Bungie talks Halo 3 640p issue

by Dustin Burg { Sep 30th 2007 at 10:30AM }

Friday, in Bungie's Weekly Update, Luke Smith took on the Halo 3 640p resolution rumor head on and confirmed that Halo 3 does output natively at 1152x640 resolution and is up-converted by the Xbox 360 to either 720p or 1080p. But, before smoke comes spewing out of your ears because you feel cheated out of 80p, know that Bungie has a semi-good reason for reducing the pixel count ... high dynamic range lighting! Yes sir, during development the dev team calculated (through very geeky methods) that in order to make Halo 3 run smoothly and use two filters to create amazing HDR lighting effects they'd have to compromise and go with a slightly lower resolution. Bungie didn't tell this before, because they thought it wasn't all that important and didn't want the internets to blow it out of proportion (too late for that). Anyway, don't feel cheated about the resolution, because you have pretty HDR lighting to fill your 80p void and we know you couldn't tell the resolution difference anyway. Could you?

Tags: bungie, bungie-studios, halo3

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

Josh @ Sep 30th 2007 10:39AM

I play on an HD projector in 96" and couldn't tell.

Moorio @ Sep 30th 2007 10:39AM

I can't tell the difference...

then again, I only have a 37" 720p tv...

hellvector @ Sep 30th 2007 10:41AM

I don't understand how anyone could really be that upset about all this. I seriously don't care and never would have known if I hadn't seen the post on here a couple days ago mentioning it. Even knowing it now, if you were to compare the two side by side, I doubt I'd notice much/any difference, and even if I did, it'd be too little for me to worry about when I'm concentrating on playing the game anyway.

erivera3 @ Sep 30th 2007 10:59AM

I think Halo 3 is all around the most beautiful game I've ever played, I can't see anything wrong with the 640p issue since mine runs great and looks greater!

TRUTH @ Sep 30th 2007 11:00AM

I could care less... But man, all this Smack talk is kinda getting to me...

Like All games will be in HD... I know it still is in HD, But it's kinda funny trying to Hide it from Us!

2nd thing is the Jaggies!!! You know I was telling my wife, Ohhhh look @ what these 'Kids' are complaining about now... Well now I find myself noticing the jaggies allot more...

Well Was the game done? Was it rushed? Could they fixed these minor flaws?

Well I think it's a Great Game!

erivera3 @ Sep 30th 2007 11:00AM

Hey Josh,

How much do those kind of projectors cost? Does it handle HD well? Is there refresh rate not a problem? Contrast Ratios decent?

I was thinking about getting a massive projector.

erivera3 @ Sep 30th 2007 11:02AM

The only level I've noticed the jaggies on was Construct, the multilevel one with all those lifts everywhere (I think that's what it's called). Other then that, the game really does look like the most beautiful game I've ever played, AMAZING textures on everything, gorgeous HDR lighting, and awesome player models, and not to mention the best video game water I've ever seen.

DocParanoia @ Oct 1st 2007 3:28PM

[raises glass]

Here's to me not caring about it.

Ciaran Gallagher @ Sep 30th 2007 11:12AM

I certainly didn't notice anyway. Halo 3 shows off the best graphics seen on the Xbox 360, it far surpasses Gears of War. At first glance, you may not think so but play a few missions and you'll see exactly what I mean.

Sam @ Sep 30th 2007 11:15AM

Everyone is all up in arms about it because this generation is all about "True HD" etc and consumers feel cheated out of their 80p.

Personally i didn't notice a particularly low resoultion but i play on a 19" widescreen monitor.

I guess they're just making shiny graphics trade-offs to ensure that the FPS is solid.

A fair choice in my opinion. I'd rather have solid FPS than shiny graphics.

All that being said...i'll still be the first to go against the trend and say this game looks pretty bad considering current gen.

The lighting is pretty nice, the animations are smooth and clever use of skyboxes/backgrounds make the game look like it has a big draw distance but...still kinda dissapointing if you ask me. Muddy textures etc.

DVictor @ Sep 30th 2007 11:19AM

Ha nope i couldn't tell the difference.....because my FUKIN xbox got the RROD 3 days before Halo 3...long story short, Halo is still in its shrink wrap

Thomas @ Sep 30th 2007 3:25PM

I don't care about this at all, it looks really good imho, and that is all that matters.

Magic Whiskey @ Sep 30th 2007 11:32AM

I couldn't tell either. Let me add that Halo 3 is by far the BRIGHTEST game i've played; the light sources come near blindingly bright in spots, something no other game has done in my opinion. The dynamic range of brights to darks gives a wider range of colors and values, so I'm happy with things as they are.

Milly @ Sep 30th 2007 11:42AM

This is coming from someone who never owned xbox or H1/H2. And I do own Gears of War, Bioshock and Halo 3.

This is not an issue for me. Like it was said before if not for an article, I (and everyone else) would have never noticed.

I dislike the comparisons (in various blogs, articles, boards) of Gears/Bioshock/H3 because they all have a very distinct style all their own. This is what makes the 360 so great. We're debating which games is better and why, they are all great and they are all ours.

I will say that Halo 3 is the most fun I've ever had playing a game period. The scale of the game is so much more epic compared to the other two it's hard to ignore. I've played on both Normal and Legendary (both co-op) and equally amazing both times. I've also play about 50 games matchmaking and that is obviously superb.

So 640p, 720p, who cares. Game looks AMAZING. Best way for me to describe all three games - Gears of War is the Mona Lisa, Bioshock is Beethoven's 5th and Halo 3 is the Sistine Chapel.

At least sonyfanboys can watch 50 first dates on Blu Ray. Well, I'm going to jump into some more matchmaking with the other 500K plus. Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

WTangoFoxtrot @ Sep 30th 2007 11:42AM

keep in mind to render the HDR they are using dual framebuffers meaning they are rendering the same image twice to get a wider range of HDR. this means the image is actually around 640p + 640p = approximately 1080p !!

Tony @ Sep 30th 2007 11:45AM

The general person would never have been able to tell to begin with... which is why it was funny that it got to be such a big deal. I can see techy people caring, but if you have to sit and count pixels on a 1:1 LCD to tell then the average person just won't be affected much lol.

At the same time, it sure doesn't explain the 720p and 1080p symbols on the back of the box. I mean, any game can be upconverted on the 360, so it's pretty misleading (if not an outright lie). They might as well list 1080i on there too because that's what I'm using.

This filter issue probably also explains the AA issues people bring up (I imagine to help the framerate as well)... although at 1080 it's something I really have to look for.

All that said, the lighting is really damn nice in this game and that explains it.

Ian @ Sep 30th 2007 11:45AM

Couldn't tell the difference. The game is fun as heck, looks great, runs great. People just want a reason to complain. Who seriously has the time and motivation to get their ruler and COUNT PIXELS. You people should just stfu. Its obvious that barely any people care.

Tony @ Sep 30th 2007 11:47AM

To add upon that...

I think the game looks great. Great effects, great lighting, good models (the people aren't perfect, but they work well). I think most of the textures are great... every next generation game has had some textures in it that don't seem to meet the standard of the rest (BioShock, Call of Duty, etc), and the same is true here... I can't say I think it's been a problem.

pixelsschmixels @ Sep 30th 2007 11:55AM

I'd rather have a high fidelity scene with a lot going on running 60fps at 480p than 15-20fps at 720p.

At 640p, Bungie is clearly meeting their performance targets. I'm glad the hardware scaling within the 360 makes this possible.

If you're a PS3 owner, you're stuck with low framerates and 720p. The developers don't even have the option.

Mauricio @ Sep 30th 2007 12:02PM

i know we cant tell just by playing the game but it is misleading. Regular DVD's arent called HD DVD's just because they can also be upscaled to 1080.

and what the fuck is with the smartass press release? did Mitch Gittelman(sp) write that up?

Zac LaCombe @ Sep 30th 2007 12:09PM

I think it's wrong to even compare Gears and Halo 3. If Gears would have had any battles to the magnitude of Halo 3, we'd have seen problems. It's just a fact. They took a hit in the area of scale for graphics, and I respect Bungie for going their own way to create an epic, fun experience for the player and it still looks damn good.

DirtyHands @ Sep 30th 2007 12:28PM

Have fun and play the game you nerds , you name one next generation game that can do what h3 does with multi player campain and vehicels.

cybereality @ Sep 30th 2007 12:26PM

I didn't really care about the resolution so much, I'd much rather a smooth framerate. What did bother me was the horrid lightmapping (or lack thereof) in H3. Many objects in the background aren't shadowed at all (ie fullbright textures) or have inconsistent / non-existent light sources. It just looks really sloppy when we know the Xbox360 can do way more. Even the first GRAW had much better lighting.

tommy @ Sep 30th 2007 12:28PM

ya i played it on a 50" samsung plasma (from 4 feet away) and i could not tell the difference... in fact the first thing i noticed was the amazing HDR effects.

Zac LaCombe @ Sep 30th 2007 12:34PM

To the guy that talked about the lighting being "horrible":

You're an idiot. The end. The lighting is the best I've seen in any console game.

Michael C. Sherrin @ Sep 30th 2007 12:43PM

I don't really swallow this excuse for the lower quality. Is the dynamic lighting really that powerful and worth it? Cause if that's true, than maybe the 360 is more limited graphically than we thought. Though with Halo 3 being far from the standard for the 360's graphics (Gears of War and BioShock put Halo 3 to shame), I have to wonder if this is more Bungie's fault.

********

Michael C. Sherrin
http://www.prodigeek.com/

Bravo6 @ Sep 30th 2007 12:45PM

It's no GEars or Bio, but it looks great, no issues with it here. My vote would be for the HDR lighting over the higher res any day.

erivera3 @ Sep 30th 2007 1:00PM

Bioshock didn't impress me at all as far as graphics go, and Gears had 8 people on screen max with no vehicles and SMALL levels all around. Halo 3 far surpasses both these games in not only graphics but gameplay, and gameplay is all that matters in the end anyway.

Corey @ Sep 30th 2007 1:31PM

Truthfully, I actually noticed that it had more jaggies than I had seen in other games before all this hoopla started happening, but I really didn't care. Now that I know why, I'm really glad they made that choice. I loves me some HDR lighting.

It still looks much better that my Wii on my 50". I have a hard time playing it because the jaggies are too bad...

Burrens @ Sep 30th 2007 1:47PM

This sucks! With 1152x640 you get 20% less pixels than if it were running at 1280x720.

h0mi @ Sep 30th 2007 1:50PM

"Everyone is all up in arms about it because this generation is all about "True HD" etc and consumers feel cheated out of their 80p."

Not sure about "everyone" but ps3 fanboys sure "feel cheated" about it, and people far more concerned about _stats_ or _specs_ than about games.

The game looks great and is loads of fun. Thats all I need to know or care about. I couldn't give a shit about 80 more or less lines and upscaling.

bigd7387 @ Sep 30th 2007 4:19PM

Idiots and Know-it-all's are the only ones saying that they can "Tell" the difference. As long as it's not 8-bit Atari 2600 graphics I could give a flying fuck about what the Rez is on any game for any system.

mitch @ Sep 30th 2007 4:31PM

Not to be a hater but jaggies on 360 are starting to piss me off. Anytime a line is supposed to be diag it always ends up giving me the jaggies same thing oin forza. GEARS and bioshock kept it to a minimum but halo had them in the 1st cutscene. I have 47inch 1080p samsung. so i doubt that its the tv.

x cram x @ Sep 30th 2007 8:13PM

I've seen so many uneducated comments I had to pipe in.

1) The game is in HD. Most all HD plasma panels never have EXACT 1280x720...they are 1024x768 and up. Do these sets display HD? YES. There are MANY HD resolutions that you probably have never even considered..especially for broadcast. see http://www.smpte.org/home for more info.
2) The back of the box is correct. The game SUPPORTS the resolutions, it NEVER means the game natively outputs in this resolution. Ex. 1080i/1080p. A majority of games do render in 720p natively, never 1080i. That resolution is always on the box to. Can you imagine how hairy the back of boxes would get if devs put every ACTUAL spec on the back of the box instead of what it actually supports? Come on.

Get over it and enjoy the game for what it is.

0D0A @ Sep 30th 2007 7:21PM

I'd rather not start down the slippery slope of vendors making up things to put on the back of the box, even if it is close. The next guy may render at 800x600 and have 30 buffer pages. Does it render nativly to 1080? No. So why lie? It's not an issue with Bungie really, this is a MS licensed game, MS is mostly accountable for this kind of thing. The issuing of the license should mean that the game is up to all MS standards including having the correct icon indicators on the back of the box.

Ben @ Sep 30th 2007 6:13PM

Still looks amazing!

Edge @ Sep 30th 2007 6:54PM

The geeks that care can yell and bitch at us to stop playing and having fun so they can count pixels.

Definition of lame.

violenceinhd @ Sep 30th 2007 8:25PM

I hate the whole OMG ITS ONLY 80 PIXELS argument and it's such a copout for fucks like the person who wrote this blurb. Get rid of HDR, up the resolution, enjoy true HD.

T Ghost @ Sep 30th 2007 9:20PM

Dustin, you got it all wrong dude.

It's not that they ran the game at 1152X640 so they can do HDR. This is WRONG.

What they did, in lay terms, is to run a frame buffer at 1152X640 with HDR (High Dynamic Range light effects)and ANOTHER EXTRA frame at 1152X640 with LDR (Low Dynamic Range light effects).

So at every frame, HALO 3 has 2 images of 1152X640 that are combined and upscaled by ANA/HANA to whatever resolution you set you 360 (480i/p,720p,1080i/p or VGA resolutions).

That means that at every single frame you see the 360 rendered it TWICE at 1152X640 (a total of rendered pixels per frame of a 2304X1280 image.

For the regular mortal people, that means that if Bungie wanted go "soft" on all Dynamic light effects (High and low) and do a mediocre looking game in terms of lighnting, they could easily run the game at 1920X1080 progressive scan and have it's frame rate way above the 30's all the time.

thebigfatj @ Sep 30th 2007 10:03PM

640p is a lower resolution than I used to play FPS games at back in 1998 (1024x768). You have about 79% as much data on screen as you do with 720p.

What really hurts, however, is that Halo 3 *is not HD*. I thought the 360 was all about HD? What gives -- their flagship game doesn't even run an HD resolution?

Neil @ Sep 30th 2007 10:35PM

Speaking as a PS3 owner (soon to be 360 owner) I think people got worked up over nothing....I mean as far as graphics go, the specs list isn't all that important, at the end of the day it only matters what your eyes are telling you. I play Halo3 at my friends house and my eyes were telling me the game looked great.

Dash @ Sep 30th 2007 11:17PM

I love how people keep ignoring all of the posts that explain why Halo 3 is in 640p. I'll write it in caps just for the idiots who can't bother to skim over three posts.

IN ORDER TO MAXIMIZE FRAMERATE AND HDR BUNGIE DECIDED TO HAVE THE GAME RUN IN 640p WITH DUAL FRAME BUFFERS. ONE PRODUCES THE HIGHER RANGES OF LIGHT, THE OTHER DOES THE LOWER. THIS ESSENTIALLY MEANS THAT THE 360 IS RENDERING THE IMAGE TWICE.

If bungie wanted to have it run in "true" HD they could have knocked off a frame buffer. Of course this would have killed the HDR engine and the game wouldn't look nearly as good as it does now, but that doesn't matter to some people(AKA idiots.)

AIR_Irish @ Oct 1st 2007 1:26AM

lol this is actually pretty funny.

just proves that "if" their game was put on a Blu-ray disc that it would have been able to be at a full 720p or 1080p res. Games on HDDVDs won't make much sense in the future when the games are very big in themselves and need more capacity. and for the reason and many others is why Blu-ray is the choice over HD-DVD. Sony pwns Toshiba. lol

Anticrawl @ Oct 1st 2007 3:51AM

Yeah the lighting in this game is incredible. Always loved the soft natural glow characters get around the edges when in light. Some of it is a little over the top, but I still love it. Plus can't beat the vibrant colors. Would much rather the bright assortment of colors and lighting than a drab colored game like Gears, COD4 or Killzone 2 honestly. But those games each have their good points.

Anticrawl @ Oct 1st 2007 3:57AM

AIR Irish, capacity doesn't have anything to do with the issue at hand. It is nearly impossible for any GPU on any platform to push AA, HDR, and High Res at the same time. Until the next batch of Nvidia cards it was impossible to have max AA and HDR running in a game. But with ATi it was, in any case capacity doesn't matter here, go away with your silly ps3 comments. If you really wanna go at it then try researching the theoretical to actual performace comparisons for the PS3 and 360, all in all the 360 is a better machine without the hardware reliablity. Then again the PS3 hasn't been out as long so we can't really tell how reliable it is yet. Sony and Toshiba are both fools for trying to push the Blue laser tech on consumers and the market when the red laser tech hasn't had it's full potential tapped yet. Just go check out VMD's, which read, write, and can hold more than HDDVD and Blue-Ray combined as of now.

GhostDoggy @ Oct 1st 2007 5:27AM

So, what Bungie is saying is that in order to provide a minimum set of lighting experiences in the game and having to work with the overly limited hardware resources they had to cop out and go HD-lite?

Now I put Bungie in the same category as DirecTV (for the less than HD offering), and then think twice about the hardware in my 360.

Hopefully Microsoft plans on reinventing the 360 with more powerful hardware or we are going to expect my game developers copping out of the high definition experience with HDlite offerings.

ThatDudeReeg @ Oct 1st 2007 10:46AM

I'm not upset about it, but I can tell the difference on my 22" widescreen.

cytamius @ Oct 1st 2007 2:12PM

I've wasted all the time it takes to read through all these and in between the intelligent discussion and researched posts all I hear is a whole lot of...
WAAAAAHHHH WAAAAAH I WANT MY 80PIXLES!!! WAAAAHHH ITS NOT HD DESPITE ALL THE INFO THAT SAYS OTHERWISE! WAAAAAHHHH XBOX SUXORS AND PS3 PWNS!!!

Its shit like this that keeps me from wanting to post very often here. For every intelligent person there are 5 that should be prevented from breeding. This whole argument is pointless and moot in the light that the game is still a blast to play.