Halo a PC port of the XBOX game?

[Belwarrior]

Why is it that every reviewer on the internet i have been reading, refer to the PC version of Halo to be a port of the XBOX game??.. I know that the Xbox game was released first but i remember that the game was ready to be released on the PC some years back and there was already some playable demos and betas available at that time.

And do you think any improvements have been made to it since they had more time to play with after they had ported it to the XBOX?

By the way, the porting to the XBOX could not have been too much, it is a celery on a souped-up geforce2 on a windowsNT-based OS or was it?

[Wombat]

I don't even know how it could be called a port. Usually porting involves moving from one architecture to another.

[Paddy]

Dunno mate.. but the XBOX version is loads better.

[Riddlewire]

The version that finally appeared on the Xbox was not just a port of the PC version that was originally in development. Not only was the engine redesigned (DX7->DX8) and the processing burden shifted from the CPU to the GPU, but the architecture and artwork was optimized for GPU usage rather than just mass amounts of memory.
The new HaloPC that is out now is also a redesigned product. Gearbox stipped out the NV2A processes in the engine and replaced them with their own DX9 shaders and fallbacks. Also, the characters had to be redesigned because the PCs still can't handle character models and animations as well as the Xbox can (I don't know the specifics, but it was contained in an interview about the game). Despite what most reviewers think (or try to convince you of), the textures in HaloPC are NOT new. They did not make new high-res versions of the textures specifically for the PC. All of Halo's textures were already high resolution on the Xbox, but they used a very near-appearance mipmapping system so that it would never be a problem. In other words, the high-res textures would only be swapped in once you got so close to an object (like a rock or a wall) that it's surface would take up the entire screen. Gearbox just altered this system so that the high-res textures would display from a more distant perspective.
And, just for the sake of clarification, the Xbox is actually a PIII with 1/2 of its cache disabled (not a Celeron, there is a difference) with a customized GPU that resides between a GeForce 3 and a GeForce 4 with some special hardware and abilities that are unique to its implementation.

[Wombat]

How could they be high resolution on the X-Box? What's a TV's resolution again?

[SteveC]

Ah, but is Halo one of the Xbox games that supports HDTV?