Question about motion blur? - Blu-ray Forum

Sylin · 08-10-2009, 12:34 AM

A friend of mine is pretty hardcore Xbox 360. This weekend he was trying to tell me that the 360 has superior graphics to the PS3 because a lot of PS3 developers utilize something called "motion blur tricks" to make inferior graphics look good.

Not knowing anything about this, I had no reply for him. I Googled around a bit and it seems there's a lot of fanboy FUD on both sides of the line about this matter, but the details get lost in the flame wars.

Does anyone have any technical references? Or can someone (Shin-Ra?) give a good explanation about what he's talking about, for my benefit, so I can silence the critic?

Thx.

brett_day · 08-10-2009, 12:52 AM

well motion blur is to do with an issue that LCD tv's suffer with. Motion blur is caused when an LCD tv cannot keep up with the motion of the picture on the tv, the picture will blur......motion blur has nothing to do with the graphical capabilities of either the 360 or the ps3

now what he might be talking about is rendering capabilities......it has been noted that the 360 is better at rendering graphics than the ps3 due to some limitations of the rsx graphics chip the ps3 uses. in side by side comparisons some versions of the same game on the 360 looks a little sharper than the ps3 version...the ps3 version might look a little soft in comparison. No tricks are being used thats for sure though.

i think that when developers, coders and programmers learn how to fully exploit the graphical capabilities of the PS3 the 360 will run and hide in a corner, will be sucking is proverbial thumb and will be showing the RROD!

Shin-Ra · 08-10-2009, 01:09 AM

CG is all trickery so the negative implication is nonsense. Motion blur is used to enhance.. the appearance of motion! Wave your finger in front of your eyes and the finger looks blurry, you can even see through this blurry trail where your finger was.

Standout examples:

Burnout Games / PGR3/4 (ground and passing scenery blurring)
Tekken 6 (fighter blurring) (there's even a trailer showing the difference on/off)
Killzone 2 / Uncharted 2 (fast moving object blurring)

etc.

Teufel Hunden · 08-10-2009, 01:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brett_day

well motion blur is to do with an issue that LCD tv's suffer with. Motion blur is caused when an LCD tv cannot keep up with the motion of the picture on the tv, the picture will blur......motion blur has nothing to do with the graphical capabilities of either the 360 or the ps3

now what he might be talking about is rendering capabilities......it has been noted that the 360 is better at rendering graphics than the ps3 due to some limitations of the rsx graphics chip the ps3 uses. in side by side comparisons some versions of the same game on the 360 looks a little sharper than the ps3 version...the ps3 version might look a little soft in comparison. No tricks are being used thats for sure though.

i think that when developers, coders and programmers learn how to fully exploit the graphical capabilities of the PS3 the 360 will run and hide in a corner, will be sucking is proverbial thumb and will be showing the RROD!

He is talking about motion blur associated with games like Killzone 2, not when the LCD refresh rate is low and causes artifacts and such.

Anyway: It is clearly an argument you can not win. You are obviously talking to a fanboy (no offense, we all have a fanboy friend), and therefore fact and reason will not matter and get lost in the dialogue as there is no answer that will convince a fanboy the other product is good.

That said, ask him why this trick was not used (at least not that I recall) on the PS, PS2, Xbox or dreamcast. They all could have used it to hide whatever he thinks they are hiding.

AM-MAN · 08-10-2009, 03:59 AM

Show him Uncharted

androvsky · 08-10-2009, 04:25 AM

Lemme guess, he's talking about GTA 4 right? Correct me if I'm wrong, but motion blur takes more resources on the GPU side, which is where the PS3 is weakest. If that's being done to hide framerate issues, that tells me the CPU is the limiting factor. Since the PS3 has more than double the CPU power of the 360 it sounds like Rockstar didn't port to the Cell very well. They probably did what a lot of cross-platform developers did, just run everything on the one PowerPC core and ignore the other 85% of the PS3's computing power.

I think the general consensus at this point is the GPU in the 360 is a bit faster than the RSX, but the PS3's almost obscene amount of extra CPU can more than make up for it. The problem is that PC/360 developers aren't used to using the CPU for graphics so porting to the PS3 gives them trouble (or requires a lot of rewriting of the engine).

I think between Killzone 2 and Uncharted 2 there's not much argument left over which system can do more. It was amusing watching the 360 fanboys on neogaf try to explain that a 360 game could look as good as Killzone 2 if only Microsoft could put as much money as Sony did into one game. Yeah, poor Microsoft, can't afford a good-looking game...

Maximus · 08-10-2009, 05:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by androvsky

Lemme guess, he's talking about GTA 4 right? Correct me if I'm wrong, but motion blur takes more resources on the GPU side, which is where the PS3 is weakest. If that's being done to hide framerate issues, that tells me the CPU is the limiting factor. Since the PS3 has more than double the CPU power of the 360 it sounds like Rockstar didn't port to the Cell very well. They probably did what a lot of cross-platform developers did, just run everything on the one PowerPC core and ignore the other 85% of the PS3's computing power.

I think the general consensus at this point is the GPU in the 360 is a bit faster than the RSX, but the PS3's almost obscene amount of extra CPU can more than make up for it. The problem is that PC/360 developers aren't used to using the CPU for graphics so porting to the PS3 gives them trouble (or requires a lot of rewriting of the engine).

I think between Killzone 2 and Uncharted 2 there's not much argument left over which system can do more. It was amusing watching the 360 fanboys on neogaf try to explain that a 360 game could look as good as Killzone 2 if only Microsoft could put as much money as Sony did into one game. Yeah, poor Microsoft, can't afford a good-looking game...

Killzone 2 - €27m
Halo 3 - $71m
Uncharted 2 - $16.5m (not too certain about this one as it's quite old and the game isn't finished)

Production budgets only, no promotional costs are included in these figures...

Shin-Ra · 08-10-2009, 07:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maxpower1987

Killzone 2 - €27m
Halo 3 - $71m
Uncharted 2 - $16.5m (not too certain about this one as it's quite old and the game isn't finished)

Production budgets only, no promotional costs are included in these figures...

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune supposedly cost around $20m which is also the target for U2. Bearing in mind Drake's Fortune didn't have a multiplayer component, but was a radically different game from Jak X/3 before it and the game engine was written from scratch, that's pretty amazing how little was spent compared to Halo 3 in a similar time-span.

It'd be difficult to expand on Uncharted 2's feature set in a way that makes Uncharted 3 take another two years so I wonder if they'll develop something extra on the side like Jak X with Jak 3.

talak · 08-10-2009, 08:22 AM

Since when has motion blur been a bad thing. To see something moving at speed without motion blur will look unnatural as your brain expects to see blurring. It like watching sport filmed at the higher camera rate to remove the motion blur caused by the normal 25 - 30 frames per second, when you watch it you mind in constantly telling you something it wrong with this image and it will give some people a serious headache.

Also motion blur is used in CGI to enhance not to hide. It is physically added to CGI movies to make them look more natural and pleasing to the eye, and take one hell of an amount of processing power and skill to do properly.

But as its been stated before in this thread if you are dealing with a fanboy no end of reasoning will ever get them to see anything but there side of the argument. Give up and enjoy your games, hell my favourite games at the moment look like PS2 games, actually one is a PS2 game

Sylin · 08-10-2009, 03:28 PM

Hey folks, thanks for all the replies. I think you're right that no amount of talk will convince him otherwise--he is pretty hardcore 360, mostly because of the Halo franchise.

From the way HE was describing it, it was a trick to improve frame rate on the PS3, but "gimped the game graphically." However, I noticed in the Batman: Arkham Asylum demo that motion blurs and background blurs were used during some slo-mo fight scenes and takedowns, and it actually, IMO, made the game more real--just like directors use blur to make an audience focus on a particular object or person in a film.

I'll take a look at those Tekken 6 videos... sounds interesting to see a side-by-side comparison.

dk3dknight · 08-10-2009, 05:41 PM

Motion Blur is just another post processing process it takes a little more juice to pull off and the effect is either liked or not.

But in no way does that cheapen the texture artwork and the love put into each game.

08-10-2009, 12:34 AM	#1
Sylin Blu-ray Samurai Member since:Jun 2007 Location:Nashville Blu-ray collection:1 Trading Score:159	Question about motion blur? A friend of mine is pretty hardcore Xbox 360. This weekend he was trying to tell me that the 360 has superior graphics to the PS3 because a lot of PS3 developers utilize something called "motion blur tricks" to make inferior graphics look good. Not knowing anything about this, I had no reply for him. I Googled around a bit and it seems there's a lot of fanboy FUD on both sides of the line about this matter, but the details get lost in the flame wars. Does anyone have any technical references? Or can someone (Shin-Ra?) give a good explanation about what he's talking about, for my benefit, so I can silence the critic? Thx.

08-10-2009, 01:09 AM	#3
Shin-Ra Super Moderator Top contributor Member since:Feb 2007 Blu-ray collection:5 Trading Score:1	CG is all trickery so the negative implication is nonsense. Motion blur is used to enhance.. the appearance of motion! Wave your finger in front of your eyes and the finger looks blurry, you can even see through this blurry trail where your finger was. Standout examples: Burnout Games / PGR3/4 (ground and passing scenery blurring) Tekken 6 (fighter blurring) (there's even a trailer showing the difference on/off) Killzone 2 / Uncharted 2 (fast moving object blurring) etc. Last edited by Shin-Ra; 08-10-2009 at 01:28 AM.

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08-10-2009, 12:52 AM	#2
brett_day Blu-ray Guru Member since:Mar 2008 Location:Moore, Oklahoma Home Theater Gallery:18 Blu-ray collection:45 Blu-ray reviews:1 Trading Score:1	well motion blur is to do with an issue that LCD tv's suffer with. Motion blur is caused when an LCD tv cannot keep up with the motion of the picture on the tv, the picture will blur......motion blur has nothing to do with the graphical capabilities of either the 360 or the ps3 now what he might be talking about is rendering capabilities......it has been noted that the 360 is better at rendering graphics than the ps3 due to some limitations of the rsx graphics chip the ps3 uses. in side by side comparisons some versions of the same game on the 360 looks a little sharper than the ps3 version...the ps3 version might look a little soft in comparison. No tricks are being used thats for sure though. i think that when developers, coders and programmers learn how to fully exploit the graphical capabilities of the PS3 the 360 will run and hide in a corner, will be sucking is proverbial thumb and will be showing the RROD!

08-10-2009, 03:59 AM	#5
AM-MAN Senior Member Member since:Mar 2008 Location:the Blu-planet@****	Show him Uncharted

08-10-2009, 04:25 AM	#6
androvsky Expert Member Member since:Aug 2007	Lemme guess, he's talking about GTA 4 right? Correct me if I'm wrong, but motion blur takes more resources on the GPU side, which is where the PS3 is weakest. If that's being done to hide framerate issues, that tells me the CPU is the limiting factor. Since the PS3 has more than double the CPU power of the 360 it sounds like Rockstar didn't port to the Cell very well. They probably did what a lot of cross-platform developers did, just run everything on the one PowerPC core and ignore the other 85% of the PS3's computing power. I think the general consensus at this point is the GPU in the 360 is a bit faster than the RSX, but the PS3's almost obscene amount of extra CPU can more than make up for it. The problem is that PC/360 developers aren't used to using the CPU for graphics so porting to the PS3 gives them trouble (or requires a lot of rewriting of the engine). I think between Killzone 2 and Uncharted 2 there's not much argument left over which system can do more. It was amusing watching the 360 fanboys on neogaf try to explain that a 360 game could look as good as Killzone 2 if only Microsoft could put as much money as Sony did into one game. Yeah, poor Microsoft, can't afford a good-looking game...

08-10-2009, 08:22 AM	#9
talak Active Member Member since:Dec 2008 Location:Middle of no where Blu-ray collection:18	Since when has motion blur been a bad thing. To see something moving at speed without motion blur will look unnatural as your brain expects to see blurring. It like watching sport filmed at the higher camera rate to remove the motion blur caused by the normal 25 - 30 frames per second, when you watch it you mind in constantly telling you something it wrong with this image and it will give some people a serious headache. Also motion blur is used in CGI to enhance not to hide. It is physically added to CGI movies to make them look more natural and pleasing to the eye, and take one hell of an amount of processing power and skill to do properly. But as its been stated before in this thread if you are dealing with a fanboy no end of reasoning will ever get them to see anything but there side of the argument. Give up and enjoy your games, hell my favourite games at the moment look like PS2 games, actually one is a PS2 game

08-10-2009, 03:28 PM	#10
Sylin Blu-ray Samurai Member since:Jun 2007 Location:Nashville Blu-ray collection:1 Trading Score:159	Hey folks, thanks for all the replies. I think you're right that no amount of talk will convince him otherwise--he is pretty hardcore 360, mostly because of the Halo franchise. From the way HE was describing it, it was a trick to improve frame rate on the PS3, but "gimped the game graphically." However, I noticed in the Batman: Arkham Asylum demo that motion blurs and background blurs were used during some slo-mo fight scenes and takedowns, and it actually, IMO, made the game more real--just like directors use blur to make an audience focus on a particular object or person in a film. I'll take a look at those Tekken 6 videos... sounds interesting to see a side-by-side comparison.

08-10-2009, 05:41 PM	#11
dk3dknight Blu-ray Ninja Member since:May 2007 Location:Arlington, Texas PSNetwork: dk3dknight PostCount: 0001 Blu-ray collection:44 Blu-ray reviews: 2	Motion Blur is just another post processing process it takes a little more juice to pull off and the effect is either liked or not. But in no way does that cheapen the texture artwork and the love put into each game.

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