Will next gen consoles focus on improving IQ at current HD resolutions?
- Thread starter blip
- Start date
There's no reason to target any resolution above 1080p for the foreseeable future (in consoles anyway). That said many games didn't even make it to HD resolutions (sub 720p) this generation, and I expect many may even opt for lower than 1080p in the next generation (that will depend on what the next generation hardware actually is capable of doing). I'd like to think that sub 720p will be behind us when the next generation hits, but who knows. Developers should stick to making the game as good as they can with the resources they have. Chasing some stupid check box to appease forum warriors is a worthless exercise.
It's also a bit of a cop out. It takes some work to actually improve the IQ through better art and rendering techniques than it is too just use the extra horsepower for a resolution increase. Video games have a huge ways too go even at 720p.
Do you guys ever feel like they use resolution as a way to shift the focus off of actually making the damn thing *look better* and instead they are just like "ahhh yeah we have it cranked up to 2560 x whatever" yes mate, all well and good but the damn thing still looks fake compared to real life even on an old standard def tv, thats the thing that had me upset at the start of this current generation. I feel like bumping up the resolution is like taking the easy road rather than programming a game that is actually more life-like in its rendering.
Do you guys ever feel like they use resolution as a way to shift the focus off of actually making the damn thing *look better* and instead they are just like "ahhh yeah we have it cranked up to 2560 x whatever" yes mate, all well and good but the damn thing still looks fake compared to real life even on an old standard def tv, thats the thing that had me upset at the start of this current generation. I feel like bumping up the resolution is like taking the easy road rather than programming a game that is actually more life-like in its rendering.
If that were true, they could render the game at higher resolutions and downscale for supersampled AA!
Are you kidding?! They sacrifice resolution and framerate tis gen to get prettier pixels. I expect most would argue the complete opposite.
Prophecy2k
Veteran
I'm curious, would it require more processing grunt on average to AA a game at 720p with say 4xMSAA than it would to simply render at 1080p with no AA or 1080p with say 2xMSAA?
I'd personally prefer devs to stay at a fixed 720p, double the framerate (in games where it makes sense) or just fix the IQ (with AA and AF) and call it a day.
(But then i'm biased because my TV only goes up to 720p, and i'm not way looking to buy a new TV anytime soon)
I think Gran Turismo 5 is a good example. The game runs at 720 with 4xAA and 1280x1080p with 2xAA. The game runs less smooth at 1280x1080p, but in my opinion, looks much better.
Personally, I think that if a game runs at 1920x1080, on most TVs at normal sitting distances, the game doesn't need AA and will still look better than 1280x720 with 4xAA. But that is assuming the same assets. That is not talking about what sacrifices are needed for the higher resolution, and it is even less clear what the performance sacrifices would be on a next gen system.
My ideal would be 1920x1080p at 60fps for next gen games, leaving room for multi-player split-screen support as well as 3D support at 30fps minimum. At those resolutions I can live without AA, though who knows what a clever low-cost post-AA could still add.
I also really like Wipeout running at 1920x1080p, and scaling back dynamically when things get very busy.
1920x1080 should be made Mandatory next time round, Up-scaled and 720p games look horrid on pretty much every native 1080p TV.
As for the old prettier pixels > Resolution argument, It's no use having prettier pixels if the IQ is too blurry to do them justice and they lose the fine detail.
As for the old prettier pixels > Resolution argument, It's no use having prettier pixels if the IQ is too blurry to do them justice and they lose the fine detail.
I fully expect 1080p for nextgen to be as common as 720p this gen if not more, just take a look at the benchmarks for modern GPUs, they cut through 1080p res like warm butter. But personally I still think 720p game looks good on a 1080p set so it really depends on your own tolerance.
Nope. Pixel shading is 2x the effort at 1080p. That's why MSAA has been so popular, because it gets reasonable edge AA using subpixel resolution without the full cost of true supersampling.
I wouldn't be surprised if 1080p was the standard next gen. I'm really shocked and disappointed this gen that SD rendering wasn't performed at the HD resolution and downscaled, but it would be an easy solution next-gen to support 1080p and downsample. You could even design the hardware around that I think. TBH I would like to see either mandatory 1080p or 720p60, but that's just my preference. I can't see a situation where a dev is really going to need to drop resolution or framerate lower unless 1) the next-gen hardware isn't like as good as we hope, or 2) they really can much better visuals, like near photorealistic at 720p30.
Dominik D
Regular
Which means it wouldn't be that popular.
As mentioned dozen times before: prettier pixels > more pixels. I wouldn't expect that to change next gen and I'd be surprised if res became a hard requirement for next-gen titles.And personally, I'd rather have the stability of 4xAA on all edges and fine geometry.
Granted, racing games are essentially all horizontally biased, so an edge in vertical resolution can go a long way, but the edge crawling remains very distracting to me.
Call of Duty looks pretty bad at 600p... i'm just hoping they stick to 720p/1080p.... hopefully nothing ridiculous happens like 1440p or 1920p tv's or something.... although it would probably just be upscaling to reach the magic marketing number
As for 720p games looking "horrid on pretty much all 1080p TV's" i just don't believe that too be true, most 1080p TV's display 720p as well as 720p TV's do. That being said, on my little 32" panasonic lcd, the image quality at 720p is outstanding.
What a lot of people don't know is even your 1080p is scaling the image... all TV's scale the image because all TV's have overscan, even your precious 1080p has pixels that aren't being used everything is scaled isn't technology fun???
As for 720p games looking "horrid on pretty much all 1080p TV's" i just don't believe that too be true, most 1080p TV's display 720p as well as 720p TV's do. That being said, on my little 32" panasonic lcd, the image quality at 720p is outstanding.
What a lot of people don't know is even your 1080p is scaling the image... all TV's scale the image because all TV's have overscan, even your precious 1080p has pixels that aren't being used
everything is scaled isn't technology fun???Yeah, games looked fine to me on my friend's 42" XBR3 (360 scaling). *shrug* He doesn't have a PS3, so can't compare (TV scaling 720p games). Next gen should have very robust scalers anyway. A lot has changed since AVIVO1 days...
Prophecy2k
Veteran
Cheers Shifty ;-)
I was even gonna mention that about rendering native 1080p and downsampling to 720p (free awesome IQ for those of us with 720p TVs).
I agree too that it was pretty farcical that current consoles didn't downsample to SD resolutions... but then again... they did want to get you all to buy the new HD TVs
Don't know how true that still is. Certainly some 1080p TVs, even if not a majority, have a true-pixel mode, and I know my 32" 720p set has zero overscan and I have to adjust games' scaling when switching between displays. I would hope that 1080p sets have smart scaling that can detect when a source isn't using overscan and render full-frame, but it'd take an official tech report to inform us if that is the case.What a lot of people don't know is even your 1080p is scaling the image... all TV's scale the image because all TV's have overscan, even your precious 1080p has pixels that aren't being used
Don't know about that. I play at 1920x1200 on PC.
I mean, it's pretty obvious that sub-native res isn't ideal, but by no means have I found the scaling quality awful in general. That is, a sub-HD game being upscaled to a 720p (768p) display vs 1080p display wasn't noticeably different to us.
humbertklyka
Newcomer
Call of Duty looks pretty bad at 600p... i'm just hoping they stick to 720p/1080p.... hopefully nothing ridiculous happens like 1440p or 1920p tv's or something.... although it would probably just be upscaling to reach the magic marketing number
As for 720p games looking "horrid on pretty much all 1080p TV's" i just don't believe that too be true, most 1080p TV's display 720p as well as 720p TV's do. That being said, on my little 32" panasonic lcd, the image quality at 720p is outstanding.
What a lot of people don't know is even your 1080p is scaling the image... all TV's scale the image because all TV's have overscan, even your precious 1080p has pixels that aren't being used
I would suspect that most TVs that are sold now do include a 1:1 pixel mapping mode, how many people that know that this is needed can of course be discussed.
As with any other resolution rescaling, if you sit close enough to a 1080p monitor to appriciate the full resolution you will notice a definite blurring of the image when using 720p content.
I still haven't seen a single game that looks more realistic than amateur shot VHS home videos. And VHS resolution is 333x480 (luma resolution, chroma is only 40x480). If we could get that good pixel quality, I would be willing to go that low in resolution
Last edited by a moderator:
Don't know about that. I play at 1920x1200 on PC.
I mean, it's pretty obvious that sub-native res isn't ideal, but by no means have I found the scaling quality awful in general. That is, a sub-HD game being upscaled to a 720p (768p) display vs 1080p display wasn't noticeably different to us.
I can spot up-scaled and sub-HD games a mile off with my brother 360 on a 1080p 32" Samsung TV
COD games look like a god awful blurry mess
