Today’s high-end gaming consoles can play games in 1080p resolution, but many Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games still run at 720p or less. The average person may not see a difference, but the graphics-minded co-creator of Doom does.
Yesterday, the legendary programmer Tweeted:
Targeting 1080P for next gen consoles brings pixel precision back to relevance. Almost every display screws with 720P.
Your HD TV can probably run it. The question is whether your consoles can without sacrificing framerate and whether it’ll make a difference. Carmack believes it will. Maybe the next Xbox should be called the 1080 and not the 720?
Id’s John Carmack Shooting for 1080p, Is an Alpha Nerd [GameTrailer's Side Mission blog]
blaja
Thursday, December 22, 2011 at 9:59 AM“meanwhile at the debuging of rage center”……(beeeeeeeeeeeeep)
JD
Thursday, December 22, 2011 at 10:15 AMI don’t think a lack of 1080p should be Carmack’s biggest concern.
IMO everything since Quake 1 has been a disappointment. He needs to get Romero back, neither of them can create good games without the other. The guy can do engines, and graphics, and respect for that. He doesn’t understand gameplay or atmosphere though.
Ad
Thursday, December 22, 2011 at 2:14 PM^^ so very true
Richard
Thursday, December 22, 2011 at 5:05 PMI don’t think you guys understand, Carmack is a programmer who creates engines – he doesn’t design games.
Zevensoft
Thursday, December 22, 2011 at 10:16 AMEven if consoles output to 1080p natively, most people will probably have stupid TV settings that destroy the image anyway (bad scaling, over sharpening, too much contrast, etc.)
James Mason
Thursday, December 22, 2011 at 10:30 AMCarmack needs to develop the next Ultima with Lord British in space. It is the only way to save humanity.
Zico
Thursday, December 22, 2011 at 11:31 AMyes
Martin
Thursday, December 22, 2011 at 10:33 AMWhy will it bring pixel precision back and what is pixel precision? Is he referring to memory constraints, pixel mapping or the users ability to move a sprite from one pkatform to another?
Nic
Thursday, December 22, 2011 at 10:48 AMI’m thinking it’s the ability to make pixel-art graphics and interfaces, so that you know your 50×10 button will be represented by exactly 50×10 pixels on screen, removing the fuzziness of up/down scaling.
Morkai
Thursday, December 22, 2011 at 10:55 AMI think (someone correct me if I’m wrong) he means pixel precision as in there’s 1920×1080 pixels available on the screen, so the source going into the screen should match 1920×1080, rather than being lower and being scaled/resampled/stretched to fit.
Sam
Thursday, December 22, 2011 at 10:38 AMAgree with the guy on this, but my god I’m sick of hearing about ‘things John Carmack said.’ The guy was relevant for the early Doom/Quake era and since then hasn’t been in the slightest, I wouldn’t take advice from a doctor who had spent the last 10 years misdiagnosing patients regardless of how well he did in med school.
Hyperthx
Thursday, December 22, 2011 at 12:39 PMYour an idiot if you think John Carmack is irrelevant.
sharmona
Thursday, December 22, 2011 at 1:39 PMHe’s not irrelevant. Just makes shit games.
pat (not that pat)
Thursday, December 22, 2011 at 5:59 PMIt’s a shame that someone (like Carmack) who pioneered a genre is so callously dismissed by someone who’s likely never to come close to achieving much beyond playing said “shit games.”
You’ve gotta respect the fact that he was instrumental in defining the genre. Rage was lacking, for sure but even rockstars have bad gigs from time to time :)
AerintheADEQUATE
Friday, December 23, 2011 at 4:13 AMIt seems like most ‘gamers’ can’t progress beyond the “What have you done for me LATELY?” mentality :-P
Braaains
Thursday, December 22, 2011 at 10:39 AMIf only running in a mere 720p had been Rage’s biggest problem.
James Woods
Thursday, December 22, 2011 at 10:52 AM“Maybe the next Xbox should be called the 1080 and not the 720?”
……priceless
Caiphus
Thursday, December 22, 2011 at 11:45 AMDefinitely makes a difference. If you can tell a major difference on a pc with a smaller screen a 40inch or bigger would really show it. 60fps should be a minimum too.
4k should be the potential capability imo if we are going to a 10 year cycle for consoles. Using a 1440p screen on my pc i have to play at 720 or full res or get a case of the fuzzies. Moving to higher storage mediums then dvd should allow them to cater to multiple native resses.
Hyperthx
Thursday, December 22, 2011 at 12:40 PMie SSD
StudiodeKadent
Thursday, December 22, 2011 at 9:26 PMI agree with Carmack that the next generation should target 1080p.
With even modest hardware (by today’s standards) 1080p30 wouldn’t be difficult, and given that consoles have fewer layers of software abstraction it should be very easy to get 1080p30 at a console price point.
oshtree
Friday, December 23, 2011 at 1:19 AMCarmack can suck a dick, Rage looks like complete shit.
whatever3003
Saturday, December 24, 2011 at 12:44 PMWhy the hell isn’t he fixing Rage first?
I buy a game, I expect it to work. I refuse to do anything more than download game patches and update video drivers. If I have to start tweaking cfg files to make it playable, it’s broken.
I can’t return it because it’s steam activated and region locked.
Fuck carmack, he’s squandering the deep respect the technical community has for him – he needs to fix his POS shooter first or start offering blanket refunds. This is not how business is done.