Wipeout HD in 3D in 2010!!

[IH8YOU]

Nope, it includes 3D ads.

[ProblemSolver]

A visitor at the Sony Building in Ginza, Tokyo, tries out a PlayStation 3
game on a 3-D TV on January 21, YOSHIAKI MIURA PHOTO

One lucky guy!

I'm stilled questioned whether the resolution of 1080p can be retained for
WipEout HD while being viewed on 3-D.

[Koleax]

Well, the TVs have their own 3D processors, which is part of the reason why current TVs with a refresh rate of 120 Hz or higher are not enough. So some operations are being dumped off to the TV itself, apparently?

[ProblemSolver]

True. I've come to known that Toshiba will utilize their Cell derivative for their
upcoming 3-D TVs as well.

[Sch@dows]

Even if it's true (in my opinion, 3D Ready TV just have to accept a 120Hz input stream where almost every HD TV are limited to 60Hz for now), it doesn't change the fact the console has to generate 2x60 fps (the TV won't compute 2 different field view).

So it may be possible that wipeout HD won't run at 1080p in 3D (it doesn't always run at such a resolution even now)

[ProblemSolver]

Sure the console has to render 2x60fps, no question about that. I thought it
was obvious.

[Sch@dows]

Yes, it is obvious but the initial question was "whether the resolution of 1080p can be retained for WipEout HD while being viewed on 3-D".
Since the console has to compute 120 fps, i doubt it will be have to maintaiin 1080p resolution.

[ProblemSolver]

I doubt it as well, but it's not impossible to say at least, after some modification
have been made to the game, of course.

[Koleax]

The two images would be very similar. Do we really know that the engine would be rendering an entire frame once from one angle and an entire frame once again from a very slightly different angle? Or could it render abstract "frames" of data at 60fps that the TV then splits into two separate images on the fly?

[Sch@dows]

despite being quite similar, they're still different. I don't know how the engine process the data, but even if it's the same 3D scene (would be computed once), the 2D images must be rendered separatly.

blending the to "frame" together, like CRT screen would mean it's not a 1080p.

[aethernet]

I'm not wearing glasses to play a video game.

[Connavar]

Do we even know what kind of 3d technology was used?
I've seen good points mentioned here.

1) 1 or 2 ps3?

2) the ps3 could transfer depth data via the HDMI connection, so a custom TV
could use this to create 2 modified frames for each eye, in this case the game
won't need to render at 120fps, 60 will be enough

3) the game could be rendering at 120 fps, which means the image quality
would suffer (worse textures etc), or ... someone comes up with a very smart
solution. I remember SL had a very smart way to handle 1080p, so maybe
they found a way to go 120fps with each even frame being nearly the same
as the odd one.

I'm sure it's possible to calculate the odd+even frames quicker than usual,
many operations must be done only once per "physical frame" = per 2 frames
here, like updating ship positions, even object visibility should be about the
same.

Obviously a resolution drop or image quality drop would also help...

4) now I'm wondering of the effect of an interleaved 60fps game, so that
would be 60 frames would be L/R/L/R/... every odd frame on the left eye,
and every even frame on the right eye ... will our brain be able to merge
both inputs to produce something 60fps smooth or not?
Would be too good to be true.

[Autechom]

If it will be so great like Rad Racer?

[ProblemSolver]

@Connavar: I would favor using two PS3 not only to get a proper 3-D version of
the game, but also to get a more enhanced stand-alone game with a greater scene
complexity and / or more frames in general. Gran Turismo has such an option
since version 3 (PS2) to render the left and right view (window) of a car
projected onto another TV each. Anyways, it's not feasible to do it that way
at first instance, but on the other hand WOHD could scale with the amount of
PS3 you can throw at it and it's pretty obvious that PS3 becomes much cheaper
as time goes by. But the bigger problem here is to parallelize the code over
multiple units which isn't an easy subject to say at least. Partitioning the
geometry, doing good load-balancing, and having a good communication pattern /
infrastructure across multiple compute nodes (many PS3) is far beyond what most
game-developers are able to do, yet. But it's the future. For example, Polyphony
has shown GT5 running at four times 1080p through a Sony SXHD projector and at
1080p@240fps on a Nano-Spindt FED using four PS3. Just imagine buying another
PS3 to either playing GT5 in 3-D@2x60Hz or in 3D@120Hz. Would be awesome, for
sure.

In general, the issue with 120fps is not that the PS3's computational units
aren't able to process much more date, the issue is that you have to bring in
the data at twice the rate, which essentially cuts the memory bandwidth in half
(with respect to 60fps). Starvation for data kills any fast CPU these days.
Memory bandwidth limitations and memory latency (collectively known as the
Memory Wall) are the core issues we have to face for a very long time. When PS3
developers say; we've utilize all the unit much better than ever before; then
they essentially mean that they have managed to utilize the aggregative memory
bandwidth a lot better than ever before to feed the units with more data to do
something useful.

At the moment I'm quite skeptical about 3-D. No one who has ever visited any
trade-show displaying WipEout HD in 3-D has ever mentioned anything about the
quality. Was the game still running at 1080p with the same amount of detail?
Or was the game running at 720p (or even HALOp = 576p xD) with a reduction in
geometry and texture quality? Only Jesus knows it.

[aethernet]

I've never even heard of the concept of having two consoles and two TV's to play a game. Multiple monitors, yes, but still. That's a lot of money. We're talking entertainment for the rich and famous here.

[Connavar]

In the worst case scenario, we'll just have to wait for the PS4 to have a proper
Wipeout HD 3D running at 120fps with no graphical loss (PS3 visual quality with
anti-aliasing), I'm sure Sony could put such a game on PSN, I would buy it
for sure!

[ProblemSolver]

@aethernet: It always depends on how much you love a certain thing. Some people
played GT4 on three TVs (left, center, right) using three PS2's and three copies
of the game.

@Connavar: I think we aren't done on the PS3, yet. But I also think that all the
3-D stuff is at best a prototype of what to expect from Sony on the PS4 at full
scale. There is a lot of hate against Sony, granted, but they, at least, do
something in terms of technology. How often have they defined the frontier of
things that have become so common place? Many times. M$ does nothing, they just
copy all the sh!t. And I do believe that in 10 years from now 3-D TV is so
common place that you will be considered old-school watching movies in 2D. 3-D
isn't any news, like we all know. I played games in 3-D on a PC 17 years ago,
but it never took off on PC because non of the former giants wanted to take the
risk. And it is still a risk today to go that road, but with the PS3 in place
it's worth to go that way once more. Currently Sony is all on their own, again.
If it pays off then they will be remembered for that as well. All the latest
signs do look promising for 3-D, most people give a positive feedback after
having watched Avatar the movie. Personally, I'm all for 3-D. There is nothing
that can replace the spatiality of a particle flow viewed in 3-D!

[DrMannevond]

@Problemsolver : I would be very surprised if WO doesn't suffer in resolution and/or framerate if they convert it to 3D. I read an interview somewhere with the guys making Super Stardust (sorry, I can't remember where, but it's well worth hunting down. The studio is Housemarque from Finland), which runs at 60fps/1080p.
They had lots of trouble getting it to work in 3D, esp. with the framerate, and they had to drop the resolution to 720p and basically re-program the whole engine if memory serves me correct (probably not..).
Or you can try the cheap-o-matic way and get some cheap video goggles and put a millisecond delay on one eye. Apparently it gives a 3D-ish effect (and a magnificent headache), and you can get it RIGHT NOW!

[Connavar]

Thanks for bringing this up, I searched and found the article:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/su...firmed-article
I don't mind a resolution drop for wipeout to 720p, if that means 3D!

[ProblemSolver]

Good find on the article!

720p is even quite good for displaying stuff in 3-D. Like the article says, lots of
optimizations can be done. And I thing this holds true for many other games
as well. What the article also reveals is that a simple 3-D firmware update
doesn't cut it.

What bothers me quite a bit is why Sony got along with such a weak graphics
accelerator, the RSX. I actually know most of the the things behind that, but up
to my point of view someone has done a mis-calculation (properly budget
related). Sony promised to deliver FullHD, at least, for most of the games on the
PS3. But this is obviously not the case. And I think the PS3 suffers from it quite a
lot.

The standard should have been 1080p@60fps with 4xAA (Anti-Aliasing) for most
of the games. There was once an article with Ken Kutaragi where he already
talked about 120fps and 240fps. I'm pretty sure that Sony had all the 3-D stuff in
mind long before.

So who was in charge for the RSX' specs? There is a story that Sony was talking
to Polyphony about the requirements to build a proper GT5 on the PS3. It is
believed that the blue-print of the PS3 was built around the requirements of GT5
and was later downgraded a lot. For example, it is known that Sony wanted to
cut the Cell processor down to only 6 SPEs, but Ken Kutaragi insisted on a Cell
with 8 SPEs. If you look at the latest GT5 videos, which are awesome btw, one
thing is for sure, the game lacks shadow-map resolution like hell. Almost every
bigger title lacks shadow-map resolution. There is just not enough memory
and fill-rate to hold and fill an 1080p screen for a more complex game using
good textures as well as good shadow-maps. :-

So you now have an FullHD TV at home to watch movies and play games
whatsoever, but unfortunately most of these games do only run in 720p. My
problem is not really the resolution, but it's just that an 720p image does not
map 1:1 on a 1080p screen. Almost all up-scalers are poor. And the
interpolation methods used (bilinear, most of the times) does not preserve
brightness. So your picture looks washed-out when scaled from 720p to 1080p
by a TV or by the PS3 itself. I really hate this. There exists better interpolation
methods, of course, but they do require more chip-logic while implemented in
hardware. Toshiba has now implemented their variant of the Cell processor into
their new so-called Cell-TVs. That means that they can now program a certain
interpolation method to be applied to the input-signal before displaying it on
the screen in software. There was a trade-show where Toshiba showed off the
Cell-TV doing realtime up-scaling + sharpening of an SD video signal. Since
than the Cell-TV is considered as the one producing the best SD image on a
FullHD TV. I hope those TVs are ready for mass production later this year, since
it will take us quite some time until 1080p is common place in either every
TV show or every game (PS4 comes to mind).