Bungie Confirms Halo Improvements for Xbox 360: WS 720p

**fe_man2000** · 10th November 2005

From Xbox scene

while back, Microsoft announced that the 360 would have some level of backward compatibility. We worked closely with that team to ensure that Halo and Halo 2 both performed according to plan. That meant a lot of work for our test team.
To clarify, the "new" version of Halo or Halo 2 is simply the disk you have already. Pop it into your 360 and it'll load up just like before. You will have to log into Xbox Live to enable Halo 2's online functions, but both games will work immediately.

But here's another bonus - the hardware in the 360 can do a lot of nifty stuff, and specifically in the cases of Halo and Halo 2, it can display the graphics in wide screen, at 720p, with full scene anti-aliasing. And it doesn't look kludgy, artifacty or smeary like an upscanning DVD player. The best way to describe it is that both games look like they're running on a PC at those resolutions.
Now, to reiterate, we didn't redo any of the old textures or geometry - this is simply the game you already own, running at a higher resolution. The results are not miraculous, but for owners of HDTVs (or VGA monitors with the appropriate cable) they are sweet.

**chris71** · 10th November 2005

Excellent, thats the type of backwards compatability I like :thumbs

http://www.bungie.net/images/news/in...omparison2.jpg

http://www.bungie.net/images/news/in...halo2_480i.jpg

and same scene on xbox360:

http://www.bungie.net/images/news/in...halo2cine2.jpg

**{{909}}** · 11th November 2005

id have been very disapointed if they hadnt included this feature, its perfectly possible with any game, the PS2 had smoothing for textures on PS1 games. hopefully the PS3 will do the same to PS2 games and the rev will spruce up N64 games, if anythin needs sharpening up, its N64 games

**fe_man2000** · 11th November 2005

Think the N64 might not benifit from running in higher res - theres only so much anti alasing can do to the original textures, unless of course it was a similar step up as 480p -> 720p was for halo e.g 320-> 480 or whatever. Like I said before this is all icing on the cake - I sure as hell am not buying any console on the strength that it plays the games on the console I already have sitting in my lounge - there is always a period of running both side by side for me and will be until I can get XBMC running on the 360.

**{{909}}** · 11th November 2005

you could run N64 games on ultra HLE and when the screens were first shown they were incredible, the mapping wasnt any better i agree, but the definiton on the polygons was so much better. im looking forward to see what they actually do achieve with the next gen and backwards compatabilty

**mysterym** · 11th November 2005

Originally Posted by {{909}}

you could run N64 games on ultra HLE and when the screens were first shown they were incredible, the mapping wasnt any better i agree, but the definiton on the polygons was so much better. im looking forward to see what they actually do achieve with the next gen and backwards compatabilty

It will be interesting to see how well xbox emulation works on the 360. Its hard to imagine something as great looking as burnout 3 running 100% perfectly under emulation (esp with it being the previous iteration of gaming hardware), its just proves what a real hardware leap from it really is from last generation if it runs perfectly.

With any luck and time it would be great to see the 360 emu dissassembled and the reverse engineered in order to write a decent PC xbox emu.

**fe_man2000** · 11th November 2005

Just goes to show what can be done when there are no legality issues - hence you can use any code you like and the original developers get involved who know what there doing and dont need to figure it out from the finshed product.