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[Gusy]

Guys, I know this is an old subject but I'm still not sure about a few things.

I have a decent 1080P panel (Samsung UN46D7000) and from what I've noticed, it does a solid job upscaling 720P (or lower res) signals. I also have the impression that my TV should handle upscaling better than my PS3 does. For this reason I usually leave all resolutions options ticked on my PS3 settings and let the devs decide to upscale on PS3 or send the 720 signal and let the TV do the job.

But there are a few weird cases where the game decides to upscale directly on PS3 and the results are worse. A few examples: Bioshock, Rainbow Six Vegas. To make matters even more confusing, there are a few games that seem to improve if you let the PS3 do the scaling job. Example: COD4. To allow this to happen I have to untick all resolution options in settings except 1080P so the scaling happens on the PS3 (Which I find ridiculous).

Lastly, I also wonder if I let my TV do the scaling could add some input lag given the extra work the TV is doing. It doesn't seem noticeable right now, but I try to avoid any lag like the plague.

What's the consensus about this issue? Is there a list of PS3 games that are known to look better if you force the scaling on the PS3? I really wouldn't want to fiddle with all my PS3 catalogue to find out what works better on a case by case basis. Thanks in advance GAF

 

[YuriLowell]

I don't think the PS3 upscales anything.
At least my OG phat model did not.

I only had a 1080i tv at the time and games that didn't support that resolution would run at 720p.

 

[Gusy]

I don't think the PS3 upscales anything.
At least my OG phat model did not.

I only had a 1080i tv at the time and games that didn't support that resolution would run at 720p.

There are games that support PS3 scaling. It's usually mentioned in the back of the box. But sometimes you have to untick all resolutions options except 1080P to enable it.

 

[Beer Monkey]

Scaling on the PS3 is a mess on any TV that doesn't support 720 and display it well.

 

[Gusy]

Scaling on the PS3 is a mess on any TV that doesn't support 720 and display it well.

What about for modern 1080P panels? Are there notable exceptions? (games that scale well directly from PS3)

 

[Beer Monkey]

What about for modern 1080P panels? Are there notable exceptions? (games that scale well directly from PS3)

I'd imagine most current 1080p panels do a good job of upscaling 720p.

Back when the PS3 came out, lots of HDTVs (especially Sony HDTVs) only accepted 480i, 480p, and 1080i. I'm talking CRT HDTVs and the ubiquitous rear-projection HDTVs that the Home Theater crowd had invested deeply in.

It hadn't been an issue up to that point, because all the cable and satellite settop boxes could output 1080i regardless of the resolution of the content. The Xbox 360 also happily scaled everything, including 720p, to 1080i.

When the PS3 came out, lots of the games were coded to output 720p only. This meant we had to play games in 480p; even games that we could play in 1080i mode on the 360.

I switched from high-def rear projection to high-def plasma just because of the PS3. Cost me a few grand.

 

[family_guy]

Guys, I know this is an old subject but I'm still not sure about a few things.

I have a decent 1080P panel (Samsung UN46D7000) and from what I've noticed, it does a solid job upscaling 720P (or lower res) signals. I also have the impression that my TV should handle upscaling better than my PS3 does. For this reason I usually leave all resolutions options ticked on my PS3 settings and let the devs decide to upscale on PS3 or send the 720 signal and let the TV do the job.

But there are a few weird cases where the game decides to upscale directly on PS3 and the results are worse. A few examples: Bioshock, Rainbow Six Vegas. To make matters even more confusing, there are a few games that seem to improve if you let the PS3 do the scaling job. Example: COD4. To allow this to happen I have to untick all resolution options in settings except 1080P so the scaling happens on the PS3 (Which I find ridiculous).

Lastly, I also wonder if I let my TV do the scaling could add some input lag given the extra work the TV is doing. It doesn't seem noticeable right now, but I try to avoid any lag like the plague.

What's the consensus about this issue? Is there a list of PS3 games that are known to look better if you force the scaling on the PS3? I really wouldn't want to fiddle with all my PS3 catalogue to find out what works better on a case by case basis. Thanks in advance GAF

I think this is usually the case for games that aren't native 720p which COD falls into this category.

 

[Beer Monkey]

There's an insane amount of lag on those 7000 sets at least in some circumstances.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8kcejpylso

 

[Darkangel]

Unlike the 360, the PS3 doesn't have a dedicated video scaling chip.

It's up to the individual developers to code in software scaling, otherwise you will just get the game's native resolution as output. I think MGS4 has proper 1080p up-scaling if you want an example to test out. If you want all your games to look completely consistent then you could disable 1080p in the PS3 settings and force everything to use the TV scaler. A lot of TV scalers create input lag though so this wouldn't be ideal.

It was a weird oversight by Sony. The 360's scaler was actually really good and made 720p content look a lot nicer on modern sets.

 

[Noobcraft]

You can force the console to display only in 1080p by deselecting 720p and 1080i as output options, but it makes almost everything look really blurry and terrible. The Uncharted games turn into a blurry mess from personal experience.

 

[Gusy]

Unlike the 360, the PS3 doesn't have a dedicated video scaling chip.

It's up to the individual developers to code in software scaling, otherwise you will just get the game's native resolution as output. I think MGS4 has proper 1080p up-scaling if you want an example to test out. If you want all your games to look completely consistent then you could disable 1080p in the PS3 settings and force everything to use the TV scaler. A lot of TV scalers create input lag though so this wouldn't be ideal.

It was a weird oversight by Sony. The 360's scaler was actually really good and made 720p content look a lot nicer on modern sets.

Hmm, makes sense. I haven't tried MGS4 upscaled by software. Gonna give it a shot. I remember being underwhelmed with the IQ when I first played it years ago.

On the other hand, most games feed a 720P signal that the TV has to upscale anyways, even when 1080P is turned on on the PS3. I use my tv in game mode and so far haven't had any issues. ( The Crysis YouTube video is not representative of the UN7000 models performance as far as I can tell.)

 

[KojiKnight]

Guys, I know this is an old subject but I'm still not sure about a few things.

I have a decent 1080P panel (Samsung UN46D7000) and from what I've noticed, it does a solid job upscaling 720P (or lower res) signals. I also have the impression that my TV should handle upscaling better than my PS3 does. For this reason I usually leave all resolutions options ticked on my PS3 settings and let the devs decide to upscale on PS3 or send the 720 signal and let the TV do the job.

That is not how this works... Your PS3 is automatically going to choose the highest available option and scaling to that, it's not selecting the closest match to what the game is rendering natively.

 

[Mike Golf]

I always left the PS3 set to 1080p, all boxes checked up to of course, and allowed any game with an internal upscale solution to do so. By most accounts I recommend this for the majority of users since typically only higher end TVs in a set range of models have decent scalers. I used to play around with allowing the TV to upscale rather than the PS3/developers own scaling algorithm but came to the conclusion that the difference isn't that large, if there was any at all, and since I don't want to deal with a 720p UI or constantly switching to 1080p for video/streaming/blu-ray it was just easier to leave it.

EDIT:

That is not how this works... Your PS3 is automatically going to choose the highest available option and scaling to that, it's not selecting the closest match to what the game is rendering natively.

But that's not what he said, if you leave all boxes ticked up to 1080p each game will run at what the developers set it to which was usually either native 720p, sub-720p scaled up to 720p, or one of those two then upscaled to 1080p (or sometimes 1080i in a few games if your set only went up to 1080i rather than 1080p). Of course there was the odd higher than 720p but less than 1080, or actual native 1080p games but the same principal applies regardless.

 

[Mike Golf]

Double Post, see above edit.

 

[nOoblet16]

PS3 hardware can only do horizontal scaling, this is why you had games that ran at 960*1080 on PS3. In order to do proper scaling games had to use a software upscaler.

 

[Mike Golf]

PS3 hardware can only do horizontal scaling, this is why you had games that ran at 960*1080 on PS3. In order to do proper scaling games had to use a software upscaler.

Right, which if the memory of my library serves correctly many games on the PS3 output the native resolution of the game if 720p or sub-720p upscaled to 720p due to developers not wanting to use the horizontal only scaler and not wanting to write their own. The only game I can think of off the top of my head that had its own internal scaler was MGS4, and maybe Ninja Gaiden Sigma 1 and 2? I'm sure there's more but I recall the majority were not scaled to 1080p.

 

[televator]

PS3 hardware can only do horizontal scaling, this is why you had games that ran at 960*1080 on PS3. In order to do proper scaling games had to use a software upscaler.

Sony was being really fucking weird about it. I don't think it was ever firmly established that the internal scaler couldn't do vertical scaling, as there were some people suggesting that horizontal scaling from very specific pixel counts is what Sony allowed. I think this continues still today in the PS3. Sony strangely only allowing H scaling. Baffling.

 

[kimifan141]

I would like to know if selecting all the resolutions and leaving it upto the ps3 is the best way or selecting a particular resolution and letting the tv handle it , i have got a Toshiba 32' it can handle 1080p but not sure if it can scale better than the ps3.

Odd gaming experiences

- on getting mafia 2 i was shocked at how terrible and muddy the graphics looked tried a various resolution changes and it looked somewhat better at leaving only 720p and 480p checked but this started affecting the visuals of games like gta 4 , rdr , mgs 4, gt5, gt6 where in they started looking worse. so had to tick off all again to get the proper visuals for those games.

- same issue with bioshock 1 it looks terrible.

Would be nice if there was a proper setting to get all the games to display properly.

Not sure how EA got it right on the ps3 but all the EA games i have played on the ps3 look awesome , nfs series, fifa , burnout, battlefield etc

 

[Toxa]

oh back in 2007 ?

 

[televator]

I would like to know if selecting all the resolutions and leaving it upto the ps3 is the best way or selecting a particular resolution and letting the tv handle it , i have got a Toshiba 32' it can handle 1080p but not sure if it can scale better than the ps3.

Odd gaming experiences

- on getting mafia 2 i was shocked at how terrible and muddy the graphics looked tried a various resolution changes and it looked somewhat better at leaving only 720p and 480p checked but this started affecting the visuals of games like gta 4 , rdr , mgs 4, gt5, gt6 where in they started looking worse. so had to tick off all again to get the proper visuals for those games.

- same issue with bioshock 1 it looks terrible.

Would be nice if there was a proper setting to get all the games to display properly.

Not sure how EA got it right on the ps3 but all the EA games i have played on the ps3 look awesome , nfs series, fifa , burnout, battlefield etc

Iirc, MGS4 had its own software solution, so it's possible that turning down resolution would make a marked difference in quality. The GT games do achieve native 1080p in photo mode and show room, so that will obviously outshine 720. I'm not familiar with Red Dead, so I can't guess why 720 would be worse.

BioShock is sub HD + no AA. It'll look bad no matter what. It was even worse before the patch. I think it ran at even lower res with a blur filter on.

This thread has been a coincidence, since I've recently been doing some testing on PS3's scaling. Some games do have noticeable blur when force scaled into 1080p. Unfortunately, there are too many outliers and scattershot solutions for me to really recommend de-facto settings. It is however easier to just leave all the resolution boxes checked and just enjoy your games...

 

[pottuvoi]

PS3 hardware can only do horizontal scaling, this is why you had games that ran at 960*1080 on PS3. In order to do proper scaling games had to use a software upscaler.

Yup, many games also did render game differently when 1080i/p was forced.
Some games also did funky things like render to 960x1080 2xMSAA buffer and directly map MSAA samples to 1920x1080 buffer, causing half resolution shading and some artifacts at polygon edges.

B3D has great list of rendering resolutions.
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/list-of-rendering-resolutions.41152/

 

[EvB]

If just force the PS3 to do it all, so few games were 720p anyway that you are going to end up scaling everything twice and introducing poor image quality and input latency from the processing