720p versus 1080p
Weve gotten a few questions about whether Resistance will be running in 1080p or 720p. In fact, AssassinX01 brought this up in his comments on my last blog.
Over the past few months we've told all of the enthusiast magazines and websites that we will TRY for 1080p. And indeed we did try. But when we began making our final discs we made the decision to release at 720p. Why? Native 1080p (versus 720p scaled to 1080p) uses much more VRAM than 720p. When we finished up a few of our bigger levels at the very end of the development process we realized that we would have had to steal VRAM from some of our characters and environments to run in native 1080p. Some of you who arent familiar with hardware in general may be asking So didnt you say you freed up more space? Well yes, but VRAM and disc space are two completely separate things. VRAM/RAM is the 512Mb of dynamic memory allocated to game assets at runtime versus the 25Gb or so of permanent storage on a single-layer Blu-Ray.
Anyway, we felt it was best to stay at 720p and that, at least while 1080p televisions are still relatively scarce, we should focus on implementing 1080p for our future games. Keep in mind too that Resistance still looks great on 1080p TVs even though its running in 720p. All 1080P TVs have a hardware scaling mechanism which scales the input signal to the TVs native resolution. In fact, much of the non direct-feed (i.e. handheld cam) footage of Resistance floating around on the net has been of 1080p TVs using Resistances 720p signal.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the game also looks really good on standard NTSC (480i) TVs. I think its easy to ignore the fact that not every consumer owns an HD TV. But we made sure to thoroughly test Resistance for text legibility and overall contrast on different types of NTSC sets.
As far as the 1080p question goes, we at Insomniac realize that naysayers will have a field day with this one. Yet keep in mind that developing a launch title is a fluid process things change all of the time. Thats what makes this kind of on the edge development both fun and terrifying. Ultimately what matters though is that you end up with a game that looks, sounds and plays great. And for Resistance: Fall of Man, I believe weve succeeded.
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