pouët.net

I've seen some discussions about this in the past, but now I found an official answer (without the awsomeness of gamerlamer tech):

It apears that in the HD generation the best games aren't really that HD. Lot's of games that run at 1080p actually run at lower resolutions.
Why do they do this? Just for marketing? It's like resizing Second Reality to 1920x1080 and say it's HD :|

When watching demos I usualy use lower resolutions with higher AA. I think it looks better this way.

forgot the quote source
http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&cid=12821

just for marketing? nooooo! they would never, just like crytek didnt with crysis. Im playing it full setting on dx9, and i will be damned if i can tell the difference between what ihave got and the dx10 screens. And apparently im far from the only one with this problem, but to blame it on CHEAPASS marketing tricks and producers with the backbone of an earth worm is too easy....so go ahead, beause thats all it is. Marketing BS!

xernobyl: So, your assertion is that "HD isn't really HD" because some part of the image isn't rendered in the native HD resolution? Sorry to be the one to tell you this, but many things aren't. :)

yeah like dx10 games in 2007

'the best games' isnt halo 3 :)

alienPDX has leading

720p is hd isnt it?

smash: That depends - do you buy into the whole marketing-whoop or not.. :)

gloom: well, some "hdtv" channels deliver in 720p - so yes, i'd say it is hd. it's a damn sight higher than 480p, thats for sure.

fyi, the 640 to 720 scaling trick halo3 uses isnt exactly dissimilar to the technique a lot of ps2 games use to save vram, which is to render to a 512-wide screen instead of 640 and let the hw scale it up. and i bet you didnt even notice that, did you?
oh no!! ive started another marketing scandal!!! many previous generation console games are not proper LD res!!!!!!

1152x640 pixels is a fairly high resolution, you know. I think scaling it might even "improve" the picture quality a bit, smoothing out edges that look unnaturally sharp, and that sort of thing.

No idea about halo, but if they're rendering at 1152x640 and calling it 1080p that's pretty lame. You'll only get ~30% odd of the detail. If that's the case, I'm sure there's a big court case awaiting in america, where some poor unfortunate will claim they suffered $1m of damage from loss of pixels.

Seriously though, who actually cares so long as it looks good? Surely people don't buy games purely based on the number of pixels they output?

same trick used by Call of Duty 4.

which is good, fluidity over HD!

I heard the same about fairlight and HDribbons.

do they really say it's 1080p somewhere? i doubt it. everyone knows almost all 360 games are 720p. sony advertised the 1080p capability a lot but even the ps3 games are mostly 720p afaik.

720p is still HD, if you want a decent framerate 1080p is not achievable without making big compromises on content. Take for example, ridgeracer on ps3 it was 1080p at 60hz but it was more of a ps2 title in high def. What difference does it make if games use hardware scalars to uprez stuff, if it looks good thats all that matters.. only no life geekoids will latch on and create forum posts saying they have been cheated. get a life.

people would be poor if they had to give a penny each time they say that very line ^_^

(and Optimus would be a millionaire by now! ;)

Doom: no it doesn't and Microsoft usually forbids that stunt because it precisely doesn't look as good as full 1280x720. Only, Bungie had a special relationship that allowed them to ship the game like that, to save some fillrate and spare the framerate.

Also, what Smash and Devistator said, who cares ? 1920x1080 is more than twice the size of 1280x720, which kills the framerate for a not so better result, not to mention that the 360 has only 10MB of vram, which is a nightmare with such resolutions and needs to have the scene rendered many times using tiles on screen.

And by the way, you're not allowed to ship a game on 360 without at least 2x antialiasing as well.

mind you, you already have to use at least 2 tiles for 1280x720 as soon as you are using 2x AA, which is mandatory nowadays.

keops: It's all about the numbers, who cares about how the game looks? IT MUST BE HD OR ELSE IT'S NOT WEB 2.1!!!

Oh, and by the way; 240x160 is HD.

240x160 is HD??
That I know only 720p, 1080i and 1080p are HD resolutions...

and their 24,25,30,60 Hz variations....