Another Minor Thought

According to Carmack, it seems that a Radeon 7500 should be able to run Doom 3 with T&L, shadows, bumpmapping, the works, albeit at a very low resolution. After thinking about it, I'm more excited at the thought of running it at 320x240 than I would be at the thought of running it at say, 1600x1200. Why? Here's why...

Basically, the higher resolution at which the game is played, the easier it is to see the imperfections. Polygons look straighter and sharper, and the engine limits are more visible. At 320x240, Doom 3's shadows would look more blended in with the game, and the monsters/characters would no longer look polygonal and angled. They'd look like they were made up of true curves!

There you have it, I'm looking forward to playing Doom 3 in 320x240. Just another minor thought.

AndrewB said:

Basically, the higher resolution at which the game is played, the easier it is to see the imperfections.

Assuming that a smaller resolution would use some kind of FSAA to downsize the screensize, yes that would be true.

AndrewB said:

the monsters/characters would no longer look polygonal and angled. They'd look like they were made up of true curves!

No, they would look like a bunch of huge pixels. You do your little thing while I play it at 1024x768 with FSAA on... We'll see which comes closer to perfection.

The original DOOM video was a low resolution, somewhere around 320, and people still looked at it and thought it was amazing and mind-blowing. Nobody said "That video sucks it's just a bunch of huge pixels."

Come on, after using any resolution for 10 seconds the brain adjusts to it and it feels normal. You won't be enjoying 1024x768 with FSAA any more than someone else enjoying 320x240, and that's what counts.

AndrewB said:

Come on, after using any resolution for 10 seconds the brain adjusts to it and it feels normal. You won't be enjoying 1024x768 with FSAA any more than someone else enjoying 320x240, and that's what counts.

Wow. You're really sticking with your "graphics don't matter" statement, aren't you. If your statement is true, then why did we ever step up to higher resolutions at all ? Why are Nvidia and ATI pouring millions of dollars into faster graphics chips ? And why are the artists at id busting their asses making 512x512 textures and 150,000 poly scenes when TEH BRAIN ADJSUTS TO ANY RSEOLUTION!!¿

You can't compare a video sequence to a game. So don't.

And don't tell me what I'll be enjoying or not, goddammit.

Maybe you should get some RAID for that infenstation in your pants. Seriously, calm down already. This doesn't need to be a mud-slinging match. I merely pointed out the benefits of a lower resolution.

There's no reason to vehemently defend your position as you are doing now, because nobody is attacking it.

Just trying to counter your weird statements. Well okay, sorry for the lousy JeffK impersonations. I'm off to bed; you crazy kids better behave while I'm offline or else.

Why would you want to play at a lower resolution? That makes the images smaller and shittier. Play Quake 3 at 320x240 and see how shitty it looks, then play it at 800x600. Contrast and compare. Now think about what Doom 3 would look like at 320x240 compared to say 1600x1200. 1600x1200 will look much much better but 320x240 will look like the original Doom on low res.

Take a look at any fancy-pancy original DOOM map that uses smooth gradient sector lighting. At 320x240, it looks smooth and relatively nice. At 1600x1200, the coarseness and limits of the engine hang out like a booger in a kleenex shortage.

I'd upgrade my computer's Radeon 7500 when Doom 3 comes out, but that most likely won't be an option, so what's wrong with being satisfied with 320x240, the necessary resolution, and looking for the positives?

Anything can look good in a 320x240 screenshot because everything is so small you can't make out the ugliness. When you blow that screenshot up to fill your screen, the enormous pixels suddenly look very ugly, and you can't see very far because anything even moderately far away is made up of about ten squares. In my opinion 640x480 is the lowest truly acceptable resolution for playing a FPS.

640x480 is my preferred gaming resolution for all games. I don't think I'll ever go higher than that for any game unless it forces me. And I'm running a GF3 Ti 200 on a 15" monitor.

I know I'm just redundantifying myself here, but I had no enjoyment issues with 320x240 first-person shooters years ago, so there's no reason why I would next year.

Low output resolution does NOT equal supersampling. Game footage recorded in videos look fucking good because either the compression blend the sharp edges when losing data, or because the raw slideshow is composed of images much larger than the final product.

Scale down a 1600x1200 screenshot to a 800x600 canvas using bilinear filtering. It's light years beyond a 800x600 screenshot of the same thing.

320X240 is plain ugly in my opinion. Everything less than a couple virtual feet away is so fucking pixelly you can't make anything out.
I play ZDoom at either 640X480 or 800X600. I've tried playing at the really low resolutions, and I just can't. They're stomach-churning. All this, is of course, my opinion, so don't flame me for it.

DooMBoy said:

320X240 is plain ugly in my opinion. Everything less than a couple virtual feet away is so fucking pixelly you can't make anything out.
I play ZDoom at either 640X480 or 800X600. I've tried playing at the really low resolutions, and I just can't. They're stomach-churning. All this, is of course, my opinion, so don't flame me for it.

True dat. I can't even play ZDoom on any resolution 'cept for 512x384 or 1024x768...the graphics are all glitchy...

Why would you want to play at a lower resolution? That makes the images smaller and shittier. Play Quake 3 at 320x240 and see how shitty it looks, then play it at 800x600. Contrast and compare. Now think about what Doom 3 would look like at 320x240 compared to say 1600x1200. 1600x1200 will look much much better but 320x240 will look like the original Doom on low res.

Why? If you had a shitty computer, that's why. And it doesn;t make them any smaller, it makes them more pixelated :)

AndrewB said:

The original DOOM video was a low resolution, somewhere around 320, and people still looked at it and thought it was amazing and mind-blowing. Nobody said "That video sucks it's just a bunch of huge pixels."

Wrong. the original doom video was run at 1024x1000 something-or-other. The video SMOOTHED IT OUT and compressed it down to 300x240

and you will have a VERY DIFFICULT TIME MAKING OUT the environment when its this complex at 320x240

Well it doesn't matter what looks better anyway because you won't be able to run it in 1600x1200 if you want anything more than a slideshow. When they say "perpixel" they mean it.

The higher res you run, the more pixels your hardware has to calculate 'perpixel' bumpmapping, specular lighting, light attenuation, etc. With stencil shadows eating fillrate, that will just make it worse.

Sure, in Quake3 with your GeForce3/4 cards you don't feel a thing when you go from 640x480 up to 1024x768, but that's Quake3. Doom3 will bring back the days of bumping down the res just to bring up the FPS.

The E3 Doom3 presentation was ran on a 2.2ghz machine with ATI's next generation in-development video hardware. Why do you think they had such a beefed up machine? So they could get a good solid 100 FPS? They were probably averaging ~50 fps on that machine. They were also running only at medium detail setting (that's what carmack claimed).

At any rate, just don't expect to be able to run > 800x600 if you want to be able to play the game..