Originally Posted by Bungie.net
The strangest rumor of all was that MS was “forcing” Bungie to make Halo 3 60 fps at 1080p. Um, it was one thing to see that on a forum, but it was strange to see it on regular news site.
1080p at 60 fps is awesome for fighting games and barely a stretch for Live Arcade games. But if you want epic battles, dozens of bad guys, huge vistas and colossal structures, with advanced AI, HDR lighting and explosive physics, then you’re not getting those at 1080p at 60fps. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate – Halo 3 will display at 1080p through the Xbox Elite with its scaler and HDMI port, but not natively. We’ve seen it do just that and it looks utterly lovely. So if you have a 1080p TV, enjoy it yourself in a few weeks. Most people, and I mean the VAST majority of people don’t have a 1080p TV, so it would be foolish to sacrifice even a single feature for a bullet point number on the back of a box.
The only number we’re committing to is that our number one priority is to make Halo 3 look awesome, smooth, detailed and innovative, no matter what resolution you run it at. Although that said, it does look significantly better in HD, so maybe you should convince the powers that be, that now is the time for a set upgrade?
Actually, HD resolutions are one of the tougher things to account for when building a console game. PC game makers are used to supporting multiple resolutions and we do have lots of experience in this regard. But when you add it to the test cycle, it becomes this enormous amount of work. Every aspect of the game has to be tested at 480i (normal, ancient TV resolution) all the way up to 1080p resolutions to check for everything from graphical glitches to controller lag. And the odd thing about HD resolutions is that they aren’t even necessarily “correct” to begin with.
For example, most folks running an image at 720p, are doing so on a screen with a native resolution of 1280 X 768. The HD resolutions were all decided on during the heyday of the CRT tube, so the introduction of fixed pixel displays brought along with it new problems and inconsistencies. We have to build graphics and gameplay to work with everything from that ancient wooden RCA in the basement to a 60 inch Pioneer Elite. I think that one of the real payoffs of all this testing is that it looks pretty damned good and “next-gen” even on a cruddy old set. I actually know someone who uses a 360 via a crazy RF adapter. Now that is hardcore!
