"The Xbox is in no way "re-rendering" the original Xbox games at a higher resolution. This would cause incredible amounts of problems with pixel shading, texture mapping, and other features that are part of the original build of the game."

I don't know if you'll see this now it's dropped off the page, but most PS1 and N64 emulators render the graphics at whatever resolution you want to set. Zelda OoT at 1600x1200 with 8xAA looks pretty nice. That's not upscaled either, all the polygons are rendered at that resolution. Yes the textures and any 2D bitmaps can't have any more detail added but that's obvious. I'm not sure how you can say it's impossible to up the resolution of a game when emulating it.

And considering every BC game has a specific profile for the emulator it's pretty likely MS are using HLE emulation. So they can use any nasty hacks they like to make the game look pretty without having to worry about breaking other games.

Yes they could be just doing things at 480p and upscaling but I don't see any reason for them not to be rendering at a higher resolution directly. And the resulting image looks to have a lot more data in it than a normal 480p picture, and it's easy to tell using a projector with a 7ft high image.

photoboy

Know what? Don't really feel like shutting up...

laputaquelepario

SquirrelPhister

Microsoft Gamer: "Microsoft! I have a problem!"
Microsoft: "Huh? Oh, right.. Uh.. Yeah, we'll get around to fixing that... sometime."

Nintendo Gamer: "Nintendo! I have a problem!"
Nintendo: "Leave us alone... We're trying to make Miyamoto a Zelda costume out of 100 dollar bills."

V1L3

Konchu

Now get Guitar Hero guitars working and I can move my PS2 out of my main gaming rig.

Billservo

It's pretty...

Definately better than trying to run my PS2 into my HDTV via Composite! My god, even with the TV set to 1x1 they looks terrible.

arcthemonkey

SpaceWhale

Maybe someone mentioned this earlier, but most PS2 games and all PS1 games I know of draw at 480i on the PS2...period. No, even if you had you're PS2 hooked up to an HDTV, the original signal was still interlaced and your TV just held the frames to create a progressive scan image. This firmware update causes the PS3 to actually de-interlace all PS1 and PS2 games (besides the few already in 480p) and display them in 480p. To say the least, all the games I've tested so far look rather terrific if you're viewing them on a HDTV.

The de-interlacing isn't perfect, as very quick motion will sometimes display jaggies, but it fixes that fugly PS2 shimmer on HDTVs.

Brendar

LOL! And yay for Sony fixing this issue!

y2kenjination

yurlittlepony

Colossus I hear looks fine now but that game (and others) need the rumble!

PresDNA

It'd be fine if the PSP couldn't handle the exact same games perfectly, but since it can, this is just depressing.

Elixir

Those upscaling DVD players will only display 480p over component. In order to get the upscaling to 720p, 1080i or 1080p, you need to use the player's HDMI output.

Polyh3dron

um. technically, it IS re-rendering original xbox games at a higher resolution. that's sort of part-and-parcel to that thing we call "real-time."

pre-rendered movies, for example, aren't rendered every time you watch them -- thus the "pre" before the word "rendered." as in, done prior and not at playback.

i think what you meant was resampling textures (bump maps, lightmaps, etc.) to a higher resolution. 256x256 upsampled to 512x512 for example.

that, it does not do. (tho, some of the backcompat fixes might. you never know...)

but, 3d games, by their nature ARE re-rendered every time you play them.

basically, tho, you're right. it's anti-alias + upscaling.

oh, and interpolation DOES mean to add extra data. that's kinda the definition of the word. it's the difference between resizing and resampling. the interpolation actually creates new pixels that "match" and "blend" the difference between other pixels. it's new pixels that were never there and not just stretching existing pixels.

m3mnoch.

m3mnoch

TitillatedOcelot

@dmek

If you own a 720p or better television, you would appreciate the upscaling. I'm sorry the process doesn't impress you, but the bottom line is that IT LOOKS BETTER.

Before getting all "smarmy", you should see an upscaling DVD player in action. Certainly worth the $99 they're asking.

FlapjacksAreTasty

Jamaicangmr

Please note that you can not change your online Account Profile avatar to use a custom photo.

Michael McWhertor

yurlittlepony

KurtSubvert

HDMI will live! YAY!

arcthemonkey

They didn't want the good news to clash, or maybe if they announced europe first and then the update, people might get paranoid and think the europe ones wouldn't be updated... or something.

Silent_Shark

Wpa2 is also added in this fix.

Regula Oblique

Vabor

SouDesuKa

However, the XBOX360 does apply anti-aliasing to the BC titles. I found it to be useful for some titles, but distracting on others. For instance, the anti-aliasing would seem to add a blurriness to some of the games.

Basically the whole "upscaling" concept is somewhat misunderstood. Pretty much every HDTV out there includes upscaling technology, majority of which is superior to the PS3/XB360 internal components. Additionally, a fair number of LCD and Plasma TV's don't have resolutions that directly translate to 720 1080 standards. In this case, the TV will again scale the input in order match its native resolution.

dMek

Well I do sit about 4-5 feet away from the tv usually. And I do notice jaggies. I have yet to install the update but I hope this does truly work. Thanks for the clarification!

starwarsfr3ak

It really depends on how much you've played your PS2 and how close you sit to your 480i TV. Jaggies are jaggies, regardless of the resolution.

Scuba Steve

jErrt

The problem was before that any PS1/PS2 game would have about 40-60 weird vertical cuts/blips along vertical lines, even if outputting to 480p. Some games made this more noticible than others (FFX and MGS2/3, for example). (see http://www.joystiq.com/2006/12/31/improve-ps2-game-graphic...
for some screenshot examples)

Masem

- HDCP handshake problems with Westinghouse TVs
Is 100% westinghouse's problem, speaking as someone who owned one of said TVs. It would sync fine on one port, only 10% of the time on the other. Same ps3 worked flawlessly on every non-westinghouse hdmi/hdcp tv I tested. How is this possibly sony's fault?
Westinghouse sucks, end of story.

- 1080i Issue
Is up to the game devs right now. Yeah, sony could probably have done a better job of supporting the devs in this regard, but do you complain to microsoft when a PC game you bought doesn't support the resolution you want? Expect most if not all future games to support 1080i.

kod

Sith_Mafia

Meh, I'll be getting a huge HDTV once the tax money comes in, anyhow.

starwarsfr3ak

Don't take my word for it, play SPLINTER CELL: chaos theory and check it out yourself... its VERY noticeable...

So YES there is more then just simple upscaling. Also TVs being forced to upscale = noticable lag on 90% of LCD sets.

Scazza

It begs the question, did sony make these problems on purpose so they could "fix" them and make themselves look good? Come on, BC problems and 1080i shit is just stuff that couldn't have been overlooked like that...lol

Scazza

- 1080i Issue
- HDCP handshake problems with Westinghouse TVs
- Add WPA2 support (Why the hell did they miss this? Wii does have WPA2 support).

dijuremo

Is it upscaling? As far as I'm aware because it's emulating in software it's rendering all the graphics in 720p and applying anti-aliasing.

Even if it is upscaling, it would be upscaled from 480p as that's what the Xbox1 renders at internally. Perhaps if it is just upscaling it's the anti-aliasing that helps. Whatever it is, the image looks much sharper and cleaner on my projector with the 360 at 720p than the Xbox at 480p.

photoboy

The only thing the scaler is doing is interpolating the 480 signal to 720, so that the TV can accept the signal in its native format. The TV has an internal scaler which does this process anyway. You basically seeing the same exact image, composed of more pixels.

dMek

Revolutionary

Tadale

@Photoboy
I'm not gonna lie.. I'd love to see ZOE, and especially Street Fighter 3rd strike.. and a lot of other ps2 games boosted up in 720p, however, I don't want to imply that the fact that the ps3 inferior because it doesn't upscale or rerender the ps2 games. I mean dang.. cell has 8 processors, could not one be taught to render a game into 720p?

Thomaticus

http://kotaku.com/gaming/ps3/clip-ps3-bc-issues-popping-up...

Basically BC games looked like crap on the PS3. Now they don't. The problem has been fixed.

NeverSage

Shut up!

Regula Oblique

Good deal, Sony. This is the first positive thing that's happened (that I know of) in awhile.

Congrats PS3 gamers!

PTTSeven

I'm confused. What feature existed before? The ability to display PS2 games in interlaced mode, or the PS3's inability to display PS2 games in progressive mode?

If it's the former, then there really was no problem with the implementation, as it was correctly displaying in interlaced mode.

If it's the latter, then it means that feature did not exist before.

If the PS3 really did support progressive mode, but did not work for certain games, then it would be a poor implementation, and therefore great that they fixed it. And yes, you'd be right. I don't know what I am talking about.

You know, I am not anti-PS3. Don't have one myself yet, but once good games roll out for it and there is a price drop I probably will.

I think the machine has tremendous potential (saw the Motor Storm trailer and was gobsmacked) and would like to see how everything pans out in the console wars (to whatever company's favor, I don't care, so long as I get the entertainment value I seek). In fact, I sincerely hope that the PS3 rocks in the physics/AI department, because I don't think graphic improvements alone are going to redefine gaming - innovation in interaction (Wii) and physics/AI can create new gameplay that cannot be done with graphics. Hopefully the cell processor lives up to the hype.

And @ penhalion:

My comment was merely an issue of semantics, not finding another excuse to bash the console. Sony PR already does a fantastic job of doing that themselves. :)

laputaquelepario

or just the older games looking better?

dh4645

Desi

If you have an upscaling DVD player with an HDMI port, odds are that resolutions higher than 480p are disabled on the component output. There's no particular reason for it, the content providers just applied pressure on the hardware people to do it that way. It's still possible to get an upscaling DVD player that plays HD over component through eBay.

ploeg

oddbalz

oddbalz

Wait so what about those 'upscaling dvd players' at my local best buy? I can't use component on them?

darkslide

TitillatedOcelot

It does upscale DVDs over VGA. It is against the DVD Board's license to upscale over component. You won't find many DVD players that do it, either. There are a few rogue ones out there, of course.

Rectangle

First thing I did was test out FFXII. The jaggies are history!

TitillatedOcelot

Psychotext

Er yea it did exist before and the original PS2 could do it so this is a fix pure and simple. Leave it at that will you!

penhalion

@laputaquelepario - I don;t think you know what you're talking about, this feature did exist before AND was poorly implemented, so it is indeed a fix.

Shin-Kaiser

This should have been there before. Thanks for fixing it Sony.

darkslide

Good fix Sony, but it still is the first thing you have done right in a long time, so try to make it a new trend for you.

-WPack911

WPack911

Personally I'd like both! :) I shouldn't perhaps have used the term upscaling though, as I believe it's actually rendering the Xbox1 games in 720p, not just upscaling a 420p image.

It's hard to say whether the upscaling is worth it right now, as MS still have many games to add. But they've done a pretty good job of getting the majority of the "good" games working, and Ninja Gaiden looks like a next gen game in 720p. I think it's just a few Sega games and Riddick left that I'd like to have emulated and then the system will have everything worth playing from the Xbox1 (for me anyway).

I'm not so bothered about Sony upscaling PS1 games as they would probably just show the polygon gaps and texture warping more, but for the PS2 I find the output extremely blurry, even in 480p. When you compare the PS2's output to the GC, Xbox and even DC it's image quality leaves a lot to be desired. I'd just like to play Shadow of the Colossus or MGS3 with a sharper image.

photoboy

THEDIRECTOR

dowingba

Um, that really isn't a "fix". It's an added feature that simply didn't exist before.

When you fix something, it is implied that the feature should have existed before, but was somehow poorly implemented or in other ways "broken".

laputaquelepario

The upscaler is used for the 360 games, it allows us to run any 720p games in 1080i or even now 1080p if we are stupid enough to want to do that (it seems to look just the same as 720).

It wasn't for backward compat just something that allowed better resolution on older games as a side effect of it being present in the machine.

penhalion

Deth

DaveKap

I <3 my PS3, but I had to put down 12 until they released this update.. just hoping it's what I'm hoping it is :D

Crimson (PS3 ID Black--Tiger)

What exactly is xbox doing with an upscaler.. I mean there's only so many xbox titles that are actually BC w/ the system.. (like you said) so I'm thinking... was it really worth it for them to even include a upscaler, if they knew they weren't going to be totally dedicated to ensuring that even 'most' of their xbox games were compatible w/ the 360.

Choice... 360.. w/ upscaler, and only some games.. from the previous generation...

or ps3, w/o upscaler, and all previous games from the previous two generations being compatible..

Thomaticus

cybersalad

No, no, no. Weeks ago people were bitching and moaning at how bad ps2 games looked on the ps3, how horrible backwards compatibility is on it.
Now that it's fixed, people aren't allowed to be negative about it being fixed.
Though I was wondering how long it would take.. took a little longer than I thought.

darkslide

I wish they'd gone the Microsoft route and included some resolution improvements, while the list of backwards compatible games on the 360 is still too short, what there is looks fantastic in 720p.

Have Sony fixed that problem of games being displayed in 480p if your HDTV doesn't support a specific resolution yet?

photoboy

So...being able to play your games from a $129 console on your $320 console justifies the price of that console...how? :)

Just sayin', if all you wanted it for was to play PS2 games in their original mode of presentation...just get a PS2 :)

jasongw

Folding@Home, which isn't exclusive to the PS3 by any means; what I mean is, nobody made this claim.

Tcata

The PS Store browsing also seems a little faster. Also, you can automatically auto-sort music files/folders.

PaiPaiMaster

Pshlos

penhalion

Er anyways good news for the PS3 people as I was starting to feel sorry for them in a big way. Pity isn't a pretty thing.

penhalion

miniboss1232

Michael McWhertor

Wait, I don't have a PS3. Oh well, still good news.

insane_cobra