SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the hehe-they-said-pissing-hehe dept.
Get ready to endlessly debate the value of "native 4K" on consoles
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/09/microsoft-and-sonys-emerging-4k-pixel-pissing-contest/
Sony's PlayStation 4 Pro (launching in November) and Microsoft's Xbox One Scorpio (launching late next year) are giving the pixel-counters out there a new, 4K-sized battlefield to fight over. Now, Microsoft is drawing a line in the sand in that developing battle, with Microsoft Studios Publishing General Manager Shannon Loftis telling USA Today that "any games we're making that we're launching in the Scorpio time frame, we're making sure they can natively render at 4K."
The word "natively" is important there, because there has been a lot of wiggle room when it comes to talking about what constitutes a truly "4K" game these days. For instance, according to developers Ars has talked to, many if not most games designed for the PS4 Pro will be rendered with an internal framebuffer that's larger than that for a 1080p game, but significantly smaller than the full 3840×2160 pixels on a 4K screen (the exact resolution for any PS4 Pro game will depend largely on how the developer prioritizes the frame rate and the level of detail in the scene). While the PS4 Pro can and does output a full 4K signal, it seems that only games with exceedingly simple graphics will be able to render at that resolution natively.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by blackhawk on Saturday September 24 2016, @05:48PM
The 4k Sony Bravia I am watching on does have high dynamic range and I can't recommend that enough. Anyone should be able to pick out the better saturation of colours and the wider range from black to white - particularly in dark scenes. I've watched a few series now with 1080p 10bit h265 encodes and they look glorious compared to previous versions. This is a combination of both the improved colour gamut and improvements in bitrate from the H265 algorithm (assuming the encoder selected a decent rate and didn't just try and crush a 45min show down to 230MB files - which does work pretty well oddly enough).
Viewing distance and screen size and resolution all have to be taken into account at once when talking about this subject though. None of those figures alone or in conjunction with 1 other gives the true picture - and that is pixels / degree i.e. the number of pixles displayed / degree of viewing from the subject's eye.
I actually sit a lot closer to my TV than most people, and a 55 inch screen is decently large, so I have no problem spotting the difference between 720p and 1080. Above 1080p it's harder, a lot harder and it comes more as a qualitative thing. It's not individual pixels you are seeing, but how they react as a whole.
Textures become more defined, in particular hair and fur. Fresnel lighting which tends to flicker outrageously on lower resolutions will simmer down or be removed entirely. You are getting the benefits you'd normally expect from anti-aliasing, but without any of the downsides because the extra resolution is actually there. I can see pore detail on skin better, and individual flyaway hairs on people's hair stand out well at 1080p and above. They are present at 720p but less distinct.
You will notice the extra detail when the camera pans, as flicker that would be present in 1080p and lower content is vastly reduced at 4k or not present at all.
I work in game development, so looking for that extra detail is pretty much in my job description. I know other people who can't see the difference, but I can, so it's totally worth the extra cost for me.