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PS2 game scaled by PS3 to full 720p ? This is potentially interesting!

P

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Pud said:
[...]

PGR 3 = 600p upscaled to 720p, much like this game will likely be upscaled on the PS3 from 480p to 720p.
Click to expand...

To scale the game to 720p with PLAYSTATION 3 they still need to render the game in 640x720p and then let the HW scaler do the rest (unless their newest Firmware enables Vertical Scaling as well) which means that the game must detect that it is running on PLAYSTATION 3 and change the frame-buffers' size.

This brings us to an interesting consideration... how is this done unless they included a PLAYSTATION 3 optimized renderer that runs on RSX ?

PlayStation 2 emulation is currently done in HW and the frame-buffers (as well as the Z-buffer which we want to be at the same resolution as the back-buffer) reside in e-DRAM (4 MB).

/*Note: back-buffer is the VRAM buffer in which the application writes/renders to while the TV is displaying the active buffer (go search for Double Buffering) and during V-blank or when the application decides it is time (if you have V-sync turned off) you prepare it for display and switch it with the currently displayed buffer (which is called the front-buffer)*/

What we can say, according to what they have stated, is that a 1280x720p signal is coming out of PLAYSTATION 3 when playing God of War 2.

Unless PLAYSTATION 3's HW scaler is allowed to scale Vertically too in the near future, the only way to achieve what they are talking about would be to render the game in 640x720p resolution than ask the HW scaler to scale it horizontally to 1280x720p resolution (much like the 1080i/p problem has been "fixed").

If they simply could take a 480p frame and use RSX to scale it in software to 720p it would be no different than letting the HDTV scale it, unless your TV has a not so good scaler (which might be the case as they are not that cheap to make apparently).

Compared to 640x480 the 640x720p resolution brings us about 1.5x more pixels which would increase VRAM usage quite a bit if you decide to simply render internally at that resolution.

One idea could be to render regular 480p with 2xAA (I think they using AA already) and on PLAYSTATION 3 to down-sample to 640x720 (using 4xAA would increase too much back-buffer and z-buffer sizes even if they used 512x512 as base resolution) instead of down-sampling to 640x480.

640x720 is not a 4:3 aspect ratio, but more of a 8:9 one (the HW scaler in PLAYSTATION 3 would scale the picture horizontally back to 16:9 native), and if you were rendering wide-screen in 640x480p (tall rectangular pixels instead of square pixels), so once you detect PLAYSTATION 3 mode you might also want to pay attention to the aspect ratio setting in your World to Camera space transform.

Another option,and probably a better one, would be the following one. They could decide to turn AA off and simply change (compared to 480p wide-screen mode) the resolution of back-buffer and Z-buffer to 640x720 and leave the aspect ratio to 16:9.

As we have seen 640x720 has roughly 1.5x the pixels compared to 640x480 and rendering 1.5x more pixels would still take less VRAM space (which is the important metric to compare 2xAA and render at 640x720 natively without AA, since the GS does not do MSAA, its AA method is good old Super Sampling AA [you basically render at a higher resolution and then downsize it intelligently to the original target resolution]) compared to 2xAA.

You would have a bigger front-buffer compared to plain 480p, but you would be saving some space for it by using only 1.5x bigger back-buffer and Z-buffer compared to 2x bigger back-buffer and Z-buffer as you would have with 2xAA turned on.
 
A

Agent Icebeezy

Welcome beautful toddler, Madison Elizabeth, to the horde!
DieH@rd said:
Nice post.

But consider posting it on some other forum. Here you can find only fanboy rantingz... :)
Click to expand...

Hope to ****ing goodness that this March update opens up the scaler. Nice post Pana
 
6

65536

Banned
Interesting, but PGR3 is 1024x600 I believe (they make it sound like it's 640x600 or something) and the difference is pretty obvious when you compare it to another 360 game that is running in 720p natively. (not to mention that the HUD was mangled by the scaling)

Any kind of increase in quality wouldn't be a bad thing of course, though I'm happy enough with how PS2 games look now anyway.

Unless things have changed in GoW2 though, it's probably not using any AA. The original God of War didn't use any, but it did have an optional "soften" filter when you were running in interlaced, which basically blurred the hell out of everything which I guess could be confused with AA? (though it was more like smearing vaseline all over your TV)
 
K

kaching

"GAF's biggest wanker"
Panajev2001a said:
This brings us to an interesting consideration... how is this done unless they included a PLAYSTATION 3 optimized renderer that runs on RSX ?
Click to expand...
Wouldn't that be the most likely candidate, since they've been saying for a few months now that this would be optimized for HDTVs?
 
Haunted

Haunted

Member
*enters thread*

*sees Evilore waving the banstick*

*leaves thread*



Actually, those are some interesting ideas to improve IQ, but I'm not technically proficient enough to judge how attractive (in terms of effort -> result) these would be for Sony.
 
L

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
- I doubt GoW2 runs with 2x supersampled AA (GoW1 certainly didn't do this)

- Other than rendering natively on PS3 somehow (using a different PS3 exe file) I don't see how they could really do what they claim to be doing - or at least do it properly without any upscaling. I doubt they wrote a software emulator for PS2 just for this game.

- Cory mentioned they wanted to use motion sensing functions of Sixaxis if the game detects you were playing the game on PS3. They eventually dropped it due to time constraints, but just the fact that this was apparently possible hints to a tighter connection between PS2 and PS3 than what I thought was possible.

theBishop said:
A few PS2 games were able to scale to HD resolution (GT4), how do you know the PS2 hardware isn't handling it?
Click to expand...
They way GT4 was doing it would not work in GoW2 as it would require *locked* 60FPS, which I doubt GoW2 has, and it also wasn't 720p but 1080i.
 
B

Beer Monkey

Member
andrewfee said:
Interesting, but PGR3 is 1024x600 I believe (they make it sound like it's 640x600 or something) and the difference is pretty obvious when you compare it to another 360 game that is running in 720p natively.
Click to expand...

IMO PGR3 and CoD3 (the two games I've seen that use 1024x600 framebuffers) look better than many competing 720p 360 games.

andrewfee said:
(not to mention that the HUD was mangled by the scaling)
Click to expand...

How? They compensated for the scaling in advance to ensure that the proper aspect ratio was generated for the HUD elements in the final output. Round gauges are displayed slightly ovular in the original buffer so that they come out perfectly round post-scaling, and so on. Looks fine to me, in what way do you find it mangled?
 
S

segasonic

Member
what.gif
 
M

marwan

Banned
when the PS3 specs were announced, i remember reading that the PS3 would be capable of running all PS1/2 games in HD.....but then none of this happened. :(
 
P

plagiarize

Banned
Hitler Stole My Potato said:
Alright. I'll bite. What's the deal with typing out PLAYSTATION 3 and in all caps?
Click to expand...
it's how sony request that everyone refer to it.

panjeeva pretty much always adheers to how a given company requests their name be written, so we get all caps playstation 3.
 
H

hamdammage

Member
PS2 game using AA? Hilarious! Remember, you only have 4 MB for framebuffers AND texture swap space. The best you can do us use the dual read circuits to reduce flicker and I wouldn't call it AA.
 
Xdrive05

Xdrive05

Member
I was thinking about this the other day. It seems like the remaining PS2 games to be released could/should have something built into the code that the PS3 can recognize when emulating it, that lets everything run at a high res. Of course, GoW2 is the prime example.

I don't know why Sony doesn't do this. Hell, it may even come in the form of a firmware update (or HD download) for PS3 that tells it how to do the emulation upscaling properly for each game.
 
L

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
hamdammage said:
PS2 game using AA? Hilarious!
Click to expand...
I'm pretty sure there are few PS2 games that use genuine AA, but GoW isn't one of them. GoW only had the interlace flicker fixed option, much like Silent Hill 3 or Tekken 5 for example.

As for examples of real AA on PS2 games, I'm pretty sure Baldur's Gate and Champions of Norrath had it, and I'm also relatively sure Ico had some horizontal AA.
 
F

Fafalada

Fafracer forever
Bishop said:
A few PS2 games were able to scale to HD resolution (GT4), how do you know the PS2 hardware isn't handling it?
Click to expand...
GT4 was only scaled horizontally - vertically it's 'true' 1080i. (which is really just 30 or so extra pixels over 480P but anyway).

At any rate - upscaling (to 720/1080) will happen to every PS2 game running on a fixed pixel display, so I fail to see why they'd brag about with that.

Pana said:
how is this done unless they included a PLAYSTATION 3 optimized renderer that runs on RSX ?
Click to expand...
While that's not a complete stretch of imagination (they have PC renderers running for GoW, I doubt it would be exceptionally hard to convert it to PS3 1:1), I kinda doubt Sony would allow any semblance of PS3 executable on a DVD.

hamdammage said:
PS2 game using AA? Hilarious!
Click to expand...
And yet they existed.
 
Xdrive05

Xdrive05

Member
Marconelly said:
I'm pretty sure there are few PS2 games that use genuine AA, but GoW isn't one of them. GoW only had the interlace flicker fixed option, much like Silent Hill 3 or Tekken 5 for example.

As for examples of real AA on PS2 games, I'm pretty sure Baldur's Gate and Champions of Norrath had it, and I'm also relatively sure Ico had some horizontal AA.
Click to expand...

That's the only one I can think of off the top of my head, but it was really, really good in that game. Very crisp and sharp. Also, the graphics were very good for the PS2 and even 60fps. Maybe the pseudo top-down perspective is what let them save enough cycles to implement it at that framerate.
 
H

hamdammage

Member
That's the only one I can think of off the top of my head, but it was really, really good in that game. Very crisp and sharp. Also, the graphics were very good for the PS2 and even 60fps. Maybe the pseudo top-down perspective is what let them save enough cycles to implement it at that framerate.
Click to expand...

Yeah, now I remember. That was one of the most impressiving looking PS2 games around. Gotta love the 60 fps. I guess since the game ran in field mode, it had the EDRAM to do AA.
 
P

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
kaching said:
Wouldn't that be the most likely candidate, since they've been saying for a few months now that this would be optimized for HDTVs?
Click to expand...

I thought the solution of rendering in 640x720 with no AA would be even easier :p.
 
D

Deepblue

Banned
I have to say, going back and playing Halo 2/Halo makes me appreciate the fact that they are rendered at HD and MSAA'd. I certainly hope GoW2 gets the same treatment. :)
 
P

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Fafalada said:
GT4 was only scaled horizontally - vertically it's 'true' 1080i. (which is really just 30 or so extra pixels over 480P but anyway).

At any rate - upscaling (to 720/1080) will happen to every PS2 game running on a fixed pixel display, so I fail to see why they'd brag about with that.
Click to expand...

Do you think they have space in VRAM to render at 640*720 ?

Front (16 bits) = 0.88 MB

Back (16 bits) = 0.88 MB

Z+Stencil (32 bits) = 1.76 MB

That would be about 3.52 MB yikes...

Do you think that with 0.48 MB for texture buffers and off-screen rendering space they can get away with it ?

(I do not see much banding though so the back-buffer should be more than 16 bits... can we sacrifice more Z-buffer space [I do not remember if the GS has a 16 bits Z-buffer format or if they would need badly destination alpha besides use it for stencil information, but I figuratively packed those 8 bits with the 24 bits of the Z-buffer :p])

That would be the only "true" way of getting "true" 720p sent to the TV... rendering in 480p and then simply magnify with the GS the back-buffer into a 640x720 buffer would seem really cheap although it would be good for those TV's with crappy scalers.
 
L

Leidenfrost

Member
Fafalada said:
While that's not a complete stretch of imagination (they have PC renderers running for GoW, I doubt it would be exceptionally hard to convert it to PS3 1:1), I kinda doubt Sony would allow any semblance of PS3 executable on a DVD.
Click to expand...


How about a downloadable "PS2 Data" patch on the online store similar to the FFXI one?
 
K

kaching

"GAF's biggest wanker"
Panajev2001a said:
I thought the solution of rendering in 640x720 with no AA would be even easier :p.
Click to expand...
If you say so ;) But, given recent interviews inidcating they were thinking about going as far as implementing sixaxis functionality, it seems like they might have been thinking of doing something a little more native overall.
 
L

Leidenfrost

Member
kaching said:
If you say so ;) But, given recent interviews inidcating they were thinking about going as far as implementing sixaxis functionality, it seems like they might have been thinking of doing something a little more native overall.
Click to expand...

It certainly is a clue that Barlog & co. were thinking beyond the little ridged monolith when they said that. But who knows how SIXAXIS control data is passed along to the EE+GS in the PS3. Is it possible that it essentially shows up just like any other exotic PS2 peripheral. Or can somebody confirm that control data is simply 'stripped' to the Dual Shock 2 subset somewhere between the Bluetooth receiver and the EE+GS?

It's possible that current PS2 games could have been programmed to take advantage of SIXAXIS without relying on any systemic differences in the BC setup than we currently have in firmware update 1.5.
 
L

Lord Error

Insane For Sony
Fafalada said:
While that's not a complete stretch of imagination (they have PC renderers running for GoW, I doubt it would be exceptionally hard to convert it to PS3 1:1), I kinda doubt Sony would allow any semblance of PS3 executable on a DVD.
Click to expand...
Why do you think not? It' not like you can't just put a PS3 game in any PC BD drive and read/cop the executable file from it?
 
S

soul creator

Member
plagiarize said:
it's how sony request that everyone refer to it.

panjeeva pretty much always adheers to how a given company requests their name be written, so we get all caps playstation 3.
Click to expand...

isn't he a developer also? I know Sony generally requires certain naming conventions when you submit a game for approval...maybe he just wants to stay consistent with what he does when he's working on a real project :p
 
A

Amir0x

Banned
Love your posts, Panajev2001a, sometimes though they go so far over my head with the technical stuff that I wish you could provide a "Panajev2001a post for dummies" :(
 
6

65536

Banned
Fafalada said:
GT4 was only scaled horizontally - vertically it's 'true' 1080i. (which is really just 30 or so extra pixels over 480P but anyway).
Click to expand...
1080i is still 1080 lines of resolution, but it's sent in two halves and reconstructed at the display. GT4 was only running at half resolution, if I remember correctly.

This was a big issue with older/cheaper HDTVs; they would effectively treat a 1080i signal as a 540p one, throwing away half the resolution and having it look worse than 720p. (but having the screen update at 60Hz instead of 30Hz)
 
D

Dali

Member
Hitler Stole My Potato said:
Alright. I'll bite. What's the deal with typing out PLAYSTATION 3 and in all caps?
Click to expand...

That's the way Sony copyrighted it or trademarked it, hence that is the real way it is supposed to be written. I know... I know...
 
B

Beatbox

alien from planet Highscore
I just hope they scale PS2 games to share the same dimensions/overscan as PS3 games. I had my RPHDTV calibrated for PS2's overscan - but now that it's calibrated for PS3 I can't play PS2 games without the fear of burning in the black bars on both sides (please don't tell me you can't get burn in from black bars because I already have and have seen it happen plenty of times).
 
S

Suikoguy

I whinny my fervor lowly, for his length is not as great as those of the Hylian war stallions
Beatbox said:
I just hope they scale PS2 games to share the same dimensions/overscan as PS3 games. I had my RPHDTV calibrated for PS2's overscan - but now that it's calibrated for PS3 I can't play PS2 games without the fear of burning in the black bars on both sides (please don't tell me you can't get burn in from black bars because I already have and have seen it happen plenty of times).
Click to expand...

Oh, you can, but it depends on the type of TV you have.
But the term of what you get is actually not burn in, but technically burnout since your using the center and not the black bars, creating an inverse burn-in on the unused portions of the display.

This is why some tv's have grey bars instead of black
 
F

Fafalada

Fafracer forever
Panajev said:
That would be about 3.52 MB yikes...
Do you think that with 0.48 MB for texture buffers and off-screen rendering space they can get away with it ?
Click to expand...
Z can safely be 16 - I would worry more about 16bit backbuffer. But yea, half a meg doesn't leave you much to work with for offscreen targets, so I very much doubt this.

Marconelly said:
Why do you think not? It' not like you can't just put a PS3 game in any PC BD drive and read/cop the executable file from it?
Click to expand...
I don't know for sure, but generally Sony enforced very strict policies with regards to disc content - any executables not-native to the target platform were forbidden. And they were also pretty adamant of PS3 games being BRD only :p - but who knows, times change.

andrewfee said:
GT4 was only running at half resolution, if I remember correctly.
Click to expand...
It was rendering different half of 1080 each frame - exactly as the TV expects to receive it (the same way many early PS2 games rendered 480 in fields also). It requires perfect 60hz to work - so in case of GT, they got 1080i essentially for "free".
 
T

teiresias

Member
Screw the scaler, I'd much rather whatever software emulation solution they're working on natively render the games in a higher resolution like any decent PC emulator would do.

As it is right now I stick any PS2 game I want to play into the PS3 and go through the process of enabling and disabling the 480p support in the PS3 Display Options and/or enabling and disabling the Progressive Scan option (if it's present in the game) to try and decide if I prefer the game's native progressive scan signal, the PS3's 480p upscaled output, or the result of feeding the projector 480i out of the PS3.

Most of the time I find the AE900 projector's scaler mutes the colors too much and makes the image to dark and soft for my tastes if I feed it 480i out of the PS3 (ie. disable 480p in the display options), so I tend to leave 480p enabled and let the PS3 scale it.

Still, I find I have different preferences for some games and would much rather have a definitive BEST solution at this point, which I'd think would be an emulator that did native higher resolution rendering rather than scaling.
 
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