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Killzone: Shadow Fall Multiplayer Runs at 960x1080 vertically interlaced

R

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
The discussion was starting to take over the other thread about this article and since it's only one small point and we didn't know this before, it would be best to make another thread.

Richard Leadbetter said:
In the single-player mode, the game runs at full 1080p with an unlocked frame-rate (though a 30fps cap has been introduced as an option in a recent patch), but it's a different story altogether with multiplayer. Here Guerrilla Games has opted for a 960x1080 framebuffer, in pursuit of a 60fps refresh. Across a range of clips, we see the game handing in a 50fps average on multiplayer. It makes a palpable difference, but it's probably not the sort of boost you might expect from halving fill-rate.

Now, there are some mitigating factors here. Shadow Fall uses a horizontal interlace, with every other column of pixels generated using a temporal upscale - in effect, information from previously rendered frames is used to plug the gaps. The fact that few have actually noticed that any upscale at all is in place speaks to its quality, and we can almost certainly assume that this effect is not cheap from a computational perspective. However, at the same time it also confirms that a massive reduction in fill-rate isn't a guaranteed dead cert for hitting 60fps. Indeed, Shadow Fall multiplayer has a noticeably variable frame-rate - even though the fill-rate gain and the temporal upscale are likely to give back and take away fixed amounts of GPU time. Whatever is stopping Killzone from reaching 60fps isn't down to pixel fill-rate, and based on what we learned from our trip to Amsterdam last year, we're pretty confident it's not the CPU in this case either.
Click to expand...

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-in-theory-1080p30-or-720p60

I was very disappointed to learn this. I always thought that the added blur in MP was due to a poor implementation of FXAA but in reality it's not rendering too many more pixels than 720p. I have no idea why this wasn't mentioned in their previous article about the game's tech since he clearly talked to GG about it back then. For me this really kills my opinion of the tech on the multiplayer side of the game. Low res and can't hit 60fps regularly. They even claimed full res too

EDIT
Explanation of the interlacing/reprojection process. Seems to be fairly computationally heavy and produces better results than a traditional upscale.
ArchedThunder said:
Some people seem to be a little confused at the resolution thinking that it upscales from 960x1080 to 1920x1080 like you would upscale a sub 1080p game to 1080p, it doesn't. I made some images to help.

Okay, so let's say the red lines are what is being updated while the black lines are empty space.
Pxyb06u.png

Now this is what it looks like on frame 1
On frame 2 this is what it looks like
BotLCAH.png

And when frame 2 comes it it blurs the information from frame 1 to fill in the black spaces. This is why it looks fine when standing still but looks blurry and odd in motion. If we could take a single frame of KZSF's multiplayer with this effect turned off it would look something like this.
Zoom in to see the full effect.
mD6aH5a.png

The grey lines are dead space where nothing is being rendered on this frame.

So techinically the game is rendering at 1920x1080, just not on each frame.
Click to expand...
 
F

Fornaximus

Member
How is something like this just now coming to light with so much attention being given to resolution this generation?
 
T

TEH-CJ

Banned
Funny thing is, after going back to the campaign after 3 month break. I am starting to enjoy it. I think the patches released improved the game.

multiplayer was always blurry to me. Makes sense now.
 
V

VanWinkle

Member
That must be why the game looks way worse in multiplayer. I figured it was all because of the FXAA. Really disappointing, especially considering the game doesn't get close to 60fps most of the time.
 
S

Speedy Blue Dude

Banned
Funny how no one noticed this.

Just like they didn't notice Playstation 4 was running Ghost at 720p instead of 1080p during Previews.

Pixel Counters be sleeping on the job. ;)
 
SEGAvangelist

SEGAvangelist

Gold Member
That means the resolution is much closer to 720p than 900p. Couple that with the crazy FoV, and yeah... this explains why MP looks so bad in the game.
 
D

dLMN8R

Member
The fact that no one knew or cared about this shows just how little all this shit matters outside of petty console wars on either side. Always built up into the worst news ever when publicized, but if no one bothers to check, no one knows or cares at all.
 
S

Sophia

Member
However, at the same time it also confirms that a massive reduction in fill-rate isn't a guaranteed dead cert for hitting 60fps. Indeed, Shadow Fall multiplayer has a noticeably variable frame-rate
Click to expand...

Doesn't that just strike me as insanely obvious? I mean, it's multuplayer. Of course you're going to lose framerates when an excessive amount of stuff is happening on screen. Especially when the developer has limited control over what players do.

I'm not terribly bothered by this resolution news, but I am kind of disappointed it's not true 1080p. But hey, nobody noticed until, so kudos to GG for masking it so well.
 
D

Dictator93

Member
There was a lot of evidence to this given the strange dithering shown in multiplayer for the game.

Somehow, people missed its technical explanation till now.

Everyone knew the game looked dithered and low res though in multiplayer.... but just did not know what it exactly was.
 
V

VanWinkle

Member
It makes me mad that Sony/Guerilla weren't upfront about this.

Speedy Blue Dude said:
Funny how no one noticed this.

Just like they didn't notice Playstation 4 was running Ghost at 720p instead of 1080p during Previews.

Pixel Counters be sleeping on the job. ;)
Click to expand...

People had no reason to believe that the game was running at a lower resolution, but MANY noticed how much blurrier it is than single player. It's just that we assumed it was a horrible AA solution, but it turns out that's not the only reason.
 
H

Havel

Member
They may as well have kept 1920x1080 in MP, as even with that weird res the framerate is all over the place. They should have lowered some effects and kept it at a rock solid 30fps @1080p in MP.
 
L

Lima

Member
UnluckyKate said:
Crazy no one noticed and he didn't test the MP when it came out.
Click to expand...

What? Many people did. They just blamed it on a really bad implementation of FXAA.

The MP looks very sub 1080. It's the first thing I noticed when I started playing it especially after coming out of the SP.
 
P

pretty done

Member
strange that the game runs at that resolution and still can't hold the claimed "60fps most of the time" that GG said. 24 man warzone dips to sub30 at times, it's really bad.

at least now we know why the MP is such a blur
 
B

boredandlazy

Member
dLMN8R said:
The fact that no one knew or cared about this shows just how little all this shit matters outside of petty console wars on either side. Always built up into the worst news ever when publicized, but if no one bothers to check, no one knows or cares at all.
Click to expand...
No, in fact it's the complete opposite. People have always wondered why the multiplayer was a blurry mess compared to single player, and now we know exactly why.
 
L

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
This for some reason impresses me more, from the standpoint of their technical ingenuity. Temporal upscale was a serious WTF when I read about it here. No one seemed to have a clue that there was any upscale happening when the game was first analyzed.

Mihael Mello Keehl said:
Proves how meaningless resolution is until someone tells people what it is
Click to expand...
Everyone saw that IQ in multiplayer was worse, but no one could figure out why exactly. What they've done was a stroke of genius IMO.
 
F

Frayne Daddy

Banned
I thought many on here could easily tell the difference between 1080p and anything less.... Guess we are all blind and should go get our eyes checked.
 
O

op_ivy

Fallen Xbot (cannot continue gaining levels in this class)
what? but everyone told me 1080p makes such a difference and you can spot lower res from a mile away!
 
J

jett

D-Member
I'm impressed it went unnoticed for so long. People at GG must've been quite sheepish for months. :p
 
C

Cheesecakebobby

Banned
I wonder how many of the people who laughed at the suggestion that 900p isn't noticeably worse than 1080p on most TVs were happily playing this thinking they were enjoying full 1080p HD.

Oh well, 1080p didn't stop the single player from being mediocre anyway. First and so far only PS4 game I've sold.
 
V

VanWinkle

Member
Frayne Daddy said:
I thought many on here could easily tell the difference between 1080p and anything less.... Guess we are all blind and should go get our eyes checked.
Click to expand...

We all thought it was blurry, but were led to believe it was native 1080p, thus we thought it must have been the AA solution. Don't talk about something you obviously know nothing about, please.
 
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