Sony Guidelines Limit 3D PS3 Games to 720p
There’s been a lot of talk about how the process of producing a 3D picture in videogames needs other visual sacrifices to obtain, 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.
Despite the fact that 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 within 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 inp (like Super Stardust HD) will still be locked in at 720p in 3D.
Benson admitted that a “more cinematic game” may really benefit from a lower frame-rate and increased resolution, but he said the Sony guidelines do not permit 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 quite a few regular consumers will notice.
This limitation isn’t extremely surprising, as the nature of producing a 3D picture demands rendering two diverse images of the game at the same time. And in reality, the PS3 isn’t the only 3D games platform that has to make some visual sacrifices to accomplish the impact — some developers have recently suggested that the additional processing power used to render the 3D image on the Nintendo 3ds could potentially be applied to generate better graphics and physics in games that don’t use the 3D effect at all.
