Black shadows in xbox360 games

Ged

Is it just me or do other people notice how dark and featureless the shadows on a lot of xbox360 games are? Is this a design choice or is it hardware or is it to do with hdri lighting? I just thought people might be able to explain this to me because personally I find it makes games look really bad and in some situations eg in skate 2 or just cause 2 it makes it really hard to play because everything just becomes this dark homogenous silhouetted mess when the camera turns to face the light source.

I did a quick paintover by just adjusting the levels and saturation in forza 3 to show what I mean. Surely the game should look like the second image in this gif that is lighter and more detailed and colourful? why doesnt it look this way? where is the ambient lighting etc?

chrisradsby

I think both systems handles the lighting differently, I've noticed that on all games that are multi-platform the shadows then to be a lot darker on the X360 than on the PS3 which features a smoother nicer lighting. People tend to believe the X360 version is the better one though and the PS3-version is washed out.

I guess you can see it in the latest Mass Effect 2 comparison videos as well
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hPqEgjOIX4[/ame]

While X360 handles alphas better the PS3 tends to have an edge in lighting, but then again I'm not completely sure since I haven't worked on a multi-platform title. Only PS3-exclusives so far ^^

Maybe someone knows about the technical side.

eld

Hardware differences makes it difficult to get an exact same look unless you actually take time to tweak it to be that.

There are no "shadows are darker on xbox360", there are just differences in values between the platforms that has to be adjusted if you want a specific level of 'anything'

And then you have to take different tv-sets into consideration, if you're working on an unreal engine game and tweaking your settings on a pc, you're not going to get the exact same values when running it on the consoles and on a tv.

Ged

eld wrote: »

Hardware differences makes it difficult to get an exact same look unless you actually take time to tweak it to be that.

There are no "shadows are darker on xbox360", there are just differences in values between the platforms that has to be adjusted if you want a specific level of 'anything'

Interesting points guys, although I dont want this to become an "xbox vs ps3" debate. If you look at the gif I posted the difference between my edited version with better shadows and the original screenshot is huge, I fail to see how hardware could effect the game so much when all I did was bump the levels up in those shadowed areas. I would expect minor subtle differences in colours and shadows between devices and TVs but these shadows in forza 3 and many other games are almost completely black and devoid of nearly all detail, surely theres no excuse for that or is it some technical drawback of our current lighting techniques? Seems a shame to not be able to see the art in such beautiful games :P

Andreas

LOL try playing Killzone 3... -_-'

Entity

360 video output tends to crush black levels more than the ps3, hence why you lose detail in darker areas especially shadows. Ironically this makes the colors seem more vibrant, which tricks our eyes into thinking it looks better (especially when compared side to side with the ps3)

rumblesushi

I think part of it is video output as Entity said, rather than how the shadows are handled by the shaders/GPU.

I've also noticed it tends to crush black levels, giving an overall more contrasty look etc.

Calabi

I know I heard something about this somewhere, I dont know if this explains it.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vs-hdmi?page=3

Keg

Entity wrote: »

360 video output tends to crush black levels more than the ps3, hence why you lose detail in darker areas especially shadows. Ironically this makes the colors seem more vibrant, which tricks our eyes into thinking it looks better (especially when compared side to side with the ps3)

The ps3 also defaults to a limited colour range which reduces the blacks.

http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps3/current/settings/rgbfullrange.html

Ged

so does this mean that we should be compensating for this in game development? eg more ambient lighting or secondary lighting? like in that forza shot if there was just some ambient light or a light facing into the shadowed areas?