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Reality of console visuals surpassing PC visual fidelity
- Thread starter Resilient
- Start date
In an alternate universe I can envision consoles releasing 2013 having a 1080p minimum res across the board. Sadly there isn't a single scenario where I can see 60 fps being the standard for console games. Sadly.
flyinpiranha
Member
I just don't see this happening. I'd like it to, but I can't imagine that mainly because I don't think MS or Sony are going to try and go 'all in' with the technology. I think they'll find a good middle ground that will show a lot of improvement but not absolutely top of the line stuff in their systems.
chaosblade
Unconfirmed Member
Running games to the same standard as consoles, PCs shouldn't take much time at all to "catch up" assuming they aren't caught up at launch. We're probably looking at sub-1080p, 30FPS with little or no AA for console games.
Factoring in price obviously makes things difficult obviously, no way a $400 or even $600 PC will match a $400 next gen console, but a $800 build probably will assuming we're not talking about crappy ports or something.
Takamura-San
Member
If they do with the new consoles, it would be short lived.
Consoles don't get yearly upgrades, PC video cards do.
Same with PC components.
Consoles don't get yearly upgrades, PC video cards do.
Same with PC components.
Why? Games will just look worse on consoles to get them to run at those settings. PCs exist for those reasons, but if console games are looking worse to run at those settings than we pay the price for that too. Our PCs can't magically make the game bigger or look better at a core level.
That's mostly because console-focused development has resulted in PC ports that don't tax the system at all. There are maybe like five games that on PC begin to tax current mid or high-range systems, and all of them look vastly superior to console games in my opinion. This is assuming we'll even get a PS2-to-PS3 difference at launch next gen. If we start seeing stuff like Samaritan or Agni (which already run on current high-end PCs) right at launch I'll be thoroughly impressed. If we just get games that look like the PC versions of The Witcher 2 or Medal of Honor Warfighter on max settings I'll be satisfied.
Well I was specifically talking about the launch titles of those platforms, but yeah you could be right.
I agree, but then we're comparing a fighter in a small arena with two characters versus a shooter that had a decent scope back then. I still remember being blown away when you first get off the ship in Unreal. I was such a fan of that game though, so I'll openly admit I could be wearing nostalgia goggles when thinking about that game.
Hmmm, gonna have to do some digging and check release dates, but I honestly don't remember thinking SNES or PlayStation games being ahead of what my PC was running at the time.
This isn't true for a properly optimized port. Put together a PC with a 3.2 GHz tri-core and a X1900 and a lot of games from the 360 launch era are playable at 720p with similar settings. Do a quick google search and you'll find people even playing some more recent CoD games at 1080p with decent settings using that graphics card (the clear bottleneck). Aside from RAM, you don't need something dramatically more powerful. There is an efficiency difference but people vastly overestimate it, the biggest difference comes from the developer knowing which sacrifices to make to make it look as good as possible using that hardware.
You'll need a PC significantly more powerful to play it at normal PC settings (1080p, higher graphics settings with AA and AF) but that's comparing apples to oranges.
zephervack
Member
If money is no object... the chance is 0%
Top of the line PCs today can play the likes of Far Cry 3 completely maxed out at 1080p * 3, which means three monitors with 3D and a resolution of 5760 * 1080, I dont see the new consoles pushing that many pixels at all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHI5zCis_-w
BTW that video is not even using a top of the line rig, some people out there have beefier machines running even higher resolutions.
Top of the line PCs today can play the likes of Far Cry 3 completely maxed out at 1080p * 3, which means three monitors with 3D and a resolution of 5760 * 1080, I dont see the new consoles pushing that many pixels at all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHI5zCis_-w
BTW that video is not even using a top of the line rig, some people out there have beefier machines running even higher resolutions.
Business
Member
I agree on that and I understand as games begin being developed with nextgen consoles in mind PC will benefit from it. But still, I look at the top of the line console games releasing today and I can only imagine what will be possible with new hardware and developers being able to squeeze that closed architecture.
i'll take the FPS hit if they implement descent AA into their games.
Considering top of the range PCs would be 20.4TFLOPs GPUs with 4GB vram and 32GB system RAM and 8-16core 4GHz CPUs, I am not sure that is even possible.
PC was further behind. Even the 2D Arcades (Especially from Konami) were crushing the PC.
Delusibeta
Banned
If anyone is expecting the Xbox 3 and PlayStation 4 to have "vastly better graphics than PC games", they're deluding themselves. It's going to be roughly on par with the best graphics PC games currently offer, and no further.
You mean starting with Crysis 3 and whatever gets released after.
And that's the only way it's possible. A $299 Xbox 360 was certainly a match for a $299 PC in 2005.
Where consoles can impress is if large budgets target them specifically instead of highend PCs and with firstparty titles. You can have all the power in the world, but without the budget to invest in a God of War, Uncharted or a Last Guardian*, it'll never give you the same sense of spectacle. It can, however, give you good ports.
*I know it's not out and might never be. I'm just massively impressed with the animation and effects in the trailers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHzHoMT5eRg&feature=youtube_gdata_player
The mid-range and high-range GPUs of this generation (600/7000) are all ready ahead of what will be in next-gen consoles.
700 and 8000 series are being released next year, before next-gen consoles. PCs will be well ahead before the consoles are even released.
They will be able to keep the gap relatively close with the 720p 30 fps games like they do now. Much easier to stretch the console's capabilities when you render significantly less pixels and half the frames.
700 and 8000 series are being released next year, before next-gen consoles. PCs will be well ahead before the consoles are even released.
They will be able to keep the gap relatively close with the 720p 30 fps games like they do now. Much easier to stretch the console's capabilities when you render significantly less pixels and half the frames.
Wouldn't even go that far, probably a mid range pc.
So many clueless people in this thread, I'm not gonna pick on individuals but jeez.
The ONLY way the new consoles (PS4 and X720) will 'surpass' the majority of modern gaming PC's (I'm talking about the $500-700 range) is if the manufacturers choose to spend that kind of money on each unit and price them accordingly. With the rate at which video card and CPU improvements are coming along, it's simply not possible for any console that'll be on the market for less than $600 to even match (yes, match) the current graphical fidelity available on PC's. Keeping that in mind too, any 'up to date' console released will become second-rate in a few months.
The power of PC's is essentially infinite as in the end, it's down to your wallet. You could pay $2000 and get near-CG quality graphics, but I like the majority have spent around a third/half of that, and achieve a level of fidelity that far surpasses the best-looking console games. Yeah, games like Halo 4 are impressive, but 720p at 30fps? Come on. I'm definitely getting one of the new consoles anyway, but that's for the exclusives, not the graphics.
The ONLY way the new consoles (PS4 and X720) will 'surpass' the majority of modern gaming PC's (I'm talking about the $500-700 range) is if the manufacturers choose to spend that kind of money on each unit and price them accordingly. With the rate at which video card and CPU improvements are coming along, it's simply not possible for any console that'll be on the market for less than $600 to even match (yes, match) the current graphical fidelity available on PC's. Keeping that in mind too, any 'up to date' console released will become second-rate in a few months.
The power of PC's is essentially infinite as in the end, it's down to your wallet. You could pay $2000 and get near-CG quality graphics, but I like the majority have spent around a third/half of that, and achieve a level of fidelity that far surpasses the best-looking console games. Yeah, games like Halo 4 are impressive, but 720p at 30fps? Come on. I'm definitely getting one of the new consoles anyway, but that's for the exclusives, not the graphics.
Kelegacy
XBOX - RECORD ME LOVING DOWN MY WOMAN GOOD
Next gen i expect consoles to still launch with 30fps and sub 1080p resolution. The FPS especially is important to me. And I don't think consoles care enough about it.
So even if the graphics come close to PC levels, there is more to visuals than just the eye candy. Its like Skyrim so heavily nodded it looks real...but the game in motion is an atrocity of frame rate instability. Console games wont be that bad of course but it goes to show performance is just as, if not moreso, important to visual fidelity.
So even if the graphics come close to PC levels, there is more to visuals than just the eye candy. Its like Skyrim so heavily nodded it looks real...but the game in motion is an atrocity of frame rate instability. Console games wont be that bad of course but it goes to show performance is just as, if not moreso, important to visual fidelity.
But that goes without saying and the statement itself is rather redundant... Of course an optimized port will require less beefy hardware but the majority of the latest batch of multiplatform games have had less than desirable performance on high end pc hardware.
LiquidMetal14
hide your water-based mammals
People forget how advanced HW is and UNDERUTILIZED it is these days. We have powerful SLI/X-fire setups which absolutely destroy rumored next gen console specs. Even single (dual
) card GPU solutions like a 690/7990 are beastly so if you have anything around that level, you should be seeing next gen PS4/720 ports with at least mid-high settings in your favor. I'm being conservative too. I can see that HW being able to run any next gen game potentially maxed.Even so, a solid PC will squeeze out more FPS and assuming they have higher textures, higher textures as well as better resolution.
Just as an example, Dark Souls was designed to be on par with consoles but PC users unlocked the fr and added custom resolution which makes the game look LIGHTYEARS better.
Yep, digging back, I concede.
It was only during the PlayStation launch and a year after the N64 that we started seeing parity (and it took beefy PCs to do it - but that shouldnt factor into this kind of argument) and in some cases, the PC surpassing its console counterparts (thanks to 3DFX).
if there weren't next gen consoles, then you wouldn't have next gen console games on PC, because consoles drive the investment decisions and PC ports are an afterthought for incremental revenue.
I think there probably won't be a huge difference, but when games come out that are properly pushing PS4/720, then you'll need a high end PC to exceed it, and even then you'll be most likely just running a higher res or maybe higher framerate. I don't think you'll have the same shader differential as you have with PS3/360 now.
It'll be interesting to see whether we just get souped up current game engines, or whether there will be new techniques that emerge, like we had streaming engines really hitting their stride this generation.
I think there probably won't be a huge difference, but when games come out that are properly pushing PS4/720, then you'll need a high end PC to exceed it, and even then you'll be most likely just running a higher res or maybe higher framerate. I don't think you'll have the same shader differential as you have with PS3/360 now.
It'll be interesting to see whether we just get souped up current game engines, or whether there will be new techniques that emerge, like we had streaming engines really hitting their stride this generation.
Again, it's different.
In the first half of the 90s, PCs simply couldn't deliver the same tiled 2D games at 60 fps that consoles could. Most PC platformers at the time ran at lower framerates or sacrificed parallax scrolling (Jazz Jackrabbit ran at 60 fps in 1994, for instance, but featured very simplistic backgrounds). It wasn't until the Pentium era that PCs started to really deliver 2D games at higher framerates.
Now, PCs could run circles around the consoles in regards to complex, painted backgrounds and pseudo-3D games simply due to their more capable of processors and additional memory.
Now, if you look at non-x86 PCs things are a bit different. Something like the Sharp x68000 PC in Japan could deliver incredible arcade quality 2D games since it basically used the same hardware.
SLI and Crossfire technology were poor or nonexistant at this gen launch, now these have evolved a lot so I think is safe to say that PC will have the better visuals. Another thing to consider it's that the PS4 and Xbox 720 specs are closer to PCs specs its most likely PC don't get shitty ports this gen.
@ bolded, those CG quality gfx aren't going to make themselves, no matter how much you spend.
Edit: Dark, I stand corrected good sir (check a couple posts above yours).
Of course, you're preaching to the choir here but I was more thinking of non-multiplatform games and then it becomes a bit more difficult to judge ( in this monumentally hypothetical scenario we're discussing in this thread ).
Not when Mass Effect 3 still lists a 9600GT under "recommended specs."
Well for starters Halo 4 came after seven years of Xbox 360 game development from some of the guys who built DirectX11. I imagine PS4 and Xbox 720 games will look fantastic in 2018, but think of where PCs will be by then. Closed Architecture also won't make as much of a difference this time around since the PS4 and next Xbox are probably gonna use more off-the-shelf parts, or parts at least more similar to what's in a computer now.
I don't think that really changes the point, though. You don't need dramatically better hardware to achieve the same performance on PC. People often seem to believe that it's not possible to pull off similar things with equivalent PC hardware, but that's flat-out wrong (though obviously its hit-or-miss in practice).
Whatever individual differences exist between developers, porting and optimization are too inconsistent to accurately account for, and not really pertinent to my point which was that efficiency of consoles isn't going to make them inherently more powerful than a PC with similar specs.
It's Unreal Engine 3. When this generation began and the first UE3 games hit the PC it took some decent muscle to pull off smooth framerates. Now that the engine has been around for so long it's no surprise that the requirements remain low.
When NEW engines are used (such as UE4) those requirements will be much higher on the PC side. That's what he's talking about.
Epic is already developping their first UE4 game for PC, so i kind of doubt consoles will have much of an advantage in regards of optimisation.
I think if they can achieve 1080p at 30fps or greater with most effects intact, some wows will definitely be said. Console devs are certainly awesome at squeezing every last ounce of power out of closed systems. That being said, PC games will likely look bonkers by Fall 2013/Spring 2014.
I think the elite console games will surpass PC's on that front this next generation. The main thing that PC's always had over consoles was 1080p (or higher) and better AA, both those advantages are likely to get wiped out. In all honestly, more than 1080p at normal viewing distances just isn't necessary unless you have some crazy sized or multi screen set up, which most don't.
doniewhalberg
Member
Are we really thinking the next consoles won't hit 1080p? I'm not stupid (enough) to assume they'll even nearly hit 60fps (doubt they'll even try) but if they can't do 1080p this time, that's a real deal breaker. I bought a 1080p tv 3-4 years ago now, I don't need a new piece of hardware next year that doesn't meet that resolution.
Right, but I expect you will need quite a powerful PC to play the game and most likely won't be able to max out at 60 fps with SGSSAA and such.
It's so weird to see this kind of statement. You're likely correct on the matter, but it's weird as consoles have *ALWAYS* outclassed PCs at launch. This will be the first time that does not happen.
Glass Rebel
Member
And both 1080p and AA will go out the window a few years into the generation if the current is any indication.
I think 1080p is most likely to be the defacto resolution for the next gen systems (bar Wii U). On modern graphics architecture, 1080p over 720p doesn't even seem to make much, even any (at times), difference on performance anyway. I think the more likely out come is frame rate woes over a lack of 1080p, depending on the game of course. Games like COD for example will likely put 60fps over resolution.
I'm not sure how I feel about that. Resolution is low on the list of things that display manufacturers need to work on. Once we get proper OLED TVs up and running then they can worry about 4k resolution. A 4k LCD is a completely unattractive idea to me. A waste of money, if you will.
Minsc
Gold Member
For this to happen, you need the next gen games exclusive to consoles to look significantly better than the best multi-platform console/PC games being released at the time. I don't think with the focus on multi-platform releases we've seen this generation (Dark Souls 2 for example being announced for PC) the divide will be that big simply because there will be a lot of high budget PC/console games, so competition will be more balanced. Even if they don't release on PC the same day, I don't think that matters until you start reaching multiple years apart.
True, but I don't think you'll see the consoles "maxing" it out either, or at 60fps. Better doesn't have to be a 10 against a 3, it can be a 4 or 5 as well.
True, but I don't think you'll see the consoles "maxing" it out either, or at 60fps. Better doesn't have to be a 10 against a 3, it can be a 4 or 5 as well.
lightchris
Member
The engine has little to do with performance demands. It'd be very simple to develop a UE3 game that won't reach playable framerates on a current (or future) high end PC.
The reason why you can still play any console port on a 9600 GT is simple: PS360 didn't grow stronger over time, and optimization can only do so much.
but the optimizations have to be done for the new consoles too. Developping a game on PC means they will already have started to optimize the engine for the platform - and have experience developping for it.
Those are completely arbitrary numbers m'man.
Current gen consoles can do "1080p 60fps" just fine. You can't always, however, have your cake and eat it too. Compromises need to be made in order to achieve a certain level of visual fidelity, and framerate/resolution seem to be the first area that compromise is made.