HaloHD!!! :D

[vtothet]

Hi all! Names Jeremy! First time poster but I always visit the forums for the latest info. Well to my post now!

So I’ve been thinking we really don’t need lots of apps like Apples store does. In fact, I’d be more than perfectly happy with just one. When I asked my friends and people at school if they were going to get a ZuneHD 90% of them said no. They said they already had a mp3 player or ipod (bleh) and didn’t need to spend the money on another one. But then I asked them a question. I asked if it had Halo on it to play if they would buy it. They all said yes in a heartbeat.

Just think about that for a second. Put a portable version of Halo on the ZuneHD. We know it’s more than capable to handle it. Heck, you could charge me $50 and I would buy it. Think about it, if they put Halo on this, and said so before Christmas, this could easily be the hottest thing on everyone’s wishlist. Halo on the ZuneHD alone could give Apple a fair run, and seems foolish not to put it on it.
Wouldn’t you want a Halo you can play on the crapper? Just use your ZuneHD to log onto XBL and message your friends and play with them?! I know I would! Just think about WiFi multiplayer! And just think with they could easily make a mic/headset to plug into the Zune port.

So here look at these that I came up with and think would work great and dream on!
See how easily that can be translated? Let me know what you think!
Come on Bungie do us proud!!

[CrowdAds]

[gljvd]

I highly doubt the zune hd can handle halo. Esp not halo 3 as in your pictures .

Also you have to understand there are no controls on the zune. IT has 1 button mabye they can make the rocker into 2 physical buttons. Its not going to play right and your finger is going to get in the way of alot of the action.

Also bungies contract with ms ends after halo reach. i doubt they'd do this as far as I've heard bungie is done with halo for a while and that is why they wanted to split from ms in the first place.

You'd really need a controller add on for this game.

[majg]

Hey there, VTOTHET.

The ZuneHD allegedly can handle graphics etc more like the original Xbox, so like the post above me, one would have a difficult time simply porting Xbox 360 versions of halo. I would believe that devs would have an easier time porting original xbox games to ZHD.

Touch controls are no match against tactile controls. So, cross platform in this sense is not an option. At least in your example.

However, I do agree with you in essence. We all know content is king and what would be better than having a portable Halo. :0)

For so many people, Halo: Combat Evolved incites positive memories. So, with a proper controller accessory, LIVE enabled and add some achievements.... Zune HDs would sell on that alone.

But who knows... maybe some version of Halo will become mobile in the near future.

[gljvd]

The main problem with porting is simple. The original xbox was a 700mhz celron the nv20a and 64 megs of ram plus a hardrive and disc drive

The flash ram on the zune makes up for the lack of a hardrive and disc drive.

The tegra will hae to render and apply effects and textures to half the res (320x240 vs 640x480) But what of the cpu ? The cpu in the xbox is surely more powerfull than the arm cpu in the tegra. So your going to be looking at a problem with the A.I

Then you have a ram problem. The xbox had 64 gigs. What does the tegra have ? A few megs ? Thats the major problem

[Leroy Bad]

LOL the Zune HD can barley handle a Calculator, how would it handle Halo? it would take like 30 mins just to load it!

[vtothet]

I know very well it can't handle Halo3. I was just using it as a mockup. And yes they can't port it either. Sure they could make some mobile watered down version. And if the cpu can't handle complex AI just make it a mutliplayer game. Never enjoyed single player anyway.

I'm not seeing how my finger would get in the way of anything. I'm holding it find with a layover template and I have big hands and can push everything fine.

When referring to the Xbox Live I ddin't mean play against people on 360's, I just meant you could see your friends and then play only people on ZuneHD XBL compatible games. And people on XBL on 360s would see like ZHD next to their name so people would know.

[Leroy Bad]

When I can go online an use MapQuest without the system crashing. Then they can add Halo.

[medion]

The tegra will hae to render and apply effects and textures to half the res (320x240 vs 640x480) But what of the cpu ? The cpu in the xbox is surely more powerfull than the arm cpu in the tegra. So your going to be looking at a problem with the A.I

Like you said, the Xbox was 640x480, or 307,200 pixel per frame. The Zune HD is 480x272, or 130,560 pixel per frame, or 42.5% of the Xbox's native resolution. The Xbox ran at 24-bit color, but on a smaller screen you can get away with 16-bit, which drops the fill rate requirement another 33%. You can also get away with applying fewer effect. Overall, the Zune HD would only need to be 35-40% as powerful as the NV2A in the Xbox, and they could get away with a similar look in a game. However, it's confirmed that the upcoming 45nm Tegra APX2600 is about as powerful as an Xbox.That tells me that the current Tegra is within striking distance, maybe about 25% short. So, it can do it. Like you said, the main problem will be the control scheme.

Then you have a ram problem. The xbox had 64 gigs. What does the tegra have ? A few megs ? Thats the major problem

The Xbox had 64MEGS of RAM. The 2nd gen iPhone and iPod Touch had 128MB of RAM, while the 3rd gen has 256MB. It's a safe assumption that given modenr mobile specs, the Zune HD has at least 128MB of RAM.

So in terms of graphics and complexity, the Zune HD should be able to handle any Xbox (not 360) port. The scaling down would be well hidden by the smaller screen. Like you said, again, it's the control scheme that will cause the biggest problems.

[Xiamhighx]

Originally Posted by medion

Like you said, again, it's the control scheme that will cause the biggest problems.

A problem that can be fixed quite easily with a controller add-on solution. Just imagine a snap-on, plug-in controller that had a joystick, d-pad, triggers, 4 buttons and stereo speakers. It would turn the HD into the mobile entertainment platform that MS is going for with the Zune.

[defaultluser]

Originally Posted by gljvd

The main problem with porting is simple. The original xbox was a 700mhz celron the nv20a and 64 megs of ram plus a hardrive and disc drive

The flash ram on the zune makes up for the lack of a hardrive and disc drive.

The tegra will hae to render and apply effects and textures to half the res (320x240 vs 640x480) But what of the cpu ? The cpu in the xbox is surely more powerfull than the arm cpu in the tegra. So your going to be looking at a problem with the A.I

Then you have a ram problem. The xbox had 64 gigs. What does the tegra have ? A few megs ? Thats the major problem

Tegra does not come with any ram (must be supplied externally). But the Zune HD has 1Gbit (128MB) of DDR ram.

http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft-Zune-HD/1170/1

The ram chip in-question is this one here:

http://www.hynix.com/datasheet/eng/m...&m=4&s=2&RK=17

It runs at 166 MHz (333 DDR), and is 32-bits wide. Thus, the total memory bandwidth for the Zune HD is just 1.3GB/s (well short of the Xbox with 6GB/s, but then the resolution on this device is less than half).

Tegra also has a 600 or 700 MHz Arm 11 processor (impossible to tell which one is included from these pictures). Whether this is as-powerful as a 750 MHz cut-down P3 is up for discussion.

But the feat is certainly within reason. I think Microsoft made a mistake providing zero tactile controls for the Zune HD - here is the portable Xbox everyone has been wishing for, and due to lack of useful controls it will be limited to the same crappy games already on the iPhone.

[gljvd]

The bandwidth doesn't have anything to do with the framebuffer. Your still going to be lacking bandwidth. You'd have to reduce the bandwidth load from 6 GB/s to 1GB/s that means a drasic reduction in all areas , much greater than the reduction in resoultion.

Tegra also has a 600 or 700 MHz Arm 11 processor (impossible to tell which one is included from these pictures). Whether this is as-powerful as a 750 MHz cut-down P3 is up for discussion

Don't really think its up for discussion , the celeron will crush the arm cpu.

The Xbox had 64MEGS of RAM. The 2nd gen iPhone and iPod Touch had 128MB of RAM, while the 3rd gen has 256MB. It's a safe assumption that given modenr mobile specs, the Zune HD has at least 128MB of RAM.

So in terms of graphics and complexity, the Zune HD should be able to handle any Xbox (not 360) port. The scaling down would be well hidden by the smaller screen. Like you said, again, it's the control scheme that will cause the biggest problems.

have you seen a psp or iphone game approaching the graphics of halo ? I haven't

But the feat is certainly within reason. I think Microsoft made a mistake providing zero tactile controls for the Zune HD - here is the portable Xbox everyone has been wishing for, and due to lack of useful controls it will be limited to the same crappy games already on the iPhone.

The zune hd is a mp3/video player. Adding tactile controls would increase the foot print of the console drasticly and reduce its use as a mp3/video player. Right now i can fit my zune in my pocket , its smaller than my phone while having a bigger screen. Adding tactile controls you run into the dsi or psp problem which is to big.

To do halo right you'd need a slew of buttons on the scale of the xbox controller. Which looking at my 360 controller would add 2 anlog sticks , a d pad , 4 face buttons 2 trigger and 2 shoulder buttons . Even getting rid of half of that would drasticly increase the size of the zune

[defaultluser]

The bandwidth doesn't have anything to do with the framebuffer

I was implying that a lower resolution means that you can sacrifice quality in several ways. One of the suggestions was to make the framebuffer and textures 16-bit, but there is another factor: the small framebuffer means you can get away with smaller textures.

Early 3D cards plus PCs were able to create rich scenes in 16-bit with half the bandwidth of the Zune HD. Not Xbox-quality games, and not software-renderd crap, but something in-between, reminiscent of the PSP.

And shaders are an additional tool that early 3D hardware lacked, and can be the difference maker because it can add wonderful layers of effects at very little bandwidth cost.

Sony has already proven that you don't have to MATCH exactly the graphics and power of the original system to create a successful portable. The PSP (even at 333 MHZ) is dwarfed by the power of the full PS2, but the games still look good. And it does this with no shader hardware whatsoever.

[ElSuperBeasto]

Originally Posted by gljvd

The bandwidth doesn't have anything to do with the framebuffer. Your still going to be lacking bandwidth. You'd have to reduce the bandwidth load from 6 GB/s to 1GB/s that means a drasic reduction in all areas , much greater than the reduction in resoultion.

Don't really think its up for discussion , the celeron will crush the arm cpu.

have you seen a psp or iphone game approaching the graphics of halo ? I haven't



The zune hd is a mp3/video player. Adding tactile controls would increase the foot print of the console drasticly and reduce its use as a mp3/video player. Right now i can fit my zune in my pocket , its smaller than my phone while having a bigger screen. Adding tactile controls you run into the dsi or psp problem which is to big.

To do halo right you'd need a slew of buttons on the scale of the xbox controller. Which looking at my 360 controller would add 2 anlog sticks , a d pad , 4 face buttons 2 trigger and 2 shoulder buttons . Even getting rid of half of that would drasticly increase the size of the zune

Can the original Xbox process HD? The Celeron on the Xbox is 733 mhz, the ARM on the Zune HD is about 600 mhz, not that big of a gap. The memory is definitely lower, at 64 MB's, and it's slower in clock speed too, I think. Though I do agree that it would be nigh impossible to port a FPS that requires so many controls. You could move by tilting and shoot by tapping, but that's still very inconvenient.

[gljvd]

Originally Posted by defaultluser

I was implying that a lower resolution means that you can sacrifice quality in several ways. One of the suggestions was to make the framebuffer and textures 16-bit, but there is another factor: the small framebuffer means you can get away with smaller textures.

Early 3D cards plus PCs were able to create rich scenes in 16-bit with half the bandwidth of the Zune HD. Not Xbox-quality games, and not software-renderd crap, but something in-between, reminiscent of the PSP.

And shaders are an additional tool that early 3D hardware lacked, and can be the difference maker because it can add wonderful layers of effects at very little bandwidth cost.

Sony has already proven that you don't have to MATCH exactly the graphics and power of the original system to create a successful portable. The PSP (even at 333 MHZ) is dwarfed by the power of the full PS2, but the games still look good. And it does this with no shader hardware whatsoever.

The nv20a was a cross between the geforce 2 and geforce 3. Its very powerful for its time.

Anyway like i've said the psp and iphone can not do halo 1 and neither can the zune hd . Wish it could but it can't

You can get a bastard verison of halo made from the ground up for the zune , but its not going ot make anyone happy. Esp not without an expensive controller add on.

Can the original Xbox process HD? The Celeron on the Xbox is 733 mhz, the ARM on the Zune HD is about 600 mhz, not that big of a gap. The memory is definitely lower, at 64 MB's, and it's slower in clock speed too, I think. Though I do agree that it would be nigh impossible to port a FPS that requires so many controls. You could move by tilting and shoot by tapping, but that's still very inconvenient.

Yes it can.

The xbox may have less ram , but we don't know what compression the tegra has. So that can be a moot point there. The ram in the xbox has a higher bandwidth than the ram in the tegra as already mentioned. 6.4gb/s vs 1gb/s.


I think its vrey likely that the zune hd could be the base of a portable game unit from ms in which xbox mobilie comes to. Perhaps a tegra 2 with dual core vortex cpus and 128megs of fast ram prob 10GB/s an most likely a slide out section with controls (ala psp go) and a bigger screen.

[Curiouss]

I <3 those awesome pictures you made. Very..... inspirational
But the buttons (analog sticks/buttons) would be very small, since the screen is only 3.3"

[medion]

have you seen a psp or iphone game approaching the graphics of halo ? I haven't

You didn't debate any of the facts that I mentioned. But anyway, the original PSP only had 16MB of system RAM, and 2MB of video RAM. The newer PSP models have 32MB of system RAM, but that's for extra functionality, and no game is allowed to require it.

Also, memory bandwidth is used to shuttle data in and out from video memory to system memory as needed, usually used for texture swapping when there isn't enough video memory available. The Zune HD uses a unified memory architecture, so memory bandwidth won't be a limitation for this. Also, having double the memory of the Xbox means that more data can be store in local memory without having to be shuttled off storage.

Don't really think its up for discussion , the celeron will crush the arm cpu.

The Xbox used a 733mhz Celeron with a Coppermine core, which was originally released on the PC side in March 2000. The Tegra uses an Arm 11 600mhz MPCore. While no official specs have been released about it's performance in terms of MIPS/FLOPS, etc, handheld devices today are far more powerful than they were from almost 10 years ago. To just assume that the older tech is better because it was made for a desktop is a bit premature.

However, we can draw some conclusions here. According to Intel, their 1.2ghz Atom CPU is as powerful as a Celeron from 2003-2004. According to nVidia, their 700mhz Tegra 650 is equal to or slightly more powerful than an Atom at 1.6ghz. So, it's a solid guess that the Tegra APX 2600, which is 100mhz slower than the 650, could be slightly slower than a Celeron from 2003-2004. Do you think that a Celeron from 2000 is going to be faster than one made 3-4 years later?

The nv20a was a cross between the geforce 2 and geforce 3. Its very powerful for its time.

Slightly understated, the NV2A was actually based off the GF3, but used some tech from the GF4. Like you said, it was very powerful for it's time. Most devs have likened the original iPhone's graphics hardware to that of the Dreamcast, while the PSP's GPU is exactly half the power of the GPU within the PS2. The Zune HD's Tegra is more powerful than both.

While it would be premature to say that the Tegra is more powerful than a GF 3.5, it only needs to be 35-45% as powerful to pull off Halo-esque visuals at a resolution of 480x272.

Yes it can.

The xbox may have less ram , but we don't know what compression the tegra has. So that can be a moot point there. The ram in the xbox has a higher bandwidth than the ram in the tegra as already mentioned. 6.4gb/s vs 1gb/s.

The Xbox used 6:1 texture compression. If MS is uses XNA, then they are using elements of DirectX, which means the same or better texture compression. Also, as stated above, memory bandwidth doesn't mean squat in unified memory architectures, which is one reason why some consoles lately get away with far lower memory bandwidth than PCs.

[defaultluser]

The Xbox uses S3TC, also known as DXTC. If Tegra doesn't have support for this industry standard, they should seriously fire the whole design team (let's just assume it does).

But regardless, even assuming Tegra can match all compression modes, there's still that 5:1 bandwidth ratio to make up. I don't think you can produce an exact copy of Halo with so little bandwidth.

But I think you could make a pretty damn good knockoff. But it would be more work than a simple port, as the artwork would have to be completely redone.

[weedalin]

Originally Posted by Leroy Bad

LOL the Zune HD can barley handle a Calculator, how would it handle Halo? it would take like 30 mins just to load it!

Please don't post unless you actually have something productive to contribute.
If you had used some of the indie (third-party) apps for the HD, you would know that they load in about 2 or 3 seconds, comparable to the iPod Touch (and other app PMPs).
And I don't think a straight-up direct port of Halo is the answer either, however nice it would be.

[timmahcheese]

uhhh.... couldn't they just make a controller add-on that plugs in and gives you tactile controls?

[TheAudiophile]

I don't know if it's been said, but something like halo wars would look like a great use of the HD's touch screen, and it's not graphics heavy.