If you look at the image/screenshot you’ll noticed that it’s very smooth and crisp, but when we play the REAL game on our HDTV’s it still looks really crisp however it suffers from Alliasing.
Alliasing is when the edges of the characters or objects have “jaggies” all around them.
In the PC world we have an option called Anti-Alliasing which removes those ugly “jaggies”. You can set it to all kinds of modes AAx4 Multi Sampling AA Super sampling AA etc etc.
I dont wanna go into too much detail because i’m sure most of you are like “huh?” but that’s the jist of it.
For those who actually know what i’m talking about or even have a good gaming pc and know what they’re talking about why is this? Is capcom adding some kind of anti-alliasing to these screenshots to make them look prettier or what?
Noticed this in vanilla too, but i’m seeing the same thing in the UMVC3 screenshots aswell.
I wished the game actually looked like that with Anti-alliasing not just the actual screenshots.
This is true. It’s a rule in game design that you should create your game to look good in motion, rather than in screenshots. Ironically, many of the games to come out in the mid 2000’s forgot about this rule, but the higher end game developers remembered this.
The best example I could think of this scenario is if any of you guys played “Planetside” when it was new? The graphic quality wasnt very good, mediocre at best, but if you found a big battle? Graphically it looked INCREDIBLE with dozens of lasers shooting per second at every angle, vehicles zooming by, etc. It seriously looked better than a war scene in a Star Wars movie, it was amazing. There were a few times it looked so awesome that I tried to take screenshots… and you know what? The screenshots looked like crap. Sure, there would be like 5 lasers on the screen at a time, but it’s the movement that made it look amazing.
An example in the fighting game world that players here may be more familiar with is Soul Calibur 4. A screenshot of that game looked decent, but honestly not so far ahead of fighting games 5 years earlier. But that game in motion? It looks great! With all the particle effects coming off the weapons in combat, mixed with light effects from the special moves, and the smooth frame rate, physics on cloths (not to mention the overdone physics on boobs) the game looked far far better in motion.
So to make the screenshots acceptable at all, they are of course doctored up. Hell, even videos are doctored up, and often times the “gameplay videos” are actually not even gameplay, they are just a render with some extra graphic effects on. Youd be surprised how many games show FoV in “gameplay videos” but the effect is nowhere to be found in the real game.
Screenshots of games are usually taken straight from their development systems, which is usually running at a much high resolution than what consoles can do. They dont necessarily go into photoshop and fix all the pictures that way. There was an article about this awhile back explaining something like this but I dont remember what site it was from.
the 2x AA that 360 has (which most PS3 games don’t seem to have) does almost nothing to reduce jaggies (once you put it at 4x it’s noticeable but they are still there). Running 720p games on a 1080p HDTV will also cause jaggies to be more noticeable. Having a huge TV will almost make the jaggies noticeable because the pixel density goes to all hell.
Ultimate having a display of the appropriate size and resolution to run games at their native resolution is the best way to reduce jaggies. Maybe next gen “HD” consoles will actually run games at HD resolutions with frame-rates, anti-aliasing and shadows that aren’t complete ass.
ROFL, are you serious? Just because we play games on consoles doesn’t mean we are fucking dumbasses. Like the guy above me said, you probably didn’t mean to sound condescending, but goddamn, we aren’t stupid.
And on topic, screenshots are doctored, they can use a program called photoshop that people use to alter images in various ways, i don’t wanna go into too much detail, cause you’re probably like “huh?”, but that’s the jist of it
Lol that wasn’t my intention. It’s just that most console gamers (i’m a console gamer at heart myself) dont know about all these PC video options. But ya I wasn’t trying to be rude by any means
Also, the PS3 actually lacks AA on most of it’s games. I’m also aware that the SF4 games on 360 (not ps3) have AA2. It doesnt remove the ugly “jaggies” away but it does indeed help.
Most MultiPlats on 360 have some kinda AA that’s why I always get Multi’s on 360. PS3 exclusives look great though.
Jinsaotomex3, i’m hoping for that too. This HD area of consoles sucks big time. For years I stuck with playing my “HD” games on my old SDTV because on a nice HDTV you can see all the uglyness and jaggies most games have. An SDTV on the other hand “hides” all this crappyness and gives game free AA.
It’s worse when you also have a nice gaming pc in which you can play games with beautiful graphics. It spoils you. When you go back to a console game you’re like “man wtf?..”
That said some games look really good on a HDTV this one is one of them. I just wished they had AA
Anyways, thanks guys for clearing up my question. I didnt know they “hooked up” their screenshots to make them look prettier lol. I wish the actual game looked that way on my tv though xD
I don’t know why everyone thinks they’re using photoshop (except post #5). If they do at all, it would just be to scale down the oversampled image taken from the computer it’s running on. That’s what AA is anyway, oversampling, then scaling down.
Not trying to be an ass, but does it really matter? Like when you’re playing MvC3 are you really gonna be upset about the jaggies around some characters?
Yes, it matters. I do 99% of my gaming on PC and I have a fairly meh system by today’s standards (E8400 @ 3.6GHz, GTX 460 1GB, rest is standard stuff) and whenever I play games on my PS3 I feel like ripping my eyes out when I see the poor quality… everything (except for character models) looks so bad in comparison, good art direction helps quite a bit but not enough unfortunately. Biggest offender in PS3 games is the shadows, those god damned shadows are fucking awful, literally pixelated messes. Now this wouldn’t be an issue if I played like 10ft away from my TV but it’s my monitor so no can’t do. If I could rip out the GPU on the PS3 and replace it with something that wasn’t god awful, I totally would. 360 is a bit better off in this regard because the GPU is a bit more powerful.
Like I stated earlier, I hope that the next gen consoles coming out in a few years are at least on par with the mid-range stuff today on PCs because otherwise I’m going to crush some skulls in. UNACCEPTABLE.
But isn’t the whole reason PCs are better graphically because there’s a new chip/video card/graphics hardware every few months or so? I’m not a PC gamer but I remember somewhere that it’s unfair to compare PCs to consoles because a PC can be upgraded at will (if you have the money) whereas a console can’t just be redesigned with a new GPU every year (or even every few months) or anything because it would hurt sales. Basically, even if the next consoles are on par with mid range stuff, after a year or so, they will be considered outdated by PC standards and won’t be “upgraded” until several years later when the new one comes out.
I do understand what you’re saying though. I just remembered when I didn’t have an HD tv and I was always like “HD isn’t necessary for a PS3. It’s not that big of a deal.” Then I bought one and noticed how crisp it looks. Just came back from vacation where the only TV was a SD round TV. Only thing going through my mind was “BAWH GOD…MY EYES!!!”
