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CRIMSON-XIII

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,173
Chicago, IL
i have had my oled 4k since November 2017 and I am starting to see ever so slight color banding on white moments during games.


big oooof. Oh well, KH3 and AC Odyssey and some other games look amazing on it.
 

RedHeat

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,681
Question OP, are you saying games haven't catched up in terms of textures, rendering, etc., to take advantage of 4k?
 

Deleted member 2474

Account closed at user request
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
4,318
I couldn't disagree more. We're reaching the point where game visuals have so much going on that at 1080p you just get one of two things: Terrible aliasing or tons of blur from aggressive modern anti-aliasing techniques (Especially TAA).

Without higher resolutions, like 4k, we will never be able to make significant progress towards photo realism because our eyes and mind are way too sensitive the the jagged edges and flickering caused by aliasing at these lower resolutions.

Modern AAA games have so much of this going on that their visuals almost never feel "clean" any more. The only time we get close to that clean visual feeling is when they're running at or near native 4k.

Yep. Higher resolutions are mandatory to solve the aliasing problem. All the post-processing techniques that have been developed (FXAA, TSAA, etc.) basically just smear the image, because there's no other way to fake AA when you've just got a 1080p output to work with. Getting rid of jaggies necessitates higher res (see: supersampling, MSAA, etc).
 

Tangyn

Member
Oct 29, 2017
2,280
Millions of people and DigitalFoundry would disagree with you.

If 1080p looks better than 4K to you, consult an eye doctor.

Huh really - I felt the same. It perhaps looked better when it was still but in motion it looked and felt like garbage to me. Blurry and unresponsive.

I did only play in 4k mode for maybe 10 mins as I am allergic to 30. So can't say I looked at it for long
 

h3ro

Member
Oct 28, 2017
633
A middling quality TV set will make sources look bad no matter what resolution the panel is.
 

Pal

Tried to circumvent ban with alt-account
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
634
I totally agree with you, OP. Pushing 4k over new rendering techs / lighting / etc is simply put a huge waste of ressource imo. Considering most are playing 6-8 feets away from their TV, the difference in resolved detailed is rather nice but certainly not a necessity like some of the people that post here would lead you to believe. Soon in the future, the next marketing push will be 8K and this whole debate will start over. This will be fucking hard to notice any difference from a reasonable distance while the average gamer will be older, thus most likely meaning slightly worse vision capacity overall, yet you'll still see people posting and telling you how 8K is such big leap in quality that makes all the difference in the world.

I love my LG B6 OLED and was completely amazed by 4K and HDR the first year I had the TV but after some times, I noticed how it was just a nice clarity bump for the little distant details and nothing more. I'd take 1080p60 any day of the week over 4K, let alone 1440p which is a complete joke.

That's my point of view on the subject, anyway.
 

mutantmagnet

Member
Oct 28, 2017
12,401
OP is saying the age old conumdrum of development. Do devs chase tech or fidelity? The answer has almost always been the latter with each hardware progression. That's because it's easier to detect from anyone. Average consumer does not care about AI simulation or transparent mirror texture tricks, they care if it looks 'good' and we all know what the standard for 'good' graphics are. But I do disagree with OP, it's not a waster of workhours or dev time or rendering resources.
Even you are misreading the OP.

To put it simply lets pretend devs wanted to go all out on ray tracing next gen. Ray tracing at 4k is unfeasible at 4K but way more realistic at 1080p.


The OP still wants better image quality in his games but he wants image quality coming from advanced techniques in shading, lighting and textures. Sacrificing all that to play at higher resolutions means all the games will look no better than last gen games in any other way.
 

dmix90

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,883
So it matters when it's convenient for you? This argument dumb as fuck, 4x the amount of detail is always going to be better.
TATM.gif


It matters to a certain point if you don't enhance game assets(textures, polygon count, lighting etc)

I don't think gif above would have been impressive at all if it was 1440p to 8k or whatever jump unless you zoom way in.
 

DJ Lushious

Enhanced Xperience
Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,330
I understand, but imagine if instead of 4K with increased shadow quality and LOD we got 1440p with added geometry and light sources? Will that break the spell? Of course not! It would enhance it.

That's what I'm arguing for. Simply brute forcing a (very costly) resolution boost isn't worth it over more graphical features that videogame rendering still lack.
If you want to consider that the current state of graphical processing is somehow limiting developers, then, sure, your stance holds water. What we are seeing, however, is developers are able to bring their content to life and still have room for increased resolution and effects on the current mid-gen consoles. We are getting titles with < 2160p resolutions, as well as 2160p titles.

At the end of the day I leave the end results up to the teams that bring video games to life: I am no John Romero, so I defer to the experts and let them make the choices that they feel are correct for their title, given all the information they know and I do not.
 

CozMick

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
1,242
Gotta agree with the OP, anything past 1440p is a waste of performance.

4k/60? nah, give me 1440p/120

4k/120? nope, give me 1440p/240fps
 

Fredrik

Member
Oct 27, 2017
9,003
Millions of people and DigitalFoundry would disagree with you.

If 1080p looks better than 4K to you, consult an eye doctor.
It's not that 1080p looks better than 4K. It's that 30fps looks like crap.
And attempting to counter the stutter by blurring the shit out of the 4K image with motion blur so you don't see the resolution difference anymore is no doubt the dumbest way of wasting system resources I can think of. Great so now it's blurry and it still stutters.
 

gabdeg

Member
Oct 26, 2017
5,954
🐝
Additional geometry and higher res textures need higher screen res to resolve. Detail and resolution go hand in hand. At sub native the impact of better effects will always be diminished.
 

inner-G

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
14,473
PNW
1440p high refresh is where it's at

4K is good on a TV if it's over 55" and you don't sit 12 feet away
 

MysteryM

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,747
My advice would be to go the gamersyde and download some 4k footage of forza 7 running on the X. That game looked incredible especially with the changing weather.
 

daniel77733

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,639
Definitely disagree. I love 4K resolution or as close to it as possible even though I do believe that HDR will be the game changer next generation. Currently playing Detroit Become Human and im not sure of the actual resolution is but holy shit, game looks breathtaking and amazing especially with the facial animations. Lower the resolution and while the game would still look great, it wouldn't feel as realistic or as alive. And I have the Sony X800D 43" 4K HDR TV which is a mid-tier model. I can only imagine how much greater the game would look if I had a high end model.
 

mutantmagnet

Member
Oct 28, 2017
12,401
Question OP, are you saying games haven't catched up in terms of textures, rendering, etc., to take advantage of 4k?
They don't have to catch up. His problem is that they are merely just as good.

He is saying games being forced to improve very little or being stagnant in everything else in order to meet the demands of 4K is dissatisfying.
 

Deleted member 16452

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
7,276
Definitely disagree. And I have the Sony X800D 43" 4K HDR TV which is a mid-tier model. I can only imagine how much greater the game would look if I had a high end model.

Yea a Sony X900F, for example, would blow you away and there's even better TVs than that.

4k is an absolutely necessary jump games need to take imo.

People underwhelmed usually have a budget 4k TV or an IPS monitor/TV or something where they expected much more than what they got.
 

DJ Lushious

Enhanced Xperience
Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,330
Millions of people and DigitalFoundry would disagree with you.
Completely off-topic, but this deification of Digital Foundry on these forums really grates me. Yes, DF does good work, but to only focus on them shortchanges some of the others out there that also do amazing work in analyzing/sharing the updated graphics/features we get on mid-gen console support:

Candyland
VG Tech
Wccftech
 

Fafalada

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,065
I mostly agree with the OP. 4k is a modest improvement* from where best of HD was before it. The delta is a bit more pronounced if you only compare the two on a 4K panel - for obvious reasons, but even there, it's perceptually minor enough not to really stand out.

Fortunately it's usually paired with HDR which for me at least was the real game-changer and does more for the image than resolution has done in the last decade.

*Worth noting here that motion resolution of modern panels is so poor that differences only really come out on non-moving parts of the picture anyway. Except for panels that allow low-persistence (which generally works with 60fps content only in current panels), which is IMO the only way to get 4k games to look noticeably better 'most' of the time.
 

RagdollRhino

Banned
Oct 10, 2018
950
After years of fence sitting I bought a great 65'' Samsung LED 4K HDR panel. My 1080p was too small for my tastes and it was time to go big or go home. And so I did.

After 4 hours of professional calibration it was time to enter the new ave. Movies look drop dead gorgeous, with lots of clarity. Mind you, the effect was nowhere near as revelatory as sdtv->1080p, but it was good enough.

But when time came to plug in my beloved PS4 Pro, I couldn't be more dissapointed, and worse, worried at the implications of the industry sudden affair with 4K.

Simply put it. Games look certainly /clearer/ but they don't look /better/.

And so it dawned on me. I know even the almighty X can't manage to reach native 4K most of the time, and that's with games being targeted at a really weak console (The S). The X meanwhile was a $500 console. And while the added resolution is nice, there is no room to add more graphical effects that put the games closer to real life at all.

What dawned on me is that next gen, with consoles probably targeting native 4K, we're not getting the generational leap we could have had if devs had stayed on 1080p or the much more healthy middle of 1440p. The jump in power previously used to advance lighting, polygons and calculations are now being used to stretch the image with negligible difference in "realism".

And you know what's that? Because real life doesn't need resolution. You can watch a football match on a 240p portable bLack and white TV and it will certainly look more realistic to you than Star Citizen at 16K ever will.

So it is of my opinion that devs should focus more on creating new rendering techniques to advance the content of the images instead of the images instead. But given that is gonna most certainly not gonna be the case, we'll be advancing at turtle speed now with consoles being judged on their ability to reach such a high resolution so that the badly lit rock texture can be a bit noisier.

Before you ask me, I tried every high profile game you can name (GoW, Horizon, Spiderman, SOTC, AC Origins, RDR2, RE7) and it was always the same. HDR /is/ pretty great but it being tied to 4K is a commercial, not technical decision.

So yeah, it's a shame we're losing current and future power and tech advancements to sell TVs instead of advancing as a medium.


Somewhat agree, ps4 pro was a way better investment for psvr though. Worth it.
 

Elven_Star

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,948
OP, this is an enthusiast forum where many people spend thousands of their savings on the latest tech they can get their hands on. Of course a thread like this is going to backfire. For something more objective, check out this video from Linus Tech Tips.
 

Wiped

Banned
Nov 2, 2017
2,096
Should've gone OLED. My friend has a 4K LCD and the difference is startling, and OLED draws out 4K an HDR especially much better
 
Last edited:
Oct 30, 2017
5,495
Agree with OP, my 1080p OLED looks better than anyone's "4K" set I've seen, and my issues with game visuals are not resolution, they're artifacts like uncanny valley human faces and bad LOD pop. More pixels won't fix either of those things.
My 4K OLED looks better than your 1080 OLED :)
Honestly tho, while 1080 content looks stunning on an OlED, 4k looks better by far as well.
HDR ftw
 

Yung Coconut

Member
Oct 31, 2017
4,267
Not sure what tv you purchased, but you'll have to pry my lg b6 oled out of my cold dead hands. 4k and HDR were both obviously huge upgrades to my eyes after putting on my glasses.
 

Rosol

Member
Oct 29, 2017
1,396
I thought for awhile that it didn't matter, Played Ps4 Pro games, didn't see a huge difference - they look better for sure, HDR seemed like a bigger thing. After hooking my PC up to my 4k TV, and going between 1440p and 4k, the difference is immediately noticeable when seeing native 4k. I will admit it's not as easy to notice if you don't switch between the resolutions. The biggest thing I think is It's a huge boost for games with lots of foliage.
 

daniel77733

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,639
Yea a Sony X900F, for example, would blow you away and there's even better TVs than that.

4k is an absolutely necessary jump games need to take imo.

People underwhelmed usually have a budget 4k TV or an IPS monitor/TV or something where they expected much more than what they got.

My TV will be three years old in September since I bought it right after the PS4 Pro was announced but to be perfectly honest, Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, Detroit, AC Origins/Odyssey, Ghost Recon Wildlands, Uncharted Lost Legacy and a few others have blown me away. I will get a high end model but until next gen starts so probably sometime in late 2020 or mid 2021 when that year's models come out.

Even with a mid-tier set like mine, I don't know how anyone could not be impressed as long as you have a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X to go with the TV. I'm hoping next gen allows RGB for HDR instead of YUV and it will be even better.
 

Deleted member 34239

User requested account closure
Banned
Nov 24, 2017
1,154
OP, this is an enthusiast forum where many people spend thousands of their savings on the latest tech they can get their hands on. Of course a thread like this is going to backfire. For something more objective, check out this video from Linus Tech Tips.

Baccus Put this vid in the OP along with the screenshots below. It's a waste of rendering resources that could be better spent on effects, higher framerate, etc. I'd take a checkerboard solution or straight 1440p and (60 fps or better effects) over just 4k.

Tiago Sousa agrees with you btw:
tiagoscorpioe4saz.png

doom1huqbr.png
 

Astra Planeta

Member
Jan 26, 2018
668
is that like saying 60 FPS is a a waste of rendering resources when 30 is fine for almost everyone? (its not 60 FPS is objectively better, and 4K is objectively better than 1080p). Part of OPs problem is probably he using the pro which can only really do 1440p. 4K on the scorpio is pretty good, on a monster PC it is quite the upgrade from 1080p.
 

DJ Lushious

Enhanced Xperience
Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,330
Gotta agree with the OP, anything past 1440p is a waste of performance.

4k/60? nah, give me 1440p/120

4k/120? nope, give me 1440p/240fps
Now you're just being silly.

I laughed. Enjoy that Geek Squad bill.
That is a good point, though. ISF calibration is a standard for film, not video games. No such thing exists in our video game world. At best, we can only strive for color accuracy and a video signal unmolested by a TV's post-processing.

Should've gone OLED. My friend has a 4K LCD and the difference is startling, and it draws out 4K an HDR especially much better
Considering that OLED's nits can't touch a candle (puns!) to the best LCDs', this statement is materially wrong. If you are exclusively talking about the lower end of the luminosity scale, then you'd be better at shining a light (puns!) on OLED's strengths, but high-end full-array LCDs handle that same luminosity almost as well.
 

Elios83

Member
Oct 28, 2017
976
OP you're right based on my own experience.
You can definetly notice 4K over 1080p (especially if you go back to 1080p after getting used to it) but it's nothing major even on a mid-sized screen (55 inches) and people who are not trained won't be able to tell any difference at all. That's why I find the race to 8K that TV manufacturers are starting even more laughable.
But overall 4K+HDR together is a big improvement over vanilla 1080p.
In any case at this point native 4K is the target resolution for next gen games and the hardware will be designed to be able to render at that res without particular issues.
 

Ploid 6.0

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,439
PC gamer here, my old monitor broke and I started shopping for my next display. I realized 4k was way too much for the horsepower that was needed far before this happened, so I figured it would be 1080p or 1440p.

I hope the next consoles won't focus on 4k, such a waste, and games will never hit 60+ fps as a standard with them continuing to up the resolution to sell tvs or something. What next, 8k?

Edit: Also the same week my PC display broke, I got a 4k 55 inch tv for the living room, I haven't even considered trying my PC on it since it's not a 2080 ti and a new unlocked intel or ryzen cpu. I have a ISP that give us monthly caps, so I did test some 4k youtube videos with HDR that most likely are compressed to the moon. Looks neat, but I wish a 1080p tv was bought, I have no idea if normal tvs are sold in 1440p.
 
Last edited:

gabdeg

Member
Oct 26, 2017
5,954
🐝
PC gamer here, my old monitor broke and I started shopping for my next display. I realized 4k was way too much for the horsepower that was needed far before this happened, so I figured it would be 1080p or 1440p.

I hope the next consoles won't focus on 4k, such a waste, and games will never hit 60+ fps as a standard with them continuing to up the resolution to sell tvs or something. What next, 8k?
Yes, 8k is next and it looks great. Even just downscaled on a 4k TV/monitor. It will take a while though before we'll get viable frame rates.
 
Feb 10, 2018
17,534
I disagree.
Certain native 4k games look noticbly better then 4kcb games.

However God of wars implementation combined with its AA method I can live with.

With TV and movies, its not that big of a deal, sure I can see the extra detail with 4k content, it looks great but even 720p on my TV still looks really good and I'm not there thinking ew gross 720p..
 

RivalGT

Member
Dec 13, 2017
6,385
Maybe you need to see what 1080p looks on a 65 inch screen. 4K makes the biggest difference on a bigger screen like the one you got. Also being able to play games at native 4k will make a big difference, VS 1080p or even 1440p.
 

TitanicFall

Member
Nov 12, 2017
8,255
They don't have to catch up. His problem is that they are merely just as good.

He is saying games being forced to improve very little or being stagnant in everything else in order to meet the demands of 4K is dissatisfying.

I'm not sure how we've stagnated. Take Uncharted 3 vs Uncharted 4, Infamous 2 vs Second Son, MGS4 vs MGSV, RE6 vs RE2 Remake. There have been stark improvements beyond resolution. Is there a big difference between Horizon Zero Dawn on PS4 and on PS4 Pro outside of resolution? No, but that should never have been expected. Devs still have to work with a baseline of hardware that was released in 2013.
 

Deleted member 37739

User requested account closure
Banned
Jan 8, 2018
908
Wait a few weeks and then play some games at 1080p. That's the moment when you realize how important is to play at 4K.

I got this effect just with supersampling at 1080p - hadn't noticed at first but going back the image looked noticeably softer.

It's like 720p never looked soft to me during last gen, but now it looks jaggy and soft as hell.
 

space_nut

Member
Oct 28, 2017
3,304
NJ
Uh there's many games not only higher res but also more graphics features on the X. Gears 4 started and wait till Gears 5 ;)
 

TaKeRx

Member
Oct 25, 2017
581
Yea that's a no for me dawg... 4K is night and day difference to me compared to 1080p. Go back to 1080p a month from now and I guarantee you that you retract your current statement.