Screensize & resolution & distance

btw Since someone here on beyond3d requested it I updated the page so it lets you calculate the FOV's given a distance/monitor size
vision.png

though my site may not always be online (~5x offline in the last 2 weeks), I've been getting too much traffic recently, I think I'm gonna change host, anyone knows of a good one? ta zed
 
Cyan said:
I have a hard time discerning 1080p Forza 5 from 720p Killer Instinct on my 32" TV.

Plus, now that you mention it, I work in a place where we have a 55" HDTV and I don't find it to be much larger than my 32" TV, although it is a very neat TV.

When 4K is standard on consoles, it will be the time to make the jump. For now, a new TV is the least of my worries.
Click to expand...


4K output would probably be very useful on consoles.. just so that upscaled 900p looks better :).

When consoles are refreshed/shrunk to 20nm or 16FF, it would probably be possible to do just that, keeping everything else equal (save other small evolutions like bundling a bigger HDD)

If needed, games can receive a software update to enable 4K output.
 
Davros said:
Forza is the one with the cars
Click to expand...

LOL.

Utterly subjective but I'm going to toss it in anyway. I recently moved from a 40" 1080p Sony Bravia (2010 KDL40EX703) to a 49" 4K Sony Bravia (2014 KD-49X8505). I sit about 10-12 ft from the set, depending if I'm sitting up and leaning back.

I'm absolutely astonished at the additional detail I'm now seeing in games - even relatively minor stuff like the detail of the texture of the helicarrier platform in Lego Marvel Super Heroes. I didn't notice it before but now it seems to pop with detail. The same with the The Last of Us Remastered which I played on the 40" on Friday and Saturday and the new set on Sunday. Eye-popping difference.

I'm not sure if this is the result of just going larger, the better screen technology, the upscaling done by the set or a bit of all three. I've calibrated the set and it's very approximate to the settings I had on the old one. Anyway, WOW :oops:

But you can tell it's a Sony product. When I set it up on Sunday there was a firmware update. Cool. When I turned it on Monday, there was another firmware update. :rolleyes:
 
My guess s it's the screensize and only the screensize. The 4k/upscale wouldn't enhance any details - but the 40" relative to your viewing distance probably ment that you were missing details you would have seen if you had moved up closer. Perhaps why PC gamers who play in front of montitors at ultra high detail put so much weight on resolution, details and clean image quality. I'd say the majority of console owners who play in their livingrooms in a more comfortable setup (10-12ft) and use medium screensizes are well below the detail they could be seeing - or the detail we like to talk up as being significant and obsessing about in topics here are probably moot when viewed in your typical livingroom.

I actually play from around 14ft on a screen the size of roughly 140" (3.5m diagonal) and I can tell that any native resolution increase is quite noticable (i.e. going from 720p content to 1080p). Contrast is also extremely important - using a projector, I'm always kind of surprised when I play the same game on an LCD set and see fine details I can't or don't really notice on the big screen at home.
 
Phil said:
My guess s it's the screensize and only the screensize. The 4k/upscale wouldn't enhance any details - but the 40" relative to your viewing distance probably ment that you were missing details you would have seen if you had moved up closer.
Click to expand...

I think you may be right. if you believe the Sony PR, the 'X-Reality engine' is supposed to create detail in the 4K upscale. I certainly believe it's supposed to do that although I'm skeptical about how effective/accurate it is but unfortunately I don't think it's something you can enable/disable to a comparison.

I'll just be satisfied that's it's a great picture and I'm seeing more detail :yes:
 
fehu said:
I don't know if depend on this, but ps4 has a worst scaler compared to one
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And your evidence for this is?
IIRC someone else said this recently, but when they were pushed for details replied ummmmm donno
 
DSoup said:
I think you may be right. if you believe the Sony PR, the 'X-Reality engine' is supposed to create detail in the 4K upscale. I certainly believe it's supposed to do that although I'm skeptical about how effective/accurate it is but unfortunately I don't think it's something you can enable/disable to a comparison.

I'll just be satisfied that's it's a great picture and I'm seeing more detail :yes:
Click to expand...

1080P content on a 4K screen is going to look worse not better, I think.

Especially cause as I understand it, it's scaled, even though it doesn't need to be! (could be just a straight 4:1 conversion)

This brings me back to something I've long wondered about (maybe it's off topic), which looks better:

720P on a native 720P screen

Or

720P upscaled on a 1080P screen.

I've always thought the former, but I remember people disagreeing.
 
Rangers said:
1080P content on a 4K screen is going to look worse not better, I think.
Click to expand...
Not true. At least, not intrinsically true. The quality of an image depends on FOV; let's be clear to start there. If you have a lower resolution set showing the same content in the same angular FOV as a larger display, the lower resolution image will either have more visible pixelisation, or have more blurring due to averaged pixels (kinda irrelevant on modern sets). The same image on the larger set will have interpolated pixels at better quality than a simple interpolated value.

At worst, the higher resolution display is indiscernibly different with the same amount of data per degree FOV. At best, it incorporates more data being reconstructed than the discrete pixel values of the lower resolution.

This is pretty easily proved these days by watching SD content on a decent TV. It upscales to a good degree and produces an image far sharper than the 720x480 (or worse, interlaced) image bilinearly interpolated to the same size.
 
Rangers said:
1080P content on a 4K screen is going to look worse not better, I think.

Especially cause as I understand it, it's scaled, even though it doesn't need to be! (could be just a straight 4:1 conversion)

This brings me back to something I've long wondered about (maybe it's off topic), which looks better:

720P on a native 720P screen

Or

720P upscaled on a 1080P screen.

I've always thought the former, but I remember people disagreeing.
Click to expand...

Depends of whether you can see all the detail in the smaller TV or not regardless of the resolution. Right now I can't see the difference between 720p vs 1080p on my TV, but I sure can see the difference on my PC monitor (because the closer seating, thus the monitor covered my fov more than the TV). If I buy a larger TV, I probably can see details previously unseen because it's simply too small to be noticeable on my current TV. Heck, I can't see the compression effect (ringing and blocking) on my cable TV from my current sitting position, but if I move closer to the TV, it is damn obvious. So basically if I buy a bigger TV I can definitely see more detail.
So a 2k content will look worse on 4k TV compared to native 4k content. But if you previously can't see all the details of 2k content, then using 4k will not help you seeing that detail, but using a larger TV can.
 
DSoup said:
I think you may be right. if you believe the Sony PR, the 'X-Reality engine' is supposed to create detail in the 4K upscale. I certainly believe it's supposed to do that although I'm skeptical about how effective/accurate it is but unfortunately I don't think it's something you can enable/disable to a comparison.

I'll just be satisfied that's it's a great picture and I'm seeing more detail :yes:
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the difference you're seeing is due to either the larger screen size letting you see more detail inherently present in 1080p (that you weren't seeing with the smaller screen) or due to the X-Reality Pro engine - which is a pretty interesting piece of technology actually.


http://community.sony.co.uk/t5/prod...k-what-is-x-reality-pro/ba-p/1346224?nobounce

Developer interview

It uses both super-resolution (multi frame analysis) and a pattern database to reconstruct a 4K image from a lower detail source.

Not sure how well it works in practice - but it's a brilliant idea nonetheless.

And anyway, even a little bit of simple sharpening will go a long way to making the image look more detailed than on your old 1080p set
 
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Shifty Geezer said:
Not true. At least, not intrinsically true. The quality of an image depends on FOV; let's be clear to start there. If you have a lower resolution set showing the same content in the same angular FOV as a larger display, the lower resolution image will either have more visible pixelisation, or have more blurring due to averaged pixels (kinda irrelevant on modern sets). The same image on the larger set will have interpolated pixels at better quality than a simple interpolated value.
Click to expand...

If you are comparing a 900p being upscaled to 4k and 1080p being upscaled to 4k, I agree, the higher the resolution you are beginning with, the better. That is a given. But comparing a 48" FullHD TV with content at a resolution of 1080p (no overdraw, so no averaged pixels) against upscaled 1080p content displayed on a 48" 4k TV and I'm not sure the latter will look better. I would expect the former to be sharper with the latter being slightly more blurred by the upscaling process...
 
Phil said:
But comparing a 48" FullHD TV with content at a resolution of 1080p (no overdraw, so no averaged pixels) against upscaled 1080p content displayed on a 48" 4k TV and I'm not sure the latter will look better. I would expect the former to be sharper with the latter being slightly more blurred by the upscaling process...
Click to expand...
At the same FOV, if the pixels are visible at 1080p, 4k will be smoother. Not blurred, because it's adding data between original samples in the same locations, and with decent image reconstruction algorithms rather than straight interpolation (which would still not look blurry). If the pixels aren't visible at 1080p, 4k won't look any better (but then why have you got a 4k set if you're viewing at distances where the increased resolution is imperceptible ;)).

Putting it another way, if you have a 40 degree FOV, one horizontal pixel on a 1080p set occupies 1 1/4 arcminutes. For someone with good eyesight, a pixel could maybe be recognisable as a dot. Its shape and corners probably can't be made out at that size for the average Joe. A 4k set will have two pixels occupying the same FOV, one with exactly the same value as the 1080p pixel, and the other some clever interpolation between that value and the neighbour(s)'. That's at an indiscernibly small resolution, so it won't look blurred.

But of course, the point with 4k TVs is to have BIG screens that fill a larger FOV. Take a 1080p set that occupies a smaller FOV and stretch it huge. Now it looks somewhat blurry. Up the resolution and reconstruct the missing data, it'll look sharper.
 
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