The latest Bungie update covers a number of topics, including achievements and skulls, but the real revelation is that unlike most Xbox 360 games, Halo 3’s native resolution is 640p, as rumored:
Naturally it’s more complicated than that. In fact, you could argue we gave you 1280 pixels of vertical resolution, since Halo 3 uses not one, but two frame buffers – both of which render at 1152×640 pixels. The reason we chose this slightly unorthodox resolution and this very complex use of two buffers is simple enough to see – lighting. We wanted to preserve as much dynamic range as possible – so we use one for the high dynamic range and one for the low dynamic range values. Both are combined to create the finished on screen image.
This ability to display a full range of HDR, combined with our advanced lighting, material and postprocessing engine, gives our scenes, large and small, a compelling, convincing and ultimately “real” feeling, and at a steady and smooth frame rate, which in the end was far more important to us than the ability to display a few extra pixels. Making this decision simpler still is the fact that the 360 scales the “almost-720p” image effortlessly all the way up to 1080p if you so desire.
I won’t deny the sense of it, and I suppose if Bungie felt it was best, then that’s that. However, if anybody thinks that’s the end of complaints on this issue, they’re insane. The fact that Halo 3 is not native 720p means one simple thing: it is not meeting the point that Microsoft said was the “sweet spot” for next-generation gaming. It’s not fulfilling the one technical requirement that Microsoft said was the sine qua non of gaming this generation; the thing they pooh-poohed the Nintendo Wii for not having. More questions certainly will be coming: already most reviewers are saying Halo 3’s graphics are not as good as Gears of War’s or Bioshock’s; but the tradeoff between excruciating detail and wide open areas almost explains that. However, it’s harder to swallow the idea that Halo 3 needs to drop down a few pixels because it looks better than those other games, when Bioshock runs natively in 720p.
Personally, it doesn’t affect me much at all. I don’t have an HDTV; my projector’s native resolution is the not-so-common 576p EDTV standard, so whatever the Xbox puts out is being downscaled to that. In fact, it just makes me wish they’d put another display setting in for the 360, and have it put out whatever game code generates without any scaling. No matter what the update says, you are nearly always better off looking at something unscaled; upscaling invents information that doesn’t exist. So for me, Halo 3 will be 640p, upscaled to 720p, then downscaled to 576p. Cutting out one of those steps would be beneficial. Dropping down a setting won’t help, since there’s nothing between 720p and 480p to set it to.
Hey Bungie– if you’ve got the werewithal to tell Microsoft to go get stuffed on their “HD is the way to go” slogan, why not get them to put in a 640p output option in the dash, so we can see the game without upscaling?
