So I hooked up the ps3 to the CRT...

[baphomet_irl]

yes the better quality of CRTs is what made me hold out so long before buying my HDTV (LCD) - I was looking into getting a CRT based HDTV - but there are pretty much none easily available in Europe - I think there is a good 42" one you can get in America though

[lordofduct]

Far more detail out of the same exact image.

For what gain? Outside of draw distance, what good is higher resolution?

So hey, higher resolution IS A GOOD THING. It's a low cost increase in image quality!

It's a good thing only if it doesn't come at the expense of something else. If it was a "free" addon, then fine. If higher resolution meant sacrificing some other better effect, then it has hindered the game. Particularly so if draw distance isn't an issue (say: RPGs, fighting games, etc where you don't care about things in the far distance).

To surmise: I'm not against extra resolution full stop. I'm against people thinking that extra resolution is a preferred goal, and ignoring the dozens of other features in game engines that have been lagging for the last decade, at the expense of bumping resolution.

What cost? What do you lose? Computers offer a lot of resolutions as well, as you even bring up and you can select which one you want. Not having high-res in consoles just limits you more then PC. I can change the resolution of my 360 easy, so why not put the high resolution settings in???

You say it costs something, but you don't say what it costs. You say you gain draw distance, you gain more then that. You get increased detail and smoothness.

Nevermind, after reading this paragraph:

To convince yourself of this beyond any doubt, try the following. Get hold of Valve's Half-Life and Half-Life 2 games, install them on your PC, and start messing around with the video settings. You will quickly realize that no matter how high you jack up Half-Life's resolution -- try 1600x1200, for example -- it will never look anywhere near as good as Half-Life 2 running at even the lowest possible setting. The reason for this is that the Source engine of HL2 supports many more, and much more advanced, effects than that of the original game.

Your statements bewilder me. Nah shit Half-Life will never look better then HL2. There's how many years of development between both games? The art drawn for each is completely different, no matter how much gloss you put on a model, the model is the base of how good it can look.

[Niode]

To convince yourself of this beyond any doubt, try the following. Get hold of Valve's Half-Life and Half-Life 2 games, install them on your PC, and start messing around with the video settings. You will quickly realize that no matter how high you jack up Half-Life's resolution -- try 1600x1200, for example -- it will never look anywhere near as good as Half-Life 2 running at even the lowest possible setting. The reason for this is that the Source engine of HL2 supports many more, and much more advanced, effects than that of the original game.

I almost died when I read this!

Doom 3 looks tonnes better than Doom 1 even if you bump the resolution on Doom 1 to 1600x1200!!

Holy crap. Really? I am AMAZED.


The main benefits of HDTVs are that they are lower in power consumption than CRTs. They cost less per inch to buy than CRTs. These two facts alone are more than enough for any mainstream consumer to want to upgrade their ageing CRT sets. Add in the bonus that they take up less space and are easily wall mountable means that all the minimalists out there who want to pretend their TV is a fish tank or a fancy mirror can do so without drawing attention away from their otherwise pristine décor. Fact of the matter is; people (read: wives) don't want big fat ugly CRTs creating an eyesore of themselves in the corner of their room.

[elvis]

What cost? What do you lose?

The loss is developers not trying to improve the core graphics engine, but rather just bumping the res on an old engine to increase its lifespan a bit. It's no secret that technology is held back the most by commercial sales (and I don't blame them - if you're bringing out a new graphics engine every 6 months, you're not going to be getting the most money out of your old one). But with that said, the industry has gone to the other extreme of late, and are flogging their virtual dead horses, pimping off ancient graphics engines at top dollar with nothing but a resolution bump.

Your statements bewilder me

You seem to be taking the point to its illogical extreme. Nobody is saying we should run everything at 480p. All that's being said is that resolution isn't everything, and given the choice, extra effort should be put towards better graphics engines and effects instead.

Please don't be obtuse about this, and understand that there is some grey between the black and white alternatives you are suggesting.

Perhaps look in the middle somewhere instead of extreme arguments: would you rather cutting edge visual effects on a game engine that gives you some of the most realistic features around at 720p, or would you rather a 2 year old graphics engine with higher poly count and the res bumped to 1080p? Ignore the string "480p", because you seem to be focussing on that instead of the real message.

[lordofduct]

no, nothing about the middle... that paragraph alone is bewildering. You compare two games with several years of development between them. It proves NOTHING.

Increasing resolution does not "flog the horse". It's a quick addition and they still continue on working on other stuff. Especially when the big house engines out there are developed first on PC where resolution is already up at 1080p if not higher.

I get your point that other technologies can make a game look better. My point is your argument and proofs for it are flawed and ridiculous. An increased resolution on the home console front just catches home consoles up to the PC genre. They can still go hard on in all the other aspects.

[marurun]

Lemme try and rephrase some of the points to match what I'm getting out of this discussion (and happen to at least partially agree with)...

Higher resolution alone simply isn't enough. In order for higher resolution to be truly worthwhile, the level of texture and geometry detail needs to be much higher as well. If you upscale an older game like Quake or Half-Life it'll look better, but still crappy, because the engines don't support high levels of detail. Yeah, you get greater draw depth and you can see tiny enemies further away, but that's only if the level of detail is otherwise equal and only the resolution is different.

Modern consoles are powerful enough to push higher resolutions with good detail, but there's a trade-off. Pushing more pixels from higher resolution output reduces the geometry and shader detail you can display. So with a modern console the trade-off is between effects/geometry/texture detail and resolution, because the graphics unit can only handle so much total load.

Let's take a modern game like Doom 3. Doom 3 looks very good even at low resolution thanks to all the shadow and lighting effects and shaders. In fact, if your PC can only support higher resolutions by turning the effects way down Doom 3 might actually look a lot better at a lower resolution with the extra effects.

With the powerful graphics subsystems in modern consoles, what kind of graphical effects and trickery are we compromising for those high-def images? Yes, some people, particularly competitive gamers, will prefer long draw distances and the finer detail granted by higher res images, but many games are probably better suited to utilizing that graphics power elsewhere, like more polys, more effects, and better shaders, though the argument could be made that many types of games don't even need the level of graphical horsepower available to them at all with modern consoles.

I believe part of the core of this argument is that the jump from 480i (what we've watched on standard definition TVs for ages) to even 720p is actually quite huge, and the level of graphics detail that can ultimately be rendered by even modern consoles can appear a little lacking at these higher resolutions. I think it'll be at least one more console generation of hardware before geometry and shader rendering catches up with the level of change we've seen in output resolutions in recent years.

This is not to say that current games don't look nice, or that they're not nicer looking than previous games. It's just to say that these higher resolutions require a lot more work to properly exploit and we're just not able with this current generation to really properly reap the benefits of high-def resolutions. It's a necessary step, but it just isn't enough. More horsepower is necessary. And frankly, I think with the horsepower available games could actually look better at 480p due to greater rendering power than they do at 720p or 1080p. You'd lose a little depth and geometry line detail in exchange for better geometry rendering and a greater LOD with effects and textures.

[Spoiler Duck]

To clarify: I called HD res a tool. Not a requirement. Very few games run at 1080p (and not a lot are actually hitting 720p) for reasons of improved effects and higher polygon counts. Art direction always trumps raw numbers. Hence I accept the facility without question, while not expecting developers to use it to sacrifice overall quality.

A couple of things:
Improved res might not help the look of a game, but it does wonders for playability. Between two competing players of similar skill, if one plays at 1080p and the other at 480p, the higher resolution is an undeniable advantage.

2D games look freakin' gorgeous at 1080p. PixelJunk Eden and Geometry Wars are among the best arguments for the HD age.