I think it will be totally up to the developers.

If a developer only want to support 480i, Sony will just let them.
Of course, all developers with self respect will most likely go with 720p+.
 
1080p is probably wasting resources early on in the life cycle of the PS3. Later on (years later) there should be a good deal of HDTV's with 1080P support in use.
 
PS3 is so powerful, the real question is - how will multiple resolutions handle PS3? Will phosphors ignite? Will twisted nematic crystals writhe, lash out, and be scattered in a broken mess across your living room floor? Will CRT tubes be blown-out from the mere radiance of the image that PS3 generates?

*watches MGS4 trailer*

Yes, of course.
 
I'm not sure that you guys understand my question. I'm not wondering what resolutions games will be made in or what resolution the PS3 will support...My question is if a game is made at 720p would I be screwed out of other high-def resolutions because the PS3 (might) not have a video scaler like the 360.
In any case, it seems that I'll have to wait and see. Obvsiously nothing has been mentioned by Sony or someone would have already answered yes or no.
 
3rdman said:
I'm not sure that you guys understand my question. I'm not wondering what resolutions games will be made in or what resolution the PS3 will support...My question is if a game is made at 720p would I be screwed out of other high-def resolutions because the PS3 (might) not have a video scaler like the 360.
In any case, it seems that I'll have to wait and see. Obvsiously nothing has been mentioned by Sony or someone would have already answered yes or no.
Click to expand...

oh, you should be able to rest assured that the PS3 should have a scaler on it (for different resolutions) but its pure speculation. Sony would be shooting themselves in the foot though, if they didn't support 480p users up to 1080p.

In all honestly though, this thing is supporting 1080p, it would be logical for Sony and Nvidia to put a scaler on the PS3. We'll have to wait a few more months though to find out for sure.
 
BlueTsunami said:
oh, you should be able to rest assured that the PS3 should have a scaler on it (for different resolutions) but its pure speculation. Sony would be shooting themselves in the foot though, if they didn't support 480p users up to 1080p.

In all honestly though, this thing is supporting 1080p, it would be logical for Sony and Nvidia to put a scaler on the PS3. We'll have to wait a few more months though to find out for sure.
Click to expand...


I wonder what resolutions PS3 will out put for PS1 and PS2 games - having PS2 games internally scaled up to 720p with anti-aliasing would look pretty damn sweet.
 
I don't think Sony will put a scaler in the ps3. Japanese developers seem to like making their games look as crisp sharp as possible, and a scaler would ruin any sharpness. My guess is that developers will simply make their games render in the resolution of whatever the ps3 is hooked up to (or Sony will tell developers to do that).
 
I'm betting the PS3 will have an option in the XMB similar to what the Xbox and 360 have, in that you choose the output resolution you'd prefer, and each game (and the OS) will then automatically output at that res.

I wouldn't worry too much though, 95% of CRT's upscale 720p to 1080i. My Toshiba does that quite flawlessly, and if there is a difference between the pure 1080i signals versus the 720p upscaled to 1080i, I can't tell, and I can be pretty picky.
 
1080P IS actually very wasteful resource wise. The question is whether or not Sony will require games to run/be tested at that resolution during the cert process.
 
INT8????

I can understand no 1080p, that was pretty much common sense. Given launch software, 1080p may be used later, but I'm guessing 720p is the standard for this gen... But no true HDR?? For a next gen system....that's sad....

I guess you can get some AA out of it, as you can't get HDR + AA on PS3. I was thinking you'd get the free AA when downscaling or something from 1080p while still using HDR. But when even "older" PC games are utilizing HDR, using INT8, for a console not even released... that sucks...
 
Tenacious-V said:
INT8????

I can understand no 1080p, that was pretty much common sense. Given launch software, 1080p may be used later, but I'm guessing 720p is the standard for this gen... But no true HDR?? For a next gen system....that's sad....

I guess you can get some AA out of it, as you can't get HDR + AA on PS3. I was thinking you'd get the free AA when downscaling or something from 1080p while still using HDR. But when even "older" PC games are utilizing HDR, using INT8, for a console not even released... that sucks...
Click to expand...

That's just one developer using INT8. Not like they are all gonna be forced to do that.
 
Pimpbaa said:
That's just one developer using INT8. Not like they are all gonna be forced to do that.
Click to expand...

Yeah I guess....It's just a little disheartening considering all the hype. Showing a 60fps/1080p/HDR FP16 (even if it was sped up) game and then only getting 720p, 30fps, INT8...
 
Hyllian said:
But this method gives the same results as of fp16. So why waste resources with fp16?
Click to expand...

Same results != truly same results.

It's imitating HDR, if it was the same results there would be no need for HDR in the first place.

Kinda like the NV30 debacle, when they kept stating you didn't need full precision and how half precision was good enough. Sure it'll get the job done, but it's not full precision quality (or real HDR in this case).

Integer, can't take the place of Floating Point.

Other examples could be the "brilinear" in place of trilinear back a gen or 2 ago in PC GPUs. Where they would only use bilinear filtering on the first stage (don't remember for sure if that's how it was) and not trilinear throughout. You can tell the difference.
 
I don't really care, if this means faking that look and getting it to the look the same so they can boost the framerate to 60fps then go right ahead.
 
A few months ago, in the big "Next Gen DVD" thread @ avsforum, RichardD (while he was at Panasonic Hollywood Labs) stated that all BR-ROM players would have internal scalers....PS3 included....
 
Tenacious-V said:
Other examples could be the "brilinear" in place of trilinear back a gen or 2 ago in PC GPUs. Where they would only use bilinear filtering on the first stage (don't remember for sure if that's how it was) and not trilinear throughout. You can tell the difference.
Click to expand...

If you take a still shot and stare at it for a while, yeah.
 
Pimpbaa said:
If you take a still shot and stare at it for a while, yeah.
Click to expand...

I can definitely tell the difference between bilinear and trilinear, and brilinear. It's more obvious than you think.

But that's veering off topic. I just hoping they fake it good enough. All I've been seeing from both companies is a bunch of twisted words.... nobody has lived up to anything they've said. That goes for both Sony and MS.

Why can't they even state realistically what these systems can achieve, no theoretical crap. Only ones who ever do/did that were Nintendo and SEGA.
 
Tenacious-V said:
I can definitely tell the difference between bilinear and trilinear, and brilinear. It's more obvious than you think.
Click to expand...

Bilinear and trilinear, anyone could tell the difference. But I never did understand all the bitchin of the brilinear. I was messing around with forcing full trilinear with my 6600GT, but the difference was so small, it wasn't worth it.
 
Pimpbaa said:
Bilinear and trilinear, anyone could tell the difference. But I never did understand all the bitchin of the brilinear. I was messing around with forcing full trilinear with my 6600GT, but the difference was so small, it wasn't worth it.
Click to expand...

To each his own I guess. I can tell brilinear and trilinear easily. But then again I get really picky about things when I play PC games.
 
Tenacious-V said:
Same results != truly same results.

It's imitating HDR, if it was the same results there would be no need for HDR in the first place.
Click to expand...
I can assure you the results are the same.
At first I'd say the same thing as you're saying here (no same results since we're using less bits per pixel) but you have to understand that's not the case for a very simple reason, FP16 is not an efficient way sto store a high dynamic range color.
So there's no 'imitation' at all, it's just a different way to store a color, that's it.
Even in the world of special fx and offline rendering they have several HDR storate formats, there's no 'true' way to do it.
There are tons of different color spaces out there, and there's a reason for that ;)
 
Sony isn't mandating devs to have a specific native resolution.

I got a question.

Did the Xbox have a scaler? I mean, some games could be ran at 720p, so...were they native at that and the console scaled it to what most people probably had at the time (480-SDTV?) how does this work

(as you can tell, I know shit about HDTV and the various resolutions) =/
 
Further to Nostromo's post is some more detailed clarification from DeanoC:

First off: FP16 HDR runs perfectly fine, we render everything in RGB Colourspace into a FP16 buffer. Then run a tonemapping algo to bring in down to LDR for display on a monitor/tv. The 'normal' way of HDR. Its all runs at the speed you would expect and it quite playable.

But RGB space is shit for lighting calculations, its simple the wrong place. Why? Originally RGB colour space was defined on the range [0,1] for each channel. With a 1 being the most strongest pure colour *POSSIBLE* in that channel. So RGB<0,1,0> is the most purest green possible. RGB was designed (long long time ago) as an absolute colour space. But even a trivial look tells you as you move to simple HDR (allow values above 1) its a vast waste of space. What exactly does the colour RGB<0,1000,0> mean? Something that 1000x purest green?

The reason is because you haven't sepereated hue (colour) from lumonsity. When we talk about HDR we not talking about more colour range but more lumonsity. So we change the colour space to one where lumonsity can go very high but the colour range just keeps the same range as before.

So what we do (Marco will have to give the details) is at the end of each pixel shader tap on a RGB->ColourSpace converter (its about 5 instructions I think). This colour space is much more quantizable, so it looks virtually the same packing it into an INT8 versus a RGB FP16 framebuffer. We still have the same range of lumonsity as FP16, still have the same colour fidelity but we just save bandwidth (and other things) by using a few shader instructions. Its also handy when it comes to tonemapping, as that involves calculating the scenes lumonsity.

Its got nothing to do with the current speed of FP16 rendering, its because we worked out how to do HDR better. FP16 rendering is slower on ALL hardware versus INT8 rendering (more memory access and having to process floats).
Its clever software beating hardware, you'd probably want to use this on PC, X360 (its much better than FP10), PS3, Rev etc. Its simple a better HDR method... Its beats FP16 HDR in almost all cases, so as I've said why wouldn't you use it?
Click to expand...

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showpost.php?p=648657&postcount=223
 
SolidSnakex said:
Sure it is, now Tenacious is going to start having to dig himself out of the hole he just jumped in.
Click to expand...

That should be enjoyable to see. He either tries to justify what he said or avoids this thread all together now....
 
BlueTsunami said:
That should be enjoyable to see. He either tries to justify what he said or avoids this thread all together now....
Click to expand...

He's a bit too trigger happy when it comes to going at the PS3. Still it should be interesting since now he's arguing against the guy who's actually working on the game.
 
SolidSnakex said:
He's a bit too trigger happy when it comes to going at the PS3. Still it should be interesting since now he's arguing against the guy who's actually working on the game.
Click to expand...

Yep, I don't think hes PR can stand up against actual factual information from a developer thats working on an actual Playstation 3 game. It can also be called "Tenacious-V Kryptonite"
 
C-Warrior said:
Sony isn't mandating devs to have a specific native resolution.
Click to expand...
Not "yet" they aren't. But unfortunately there's no TRC yet, so they could spring out a mandated screen resolution on us at any time.

Tenacious said:
It's imitating HDR, if it was the same results there would be no need for HDR in the first place.
Click to expand...
Everything on mainstream display technologies is an immitation of HDR. We're not even remotely close to have consumer displays capable of displaying it.
That said, there are many ways of storing high dynamic ranges of data, and FP16 is hardly an ideal one (but it's supported by hw).
 
How will PS3 handle multiple resolutions?

- Simultaneously. Two outputs, see?



Anyway, as to INT8 or not. Lets face it, developers are trying to simulate a real life situation. Doom managed a pretty good job of simulating a 3D space using little more than sprites.

Nearly any solution that isn't a fully mathematically and scientifically correct solution will be faster. And in games, faster=better.


BTW, if X360 used a similar solution, can they get proper AA etc (edram limit thing?)
 
Nostromo said:
I can assure you the results are the same.
At first I'd say the same thing as you're saying here (no same results since we're using less bits per pixel) but you have to understand that's not the case for a very simple reason, FP16 is not an efficient way sto store a high dynamic range color.
So there's no 'imitation' at all, it's just a different way to store a color, that's it.
Even in the world of special fx and offline rendering they have several HDR storate formats, there's no 'true' way to do it.
There are tons of different color spaces out there, and there's a reason for that ;)
Click to expand...

Yes, but Nostromo (do I have to call you that way ? :( nAo looks better :D) that must also mean that you rules out FP32 too ;).

It is true that there is no "true" way to do it, but I do not think that Lucasfilm uses INT8 either (OpenEXR is standardised around FP16/FP32 and INT32 with their 16 bits FP format being the same as nVIDIA's GeForce's FP16 format so it might be usable somewhat too :)) ;).

Something is gota give though... there are issues with every compromise you take to deliver HDR, obviously you guys feel INT8 gives you what you need for the HDR effects, but maybe in other cases a solution based on FP16 might be easier to handle or have other side benefits unless the Manzetti method is so good that it gets patented :P.

First off: FP16 HDR runs perfectly fine, we render everything in RGB Colourspace into a FP16 buffer. Then run a tonemapping algo to bring in down to LDR for display on a monitor/tv. The 'normal' way of HDR. Its all runs at the speed you would expect and it quite playable.

But RGB space is shit for lighting calculations, its simple the wrong place. Why? Originally RGB colour space was defined on the range [0,1] for each channel. With a 1 being the most strongest pure colour *POSSIBLE* in that channel. So RGB<0,1,0> is the most purest green possible. RGB was designed (long long time ago) as an absolute colour space. But even a trivial look tells you as you move to simple HDR (allow values above 1) its a vast waste of space. What exactly does the colour RGB<0,1000,0> mean? Something that 1000x purest green?

The reason is because you haven't sepereated hue (colour) from lumonsity. When we talk about HDR we not talking about more colour range but more lumonsity. So we change the colour space to one where lumonsity can go very high but the colour range just keeps the same range as before.

So what we do (Marco will have to give the details) is at the end of each pixel shader tap on a RGB->ColourSpace converter (its about 5 instructions I think). This colour space is much more quantizable, so it looks virtually the same packing it into an INT8 versus a RGB FP16 framebuffer. We still have the same range of lumonsity as FP16, still have the same colour fidelity but we just save bandwidth (and other things) by using a few shader instructions. Its also handy when it comes to tonemapping, as that involves calculating the scenes lumonsity.

Its got nothing to do with the current speed of FP16 rendering, its because we worked out how to do HDR better. FP16 rendering is slower on ALL hardware versus INT8 rendering (more memory access and having to process floats).
Its clever software beating hardware, you'd probably want to use this on PC, X360 (its much better than FP10), PS3, Rev etc. Its simple a better HDR method... Its beats FP16 HDR in almost all cases, so as I've said why wouldn't you use it?
Click to expand...

Ok, I had not read this post yet... :lol, sorry.

nAo, the RGB->ColourSpace converter is run AFTER the tone-mapping pass or before (after the rendering in the FP16 buffer is done ? If so it would be FP16 rendering -> change of colour space -> Tone Mapping (back to RGB but 8 bpp) right ?).
 
Pana,
framebuffer stores data in a different colorspace(and consequently data format).
It's no different then FP16 (or other framebuffer formats) in that regard, you compute stuff in shaders in FP32, and convert to actual FB format on framebuffer reads/writes.

The difference is conversion happens in software in this case.
 
C- Warrior said:
Sony isn't mandating devs to have a specific native resolution.

I got a question.

Did the Xbox have a scaler? I mean, some games could be ran at 720p, so...were they native at that and the console scaled it to what most people probably had at the time (480-SDTV?) how does this work

(as you can tell, I know shit about HDTV and the various resolutions) =/
Click to expand...
As far as I understood the XBOX the system just had a "D/A conversor" that took pixels on the front FB and converted them to a signal the TV understood.
There was no such thing as a scaler. By that I mean, that when HALO 2 runs at 480p you are having a 480p FB and when it does at 720p your FB is 720p. In other words, each resolution supported by a game implied the use of a FB of that resolution.

On the other hand X360 works differently. Games are supposed to have a standard FB of 720p but the system prior to the signal creation, can scale it.


That's how I see it.
 
Panajev2001a said:
Yes, but Nostromo (do I have to call you that way ? :( nAo looks better :D) that must also mean that you rules out FP32 too ;).
Click to expand...
I rule out FP32 as a final or intermediate frame buffer format for HDR images, but internally almost all shaders work with a mix of half/full precision RGB colors, so FP32 is used and abused :)

It is true that there is no "true" way to do it, but I do not think that Lucasfilm uses INT8 either
Click to expand...
They use a simpler format to encode their renderings and I don't blame them for this: since having a smaller someway trickier format would not buy them almost anything (except some disk space) since they're not doing realtime rendering.

Something is gota give though... there are issues with every compromise you take to deliver HDR, obviously you guys feel INT8 gives you what you need for the HDR effects, but maybe in other cases a solution based on FP16 might be easier to handle or have other side benefits unless the Manzetti method is so good that it gets patented :P.
Click to expand...
Ahaha :) I'm not claiming I invented something new, in fact I just used VERY old ideas/standards about color spaces developed many many years ago (some of them at the beginning of the previous century :) )
nAo, the RGB->ColourSpace converter is run AFTER the tone-mapping pass or before (after the rendering in the FP16 buffer is done ? If so it would be FP16 rendering -> change of colour space -> Tone Mapping (back to RGB but 8 bpp) right ?).
Click to expand...
There's no rendeing into a FP16 buffer anymore, everything is rendered into a RGBA8 buffer. Conversion from funky color space to RGB can happen before/at the same time/after tone mapping pass.
 
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