Progressive VS Interlaced - Why Ain't Interlaced More Popular?

I've recently come to wonder why developers desperate for frames don't render interlaced instead of progressive - alternating which lines of pixels gets rendered each frame. As far as my layman's knowledge goes, that could substantially increase framerates at a relatively minor loss of image quality, respectively allow to render in a higher resolution and maintain sufficient framerates. Playing on a native 1080p panel, 1080i does look worlds clearer to me than upscaled 720p - almost as good as 1080p.

Would I rather play a game that's rendered at 30 frames per second in 720p? Or at 60 frames per second in 720i? Or at 30 frames per second in 1080i? The latter two options do sound much more enticing to me. On PC, for hardware intensive games like Battlefield 3 and Crysis 2, I'd absolutely love an option to switch to interlaced rendering to potentially double my framerates.

Anybody got a clue on why console games don't opt to render an interlaced image, and why it ain't an option in most PC games? And where do you guys stand in the matter? Would you prefer more frames or a higher rendering resolution over the common progressive method of rendering every line of pixels in every frame?

I'm guessing it's because the TV requires a full frame's info regardless on how it chooses to draw it out, so there's no way to take advantage of it since its something on the TV side of things and not the console/PC side. But I don't know jack shit about this sort of stuff so...

There's probably a good technical reason; either that or "720p" just sounds better because it's more familiar to people.

But yes, if that gives me better performance in my games I would much prefer it.

No idea, I barely understand that there is a difference. I just want better quality, but it would seem "Progressive" is known more so it will most likely stay. It still boggles my mind that the ps4 will support 4k...will that be that relevant in the next 5-6 years?

@ccampb89 said:

No idea, I barely understand that there is a difference. I just want better quality, but it would seem "Progressive" is known more so it will most likely stay. It still boggles my mind that the ps4 will support 4k...will that be that relevant in the next 5-6 years?

It's actually very relevant. Current generation SONY digital projectors for movie theatres are 4k and capable of 3D picture as well. The ability to have that fine detail in your home, while a bit overkill for even a 50" TV is kind of awesome.

@Humanity said:

@ccampb89 said:

No idea, I barely understand that there is a difference. I just want better quality, but it would seem "Progressive" is known more so it will most likely stay. It still boggles my mind that the ps4 will support 4k...will that be that relevant in the next 5-6 years?

It's actually very relevant. Current generation SONY digital projectors for movie theatres are 4k and capable of 3D picture as well. The ability to have that fine detail in your home, while a bit overkill for even a 50" TV is kind of awesome.

Ah, I see. However, will it be relevant enough for it to be a "Pro" check-box when it releases, or even 3 years down the road. It's fantastic that movie theaters are using it, but if the common household, or at least upper-class cannot afford to use it in their own houses afford-ably, it seems like a useless addition. I don't know, I just know that many people are still licking their wounds from purchasing an HD television at $1,500+ - just seems a little soon to be pushing another graphical generation for such a non-hardcore audience as console media enthusiasts.

@ccampb89: well, consider BluRay - it's a way for Sony to create a secondary saturation of that technology. If they sell a couple of million PS4's with 4k support, then there's an established userbase with access to the technology. When they upgrade their display, they will possibly be moreinclined to get get one with 4k support. ie: it creates secondary business, that they hope to catch with their Bravia division.

@Seppli: There are a bunch of articles on Wikipedia about interlace vs progressive scanning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_scan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlaced_video

But effectively, the main benefit of Progressive is that you don't as much artifacts on images that are quickly moving horizontally.

@ccampb89 said:

@Humanity said:

@ccampb89 said:

No idea, I barely understand that there is a difference. I just want better quality, but it would seem "Progressive" is known more so it will most likely stay. It still boggles my mind that the ps4 will support 4k...will that be that relevant in the next 5-6 years?

It's actually very relevant. Current generation SONY digital projectors for movie theatres are 4k and capable of 3D picture as well. The ability to have that fine detail in your home, while a bit overkill for even a 50" TV is kind of awesome.

Ah, I see. However, will it be relevant enough for it to be a "Pro" check-box when it releases, or even 3 years down the road. It's fantastic that movie theaters are using it, but if the common household, or at least upper-class cannot afford to use it in their own houses afford-ably, it seems like a useless addition. I don't know, I just know that many people are still licking their wounds from purchasing an HD television at $1,500+ - just seems a little soon to be pushing another graphical generation for such a non-hardcore audience as console media enthusiasts.

You're absolutely right but SONY's business model has always been to push new hardware on people. When the PS3 was coming out Blu Ray wasn't popular at all. I'd say even today Blu Ray isn't THAT popular but it's night and day from like 5 years ago. Their big sellings points have always been tech that will be important in a few years. The 3D craze didn't catch on as much so maybe super 4K high definition TV's will be a new craze - although it will suffer from the same limitations we've been seeing with HD TV's where your TV might be able to render beautiful picture but your cable provider or whatnot will not be sending you those signals. I remember the shock everyone went through buying HD TV's only to realize non HD channels cable looked worse than on their old TVs.

I think anything new and innovative is a pro check-box. If the next 360 has the ability to act as a wireless network hub for my PC I might not care, but it's cool it might do that I guess.

I prefer progressive. Changing from 480i to 480p on my Wii was a godsend. There was horrible ghosting before on most games.

Progressive is better, thats why everything is 720P or 1080P and not I.

If I don't remember totally wrong you have a higher risk of "ghosting" and getting delay with interlaced tech. The risk also goes up if the picture on the screen moves fast. We used to say in the store (I have sold TV:s) that it's always better to watch rapidly moving pictures with progressive screen rather than interlaced. Since the picture has to be redrawn twice before it's complete it becomes a higher risk of giving the impression that it's picture is crooked or blurry. We are after all talking about miliseconds and I sold TV:s during 2006-2008 so technology can have changed. Correct me if I'm wrong. But that was the main reason back then why P was preferred against I.

@Seppli: That's not how interlaced displays work. They don't actually render two different half frames. It takes one full frame and displays it one half at a time, splitting it over two refreshes. The only reason for a signal to be interlaced is if your screen is too slow to keep up with the rendering of the console. Interlaced displays are capped at 30 complete frames a second. They just display them as 60 half-frames a second.

There's also the matter of terrible artifacting that @Mnemoidian mentioned. It would be like V-sync issues, multiplied by the vertical resolution of your screen.

I don't think it wouldn't really matter I don't think, since you would render half the image every 1/60th of a second it would still equal out to rendering the whole frame every 1/30th. With interlacing artifacts included. But then again, I'm not an expert.

Also 720i doesn't exist, sure as a theoretical resolution, but no machine or standard accepts it.

Because it is hideous and leaves artifacts everywhere, it'd be taking a massive step back in terms of progress. It's a relic of old video systems, it was a cheat to get a higher frame rate out of the same signal. Now bandwidth for cable TV is certainly no longer an issue, and of course consoles don't have that limitation either, why wouldn't you use progressive scan?.

Also any benefit you'd get in added frame rate (if any) would be negated by the fact that you'd need a lot more anti-aliasing to make the image look acceptably good.

@ccampb89 said:

No idea, I barely understand that there is a difference. I just want better quality, but it would seem "Progressive" is known more so it will most likely stay. It still boggles my mind that the ps4 will support 4k...will that be that relevant in the next 5-6 years?

just because the Ps4 can support 4k doesn't mean games will be produced that can handle it, especially since console games aren't hitting the 1080p benchmark now. I'd imagine the 4k might be utilized for video... that's about it.

@Jack268: Thats probably because you switched from composite to component cables to get 480p.

Most games don't even run at true 720p nowadays anyway. they need to get true 1080p in the next generation.