PGR3 not HD?
Is this the future? Current rumour has it that PGR3 isn’t really HD at all, but 1024 x 600.
What does that mean?
It means that Project Gotham Racing 3 for the Xbox 360 is rendering the racing scenes internally at 1024 x 600, and the Xbox 360’s scaling hardware (not the 3D hardware) is scaling it up to 1280 x 720 for output to your HDTV. So while your set is receiving a 720p signal, it doesn’t have 720p’s worth of information therein. Why? Probably to get a good frame rate. They jammed so much polygon and texture goodness in there, the Xbox 360 was having trouble rendering it fast enough. So they went for a slightly lower resolution to boost the framerate.
Which, in theory, is bad. But in practice, you’re still going to get a great looking game. Maybe not quite as great as it could possibly look if it was really HD, but still pretty good.
But I would have liked that extra little bit of pixel yummyness.
360 Insider - Project Gotham Racing 3 not really running at 720p?
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November 15th, 2005 at 4:15 pm
[…] First, I hear that the game is really rendered at 1024 x 600, then upscaled to 720p. Crap. Then I hear that the game will only have five locations: Tokyo, Las Vegas, New York, London, and Germany’s Nurburgring. Crap. All my favourite European locations are gone. Now I find out that I can’t play PGR3 with three other friends at the same time! Quadruple crap. […]