360 Scaleing

I was wondering, When you play on lower resolutions on ur pc most likely you turn up some other features (AA,AF textures etc. But does the 360 do this also? When u play on an HD screen does it tune the game to a specific setting thats lower than when you play on a 480 screen?

 

Not as far as I know, because the console always renders games at the same resolution internally (720p, I believe), and simply upscales the result when necessary.

And yes, the PS3 does the same. It's just simpler that way.

 

Its another reason why consoles can have great games with good graphics for years. They are only running at 1280x720 whereas many PCs have 1280x1024 or 1680x1050 which is 40-70% more pixels

 

Agreed, those consoles are no Next Gen. Hell we have had Next Gen for years, yes that is right it's called PC Gaming with high resolutions, high AA and AF that is Next Gen, not this crap. Oh before I get flamed I do own a 360 myself

 

I have a 360 and a pc and the pc does look better on my hdtv.

 

Anyone know why the PS3 doesnt have AA?

 

It can do AA, if the developers choose to enable it.

But then they lose performance that could be spent on other features.

 

The specs for game developers for the 360 call for at least 2x AA while the PS3 lets the developers do what they think is best(gotta give them something when few developers want to develop for the PS3 as it is).

You have to consider that Most HDTVs have upscaler chips. Games can be rendered in 480p or 720p and it'll look pretty good on most HDTVs because of this chipset. The 360 was planned for 720p and most TVs until recently(1080p) aimed to have the best picture at 720p. IRC the 360 has a video card that was designed to pretty much give 2x AA with next to no performance hit, anything higher would cost performance. IRC again the 360 wanted 4AF for most games but wasn't part of the rules for developers.

 

In this regard the PS3 has better AF than the xbox 360. Sharper textures on the PS3 though no AA.

 

Speaking of textures, I notice that the 360 has some "texture lag" where the PS3 doesn't seem to show it. When I was playing GOW I noticed some sections where it would take a split second to a second to load a texture like Halo 2 on the Xbox.

 

The 360 has the advantage of a GPU that's developed specifically for this though.
The 360 can do antialiasing almost at no cost, because of its on-chip framebuffer.
On the PS3, like on PC, it costs a noticeable amount of performance.

And what the hell is texture lag?
(Sounds like a software issue rather than hardware though. In other words, GOW might sometimes be too slow in loading new textures, but that has nothing to do with the hardware, or the console in general)

 

texture lag happens to lower the loading times. Its better for the gameplay to load textures on the fly rather than haveing 20+ loading screens per lvl.

 

I'm glad I'm not the only one to notice it. I first noticed it on Halo 2, I was a little disappointed that it was still there in the 360. It's not so bad.

 

Some games on the 360 do 4 x AA when you drop them down to a 480P resolution (Saints row is a notable example - provided you install the patch).

I'm not too sure which ones do or don't, seems to be something the developer decides to implement.

 

I notice it on GOW during online play, there are no textures at first but once you start running towards the goals the textures fill in.

I thought my 360 was freaking out!

 

They really should have put more RAM in the 360. That would help ease the texture lag and just prefetch more. I think the elimination of "texture lag" has something to do with the PS3's long load times. I was playing resistance with my friend and it annoyed me that we had to go through so many load screens and each one took a while.