Tech Anaysis: Splinter Cell Conviction Demo (360)

For a generation of consoles geared towards high definition content there has been many games which fail to hit this target, instead being rendered in sub-HD resolutions, or worse, in progressive scan standard definition.

Tekken 6, on both platforms, Halo 3 and Final Fantasy XIII on 360, are all recent examples of high profile titles which for whatever reason are given the decision to forgo a true 720p framebuffer, thus not being able to meet the basic HD requirements advertised for two of the three competing consoles. Today, IQGamer can add Sam Fisher’s latest exploits to the list, as Splinter Cell: Conviction becomes the latest casualty in the sub-HD generation.

Splinter Cell: Conviction, exclusive to Microsoft’s Xbox 360, is rendered in 1024x576 with 2xMSAA (multisample anti-aliasing), and marks the first time the franchise on 360 has rendered in anything but a true HD resolution. Double Agent, for those of you who must know, was 720p with no AA, instead using an edge blur technique to recreate the effect.


However, this not so shocking revelation isn’t actually as bad at it seems, though still not particularly great. In fact Ubisoft Montreal has made a number of cleaver technical choices, which help negate the slightly burry, and rough around the edges look the upscaled 576p buffer usually results in.

For one, the game has very few high contrasting edges, being set mainly in the dark or at night time. This means that most of the noticeable upscaling artefacts aren’t really as visible as they could be, and the ones that are, can mostly be clearly seen in brighter areas of the game not completely covered in darkness. Although, in the night time sections outside, there is a slight pixelation effect to most of the sprite and polygon edges in the game, along with plenty of texture shimmering, which disappointingly shows off the upsacled nature without restraint. These parts make the game look far worse than FFXIII or Tekken 6 with regards to the upscale and 576p rendering resolution.


Conviction’s tightly controlled use of specular effects however, prevents any unwanted shader aliasing, as does the inclusion of good texture filtering, which means that there are no shimmering textures to be found, inside at least - another cause of bad aliasing in games. The game uses a combination of anisoptropic/trilinear filtering for it’s textures, resulting in this cleaner look, along with having high quality shadowmaps, which are soft looking rather than the basic hard edge type more commonly used.

In addition, the game features an nice depth of field effect, which blurs objects in close range of the camera, helping reduce any poorly upscaled edges from becoming too noticeable, though you can still see them. This smoothing effect works reasonably well with the 2xMSAA, hiding away some of the jaggies and other upscaling artefacts. However, in various scenes where objects are not shrouded in the darkness of the game’s shadows, and in the night time out side sections, the soft looking nature of the upscaled framebuffer is all too obvious, and reveals its 576p origins.


Despite this, Splinter Cell: Conviction deserves some technical merit. The game features a completely dynamic shadows and lighting system. Every light source in the game is fully reactive with the environment and all objects, including characters, and can be disabled or enabled by the player in various ways. In terms of shadows, all shadows change and react to the player, guards and light sources on screen. So when lights are shot out shadows become wider and less directed, or move when characters do so around the environment.

Backing up this shadows system is a fully custom, completely dynamic ambient occlusion solution, developed in house at Ubisoft Montreal. Whilst we don’t know the exact details on how it works, or the advantages over using traditional SSAO (screen-space ambient occlusion), we do know that according to Ubisoft, their system gives artists greater control and flexibility, whilst maintaining competitive performance wise.


Lastly, we can confirm that Conviction runs at 30fps with very little in the way of slow down. Instead, the game prefers to screen-tear whenever the engine comes under any kind of load. This happens fairly regularly, however it isn’t as bad as you might think, with much of the screen-tearing simply appearing for a brief split-second, and is very slight at best. At its worst, with lines splitting across the screen, it’s pretty harsh and a little distracting.

I’m not too sure that having a mostly solid 30fps is a good trade off for constant, subtle screen-tearing, although saying that, a drop in framerate is more detrimental to image quality than some slight lines appearing over the screen.


Overall, Splinter Cell: Conviction compares with most other upscaled 576p games in the image quality stakes, and exceeds them in certain scenarios. The use of dark environments and minimal contrasting edges helps hide the more obvious of artefacts when indoors, whilst the depth of field effects and MSAA smooth over others still noticeable in the shadows. The use of dynamic lighting and AO is pretty impressive, and combined with the soft shadowmapping, takes your vision away from the upscaled nature of the edges. However, despite this, there are times in which the game just can’t hide its sub-HD resolution, and it never looks particularly sharp as a result. Certainly, compared with true 720p titles, and the 600p Call Of Duty games, it looks somewhat poor in comparison, although it is one of the better upscaled 576p framebuffer games so far.

Ubisoft Montreal has shown, that with the right art design and technical choices, how 576p is not necessarily a no go area for developers, much like with Namco and their home conversions of Tekken 6. However, they still have a lot of work to do before we can say their 576p achievement matches PS3 Tekken 6 (with motion blur turned off) for clarity and sharpness. Saying that, Conviction looks better than Double Agent, a title which rendered in 720p, but used a heavy edge blur effect for an anti aliasing, and in turn better than a lot of other sub-HD games in general. Sadly, the game also has moments in which it looks truly awful, and it’s in these sections, mostly set outside during the night, which bring the whole image quality right down.

For a flagship AAA title, Splinter Cell: Conviction is rather disappointing in the IQ department, with the mixed success of having an upscaled 576p framebuffer combined with some well thought out graphical effects. Had the outdoor areas of the game fared better then it would have made a tangible difference, putting the title visually above most other 576p releases.

Tech Report: Anti-Aliasing In God Of War 3

Looking at any of the full resolution screenshots from the final release code of God Or War 3, you could be forgiven for thinking that what you are seeing is nothing more than supersampled bullshots, shots created for the purpose of making the game look good when blown up several times its original size for magazine printing. However you’d be very wrong indeed, because although some have speculated that these latest direct-feed grabs of GoW3 are downsampled images like most of the screens released for the demo, we at IQGamer can confirm that they in fact showcase the game’s unique Anti-Aliasing method in action.

That method in question is MLAA, or Morphological Anti-Aliasing, another form of edge smoothing done using the SPUs on the PS3 rather than the RSX GPU. We only heard about the game’s somewhat exciting AA solution a couple of weeks ago, after it was revealed in an online interview with one of the developers working on the title. It seems that whilst the original plan was to use the usual 2xMSAA method of jaggies reduction – and that was present in the recent PSN demo – that all changed at some point this year, in which a programmer at Sony’s Santa Monica Studio found a way of performing a much better method of AA on the CELL, whilst in turn saving the use of precious GPU and memory cycles in the process.


Just take a look at the screenshot above. The AA is absolutely amazing, far better than anything the 4xMSAA 360’s GPU can manage, and in some places matching perhaps what you expect from a high end PC gaming rig performing 16xMSAA. Either way, it is the best example of Anti-Aliasing on any console game to date, bar none.

In addition, the developers themselves at Sony’s Santa Monica Studio stated that they managed to increase both performance and quality of the AA used, along with other effects in the game, by offloading tasks normally done on the GPU to the SPUs on CELL.

“AA on the cpu is MLAA Morphological Antialising. We saved 5-6 miliseconds by moving it off the cpu's. Many props to our coder Cedric for making this happen and it looks way better!”

Of course the benefits of having better AA isn’t just dealing with jaggies reduction, but also reducing aliasing caused by certain shaders, such as specular aliasing for reflections and transparencies, whilst also eliminating texture shimmering caused by a lack of AA, bringing a stability and smoothness to the image allowing the art design to really shine. Its importance is usually only ever compromised due to the lack of available memory and bandwidth available on both systems. On 360 it’s having to fit the final framebuffer into the 10MB EDRAM, while on PS3 it’s dealing with just a lack of available bandwidth altogether. The use of MLAA can alleviate some of these issues providing a more even split of resources, which can then be used to improve other graphical aspects of the game.


The above screenshot demonstrates how well this use of MLAA works on gameplay scenarios. Notice that every single pixel in the shot is covered by the AA, without any extensive blurring of the detailed textures, even smoothing off edges that are small and far off into the distance. Everything remains clean and sharp, minus the parts of the scene which feature the engine's depth-of-field effect, used only on specific areas of the scene. You can see this happening on the botton left of the image, in which the scene is slightly blurred, whilst on the right, just above Kratos, all details are sharp and clear as day, even in the distance.

Another recent release, Metro 2033, due out this Friday, also uses a custom form of AA done specifically on the CPU, but this time on Xbox 360. It’s called AAA, Analytical Anti-Aliasing, and works by finding all the pixel edges, rendering samples of them in a higher resolution, before then downsampling those samples for use in the final 720p framebuffer. Effectively the only performance hit you get, is a slight one caused by having to render a small amount of pixels in a higher resolution, and the end result is another AA solution which allows for the same effect as using 16xMSAA. However the developers still managed to save 11MB of memory by using this technique instead of regular MSAA, which was their original choice, memory used for other visual effects taking up precious space in the framebuffer.

So God Of War 3’s impressive use of AA is just one of an increasing amount of games looking for a more flexible AA solution than the out of the box MSAA fix found on both consoles GPUs. By exploring these other areas, and by doing things differently they can ultimately drive forward better image quality, whilst focusing more on things such as art design, which has always been more important that raw technical prowess.

Lighting is another area in which GoW3 proves this notion of thinking.

“We built our engine around being able to use up to 20 dynamic lights per game object. The light can be big or small, it doesn't matter. In the end, I believe we support up to 50 dynamic lights per game object. We are not using a differed lighting scheme. Our lead programmer Vassily came up with this amazing system during pre-production, us artists love it!!! We can place lights in Maya and have them update in realtime in the game on the PS3, its like being able to paint with lights.”


Again, this is Santa Monica Studio thinking up a solution that isn’t right out of the box, but is technically at the forefront whilst also being very much in consideration with just what their artists were looking for. It’s exactly this kind of attitude and understanding that is driving forward the use of alternative AA solutions, at the same time providing increased graphical fidelity, whilst saving on performance, and making development easier for future titles. This is especially important with regards to memory related issues, which generally keep coming up in every console generation, and in which working smarter, not harder is really the only way in pushing forward console performance years after launch.

From a developers point of view, now has never been a more exicting time to be involved in console gaming, in which both tools and innovation are coming together setting the new standard of videogames production. Anti-Aliasing is of course just one part of the picture, but in GoW3's case, it could be its defining one.

IQGamer will be performing our in-depth technical analysis on God Of War 3 this weekend just after the game’s release. Be sure you check it out, as it will be filled with interesting technological reveals about some of the development process behind the game, and the ever more innovative steps that developers are taking to push the visual envelope forward.

Tech Analysis: Final Fantasy XIII (PS3 vs 360)

Final Fantasy XIII has been having a rough ride in the press recently, with both fans and journalists alike quick to critise the linear and almost on-rails nature of the majority of the game. And while we much of their criticism is well justified, we can’t hep but feel that the new Paradigm Shift mechanic, combined with a faster variant of the Active Timer Battle system, make up for the tightly controlled nature delivered in the first 25-30 hrs of gameplay.

One area in which we feel deserves all the criticism being flung towards it, is with regards to Square Enix’s pitiful attempt at cross platform development, simply quick porting across the PS3 code to the 360 without any optimisations, or consideration for the hardware. In that respect FFXIII is nothing short of a travesty, and a disservice to not only Xbox 360 owners everywhere, but also the development community as a whole. Given that the release date for both North America and Europe was pushed back significantly in order to allow for a 360 version to be available on the same day as the PS3, we have every right to expect a far better conversion than what we eventually got.


Also, for this latest Technical Analysis come Head-to-Head feature, we at IQGamer, have decided to cut the fat down just a little, feeling that our exemplary Bioshock 2 analysis was far too long winded for it’s own good. So in that respect, for our latest tech feature, we’re going to be far more concise and straight to the point. All the details of course will still be present and correct, picked over with the same fine toothcomb as before. But unlike in the past, it’s not going to be presented in the way of a 3000 plus word dissertation on the subject. More like our quick, clear, and thoroughly in depth Halo Reach analysis.

As always, we’ll start by stating the rendering resolutions used for both versions of FFXIII, before moving on to cover texture filtering, use of framebuffer effects, etc. You know the drill by now.

Final Fantasy XIII renders in full 720p (1280x720) on the PS3, using 2xMSAA (Multi-Sample Anti Aliasing), whilst on 360 it renders in a meagre 1024x576p, also using 2xMSAA. The outcome of this has a devastating effect on overall image quality and screen clarity, hiding away some of the more detailed textures used, whilst blurring the entire image.

On the 360 version the game renders in little more than Standard Definition resolution, and then is upscaled by the internal game engine to 720p, with the HUD elements being added after the scene has been completed. The scaling on offer is slightly worse than found in upscaling original Xbox games via the 360, creating mildly fuzzy edges on geometry, and blurring many of the finer details clearly visible in the PS3 game. Why Square Enix (SQE) didn’t decide on using the internal scaler found on the Xenos GPU is beyond me, as it definitely does a better job of things. Maybe they were using that particular part of the GPU for something else, or found that it was simply easier to use their own engine for the task.


720p 2xMSAA


576p 2xMSAA

In the above two screenshots you can see those differences we’ve just mentioned and the effect it has on the final look of the game. The PS3 game remains pin sharp, as it’s native 720p with nothing else going on, whereas the 360 game is significantly blurrier as a result of upscaling from 576p. The only consolation is that the use of 2xMSAA on the 360 version allows it to be upscaled with fewer jaggies being visible than if no AA was present, giving cleaner looking edges with less artefacting.

It seems that SQE has resorted to using 576p on the 360 in order to fit the framebuffer into the 10mb EDRAM available whilst still using MSAA, and to avoid titling multiples of that 10mb into main system RAM. Having the game render in 720p with 2xMSAA would mean titling to system memory, whilst incurring additional performance hits with regards to objects present in both titles, so to speak.

With regards to texture filtering, both versions are identical. Neither one uses any kind of AF (Anisotropic Filtering) solution, instead going for the more common Trilinear approach. No doubt this was done to converse the memory footprint so precious when working with the PS3. Although since PS3 effectively features nearly double the amount of texture units on its GPU than compared to 360 – meaning that AF is almost a free commodity – it’s somewhat surprising to the a lack of AF being present on that build.


In addition, the PS3 version appears to not only have more detailed textures than the 360 game, it also features additional texturing not found anywhere in Microsoft’s butchered port. The next screenshot further down shows exactly what is missing in some scenes, and all signs point to it being more than just a case of poor upscaling of a lower resolution image. Although, we did find that many textures are also identical across both platforms, with the 360’s upscaled image hiding some of the detail.

To test out this theory of additional texturing, we actually played the same sections on the PS3 with the console’s video output set to 576p over HDMI, letting our Plasma do the upscaling work. The result was although we had a blurrier image than the 360 game – due to the 360 upscaling the game better than the TV – we also could see that the textures were still more detailed on the PS3 despite the poorer quality upscale.


One area however, which is like for like across both platforms, is the use of Alpha to Coverage (A2C) for transparency effects and particles. When using A2C in order to render transparencies, instead of rendering a whole transparent texture, the A2C produces an interlacing style effect, creating an almost dithered look to things. It’s kind of like a mild screen door type effect, used to half the amount of bandwidth needed for such effects. The advantage is that you can render full resolution transparencies with lower cost than if you were rendering them as a whole solid effect.

All of the transparent elements of characters facial hair, except eyebrows are rendered using A2C, including the hair on their heads, and even eyelashes too. Also, numerous particle, and smoke effects are rendered this way, though not all, to keep bandwidth under control.

The screenshot below shows the A2C at work on both version of the game.


Unfortunately, the 360 version not only uses A2C in order to fit the framebuffer into EDRAM, it also renders lower resolution transparencies as well, due to the reduced overall rendering resolution, making the effects look even worse on that build than they should. The PS3 has no such issues, other than the interlacing style look to anything see-through, because all these effects are rendered in 720p. Quite how SQE couldn’t take advantage of the 360’s near limitless amount of bandwidth to deliver full resolution transparent effects is unknown, but we feel it’s a case of why bother, rather than how, given the short conversion time and rushed approach to 360 development.

In terms of framerate, both versions manage to stay at a mostly stable 30fps. However, it is the 360 build which has a slight advantage here, with us noticing less drops than with the PS3 game. While both drop down to around 20fps at times – without any equipment to measure framerate, we can’t be any more specific – it’s the 360 version which seems to maintain 30fps in close-ups during the in-game engine cut-scenes, whereas the PS3 version tends to slow down slightly. Both versions seem to slow down at similar points in battle sequences, though again, the PS3 slows down slightly more.

Any differences we found between the two were very slight, certainly the PS3 game, when it drops, does so by only a few frames more at worst than the 360 game. This seems to be the only area in which I would say the 360 version hits parity with the PS3 one. Oh that, and the use of 2xMSAA.

Despite these issues, Final Fantasy XIII actually manages to be a very pretty game. In some situations it looks almost stunning to behold, with various HDR lighting effects, reflections, and particles being pushed around on screen. Plus at the same time, featuring some of the most detailed gigantic creatures we’ve ever seen in a game. Lost Planet aside, obviously. In this regard SQE have produced a visual wonderment in which art design is equally important as technical precision, and that goes a long way in constructing its visual impact. Naturally the 360 version also benefits from this too, as the post processing, lighting effects, and beautiful art style, helps in keeping the image clean whilst being upscaled to 720p.

Moving on from in game assets, and into the realm of CGI cinematics, I honestly didn’t expect the 360 version to fair as badly as it did against the PS3 game. After all, if you’re gonna be putting the game on multiple discs, then surely you’d have enough space for some high quality video sequences. Unfortunately not, and SQE have once again taken the quick and easy route in porting the meticulously produced, almost Blu-Ray quality CGI video sequences and transcoded them rather poorly.

Seeing as the both the 360 and the PS3 have full support for allowing for HQ video encoding, it’s a complete mystery to me as to why they didn’t take advantage of that fact. Instead they’ve gone down the route of using much lower bit-rate compression, resulting in a rather poor image. During quick pans, and overall fast motion, the 360’s CGI sequences are filled with macro-blocking and other artefacts, dissolving any fine details to be found.

At least the CGI cut-scenes are rendered in 720p on the 360, which is more than could be said for the actual game itself, although they don’t feel that way.

By contrast the PS3 version features what looks like full 1080p (1920x1080) cinematics, all encoded using far better compression schemes. And whilst they aren’t quite BR quality, due to the lower bit-rate used, they don’t suffer from any of the issues facing the same footage on 360. In fact, on PS3 detail is superbly clean and sharp, with no artefacting.

Arguably, it’s such a shame to see such a disrespect taking place with regards to keeping FFXIII’s trademark cinematics at a high quality. If nothing else, all those long-winded CGI cut-scenes are as much the lifeblood of the franchise, as are the actual turn-based battles, or resilient level grinding seen throughout much of the series. And to see them here, butchered up to make way for a quick and easy multiplatform port, isn’t really fair to the fans, which are ultimately the ones who allow the series to carry on flourishing.


In the end, it’s the PS3 version of Final Fantasy XIII that shines in every area, losing absolutely nothing over the badly butchered 360 port. Not so surprisingly, I’d put 360 FFXIII alongside Tekken 6 and Bayonetta on the PS3, as one of the worst multiplatform developments released by a Japanese software house to date.

However, despite all the technical shortcomings, Final Fantasy XIII is still the same game on 360 as it is on PS3. You’ve still got the lovingly crafted, and utterly captivating storyline to get your teeth into. The battle system, whilst being geared towards newcomers to the RPG genre, also contains numerous depth, making up for the faster pace, and linearity of much of the game. In addition, you also have what could be considered the most polished of all the JRPG’s released so far this generation, especially on the 360, which has seen it’s fair share of failed attempts to reinvigorate the genre.

Even if you only have the option in picking up the 360 version, it is definitely worth doing so, as all those graphical shortcomings won’t tarnish the overall experience for most people, and there’s a whole lot more to Final Fantasy XIII than just how it looks.

Given the choice though, the PS3 version is the one to get, any day of the week. Its full resolution, 720p output, makes it a far more accomplished animal graphically, allowing its art to shine far brighter than on Microsoft’s console. Also, when you are talking about a game that relies so much on visual presentation to carry everything else that goes along with it, you don’t really want to be making any compromises with that on a visual level.

Hopefully, Square Enix will be able to move on from this debacle, putting a greater emphasis on future cross-platform development, whilst taking their time to creating decent multiplatform tools and a versatile engine to go along with them. Because by the looks of it, this is where the industry is heading, and you either keep up or get left behind.

For a rather unorthodox look at Final Fantasy XIII, head over to Beames on Games. It's not quite what you'd expect, making for an entertaining read.

Tech Analysis: Bioshock 2 (PS3 - 360)

Earlier this week we brought you our in-depth analysis on the technically proficient Dante’s Inferno, a game that impressed us with its startlingly solid approach to achieving almost 100% parity across both PS3 and 360, and if it weren’t for a slight horizontal blur on the 360 version, it would have been absolutely identical. Now at IQGamer we roll out the same treatment for Bioshock 2, going over every detail with a fine toothcomb seeing just how close both PS3 and 360 versions are, and of course take a look at the reasons behind any technical differences we find.

First impressions of Bioshock 2 are rather good, there initially seemed to be very little in the way of differences between both versions of the game, with texture detail being very similar and sharpness being pretty much equal. Lighting looked also to be on par for both PS3 and 360, with the only difference I noticed were with regards to the gamma levels being lower on 360, making for some loss of shadow detail in dark areas. However just a few minutes into the game things began to change, and it was extremely clear than something was going on with regards to how the effects were rendered in both versions, and the impact it was having on overall image quality.

Before I go into detail about those changes I’ll start by saying that Bioshock 2 renders in 720p (1280x720) for both platforms, with the 360 gaining an image quality advantage from having 2xMSAA (multi-sample anti-aliasing) and the PS3 version once again having no AA solution whatsoever, though a slight edge blur is present without affecting edge sharpness to any detriment. The level of sharpness with regards to the actual geometry is identical across both platforms, and this only changes when certain visual effects are present, in which case the PS3 game seems to blur noticeably over the 360 one.



In terms of texture detail and filtering, there are advantages and disadvantages on both versions to consider. These are the same ones we find on most cross platform PS3/360 ports or conversions. The 360 game seems to have a very slight edge in texture quality and detail, though not always in all circumstances. In most areas textures are actually identical across both platforms, and in other areas in which some textures seem blurrier on PS3, they are in fact the same as on 360, with the blurring caused by the lower resolution alpha and transparency effects being rendered.

In terms of texture filtering, anisotropic is present on the PS3 with 360 instead using the older trilinear method, meaning that texture detail is clearer from further away on PS3, which can lead to some of that version’s less detailed textures actually looking more detailed from a distance.

The PS3 also sees a small advantage in the area of texture streaming and with the LOD system present in the game. When playing through both versions one thing that did strike out at me was that texture pop-in was a semi-regular occurrence on 360, with on some occasions in which the higher quality mipmap would load in only a few feet away from the object you were approaching. This issue was quite infrequent and by and large didn’t affect the most prominent areas of scenery. By contrast when playing the PS3 game I noticed hardly any texture pop-in whatsoever, despite the fact that the extra level of filtering made it easier to spot any potential issues with this problem.

The reason behind this seems to stem from the fact that the PS3 game is streaming textures directly from the Hard Drive, in which there is a 5GB mandatory install, whereas the 360 is having to load them in directly from DVD. Essentially the PS3 has greater available bandwidth to do this via the HDD compared to 360’s DVD drive, which allows it to push through more higher quality textures at faster speeds, though not necessarily displaying more texture detail, as this is still limited by the system’s internal RAM.

Earlier we mentioned that there was a noticeable difference on how each version renders its transparency and alpha effects. Basically on PS3 all effects are rendered in as little as a quarter of HD resolution, whilst they are of full resolution on the 360. As we have pointed out before in our Dante’s Inferno comparison, this is done on the PS3 to save bandwidth as there is much less available than on Microsoft’s console. The PS3 only has around 21.6GBs per-second worth of bandwidth available for framebuffer effects compared to a huge 250GBs that the 360 can draw upon. This means that in order to render all the same visual details they have to be displayed at a lower resolution in order to fit into the bandwidth requirements of the PS3.



The effects of this can be seen above. Notice how the water running down the stairs is much blurrier than the surrounding stairwell and the stairs themselves. The same thing can be seen with almost all water, fire and particle effects in the game. It does mean that although textures are almost the same in both versions, the lower resolution effects tend to blur out those very same textures on the PS3. Basically the high res bump mapping and texture detail is effectively being displayed at a lower resolution and upscaled every time a transparency or alpha-based effect is rendered on top of them. With this happening frequently - as Rapture is an underwater city, leaking and slowing decaying with age - you find that the entire scene has a tendency to blur when all these visual effects are present, thus negating any advantage the PS3 version might have had with its use of better filtering and superior LOD system.

These lower res effects also feature less animation than those of the 360 game, with most of the water effects being affected, along with some rather strange errors when it came to rendering certain flame effects, and seemingly random objects in Rapture’s various rooms. Some pixallation occurs when viewing these at various angles and at long distances, and although this isn’t as apparent up close, you can still see that something doesn’t look quite right. In addition it seems that there is less, or more subtle use of bump mapping on the PS3 when compared to the 360. Sometimes it appears that the levels used are the same, at other times it seems like the PS3 is lacking in that department. Perhaps the reduced resolution alpha effects are to blame, as in areas in which there is very few of them, the bump mapping appears to be much better and can reach parity with the 360.

However there are many times when the use of lower res buffers hardly impacts upon image quality at all, looking nigh on indistinguishable from the 360 version. From what I’ve observed, this mainly applies to pools of water located on the floor in small dark corridors, or areas with low light levels. In these cases texture detail, bump mapping and IQ of the effects looked only slightly worse, and sometimes pretty much identical, showing that you don’t always need the technical advantage to produce similar results. Unfortunately this is the exception rather than the rule when talking about Bioshock 2.

You see, another issue is that these reduced resolution effects, and strangely rendered texture anomalies on the PS3 also give the game a slightly more washed out look than the 360 one. Differences in gamma between both versions we also believe attributes to this as well. The 360 game has lower gamma levels than the PS3 which means any details in really dark areas suffer from a slight black crush. Even after calibrating both consoles and the TV, the two versions couldn’t be matched up in a way that didn’t reduce the black levels of the 360 version, whilst still failing to reveal shadow detail. It’s not a massive difference, and doesn’t impact in the enjoyment of the game in any serious way, although people playing the PS3 version first will certainly notice.



Performance wise there are similar trade-offs but between smoothness and screen tearing. The PS3 version suffers from next to no screen tearing whatsoever when compared to the 360, though it does slow down more frequently in heavy battle scenes with lots going on.

Bioshock 2 runs at a near constant 30fps for most of the time, with only occasional screen tear and slow down only really occuring when lots of stuff is happening on screen at once. Occasionally I’ve noticed that the game will tear for a split second just randomly as you are venturing along Rapture’s many corridors and communal areas. Not sure why this happens, and it doesn’t seem to be performance related. The most likely candidate is triple buffering, in which the game renders several frames as a back up in case one or more of the frames are torn. It appears that occasionally the game loses one or two of its frames to tearing, and the triple buffering system accidentally displays one of those instead of a clean frame.

This however comes as a cost to the framerate, and when the PS3 game slows down it does so more frequently than the 360 one and for longer. The controls tend to suffer slightly as a result, loosing responsiveness for a brief second or two on top of the slight lag caused by the use of triple-buffering.

With the 360 game the framerate is a much steadier affair, although in response you get a greater amount of tearing. What looks to be happening isn’t always a case of a greater volume of tearing, though this does happen, and much more than you might think, but rather when the tearing occurs, it simply stays on screen a little longer than when the same thing happens on PS3. On the 360 the game also tears frequently in the overscan area of the picture, something that never occurs on PS3. Now this is an area that you simply cannot see unless you turn off the overscan option on your TV. So for 99% of people it won’t be seen at all, and naturally because of this, won’t impact in any way on your experience of the game.

In terms of performance there is no clear winner here. The PS3 drops framerate more often but has virtually no screen tear, and the 360 one doing the opposite; suffering from a greater amount of tearing but having much less in the way of slow down, making the game a smoother more responsive experience. Either way both versions present the gamer with a smooth enough engrossing experience, and the slow down on PS3 doesn’t prevent you from really enjoying the game, as it doesn’t happen very often.

In the end whilst both versions of Bioshock 2 are excellent in their own right, it is the 360 version which takes the lead, with it’s higher resolutions effects, better bump-mapping and smoother framerate, making for an all round more immersive experience. The PS3 game with its low resolution effects, although still a great game and one which looks pretty damn good at times, ventures into a slightly blurry mess on occasions when lots of water, transparencies and particles are on screen. Sadly that can be pretty often, which is a real shame as these effects are integral to helping create Bioshock’s wondrous and foreboding atmosphere.

Either way if you only have a PS3 don’t be discouraged, as many of the issues seen here are not always apparent, plus you get next to no screen tearing and a still very good looking game (in many places at least), just not as technically accomplished one.

Overall if you have both systems and given the choice, I’d say that the 360 game is the one to get.

If of course you've had enough of reading about all this tech stuff, or simply looked at those pictures instead, head on over to Beames on Games for the full review of Bioshock 2.

Tech Analysis: Dante's Inferno

Dante’s Inferno may be a blatant God Of War rip off, but it is also one of the best examples of platform parity across PS3 and Xbox 360. It does so not by playing to the strengths of each machine, but by simply having an engine which barely taxes either system, making some concessions to alleviate the issue of PS3 having a lack of available bandwidth, and 360’s need to fit the framebuffer into it’s 10mb worth of EDRAM.

You could almost say that Visceral Games effort is an almost exemplary example on how to get a game running and looking identical on both platforms, or rather almost 100% identical. The only exception we noticed to that being a slight blurring of the image on 360, but more on that later.



Dante’s Inferno runs at a flawless 60fps on both PS3 and 360, with no noticeable sign of screen tearing or framerate drops, which in it self is quite impressive for a multi-platform title. However it does this through using only a limited number of memory and shader intensive effects. So what we have here is mostly flat looking textures, with bump mapping reserved for the characters and only certain parts of the environment.

The game is rendered on both PS3 and 360 in 720p (1280x720) with no anti-aliasing of any kind. This allows the framebuffer to fit into the 10mb EDRAN found on 360’s GPU, whilst making the conversion to PS3 much easier as it doesn’t put a stain on the bandwidth. The resolution of transparencies and particle effects usually lowered on PS3 due to the lack of available bandwidth has been compromised on both versions. So instead of 360 having the usual advantage when it comes to displaying loads of multi-layered effects, it’s merely equal across the board. Again this basically allows the smooth running of the game on both platforms whilst keeping the actual look identical; certainly, it’s how Visceral have achieved the constant 60fps on display.

Anisotropic filtering and texture detail is like for like across both versions, demonstrating clean and clear characters and vistas, though the overall sense of scale is rather small, and the detail itself is somewhat simple when compared to the likes of Bayonetta or Devil May Cry. Serviceable is how I think you could best describe the overall look and technical application.



Now earlier we mentioned that both PS3 and 360 games were almost identical, except for a slight blurring on the 360 version. This blur whilst being hardly visible during fast moving scenes can be clearly seen in the still screenshots above, and during more sedate moments of gameplay. It seems that there is a horizontal 1-pixel wide blur on all edges, with no apparent reason as to why. It could be that the developers still wanted some sort of AA solution, but seeing as 720p 2xAA may not have fit into the EDRAM, they thought a simple blur approach would suffice. It’s perhaps the only blemish on what can be considered one of the best multi-platform conversion examples available on both consoles.

Overall, Visceral Games have shown just how to successfully accomplish a good multi-platform conversion without sacrificing too much from each version along the way. Sure they could have played up to the 360’s strengths and added higher-resolution effects and more particles, or had extra HDR lighting on the PS3 game, but it would have taken longer to develop and required more optimising for both versions. This is a problem most would rather avoid, so it’s easier to go down the safe route, and keep your development budget under control and get good results, rather than having it spiral out with two different versions, each having their own tweaks, and neither achieving parity.

Date’s Inferno shows you don’t need to achieve a massive technical accomplishment when creating a game, but rather just a well thought out approach and a solid underlying engine, which can perform on both systems without needing to radically tailor features to each one.

In this respect Visceral have been successful, and I imagine that more developers will go down the same path seeing as it can work so well.

Halo Reach Engine: Early Tech Analysis

A few days ago Bungie released the first batch of in-game screenshots from their newest Halo title. Interestingly these appeared to be in full 1080p (1920x1080) resolution, and didn’t seem to be upscaled. In addition, the screens at first glance also showed off a few improvements to the Halo engine, such as possible AA (anti-aliasing) and for the first time, AF (anisotropic filtering).

Whilst it’s not uncommon for companies to release higher resolution rendered screens to the press with higher IQ than the final game, and Bungie did the same thing with Halo 3 (remember those 720p native screens?), the first official sighting of Reach’s gameplay looks to hold some truths in regards to the engine used in the final game.



The above screen was posted on Bungie.net and is obviously in 1080p. However there appears to be a huge level of AA on display, far more than the 4xMSAA used in certain 360 titles such as Dirt 2 and Race Driver Grid. This simple excess of AA can be explained away with the use of supersampling, a simple process in which an image is rendered at a much higher resolution, and then downsampled to form a cleaner smoother final image. This is basically a form of AA which requires a huge amount of processing power, due to having to render at a higher resolution than the one you want to display at, but is also very effective at eliminating jagged edges across the whole scene.

It seems that this shot was originally rendered at 2560x1440 (thanks to AlStrong for the pixel counting) with no AA, and then downsampled giving the smooth 1080p image. This is certainly something that won’t be seen in the final game. Instead we expect Reach to render either in full 720p, or using the same dual 1152x640 buffers found in the previous two games. Currently we have no idea on whether any form of AA will make it into the game, that all depends on if they’re using the same HDR lighting method from before, or if they have adopted the use of tiling in order to fit a 2xMSAA frame buffer into the 360’s 10mb edram.

Either way, in order to render in 720p or using the 1152x640 dual buffer method with MSAA, they will need to title. Especially as they claim to be pushing more enemies and vehicles around on screen than before at any given time.

However whilst we can’t judge what AA will be used (if any), or at what resolution Reach will be rendered at, it is possible to see at least 4x AF + maybe trilinear at work, or just AF with a bias towards certain textures. If you look closely at the ground you’ll see it blur much further into the distance than with both Halo 3 and ODST.

Texture detail in itself, has also been improved, with greater levels of normal mapping and improved shaders on many surfaces. Combined with the use of AF, the numerous bumps and curves of the cliff faces and surrounding scenery are much more apparent than before.

You can also find small elements of SSAO (Screen-Space Ambient Occlusion), particularly on some of the environment details, although rather subtle. It doesn’t appear to be present in the entire scene, with only a few points of visibility in other areas. A clear example can be found in the screenshot below, look at the metal shelving in the bottom right. The shading there isn’t quite correct, a usual side effect of using SSAO.



There’s no sign of the improved lighting model in the first-person screenshot either, though it’s very hard to tell, especially without seeing the same area, but from different angles as to analyse the shadowing and lighting. At present it looks very similar to ODST, and there’s no sign of the multiple independent light sources that Bungie stated is going into the game. Though those have been witnessed in other screenshots released, showing what looks to be from in-game engine cut scenes. (see above)

Arguably the gameplay build we’re seeing here is very early, and is almost certainly likely to see a noticeable improvement by the time the beta launches. Between now and then, we still have many questions that need answering. Will Bungie still be keeping the benchmark HDR of the last two games, in addition to the 30 or so real-time light sources being added? Are we going to be seeing AF plus a proper 1280x720 frame buffer. Or will the HDR be dropped for an easier 1152x640 with 2xMSAA and AF approach using titling?

We just don’t know yet, and I guess the beta is when we will find out about some of this stuff. The rest will no doubt have to wait for a more complete single-player build of the campaign, in which nothing will be paired down to deal with lag, split-screen and other concerns, which almost certainly impact on graphics.

Anyway, this small insight into Halo Reach’s graphics tech is all we have for now. But stay with as, as we’ll be following any developments very closely.