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Checkboard Rendering and Nintendo

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Kingpin722

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Recent God of War preview from Eurogamer mentioned how Santa Monica has potentially achieved a better picture result with the checkerboard process than even Horizon Zero Dawn did. God of War, Horizon, Spider Man, and Last of Us Part 2 will all at the very least match what the best looking XB1X games despite being on inferior (tech wise) hardware. That got me thinking about how Nintendo has (or hasn't) battled against this power gap between them and PlayStation/Xbox for a while now.

Checkerboard processing seems to be in line with what Nintendo values which is efficiency; not breaking the bank using cutting edge tech and making the most out what is available. Do you guys think it would be smart for Nintendo to adapt this process in the future?
 
TheFailGamer

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As far as I know it only produces good results above 1080p, so we'll have to wait until Nintendo adopts to resolutions above that first.
 
Skittzo

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IIRC from the NX days doesn't the Tegra X1 have some sort of built in tile-based rendering feature which is essentially checkerboard rendering? Or am I confusing it with something else?
 

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Once they have a hardware that is powerful enough to put out 4K resolutions, yeah sure.
Right now with "just" 1080p you would see checkerboard rendering. But you just need that high pixel density, so that it works.
 
Mullet2000

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From what I've understood, checkerboard rendering would look pretty bad at lower resolutions, with increased artifacting.
 
flkRaven

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Kingpin722 said:
God of War, Horizon, Spider Man, and Last of Us Part 2 will all at the very least match what the best looking XB1X games despite being on inferior (tech wise) hardware.
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I don't know how this blanket statement can be made. How is checkerboard rendering equal to or greater than native resolution?
 
Transistor

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First off, CBR is in no way as good as native res. It's damn good looking, don't get me wrong, but native res is just better, plain and simple
 
KINGOFSHIBUYA Ltd.

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They sparsely use anti-aliasing as it is. I doubt we'd see them use this for a while. If they ever get to a point (probably years from now) where they find including 4K to be necessary, I could see them using this technique.

They'd probably just want to get a 4K signal out, but not necessarily have the cleanest picture, should they ever see that as something that they have to do.
 
Elfotografoalocado

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skittzo0413 said:
IIRC from the NX days doesn't the Tegra X1 have some sort of built in tile-based rendering feature which is essentially checkerboard rendering? Or am I confusing it with something else?
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That's something else entirely. Tile rendering means the GPU renders in chunks, and renders those chunks to its cache memory. This means that, if properly done in Vulkan, the Switch can render those chunks directly in the cache without touching main memory, thus saving a ton of memory bandwidth.
It's the same as the XBOX One does, but thanks to the hardware it can have a lot less cache in its SoC.
That, combined with the TX1's memory compression, is why people saying the Switch is bandwidth-starved is kinda strange. The XBOX One sure isn't, for example.

Iirc, Rainbow Six Siege does checkerboard rendering on the base consoles to reach 1080p with the GPU load of ~810p
 

vkbest

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flkRaven said:
I don't know how this blanket statement can be made. How is checkerboard rendering equal to or greater than native resolution?
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Pretty better than dynamic 4k. 2160c > 1800p. At least for me.

Besides those games have better graphics than most multiplatform games, and XBOX X haven't pretty high graphics exclusive game yet. I would like to see if XBOX X could render a game such as Horizon or God of War to real 4k.
 
tuxfool

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gcwy said:
I don't think it's a good fit for resolutions below 900p. It's sort of like temporal AA.
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If one wants to see examples of how it looks like butt, it would be playing Rainbow 6 Siege at low resolutions (before they removed MSAA upsampling)

DarkConfidant said:
They sparsely use anti-aliasing as it is. I doubt we'd see them use this for a while. If they ever get to a point (probably years from now) where they find including 4K to be necessary, I could see them using this technique.
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This too. Nintendo doesn't really give a shit about image quality, to their immense detriment.
 
Skittzo

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Elfotografoalocado said:
That's something else entirely. Tile rendering means the GPU renders in chunks, and renders those chunks to its cache memory. This means that, if properly done in Vulkan, the Switch can render those chunks directly in the cache without touching main memory, thus saving a ton of memory bandwidth.
It's the same as the XBOX One does, but thanks to the hardware it can have a lot less cache in its SoC.
That, combined with the TX1's memory compression, is why people saying the Switch is bandwidth-starved is kinda strange. The XBOX One sure isn't, for example.
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Ah okay I must have confused the terminology then. Tile-based rendering and checkerboard rendering sound like very similar concepts to be honest, at least just from their names.
 
Gotdatmoney

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D65 said:
I have to start ignoring people with such obvious fan boy motivations behind their posts... I mean, this thread is less asking what's up with Nintendo and how they could improve IQ and just licking the butt of Sony.
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I thought he was just implying that despite being on weaker hardware the end result will be similar to some of the best looking XB1X games. Maybe I'm naive though. (I'm probably naive)

Anyway, my understanding is checkboarding isnt really effective at resolutions below 1080p. Is there any way that can be improved though?
 
kirbyfan407

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I think it makes sense for Nintendo to adopt workaround techniques. But the big question is when they'll actually target 4k and how.

I could see Nintendo releasing a 4k-friendly Switch package by 2022, but will it only apply to 4k streaming and maybe a UI? Will it somehow have a "power dock" to achieve the results? It might make sense for Nintendo to sell a dock (if technically possible) that can provide the extra power needed to go from 1080p to 4k, but I think it makes sense for them to do it via CBR to reduce costs and power needs.

As long as Nintendo wants to keep things cheap and in a small form factor with a low TDP, I'm sure techniques like CBR will be very interesting to them.
 
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New Fang

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Kingpin722 said:
Recent God of War preview from Eurogamer mentioned how Santa Monica has potentially achieved a better picture result with the checkerboard process than even Horizon Zero Dawn did. God of War, Horizon, Spider Man, and Last of Us Part 2 will all at the very least match what the best looking XB1X games despite being on inferior (tech wise) hardware. That got me thinking about how Nintendo has (or hasn't) battled against this power gap between them and PlayStation/Xbox for a while now.

Checkerboard processing seems to be in line with what Nintendo values which is efficiency; not breaking the bank using cutting edge tech and making the most out what is available. Do you guys think it would be smart for Nintendo to adapt this process in the future?
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You're not wrong, but holy shit did I know this thread would only be about this the moment I read that line.
 
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Kingpin722

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I have all 3 consoles and from my experience so far on the XB1X , no game looks better than Horizon or Uncharted the Pro. Can you guys list games that do look definitively better than them on the 1X? I have Gears 4, Halo 5 and Quantam Break already.
 
Planx

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Doesn't checkerboard require games to be capped at 30fps? That seems like an unfortunate tradeoff for most Nintendo games. Of the big First Party titles released so far only BotW and Mario+Rabbids (counting it as 1st party because Mario) would have been good candidates for 30fps + Checkerboarding. And I'm not sure how much more detail you could squeeze out of Nintendo's artstyle

Arms, Spla2n, MK 8 DX, Pokken DX, Mario Odyssey, none of these games would get much benefit from Checkerboarding, graphics wise, and would lose out on smooth gameplay
 
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Kingpin722

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Planx said:
Doesn't checkerboard require games to be capped at 30fps? That seems like an unfortunate tradeoff for most Nintendo games. Of the big First Party titles released so far only BotW and Mario+Rabbids would have been good candidates for 30fps + Checkerboarding. And I'm not sure how much more detail you could squeeze out of Nintendo's artstyle

Arms, Spla2n, MK 8 DX, Pokken DX, Mario Odyssey, none of these games would get much benefit from Checkerboarding, graphics wise, and would lose out on smooth gameplay
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If the 30fps cap is true, I had no clue about that. That would be a terrible trade off for Nintendo games. For ANY game at that matter.
 
Lyrick

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Monster Hunter World used a temporal based reconstruction method for both vanilla platform release versions (1080p & lower) making everything look soft as hell while in motion (character movement & camera movement), but pretty nice when standing still and taking pics to upload.

If game companies want to continue to prioritize viral styled advertising among their enthusiast consumers they can just continue on the route they're on by making special rending for photomodes, and generally making still frames look much better than what actual game play represents.
 
Andromeda

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Checkerboard rendering as done on Pro is not easy either form a hardware of from a software point of view. Sony has included dedicated hardware for CB and the documentation provided by them (notably examples of how to integrate CB into an engine pipeline, various comparisons and benchmarks) is quite extensive.

My point is that CB done right (like in those aforementioned games and some multiplats) required a strong involvement in both hardware and software sides of the problem.

I am not sure Nintendo is up for a similar involvement just in order to improve image quality of their games.
 
Toa Axis

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Planx said:
Doesn't checkerboard require games to be capped at 30fp
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I'm quite sure it doesn't. If so, it's the first I've heard of this.

Rainbow Six Siege is a 60fps game, and it uses a reconstruction technique that, to my understanding, works very similarly to traditional checkerboard rendering.

Super Mario Odyssey in handheld mode also uses a reconstruction technique. It takes two 640x720 frame buffers and uses information from each prior frame to create a 720p image.

Now, I do realize that temporal reconstruction and checkerboard rendering aren't exactly the same, but to my understanding they operate on some base principles. If anyone more technically savvy could make any corrections to my post if there are any, that would be appreciated (I read a lot of technical stuff but I'm not a game dev by any means lol)
 
Planx

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New Fang said:
no
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Ok then I'm going to need an actual explanation of what Checkerboarding is, because my understanding is that you take half the image, render that, then next frame you render the other half and because of how fast it's pumping out frames you interpret the combined image. But that requires a 60hz TV to pump out half the image every other frame and caps the perceived FPS at 30

If it's not doing that, then what is checkerboarding doing?
 
Runner

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remember when rendering checkerboards was the way to show how powerful your renderer was
now we've come full circle
 
New Fang

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Planx said:
Ok then I'm going to need an actual explanation of what Checkerboarding is, because my understanding is that you take half the image, render that, then next frame you render the other half and because of how fast it's pumping out frames you interpret the combined image. But that requires a 60hz TV to pump out half the image every other frame and caps the perceived FPS at 30

If it's not doing that, then what is checkerboarding doing?
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To put it into the simplest possible terms, it's mixing together the prior frame or two into the current frame, to generate a more dense (higher resolution) current frame image. This can be done at any framerate.

Current examples of PS4 Pro games that run at 60 and use checkerboarding. Gran Turismo Sport, all recent Call of Duty games, Resogun, Rocket League, and Trackmania Turbo.
 
ILikeFeet

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It always looks pretty sharp to me. Normally I can spot a slightly softer 900p image, but Fortnite always looks great. Didn't know if they had any other tricks.
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well there's also some cpu optimizations and scaling down the quality of some visual effects. but Fortnite was pretty sold 30fps as it was without dynamic res, so they must have had a lot of room to play with
 
Joe Shlabotnik

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Planx said:
Ok then I'm going to need an actual explanation of what Checkerboarding is, because my understanding is that you take half the image, render that, then next frame you render the other half and because of how fast it's pumping out frames you interpret the combined image. But that requires a 60hz TV to pump out half the image every other frame and caps the perceived FPS at 30

If it's not doing that, then what is checkerboarding doing?
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Checkerboarding is algorithimically guessing at every other pixel on the screen using the rendered pixels as a guide.
 
Planx

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Joe Shlabotnik said:
Checkerboarding is algorithimically guessing at every other pixel on the screen using the rendered pixels as a guide.
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Are the developed algorithms better at certain kinds of scenes and situations? Would they have a harder time guessing at, say, bright and colorful artstyles than muted realistic ones? How often do they make mistakes? What do those mistakes look like?

It seems like Checkerboarding is an umbrella term encompassing a bunch of different rendering technologies that different studios use rather than one cohesive thing
 
StuBurns

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I'll see when GoW hits, but checkerboarding so far hasn't nearly matched temporal injection. I'm ready to be wrong, but it seems like a pointless mid-step given 4k is so close and temp-inject so far has shown stronger results.

As for Switch, maybe with Super Switch if they care about fauxK, but I kind of doubt it. As it's always going to be a hybrid, and the handheld is never going to need resolution beyond 1080p realistically. There's no point in having that huge gulf between the docked and undocked IQ.
 
iswasdoes

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This thread generates more questions than answers. Are any knowledgeable people able to answer:

- Does CB offer any benefit/is possible for 1080p?
- Is it possible to do through software only or does it require specialist hardware?

If the answer to both is yes then it seems like a no brainier to get games like BOTW up to full 1080p in docked mode?
 
Dave.

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Planx said:
Ok then I'm going to need an actual explanation of what Checkerboarding is, because my understanding is that you take half the image, render that, then next frame you render the other half and because of how fast it's pumping out frames you interpret the combined image. But that requires a 60hz TV to pump out half the image every other frame and caps the perceived FPS at 30
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Think about it - that's just normal rendering at 30fps.
 

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New Fang

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Planx said:
Are the developed algorithms better at certain kinds of scenes and situations? Would they have a harder time guessing at, say, bright and colorful artstyles than muted realistic ones? How often do they make mistakes? What do those mistakes look like?

It seems like Checkerboarding is an umbrella term encompassing a bunch of different rendering technologies that different studios use rather than one cohesive thing
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This is quite accurate. There are multiple different techniques being used to achieve a similar goal. Even within genuine "checkerboard rendering" there are different techniques to choose from.
 
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