Future 4k gaming

[moonbogg]

OK, here is the biggest point of 4K gaming for me. It has less to do with realism and more to do with fidelity and level of detail. Do you realize that we will be playing sand box games, like Far Cry 5 or something, and we will be able to see ants crawling around on logs? We will be able to see insects on flowers and watch them fly away as we disturb the bushes. With a large screen, like 30" or something, at 4k or similar res, the level of detail will create a whole new kind of immersion, regardless of "realism" or photorealism or whatever. Its about image quality, fidelity, level of detail, aliasing etc. These things get better with higher pixel density and resolution.

 

[reallyscrued]

OK, here is the biggest point of 4K gaming for me. It has less to do with realism and more to do with fidelity and level of detail. Do you realize that we will be playing sand box games, like Far Cry 5 or something, and we will be able to see ants crawling around on logs? We will be able to see insects on flowers and watch them fly away as we disturb the bushes. With a large screen, like 30" or something, at 4k or similar res, the level of detail will create a whole new kind of immersion, regardless of "realism" or photorealism or whatever. Its about image quality, fidelity, level of detail, aliasing etc. These things get better with higher pixel density and resolution.

I'm 100% positive you're intentionally obtuse now.

Dude, higher resolutions won't enable you to see more detail like 'ants crawling on logs.' You know what would? If the game was designed to show ants on logs. That's it. It has 0 to do with resolution. If Crysis right now was programmed with ants on logs, you'd see them at 1080p. That's why we want higher polygon ceilings, to render those ants and whatever other little details they can stuff in there once we can show more raw detail (polygons and vertices a second).

 

[destrekor]

I'm 100% positive you're intentionally obtuse now.

Dude, higher resolutions won't enable you to see more detail like 'ants crawling on logs.' You know what would? If the game was designed to show ants on logs. That's it. It has 0 to do with resolution. If Crysis right now was programmed with ants on logs, you'd see them at 1080p. That's why we want higher polygon ceilings, to render those ants and whatever other little details they can stuff in there once we can show more raw detail (polygons and vertices a second).

Bugs that are but a few mere pixels when represented a few virtual feet from your point of view, is not really "seeing them at 1080p."

There have been such instances already.


Yes, while a resolution like 4K won't automatically mean more impressive imagery, it does provide the ability to display higher detail, and aliasing alone would be incredibly minimal (since the edges of anything would be single pixels, and single pixel borders would be difficult to truly discern the sharp-angled contrast at that pixel density).

We most certainly need higher polygon/vertex budgets, and in general an improved art direction all around, but the fact is the higher resolution most certainly makes it more feasible to appreciate the finer details. But yes, we'll need more details to even be able to appreciate said details.

 

[reallyscrued]

Yes, while a resolution like 4K won't automatically mean more impressive imagery, it does provide the ability to display higher detail, and aliasing alone would be incredibly minimal (since the edges of anything would be single pixels, and single pixel borders would be difficult to truly discern the sharp-angled contrast at that pixel density).

I think everyone is underestimating the need for AA. Aliasing will happen at any pixel density and any resolution, SOME form of smoothing has to be applied no matter what to make 3D graphics look unblocky and combat rigid stair stepping of pixels when a diagonal needs to be drawn. It's just the nature of the beast during rasterization.

I would love a 4k television, but to say it will revolutionize gaming fidelity is a fantasy. All it will do is ensure you can stretch your image out to 50+ inches without it looking like a blurry mess.

 

[destrekor]

I think everyone is underestimating the need for AA. Aliasing will happen at any pixel density and any resolution, SOME form of smoothing has to be applied no matter what to make 3D graphics look unblocky and combat rigid stair stepping of pixels when a diagonal needs to be drawn. It's just the nature of the beast during rasterization.

I would love a 4k television, but to say it will revolutionize gaming fidelity is a fantasy. All it will do is ensure you can stretch your image out to 50+ inches without it looking like a blurry mess.

If you refer to my previous argument regarding AA, you'll note my prophetic statement merely applies to resource-intensive AA types, like MSAA and the like.

With the improvements to post-process AA, all that 4K (remember, PC desktop: typically sub-30") monitors will need is the lightest touch of a post-process AA filter.

I think you underestimate the fine details of 4K resolution on a sub-30" monitor. The pixel density is so great that the fine-matrix pattern will surely be essentially invisible. There might be the most barely-discernible stair-stepping impressions on fish-mesh lines. Most users will likely be comfortable running without any AA whatsoever, but for the rest a completely [seemingly] resource-free AA filter will take care of the rest.

 

[kache]

(4096x2160x120x3x12)/(1024x3)=~36GB/s

Need to double check, but I think 2 Displayport can drive this.

EDIT:


Yep, can.

I am disappointed: nobody noticed the 2 huge errors I've made here... :|

 

[Cerb]

I think everyone is underestimating the need for AA. Aliasing will happen at any pixel density and any resolution, SOME form of smoothing has to be applied no matter what to make 3D graphics look unblocky and combat rigid stair stepping of pixels when a diagonal needs to be drawn. It's just the nature of the beast during rasterization.

However, for any given game, it's typically a small coefficient loss. IE, it may be 10% for one game, 20% for another, 30% for another, etc., but generally not much more than that--little enough that you can get a slightly higher tier video card and move on.

Also, there is work going into improving AA, in hardware only, in software only, and tying the two together. We'd need such high DPI for computer monitors to not benefit from AA, and AA is awfully economical in performance terms, so it's going to be here for many years to come, and generally improve.

 

[reallyscrued]

I am disappointed: nobody noticed the 2 huge errors I've made here... :|

Didn't calculate it myself but it didn't seem unfeasible once I searched for it.

Displayport got some extreme bandwidth.

http://techreport.com/news/18328/displayport-1-2-spec-doubles-bandwidth-adds-features

 

[Karsten]

I have a 30" Monitor from Dell at 2560x1600 and when I first had it it was sometimes hard to get games working with reasonable frame rates in that res even with the SLI rig I had. Now a single card does just fine. However people sometimes underestimate the exponential higher requirements when doubling the resolution. And as shown the models can be made look much better with the res most people have, but the tax on the GPU and CPU becomes unmanageable. That is why many devs choose to lower the bar and one of the reasons some people think that Console gaming is holding back PC gaming because of lowering the bar even further.

 

[cmdrdredd]

So display port 1.2 has higher bandwidth capabilities for video than a thunderbolt port would? Specs from thunderbolt say 10Gb/s with display port 1.1 protocol.

If so that is pretty nice.