Topic: I Got To Try The 360... (Read 839 times)

scooby_dooby · « **Reply #60 on:** October 21, 2005, 04:48:00 PM »

Wow, this forum has really gone downhill, 6 Pages of people complaining about lack of AA and not a single person has stopped to explain how EDRAM works, and why AA is vistuall free, however only when the engine has been built with EDRAM in mind.

The EDRAM has 256GB/s of internal bandwidth, this means it has tons of bandwidth to apply effects like 4xAA, depth of field etc, there is no penalty here since 256GB/s is more than enough.

The penatly hit occurs because the EDRAM in Xenos is only 10MB, this mean that in order to fit a 720p frame into the 10MB EDRAM, and apply 4xAA, requires the frame be split into 4 tiles. 2xAA requires 2 tiles.

Now, in order for the game to support the EDRAM it has to incorporate somethign called 'predicated tiling.' When a game engine has implemnted predicated tiling from the ground up, which is fairly trivial, ATI suggests the performance using 4 tiles is only a 3-5% performance hit, and with 2xAA it is only a 1-3% performance hit.

So...what's the problem?

The problem is, until 4 months ago not a single developer had a GPU with EDRAM, they had no hardware to test their tiling with, and despite MS urging developers to incorporate predicated tiling into their engines, many developers haven't, and that's te reason, plain and simple, that 4xAA is not exactly free at this point. When tiling is built into an engine as an add-on, rather than from day 1, the performance hit can be more like 1-10% from 4xAA, definately far from free, but is still much less than the 10-30% hits that a typical GPU would take.

The important part, THIS IS NOT MSS FAULT. They have given developers a kick-ass GPU, with unified shaders(read: massive vertex shading power), EDRAM(free AA and other effects), built-in hardware tesselator (read: perfectly round wheels), MEMEXPORT (read: GPU based physics engine) and it is up to the developers to master this technology. The developers knew what had to be done to utilize the EDRAM, some did it and others did not, you can't blame MS for that.

MS is enforcing standards that no X360 game will exhibit noticeable jaggies, we'll see how closely they follow that.

The other important thing to remember, when implemented properly in the future, Xenos WILL HAVE VIRTUALLY FREE 4xAA. That's a fact, you can take that to the bank!
(By vurtually free I mean 3-5% performance hit as opposed to 10-30% the PS3 will suffer from)

trance4jim · « **Reply #61 on:** October 21, 2005, 05:07:00 PM »

Carlo210 · « **Reply #62 on:** October 21, 2005, 05:29:00 PM »

QUOTE(scooby_dooby @ Oct 22 2005, 12:59 AM)

Wow, this forum has really gone downhill, 6 Pages of people complaining about lack of AA and not a single person has stopped to explain how EDRAM works, and why AA is vistuall free, however only when the engine has been built with EDRAM in mind.

lex luther · « **Reply #63 on:** October 21, 2005, 05:30:00 PM »

QUOTE(miggidy @ Oct 21 2005, 07:30 PM)

Hopefully these pictures will put everyone's concerns to rest.

Ozy · « **Reply #64 on:** October 21, 2005, 05:40:00 PM »

Why is this all confusing?

M$ should just release a DVD packed with gameplay footage, 2 weeks before launch.

miggidy · « **Reply #65 on:** October 21, 2005, 05:40:00 PM »

QUOTE(Ozy @ Oct 22 2005, 01:51 AM)

Why is this all confusing?

Ozy · « **Reply #66 on:** October 21, 2005, 05:42:00 PM »

QUOTE(miggidy @ Oct 22 2005, 12:51 AM)

It's called trial and error learning

illbastid · « **Reply #67 on:** October 21, 2005, 06:19:00 PM »

Ok, as i said in an ealier post i played the 360 last night and was a little disappointed at the jaggies and stuff, but i went back about an hour ago and to my excitement everything was "fixed"!

Kameo was beautiful to say the least.

Kong was not perfect but much better than before. Awesome gameplay by the way.
Didn't think i would like it but that shit had me hooked in less than 3 minutes.

So basically in a nutshell anyone who was a bit worried don't be.

I feel good again about the 360 and so should anyone else excited about it.
Launch games will never be perfect. They never have been.

Anyone who has been looking forward to Nov.22 won't be disappointed.

Deftech · « **Reply #68 on:** October 21, 2005, 06:36:00 PM »

QUOTE(illbastid @ Oct 21 2005, 08:30 PM)

Ok, as i said in an ealier post i played the 360 last night and was a little disappointed at the jaggies and stuff, but i went back about an hour ago and to my excitement everything was "fixed"!

Kernal69er · « **Reply #69 on:** October 21, 2005, 06:43:00 PM »

Ya boyz............. Xbox has awesome, and even if the Xbox 360 isn't all that it will be nice to have the hardware and games

I use to be a Sony fan boy but 4 PS2's later and 3 Xbox's I have had my time to compare and GO M$ GO

georaldc · « **Reply #70 on:** October 21, 2005, 08:10:00 PM »

CattyKid · « **Reply #71 on:** October 21, 2005, 08:44:00 PM »

I think the Jaggies" that some people seem to be pointing out may be present in, for example, the barbed wire in COD2, or where shells are loaded into the ANIT-Air guns. Other than that, everything looked good to me. Didn't blow me away, but looked good.

mert8431 · « **Reply #72 on:** October 21, 2005, 09:00:00 PM »

Played the 360 today myself and despite losing feeling to my neck after 3 minutes, (damn Wal-Mart displays)I am definately looking forward to the 360.

Yeah there was some jaggies, but COD2 ran so smooth and its only a pre-release demo, Kameo didn't interest me nor did King Kong, but still I had a great experience.

VariableElite · « **Reply #73 on:** October 21, 2005, 11:29:00 PM »

QUOTE(Ozy @ Oct 21 2005, 06:51 PM)

Why is this all confusing?

jizmo · « **Reply #74 on:** October 22, 2005, 01:57:00 AM »

QUOTE(Deftech @ Oct 22 2005, 04:47 AM)

Gee, look at that you trolls. A few of you who saw jaggies said you doubted it was because the kiosk was setup incorrectly..what do you have to say now?

yeah thats what I thought.

Yeah, right. Just label people as trolls as they are trying to have a civilized conversation about absense of AA that was reported by many gamers. It's not like anyone was shouting and jumping "xbox 3600 suxx0rs l000ll!!!", so I'm asking you kindly to put things in perspective. Everyone's as eager to know the truth as the other guy, and we're all Xbox enthusiastics, so let's not jump to each others throats here.

I've read comments from four forums and still don't understand how so many people that seem pretty educated in the reports they write about those booths see the jaggies. Least in COD, some more in Kameo and even more in King Kong. I was excited when hearing about the xegtioner proof images, but they turned out to be shaken, small snapshots taken with phonecamera from distance and full of jpg packing artifacts. I had a hard time judging if I was looking at tyrannosaurus rex or king kongs butt in the first image, let alone being able to know if there was any AA present.

I want some solid proof. Actual horizontal lines shot with a good camera that show those 4xAA pixels. They're really easy to capture even with my $400 compact in macro mode.

QUOTE(scooby_dooby @ Oct 22 2005, 02:59 AM)

The important part, THIS IS NOT MSS FAULT. They have given developers a kick-ass GPU, with unified shaders(read: massive vertex shading power), EDRAM(free AA and other effects), built-in hardware tesselator (read: perfectly round wheels), MEMEXPORT (read: GPU based physics engine) and it is up to the developers to master this technology. The developers knew what had to be done to utilize the EDRAM, some did it and others did not, you can't blame MS for that.

You are SO right about this, this is how it works and would actually explain this all.

But .. if it's not MS' and they have done their share of informing game developers, then why does Kameo suffer from aliasing as well? It's not likely that Rare has been kept in darkness about these matters when designing the games.

I still think they're struggling all they can to get the AA in in the last minute.

Author Topic: I Got To Try The 360... (Read 839 times)