PS3 and it's hardware scaler - Page 4

did you even read the article? Penalty is 10% only. Different resolutions should be fine, afterall plenty of space on those discs.

I also heard that said, but as to who originally said it and how credible they were, I have no idea. It seems a lot of people who spent time on the insides of the box were pretty sure it didn't and I'd venture MSFT did more than a bit of that before their ANA scaler article.

I'm not in any way an authority on this stuff but I am always highly skeptical of anything put into a box (more cost) and conveniently disabled (making it useless cost). It's a rare item that costs less to include than it does to leave out.

there is definetly a lot of speculation going on :-).

If this is true, what happens to 720p native TVs? I don't have a PS3, so I don't know the exact order or if they updated it. Does 1080i still have a higher priority than 720p? I know that users have to enable 1080i to play BluRay at HD.

Let's take a 720p native game as an example. If they enable 1080i as one of the supported resolutions through scaling, does that mean that it will automatically select 1080i instead of 720p because of the current priority?

Its not that uncommon and very often done with graphics cards. Although, its for a specific reason in that case. Offering a high end card at a discount with disabled features for example. Its also not unheard of to include hardware with functionality that is enabled through firmware updates. The strange part here is the total secrecy regarding plans for the final, functional version of the PS3, even from game developers.

Only 10%? If I recall correctly, you once said that you were a programmer. A programmer saying "Only 10%" clearly hasn't worked on applications that demand performance. A 10% loss/gain is HUGE in this industry. Game developers spend countless hours optimizing their code to gain a few more FPS. Also, 10% is just a crude estimate, we do not know the actual performance hit until things are cleared up. I simply said that increasing the resolution does require more power, which is true.

If you have worked with applications that are very system intensive, then I apologize , I guess I was surprised by such a statement coming from a follow programmer.

What is being said above is a lot of assumptions and a lot of that assumption is wrong. See, I could explain the issue and why it was not allowed to be used, and explain what the solution is doing, and explain what the SDK support does, but a lot of that would be seriously breaking NDA. I can confirm that it is definitely a hardware scaler, it is always referred to as a hardware scaler, and that you could access it before in the SDK simply by setting it up the code right. What has changed now is how developers interact with that scaler, and that they can now use the scaler with some restrictions.

BUT, why the restrictions? What purpose does it serve? Is it some limitation of the PS3 design that Sony realized and thus they were forbidding use of the scaler? Why the secrecy? It begs the question does it not? I think there is a scaler, its just not functional in some way as its use is causing problems with the PS3. Probably performance issues. Its the only thing that makes sense. I'm glad Sony is figuring out a solution however, and this update is a great bit of news and a step in the right direction. Hopefully, they will be more transparent in what they're doing and not so secretive, but I doubt they'll do that.

That seems to be the question puzzling everyone. Sony is capable of making great scalers, we all know that. Hmm, I guess we will just have to wait and see.

my guess is that it has something to do with films on Blu-ray discs.

This is hogwash.I can output any variety of resolutions on my PC, do the devs need to remake all the art, movies, etc? Of course not, we are talking about the output resolutuon and every console supports more than just one, just like a computer.

Trying to optimize code that runs on top of DirectX is like feeding steroids to a cow hoping it will win the Kentucky Derby.

Obviously they will remain secretive. They are not going to publish their trade secrets and the schematics of every piece of hardware they developed.

I think they did what they did because they wanted to force/push developers to produce content that would look better than what is available on other consoles.

can I get full HD with my video and left and right audio jacks through my TV.....BD with video jack is awesome......(lame)

obviously hey couldnt so sony said, "screw it we do the job for you since 1080P is impossible by these dumb developers" (whoa )

Article has no references, no pictures and no author is named?

makes you wonder...

Well talk about a failure of monumental proportions!

So we have one scaled horizontal resolution... that hardly seems similiar to the 360's ability to scale reolutions. My vote goes with those that find this a cobbed software "solution". Scale my PS2 games to 720P, my PS3 games to 1080P and my BR to 720P and I will be impressed, this is not going to do it.

Clearly this is not a transparent scaler to developers. I think Xbox360 is a fully transparent(?) to all previous and future games. They make 1280x780 optimized gfx, screen layout and positioning. Then user simply activates upscaler to 1080i/p. Both use the same aspect ratio so relative layout positionings are not a problem.

From 960x1080 vs. 1280x720 both upscaled to 1920x1080 resolution is a major challenge to develop. It simply cost more money and time. You cannot take X0 720p game and do "simple" port to PS3. Future may not be like it was before, first made PS2 and then did Xbox release. Now it might go other way around for nextgen games and PS3 requires so much more work.

I wait for existing Resistance:FoM game to see scaler enabled. But we don't see it until devs make a major update. Time will tell if they go through all the troubles. Should it be free or purchased upgrade for 1080i-only tv owners?

Why not just enable 1280x720 upscaling and please developers. PS3 scaler is unable to do realtime scaling from 720p buffer without a major performance hit? Hardly a sophisticated scaler.

I don't care if X0 scaler is a fully transparent or developers must call few sdk functions to enable it. It does the job more transparently than PS3 counterpart anyway and its always good to help devs during these 50M budgeted game projects.

edit1:
One explanation to provide horz-only "half scaler" in SDK is they give two-pass scaler rendering.
* pass 1: game renders background and scenegraph graphics, without overlay HUDs and texts. 960x1080 -> 1920x1080
* pass 2: game renders overlay HUDs and texts with pixel-perfect results to 1920x1080 buffer
-> buffer is drawn on screen

I don't know if this a valid idea at all. But one could run Photoshopped test and see how some image looked.
* 1280x720 with HUDs and texts scaled to 1920x1080 in one go
* 960x1080 image upscaled, then HUDs and texts plotted

edit2:
vdo from www.ps3forums.com quote:
"the choices of resolutions that a developer can use have been increased to be 960x1080, 1280x1080, 1440x1080 and 1600x1080......So this means that at the very least Sony could begin requiring that all 1280x720 games also support somethingX1080.

But the main point is that by forcing the dev to not just develop for 1280x720, but to also force them to develop for somethingX1080 resolution, that will produce games that look great on 720p TVs and also look better on 1080p TVs than if devs only developed for 1280x720p and had PS3 scale that (both horizontally and vertically) to 1080p."

I think it sounds more rationale now.

What does your incoherent comment have to do with this thread? Anyone on this forum knows that you can find an HDMI cable for all of $7. If $7 is too much for a cable, you should have never bought a PS3 in the first place.

Are you saying that there is no hardware scalar present?

Regardless of Dark Knight's supposed insider knowledge - I'd argue the simplest explanation for the whole fiasco is that there ISN'T a hardware scalar in the vein of the 360's ANA present in the PS3, and that this late addition is the result of Sony Jerry-rigging a system together out of existing resources. Doing a horizontal stretch is an interesting way around the issue, and frankly we'll have to wait and see if the end result is noticably worse or similar to the 360's scaling performance.

As it stands I can't think of a single reason why Sony would purposefully delay developer access to a functioning scalar if it was already present and working. Can you?

One theory was that they were trying to force developers to render at 1280x720 or 1920x1080 natively. None of us has any inside knowledge of the situation, however, so mostly everything on this board is conjecture.

Stop thinking logically. Sometimes Sony doesn't.

Kutarogically then? ;D

Only 10% in memory usage? Yes, thats definetly not a lot to give an option to customers that cant play games currently at 720p!

Yes! With Kenny at the helm, you never knew what to expect. They are probably using 25% of the scaler's life force to power the 2nd and 3rd HDMI outputs (that are currently hidden from cunsumers, developers, and even some Sony insiders.) The other 75% of the scaler is being used to power the flux capacitor, because Ken wanted to be future proofed against the rise of time machines.

spwolf, please read my posts before commenting. All this time I have been saying that the increased resolution takes more power, that is it. I have not commented on wether this was "good" or "bad." I was simply talking about the technical aspects of it.

While that does allow 1080I people to play games, it may also hurt 720P gamers a bit. Frankly, I think losing a few extra objects in the background or a few extra FPS is worth it. But like I said, not enough has been revealed. For all we know Sony could be working on some sort of fix.

From your post history, I highly doubt you own an Xbox 360. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a 20GB PS3 in stock. When I do, I plan on buying it. I am just as likely to defend/assault whichever console deserves it. I'm not an "enemy" you need to try and defeat.

Scaling up does not improve quality.

If games are rendered at the desired resolution without scaling, they will look better than games scaled up from a lower resolution.

Hence, Sony figured they would force the odds.

I won't blame them because look at how Microsoft handled the situation: They added 1080p support at the flip of a switch and most 1080p-enabled 360 games will be 720p game scaled up.

Actually, that is not completely true. A 720P game scaled to 1080P does look a bit better on most TVs. It is nothing out of this world and most people probably won't notice but the improvement can be seen if you focus.

Although, if developers target Sony's new resolution, odds are it will probably look a bit better scaled to 1080P than 720P scaled to 1080P. Again, it won't really be noticeable unless you put 2 displays next to each other and compare.

That's not at all how it works. Every 360 can now output at 1080p, but no games are advertised as being 1080p native. Nobody is going to claim that 720p games scaled up are 1080p.