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Doom's lead graphics programmer thinks 4K isn't a good use of Xbox Scorpio's power

N

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
This quote is a bit old, but I found it while looking up developer comments for the thread about publisher opinions.

I don't think we've had a thread about developers weighing in on this yet, so I thought it was worthwhile.

This is from Tiago Sousa, who you will best remember as a CryEngine bigwig, and now works on idtech6 at Doom.

Here's the twitter chain: https://twitter.com/SebAaltonen/status/744184184571367425

His statement on 4K (he's the guy in the red box):

doom1huqbr.png


He retweeted this as well:

doom205om0.png


And his overall sentiment on Scorpio:

tiagoscorpioe4saz.png
 
B

Beer Monkey

Member
Viewing distance (to screen size) of the general console gaming public is certainly a factor, but people are going to yell about this and say only blind people can't tell the difference. :)
 
W

Warxard

Banned
Love Sousa

--

Yeah I don't think 4K should be the main focus for most of the programmers/devs working with Scorpio.
 
V

Varvor

Member
I kind of agree....its a new fad that every one is chasing....but its not most optimal use of power they'd get from that console.
 
J

johnnydrama

Banned
That's one point of view and it's definitely not a wrong one. 4K or 1080p, I'm excited regardless. Always love to see the new gen visual improvements.
 
A

Alpha Phoenix

Member
I'm in the '4K isn't everything' camp. Stick to 1080p and focus on the details (lighting, mapping, textures, AA, etc.). I imagine that would make for a more effective use of Scorpio's power.
 
K

Kuno

Member
I think we all know what we'd choose between a game at 4K running at 30fps, and the same game at 1080p running at 60fps.

The way Microsoft is pushing 4K seems like their marketing department looking for ways to sell the thing.
 
C

Corpekata

Banned
1080 at higher framerates seems like the ideal situation. I imagine Sony in particular wants to help move some 4k TV sets but there's likely not enough in gamer's hands to really make 4k gaming a priority (especially since it at a stable framerate might be tough to hit).
 
LordOfChaos

LordOfChaos

Member
I've been with him 100%. Using 4X the power on 4X the pixels just seems stupid. I'd imagine most people would be happier with using it first for 60fps (depending on if the Scorpio CPU scales near as well as the GPU, or at least double the Jaguars), and then the rest for balls out 1080p visuals.



Or if there's room to spare, something like 2K would still look great on a 4K screen.


Oh hey, Andrew Lauritzen is in that convo.
 
B

Blinck

Member
I never really saw the point of 4k. People get super excited when they play at 4k on PC's but I don't really think there are much gainings from 1080p, and the power needed for 4k is just stupid. Better spend that on better graphics and IQ.
 
T

tuxfool

Banned
There are definite instances where 4K would be extremely beneficial. Unfortunately in those cases you'd also be pumping a great deal of GPU power into more detailed scenes, which would mean that you're looking at more than linearly scaling a typical game scene at 1080p today.
 
vpance

vpance

Member
So the higher the res, the more wasteful it is to spend GPU power to render each pixel. Makes sense to use the trick techniques to fake it.
 
J

JaggedSac

Member
Nirolak said:
Especially AAA developers. I could imagine some indies who don't really have a budget for scalable graphics considering 4K to put the power to use on something.
Click to expand...


Yeah. How much better does 1440p look? I only have a 1080p monitor so I have no idea. Perhaps a middle ground of higher IQ plus better effects.
 
N

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Corpekata said:
1080 at higher framerates seems like the ideal situation. I imagine Sony in particular wants to help move some 4k TV sets but there's likely not enough in gamer's hands to really make 4k gaming a priority (especially since it at a stable framerate might be tough to hit).
Click to expand...

It stuck out to me that Andrew House didn't use 4K as a selling point in his last statement about the Neo, but instead said that games will "play an awful lot prettier."

It's possible he just didn't want to unveil a marketing pitch early, but that might have also been the feedback they got from developers once they got their hands on the hardware.

JaggedSac said:
Yeah. How much better does 1440p look? I only have a 1080p monitor so I have no idea. Perhaps a middle ground of higher IQ plus better effects.
Click to expand...

One thing worth considering about sticking with 1080p is that 4K is exactly four times as many pixels, so the scaling is much, much cleaner than going from 720p -> 1080p or some other uneven multiple. I suspect that's why the TV industry jumped on this resolution as well, since they knew most of the content would be 1080p, but wanted it to still look clean and good on new sets.
 
D

dragonelite

Member
Aah nice to see more devs looking into reconstruction techniques.
Should be interesting what 343 and Turn 10 will do will they push 4k@60fps.
 
K

Korezo

Member
RoiPourpre said:
I agree.

1080p ultra quality > 4K low/medium quality !

Is ridiculous to focus 4K with only 6 Tflops of power...
Click to expand...

I saw 4k witcher 3 on low/medium settings on a oled in a friends house and it looked much better than when I play on my plasma downsampled ultra settings. Really depends on the tv.
 
N

naitosan

Member
Awesome, I'd love to play games in 1080p/30fps (or 60fps) with ultra setting (or even higher than that). I can see native 4k games more used for indie games, remastered, low budget games.
 
Thelonelykoopa

Thelonelykoopa

Member
I have to agree 4k make sense for PC gaming as you closer to you monitor but with consoles the distance from the tv would make it a tough sell compared to just 1080p gaming with AA.
 
D

Diablohead

Member
1080p with a clean image is very good still, 4k sounds great but i'd prefer a clean 1080p picture over any kind of cuts and tricks to hit 4k at this time.
 
S

SpiceMelange

Member
On a PC monitor 4k is great, but I do agree I'd prefer mindblowing tech at 1080p rather than the same games at 4k on a tv screen sitting at distance.
 
J

JNT

Member
I don't see the massive benefit from 4K outside of VR at this point. Right now there are other aspects of graphics that will contribute more to the overall graphical impressiveness of a game.
 
S

Spider_Jerusalem

Member
As devs will have freedom on how to use the console's power, I hope more and more will think the same way. 4K gaming on a TV really is a waste of resources.
 
SEGAvangelist

SEGAvangelist

Member
Nirolak said:
It stuck out to me that Andrew House didn't use 4K as a selling point in his last statement about the Neo, but instead said that games will "play an awful lot prettier."

It's possible he just didn't want to unveil a marketing pitch early, but that might have also been the feedback they got from developers once they got their hands on the hardware.
Click to expand...

Could also mean the rumored Neo specs are true as that hardware isn't very capable of 4K games.

As far as Scorpio is concerned, I see it getting about as many 4k games as XB1's amount of 1080p games. Scorpio will be tied down to XB1 because of running the same games (at least for 2-3 years, IMO) so 4K games seem likely.
 
T

thuway

Member
He is right. Scorpio would allow pretty close to Nightmare settings at 1080p or >. What would be smart is maxing out the effects and employing a dynamic internal resolution AND upscaling. The game would look ridiculous.
 
F

Flame Lord

Member
Well it sounds like they're letting people do whatever they want, so I'd be fine if most games end up with 1080p 60fps and a lot of AA.
 
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