Burnout Paradise PS3 to get new patch

By Ellie Gibson Published 1 April, 2008

It'll introduce 1080i support.

Criterion is working on a new patch for the PS3 version of Burnout Paradise.

Chronologically it's patch 1.3, but what with being so lifestyle Criterion's calling it "Cagney".

As announced on the developer's website the patch will introduce 1080i support. So if you've got a 1080i telly that doesn't support 720p, you'll now be able to run Burnout Paradise in HD rather than SD.

However, "If you have the option to run 720p, we still recommend you run the game in this mode, because the 1080i image is effectively scaled from 720p."

Criterion is promising to tell us more about what else patch 1.3 will do later this week. While you're waiting, why not read Kristan's review, if you haven't already.

Picture of Ellie.

About Ellie Gibson

Since joining Eurogamer in the mid 2000s, Ellie has written about subjects as diverse as the fall of Gizmondo, the rise of Hollyoaks actresses in Red Alert games and the noise a bear makes under NSFW circumstances.

Read more articles from Ellie by visiting the Ellie Gibson archive page.

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Comments (41) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • jack_klugman #1 4 years ago

    Will we be able to restart races?

  • gizmo #2 4 years ago

    Hehe. I thought PS3 was the real HD? You know, 1080p.

  • Retroid #3 4 years ago

    /Countdown to Morriss

  • Darren #4 4 years ago

    Nice that Criterion are addressing this for those few people with 1080i-only HDTVs but I can't understand why Sony don't just update the PS3 so that games can be scaled via hardware like the Xbox 360 does by default. The Xbox 360 uses the Xenon graphics chip to upscale games not a scalar chip as many people assume it does so surely the PS3's RSX chip is capable of doing the same. Scaling graphics is a very basic feature these days so it seems odd that the PS3 can't do it directly. Making developers patch their games to support it is very messy IMO, and surely unnecessary?

  • Quak #5 4 years ago

    Where's the patch to get it running 1080p on 2 screens at 120fps?

  • morriss #6 4 years ago

    Hopefully every developer everywhere will follow suit.

  • systems #7 4 years ago

    @Darren: In fact the ANA and HANA chips do the scaling, not the Xenos GPU (the Xenon is the CPU incidentally).

  • seasidebaz #8 4 years ago

    @systems and @darren:

    yep, that's why you can get an e74 (scaler chip failure) and still get something up on screen to tell you that it's an e74.

  • Beano #9 4 years ago

    Hopefully they will support custom soundtracks soon...

  • bodypopper #10 4 years ago

    Yes Umberty. Especially the many thousands of people who bought 1080i tellies before 1080p sets became available on the market. 'Muppets' indeed.

  • jozz #11 4 years ago

    haha, darren got owned hard!

  • Darren #12 4 years ago

    @systems - According to EG's Xbox 360 Elite feature the ANA and HANA chips do the necessary work to output the image via SCART, composite, VGA, component video and HDMI and don't actually do the scaling at all. They were apparently told this by Microsoft so I'd imagine they'd know. ;)

    The link to the article is *HERE* and this is the paragraph in question if you cannot be bothered to look:

    "The only other major change under the bonnet is the new HANA video display chip, replacing the old ANA version in the classic 360. This chip has erroneously been described as the silicon that deals with the 360's inbuilt hardware scaling. In truth, Microsoft has now confirmed to us that it's merely a video output chip - a means of transferring the framebuffer into all of the different signals: composite, s-video, RGB SCART, component, VGA and - the key addition with HANA - HDMI. Scaling itself is actually performed by the Xenos GPU (most likely using a variation of Lanczos resizing) so in that respect the Elite performs identically to the original Xbox 360. The presence of HANA confirms that there will be no aftermarket HDMI solution for the current model."

    So unless Microsoft and EG were telling porkies, that pretty much confirms that the graphics chip does the scaling and it is not done by a scalar chip at all.

  • Darren #13 4 years ago

    @jozz - Wow, that's real mature. How old are you again? ;)

    P.S. Read my post above...

  • Darren #14 4 years ago

    There's another thread *HERE* too which seems to conclude that the Xbox 360 doesn't use a hardware scalar chip to scale the graphics but instead the Xenos chip.

    Whatever, I based my original assumption on the EG article and the fact that even a PC graphics card can do rescaling with little or no performance hit - try resizing a photo in an art package for example - and they don't have hardware scalars. So why would the Xbox 360 need one? TVs and DVD players use them because they don't have graphics cards.

    Anyway, if the Xbox 360 indeed doesn't use a hardware scalar to up and downscale then there's no reason why the PS3 can't which brings me back to my original point.

  • pikemon #15 4 years ago

    two-telly 4p splitscreen with one PS3 would be awesome!

  • Garulon #16 4 years ago

    "Anyway, if the Xbox 360 indeed doesn't use a hardware scalar to up and downscale then there's no reason why the PS3 can't which brings me back to my original point. "

    AFAICT it does use a hardware scaler but it's in the GPU at scanout. But yeah, I've got an effectively 1080i-only telly (it's a CRT and the 720p mode just bobs the picture down to 576 lines, no better than PAL ED) and the 360 just works. The PS3 looks like a nightmare for 1080i owners and I'm a bit shocked that there's still games coming out with no 1080i mode a year after launch.

  • stepneg #17 4 years ago

    'The HD era really only starts when we are on the market' - Phil Harrison

    Were still waiting it seems...

  • Darren #18 4 years ago

    @Garulon - When it comes to dealing with difference resolutions that aren't supported by games the PS3 is quite frankly a mess and it took several months for Sony to support 720p for Blu-ray playback for example. At least this is something that Microsoft considered when designing the Xbox 360 even though on that machine it's far easier to pass off a non-HD game as being HD because the Xbox 360 will upscale it to 720p anyway. Look no further than PGR 3, Halo 3, Tomb Raider: Anniversary/Legend and Call of Duty 2/3/4 if you want proof, all are sub-720p and therefore not high-definition at all in the technical sense of the word any more than an upscaled Xbox game or DVD are.

  • Beano #19 4 years ago

    @stepneg : He never said that, troll
    Edited by 1 at 01/04/08 @ 12:36

  • Garulon #20 4 years ago

    "all are sub-720p and therefore not high-definition at all in the technical sense of the word any more than an upscaled Xbox game or DVD are. "

    Does HD mean 720p minimum or does it mean better-than-576p ED or 576i SD though? I think there's a world of difference between seeing the max resolution a game will support effectively (which on a 1080i CRT connected to a 360 I can) and getting my HD game downscaled on my HD telly because it's not the "right" sort of HD.

  • Garulon #21 4 years ago

    @Beano - oh yes he fucking did:

    [link url=http://www.joystiq.com/2005/ 12/13/sony-exec-hd-era-starts-when-we-are-on-the-market/
    ]http://ww w.joystiq.com/2005/12/13/sony-e...[/link]

    Sony's Worldwide Studios president Phil Harrison boasted that the PlayStation 3 is the only next-gen console that will reflect the "true definition of HD".

  • Garulon #22 4 years ago

    Anyway who cares about Phil any more? He's probably busy at Atari.

    On the shredder.

  • Beano #23 4 years ago

    @Garulon: I stand corrected !

    I thought he said that the true next-gen (and not HD) would start with PS3.. but I was wrong ;)

    But he did have a point (or pint?) if true HD is "Full HD" (1080p) - but 360 does that also in a few games.

  • Darren #24 4 years ago

    @Garulon - High-Definition is stated as being 720 vertical lines minimum, anything less than that regardless of the horizontal resolutions, is not considered HD. Standard-Definiton is 480/576i and Enhanced-Definition is 480/576p but also, by definition, anything between those and 720p too.

  • Darren #25 4 years ago

    @Beano - Sony coined the term true HD as being 1080p but prior to that High-Definition was merely defined as anything with 720 lines or more vertically thus 1080p falls under that criteria. Sony just wanted Microsoft's Xbox 360 to sound inferior but the truth is that aside from HD DVD and Blu-ray movies, which are encoded at 1920x1080, most PS3 and 360 games actually run at 720p and some can't even manage that!!! LOL

  • Retroid #26 4 years ago

    "headbog: See what I mean about XBOTS invading PS3 threads?"

    I've only just noticed you recently and it's already clear you're a tiresome little fantroll.

    I think it's perfectly reasonable for people who own both machines to want to know why one machine can handle things like 1080i with no hassle whatsoever and yet another regularily dumps games down to might-as-well-be-SD resolution if 1080i is the only HD option. Also bizarre as Sony have a reputation as a consumer electronics company.

  • Beano #27 4 years ago

    @Darren: True but some PS3 games (especially some of the "simpler" PSN games like Super Stardust, Pixels Junk Monsters, Tekken:DR, flOw, Calling All Cars, BlastFactor, etc.) run in real 1080p and looks great tought :)
    Edited by 1 at 01/04/08 @ 13:32

  • f01re #28 4 years ago

    @Garulon

    Listening to the Criterion podcasts they were genuinely surprised people had tellies that could do 1080i but not 720p. Hence the patch, at least they check their email.

    @Beano

    Custom soundtracks are coming.

  • Darren #29 4 years ago

    Custom soundtracks are here NOW, both Super Stardust HD and MLB 08: The Show support them but it's up to the developers whether they're added. Of course, Sony might add a feature to play music for all games from the XMB but I don't see how it would work since the PS3 and most of its games weren't designed with that in mind unlike the Xbox 360.

  • Beano #30 4 years ago

    I belive f01re is talking about custom soundtrack in BOP ;)

  • oreillymj #31 4 years ago

    "Listening to the Criterion podcasts they were genuinely surprised people had tellies that could do 1080i but not 720p."

    @f01re Criterion may have never tested on this setup as these TV's are rare outside the U.S.

    Most people in Europe did not have anything greater than PAL/SECAM 576i/p until HD-Ready plasma's came on the market.
    These TV's had to support 720p/1080i to be allowed carry the HD ready sticker.

    In the U.S., you'll find these giant CRT's and rear projection set's that support 1080i but not 720p. In games that don't support the 1080i, the PS3 will output the next highest supported resolution which is likely to be NTSC 480p.

  • Darren #32 4 years ago

    @Beano - Yes, of course he is! Sorry! LOL

    The thing is though that the SDK has included support for custom soundtracks in games for a while now - I believe some obscure Japanese PS Store game was the first to use it last year - so why didn't Burnout Paradise on the PS3 ship with support for custom soundtracks out of the box? It's all very well adding it later but by then most people who bought the game at launch will no longer be playing it, or if they are, not as much.

  • oreillymj #33 4 years ago

    Oh and I'm guessing that the 10mb of onboard memory on the 360's Xenos chip is used to store a scaled image.

    I think a 1920 * 1080 * 24bit image requires about 8mb of memory.

    There may even be enough memory to support an Alpha channel for transparency effects.
    Edited by 1 at 01/04/08 @ 15:36

  • Beano #34 4 years ago

    "So why didn't Burnout Paradise on the PS3 ship with support for custom soundtracks out of the box?"

    Listening to Criterion's podcast, they sounded unaware of this - but the custom soundtrack option takes memory away from the rest of the game which could be another reason.

  • Garulon #35 4 years ago

    "Listening to the Criterion podcasts they were genuinely surprised people had tellies that could do 1080i but not 720p. Hence the patch, at least they check their email. "

    Yeah, Critereon are Good People but I'd much rather they didn't have to worry about it in the first place and they could have spent the dev time on something cooler (crash mode back pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease).

  • Beano #36 4 years ago

    True - custom soundtrack is a nice-to-have feature IMO. I would rather have DLC like new areas and cars... which is coming :)

  • captainrentboy #37 4 years ago

    ''I can't believe some people got mugged into buying a 1080i TV anyway. Muppets.''
    I'd like to agree, but as around a year ago I got a stupidly sexy 50" Samsung HDTV for £900, just because it was being replaced by the 1080P model I really can't.
    And yes I'm one of those goons that can't tell the difference between 720 and 1080P, especially when I'm sat 8 ft away.
    So it was all good.

  • f01re #38 4 years ago

    Yeah, custom soundtracks have been possible for a while but used far too much memory hence Criterion et al not being able to fit them in. However, sony has recently decreased the memory footprint considerably allowing Criterion to fit them in BP and I think they'll become more common.

    I see they're in Wipeout HD :)

  • Garulon #39 4 years ago

    "''I can't believe some people got mugged into buying a 1080i TV anyway. Muppets.''

    Hang about, you get 1920x1080/30 (effectively) for less than the cost of 1280x720/60 and on most consumer electronics (except of course the PS3) its set-and-forget, and we're the muppets? Er, OK!

  • dominalien #40 4 years ago

    It seems that the PS3 is not very good at scaling in general. Not bothered to look up the details of what and why, but I was playing Ninja Gaiden Sigma the other day, which said it had "1080p support". And it did... outputting a 1080p signal to my monitor, but clearly scaled up by the console from something like 720p. And the scaling really did not look good. Did not bother me at all when playing, but looking closely the image was moderately pretty (actually only visible on menu letters and such). Much better results are achieved when the PS3 outputs a 720p signal and my display scales it up to full screen by itself (It's a 1900x1200 Dell monitor, not a TV).

  • Darren #41 4 years ago

    I'm pretty sure Ninja Gaiden supports 1080p natively... I don't think it's upscaled from 720p...