SD v.s. HD

No it's not a new video game. It's just a video standard. Or standards, rather.

There's been a big fuss over HD in recent times. Following on from digital TV, we went from getting crystal clear picture (no more snow, woot) to now getting that same picture in a higher resolution. It sounds like a big deal, and to a lot of people it probably is. Although now I've experienced both standard- and high-definition picture, and I'm confused as to why it matters so much.

If you want you can hit up the HDTV article @ Wikipedia. In that article it lists the various SD and HD resolutions. My Xbox360 runs at a mediocre 480p. I was (and am still) puzzled as to why my AU PAL console is running at an NTSC resolution. But oh well.

Your standard TV resolution is about a 0.3 Megapixel quality, and that's running it at 480p. When you bump it up to 720p, you're getting around 0.9 MP. And 1080i/p is at a relatively whopping 2MP. I can see that, for a video game, this just means more pixels in the same space. When you take a photo with a camera, that Megapixel quality determines how much of that analog real life data is captured into a digital form. In a game, it just means things get scaled (or so I think). In a game it's polygons and not pixels that determine quality. The only way you get a better picture is by using better quality models. Better quality effects. And so on. Although there are still people who swear by HD and it's awesomeness, like my good friend Rob.

He's a bit of a graphics whore, and so he's very for the whole HD thing. When I tell him that I don't see a significant difference, he thinks I'm crazy. Normally I wouldn't said anything, I've never played my games in HD, and I don't have the hardware to do it even if I wanted to. But yesterday I was at a mate's place playing his 360, and he had it set up for HD. The game I spent the most time playing was Guitar Hero 3. I've beaten a large chunk of the game on Wii, and when I played it on a 360 at EB, I was stunned at the quality of the graphics in comparison. So when I bought the game (and GH2) the other day for the 360, I was able to experience that quality for a while. Then at my mate's place, I got to play it in HD.

Not impressed.

If HD is this marvelous thing, then why is the difference negligible? I played GH3 in HD for a good while, and I don't see much difference in how it looks on my own monitor at standard def. I also played some Crackdown, CoD4, and RS: Vegas and, after taking these games home with me (borrowed, of course! [Steggles ftw]) I got to see how they look in SD. Again, no difference.

I think the whole thing behind HD is just a placebo. Someone tells you something is in HD, and you kind of nod your head uncertainly and agree. Yeah, of course you know it's HD once you've been told. If I was to take captured images from identical SD and HD footage, and then scaled them to the same size, I don't think there'd be a significant difference. After playing some Halo3 on Steggles' projector, I could see how HD would be a good thing there. Increasing the DPI is very good for lessening the crapness of picture on large displays. I imagine that playing on the projector in SD would've been smeh.

Anyways. For all the people getting horny over HD... It's very nice and all, but unless there are several sets of graphics data stored for every game (one for each resolution) including textures and models, then HD isn't doing much. I can take a screen shot of.. My screen, which is currently at something like 1280*1024, and upscale it. Increase the DPI. And it will be the same thing. I'll try that now before I look silly.

I did it. And it just looks like I've zoomed in on it. Meh.

I think I can safely say that the difference between SD and low-end HD (like 720p) is negligible. The low-end has about 3 times more pixels and, whilst it's a good increase, it isn't much. However, 1080 is over twice the quality of 720, and over 6 times that of 480.

Dam graphics whores. Stop getting horny. Maybe when there are high polygon count options, then maybe it'll be a big deal. For now, it's not so much.

I'm done.