XBox and Digital set. Were you disappointed? (1 Viewer)

[CRyan]

Well, I finally hooked up my Box to my 55" widescreen HD ready set and, well, I was a little disappointed.

There are a lot of jagged edges and what I would call NTSC artifacting. Project Gotham and Halo are the two games I currently own and they both display this problem. I was hoping the anti-aliasing of the XBox combined with the 480P signal would prevent this.

Do the games that support 16:9 display this "problem" as well? Like DOA3?

Equipment:

Mits. 55807 Widescreen HD Ready TV

XBox with XBox HD Pack and component cables

XBox Component cables running directly into TV

I know that I am getting 480P as my set indicates this and I have tried a few of my expensive sets of Component cables with no visible advantage. I have gone into the XBox GUI to setup 480P - 720P - 1080i correctly. Also setting it to Widescreen of course.

Thanks for any input. Is this just what you get with these games? Maybe I was just expecting too much?

C. Ryan

 

[Camp]

It's been reported here that Halo isn't using anti-aliasing.

 

[Trey Jones]

Hey ryan, I have some bad pictures of DOA3 on my Toshiba 57HX81. There are jaggies if you look very closely, but only on certain parts. Overall, it looks much better than Halo and Gotham Racing. I will try to get some better pictures up soon.

 

[Dave F]

The 16x9 games look much, much better. Give DoA3, Amped, or SSX Tricky a whirl & you'll be much happier.
By the way, did you try the "fisheye" camera in Gotham? I heard that is 16x9, but I haven't tried it...
-Dave

 

[Dan B]

As Camp said, these games aren't using anti-aliasing. Look for 2002's games for that...I just saw some footage of "Brute Force" and it looks similar to Halo but with antialiasing. For launch games, Halo, DOA 3, & PGR look very good IMO.

-Dan B

 

[Michael St. Clair]

'Jaggies' of this sort are definitely caused by aliasing, and this is not an NTSC artifact. It is a graphics artifact.
You will likely see many AA games in the future.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

I'm surprised they didn't use AA. It's kind of a common sense thing to include. Then again, this is the first launch of the X-Box, whereas Sony and Nintendo had time to include AA in their launch titles between launches (because they launched in Japan first).

Even so, for launch titles they do look pretty damn good. And if they play good, then that overshadows the lack of AA.

 

[Henry Colonna]

I'm personally still skeptical about anti-aliasing. It's been on the PC for awhile but when active does take a significant performance hit, even on 1.4-2ghz PIV's and Athlon XPs. I bet anything that while on paper the XBOX has it, it's not used all that well or in all that high intensity on a 733 mhz P III.

I think it's there to be shown on paper and on a few still screenshots for marketing.

But there probably are people out there who "see" a difference and believe that it is a usable current technology.

 

[Jeff Peake]

I think AA will be done very well on xbox. Especially when combined with depth-of-field, it should look amazing.

The reason there is such a performance hit on PC's, is that AA performance is based on resolution. If you run at 1600x1200 resolution, and turn on 2x AA, the screen gets rendered at 3200x2400, and this high res version of the screen is used to make the jaggies appear less visible. At 3200x2400, even high-end video cards have trouble keeping up.

Since xbox games all run at 640x480 on a video card a little better than a GF3, there shouldnt be a big performance hit when using anti-aliasing.

Jeff Peake

 

[Gary King]

Jeff -

The resolution you listed would apply for 4X anti-aliasing (not 2X); however, current NVIDIA graphics procesors don't use supersampling, so the requirements aren't quite as stringent.

Silent Hill 2 looks to be nicely antialiased; however, I'm currently using a 27" interlaced TV, so everything is going through the Xbox's deflicker filter. Once I get back to CA and playing on my progressive set, I'll take another look... however, things are so smooth for me that I'd be surprised if Konami isn't using AA.

 

[Sean Oneil]

If you think that the X-Box looks bad on your Mitsubishi, try hooking up a PS2 or other gaming system and let your Mits internal line doubler do the work -You will gain a new appreciation for the X-Box 480p output quality. I have a 55857, so I pretty much know what kind of picture that you should be getting with your Mits set and your X-Box. There are jaggies present due to the limitation of the resolution, but other than that, the image should be artifact free. This is just what a clean sharp image looks like blown up to 55".

BTW, Gary ...I don't think SH2 is using AA judging from my own experience with the game. No Way.

Still looks great though.

 

[Gary King]

I guess I'll need to try it then, with the noise filter off (whoops... silly me, trying to judge aliasing with the noise filter on).

 

[Sean Oneil]

a-yup, that noise tends to hide things a bit, but boy ..it still looks sweet when you turn that noise off. This game has some nice graphics, especially when you have a flashlight in a dark area. A lot of real-time shadows that will change perspective/length/shape etc.. as you move the light around objects. Between SH2 and Halo, you can see that the X-box is very good at lighting effects. Both games have very convincing flashlights

 

[Gary King]

a-yup, that noise tends to hide things a bit

Well, I'm sure that's why it was originally included .
Noise masks aliasing (one of those signal processing facts that they pound in you in computer graphics 101). The pleasant horror film look is just a nice bonus.