Microsoft Says 1080p Is Meaningless
Andre Vrignaud, technical director at Microsoft, writes in his blog a bit about HD and 1080p. He calls it “meaningless” in games, and claims there will be no PS3 games this year supporting 1080p.
He goes into details about the true difference between 1080i and 1080p, the difference in interlaced vs. progressive mode. “To sum up, don’t get sucked into all the 1080p hype,” says Vrignaud, as “the current sweet spot developers are targeting is 720p.”
Developers are aiming at a resolution both consoles can handle (720p), and focusing on that area. This is certainly the cheapest way of doing for those looking to release titles both on the 360 and on PS3.
Of course, as this comes from a Microsoft employee, it’s not really surprising that the outcome favors the 360. The Xbox360 cannot handle 1080p, only 1080i. The difference, long story short, is that “i” runs at 30 fps, while “p” runs at 60 fps. That’s a huge difference when it comes to videogames, especially first person shooters.
August 19th, 2006 at 9:56 pm
1080i and 1080p both run at 60 frames per second. The difference is that in 1080i only half the horizontal lines are drawn every frame. So at the 1920×1080 resolution of 1080i/p, 1080p draws 1920×1080 every 1/60th of a second and 1080i draws 1920×540 every 1/60th of a second. This even/odd rendering system allows 1080i to deliver the same temporal resolution as 1080p, but with half the horzontal resolution. It is incorrect to state that 1080i only runs at 30fps because the even and odd render fields can still contain separately rendered data from the game.