Why very high resolutions are bad.

To be honest, I'm in agreeance to a certain extent. I've never seen the need to overclock to almost inane clock speeds or go up to resolutions around 1920x1200 or higher, as well as x16 TSAA and what have you and not being sated without dropping below 30FPS. Absolute squandering of time in my book, as I feel the best details of a game is found through options like FP16 blended (or even FP32 full precision) HDR, very large normal maps, and things of the like. I've never seen the need to go beyond 1024x768-1280x1024 (or perhaps 1600x1200, stretching it a tad in my view), that without FSAA (though I tend to turn on x16 AF as I'd rather have the normal maps, parallax maps, and what have you look as clear as "possible") and all the game's details on works well enough for me, and what's great is you don't need a monster rig to do it smoothly.

But, as for looking worse? That's an oddity. If anything it looks better to me, though not to that stupefying an extent.

 

Well, as I said, the primary benefit of the higher resolutions, in my opinion, is if you have a large screen. High res also looks amazing in any game where you can see for a long ways. The most recent game where I was really blown away by my 8800 GTX and 24" display was Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, where in the swoop races I could see details practically forever, and couldn't see any detectable aliasing all the way to the finish line. That really just blew me away.

 

How did you get the game to run higher than 1280x1024? IIRC, they had a limited choice of resolutions...

 

Uh, runs fine at 1600x1200. I can't run it in widescreen, but now that the new nVidia drivers support aspect-resolution scaling (so that I get black borders instead of a stretched display), I've started playing it again.

 

Ah I see.

(Guess I need a bigger monitor, Mine is 1400x1050)

 

I think it has more to do with the relationship between the aspect ratio, size of display and viewing distance than just the absolute resolution. Are the additional pixels of a high res display being used to fill in the size that is required for viewing at farther distances, or is the display being viewed from up close? When viewing a relatively large screen from a certain distance, there may be more flat looking spaces, but this has more to do with the field of view limit imposed by our eyes.

Consider staring at a wall from the back of the room where other objects are visible, and then walking up to the wall. The scene may get more bleak as you get up close, since most of the image sent to your eyes will be taken up by the wall. At such a point, if your eyes were tuned to your artistic tastes (assuming a constant number of photon sensors), they would either adjust the aspect ratio or scale down the image size, so that you retain the balance of detail, shapes and spaces you desire. You're right about the texture resolution, though. The texture resolution should scale with the distance you are from a given object, otherwise the increased detail brought about by a high resolution at close distance will emphasize the fact that the textures are low res.

 

I submit the following evidence on why very high resolutions are very good, even on (certain) essentially DX7 games.

 

I think high res is good for things that are drawn procedurely, but bad for things that have a limit amount of information pre stored, like ordinary textures.

 

All depends on what your use to. People will find 1024x768 perfectly fine, as long as the bulk of their time they spend gaming is played at that resolution.

And so the problem with buying high end graphics cards for the first time, as you up the resolution you get use to it and when suddenly a year later, you cant run games at those settings and have to lower settings you find a lower res unbearable.

Its the same with everything, whether its a better sound system, faster car or nicer tasting tea. You get use to it and the lesser item feels just that, lesser.

 

What game is that?

 

I thought 1024x768 was fine too, but now that i'm on 1680x1050 and game fps is smooth, I think it's even better.

US

 

Its the Europa Barbarorum mod of Rome:Total War Battles with ~3000 units per side are also pretty impressive to see at high res