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Digital Foundry :- Does resolution really matter?

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I remember Rage runs better on ps3 honestly. The only problem of the ps3 version it can't be full installed in the HDD and texture streaming is more prominent.

Both are running at 60hz for 99.9% of the time, with some drops to 50 for split second in big explosion in car gameplay sections based on the article. Rewatch it again.
 
People need to compare 1080p to 4K, not 1080p to 720,900p or whatever odd resolution the devs choose to use.

4k will make anyone a believer that resolution really does matter...


We were doing the same thing with 1080p when it first came around. Resolution will always increase. 8k will make 4k look redundant. It's inevitable. In the grand scheme of things it won't make games from before unplayable tho. Some might say they can't play it but I genuinely believe that is a shame for those people.

I will say that high resolutions really can blow me away when I first see the game. A couple of hours in I'm just into the mechanics and don't even really notice it anymore
 
Like everything else resolution is one part that makes up a whole of a game and matters as much if not more so than many many other elements we consider important in visuals. Some games can benefit immensely from a jump of 900p ->1080p while others might not.

It's also something where tests on the average player are less useful than you might think, same goes for frame rate where people can't tell you what is 30 and what is 60 but benefit regardless.
 
I really hope people read the full article, but I predict lots of surface scratching and then jumping to assumptions.

There's some interesting stuff in there.
 
I keep seeing this line of thinking trotted out but I don't think you're really think things through.

The lower your resolution, the more those pixels matter. The difference between a 3D game running at 320x240 and 640x480 is much larger, perceptually speaking, than the difference between a 640x480 to 1280x720 title. The gap between 480p to 720p, then, is much larger than the gap from 900p to 1080p.

Also, with last gen games, we often had situations where you'd see double scaling - the game would render at, say, 600p which would be scaled up to 1280x720p and then again, by the TV, to 1080p. 600p on a 1080p display looks a LOT worse than 720p on a 1080p display. The difference between those resolutions is much more pronounced than 900p to 1080p.

You also need to consider that consoles are typically played on a TV. The perception changes dramatically based on screen size + distance. With a TV, most people sit far enough away from the display that differences become less pronounced. When sitting in front of a PC monitor, however, those differences feel much greater. I use a 32" 1440p monitor - 900p looks insanely bad on that display from my seating position but, on my plasma, it can look pretty good.

Now we're dealing with superior AA techniques alongside more pixels in general - the difference is less pronounced. Last generation that gap was much larger.

That's my take on it. The amount of pixels + view distance + display size + display type all determine the outcome.

That said, given the choice, I'd always take native resolution over scaled but dropping resolution to 900p from 1080p is one of the first things I'd do in order to fix performance issues. It's all about compromise in the console space these days.
I agree with this all but video game have always been about compromises. They are a miserable pile of secrets.
 
People need to compare 1080p to 4K, not 1080p to 720,900p or whatever odd resolution the devs choose to use.

4k will make anyone a believer that resolution really does matter...

People who don't notice a difference between 1080p and 720p would notice the difference between 1080p and 4K even less.
 
when 2 systems share 99% of their library then obviously it does. if the systems essentially play the same exact games then why not pick up the one with better resolution? assuming they are similar in price. In this case ps4 actually launched for 100 less than xbone lol
At the moment Xbone has the lead when it comes to games though (depending on what you like).
 
People need to compare 1080p to 4K, not 1080p to 720,900p or whatever odd resolution the devs choose to use.

4k will make anyone a believer that resolution really does matter...
It's a nice thing but I don't think it matter as much as you say.

I still find good ol' 15 khz 240p to be a thing of beauty and 480p on a good CRT TV can look gorgeous.
 
I don't' think I ever saw such an article on Eurogamer during the PS3 vs 360 face offs. To think it comes to this, an article questioning the relevancy of resolution. It must be a bitter pill for Leadbetter to swallow after all those years.
 
I think there's some interesting implications for what happens next-gen.

Do we really want 4k game machines? Is that going to be all that beneficial for most people's viewing situations given the diminishing returns of upping resolution held against the vast power requirements that getting to that resolution requires? Imagine what next-gen machines could do if they were only asked to render at 1080p...
 
Are we in September-October 2013 again in the dreaded Resolutiongate? Also needless bashing on Neilsen which is an industry standard in, well, every industry. They might as well mock and dismiss NPD results since those are also an industry benchmark.
What's crucial in this case is that not only are both COD and Far Cry 4's res reductions well-handled on Xbox One, they also have performance profiles equivalent to or even better than their PS4 counterparts - and we're firmly of the belief that frame-rate difficulties have much more of an impact on the overall experience than resolution.
What the hell? "By the way, please ignore all of these comparison tests we've been doing on the new consoles for the past 15 months because by personal decree the XBO now has 'performance profiles equivalent to or even better than their PS4 counterparts'". Odd, because heir recent comparisons have favored the XBO for non-technical reasons.

Do we have any other sites that make an effort to professionally compare performance between consoles? DF has complete gone to hell in but a few weeks; Cratering faster than I ever thought a media outlet could. By extension it doesn't exactly speak well for broader Eurogamer. It might as well shut down if it says what they do best doesn't actually mean anything for any purposes other than to provide a new source of fanboy fuel. The internet already has too much of that crap.
 
I always prefer native resolutions. Thatswhy I have a problem with many PsVita games.
Its not like this is a dealbreaker for me, but I for one am always evry disappointed with subnative resolutions. Be it Uncharted on Vita or BF4 on Ps4, I just don't like the look.

I don't get why we need to downplay differences between hardware and wish for the to go away. If one manufacturer built stronger hardware I think its fair to expect games to make use of it.
And since the consoles share like 95% of their software library and multiplats are what most people are playing its just natural that small differences in performance are huge deciding factors for many people.
 
Of course, the one article I started to write for DF got rejected on grounds of being too technical :P
LOL, really? That's pretty stupid. I love tech articles that go more in depth to explain the graphical features being used. That IQ analysis of yours in The Order thread was interesting and I want to see more of those, not a tech article about gameplay...
 
Of course it matters depending on the size of your TV/monitor and the distance between you and the picture.

Framerate is more important though.
I agree with the first part. The second, however, I don't.

Framerate is more important with some genres, especially if you're playing competitively. However, a lot of genres you don't need over 30FPS.

Course, this is all preference in the end. I don't play many competitive, or fast paced games that benefit from higher framerates. So consequently, I value image fidelity higher in most cases.
 
Imagine what next-gen machines could do if they were only asked to render at 1080p...

Well that's like saying imagine what the PS4 & Xbox could do if they were only going to run at 720p, would people be happy with the lower resolution but nicer shaders?

I don't think so, 720p is yesterdays news.

1080p will be yesterdays news for PS5.
 
Isn't it the Xbox the platform with lower res games? Another coincidence?

It is another coincidence that in the 7 years prior to the xb1, digital foundry did not mention not thinking of doing an article like this for resolution differences of less than 10 to 20 percent.
 
No.

4K is 8.294400 million pixels
1080p is 2.073600 million pixels
720p is 921.600k pixels
Yet visually, the difference is actually smaller unless you're pressed up against the screen.

Which is why all these 'its this many more pixels better' arguments are quite silly. That's a more useful metric to think about when talking about how you power a resolution, but in terms of what we see, going above 1080p hits diminishing returns pretty hard.
 
Yet visually, the difference is actually smaller unless you're pressed up against the screen.

Which is why all these 'its this many more pixels better' arguments are quite silly. That's a more useful metric to think about when talking about how you power a resolution, but in terms of what we see, going above 1080p hits diminishing returns pretty hard.

I guess that's what I heard, not the amount of pixels.
 
optimal-viewing-distance-television-graph-size.png


Edit: I bring the pwnage on a 22" monitor at 3 ft distance and suck horribly on a 40" TV that is 10ft away. Input lag on my 22" is <30ms and the 40" is <60ms.
Input lag, viewing distance, refresh/FPS, screen reflectivity, screen & input resolution... It all plays a factor in how we game. I'm probably failing to list all the factors.
 
It is another coincidence that in the 7 years prior to the xb1, digital foundry did not mention not thinking of doing an article like this for resolution differences of less than 10 to 20 percent.
You're really thinking about this the wrong way.

The perceived difference between something like 576p and 720p is much much greater than 900p to 1080p. The higher the resolutions in question, the less it ultimately matters. The difference between 2160p and 2880p, for instance, isn't going to be nearly as significant despite the actual difference (in terms of pixels) being much greater.
 
..almost as amazing as all the DF haters that crawl from under their rocks whenever DF is mentioned on here.
I'm not a hater and I bet most aren't I just don't like the direction they've been heading they use to be the go to now they've let their own preferences cloud what use to be very objective articles.
 
Well that's like saying imagine what the PS4 & Xbox could do if they were only going to run at 720p, would people be happy with the lower resolution but nicer shaders?

I don't think so, 720p is yesterdays news.

1080p will be yesterdays news for PS5.
The improvement from 720p to 1080p, while not massive, is still pretty nice in a living room situation. The point is that you don't quite get that same sort of jump when talking about 4k. You've got to have quite a big TV or sit quite close. How many people are going to benefit from it exactly?

I'm sure next-gen gaming systems will be 4k, and people will flip their lids over it, but in the end, I do have to wonder whether or not using those vastly more powerful machines to render at 4k isn't somewhat wasteful.
 
I definitely agree frame rate is the most important thing. I like playing games buttery smooth and would rather have a lower res with 60 fps+ ,than 1080p + at 30fps. Glad my pc can at least do both.
 
You're really thinking about this the wrong way.

The perceived difference between something like 576p and 720p is much much greater than 900p to 1080p. The higher the resolutions in question, the less it ultimately matters. The difference between 2160p and 2880p, for instance, isn't going to be nearly as significant despite the actual difference (in terms of pixels) being much greater.
What about 720 p to 1080 p there's many of them about this gen. Bigger than any gap of last gen.
 
You're really thinking about this the wrong way.

The perceived difference between something like 576p and 720p is much much greater than 900p to 1080p. The higher the resolutions in question, the less it ultimately matters. The difference between 2160p and 2880p, for instance, isn't going to be nearly as significant despite the actual difference (in terms of pixels) being much greater.

yes it is but we aare talking about smaller differences in resolution, like 1024x600 and 1024x720 being called out obviously in favour of the higher resolution. and then we have larger gaps here like 1600x900 and 1920x1080 not mattering.
 
Well, it did matter to him before.

Here we have Leadbetter using 5 paragraphs of an article (2 updates included) trying to determine the different sub-hd solutions of a game. We can find probably a hundred articles like this one
 
I think there's some interesting implications for what happens next-gen.

Do we really want 4k game machines? Is that going to be all that beneficial for most people's viewing situations given the diminishing returns of upping resolution held against the vast power requirements that getting to that resolution requires? Imagine what next-gen machines could do if they were only asked to render at 1080p...
I fear for the first 4K console gen. I could see a bunch of games very limited in scope just to hit that 4K target. People will still be complaining that assets look no better then current gen because they need to be held back to hit performance targets at the massive resolution increase.
 
and we're firmly of the belief that frame-rate difficulties have much more of an impact on the overall experience than resolution.



Well, I don't think anyone can really disagree with that.
 
when 2 systems share 99% of their library then obviously it does.
And since the consoles share like 95% of their software library and multiplats are what most people are playing its just natural that small differences in performance are huge deciding factors for many people.
I think this is about the second mention of 90%+

239 on PS4
159 on Xbox One.

I get what you guys mean (big third party AAA multiplats) but the mid AA and Indies are not and they are increasingly a player on consoles. Comes out to 66%.

Lets just say for what matters, 85% and I am just making this number up on the fly.
 
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