Sony Guidelines Limit 3D PS3 Games to 720p
A Sony representative explains the limit exists to maintain a high frame-rate.
By Kris Pigna, 07/17/2010
There's been a lot of talk about how the process of producing a 3D image in videogames requires other visual sacrifices to achieve, but now Sony has revealed that their official guidelines to 3D PlayStation 3 games do in fact limit games to a resolution no higher than 720p. Although the PS3 is indeed capable of presenting games in 1080p, Sony's Simon Benson explained during a 3D demo at the Develop Conference this week that their guidelines prohibit 3D games from being portrayed in the highest resolution, as it wouldn't allow for a smooth 60-frames-per-second (via Joystiq). This means that even games that run natively in 1080p (like Super Stardust HD) will still be locked in at 720p in 3D.
Benson admitted that a "more cinematic game" might actually benefit from a lower frame-rate and higher resolution, but he said the Sony guidelines don't allow for it. He also assured that even trained computer graphics artists could barely see a difference between a 720p and 1080p image in a 3D game, so it's unlikely many regular consumers will notice.
This limitation isn't very surprising, as the nature of producing a 3D image requires rendering two different images of the game at the same time. And in fact, the PS3 isn't the only 3D games platform that has to make some visual sacrifices to achieve the effect -- some developers have recently suggested that the extra processing power used to render the 3D image on the Nintendo 3DS could potentially be used to generate better graphics and physics in games that don't use the 3D effect at a
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