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Haze Runs at 720p (Update)

Posted on 18. May, 2008 by Reckless in Games, News, Screenshots

Previous reports on the net suggested that Haze runs at sub HD resolution of 1024×576, that statement is incorrect according to the Haze Community Developer, Aymeric Evennou AKA Ubi_Wuzz.

“Since last week, I hope you enjoyed the demo and that you did not make any abusive use of Nectar. From what we saw, it seems that you enjoyed playing this demo. Yet, we noticed that some of you found the demo too easy, for those ones the suggestion is to try the Hard mode. (You may also be glad to know that an Ultra Hard mode is unlockable in the final version of the game!) From some other comments I read, I wanted to clarify that the game runs at 720p resolution.” News Source

So for the few that were wondering? Haze will be running in all it’s 720p HD goodness.

(Update) Ripten.com visited Free Radical’s studio near Nottingham and had a chat with creative lead Derek Littlewood. Derek told Ripten.com that the final game does indeed render at 1024by576, contrary to what is said by Ubisoft.

We prioritise a nice smooth framerate over a different res. Personally, I don’t really buy the whole thing. People did the same with Call of Duty, they did the same with Halo, and they say with those games ‘It’s not running at true HD!’ And it’s like, I don’t care. If the game looks good and it runs smoothly, those are the important things to me.

In asking whether the resolution was decided towards the end of development, Derek replied:

Yes. Well, as you develop an engine you’re aiming for a certain thing, but as all the pieces slot into place, you end up realising what sort of resolution you can run it at and that’s where we ended up with for Haze.

If you were to move forward with our next games, then as we optimise the engine we might be going, ‘Oh yeah, we’ll step things up and change things.’ But then different games we work on might have different requirements, so things may change there again. It’s all about how you use the resources you’ve got. But I don’t understand why people care whether there’s 20 pixels, 50 pixels, or 100 pixels more…

Naturally, Ripten.com said that it’s not only a 100 pixel difference. 720p is over 300,000 pixels more than 576p:

Well, I always say, judge it [Haze] by the whole experience. Sit down with it and enjoy it. If people come away from that saying ‘Yeah, the resolution was a bit lower than I was expecting’ then I hope people wouldn’t, because it has other things it does really well.

Tags: 720p, haze