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[mre]

I don't even see how the lawsuit could continue, but I cannot imagine it even winning .. anything.

Let's clear something up about what's happened so far in this case. The only thing that has happened is that Sony lost their motion to dismiss the case with regards to all but one of the Plaintiff's claims (negligent misrepresentation).

This is not surprising.

Motions to dismiss brought pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6) are routinely filed and, if the complaint was competently drafted, routinely denied. The standard for ruling on a 12(b)(6) motion is extremely favorable to the plaintiff. Essentially, the judge's only decision is to look at the complaint and decide "okay, IF everything written down here is true, then does the plaintiff have a case?" He's not making any determination as to the merits of the plaintiff's factual claims, and, in fact, he's bound by law to accept those factual claims as true for the purposes of deciding the motion.

So all Judge Chen is saying here is "yes, the plaintiff has written down enough facts which, if taken to be true, could support every claim* that he has alleged."


*The one claim he dismissed, negligent misrepresentation, was not dismissed on this basis. It was dismissed on a procedural rule.

 

[professor_t]

LOL, I actually just ordered this game. As a Killzone fan, I always thought it looked great and can't wait to finally play it.

You probably should have have just looked at it . . . stopped while you were ahead.

In my opinion, of course. I'm sure that a pretty substantial population of people loved the game, so hopefully you're in that corner.

Regarding the lawsuit, it's frivolous and almost certainly a cynical cash grab, but technically the allegations are accurate.

 

[low-G]

Gamers are idiots with too much free time on their hands.

 

[TaintedHotSauce]

Amazing, simply amazing. One of the best devs in terms of technical ability, transparency and support gets sued for using a really neat trick that slightly compromises image quality for a huge gain in frame-rate.

No games use 1080p rendering for all their effects. Shadows, transparencies, particles are almost always done at lower resolutions.

This is not the game there should be a lawsuit for. Most games last-gen were sub-720p upscaled yet advertised as 720p.

The temporal re-projection technique Guerrilla used should be hailed as an achievement that hopefully other games can adopt. Guerrilla said this technique gives you a roughly 80% performance gain without the labor intensive task of downgrading assets for multiplayer.

 

[mre]

Maybe i worded it wrong, but what i ment to say is that it would depened on how much money that potentially could be gotten out from this lawsuit compared to how much lawyers fees there are. Unless that scales somehow, but i dont think thats the case. That means that it could be little money left after all the fees are payed off (as in taken from the pot), couldnt it?

In a class action, the judge has the final say over attorney fees. So not only are the attorneys constrained by the ethical cannons pertaining to the amount of a fee they can charge, but the judge has to approve their fees and determine that they are reasonable based upon such factors as the amount of work conducted by the attorneys as well as the financial risk to the attorneys had they lost the litigation.

For example, in a recent class action which my firm settled, we received an award of 30% of the roughly $1m settlement. Each of the class members ended up getting a check for around $200, while we received $300k in fees, plus recouped our actual expenses of ~$50k. There was literally no work done by any of the class members with the exception of the class rep who had to sit for a deposition, and that person received a nice check for their time. We flew across the country multiple times for depositions, argued the case before the trial judge, briefed the case all the way up to the supreme court to protect the class certification, and did all of this on our own expense, both financially and with regards to our time.

So when you compare what an individual class member received, $200, to either the "entire pot" of $1m or the $300k in fees we took, then I can see how you can view that as disproportionate. However, in reality, the part of the settlement that went to the injured parties was ~$650k, which is not insubstantial at all. It's just that there were so many class members, this $650k got whittled down to $200 per class member.

 

[WonkyPanda]

In a class action, the judge has the final say over attorney fees. So not only are the attorneys constrained by the ethical cannons pertaining to the amount of a fee they can charge, but the judge has to approve their fees and determine that they are reasonable based upon such factors as the amount of work conducted by the attorneys as well as the financial risk to the attorneys had they lost the litigation.

For example, in a recent class action which my firm settled, we received an award of 30% of the roughly $1m settlement. Each of the class members ended up getting a check for around $200, while we received $300k in fees, plus recouped our actual expenses of ~$50k. There was literally no work done by any of the class members with the exception of the class rep who had to sit for a deposition, and that person received a nice check for their time. We flew across the country multiple times for depositions, argued the case before the trial judge, briefed the case all the way up to the supreme court to protect the class certification, and did all of this on our own expense, both financially and with regards to our time.

So when you compare what an individual class member received, $200, to either the "entire pot" of $1m or the $300k in fees we took, then I can see how you can view that as disproportionate. However, in reality, the part of the settlement that went to the injured parties was ~$650k, which is not insubstantial at all. It's just that there were so many class members, this $650k got whittled down to $200 per class member.

MRE doing the grunt work for me. Can't really add anything to what has been said. Attorneys' fees will usually be about 25-30%.

I think the critical thing, that MRE said a lot nicer, is that 12(b)(6) motions succeeding are RARE, and with good reason. It may be hard for an outsider to understand, but the system is designed to allow someone to actually be heard. Imagine walking into court, filing your complaint, and then getting it thrown out without you ever getting a chance to acquire and present evidence.

Liberal pleading--it's at the core of the civil system. It's pretty rude for people to antagonize Jude Chen and a legal system they don't completely understand.

Nice work, MRE.


EDIT: I'd also add that a great majority of cases are dismissed due to procedural issues. Substantively, though, it won't really happen at this stage.

 

[thelastword]

So, it wasn't "known" before release. Also, I couldn't find anything about idtech5 dynamic output resolution before Wolfenstein. Just dynamic texture resolution, which is really another story.

I'm not trying to attack or defend anyone here, it's just that things are more complex than "1080p or not" and these things have been going on for a long long time.

I've never said that it was known before release with wolfenstein. I'm just saying that having such information before release or placing it on the box for release should be encouraged for openness and fair knowledge of your product. The game was released on the 20th and the analysis was posted two days later, it's not as bad as what was done with shadowfall mp. Had persons not continue to question the quality of shadowfall's image continuously, perhaps Guerilla would have never shared such knowledge with us. In essence, you don't hide something you're proud of.

Amazing, simply amazing. One of the best devs in terms of technical ability, transparency and support gets sued for using a really neat trick that slightly compromises image quality for a huge gain in frame-rate.

No games use 1080p rendering for all their effects. Shadows, transparencies, particles are almost always done at lower resolutions.

This is not the game there should be a lawsuit for. Most games last-gen were sub-720p upscaled yet advertised as 720p.

The temporal re-projection technique Guerrilla used should be hailed as an achievement that hopefully other games can adopt. Guerrilla said this technique gives you a roughly 80% performance gain without the labor intensive task of downgrading assets for multiplayer.

That has never been a debate before, until Guerilla used it to spin their method of 1080p. A game was always considered 1080p Native despite lower internal buffers.

The performance gains you speak of due to this technique is not significant either, Killzone mp hardly touches 60fps, you should really look at the framerate videos.

 

[Quadraphonic]

It outputs a full 1080p frame.

It keeps internal buffers sized at 960x1080 then using information from the same pixel 2 frames in the past it has a good chance of guessing the pixel information in the current frame.
http://www.killzone.com/en_GB/blog/news/2014-03-06_regarding-killzone-shadow-fall-and-1080p.html

There's an explanation they did that goes into more detail than the blog did, but I can't find it at the minute.

It's a really interesting technique imo.

Edit: These are more slides on the tech in SF. http://www.slideshare.net/guerrillagames/killzone-shadow-fall-demo-postmortem GG are excellent for doing their post postmortems.

Smart interlacing is still interlacing.

1080i is not 1080p.

 

[Raist]

Just read the whole ruling. It's amazing.
I can't tell if it's a parody or a legit court file.

 

[Mr Git]

Jesus fuck, of all the things to take someone to court over. What a waste of everything.

 

[ypo]

Smart interlacing is still interlacing.

1080i is not 1080p.

Good thing it's not interlaced.

 

[Journey]

I see this 2 ways: On one side, the law suit is borderline frivolous, but at the same time it will keep developers honest or at least stop the whole nauseating 1080Pr campaign.

 

[thelastword]

I just placed my shadowfall disc in the system because of this thread, says it needs a 2.5gb download, that finished. So I go to refresh my memory of the mp, but I must download a map-pack at 5.9gb before doing so.....ahh..I'll let it download in the background.

 

[Journey]

Good thing it's not interlaced.

It isn't. But would you accept someone claiming their audio source is true dolby digital 5.1/7.1, when instead you find out their using a method like DTS: Neo or Dolby Pro Logic II as a faked method instead of the real thing?

Much like interlacing video, their process introduces artifacts that don't happen when using a native 1920 x 1080p source, therefore anyone calling it native 1080p is lying.

You can see it in the rain here:

 

[Clockwork5]

Hopefully this causes developers to pause before knowingly lying to their customers.

 

[mre]

Nice work, MRE.

I understand it can be confusing for someone who works outside of the legal system to understand the reasons behind why things happen in a certain way, so I try to do my best to hopefully explain what's going on in a way everyone can understand.

 

[Live Free or Die]

Hopefully this causes developers to pause before knowingly lying to their customers.

joke post? This has to be?

I can't believe people are defending this lawsuit.

 

[Clockwork5]

joke post? This has to be?

I can't believe people are defending this lawsuit.

Is multiplayer native 1080p?

 

[mrklaw]

Smart interlacing is still interlacing.

1080i is not 1080p.

No it isn't

Interlacing is displaying two separate half resolution fields, and the eye merges them together. Killzone is creating new data between those interlaced lines, so you get a 1080p image 60 times per second. It is in no way interlaced, other than for how the source frame buffer starts out - and then lots of processing is done on it.

 

[ypo]

It isn't. But would you accept someone claiming their audio source is true dolby digital 5.1/7.1, when instead you find out their using a method like DTS: Neo or Dolby Pro Logic II as a faked method instead of the real thing?

Much like interlacing video, their process introduces artifacts that don't happen when using a native 1920 x 1080p source, therefore anyone calling it native 1080p is lying.

You can see it in the rain here:

Sure the traditional1080p is always preferable and their method has artifacts, but it's much better and preferable than an upscaled image. Most compressed videos use something similar. Are you people going to complain about *mislabeling* of resolution in 99% of videos out there and screaming they are lying about resolutions?

Is multiplayer native 1080p?

Yes it is.

 

[Nafai1123]

Is multiplayer native 1080p?

Regardless of what you or I consider the definition of "native" 1080p to be, it needs to be proven in the courtroom which will be extremely difficult if not impossible to do.

 

[Journey]

Regardless of what you or I consider the definition of "native" 1080p to be, it needs to be proven in the courtroom which will be extremely difficult if not impossible to do.

Proving "Native" 1080p for a game should be quite easy, it should involve 1920 pixels by 1080 pixels. If you have to write an essay explaining predictors and other wizardry, then you're not running things natively, plain and simple.

 

[Clockwork5]

Regardless of what you or I consider the definition of "native" 1080p to be, it needs to be proven in the courtroom which will be extremely difficult if not impossible to do.

Lawyers pay a ton for experts who will very easily be able to distinguish native 1080p rendering from the advanced interlacing methods of KZ multiplayer.

 

[Tumle]

Proving "Native" 1080p for a game should be quite easy, it should involve 1920 pixels by 1080 pixels. If you have to write an essay explaining predictors and other wizardry, then you're not running things natively, plain and simple.

It is displaying 1920x1080!!
What goes on behind the scene is not the question in the lawsuit...

 

[MidgarBlowedUp]

Smart interlacing is still interlacing.

1080i is not 1080p.

Could be debated.

1080i is still 60 fields or 30fps @ 1920x1080
1080p for video is just 24fps with frames copied.

 

[Clockwork5]

What is wrong with leting this go to court anyway?

 

[ElFly]

That sounds less like scaling and more like deriving the data of a new pixel from other data points in exactly the same way it does for predictable pixels. Those neighbour pixels are simply sharing the interpolation data they used to achieve their current state with the neighbour pixel. The new pixel is still using multiple data points to determine it's own makeup, it just sometimes uses the data points form neighbouring pixels past selves rather than its past self. The final image isn't upscaled. The renderer always outputs a 1920x1080p frame buffer. The resulting image is mostly indistinguishable from a 'normal' 1080p image.

Yeah but remember that the prediction data is useless for the current frame. That data will be useful once this frame was already rendered and the frame passes to the queue of past frames.

If the prediction algorithm decides a pixel from previous frames cannot be predicted, it cannot use the prediction info of just the current frame, as it only has meaning when considering the next frame. I doubt they can use that info for anything useful in that case.

So when the prediction fails the best possible fallback is simple up scaling.

 

[MidgarBlowedUp]

What is wrong with leting this go to court anyway?

A. It's stupid.
B. It could open up a can of worms that could cause more harm than good for the gaming industry.
C. Ubisoft

Now, if it does force publishers to advertise the actual native resolution, whether it is upscaled or not, that could be good for gamers but could also just add confusion.

 

[Leatherface]

wow. this is a whole new level dumb.

 

[Clockwork5]

A. It's stupid.
B. It could open a can of worms that could cause more harm than good for the gaming industry.
C. Ubisoft

Now, if it does force publishers to advertise the actual native resolution, whether it is upscaled or not, that could be good for gamers but could also just add confusion.

A. Thanks, but it is not.
2. What can of worms? Providing a product as advertised? Defining industry standards?
C. Is Ubisoft suing Sony? I don't get the relation.

 

[ebullientprism]

343 are watching this very carefully.

 

[camac002]

Damn I didn't realise there was a backlash for this method, I thought it was a neat idea. They said 80% perfomance increase. I know there was a problem with the motion blur when running but a later patch removed most of that.

 

[Innolis]

Wait, I don't understand...the actual game outputs in 1080p right? its just the MP thats running at 720p isn't it?

I don't recall any publicity stating the game would be running at 1080p at all times, I'm also fairly certain the devs themselves said on multiple occasions to the specialized press that the game would run in 720p for multiplayer..

 

[Nafai1123]

Lawyers pay a ton for experts who will very easily be able to distinguish native 1080p rendering from the advanced interlacing methods of KZ multiplayer.

No, experts will not very easily be able to distinguish. Not even DF was able to figure out what was going on. The only reason people found out was because GG disclosed it themselves.

 

[EightBitNate]

No, experts will not very easily be able to distinguish. Not even DF was able to figure out what was going on. The only reason people found out was because GG disclosed it themselves.

Most players knew something was off just by looking at it.

Wait, I don't understand...the actual game outputs in 1080p right? its just the MP thats running at 720p isn't it?

I don't recall any publicity stating the game would be running at 1080p at all times, I'm also fairly certain the devs themselves said on multiple occasions to the specialized press that the game would run in 720p for multiplayer..

No... The issue is it uses a temporal resolution. It's 1080tr or whatever that means.

 

[Nafai1123]

Most players knew something was off just by looking at it.

Yes, most thought it was a different form of temporal AA.

 

[Clockwork5]

No, experts will not very easily be able to distinguish. Not even DF was able to figure out what was going on. The only reason people found out was because GG disclosed it themselves.

This disclosure will provide the expert witnesses the information required to identify the advanced interlacing used and distinguish the result from 1080p rendered on a native 1080p display. The issue is that this was not disclosed until questions were asked and millions of copies were sold.

 

[hodgy100]

No, experts will not very easily be able to distinguish. Not even DF was able to figure out what was going on. The only reason people found out was because GG disclosed it themselves.

DF aren't experts.

 

[Nafai1123]

This disclosure will provide the expert witnesses the information required to identify the advanced interlacing used and distinguish the result from 1080p rendered on a native 1080p display. The issue is that this was not disclosed until questions were asked and millions of copies were sold.

I disagree, since the definition of "native" does not have a concrete meaning. As others have mentioned other parts of the rendering pipeline can be non-native while still outputting a native 1080p image. Regardless of what you consider to be native 1080p, I don't think you can possibly prove it. You can't use 1:1 pixel mapping as an argument either.

 

[hesido]

Amazing, simply amazing. One of the best devs in terms of technical ability, transparency and support gets sued for using a really neat trick that slightly compromises image quality for a huge gain in frame-rate.
..........
The temporal re-projection technique Guerrilla used should be hailed as an achievement that hopefully other games can adopt. Guerrilla said this technique gives you a roughly 80% performance gain without the labor intensive task of downgrading assets for multiplayer.

This stupid ordeal could also mean devs being more stringent on what they share with the public. How the heck would this idiot know that was going on if they hadn't disclosed their technique in various platforms? Whould he be upset enough to sue them for the occasional vertical line artefacting?

You can see it in the rain here:

Oh, the rain.

What if the game ditched this temporal reprojection technique, but actually used quarter resolution alpha effects for the rain, explosions, various particle effects? Would it have been non native 1080p, then? In that image, a good deal of the image is free of artefacts and every such pixel is put to good use.

 

[hesido]

edit: Sorry for the double posts, thought my last reply was for a different thread.

 

[BADCOMPLEX]

Just tell me where to sign up to get my $3.74 check sent to me when its all over in about 5 years.

 

[TyrantII]

Proving "Native" 1080p for a game should be quite easy, it should involve 1920 pixels by 1080 pixels. If you have to write an essay explaining predictors and other wizardry, then you're not running things natively, plain and simple.

You have no idea how games work / render, do you.

You just tossed out 99.5% of games from being 1080P. And we are not talking about upscaling, but rendering pipelines.

Lot of people being very obtuse in this thread.

 

[test_account]

In a class action, the judge has the final say over attorney fees. So not only are the attorneys constrained by the ethical cannons pertaining to the amount of a fee they can charge, but the judge has to approve their fees and determine that they are reasonable based upon such factors as the amount of work conducted by the attorneys as well as the financial risk to the attorneys had they lost the litigation.

For example, in a recent class action which my firm settled, we received an award of 30% of the roughly $1m settlement. Each of the class members ended up getting a check for around $200, while we received $300k in fees, plus recouped our actual expenses of ~$50k. There was literally no work done by any of the class members with the exception of the class rep who had to sit for a deposition, and that person received a nice check for their time. We flew across the country multiple times for depositions, argued the case before the trial judge, briefed the case all the way up to the supreme court to protect the class certification, and did all of this on our own expense, both financially and with regards to our time.

So when you compare what an individual class member received, $200, to either the "entire pot" of $1m or the $300k in fees we took, then I can see how you can view that as disproportionate. However, in reality, the part of the settlement that went to the injured parties was ~$650k, which is not insubstantial at all. It's just that there were so many class members, this $650k got whittled down to $200 per class member.

MRE doing the grunt work for me. Can't really add anything to what has been said. Attorneys' fees will usually be about 25-30%.

I think the critical thing, that MRE said a lot nicer, is that 12(b)(6) motions succeeding are RARE, and with good reason. It may be hard for an outsider to understand, but the system is designed to allow someone to actually be heard. Imagine walking into court, filing your complaint, and then getting it thrown out without you ever getting a chance to acquire and present evidence.

Liberal pleading--it's at the core of the civil system. It's pretty rude for people to antagonize Jude Chen and a legal system they don't completely understand.

Nice work, MRE.

EDIT: I'd also add that a great majority of cases are dismissed due to procedural issues. Substantively, though, it won't really happen at this stage.

Thanks for the info =) Not being a native english speaker (although i think i'm pretty good at understanding english) probably isnt a positive thing either when it comes to english law terms. Although i guess i can be hard to understand even for native english speakers.

Yeah, its good that people can take up their case, generally speaking. It still sort of annoys me when bullshit cases like this happen, because i feel that its a case of simply for someone to get rich. But overall, its good to have a system where people can present their case and have a process around the case. I think most people argee with that, but speak more on this case in specific (as they think its a waste of the legal system's time).

 

[Armadilo]

Killzone: Shadow Fall's 1080p class action lawsuit dismissed-
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...dow-fall-1080p-class-action-lawsuit-dismissed

 

[Afrikan]

Killzone: Shadow Fall's 1080p class action lawsuit dismissed-
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...dow-fall-1080p-class-action-lawsuit-dismissed

dude you should've searched first.....

I thought they reversed this ruling again or something...lol.

 

[Armadilo]

dude you should've searched first.....

I thought they reversed this ruling again or something...lol.

The Article came out today

 

[Commanche Raisin Toast]

The Article came out today

A separate thread was already posted about it being dismissed. He means you should have searched first before bumping this one.

 

[fernoca]

The Article came out today

Think Afrikan meant that, it was posted as a separate thread earlier.

 

[Nugg]

The Article came out today

So did the thread: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1041145