by Lono

Source: Joysitq

It was discoverd this week, by people with waaaaay too much time on their hands, that Halo 3 isn’t rendered natively in HD. Instead, Halo 3 is rendered natively in a lesser 640p and is upscaled to 720p or 1080p, depending on your TV. It was apparently done to allow high dynamic range lighting (HDR), which allows for a broad range of exposures, making possible much greater extremes of light and dark. They were forced to trade off between performance and pixels in order to have HDR.

The lesser 640p rendering was confirmed by Bungie, who apparently didn’t think it was a big deal that their golden goose couldn’t muster 720p.

I’m beginning to wonder if the Xbox 360 has peaked as far as what can be done with the system graphically. Bungie had three years to make this game. After all of that time they couldn’t get the game to play smoothly at 720p? Is this the extent of the capabilities of the Xbox 360? If you want a wide open single player campaign with huge levels and vehicle interaction, you’ll have to downscale the graphics?

Wow.

I hope that this isn’t the case. I know that Gears looks better, but if that game had the scope of Halo 3, would Gears have looked as good? I dunno. I’d like to think that it would. I sure would hope that it would. To think that the 360 peaked only two years after launch, that Halo 3 is the pinnacle of what can be done graphically with the system?

Time to get a PS3.

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