Sony Being Sued For...graphics?

[TheErebus.]

Yeah, apparently Sony is being sued for 5,000,000$ for false advertising in relation to Killzone: Shadow Fall's graphics. It says that it is 1080p "native" but it turns out that it isn't...sorta.

 

You can read more about it here and the tech that the developers of the game used to make it 1080p (a technique called temporal projection).

 

http://www.polygon.com/2014/8/6/5975983/sony-sued-killzone-shadow-fall-1080p

 

 

[izzatuw]

It's practically just scamming lol. People are desperate for money and the best way they think is to sue companies for small issues. You remember the person that sued RedBull for not giving wings?

[TheErebus.]

It's practically just scamming lol. People are desperate for money and the best way they think is to sue companies for small issues. You remember the person that sued RedBull for not giving wings?

For the RedBull one, he claimed that it provided no athletic or energetic boost upon drinking it. Have they ever done testing on this to show it doesn't?

[Shifted]

So it's horizontally stretched..

 

Lol.

 

Feel sorry for the devs, but on the other hand...

 

#PCMasterRace.

[OkniolasPrime]

Say it was in america and we can once prove that in america you can get sued of anything,

[TheErebus.]

So it's horizontally stretched..

 

Lol.

 

Feel sorry for the devs, but on the other hand...

 

#PCMasterRace.

We're all gamers at heart. In any case, it still gives off the view of a 1080p product, but this guy seems to be so dead focused that isn't it native, that he's willing to sue over it.

 

 

Say it was in america and we can once prove that in america you can get sued of anything

 

"The suit, filed by California resident Douglas Ladore in Northern District California court"

Only in america.

Edited January 3, 2015 by TheErebus

[(PSN)IIIDevoidIII]

Read it and all the comments.

One word: hilarious.

[TheErebus.]

Read it and all the comments.

One word: hilarious.

Sony is just getting rekt this month.

[(PSN)Pharen]

But it's not false advertising. The assets are not 1080p but the visual on screen is. They explained it as having multiple layers overlay each other to make up a full 1080p image. It is done this way to make the characters and environment look more realistic. Sony should be suing them for reverse engineering the game. There's no other way they could have found out the assets resolution.

[TheErebus.]

Sony should be suing them for reverse engineering the game. 

I don't think its wise for a gaming company to sue their own developers and risk having them completely gone from the company, especially when it comes down to one of their most well known dev teams.

[(PSN)Pharen]

I don't think its wise for a gaming company to sue their own developers and risk having them completely gone from the company, especially when it comes down to one of their most well known dev teams.

You've got that wrong. The people suing Sony are the ones who reversed engineered the game to check out the assets. Most likely hackers trying to find a way to jailbreak the PS4. I really don't know how you messed that up......

[TheErebus.]

You've got that wrong. The people suing Sony are the ones who reversed engineered the game to check out the assets. Most likely hackers trying to find a way to jailbreak the PS4. I really don't know how you messed that up......

Read it the wrong way. The way it was written made it seem like you were saying the devs reverse engineered it, I'm just being slow today. 

[Rydian]

I wonder what's going to come of this.  While it is a legit complaint in-line with a lot of end-user annoyances with consoles lately, it can be seen as a little frivolous since the differences are only in one mode and not highly-noticeable.

 

I wonder if this is just one of those "make an example" cases (like the RIAA used to be so fond of).

 

 

 

 

But it's not false advertising. The assets are not 1080p but the visual on screen is.

Assets cannot be "1080p" because "1080p" is a phrase that specifically refers to output, broadcast, or rendering resolution.  It specifies a vertical component of 1080 pixels, and it specifies that it is a "progressive" image (versus 1080i, which would be "interlaced").  Note that it is also understood as being a wide aspect ratio.

 

It has nothing to do with texture quality or anything like that.

 

Additionally in this case the phrase "native" refers to the initial rendering resolution, not the final output resolution which might be a combination of post-processing and filters.  For example Super Mario World for the SNES has a resolution of 256x224 (224p, so to speak), yet in

I'm using upscaling and a filter to present a more complex image and there's a 720p option available due to the scaling... but the scaling and filtering in this case don't improve the actual game graphics, it's still rendering at "224p" and just putting a filter on it for a retro/nostalgia effect.

 

 

They explained it as having multiple layers overlay each other to make up a full 1080p image.

They explained it as using a special prediction filter to stretch the image.   What's important to note is that it is being stretched from an initial 960x1080 rendering.  The horizontal component is less than the vertical component in this case (960<1080), and as my earlier link showed, "HD" resolutions such as 1080p are generally specified as being a wide aspect ratio (meaning the horizontal component should be bigger than the vertical component).

 

 

It is done this way to make the characters and environment look more realistic.

As somebody with some experience in this field... that's a complete fabrication and I doubt they actually said that.

There is nothing "more realistic" about a filter for upscaling an image opposed to proper rendering of all pixels in the first place.

 

 

Sony should be suing them for reverse engineering the game.

Reverse-engineering isn't inherently illegal.  I can only find it mentioned in two places in US law  Title 17, Section 906 states it's not illegal to analyze microchips and circuits and such, and Title 17, Section 1201 outlines some illegal practices of reverse-engineering, but these are related to bypassing DRM for the purposes of piracy, more or less... and also outlines some legit reasons to reverse-engineer, such as for interoperability.

 

 

There's no other way they could have found out the assets resolution.

This isn't about asset resolution, it's about rendering resolution.  Recording the output of both single-player and multi-player modes in a lossless format (assuming digital output, which goes without saying for HD output) would actually allow them to examine the game's output pixel by pixel and find discrepancies... and this examination would be done outside of the console itself (as you'd be checking the output, not the inner workings).

 

Besides, it's the devs that outlined the inner technical processes, not the people that initially complained about it.

[TheErebus.]

*snipped because text galore*

In any case, this is simply just another case of someone suing a company for the dumbest of reasons. It still appears as 1080p but because of the prosecutions pedantic nature, it appears like it is a big deal.

[(PSN)Pharen]

I wonder what's going to come of this.  While it is a legit complaint in-line with a lot of end-user annoyances with consoles lately, it can be seen as a little frivolous since the differences are only in one mode and not highly-noticeable.

 

-snip-

You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. And the alledged image strecthing is also wrong here are the facts: https://www.killzone.com/nl_NL/blog/news/2014-03-06_regarding-killzone-shadow-fall-and-1080p.html I'm not gonna bother with explaining it.

[Rydian]

In any case, this is simply just another case of someone suing a company for the dumbest of reasons. It still appears as 1080p but because of the prosecutions pedantic nature, it appears like it is a big deal.

There's a difference between the native rendering being 1080p versus rendering lower with upscaled output.

 

Let's take this example... Zelda 64, Ocarina of Time.  Native 1080p.

 

And this is the same game, but rendered internally at widescreen 480p and then upscaled to 1080p.

 

Both of these images are 1920x1080.  But there's a definite difference, yes?

Of course this is just an example with an older game using more basic filtering, the game being discussed in this thread is using a much more advanced filter so the differences will be less easily viewed... but my point is that stating there's no difference because the output resolution is the same is incorrect.

 

EDIT: Images put on a better host.

 

 

 

 

You clearly have no idea what you are talking about.

I have made multiple statements and linked to multiple sources.

Do you mind going into detail on this claim of yours?

 

 

And the alledged image strecthing is also wrong here are the facts: https://www.killzone.com/nl_NL/blog/news/2014-03-06_regarding-killzone-shadow-fall-and-1080p.html I'm not gonna bother with explaining it.

I am aware of that.  In fact I linked you to that source in my reply, since that is where the devs admit that the game renders each frame at 960x1080 before applying an upscale filter, and that it's not native 1080p like the intial claims.

Edited January 3, 2015 by Rydian

[(PSN)Pharen]

There's a difference between the native rendering being 1080p versus rendering lower with upscaled output.

 

-snip-

Here we go again. For starters half the "facts" you quoted are misled or wrong. And the background of 960x1080 is BEFORE the details are added to buff the resolution to a 1920x1080 output. If you had actual experience in game programming and advanced techniques you would know this is actually widely used, and most likely only being brought up by some PC fanboy trying his best to take a stab at consoles. But here's a very good question for you: have you actually played killzone shadow fall? I have. And I know I have yet to play a PC game with that visual quality and technical stability. Which is one hell of an accomplishment when you consider it was developed at the same time the console was, guerilla games didn't even have a finalised dev kit, and the engine had to be reworked multiple times during development, due to changes in hardware specification. The PS4 didn't originally have a HDD. Bet you didn't know that though.

[TheErebus.]

Here we go again. For starters half the "facts" you quoted are misled or wrong. And the background of 960x1080 is BEFORE the details are added to buff the resolution to a 1920x1080 output. If you had actual experience in game programming and advanced techniques you would know this is actually widely used, and most likely only being brought up by some PC fanboy trying his best to take a stab at consoles. But here's a very good question for you: have you actually played killzone shadow fall? I have. And I know I have yet to play a PC game with that visual quality and technical stability. Which is one hell of an accomplishment when you consider it was developed at the same time the console was, guerilla games didn't even have a finalised dev kit, and the engine had to be reworked multiple times during development, due to changes in hardware specification. The PS4 didn't originally have a HDD. Bet you didn't know that though.

Ok, while I do want a discussion going, let's not devolve into fanboy naming.

 

There's a difference between the native rendering being 1080p versus rendering lower with upscaled output.

 

Let's take this example... Zelda 64, Ocarina of Time.  Native 1080p.

 

And this is the same game, but rendered internally at widescreen 480p and then upscaled to 1080p.

These two images don't seem to work for me.

[(PSN)Pharen]

Ok, while I do want a discussion going, let's not devolve into fanboy naming.

 

These two images don't seem to work for me.

Sorry Erebus. It's just the one thing I can't stand is falsified information stated as facts as a way to degrade its opposition. Which is essentially what this topic is about right from the lawsuit to the statements being made in this thread. Honestly to say KZ shadow fall isn't true 1080p due to its advanced rendering techniques is only lying to yourself, I bet if the people actually played the game they would thoroughly enjoy it. I would say it was the best campaign of any game I finished in 2014, uncontested. Too bad the numbers in multiplayer are kind of lacking.

[TheErebus.]

Sorry Erebus. It's just the one thing I can't stand is falsified information stated as facts as a way to degrade its opposition. Which is essentially what this topic is about right from the lawsuit to the statements being made in this thread. Honestly to say KZ shadow fall isn't true 1080p due to its advanced rendering techniques is only lying to yourself, I bet if the people actually played the game they would thoroughly enjoy it. I would say it was the best campaign of any game I finished in 2014, uncontested. Too bad the numbers in multiplayer are kind of lacking.

I've played it myself, honestly, the graphics are quite stunning. The fact that people haven't complained about how it "isn't 1080p" shows that they did good in making the game as good as it can look.

 

I wouldn't go far to say it's the best game of this year, but it is a great game. 

Except for the fact that they got rid of the Operations which I loved in K3. 

[(PSN)Pharen]

I've played it myself, honestly, the graphics are quite stunning. The fact that people haven't complained about how it "isn't 1080p" shows that they did good in making the game as good as it can look.

 

I wouldn't go far to say it's the best game of this year, but it is a great game. 

Except for the fact that they got rid of the Operations which I loved in K3. 

Well that's the thing though, it is 1080p, it just is made up in a more complicated way rather than just the standard polygon set. It may not get the game of the year, but I loved the hints to the first game, I really enjoyed killzone 1 and it's rediculous weapons. And killzone has always been exceptional for advanced AI.

[Rydian]

These two images don't seem to work for me.

Alright, I edited the post to reupload them to imgur.

I generally use postimage out of laziness (imgur takes too many clicks and steps and page loads), but it seems some countries/ISPs don't like it.

 

 

 

Here we go again. For starters half the "facts" you quoted are misled or wrong.

Which ones in particular, and howso?  I made sure to provide a source or example for those concepts I know that a lot of people are unfamiliar with or misunderstand.

 

And the background of 960x1080 is BEFORE the details are added to buff the resolution to a 1920x1080 output.

1 - As I stated above, output resolution is not native rendering resolution.  That's part of the point of the suit.  People were not promised an output resolution, they were promised a native resolution and the game doesn't do that for multiplayer.

 

2 - In-game details are not being added, it's a fancy scaling filter akin to a from of de-interlacing (though with vertical bands).  As I showed in the above examples, just because something ends up at 1080p does not mean it has the same quality as something that was 1080p from the start (though my example has a greater difference on purpose so that it's easily-visible).

 

If you had actual experience in game programming and advanced techniques you would know this is actually widely used

Well, I actually do have some experience with these concepts.  I've been doing programming stuff for years and I've dabbled in game development, also the screenshots and video linked earlier were taken by me to explore and show concepts of resolution and scaling/filtering.  If you'd like some links and examples to thinks I've done I can give them, but that's sort of off-topic and we should be discussing the facts here, not each other's backgrounds.

 

It doesn't matter that other teams and games do it.  The point is that this game promised it would not do it, including on ads and the packaging, and then it does it.  That's false advertisement and the reason that this case exists.

[(PSN)Pharen]

-snip-

I'm not going to respond to your bait here, I will say one thing though, an image made up of different parts/filters/layers that make up a true 1080p output is the same as using a generic 1080p bitmap output. Your two images "showing 1080p native and 1080p upscaled" in a previous post are also wrong, one is a vector graphic and the other is bitmap. Upscaling a vector graphic produces the same result as a native 1080p output, so long as the image inside has less than a full 1080p detail inside, which in the case of Zelda 64 is true. Upscaling a bit map causes the pixels to stretch, upscaling a vector does not. In fact these images are showing what I have described.

Edited January 4, 2015 by (PS4)Pharen

[Rydian]

Your two images "showing 1080p native and 1080p upscaled" in a previous post are also wrong, one is a vector graphic and the other is bitmap.

... that is incorrect.

 

Both of them are screenshots from the game, which renders to raster graphics, and both screenshots are 24-bit PNG images.

 

http://i.imgur.com/Vy5XvUL.png <- First one, png.

http://i.imgur.com/qU9Anch.png <- Second one, also png.

 

PNG is a raster ("bitmap") format, not a vector format.

 

 

Upscaling a vector graphic produces the same result as a native 1080p output, so long as the image inside has less than a full

1080p detail inside, which in the case of Zelda 64 is true. Upscaling a bit map causes the pixels to stretch, upscaling a vector does not. In fact these images are showing what I have described.

The first image is not upscaled.  The first image was screenshotted directly while playing fullscreen at my monitor's native 1080p.  That is, the game itself was running at 1920x1080.

The second image was with the game running at 720x480, and then that rendering was upscaled to show the difference between native 1080p and upscaled-to-1080p.

[Rydian]

The image of the screenshot is PNG, that is unrelated to the scaled image used in game.

Both images are screenshots.

 

• The first image was taken with the game running at 1920x1080.  I then uploaded this image with no changes, in order to post it in this thread.
  
• The second image was taken with the game running at 720x480 (as a matching aspect ratio for 480p wasn't available).  After taking this screenshot, I upscaled it to 1920x1080 in photoshop.

 

Both images are 1080p, and both are taken from the game's output.  The difference is that one is upscaled for display and the other one is displayed as-is.  That is why I used them as an example of a counter to the idea that it's all the same as long as the final display resolution is the same.

 

If you have any questions on the methods I used or would like another example, please be specific and I'm willing to do a little more to try to show you what I'm talking about.