Or if you're like me and play on an even smaller screen, the differences between 720p and 1080p are marginal when sitting close.
The technology of Alan Wake *spawn
- Thread starter nightshade
- Start date
Or if you're like me and play on an even smaller screen, the differences between 720p and 1080p are marginal when sitting close.
Do you mean a survey or a poll of the hardware settings? They must be able to gain access to output resolution settings from the system. In fact I expect this is where Epic got their figure when talking about Gears 2' players on SDTVs; we'd just never be privvy to such information.
Yeah, I remember that, but they don't know the actual size of the tv. I brought up it because viewing distance relative to resolution and tv size was brought up. They could ask questions about plasma vs LCD vs projector and all kinds of stuff. How much of that would be useful to devs, I'm not really sure.
It seems obvious to me that low res in Alan Wake will not bother me that much because I play on a small screen. People with huge 50" and larger displays are probably going to be the ones that don't like it.
corduroygt
Banned
It depends on distance and screen size, as long as you're in the blue area, Alan Wake will look the same.
Also looking at the chart you really need to have a large HDTV or sit very close to a smaller TV/monitor to appreciate 1080p, so I think games will still not be 1080p mandatory, but I hope 720p and HDMI will be standard, as in no analog outs. SDTV should die already.
Also looking at the chart you really need to have a large HDTV or sit very close to a smaller TV/monitor to appreciate 1080p, so I think games will still not be 1080p mandatory, but I hope 720p and HDMI will be standard, as in no analog outs. SDTV should die already.
ShadowRunner
Veteran
All of these charts are bassed on movie viewing, and movies have infinate native resolution. This is a totaly different to games where the native resolution is lower or equal to the screen res.
If a movie looks comparable on DVD and BluRay at a certain distance it does not mean a game running at 480p vs 1080p will look the same as eachother at that same distance. There is a ton of misinformation being thrown around here.
EDIT:
Alan wake dev walkthoughs up on GT: http://www.gametrailers.com/game/alan-wake/1608
If a movie looks comparable on DVD and BluRay at a certain distance it does not mean a game running at 480p vs 1080p will look the same as eachother at that same distance. There is a ton of misinformation being thrown around here.
EDIT:
Alan wake dev walkthoughs up on GT: http://www.gametrailers.com/game/alan-wake/1608
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And to add that...movies are far more detailed than anything a current gen game can even remotely pull off. So unless we are talking about "that" level of visuals with a sacrifice in resolution, its not even a fair comparison.
Everything else being equal a 480p and 1080p game viewed from a distance of 15' on a 50" television will be indistinguishable. Eye sight of course comes in to play and that chart is likely based on the average person. Source resolution doesn't matter, a dvd is still only outputting a set amount of pixels.
nightshade said:
That is the point many have tried to make. We are not even comparable to dvd in terms of detail per pixel this gen, so why not use a lower res and make more detailed pixels. Resolution isn't everything.
That's a valid point, but not entirely accurate. Watch an episode of Top Gear and you've a good chance of seeing hideous aliasing around windows from in-car views where the HDR of Real Life destroys the antialiasing methods of photon accumulation on the CCD, whereas a synthetic line-drawing algorithm could produce a much smoother edge.
Certainly aliasing (edge and texture/shader) is going to be more prominent at a given resolution than filmed material, but there is definitely a biological resolving issue, and I believe that chart was drawn up based on the physical properties of the eye and hence is perfectly applicable to considerations of game resolutions and screens.
corduroygt
Banned
Movies don't have infinite resolution when you watch them in a digital format. The negatives are scanned at either 2k or 4k then downsampled. Not to mention digital movie cameras are getting better every day and the cost savings are pushing movie producers and directors to use them more and more.
The chart is based on the average human eye. You are right about the native resolution thing though, so what we can say is that If all else is the same, you won't notice a difference between two games if one is rendered at 1080p and the other is rendered at 1080p but supersampled to 480p if you're far enough away. This is the exact same analogy between DVD and BD.
Although SSAA is very expensive, there are other tricks and AA methods to approximate it close enough that you wouldn't easily be able to tell the difference between 480p SSAA vs. 480p+other AA when 15' away on a regular sized TV.
ShadowRunner
Veteran
It just doesnt fit in with real world experience. According to the graph if i sit 12-13 feet away from my 42" TV i shouldnt be able to see a difference between a game running in 1080p or 480p but i can see a difference plain and clear. Now doing the test with a movie its much harder to see the difference.
This chart is missleading if you apply it to games, its a bad idea to blindly follow graphs and statistics without question when it flies in the face of our own experience. Either that or i have super human vision, in which case cool
Damn, couldn't prevent myself from watching that vid. Gotta stop spoilering the game for myself. It looks really cool. Seems like all of the lighting and shadows are pretty high quality. The shadows all look very detailed and soft. No jaggies by the looks of it. The way the light plays on the fog and the trees is cool. Draw distance looks really good at the dam.
No, this is true only if the renderer is perfectly antialiased.
If not, details which are too small for 480p, but still can be rendered on 1080p (e.g. single-1080p-pixel lines) will shimmer on 480p, but will be averaged out by your eye in 1080p.
You don't need perfect antialiasing, you just need the same number of samples. At 1080p you're rendering five times as many pixels compared to 480p (854x480). If you did 5x supersampling on your 480p output, you'd be hard pressed to see a difference.
Cheers
Yes, of course, you are right.
ShadowRunner
Veteran
Noticed quite a bit of screen tearing but its unclear if thats due to the video or the game. I found jaggies to be pretty bad in the daytime scene, specifically the tables in the diner, to the point that it looked like those edges were getting no AA at all. In the night scenes its a night and day difference, pun intended. In the dark scenes the low contrast really helps hide any jaggies and the overall blurriness isnt an issue in the dark as you are not supposed to be able to see fine detail in the dark anyhow.
Would still like to see a 720p 2xAA version to compare it to and see the actual sacrifices that would have had to have been made to attain this. With it being 540p its easy to assume that its obviosly because the game looks best like that, when in fact reducing the res could have just been the easiest option to get the game out of the door rather than reworking all the other systems to claw back performance. I guess we will never know though. Im just not convinced that it would have to look significantly worse, it doesnt seem to be doing anything too far above and beyond what we have seen from higher res games this gen. At 720p, and indeed even currently, it could well be one of the best looking games this gen but even at 720p i wouldnt say its above and beyond its peers imo.
Does it matter that it is 540p? Hell no, it still looks great.
Gameplay wise im not sure its for me, its more RE5 than Silent Hill which most will be happy about but not me.
I saw the jaggies in the diner too. I'd have to look again, but it definitely seemed like some edges were affected by AA where some were not. Didn't notice any aliasing on shadow edges throughout. Shadow resolution also seemed fairly high.
Didn't notice the screen tearing, but I'll look again.
Didn't notice the screen tearing, but I'll look again.
I think most people arent getting what the tech experts here are trying to convey. We have seen Alan Wake on HD TV --ie screens which looked blurry and caused commotion . We have also seen the doctored images (probably from PC or like what EPIC games do with added 16X AA perhaps) . The thing is on HD tv the game isnt going to look anywhere close to those PROBABLE PC screens. Even worse, the game wont look anywhere close to the big guns (KZ2,UC2,GOW3,RE5) on an HD tv.
So, like AmirOX said at GAF, people could be very disappointed by this. You had people claiming it to be one of the best looking games on consoles after the emergence of the DOCTORED images. Then all of a sudden, after the native rez revelation and the leaks of screens which looked BLURRY (if not VERY BLURRY) ,the game went from a pioneer in graphics on consoles to a mere great looking game. Also if your TV has low contrast ratio then i believe the game can indeed look OKish on a 720p/1080p rez.
So, like AmirOX said at GAF, people could be very disappointed by this. You had people claiming it to be one of the best looking games on consoles after the emergence of the DOCTORED images. Then all of a sudden, after the native rez revelation and the leaks of screens which looked BLURRY (if not VERY BLURRY) ,the game went from a pioneer in graphics on consoles to a mere great looking game. Also if your TV has low contrast ratio then i believe the game can indeed look OKish on a 720p/1080p rez.
LittleJohnny
Newcomer
I just watched the gametrailers video in HD which shows actual gameplay and to me it looks better than RE5, I didn't see the so called blurriness, in fact his jacket looks super crisp and shadows look nice and soft for a change rather than the blocky shadows we usually get.
