I'm not sure who are the resident 343 spies or direct liaisons so I thought that I would shout it to the wind. Does anyone know if Halo 3 split screen has had the detail enhanced? Do they intend on enhancing it in the MCC? I ask this because I know they dumb down the detail when displaying split screen (for performance reasons) and I would love to see them use the horsepower to bump that back up. Reach customs 4 player split is a prime example of how bad it can get. I'm really hoping they revisit split screen detail in the enhanced version of MCC. I would totally do 1080p 60 with enhanced split screen detail over 4k with the dumbed down detail.
Halo 3 is enhanced by the OneX, so if you run that version I'd bet the Split looks better (than it used to)
Obviously, but I'm specifically looking for higher visual fidelity in each screen rather than a generic bump to the overall clarity. IE, further draw distances, improved lighting and shadows, improved texture quality ect ect. A high resolution image with low visual fidelity does not a better picture make.
I see what you're getting at. However, even with new power on a better machine, whether regular Xbone or 1X, the split image must always be less detailed than a full image for the simple fact it is actually rendering it as if it were two games running simultaneously. It's something they would loathe to do if it wasn't a technical necessity. With fewer people playing splitscreen in general, it is easy to see why devs just leave it out entirely. It takes too long to type out, but sufficing to say the devs are always in a balancing act when it comes to splitscreen. Gains brought to the whole game on a single screen, must then also be brought to splitscreen, and so they are still at the disadvantage of not having another cpu/gpu to run the 2nd game that is the split game. So, the only way you'd get parity between a full screen and a split one, is if the full screen simply had so much overhead available that it never got used until you went to split mode. People would complain about the 99% of activities they do on the game, and people would be much more unhappy than they are. See how tough the choice is? That is why LAN is so much better for multi-player. Though, I don't know where Halo would be today if we couldn't run 4-way split back in the day with CE. Consider another thing as well. With older gen games/consoles, we didn't care as much about res, first of all. And, with the low fidelity TVs, the fact that resolution got cut in half for splitscreen wasn't as noticable. I played H3 the othe rday on a great gaming monitor, and I never knew just how pixelated the original picture was at the time. Its because you simply couldn'tsee the individual pixels as well due to fuzziness of old TVs. I wouldn't envy the task to try and solve this... and I don't blame you for wanting a solution, either.
I would assume the ability to fine tune visual fidelity on split screen already existed and the only real work it would take is finding the sweet spot. You need to remember that they reduced things like draw distance not added them, so all I'm talking about is cranking it back up. Certainly it's not going to be as clear as single player would be, that's a given, but that doesn't mean it can't be better. I remember seeing somewhere that the reason we're seeing a new year of improvements coming to the MCC is because of an influx of cash meant to bolster the X. It all depends on if there was enough cash in the pool to justify spending the time tweaking it. I'm sure there are at least a few staff members around there that might not mind wasting the time if it got them the best classic Halo experience. Another thing to consider is that with the MCC getting bumped up to take advantage of the X and the X being basically a kickass PC, then you take into account Phils stance on how gamers game and what that means to sales, I can't help but wonder if we'll be seeing the MCC join the Play Anywhere catalog. If a PC release is a goal then there may be a far larger cash pool to put towards this kind of enhancement.
(EDIT: I wrote this, then re-read your last post and realized I may have misunderstood you. If you're pointing out that at some point they had greater draw distances on splitscreen, and then perhaps for performance reasons, reduced it, you are hoping it could come back simply because performance has been boosted. The below points still stand...) good points, but you appear to still not be understanding the fundamental problem. If the new tech offers the chance to increase draw distances, then they will not be able to increase them for splitscreen while also including other visual enhancements being applied to the entire title. The splitscreen would have the draw distances you so crave, but would otherwise look bad. They have simply prioritized your preferred aspect of visuals lower than you would. If you were the devs in this scneario, you might opt for greater draw distances and things like that, but you would have more people complaining that the new tech didn't make the game look any better when not in splitscreen. You could say, "yeah, but look at what we did with split!" and they would just keep bitching about what they don't have. So, look at the screen space you have at any given time in gaming. If you want to split that in two, you naturally cannot have double the pixels because you have the same screen. Not only that, but the console doesn't suddenly gain 2x its power - two reasons why same res cannot be done on half a screen. But when you consider that the game is already pushing a certain number of pixels, that there wouldn't be any problem. Because, after all, the game was say, pushing 1080p (not speaking of any particular game, here) for a single, full screen, so why wouldn't halving that vertically so it is 540 simply give the same draw distance quality at the same resolution/sq inch? The answer has to be, for simple deductive reasoning, that it can't. It seems to you and me that it should be a natural thing, but apparently it isn't. There must be some overhead involved in producing the splitscreen, not as two separate entities, but as two pieces of a larger entity, that costs more resources than simply halving the resolution and calling it good. If they did not have to decrease draw distances for splitscreen, they very simply wouldn't, because it is an unattractive thing to do. If you keep in mind that any game is the both the image being produced on the screen, AND a bunch of mechanical items running in the background to facilitate the gameplay of that world you can see on the screen, then it makes more sense. One game running two half screens costs more than that same game running one full screen.
Rendering is done differently for split screen, it will not impact single screen. Draw distances, textures, shadow detail, ect are reduced (on spliscreen) to make sure the game doesn't lag out. Now that we have more power I just want the parameters re-adjusted to better suite this performance. Nothing in what I'm talking about has anything to do with single screen. Just imagine you're on a PC trying to get the most out of your hardware. Same game just different settings. The problem is split screen on a console requires a devs touch.
unless I'm mistaken and completely misreading what you've written, you are asking for the draw distance on split to be the same as that of single... is that correct? If so, you'd have to trade that parity for lack of parity on something else in the game. It's a trade-off.
No, what I'm asking for is split screen to be re-assessed (as if it were a new title) to determine what is the best combination of settings that will give players the best possible experience. It would be highly unlikely that anything would get worse as there is a lot more horsepower to throw into it. Most things would probably see a fairly similar percentage bump in Improvement, with some things less and other things more, dependent on the overall experience.