The big, fat Halo 3 thread

[MRU]

It's BS. I noticed that Halo 3 does not look anywhere near as good as the GRAW games or Resistance on the PS3. I wondered about it as soon as I fired it up.

And they messed up things like the water as well.

That's not to say that games that run at under 720p need look bad. Perfect Dark Zero does, but its cartoon style graphics don't really suffer from it.

Yeah the game certainly doesnt look anywhere near as good as The Darkness or BioShock and they had amazing lighting too.

Yeah I agree about the water, it just doesnt look right to me either.

PGR3 looked good too and that was under 720p i read.



Halo3 is just ok looking. I played Halo2 for about an hour last night and yes Halo3 does looks a massive leap better than it, but it's just that we have been so treated to better looking games on the hardware, it's hard to forgive some of those ugly character models in cutscenes.

were just all turning into greedy graphics whores

 

[0098386]

Coolio. So 640 against the 576 of my Wii.

I'm probably missing the point or something, but is the Wii just a little bit more powerful than we know? Just that I've yet to find an ounce of slowdown in a Wii game, they're all very fluid at 480p. And Halo 3 has to run at 640p to and still get a bit of slowdown from time to time?

I dunno if I was underestimating the Wii or overestimating these HD consoles...

 

[zap2]

Coolio. So 640 against the 576 of my Wii.

I'm probably missing the point or something, but is the Wii just a little bit more powerful than we know? Just that I've yet to find an ounce of slowdown in a Wii game, they're all very fluid at 480p. And Halo 3 has to run at 640p to and still get a bit of slowdown from time to time?

I dunno if I was underestimating the Wii or overestimating these HD consoles...

Come on...stop the FUD

Naturally it’s more complicated than that. In fact, you could argue we gave you 1280 pixels of vertical resolution, since Halo 3 uses not one, but two frame buffers – both of which render at 1152x640 pixels. The reason we chose this slightly unorthodox resolution and this very complex use of two buffers is simple enough to see – lighting. We wanted to preserve as much dynamic range as possible – so we use one for the high dynamic range and one for the low dynamic range values. Both are combined to create the finished on screen image.

This ability to display a full range of HDR, combined with our advanced lighting, material and postprocessing engine, gives our scenes, large and small, a compelling, convincing and ultimately “real” feeling, and at a steady and smooth frame rate, which in the end was far more important to us than the ability to display a few extra pixels. Making this decision simpler still is the fact that the 360 scales the
“almost-720p” image effortlessly all the way up to 1080p if you so desire.

In fact, if you do a comparison shot between the native 1152x640 image and the scaled 1280x720, it’s practically impossible to discern the difference. We would ignore it entirely were it not for the internet’s propensity for drama where none exists. In fact the reason we haven’t mentioned this before in weekly updates, is the simple fact that it would have distracted conversation away from more important aspects of the game, and given tinfoil hats some new gristle to chew on as they catalogued their toenail clippings."

Halo 3 looks much better then anything on Wii. Don't even try and say other wise Jimmi!

 

[0098386]

WTF, I didn't.

I said "why am I playing Wii games without dropped frames in 480p" and "why is Halo 3 running in 640p with dropped frames". Which is why I said am I underestimating the Wii hardware OR overestimating the 360. That is the comparison I am bringing up, nothing to do with "Wii games looking as good as 360 games". W.T.F...

Course theres a lot more AI and stuff running in the background. But for a system with 3 cores, a super powered GPU and more RAM shouldn't Halo be running just a little bit better? Half Life and the Source engine seem to get HDR running on my system pretty well...

 

[MRU]

Actually when you start playing with the Theatre portion of Halo3 you can really see how pretty the game is at times, with great lighting and some amazing particle effects.

The game also does improve after the first few levels which are ironically misleading because they give the first impression of meh! when some of the later levels are really great looking.

Also the fact there is a NOTICEABLE difference when you play the game in 1080p over 720p. It does look much better so whether the game internally is 620p makes bugger all difference because the upscaler hardware on the 360 is doing a great job.

 

[0098386]

It seems to be doing a stellar job. 4 player splitscreen and I can still get the long distance sniper shots.

So... the 360 scaler just makes everything 1080p, or does it process the 3D output image into 2D and just stretch it bigger using techniques to make it look native? I've never seen it explained.

 

[MRU]

It seems to be doing a stellar job. 4 player splitscreen and I can still get the long distance sniper shots.

So... the 360 scaler just makes everything 1080p, or does it process the 3D output image into 2D and just stretch it bigger using techniques to make it look native? I've never seen it explained.

I imagine its the same as say running a pc game.

Lets face it bio shock on high settings is the same game, with the same textures and details whether it is run at 800x600 or at 1600x1200 except the resolution is far greater and therefore better looking.

So the scaler just does that job hardware wise.

It just ups the resolution of the content it has. Same as you would see a N64 emulator when upping the res of a game making it look better than it did originally, even though its the same game.

 

[Chone]

*

 

[Chone]

I imagine its the same as say running a pc game.

Lets face it bio shock on high settings is the same game, with the same textures and details whether it is run at 800x600 or at 1600x1200 except the resolution is far greater and therefore better looking.

So the scaler just does that job hardware wise.

It just ups the resolution of the content it has. Same as you would see a N64 emulator when upping the res of a game making it look better than it did originally, even though its the same game.

It doesn't really work that way, when you change the resolution in a PC game, the renderer has to render (yay for redundancy) more pixels and in the current days of "per-pixel" lighting models upping the resolution takes a massive hit on performance.

An scaler extrapolates the image so it displays correctly full size on the screen, a "1080p" scaler just means the game was internally extrapolated to 1920x1080 pixels and then sent as a native resolution to the TV, if you scale to "720p" internally then send to the TV, the TV still has to do some work because the image is not a native resolution, this double extrapolation causes further decrease in image quality which is why a 1080p scaler still manages to look better than a 720p scaler.

So in reality, the game is being rendered at 640p or whatever but the Xbox360 is internally scaling it up to the TV's supported resolution, essentially reducing the amount of graphical artifacts from scaling.

Essentially the difference is, a renderer is told to draw an image that fills up a space of 1024x720 pixels and it knows what to put on each pixel with information from the game data files. A scaler is told to draw an image that fills up a space of 1024x720 pixels by using the information from a 800x600 image and "guessing" what properties each pixel should have.

 

[MRU]

^ Cheers I get ye. That makes sense.


As long as the end result look I don't mind how it works though

 

[takao]

looks like with halo they already hit some performance limits in the hardware if they have to render it with "less than HD" resolution internal just like they did with PGR3

 

[Markleshark]

As long as the end result look I don't mind how it works though

Thats the point, really, isn't it.

First time I've really gotten into a Halo Multi player though, I'm absolutely loving this.

 

[MRU]

looks like with halo they already hit some performance limits in the hardware if they have to render it with "less than HD" resolution internal just like they did with PGR3

But the new PGR4 doesnt do it, and besides....

There are better looking games (FPS) on the hardware.

Clive Barkers - Jerihco, The Darkness, BioShock, Gears of War, GRAW all look better than Halo3 to me and have as much HDR lighting and such, so I dont think we can just blame 'hardware' and say it's a limitation of it, it seems to me to be more so the developers and the engine they have created limitation.

I think the reason they have stripped down the graphics (if you want to say they are stripped down) is because of the 4 player split-screen. Hence 4x as much to render on screen at one time. Just a thought, though could be wrong.

Thats the point, really, isn't it.

Yep! As long as the scaler works, does it's job and the end result is good/great then really is it really that important ?

 

[0098386]

Yep! As long as the scaler works, does it's job and the end result is good/great then really is it really that important ?

From what I've gathered around't web it's more about the irony of 360 people ripping on the Wii for its lack of HD when the systems flagship game isn't HD.

Personally I don't care. I've locked my PC gaming output to 720p with 3x FSAA and HDR (game allowing).

 

[2nyRiggz]

Always good to know that your flagship game isn't running in native HD plus flogging 360s...good job bungie/MS.

The game still looks good but there are at points lot of the jaggies....well once it doesn't hinder gameplay.

were just all turning into greedy graphics whores

Damn right....I payed for it so it better produce the goods.


Bless

 

[MRU]

The game still looks good but there are at points lot of the jaggies....well once it doesn't hinder gameplay.

Jaggies are a curse but there are plenty of games on PS3 with seriously bad jaggies too, so it's not just a system or halo 3 thing.

We deserve better on all our consoles.

 

[Markleshark]

Jaggies don't bother me until people mention them...

...

 

[sikkinixx]

the one glaring Halo 3 performance issue I have noticed so far is the occasional massive frame rate drop to about 4 fps. It has only happened about 3 times but it lasted for a good 10 seconds before the game got back up to speed. And oddly it wasn't even during the heaviest of action scenes either. Again its only happened about 3 or 4 times in 5 hours of gameplay but it caused to me to die *shakes my fist at bungie*

 

[zero2dash]

Oh yeah???!
Well I love it!!!!
so THERE!!!

I haven't bothered with multiplayer yet and I have already told myself that I will finish campain on Legendary before I dive into multiplayer.

Just finished Act 2 last night...and I love the game.
It's certainly HARD on LEGENDARY but I expected no less.
Try it like me...Legendary, single player only (no co-op whatsoever....not local and not on Live).
See if you can do it.

I got stuck at a few spots already so far but eventually did pass them. The AI is pretty smart especially at flanking and attacking if you are cornered. Brute Chiefs are NASTY, they're like tanks; take a ton of damage and 1-hit kill you if they get close. Them + Jackals with the Particle Beam Rifle (ie 1-hit kill from across the 'world') have already made me (nearly) cry in several spots because of the difficulty. But it's oh so worth it.

 

[zap2]

So, I went and bought a 360 and Halo 3 today, and WOW...so much fun.


Tons of fun, I love it. I missed having good FPS games(for now, Wii, your FPS suck)

 

[sikkinixx]

Just beat it with a buddy.


meh.


the second to last level is ****ing awful... Died about 10 times when we probably died less times in the whole game, totally unbalanced. Well now for it's place on the shelf never to be played again.

 

[zero2dash]

Just beat it with a buddy.


meh.


the second to last level is ****ing awful... Died about 10 times when we probably died less times in the whole game, totally unbalanced. Well now for it's place on the shelf never to be played again.

LOL
See this is what I'm talking about.
The whole game puts up a challenge but with co-op the challenge is moot unless tables are stacked in ridiculous proportions (like they probably did on the last stage, which I'd expect seeing as IT'S THE LAST STAGE ).

Play single player, no co-op, then come and tell me the game is unbalanced.

I just started Act 3 on Legendary.
The game is hard, very hard. But not obnoxiously so. No harder than Gears of War on Insane which I also finished by myself, no co-op.
In both games, you are expected to be at the top of your game on the hardest difficulty. You make a mistake, you will die and die often.

All this complaining about Halo 3's difficulty (namely how easy it is and how much the game sucks because of it) and every complaint I've seen (and I'm not just talking about here, I'm talking about here, Joystiq, X3F and other sites) is by a bunch of people playing on co-op.

 

[Symtex]

raggedjimmi complaining about Halo 3, why am i not suprised. Why the hatred Jimmi ? Does it really matter if the game is running on 640p or 1080p ? Bungie has never been known for their graphics but their multiplayer experience. They have more then deliver with Halo 3.

 

[sikkinixx]

LOL
See this is what I'm talking about.
The whole game puts up a challenge but with co-op the challenge is moot unless tables are stacked in ridiculous proportions (like they probably did on the last stage, which I'd expect seeing as IT'S THE LAST STAGE ).

Play single player, no co-op, then come and tell me the game is unbalanced.

I just started Act 3 on Legendary.
The game is hard, very hard. But not obnoxiously so. No harder than Gears of War on Insane which I also finished by myself, no co-op.
In both games, you are expected to be at the top of your game on the hardest difficulty. You make a mistake, you will die and die often.

All this complaining about Halo 3's difficulty (namely how easy it is and how much the game sucks because of it) and every complaint I've seen (and I'm not just talking about here, I'm talking about here, Joystiq, X3F and other sites) is by a bunch of people playing on co-op.

but the game IS unbalanced. Look, like it or not co-op is how the game is meant to be played. The menu is set up for multiple people to create a party and play campaign mode, and it is scoring for campaign mode. If it was supposed to be single-player with co-op tacked on as an after thought they would have just made you master chief #2 like in Halo 2 when your buddy played with you instead of (very poorly) writing the Arbitor into the story/gameplay. The game should compensate properly for playing co-op not be easy then have one nearly broken level 2/3's through it.

and I'm not saying the game sucked because of it, the (campaign) game sucks for a lot of other reasons, but it shows very poor design on Bungie's part.

 

[0098386]

Well I tried to give it another shot today (up to level 4).

I dunno. It seems like I've been spoiled by Half Life 2. The single player story is more engrossing and better presented, the weapons are much more balanced, AI is better. Then multiplayer is taken care of through Deathmatch and Team Fortress 2. Meh.
If Halo 3 really was just a full Halo 2 then it'd likely be a fantastic game. Similar to how Doom 3 was pushed aside for the original HL2 and even Farcry it just seems Halo 3 was released way too late.