Super Stardust HD Running at 120fps, 720p for 3D

This is pretty cool:



Via Eurogamer.

An interview with Housemarque regarding the stereoscopic version of Super Stardust HD:

"That was of course just the beginning: after that we had to optimise a lot, as we now had 8.3ms instead of 16.7ms to render a frame. Luckily we had 50 per cent of the SPU power left, so we tapped into that. The current version of the game heavily pre-processes the data that goes to RSX to make sure it can chew through it as quickly as possible."

"For SSHD it was mainly drawcalls and polygons - we have lots of objects with lots of polygons and massive particle effects. I solved the issue by moving vertex processing from GPU to SPU and merging as many objects as possible to one drawcall. Previously every asteroid chunk and every enemy was in a separate drawcall; in the stereo version they go out in a few fell swoops."

Doesn't change the fact that the PS3 hardware is a mess of bottlenecks, but still awesome. Just think if you could chose to either render your game in 3D, or play it at 120fps on one of the newest displays? Native 120fps support would be sex.

Wonderful. I do sometimes wonder if the three-sixty is capable of things like this.

I didn't even know they could have 120 fps.

Originally Posted by Apollo

I didn't even know they could have 120 fps.

I run many of my PC games with well over 100 fps. Some source engine based games run with over 300 fps on my computer.

If you mean a console, I am surprised too. They are relatively underpowered, but if any game were to have more than 60 fps it'd be a basic game like that.

Isn't 120fps twice as fast as what normal games are designed to display? In that case, why would you want the game to run twice as fast as it is supposed to? It would by hard to play. It'd be kinda like trying to watch a movie in fast forward.

Originally Posted by Wrath of Pong

Isn't 120fps twice as fast as what normal games are designed to display? In that case, why would you want the game to run twice as fast as it is supposed to? It would by hard to play. It'd be kinda like trying to watch a movie in fast forward.

It doesn't work that way at all. The frame rate is how many times a second a frame (read, a picture, which coming together forms animation, just like how a hand-drawn cartoon is made), is drawn on the screen. The higher the frame rate, the smoother the animation and the more detail there is in motion. Humans can notice a visible flicker at 60fps, meaning higher frame and refresh rates are beneficial to our viewing experiences.

And daeth, while we can run our games at well above 60fps, it doesn't mean squat if we don't have a display that supports it. I would love to get a 120hz monitor, which I'm sure in the next year or so we'll see.

Originally Posted by Mr. Wonderful

IAnd daeth, while we can run our games at well above 60fps, it doesn't mean squat if we don't have a display that supports it. I would love to get a 120hz monitor, which I'm sure in the next year or so we'll see.

You can "feel" the difference, and that is what makes it most beneficial. Of course once you start going into the 100+ range the difference is negligible. Still, 60 fps feels horrible when you get used to 100+.