Image Quality and Framebuffer Speculations for WIP/alpha/beta/E3 games *Read the first post*

Gaf has some screens of both versions of Battlefield 4.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=87929769&postcount=2202

bf4gjcvm.gif


XB1 no AA Vs Ps4 FXAA?
 
There's some oddities in other shots regarding ground texture differences (opposite orientation of textures).
 
Man I'd love to see a blind test of 720p + sharpen filter with 900p without one, have people play both on actual tv's and not just screen grabs and decide blind which they would prefer. I think the results might be really interesting. Black crush is an interesting one as well. Although it might just be a capture error in this case, black crush tends to make things pop and have more contrast to where even though it's wrong sometimes people prefer the look of it. It's like with ambient occlusion where people tend to prefer the look of slightly exaggerated ao even if it's technically wrong.
 
Would this have caused the inverted cloud in the PS4 version?

Dunno. These are two very specific cases not affecting anything else (from what I can tell). They may fix it in retail, but who knows. The missing AO on XO seems like it'll be fixed too.

Even 1280x688 on 360 is a bug, which also caused problems for the post-AA blurring too much at times - maybe a mismatch in 1280x688 framebuffer and post-AA trying to work with 1280x704? It's a very slight misalignment when looking at the more blurred shots on 360. I kinda wonder if there's a similar misalignment with XO being full 1280x720 as the helicopter shot (XO_006 @DF) shows some peculiarities on the bottom edges.
 
Man I'd love to see a blind test of 720p + sharpen filter with 900p without one, have people play both on actual tv's and not just screen grabs and decide blind which they would prefer. I think the results might be really interesting. Black crush is an interesting one as well. Although it might just be a capture error in this case, black crush tends to make things pop and have more contrast to where even though it's wrong sometimes people prefer the look of it. It's like with ambient occlusion where people tend to prefer the look of slightly exaggerated ao even if it's technically wrong.
This comparison video doesn't show black crush, it's certainly odd. Even there are obvious differences in the IQ because of PS4's improved resolution and effects it's also true that for the untrained eye -without knowing the resolutions- the lighting of the Xbox One version pops out a little more, as the journalists say in the video, although not as finesse as on the PS4, perhaps.

http://www.videogamer.com/videos/battlefield_4_how_it_looks_on_ps4_and_xbox_one.html

The question is, are people okay with sacrificing a bit of resolution for a superior pixel quality? I would be happy with that.
 
Someone should release a PS4 versus PC at 900p resolution capture comparison...to find out what the origin of the blur in the PS4 version is.


@Cyan: lol
 
Someone should release a PS4 versus PC at 900p resolution capture comparison...to find out what the origin of the blur in the PS4 version is.


@Cyan: lol

We dont know how they upscale on PS4, so it wouldnt be too accurate.
 
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It looks like the hud on the xb1 accounts for overscan more than the ps4. Is that adjustable by the user? It seems odd they would be different.

PC has HUD placed even closer to the borders of the screen.
As far as I know you can't customise the HUD in BF4.
 
Man I'd love to see a blind test of 720p + sharpen filter with 900p without one, have people play both on actual tv's and not just screen grabs and decide blind which they would prefer. I think the results might be really interesting. Black crush is an interesting one as well. Although it might just be a capture error in this case, black crush tends to make things pop and have more contrast to where even though it's wrong sometimes people prefer the look of it. It's like with ambient occlusion where people tend to prefer the look of slightly exaggerated ao even if it's technically wrong.

I'd also be interested to see the results of that test. People tend to like having details that "pop", but I wonder if the accentuated aliasing would kill it for them.

Lately most games (including BF3 and BF4, to my knowledge) have consciously moved towards using tone mapping/color correction curves with a toe in it in order to boost contrast and saturation. It's actually a pretty big difference if you compare to the earlier games from this generation that used Reinhard curves, which do a good job of preserving detail but produce a fairly washed-out look. The black crush in those BF4 images go too far through IMO, it's totally killing all of the detail in the darks and causing some really weird skin tones. Hopefully it's just a capture glitch.
 

Ah, sounds like it may be an xb1 os/firmware bug, or some aspect of the system that still isn't complete. I don't really agree with this comment from that link though:

Um, you don't make a game look better by crushing subtle detail. The lowering of dynamic range like this physically can't make a game look better - it can only look worse.

You can in some cases make it look better by crushing detail, with "better" being defined as will the user prefer it. Color graders for tv shows and more so movies do it all the time to various degrees. Same thing with sharpen filters, movies also do that in various degrees. The key in all cases is to use it sparingly, and to not judge with screen grabs which I've always argued is kinda worthless for games, but to see said games in motion on a proper tv and then compare.


but I wonder if the accentuated aliasing would kill it for them.

Yeah I'd love to know that as well to determine what carries more weight with typical users, contrast or aliasing.
 
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The people that prefer black crush and overblown whites are probably the same people who use Vivid/Dynamic/Store/Torch mode on their TVs (it's essentially the same thing). And the people who like the sharpen filter are probably the same people who have their TV's sharpness setting set to 100 with Edge-enhancement on. I calibrate displays and I will take proper black/white levels, gamma WITHOUT any sharpening any day. Sharpening adds to much ringing and aliasing... it looks terrible IMO. You could make the PS4 version look like the X1 version with the picture controls.
 
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