Benefit of 1080p over 720p: Is it worth it?

[Nesh]

I was playing GT5 a little ago and my default display is of course 1080p.

The biggest eye sore I had with the IQ of the game, were the ton of tiny jaggies infesting every small line displayed on screen. The cars and tracks boast tremendous detail, but those broke the illusion of realism.

So I decided to change the console settings to 720p just to see how that res with 4xMSAA would look like.
The difference was high. It looks much more clean and crispy in that mode and it makes you wonder if it was worth the effort to make the res run at 1280x1080p.

In this case I believe it wasnt worth it. It doesnt help much, and I am pretty sure that it must have caused lots of headaches to PD trying to maintain 60fps with all that detail and most likely there must have been many other sacrifices (see pixelated transparencies, low geometry in some tracks, jaggied shadows). The decision in GT5's case didnt serve not even Sony's marketing attempt to support the 1080p console claim. It certainly doesnt make it look better than 720p 4xMSAA. 5 years ago it would have been relevant. Today its not. The consumer asks for tangible visual improvements, especially now that many 720p titles came with unique visual effects which make the average joe go "WOW". The most impressive titles such as Uncharted and God of War would not have been what they are if the aimed for higher resolutions.

Its apparent that 720p would have opened lots of resources for better refined visuals and better effects for GT5 as well. Technically, it was an amazing job how they did it but at the end, based on the total visual package 1080p resolution in our games may not worth it if they can run at 720p with adequate AA

The performance hit may be less that way and the proper amount of AA may more than compensate for any resolution lost.

 

[Toaddio]

Not everyone is sensitive to aliasing. I hate digital artifacts in digital video. I have a difficult time watching it. I love old Sega scaling sprite based games that have the biggest freaking stair-edges.

Your mileage may vary.

 

[Nesh]

Regardless of personal sensitivity to aliasing I dont feel that 1080p appears to do much of a difference next to 720p. Note that I am talking about games and not videos

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

Supposedly, 2xQAA gives about the same edge smoothing 8xMSAA or greater, so why would 4xMSAA and 720p be better in the edge smoothing department?

 

[Nesh]

Supposedly, 2xQAA gives about the same edge smoothing 8xMSAA or greater, so why would 4xMSAA and 720p be better in the edge smoothing department?

Supposedly. Does it though? I didnt see that result while was playing GT5 at 1080p

 

[Toaddio]

Supposedly. Does it though? I didnt see that result while was playing GT5 at 1080p

That was my point. Some people are more sensitive to certain issues.

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

Supposedly. Does it though? I didnt see that result while was playing GT5 at 1080p

Even if it's half that, you're still at, effectively, 4xMSAA + blur @1280x1080 versus 4xMSAA at 720p.

 

[joker454]

The minute qaa enters the mix, image quality goes out the window. Just from qaa alone it's not really surprising that 720 mode looks better. There's actually a host of other reasons why 720 mode looks better as well for GT5 but I've covered them before here and there.

Also I'm skeptical that GT5 is really rendering everything to a 1080 buffer even in 1080 mode. The game really doesn't make effective use of that res at all, it has way more aliasing than it should in that mode, and some stuff like power lines oddly have less detail or even totally disappear in the distance on GT5 1080 compared to other 720 racing games that keep them more intact. Other items as well also often don't even resolve with more details in the distance in 1080 mode compared to other 720 games.

My hunch is that they were pot committed to 1080 mode even though at some point they finally realized that it wasn't really possible, then they pulled all manner of trickery to get the game to try and run decently in that mode, including rendering some stuff into lower res buffers (opaque and transparent) then upscaling them. As far as I can see, the only thing that looks better in 1080 mode is game menus and the hud, as I suspect those are rendered at actual 1080 res and without qaa. The rest looks worse. Normally you would just expect worse performance from the resolution jump, but in GT5 you actually get worse visuals. That makes GT5 a special case as ultimately it's a very poor example of 1080p gaming because of the sacrifices they made in that mode, hence it's probably not a very good general example to use when comparing 720 to 1080 gaming.

 

[-tkf-]

I was playing GT5 a little ago and my default display is of course 1080p.

The biggest eye sore I had with the IQ of the game, were the ton of tiny jaggies infesting every small line displayed on screen. The cars and tracks boast tremendous detail, but those broke the illusion of realism.

So I decided to change the console settings to 720p just to see how that res with 4xMSAA would look like.
The difference was high. It looks much more clean and crispy in that mode and it makes you wonder if it was worth the effort to make the res run at 1280x1080p.

In this case I believe it wasnt worth it. It doesnt help much, and I am pretty sure that it must have caused lots of headaches to PD trying to maintain 60fps with all that detail and most likely there must have been many other sacrifices (see pixelated transparencies, low geometry in some tracks, jaggied shadows). The decision in GT5's case didnt serve not even Sony's marketing attempt to support the 1080p console claim. It certainly doesnt make it look better than 720p 4xMSAA. 5 years ago it would have been relevant. Today its not. The consumer asks for tangible visual improvements, especially now that many 720p titles came with unique visual effects which make the average joe go "WOW". The most impressive titles such as Uncharted and God of War would not have been what they are if the aimed for higher resolutions.

Its apparent that 720p would have opened lots of resources for better refined visuals and better effects for GT5 as well. Technically, it was an amazing job how they did it but at the end, based on the total visual package 1080p resolution in our games may not worth it if they can run at 720p with adequate AA

The performance hit may be less that way and the proper amount of AA may more than compensate for any resolution lost.

What display do you use, size, etc?

 

[Nesh]

That was my point. Some people are more sensitive to certain issues.

I dont understand what you are saying. Lets assume that I am aliasing sensitive and the 1080p 2xQAA was that good, I would have seen more aliasing at 720p 4xMSAA whereas its the opposite

What display do you use, size, etc?

42" Inch TV, 1080p.

The minute qaa enters the mix, image quality goes out the window. Just from qaa alone it's not really surprising that 720 mode looks better. There's actually a host of other reasons why 720 mode looks better as well for GT5 but I've covered them before here and there.

Also I'm skeptical that GT5 is really rendering everything to a 1080 buffer even in 1080 mode. The game really doesn't make effective use of that res at all, it has way more aliasing than it should in that mode, and some stuff like power lines oddly have less detail or even totally disappear in the distance on GT5 1080 compared to other 720 racing games that keep them more intact. Other items as well also often don't even resolve with more details in the distance in 1080 mode compared to other 720 games.

My hunch is that they were pot committed to 1080 mode even though at some point they finally realized that it wasn't really possible, then they pulled all manner of trickery to get the game to try and run decently in that mode, including rendering some stuff into lower res buffers (opaque and transparent) then upscaling them. As far as I can see, the only thing that looks better in 1080 mode is game menus and the hud, as I suspect those are rendered at actual 1080 res and without qaa. The rest looks worse. Normally you would just expect worse performance from the resolution jump, but in GT5 you actually get worse visuals. That makes GT5 a special case as ultimately it's a very poor example of 1080p gaming because of the sacrifices they made in that mode, hence it's probably not a very good general example to use when comparing 720 to 1080 gaming.

Yeah in general thats how GT5 looks on my TV.

 

[nasanu]

Are you playing on a TV with a sharpness setting set anything above 0? If so then there is your problem. Personally I don't notice aliasing in 1080p but I am playing on a small 22" monitor.

 

[Nesh]

Are you playing on a TV with a sharpness setting set anything above 0? If so then there is your problem. Personally I don't notice aliasing in 1080p but I am playing on a small 22" monitor.

I am pretty sure sharpness is not 0. But even if it was it still shows that aliasing is more present at 1080p.

A 22" monitor is too small to notice aliasing.

Wipeout HD also has some aliasing at 1080p but since it doesnt have many wires, white lines etc is not as notiecable. Its very clean. I tried 720p ages ago too so I cant remember clearly now. What I remember though was that there wasnt a clear advantage of 1080p over 720p. I will have to check again.

Regarding GT5 my observations are very similar to Joker's

The problem with current consoles are the limited resources, so 1080p clearly comes with sacrifices that in total does not give much of an advantage. Only with powerful enough hardware( where the higher resolution doesnt have any significant impact on overal performance and high levels of AA are enabled at the same time) higher resolution may be a benefit

 

[Rangers]

Err, upping resolution will always have an effect on perfomance. See if you can find any PC review where the framerates at 1080P are the same as at lower resolutions.

Methinks this might be an interesting question next gen. Do we standardize on 1080P or maybe you get better visuals at 720P? Even this gen was supposed to be locked at 720P but we all know how that worked out.

 

[Neb]

Regardless of personal sensitivity to aliasing I dont feel that 1080p appears to do much of a difference next to 720p. Note that I am talking about games and not videos

"1080p" in GT5 is with QAA which is 2xMSAA with blur filter getting clsoe to looks of 4xMSAA but penalty of the blur filter destroying details. Now if game also does temporal AA then it would be double that but AFAIK temporal AA doesn't work in motion/sub 60fps thus it will not be present often when playing.

As for quality difference between 720p and 1080p it is very big. You really only need a PC to check difference in games, movies and with photos.

 

[N_B]

Would scaling come into it? In 1080p mode the PS3 would be doing the upscaling (just blinear?) and at 720p the TV would be upscaling it...most TVs have pretty good (better?) scaling nowadays.

 

[I.S.T.]

When it comes to gaming, resolution doesn't matter much, as long as the scaling is good. If it isn't, well, things go bad quickly.

 

[ct03]

A 22" monitor is too small to notice aliasing.

That's a ridiculous statement. Absolute size doesn't matter. The ratio of size and viewing distance does.

 

[Nesh]

That's a ridiculous statement. Absolute size doesn't matter. The ratio of size and viewing distance does.

I think we are playing with words here

 

[Shifty Geezer]

As for quality difference between 720p and 1080p it is very big. You really only need a PC to check difference in games, movies and with photos.

At what size screen and viewing distance? Many BRDs don't look better than SD even, let alone noticeably better at 1080p than 720p. In games it has a much bigger effect because there isn't the supersampling of real photography, nor the motion blur nor subtle optical blurs etc. from movies. PixelJunk monsters, a 2D game, looks fractionally better at 1080p than 720p on my 1680x1020 display. Age of Booty is much better at 720p because it's a solid 60fps compared to the juddery 1080p version, and aliasing isn't an issue.

All in all, it comes down to a per-title choice. As you can do more with 720p, often that's the better choice. Imrpved fidelity will only matter if your viewing distance and eyesight are such that it makes a noteworthy improvement.

 

[corduroygt]

42" Inch TV, 1080p.
Yeah in general thats how GT5 looks on my TV.

Viewing Distance? The closer it is the more you're going to see a difference in 720p vs 1080p. GT5 is a poor example to try this, since it's 1280x1080 horizontally scaled, resulting in more aliasing than normal. You should try Sacred 2 and see if you can tell a difference between 720p and 1080p.