[mrcorbo]

Originally Posted by joker454

I dunno I can't see that being the case, if you can spot one then you can spot the other. In other words if you can't spot an upscale blur then I'd wager you probably can't spot the improvement from 4k resolution anyways so why bother. Likewise if you can see improvement from 4k resolution then I'd also wager that you will notice upscale degradation on 1080p content.

That is exactly my point, actually. And as Shifty said, scaling 1080p to 4k should just be a matter of representing each 1080p source pixel as four 4k display pixels. However....

Originally Posted by joker454

In theory that could be true but we don't know what kind of image mangling (or "improvements" in marketing speak) they will do to the image. I agree that upscale can be done very well like how the PS3 upscales dvd's, but the history of tv upscaler quality does not fill me with confidence as they are typically somewhere between bad and appalling.

Overzealous image "enhancement" is a real concern, but then it's just a matter of being picky about your purchasing choice. If I can't turn those enhancements off, I won't buy the set. With my HTPC, I take the scaling out of the display (and even my video card's) hands and do it in software via the madVR renderer. This allows me control over the algorithms being used to scale and I can make the sharpening vs. artifacting tradeoff according to my tastes.

[Simon F]

Never mind home 4K res displays....

.... I want to connect a computer game up to the London {O|Para}lympic stadium seat lighting!

(Great closing ceremony last night, BYW)

[-tkf-]

Okay then, i had the pleasure of watching the new Sony 4K Bravia in action today, it was showing a 50MBIT satellite stream based on F65 recordings...

I am used to sitting very close to a 110 inch projected image, which by all accounts does give me a cinema like experience at home.

Screw that, this was a almost a window to where ever the recordings was from, you can place you seat so close to this screen that if you have old eyes you might need to put on your reading glasses..

I have seen the future and it's 4K, so, sure, we wont see 4K games, or rather they will be limited to certain genres, but whoa, they will look good, and the added bonus of a 4K blu-ray would be very welcome.

As a sidenote, there were a lot of HEVC realtime demos running around the stands, including 4K demos with everything from 12Mbit to 4Mbit. The screens were a bit to small to really judge them (classic trick) but it looked promising, the picture only suffered mild softness.

[mrcorbo]

Originally Posted by -tkf-

Okay then, i had the pleasure of watching the new Sony 4K Bravia in action today, it was showing a 50MBIT satellite stream based on F65 recordings...

I am used to sitting very close to a 110 inch projected image, which by all accounts does give me a cinema like experience at home.

Screw that, this was a almost a window to where ever the recordings was from, you can place you seat so close to this screen that if you have old eyes you might need to put on your reading glasses..

I have seen the future and it's 4K, so, sure, we wont see 4K games, or rather they will be limited to certain genres, but whoa, they will look good, and the added bonus of a 4K blu-ray would be very welcome.

As a sidenote, there were a lot of HEVC realtime demos running around the stands, including 4K demos with everything from 12Mbit to 4Mbit. The screens were a bit to small to really judge them (classic trick) but it looked promising, the picture only suffered mild softness.

OK, I admit it. I'm a bit jealous. Sounds like a good day.

Still, at this point 4K is something the industry wants to sell me more than something I actually care about. Give me better contrast, better color reproduction and lower input latency (for gaming) so we can render our current content in the maximum possible fidelity. THEN talk to me about the benefits of 4K.

[tuna]

Originally Posted by mrcorbo

OK, I admit it. I'm a bit jealous. Sounds like a good day.

Still, at this point 4K is something the industry wants to sell me more than something I actually care about. Give me better contrast, better color reproduction and lower input latency (for gaming) so we can render our current content in the maximum possible fidelity. THEN talk to me about the benefits of 4K.

It is not like those things are mutually exclusive. Also, are not the things you mentioned available today?

[mrcorbo]

Originally Posted by tuna

It is not like those things are mutually exclusive. Also, are not the things you mentioned available today?

They don't have to be, but if I were to replace any of my existing TVs with 4k TVs it would be because those TVs offered those other improvements, not because of 4k. That is unless along with 4k they also start pumping out big (like 65"+) panels at cheaper price points, which, from the perspective of the manufacturers would be counterproductive.

And as far as those things being available today? Not to the degree that I would like. I'm really pulling for OLED, but I'm concerned with the problems they seem to be having bringing the tech to market. If I were to replace my 1080p plasma, it would be for an OLED.

I also would really like to see the industry standardize a protocol for a source device to request a "minimal processing path" from downstream devices for dealing with latency-critical media (pretty much games, I guess). This would be automatic and transparent to the user (no more fiddling with "game modes" or using special inputs). THAT would sell me a new TV, receiver, etc.

[tuna]

Originally Posted by mrcorbo

I also would really like to see the industry standardize a protocol for a source device to request a "minimal processing path" from downstream devices for dealing with latency-critical media (pretty much games, I guess). This would be automatic and transparent to the user (no more fiddling with "game modes" or using special inputs). THAT would sell me a new TV, receiver, etc.

This would be really nice! Sony should work on this!

[Babel-17]

http://www.timescapes.org/4k/default.aspx

What does it look like?

Click the images to your right (warning - large files!)
If it's not filling the whole screen many times, your browser might be reducing it to fit. Try to select View > Actual Size - or on a phone, just keep zooming in.
What is TimeScapes?

TimeScapes is the debut film from Tom Lowe, an award winning photographer who is renowned for his astro-photography and time-lapse photography. Watch the trailers, read the story.
How do I watch TimeScapes in 4K?

You can like our facebook and if we come to a theatre near you, we'll let you know.
If you want to watch at home, Sony and other manufacturers have released 4K home projectors, and every major TV manufacturer is about to release a 4K television. If you have a 4K home theatre, and specialist equipment for your computer (such as RAID hard drives and 4K video cards), you can buy TimeScapes 4K here.

Well, it's nice to see both hardware and content coming along.

[wco81]

The TV manufacturers want 4K but the key is whether the content owners want to release 4K at this time.

Supposedly, for Blu-Ray, a lot of film masters were scanned in at 4K resolution. Also, presumably those filmmakers who chose to use digital instead of film in recent years had access to 4k tool chain?

If Blu-Ray sales are still increasing, if at a very slow rate but still increasing, the studios may not be in a hurry to release 4K content.

OTOH, 4K content may justify the continuance of packaged media business at a time when everyone is pushing for online distribution.

[-tkf-]

Originally Posted by wco81

The TV manufacturers want 4K but the key is whether the content owners want to release 4K at this time.

Supposedly, for Blu-Ray, a lot of film masters were scanned in at 4K resolution. Also, presumably those filmmakers who chose to use digital instead of film in recent years had access to 4k tool chain?

If Blu-Ray sales are still increasing, if at a very slow rate but still increasing, the studios may not be in a hurry to release 4K content.

OTOH, 4K content may justify the continuance of packaged media business at a time when everyone is pushing for online distribution.

From what i see around these parts, Blu-Ray disc prices are slowly but surely coming under pressure, and prices are dropping (slowly). If the industry gets a chance to produce new "highend" discs and earn some extra money they will do it.

But i think that 4K will become yet another Checkmark on the streaming services, the HEVC demos i saw at IBC were (as i mentioned) done in 4K, it was like a giant Deja-Vu from when VC-1 and AVC was all over the place, just another codec and with HD being the new SD

[user542745831]

Originally Posted by onQ

Well..., especially see the highlighted (bolded/underlined) parts in the following quote:

Originally Posted by unrealengine.com/files/misc/The_Technology_Behind_the_Elemental_Demo_16x9_(2). pdf

http://www.unrealengine.com/files/mi...o_16x9_(2).pdf

Elemental demo

• GDC 2012 demo behind closed doors
• Demonstrate and drive development of Unreal® Engine 4
• NVIDIA® Kepler GK104 (GTX 680)
• Direct3D® 11
• No preprocessing
• Real-time
  • 30 fps
  • FXAA
  • 1080p at 90%

[MarkoIt]

Ultrahigh resolution will be needed for bigger display. I think in the future we will have bigger screen. The average screen size has grown a lot in the past 2 decades and i think it will still grow more for achieving the ultimate movie experience. Also, OLED should resolve most of the picture quality problems of plasma and lcd. The improvements on image quality on each generation may be so little thats producers will need new features for pushing the display in the market. Bigger screen for less money seems a good way to do it.

[Sigfried1977]

Originally Posted by wco81

Supposedly, for Blu-Ray, a lot of film masters were scanned in at 4K resolution. Also, presumably those filmmakers who chose to use digital instead of film in recent years had access to 4k tool chain?

The thing is that a 4K scan doesn't necessarily mean you get a full 4K resolution worth of detail. There are plenty of Blu Rays out there - even recent ones - which you could downscale to 720p and no-one would know the difference. The detail simply wasn't there in the first place.
It's probably a nice thing for documentaries which mostly use slow camera movements, but throw in a bit of action, color-grade the shit out of it and maybe even use a bleach-bypass process and all that excess resolution becomes pointless.

I agree fully with mrcorbo: there are more pressing issues with current panel technology left to solve than a resolution "deficit".

[-tkf-]

Originally Posted by Sigfried1977

The thing is that a 4K scan doesn't necessarily mean you get a full 4K resolution worth of detail. There are plenty of Blu Rays out there - even recent ones - which you could downscale to 720p and no-one would know the difference. The detail simply wasn't there in the first place.
It's probably a nice thing for documentaries which mostly use slow camera movements, but throw in a bit of action, color-grade the shit out of it and maybe even use a bleach-bypass process and all that excess resolution becomes pointless.

I agree fully with mrcorbo: there are more pressing issues with current panel technology left to solve than a resolution "deficit".

True..
The footage i saw was shot with a F65 http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/show-hi...hend-F65.shtml Which by all means is meant to be a Hollywood Camera. And it's not every movie and every scene that is color graded to hell and back, those that keeps it within limits should not hurt the 4K resolution.

But it's pretty obvious that as resolution improves, the demands on the original source rises. And that will thin out the real killers at 4K, especially older catalog titles. But new films should benefit and will benefit with the onslaught of new Cameras that just keeps on coming and improving.

[Shifty Geezer]

DOF means parts of the content are blurred, although whatever you're focussed at should be in focus. Any movement of the subject will introduce blur larger than a 4k pixel. Any motion of the camera will introduce blur larger than a 4k pixel. So short of static photos, 4k 's benefits should be very limited. That's why lots of folk can't tell the difference between 720p and 1080p movies - the actual difference on screen is very little. Of course for games it could be different with perfect pixels, except by the time 4k becomes commonplace I'm sure devs will be implementing photography effects like DOF and motion blur pretty universally.

[-tkf-]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

DOF means parts of the content are blurred, although whatever you're focussed at should be in focus. Any movement of the subject will introduce blur larger than a 4k pixel. Any motion of the camera will introduce blur larger than a 4k pixel. So short of static photos, 4k 's benefits should be very limited. That's why lots of folk can't tell the difference between 720p and 1080p movies - the actual difference on screen is very little. Of course for games it could be different with perfect pixels, except by the time 4k becomes commonplace I'm sure devs will be implementing photography effects like DOF and motion blur pretty universally.

No, the benefit should be there, as long as the screen is big enough and able to actually display 4k

It's obvious that Jason Bourne movies will benefit less but not every movie has actions scenes all the time, and even action movies do shots where it could be like "looking" through a window.

4k is very common when shooting commercials the difference is clearly to be seen in post

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by -tkf-

No, the benefit should be there, as long as the screen is big enough and able to actually display 4k.

You may be right, but I'd need to see good numbers to convince me. A handheld camera is going to be moving ever so slightly. 4k pixels are so dense that you'd surely be moving as much as a couple of pixels around in a stationary shot, meaning a small degree of blur equivalent to a 1080p sample. Any amount of motion blur such as leaves moving in the wind will also apply, and any camera motion with pans and tilts will be blurring significantly. The opportunities for resolving a scene to something like 0.0125 degrees (1/4000th of a 50 degree FOV) can't be that numerous. It works in nature programs staring at static rocks and the ground and stuff with creatures posing, but a lot of human interest is going to be dynamic and framed artistically.

I saw the latest Batman film on a cinema in Sony 4k, and I never noticed the difference TBH. The screen was still a big blur like usual at the cinema. I'll even say that I bet viewers would consider 1080p50/48 movies as clearer and better quality over 4k 24 fps movies.

[Silent_Buddha]

4k resolution will "potentially" be great for still shots, assuming the detail is preserved. In motion, however, with movie blur and other types of processing, the effect will be far more muted. Take a 1080p souce and pause a heavy action scene in a movie. Notice how much detail is lost. 4k will do nothing to improve on something like that.

For slow moving documentaries, however, it could be potentially amazing...assuming you sit inches from your TV screen. At typical TV viewing distances, most - if not all, people are unlikely to be able to note the differences.

Myself, I'm not at all interested in 4k for TV. I already have a tough time telling the difference between 720p and 1080p on a 55" HDTV from 3-4 meters away. 4k isn't going to improve on that.

I'm interested in 4k for computing. But don't expect 4k gaming to be achievable for the vast majority of people (using integrated, budget, or midrange video cards) for years after 4k actually becomes available.

Hell, thanks to cell phones, we have more games being released now at 1024x768 on the PC than we have had in over a decade.

Regards,
SB

[user542745831]

Question:

If a game would manage to render at 3840x2160@30fps with a given configuration, would that automatically mean that it could manage to render at 1920x1080@120fps just as well with the same configuration?

[Silent_Buddha]

Originally Posted by user542745831

Question:

If a game would manage to render at 3840x2160@30fps with a given configuration, would that automatically mean that it could manage to render at 1920x1080@120fps just as well with the same configuration?

Depends on the game.

Just go and look at the scaling of some games on PC.

Things like heavy physics, for example, won't become easier with a lower resolution. So the short answer is no. It's going to vary by game as to how much or how little performance scales with resolution.

On the flip side. As resolution increases it puts a ceiling on how well something can perform. So, for example, something could potentially scale quite well going from 720p to 1080p but then fall off a cliff before hitting 1440p (2560x1440) or 1600p (2560x1600). This are definitely going to fall off quite quickly for anything that isn't an enthusiast class video card (400 USD and up). With 4k potentially requiring 2 of those enthusiast cards for fluid gameplay (800+ USD) depending on the game.

Consoles aren't coming anywhere near that for a while. Not if they plan on releasing them for 400 USD or less.

Regards,
SB

[user542745831]

Originally Posted by Silent_Buddha

Consoles aren't coming anywhere near that for a while.

Never mind, the question was more like: "Would you really want a game to render at 3840x2160 with only 30 fps for example, if it could instead render at 1920x1080 but with 60 fps for example and maybe even enhanced visuals on top?" .

[Davros]

depends, I play at 5292x1050 if the game works ok at that res and can keep a decent framerate then its preferable. It's totally a personal preference thing depending on the framerate and what if any eyecandy you have to give up

[Silent_Buddha]

Originally Posted by user542745831

Never mind, the question was more like: "Would you really want a game to render at 3840x2160 with only 30 fps for example, if it could instead render at 1920x1080 but with 60 fps for example and maybe even enhanced visuals on top?" .

Oh, I got you. Yes. I don't mind 30 fps. Or even 24 fps in games. I can even tolerate occasional drops into the teens.

Then again I'm older now and not into competitive FPS play like I was in the past. I don't play in tournaments anymore where there's a cash prize for performing well. So I can relax a bit. Back then everything had to be 60-120 FPS (for FPS and action games). Also, CRT required. No LCD with their inferior response.

I definitely "like" it when it is more fluid (60 fps). But I don't mind sacrificing that for either a cleaner image (4-8x MSAA/SSAA with AF, I can't stand MLAA or FXAA alone) or more graphical bling.

And at least on PC, since I have a 2560x1600 monitor, sacrificing resolution either means a small window (not good) or scaling it up (again, not good). So, I'm not about to reduce that. If I get a 4k monitor (unlikely as I expect prices for 4k monitors to be greater than 4-5 thousand USD for at least the first 4-5 years although it may possibly drop as cheap as 2-3 thousand by year 4 or 5 from first product hitting the streets), I'll end up with the same situation.

Regards,
SB

[user542745831]

Originally Posted by Davros

depends, I play at 5292x1050 if the game works ok at that res and can keep a decent framerate then its preferable.

But that's more like just increasing the FOV though, and not really enhancing the resolution, isn't it ?

You're talking about something like Eyefinity, don't you? Three 1680x1050 displays? That should be 5040x1050 though?

Originally Posted by Davros

It's totally a personal preference thing depending on the framerate and what if any eyecandy you have to give up

But this is not the PC Games forum, it's the Console Forum, isn't it? And on consoles mostly the game developers decide which resolution/framerate/etc. they are going for, don't they ?

Originally Posted by Silent_Buddha

I definitely "like" it when it is more fluid (60 fps). But I don't mind sacrificing that for either a cleaner image (4-8x MSAA/SSAA with AF, I can't stand MLAA or FXAA alone) or more graphical bling.

For consoles though, which probably are getting played on HDTVs mostly, where resolution mostly maxes out at 1920x1080 at the moment, how likely would it be that a console game developer would design a game for "4K"?

Wouldn't he rather choose to go for 1920x1080 with "more graphical bling" () and/or more fluidity instead ?

[Silent_Buddha]

Originally Posted by user542745831

Wouldn't he rather choose to go for 1920x1080 with "more graphical bling" () and/or more fluidity instead ?

For the most part, I'd imagine so. Hence why 4k resolution is going to be irrelevant other than as a checkmark box for this upcoming gen of consoles. Assuming anyone other than Sony even bother to add that as a checkbox. It's mostly useless for any serious gaming for this next generation of consoles and quite possibly useless for the generation after it.

The one caveate is for really simplistic games that rely more on style than graphical IQ. Something like Limbo, for example, would probably be just fine rendered at 4k as its graphics are so simplistic.

Something like Halo, Gears, Killzone, Uncharted, God of War, etc.? Yeah, not going to be happening at 4k on consoles in the next decade probably.

Regards,
SB