The Xbox 360 Compendium
#103
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Originally Posted by Centurion
What good is an opinion if you don't have the rationale to back it up?
I was just responding the the post about not posting your opinion repeatedly by saying that's not what I do, but rather that I post it and then address questions and issues others have with it.
I have no problems at all with the questions etc. or taking the time to back them up.
Shoot away when you want to discuss something I post, and those that get annoyed by my posts or think I'm repetitive due to this, can simply put me on their ignore list.
#104
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Originally Posted by Josh Hinkle
I still play KOTOR and Halo a good deal, and I'm waiting on price drops for KOTOR II, Halo2 and Jade Empire, just to mention a few..
The environments are a nice change as well and really evoke a feeling of a mystical ancient china. The fact that you spend 90% of your time in beautiful outdoor environments is a nice change from most rpgs.
I'm about 20 hrs in and so there's still time for it to go to crap but so far the plot has been entertaining.
#106
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Quick question before I head to work. I know the XBOX360 supports a minimum of 720p for HD gameplay, but what about the thousands of HD owners whose TV's do not display that? I know my TV, along with most others does the standard 480, and 1080...hardly anything uses 720. Why would they pick that at the minimum? My main concern is...will the system 'down-grade' to 480p on those 720 games, or does no one know yet? If not, this will really hurt the XBOX, as no one will be able to play their games in HD.
#107
Originally Posted by discostu1337
Quick question before I head to work. I know the XBOX360 supports a minimum of 720p for HD gameplay, but what about the thousands of HD owners whose TV's do not display that? I know my TV, along with most others does the standard 480, and 1080...hardly anything uses 720. Why would they pick that at the minimum? My main concern is...will the system 'down-grade' to 480p on those 720 games, or does no one know yet? If not, this will really hurt the XBOX, as no one will be able to play their games in HD.
#108
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Originally Posted by Gallant Pig
Your 720p resolution will be upconverted to 1080i and look really good. 720p is the minumum for game makers. It's actually the most popular format for front projectors. They might have picked it as the minumum because it's HD format. It has less jaggies than 1080i.
#109
Originally Posted by flashburn
Doesn't that depend on the TV itself? I thought I read about people being pissed off that their HDTV downconverted 720p to 480p.
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Originally Posted by flashburn
Doesn't that depend on the TV itself? I thought I read about people being pissed off that their HDTV downconverted 720p to 480p.
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It important that you find a TV that accepts 720p, otherwise it will convert to whatever the native resolution is. If the native resolution is 420p, but you want it displayed in 1080i, it will downconvert to 420p before upconverting to 1080i. You want the native resolution to be 720p for these new systems.
I've done some research for a new TV myself
I've done some research for a new TV myself
#112
Originally Posted by joshd2012
It important that you find a TV that accepts 720p, otherwise it will convert to whatever the native resolution is. If the native resolution is 420p, but you want it displayed in 1080i, it will downconvert to 420p before upconverting to 1080i. You want the native resolution to be 720p for these new systems.
I've done some research for a new TV myself
I've done some research for a new TV myself
#113
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http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=9410
Seagate to provide LD25 hard drives for Xbox 360
Rob Fahey 11:40 09/06/2005
New discs designed specifically for gaming and home entertainment systems
Microsoft's Xbox 360 is set to use hard drive technology from storage specialist Seagate, with the company announcing that its new LD25 2.5" discs are to be used as the removable drives for the console.
Seagate announced the LD25 range of drives in a statement last night, describing the new drives as specifically designed for use in game systems, home entertainment devices and small form factor PCs.
The drives will be available in 20GB, 30GB and 40GB variants, with the Xbox 360 set to ship with the 20GB version of the hardware - which will be used for applications ranging from downloading game content to storing video messages and custom soundtracks.
"The hard drive extends the gaming experience on Xbox 360," explained Microsoft's corporate VP of Xbox hardware, Todd Holmdahl. "From downloading trailers, new game levels, maps, weapons, vehicles, and more to supporting custom playlists in every game and storing video messages from friends, Seagate's LD25 Series 2.5-inch hard drive brings gaming and digital media together for the ultimate entertainment experience."
According to Seagate, the new drives use a technology called DynaPlay, which optimises their performance to reduce power consumption and improve media streaming and security, while motors using a technology called SoftSonic mean that the drive runs more quietly than its competitors.
Seagate joins an impressive line-up of technology partners who are working with Microsoft on the new console, including CPU provider IBM, graphics chipset designer ATI and wireless solution provider RTX Telecom.
Chris
Seagate to provide LD25 hard drives for Xbox 360
Rob Fahey 11:40 09/06/2005
New discs designed specifically for gaming and home entertainment systems
Microsoft's Xbox 360 is set to use hard drive technology from storage specialist Seagate, with the company announcing that its new LD25 2.5" discs are to be used as the removable drives for the console.
Seagate announced the LD25 range of drives in a statement last night, describing the new drives as specifically designed for use in game systems, home entertainment devices and small form factor PCs.
The drives will be available in 20GB, 30GB and 40GB variants, with the Xbox 360 set to ship with the 20GB version of the hardware - which will be used for applications ranging from downloading game content to storing video messages and custom soundtracks.
"The hard drive extends the gaming experience on Xbox 360," explained Microsoft's corporate VP of Xbox hardware, Todd Holmdahl. "From downloading trailers, new game levels, maps, weapons, vehicles, and more to supporting custom playlists in every game and storing video messages from friends, Seagate's LD25 Series 2.5-inch hard drive brings gaming and digital media together for the ultimate entertainment experience."
According to Seagate, the new drives use a technology called DynaPlay, which optimises their performance to reduce power consumption and improve media streaming and security, while motors using a technology called SoftSonic mean that the drive runs more quietly than its competitors.
Seagate joins an impressive line-up of technology partners who are working with Microsoft on the new console, including CPU provider IBM, graphics chipset designer ATI and wireless solution provider RTX Telecom.
Chris
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Originally Posted by discostu1337
Quick question before I head to work. I know the XBOX360 supports a minimum of 720p for HD gameplay, but what about the thousands of HD owners whose TV's do not display that? I know my TV, along with most others does the standard 480, and 1080...hardly anything uses 720. Why would they pick that at the minimum? My main concern is...will the system 'down-grade' to 480p on those 720 games, or does no one know yet? If not, this will really hurt the XBOX, as no one will be able to play their games in HD.
I have a Hitachi CRT, one of the few CRT HDTVs that support 480, 720p, 1080i.
/can't wait for all HD games
#116
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Originally Posted by joshd2012
It important that you find a TV that accepts 720p, otherwise it will convert to whatever the native resolution is. If the native resolution is 420p, but you want it displayed in 1080i, it will downconvert to 420p before upconverting to 1080i. You want the native resolution to be 720p for these new systems.
I've done some research for a new TV myself
I've done some research for a new TV myself
It's mostly dependant on the native resolution of your HDTV.
Take a game (or movie for that matter) programmed in 480 lines and output it to a screen with a native resolution of 720 lines (one column of pixels from top to bottom should have 720 pixels). What happens here is the Xbox (if you clicked "YES" in the Xbox dashboard) will output 480P but your monitor has to scale that information to fill all of it's 720 lines of resolution. That means, no matter how good of a scaler your monitor has, it still has to "make-up" some of that information to fill it's screen. This is why people who spend thousands of dollars for an HDTV still have their Xbox games looking like crap compared to a regular tube TV worth hundreds of dollars. These older TV sets have a native resolution of 480 lines (640 x 480).
The Xbox 360 will have, at a minimum, games programmed with 720 progressive lines of resolution. An HDTV with that same native resolution will look sweet. All the information the game developers programmed into their game should come up on screen. No conversion or scaling needs to happen. What you need to be concerned with now is how well your LCD, DLP, LCoS monitor can show fast changing colors and objects which is opening another can of worms altogether.
#117
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http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=9451
Unified architecture gives Xbox 360 the graphical edge, claims ATI
Rob Fahey 13:23 10/06/2005
PlayStation 3 may be faster on paper, but Xbox 360's easier to harness, says Huddy
Microsoft's Xbox 360 will have better graphics performance than the PlayStation 3 despite the better on-paper specifications of the Sony console, according to graphics chip designer ATI's Richard Huddy.
Speaking in an interview with techie website bit-tech.net, Huddy - ATI's developer liaison and technology evangelist - went into detail about the Xenos chipset used in Xbox 360, and how it stacks up against NVIDIA's RSX part for the PlayStation 3.
Although the RSX is more powerful in terms of raw specifications - it runs at a higher clock speed for a start, 550Mhz rather than the 500Mhz speed of the Xenos part - Huddy claims that the unified shader architecture used by ATI will give Xbox 360 the graphical edge.
"That mere 10 per cent clock speed that RSX has on Xenos is easily countered by the unified shader architecture that we've implemented," he claimed. "Rather than separate pixel and vertex pipelines, we've created a single unified pipeline that can do both."
"Providing developers throw instructions at our architecture in the right way, Xenos can run at 100 per cent efficiency all the time, rather than having some pipeline instructions waiting for others," Huddy explained. "For comparison, most high-end PC chips run at 50-60% typical efficiency. The super cool point is that 'in the right way' just means 'give us plenty of work to do'. The hardware manages itself."
For its part, NVIDIA has repeatedly downplayed the importance of unified shader architecture, and has publicly stated that it doesn't believe that this is the best path to improved graphics performance.
Huddy believes that this position is marketing bluster from NVIDIA, rather than being based on any genuinely held beliefs about the technology in question.
"This time around, they don't have the architecture and we do, so they have to knock it and say it isn't worthwhile," he said. "But in the future, they'll market themselves out of this corner, claiming that they've cracked how to do it best. But RSX isn't unified, and this is why I think PS3 will almost certainly be slower and less powerful."
Of course, neither the RSX nor the Xenos exists in final silicon form yet, and the claims of both NVIDIA and ATI need to be taken with a hefty pinch of salt as a result. Although they're both based on IBM-manufactured chips and PC-like graphics parts, the architecture of the Xbox 360 and the PS3 is radically different and direct comparisons are difficult.
However, many developers working with both consoles up to now have privately concluded that Sony's system, which will be launched at least six months after Microsoft's, will have the edge in terms of overall performance.
Chris
Unified architecture gives Xbox 360 the graphical edge, claims ATI
Rob Fahey 13:23 10/06/2005
PlayStation 3 may be faster on paper, but Xbox 360's easier to harness, says Huddy
Microsoft's Xbox 360 will have better graphics performance than the PlayStation 3 despite the better on-paper specifications of the Sony console, according to graphics chip designer ATI's Richard Huddy.
Speaking in an interview with techie website bit-tech.net, Huddy - ATI's developer liaison and technology evangelist - went into detail about the Xenos chipset used in Xbox 360, and how it stacks up against NVIDIA's RSX part for the PlayStation 3.
Although the RSX is more powerful in terms of raw specifications - it runs at a higher clock speed for a start, 550Mhz rather than the 500Mhz speed of the Xenos part - Huddy claims that the unified shader architecture used by ATI will give Xbox 360 the graphical edge.
"That mere 10 per cent clock speed that RSX has on Xenos is easily countered by the unified shader architecture that we've implemented," he claimed. "Rather than separate pixel and vertex pipelines, we've created a single unified pipeline that can do both."
"Providing developers throw instructions at our architecture in the right way, Xenos can run at 100 per cent efficiency all the time, rather than having some pipeline instructions waiting for others," Huddy explained. "For comparison, most high-end PC chips run at 50-60% typical efficiency. The super cool point is that 'in the right way' just means 'give us plenty of work to do'. The hardware manages itself."
For its part, NVIDIA has repeatedly downplayed the importance of unified shader architecture, and has publicly stated that it doesn't believe that this is the best path to improved graphics performance.
Huddy believes that this position is marketing bluster from NVIDIA, rather than being based on any genuinely held beliefs about the technology in question.
"This time around, they don't have the architecture and we do, so they have to knock it and say it isn't worthwhile," he said. "But in the future, they'll market themselves out of this corner, claiming that they've cracked how to do it best. But RSX isn't unified, and this is why I think PS3 will almost certainly be slower and less powerful."
Of course, neither the RSX nor the Xenos exists in final silicon form yet, and the claims of both NVIDIA and ATI need to be taken with a hefty pinch of salt as a result. Although they're both based on IBM-manufactured chips and PC-like graphics parts, the architecture of the Xbox 360 and the PS3 is radically different and direct comparisons are difficult.
However, many developers working with both consoles up to now have privately concluded that Sony's system, which will be launched at least six months after Microsoft's, will have the edge in terms of overall performance.
Chris
#118
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On backwards compatability:
http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/8492/X...ility-Details/
If this ATi guy is correct, then they have to emulate each game separately. If this is the case, 100% backward compatability will come... but maybe in 5 years.
They have implemented compatibility purely through emulation (at the CPU level). It looks like emulation profiles for each game are going to be stored on the hard drive, and I imagine that a certain number will ship with the system. They already have the infrastructure to distribute more profiles via Live, and more and more can be made available online periodically.
If this ATi guy is correct, then they have to emulate each game separately. If this is the case, 100% backward compatability will come... but maybe in 5 years.
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Quick question re: media center capability... does this mean that if I've got some .VOB files located on a USB or CAT-5e external hard drive, that the 360 will "see" them and I'll be able to play them on my hdtv instead of my computer? Thanks anyone
#120
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Originally Posted by joshd2012
On backwards compatability:
http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/8492/X...ility-Details/
If this ATi guy is correct, then they have to emulate each game separately. If this is the case, 100% backward compatability will come... but maybe in 5 years.
http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/8492/X...ility-Details/
If this ATi guy is correct, then they have to emulate each game separately. If this is the case, 100% backward compatability will come... but maybe in 5 years.
I don't think there will be 100% backwards compatibility ever. The PS2 doesn't play 100% of all PS1 games, but it does play all but a handfull.
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Originally Posted by Miami Joe
Quick question re: media center capability... does this mean that if I've got some .VOB files located on a USB or CAT-5e external hard drive, that the 360 will "see" them and I'll be able to play them on my hdtv instead of my computer? Thanks anyone
#122
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Even PS1 emulation on PC requires different configuration (occasionally a different plugin even) to get optimum results. However one particular configuration might work great for 50 different games, as I'm sure MS will be hoping. The idea that you are writing totally different code for each individual game is completely wrong.
#124
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Originally Posted by amped
Took a quick glance through the thread and didn't see a pic so unless I missed it, here's something to look forward to: