How HDR and AA Works in Xbox 360


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HDR and AA can be applied at the same time in Xbox 360 games but there are a few tricks to play, if you see the videos of Kameo you will notice lack of ALiasing, that is with the AA disabled, the trick is with HDR: Xenos allows HDR and AA at the same time but because HDR takes a lot of bandwidth the developer needs to reduce AA to get more HDR. Another trick is D3D compression which Project Gotham Racing 3 uses, it compresses textures using d3d and thus allows more to go through cpu gpu with less bandwith, this allows HDR and AA at the same time so you will see full AA and full HDR at the same time.

Example:

Valve's Day of Defeat with no HDR and ALiasing off on a Nvidia 7800

noHDR.jpg

Valve's Day of Defeat with Full HDR and Aliasing off on a Nvidia 7800

fullHDR.jpg

Notice that applying HDR reduces Aliasing AND enhances the images to look better and real at the same time.

/end of todays lesson

EDIT: here is an example of PGR3

726_0008.jpg

Notice the full HDR at background and full AA on the car, this is enabled by D3D compression technique allowed in directx 10 in future, but one of those dx10 features are in Xbox 360 card. Rare sadly hasnt used this feature

Edited by OrangeSoul
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Looking at the butt of the gun, the aliasing looks exactly the same between the two pictures. It seems that the only time it will look reduced is during the first few frames of the contrast changing with HDR (everything's washed out), when the image returns the normal I'm sure the aliasing will still be there.

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Looking at the butt of the gun, the aliasing looks exactly the same between the two pictures. It seems that the only time it will look reduced is during the first few frames of the contrast changing with HDR (everything's washed out), when the image returns the normal I'm sure the aliasing will still be there.

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yes but i just showed an example of software HDR that Valve is using, i dont have any other hardware HDR implementation example which is traditional

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All this fuss and i can't notice any difference except the bottom one is abit lighter and hazey in the background.

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ok i found an example, an official Rare 720p image of Kameo with hardware HDR and AA off

273_0006.jpg

vs

project gotham racing 3 , 720p image with full hdr and full aa using d3d compression

726_0003.jpg

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also remember if your just going for the effect used in those pics you can fake the hdr with non-hdr-bloom like halo2 has.

hdr is more important for exposure control when you go from dark to light places etc.

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perhaps a bad example of high dynamic range.. if only because, although DoD supports HDR, none of the maps were constructed for HDR, and there's certainly nothing in those screenshots which show off HDR. I would however argue that we're all going to be sorrily disappoint if we are to expect HDR games to produce fuzzy images like that. or is that just the source engine's feigned HDR ****ing it up?

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Far Cry (PC w/ SM3.0) does a good job of showing off HDR in its finest. The difference is amazing, and things definitely aren't blurrier. It's like the difference between having Digital Vibrance on and off if you have a PC with an nVidia graphics card, except even better :).

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Kameo doesn't use AA? Sure looked like it did to me.

And it's very confusing when you sometimes say "Aliasing" when you mean "Anti-Aliasing"

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Wow, the colors look so faded and washed out compared to my ati x850xt platinum. Glad I stuck with agp for now, i think ill wait for pci-e 2 before i bust out the big bucks :D

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