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Digital Foundry :- Does resolution really matter?
- Thread starter DHC-Shannow
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I think it matters far more than a lot of people want it to. While it's mostly not resolution or fps talk the PS4 is generally seen as the better "technical" console. The libraries are largely the same (AAA wise) and i think the general image of the PS4 hardware being better makes a large contribution to PS4 sales, especially for the "casual" market.
I'm sure a similiar poll last gen would have similiar results for the 360.
I think the word "resolution" is used because most people have no idea what AA or AF is and so resolution becomes the what most people perceive as better visual fidelity.
I'm sure a similiar poll last gen would have similiar results for the 360.
I think the word "resolution" is used because most people have no idea what AA or AF is and so resolution becomes the what most people perceive as better visual fidelity.
Chris Metal
Member
How big is Leadbetter's comparison tool... 50 inches?
They aren't undermining anything with this. They are not disagreeing that resolution brings improvement to IQ. But resolution isn't free. In fact, its hugely demanding to output 40% more pixels just to go from 900p to 1080p. Developers have to use a significant part of the limited graphics budget(on consoles) to accomplish this. Which means that that is using resources that cant be used to improve other aspects of the graphics. Ryse would not have looked as good as it did if they were to have turned up the resolution on the XB1, for example. And people generally feel Ryse is a very good looking game as a result.
Its under this context that the question is being asked - "is resolution that important?" Obviously is everything else is equal, then yes, higher resolution is always better. DF are not disputing that, despite that being what almost everybody seems to be assuming they are doing.
This is just like any other hobby, people can spend money to get more than 1080p/60/ultra settings or less to at least beat consoles (which isn't really hard, even with under 300 bucks).
Building a really high end gaming rig doesn't have to be expensive, you can sli/crossfire the second best cards of Nvidia/Amd for a good price and get a good cpu for under 1200 which is cheaper than my friends hobby (he buys regularly expensive bmx bikes which costs ridiculously high.
But that's my opinion, I don't think it's that expensive anymore to get an awesome high end SLI pc.
Building a really high end gaming rig doesn't have to be expensive, you can sli/crossfire the second best cards of Nvidia/Amd for a good price and get a good cpu for under 1200 which is cheaper than my friends hobby (he buys regularly expensive bmx bikes which costs ridiculously high.
But that's my opinion, I don't think it's that expensive anymore to get an awesome high end SLI pc.
Personally, I wouldn't give a crap even if games look like Avatar CGI at 480p. The gap from 480p to 1080p is so gigantic that I almost can't stand SD at times.
*barf*
Imp the Dimp
Member
Who is this Leadbetter and why is he infamous?
travisbickle
Member
No, he doesn't like inFamous because it's a Playstation exclusive.
When you're supposedly a journalist from a reputable tech site and you make ridiculous comments like "Next gen gameplay!" and now, "Resolution doesn't matter", something would be wrong if he's not infamous.
He is the author of most digital foundry articles who reveled in smaller-than-current-gen's-differences resolution advantages 360 had over PS3 last gen and according to some, is having a hard time adapting to the new gen where Xbone usually doesn't have the upper hand and is trying to mitigate it via irrelevant factors like online performance, "feel", gameplay etc. - this article is the most recent of his apologia.
Of course if you ask some, this totally isn't a thing, he is totally fair and the non-technical stuff he says is totally relevant to a technical analysis.
You should check out DF articles he writes to make up your own mind.
Good answer.
I'm just wondering what today's consoles could do if the power needed to run at higher resolutions was freed up.
StrongBlackVine
Banned
For many below 1080p is unacceptable now.
FairXchange
Member
If a game isn't 1080p I can immediately tell, and it takes along time for my eyes to adjust to the lower detailed image.
CouchMaster
Member
Yes he did, but apparently its easier to tell the difference between 640p and 720p both upscaled to 1080p, compared to say 900p and 1080p where one is actually native res.
Velurian
Member
Funny how during last gen pc folk were considered freaks for talking about 1080p 60 fps.
Then ps4 happaned and all of the sudden 1080p became A THING.
Maybe oneday we'll even see 60 fps as a standard. That would be the day.
Not yeah, sitting a few m from the screen helps but running stuff @ native resolution still makes a difference...
Then ps4 happaned and all of the sudden 1080p became A THING.
Maybe oneday we'll even see 60 fps as a standard. That would be the day.
Not yeah, sitting a few m from the screen helps but running stuff @ native resolution still makes a difference...
Well that's just silly.
Most of the time, the loss of clarity is enough to offset good visuals like that because your already loosing so much of the image to upscaling. I could barely enjoy the better graphics of Resistance 3 because the IQ was so damn blurry. I think that was like 900x500 something, we're talking PS3 Blops level framebuffer, PSVITA level res.
That's before we get into whether or not a decrease in res on that level would actually make graphics better to any significant degree, considering there is still a limit to GPU power and framerates are not really affected by res unless you are already GPU limited.
Can Crusher
Banned
I think it's funny that some people are saying this guy didn't write the article to defend the Xbox One, when in fact the only reason why this article exists is because of a poll that says PS4 managing better resolution is a major factor over the Xbox One. (Which it doesn't say, but clearly it's how the guy perceived it)
So really anybody thinking this shit ain't about PS4 vs Xbox should really try harder.
What follows are 2000 words dedicated to defending the notion that Xbox One doesn't offer a noticeably lesser image quality experience, and how other factors are more important. Finishing off with a rather cute remark about how maybe fun is what matters.
The best part about this shit show is how "processing power" being higher on Xbox One than on Ps4 got no attention by DF. Which to be fair makes sense because:
Doesn't read like:
So I wonder why only one bit got such a knee jerk reaction out of the fanboy who wrote the article.
So really anybody thinking this shit ain't about PS4 vs Xbox should really try harder.
What follows are 2000 words dedicated to defending the notion that Xbox One doesn't offer a noticeably lesser image quality experience, and how other factors are more important. Finishing off with a rather cute remark about how maybe fun is what matters.
The best part about this shit show is how "processing power" being higher on Xbox One than on Ps4 got no attention by DF. Which to be fair makes sense because:
Doesn't read like:
So I wonder why only one bit got such a knee jerk reaction out of the fanboy who wrote the article.
Cornbread78
Member
Sure, but if both consoles cost 400$ would you choose the console that generally displays games better or the one that doesn't?
I use my consoles almost only for gaming, mostly SP games. I don't really care about either brand so i choose the console that plays most games better than the other, just like i did last gen with the 360.
He wrote the article because of the Nielson study results that showed that the number one reason people chose the PS4 was resolution advantage. He wasn't writing the article just to explain why an XBO game might try for 900p instead of 1080p on their exclusive title for better performance. He was trying to downplay consumer reasoning about choosing PS4 for resolution advantage. He wants people to not consider resolution differences in Multiplatform titles when choosing a console to buy because post processing and scaling makes the consumer reasoning to go with PS4 largely irrelevant.
HORRORSHØW
Member
but but but...
I didn't even think about that being the reason for the article. I just thought it was an out of place criticism on resolution, but that connection to the Nielson study does make sense. I wonder why i didn't think about that...
I think it's important to note that the average person didn't even notice or care last gen. The average day to day person didn't buy a 360 because it ran multiplats better than the ps3. I'm sure a small margin did buy the 360 for that. We didn't see huge win by the 360 because it ran 90 percent of games better than the ps3. I'm also sure loads of people on here still bought ps3's because they preferred that consoles games over the 360. So isn't this basically proving that resolution didn't matter last gen but for some reason it dies this gen? It's been spearheaded to be the number 1 reason to own a Ps4. That's shocking to me. I bet the 360 wouldn't have won that poll llst gen due to resolution. Cost etc might have been a reason. I just don't get it this gen. It's crazy
Or am I missing something and this forum deffo was completely 360 orientated last gen. I don't think I was really posting back then
Or am I missing something and this forum deffo was completely 360 orientated last gen. I don't think I was really posting back then
He mentions the Nielson study in the article's intro. He's framed his whole article towards those study results and why people shouldn't choose PS4 for resolution advantage.
It really depends on what they focus on, but anything with a focus on detail would look awful.
Try watching a YouTube video of a good looking game at 480p and then watch the same video at 1080p, even with awful video compression you'll notice an immense difference in detail is visible.
I owned both systems last gen. Oblivion ran like crap and it seemed like every third party game was running worse on PS3. PS3 was only my bluray player and stayed that way while 360 was my gaming machine. You're wrong if you think people didn't care about the graphics and performance advantage the 360 enjoyed last gen.
Revolutionary
Member
I can't believe this is even a question. 1080 on a native 1080 screen makes a huge difference.
I don't really get it was the Nielsen survey about why you bought a certain console or what makes the console you bought better than the other ones? I thought it was the former?
I don't think Richard needs to get so riled up just because PlayStation owners chose resolution as something they like. It's not a slight on anyone or anything else, i don't think that's the point of the survey.
Markitron
Is currently staging a hunger strike outside Gearbox HQ while trying to hate them to death
I'm not suggesting for a second that either Infamous or The Order were particularly special, my point is that they singled out those two games out of every other release on the PS4 and XB1. It's a little odd.
As far as the quote goes, they didn't go out of their way to put an article up on the site to say this about Ryse. What they said is absolutely true but they didn't single it out like the other two games.
For what it's worth I bought and enjoyed all 3 of those games, Ryse and The Order are the game equivalents of Transformer movies to me. Not too deep but enjoyable enough.
Basically. "I saw y'all are buying the Ps4 because of its resolution advantage, but let me tell you why it doesn't matter, what reason could I have to do this!?"
I think it's rather unfortunate that people don't try to extract the value that is there in the articles but just straight jump to who has written it.
Not that I don't think he rightfully earned this reputation. I think he has written blatant PR and has mislead his readership in the past.
I just thought the discussion about the quality of the pixels that make up a frame vs. the amount of pixels in a frame is an interesting thing to talk about.
I'm not defending this guy coz he sounds a bit off with his opinions if he truelly made out that small advantages for the 360 were huge last gen, and bigger differences are minor thus gen. If he is biased then that sucks.
I would say he's right to make the argument that people shouldn't buy a console because it has a resolution advantage over another. Tho.
I'm sure it mattered to a small margin, worldwide tho I am sure the average person just picks up call of duty and fifa on launch day and plays it on what they own
Broder Salsa
Banned
The human eye can't see over 900p anyway unless you got a 50 inch tv, and there's a reason movies are 24fps, it looks better
This was his opening paragraph:
"This one took us by surprise. A study undertaken by US pollmeisters Nielsen revealed this week that "better resolution" is the top reason people bought PlayStation 4 over its competition. It's a remarkable, perhaps even unbelievable result, and one we wanted to dig into more deeply, so we contacted the director of Nielsen Games, Nicole Pike, asking about the size and make-up of the sample and how respondents were directed into giving their answers."
He was taken by surprise that people chose better resolution as a reason to buy PS4. And that it was a remarkable and unbelievable result. He then spends the entire article highlighting reasons why we shouldn't choose PS4 due to resolution advantage. He was so baffled that he had to question Nielson about their sample size and methods. Reads like total denial and that consumers weren't listening to his downplaying earlier in the gen.
Boom. Thread over
I want to reiterate what I said on page 1...
I'm operating under an assumption that the majority of HDTVs used for game consoles are not native 720p. The majority now are probably 1080p and have been for a while now but, prior to that, they were likely 1366x768 (or similar). 720p displays are a rare breed limited almost exclusively to earlier DLP rear projection sets. For all intents and purposes, they don't really exist and I'd argue that less than 1% of HDTVs in use throughout the world are actually native 1280x720.
So, in the majority of cases, people will be viewing games with double scaling. I feel that scaling resolutions like 576p and 600p to 1080p look dramatically worse than scaling 720p to 1080p.
The numbers of pixels present in the signal versus the number in the display is what is important here.
There's obviously no way to account for every situation but I do believe, in general, the difference between 900p and 1080p is less significant than sub-720p resolution games compared to those rendering at 720p due, mostly, to the types of displays people are using.
Now, if you were to perform this same comparison using a native 1280x720 32" display versus a 50" 1080p display things would be different. A 600p game on that 720p display would likely appear rather similar in a lot of ways to a 900p game on a 1080p display if those sizes were used and the viewing distances matched up. That's not a realistic scenario, though.
I also think times have simply changed which is why one can discuss that resolution is less important NOW than it was in the past. This is actually a key point that people are missing when they say "BUT WHY WAS RESOLUTION A BIG DEAL IN THE PAST BUT NOT NOW BIASSSSS?!?" - anti-aliasing techniques have improved dramatically. The type of AA used in last generation games was often rather poor and post-process AA didn't really even make an appearance until halfway through. Combining modern AA techniques with higher number of pixels does reduce the impact of running at a non-native resolution.
Another thing to consider - those PS3 ports that were often bitched about didn't JUST run at lower resolutions they often also ran at lower frame-rates and featured other compromises. Since I dislike buying games on Microsoft platforms for the most part I was pretty much forced to abandon buying console games (outside of exclusives) during the second half of last gen as PS3 iterations just couldn't cut it. There's a point where my console library just stops and switches to the PC entirely as a result. I still think exclusive games did some amazing stuff on PS3, though, but ports were often pretty bad.
Now, for my own tastes, I actually don't really MIND lower resolutions provided I can choose the scaling method. With the XRGB I always tend to use the 2:1 pixel mode for 480i/480p content with nearest neighbor filtering. This produces a centered 1280x960 image with sharp pixels. 240p looks fantastic as well when scaled properly. When scaled IMPROPERLY, however, with lots of filtering 240p and 480p look absolutely atrocious on modern displays.
I hope not too many people feel that way. I've been trying my goddamned best to put out good stuff. I'm no master of this by any means but I want to present interesting findings for people and I do it without letting bias enter into the equation. I dislike what Microsoft has wrought on the industry but I don't let that personal distaste influence the results.
What critics consider good/bad and what consumers want to watch can be very different things.
staticneuron
Member
When reading it things stick out like a sore thumb.
Really? It is surprising and unbelievable result? If at the start of the gen there weren't talks about resolution doesn't matter, one would think that people expected this type of result hence this talk started at the start of the gen.
and at the end
So yes, DF..... is hoping that the next report has "experience" not resolution (quantifiable metric) as a motivating factor and the quick throw in about "fun".
The article is cringe worthy.
You just had to beat me to the punch didn't you? Might as well have this pointed out often because of how silly this article seems.
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