Major Nelson asks what's best for gaming? 720p, 1080i or 1080p
By Richard Lawler 
posted Feb 21st 2006 7:17PM
posted Feb 21st 2006 7:17PM
On this edition of Major Nelson's weekly podcast he has a special guest, Tyler the HDTV expert. Among the things
they discussed were what HD means, a few of the reasons Microsoft chose HD-DVD to support, why the Olympic broadcast
isn't the best it could be, and the many different formats of HD. It's a pretty long conversation that I'll try to
summarize here, but I suggest you give it a listen to get all the details on why 720p may be better for gaming than
1080i or even 1080p (which the PS3 will apparently have and
the Xbox 360 doesn't).We will leave the breakdown of spatial and temporal resolution to Tyler, but there are several elements here to consider.
Many people like to discuss HD formats not only in their resolution but also the amount of frames displayed per second (720p60, 1080p30, etc.), and while lower frames per second is just fine for movies, it might not be as good for things like sports and videogames. I'm not sure if I agree with all the points however, since they seem to assume most games run at 60fps, which while some early 360 games have (DOA4, NBA 2K6), some have not (PGR3). I think it's fair to assume we'll see higher target framerates in upcoming games, especially twitch shooters like Halo 3.
They don't mention the Playstation 3 specifically, but it definitely looms large for high definition gamers. As mentioned in this interview, the current HDMI spec does not require a TV to accept 1080p (although it supports it), and even TV's manufactured by Sony don't accept it. Of course, Sony could just end all this speculation and guess work by showing us a PS3 powering two 1080p screens beautifully, at which point we will collectively hand over our wallets, souls and firstborn children.
Whether you accept Tyler's points or just consider this a sign of Microsoft copping some 1080p pleas, it's clear that just like ESPN and ABC they have picked 720p as their target resolution for HDTV, but whether that is high definition enough to satisfy consumers remains to be seen.
With games beeing action packed I think you can say that a progressive scan picture is more desireable in gaming... We know that progressive scan is better for that type of content.
That leaves us with 720P and 1080P. But you have to be more specific and get in to framerates like this article talks about. I think the more important thing for a gamer is framerates... all those pixels aren't that glorious if I'm not pulling enough fps. For a fast action game like halo 2 (or 3) I would say that 720P/60FPS would be more adventageous than 1080P/30FPS. Of course this is all speculation as I haven't seen and played 1080P.
Now when we are able to play 1080P/60FPS.... oh man, will that be great!
PS, when playing halo 2 on my 360 if there is too much action on the screen my framerate will drop noticeably. Anybody else have that?
"PS, when playing halo 2 on my 360 if there is too much action on the screen my framerate will drop noticeably. Anybody else have that?"
Can't say I've noticed, but it wouldn't suprise me. Emulation is a very resouorce intensive task. Take a game that was pushing the Xbox to it's limits, then run that in an emulator - you're bound to have frame rate issues. The fix? Halo 3! I'm anticipating that game more than I really should. So much of my life has been lost to Halo 2 that I should really hope for no Halo 3. It's a sickness.
I just wish more PC games supported wide screen display modes. There is nothing worse than squashed, alised 1024x768 on a 720p screen.
p is 60fps, i is 30, so 1080p is 60fps.
BUT it requires LOTS AND LOTS of bandwidth/speed/power and memory to run at that resuloution. So many games will stay with 720p so they can still have other features like AI, collisions, physics and other fun game things.
I don't think I've even seen 1920x1080 in real life yet!
Of course 1080p is better, but there's nothing wrong with 720p.
As a note, the bandwidth difference between 720P/60fps and 1080P/30fps is basically marginal (1080P/30fps requires only about 12.5% more bandwidth). This is why it is somewhat of an amusing point.
"I think it's fair to assume we'll see higher target framerates in upcoming games, especially twitch shooters like Halo 3."
What makes you think that?
Halo 1? Locked at 30fps.
Halo 2? Locked at 30fps.
I'll go out on a limb here and guess that Halo 3, assuming it exists and Bungie is working on it right now, is targeting a framerate locked at 30fps.
The entire philosophy of Halo's graphics engine, from the start, has not been to maximize the number of frames per second or to maximize the output resolution, but to maximize the number of texture passes on each frame.
"4. p is 60fps, i is 30, so 1080p is 60fps."
p is for progressive scan, i is for interlaced
both can be 30 or 60, or 25, 50, even 24 i believe ;)
interlaced isn't good for games of course, because it generates interlace flickers ;) it is seen especially on sharp, vertical lines ;)
I have another question... Does someone knows if scaling 720p (1280x720) to 1024x768 (most popular in HDTV 42" plasmas) is THAT bad? But does 1024x768 have some other issues with viewing 720p, than a little drop in the resolution?
Write me if u know the answer or have some examples... fredro@autograf.pl
fredro,
Yes scaling a 720p image to 1024x768 is very bad, Firstly one is a 16:9 resolution whilst the other is 4:3. Secondly a 720p image doesnt even have 768 lines of horizontal information, so that has to be 'inserted' into teh image somehow (or leave black bars) and at the same time the 1280 is scaled down to 1024 leaving a distorted image.
I personally wouldnt even call 1024x768 high definition.