640p is still considered HD.

I dunno, man.

Eye for an eye, and all.

The whole world blind, and all that. You know what they say.

Oh well, this isn't the first time I've heard a grizzly tone from Microsoft.

I'm still waiting for the bioshock widescreen patch for 360 2k!

I'll just copy and paste my comment from joystiq (with few alterations):

I still wonder why no one mentions that, while the game runs at 640p, it never, ever seems to drop below the 60fps mark?

Most games that have a slightly higher polycount and run at 720p can't even maintain 30fps.

Small jaggies, that I usually don't even notice when I'm trying to dodge plasma rifles and needle shooters, are nothing compared to just another slowdown that completely killed my timing, and in result my avatar.

60fps has, for a long time, been the pinnacle of videogaming. There are PC gamers that won't touch a FPS unless they can hit a steady 60+ framerate.

I couldn't care less about those 127x80 missing pixels, for that doesn't kill me or my experience with the game. But stuttering and slowdowns do, for sure.

I can't believe Bungie did not address in this update the unreadable disc errors that have been running rampant with many Halo 3 discs. I went to Best Buy to return my defective disc (standard edition in case anyone was wondering) and the customer service rep told me that there was a "defective batch" of discs, and then pointed to a stack of 20+ Halo 3 discs that had already been returned. So Bungie is big and bad enough to talk smack about their 640p resolution but ignores the fact that they shipped defective discs? That just does not sit well with me, especially since I have always thought of Bungie as an extremely customer friendly company. Hopefully they will address the situation soon.

What about the splitscreen thing? To be honest I don't care about this 460p at all, but the huge black wasted space in splitscreen is rediculous from a otherwise polished highprofile title.
[www.flickr.com]

So it does run at a lower resolution than usual, but it's no big deal because of the 360's excellent hardware scaling support.

Bungie is using Tech-Talk on it's fans.

Are they overestimating them?

@versellios: No its not, 720 and above is HD.

Hey, Bungie dodging us! EVERY modern game using FEW buffers to render image... Well, look at this "Tomb Raider: Legend Developers Secrets" video:

[youtube.com] (2:12)

Here you can see HOW REALLY render proccess going on... And yes, last "black image" -- is one of the buffers, whither game engine render image... It's [black] for "death of field" effects... For HDR that's buffer will be colored with some extra effects...

So they pulled a PGR3 (which also runs below 720p) and hoped no-one would notice.

Scaling simply doesn't count. I can scale a standard def image up to 1080p, it doesn't mean it is magically as detailed as 1080p, no matter how fancy the scaler.

Not that I care, Halo 3 looks decent enough. But Bungie trying to keep it quiet, then explain it away deceitfully is something worth highlighting. Thanks Internet Detectives!

Now if only they had a chip in the 360 that makes the single player less dull, and the online less frustrating.

Halo 3 runs at 30 FPS not 60.

And the change in resolution isn't just "80 pixels", or "127x80" pixels but about 20% of the entire screen.

Is 20% insigificant?

It's not, but because it's easy to dismiss in a way the non-technically savy will accept, Bungie can just shrug it off like they did here.

20% is a lot and anytime something is pumped through a scalar you lose a decent amount of detail making Halo 3 less impressive visually on high def displays than other more visually impressive games, like Gears or Bioshock.

It's more than a few pixels.

Personally I can't agree with what they say. The game runs at 1152x640 because they couldn't get it running at the framerate they desired at 720p.

The game would look better in 720p, but:
Firstly, it would not be to an extent that most people would notice, and secondly, the graphical tradeoff to maintain a good framerate at 720p would be significant, as the step up represents a 25% increase in the total number of pixels rendered, meaning 20% less time can be spent on each individual pixel.

On the other hand, how many people are playing on a 720p native screen - almost noone. Virtually all "720p" HDTVs have resolutions of 768p.

@Teekan: Why? The team was creating the game for an audience who mainly have widescreen TVs. They decided how much peripheral vision the player should have, and the game renders appropriately. So as not to give the 4:3 players a handicap they chose to give them the same width, which has the effect of making the 4:3 render "taller". It is not an issue.

Funny to watch all the Halo fanboys trying to justify this.

I didn't notice any problems with the resolution so it doesn't bother me, but that's a pretty dickish attitude to take. They should read 2K's responses to the Bioshock complaints and then maybe they'd learn something.

They provided their consumers a product, the consumer isn't entirely satisfied the product is as-advertised. Baffling them with techno-babble isn't going to appease them.

@Mendorian:

This is one thing that has bugged me for ages, and i can never seem to find a definitive answer;
Does HD video even run at 60 frames per second? I always thought it 720p and 1080p ran at 30fps?

The "zomg! it doesn't run at 60 frames per second!!!" agument has always been a factor in the console gaming area, yet SD video through regular composite cables only outputs in interlace 25 or 30 frames per second.

Console guys sould start buying LCD monitors for his games. This use of TV for videogames is soo 80's

This is golden; as long as the game plays well that's the main thing, right? I'll knock Halo on many things (single player story being the main one) but I don't see how this is an issue. From the screenshots I've seen the game still looks better than Halo 2, so what's the issue?

so, does this make the game worse? does this mean you won't play it any more?
i don't know about you but up until about 2004 i was playing pc games exclusively in 800x600 even though they could go up to silly resolution... and now i'm only using 1024x768... resolution is way less important than performance

honestly would you rather the game ran a bit slower but in a higher resolution?

also i like the fact that bungie have effectively stuck two fingers up at the internet crybabies - they just made a great game with all that you could ask for (if you like halo etc) and all these people can do is complain that it's not in a high enough resolution? bah, get a life.

It seems a bit petty that Bungie even bothered to respond to this trivial issue. They shouldn't have given these guys the time of day, just call them all cunts and point to the Edge 10.

Wow that was alot of technical bullshit coming from Bungie. It is not only a few pexels it is a clear difference from 720p.
However, in the end I just agree with HINGES comment here.
Halo 3 is still a great game.

Type "1080p sony lies" into google and take a look at the response when Sony announced that Motorstorm would run at 720p instead of 1080p as expected. So, yes, it appears that the gaming hoi polloi care about the resolution of their games.

If Sony had written "Shut up, crybabies. It looks just fine in 720p. Take off your stupid tinfoil hats.", people would still be bitching about it. But hey, its Halo, so all is forgiven.

I'm actually more annoyed that they claim to support 1080p.

I don't think you should write "1080p" on the Halo box when it is clearly not supporting it. I have an upscaling DVD player, it doesn't mean my entire collection has suddenly turned into blu-ray disks.

I may not be fond of Halo, but I LOVE Bungie for stuff like this. When they see bullshit, they call it out. Might be bad PR, but it makes me want to buy Halo 3 just as a "thank you" for keeping the idiots in check.

This is also why I love Telltale Games (the guys behind the Sam and Max episodes). Not only do they actually shape the games based on our feedback, but they too will call bullshit when needed.

I TOLD people on the Bungie boards it wasn't running in 1080p like advertised on the back of the box. That the jaggies were too large to be that high of a resolution.

And the FANTARDS on there (yes I love the Halo games, but like any game there is the loyal blinders) ... claimed it was my Dell 2405 monitor making it look like crap cause I have an extra 120 lines in fill mode for resolution. Stupid fan kiddies.

Especially since this monitor will run CIRCLES around any 1080p high def TV on the market for clarity.

I have been playing games for a long time om the PC, so I am VERY sensitive to resolutions. I was EASILY able to tell this game wasn't in 1080p ... and seeing this is none to surprising.

DON'T ADVERTISE 1080p MICROSOFT IF IT CAN SCALE IT. SCALING AND BEING THAT RESOLUTION ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.

Thanks.

that is retarded. You can't use the frame buffer as the resolution it is running at. Like he said, they are combined to from one lower than 720p image. The 640p image is what the end user sees so no, the game is not running at 2x1152x640.

Hell, while were at it, why don't we count all the extra passes for volume shadows or transparencies or anything else that didn't take one polygon with one texture to display? I mean, that would put halo at like a 59400x47200 resolution right? It doesn't matter if the player sees it, but that is what it is.

Yes, I own halo. Yes it looks awsome on my 1080i tv. Don't make up excuses for the little bitches that just want something to complain about.

Lol!! So Bungie and Microsoft create a media shit storm about there upcoming product, producing almost religious levels of obsession with every minor detail of the game amongst fans and then complain when people follow through with this obsession to its logical conclusion!

They created this monster and shouldn't be surprised people complain about these kind of issues. Also a nice way of pushing the spotlight away from all those LE discs that were sent out scratched...

Can people actually tell an "80p" difference?

for hdtv there are no real set frame rates other then whatever is chosen by the broadcaster.. its usually shown as 720p30 (for 30fps)

and you can't really blame bungie if they have to lower the resolution the game runs at to keep smooth performance on the xbox360... if halo ran slower but at 720p then you would whine about it being jerky..

All this tech stuff gives mcderek3000 headache.

@Gannoc:

/agree

I was stoked for 1080p ... but now that I seen it, I knew it wasnt the minute I played the first mission. Virtua Tennis looked much more crisp and clear than this.

Still an awesome game with a perfect ending to the series IMO.

Zho, I too was bugged to no end about the black bars, and the only thing I've been able to dig up is that it was being sold as a "feature". That instead of distorting it to fill the screen, it esnures a true to single player aspect ratio for both players.

Personally, I wouldn't mind a little stretching over huge black stripes on both sides of the TV. I was even more ticked that this "feature" can't apparently be changed/turned off...

BTW I really don't like Bungie's response, even if I did not understand the argument. The customer is always right, no matter how wrong they are.

@Teekan: There's nothing wrong with Bioshock's widescreen mode, it's as-intended. The whiners on the widescreen gaming forums don't know what they're talking about.

As for Halo 3 being a slightly lower res, I don't think it matters much. It's not very noticeable and it has allowed them to deliver a rock solid frame rate which I always prefer over resolution/detail. In fact just about every game I can think of for the 360 has the frame rate fluctuating between 20-30fps, it seems locking a game to a specific frame rate is getting harder and harder for developers.

So the Sega Rally team definitely deserve some plaudits too, while it's "only" 30fps, it's locked to that the whole time. For a while I thought it was running at 60fps until I realised I just hadn't seen a solid 30fps in a good while...

See I hope people start looking at nintendo better now . Nintendo will do hd next gen after all the hd resolution problems are figured out. IF they cant even do halo in 720p then there are problems.

When sony and microsoft fanboys count out the wii because its not hd then halo 3 comes out and thats not full hd then yes it matters.

Maybe this will teach people not to look at graphics and worry about the gameplay.

It's interesting how the importance of HD versus 'more important aspects of the game' switches places in the HD consoles' PR arsenal. Such choice of argument is so inconsistently a la carte it's pants!
Come on Bungie! After all this hype you created you should expect some bitterness over your (well meant, I'm sure) concealment. And go to work porting it to the Wii. 480p is only 'a few extra pixels' less and guarantees a proportional 90 fps. That'd be Super fluid!

The only reason they didn't mention it was probably to avoid putting any sort of bad light on the game to ensure more first day sales. Kind of like how a year ago they said we would be able to search for custom games online (XBL Public) and the game came with no such feature.

@hinges: see...that's what I'm thinking. It's easy for Bungie to puff their chest up with the techo babble but the reality is they couldn't get the game to run at a smooth clip unless they did some slight of hand that with the screen resolution. I think Sony and MS blew it with the HD support in general. I see entirely too many games on both platforms that can't hold a steady framerate. It's a disgrace. I remember when there was an interview with a developer back when the PS2 launched that was "excited that they could finally run their games at 60fps standard..." Well we're a generation later and we still can't get it as standard.

The bottomline is, Bungie can say it's bullshit and no big deal but when you have MS executives ripping Wii and PS3 for their hardware perfromance and spec and praising 360 as a superior device (when it actually works), you beat your ass there's going to be drama. Bungie I have four words for you...

Call

of

Duty

4

nuff said.

You know .. how does this affect the gameplay? Lets say they didnt go 720p to get a smoother game .. thats better than going the full 720 and giving us stop action gaming ;). Games guys thats all that matters and regardless seems like Halo 3 is THE GAME.

@majortom1981: If they worry about the gameplay, then it Wii is not where it's at.

So in other words, Bungie just confirmed that the game is running at lower than HD resolution. Their explanations are just excuses that boil down to "we couldn't get the game running smoothly at anything higher."

The bullshit about scaling is just that. All that matters is native res.

@versellios:

Bungie's right in that there is no such resolution as "640p". But if there was, it wouldn't be considered HD. 720 lines of vertical resolution is the minimum HD spec. Horizontal res can be whatever you want it to be, but you've gotta have 720 vertical to be HD.

@majortom1981: I'm calling this one out. So far only two Wii games have displayed great gameplay, with a few more coming. Zelda, and Metroid.

For what it's worth, and I'm not even a Halo fan, the people getting this are getting a good looking game with great gameplay. When the gameplay is solid guess what comes next.

FPS > 80 Lines of resolution

I mean it's easier to notice a frame rate drop than it is to notice 80 lines of pixels gone, when they're flashing at you 30 times a second.

Ah'm so glad ah'm teck-nuk-ly challunged so's I can jes luk ayt the purty pitchures.

Pur-ty.

BUNGIE fragged TEHINTERNETZ with assault rifle

Who really cares? I mean, seriously. The game looks fine and it runs smoothly. Unless you're playing on a goddamn movie theater screen this shouldn't even be noticable.

@Zho: That's just the best way to do it. Exactly what aspect ratio do you want for it to fill up the whole screen?

FYI, Bungie themselves busted the rumor that would be running in 1080p natively themselves a good while ago:

[www.bungie.net]

(towards the bottom, Frankie explains)