Is there a visual downside to 4k? A surprising realization.

[LOST TALE]

I once read a random comment claiming that lower resolutions are easier because there's less detail to see (sounds outrageous?).

I happened to lower res scale to 90% today as bf5 was acting up with jarring input lag after 2 hours and on the most demanding map.

 

I found it easier on the mind, and things seemed faster. Sure it could be the faster rendering, but it was actually no longer having as much detail.

 

See normally, there's not that much to see, and there's no point in trying to see more out of shit res. There's only just a few ''possible enemies'' to look at.

Whereas with 4k, the bush at the ''other edge of the galaxy'', suddenly becomes something for your visual cortex to process. The relevant range of vision was reduced by some meters.

 

When I dropped the res, I found myself idling between frames, sometimes staring at what were formerly clear areas of vision.

 

Bonus: you never scope in to see in 4k (unless you'd have to in real life), why would you lower your FOV? lol

I remember there was a trade-off between FOV and far sightedness. old days

[Arika]

kind of depends on the game.

 

one of the things i play is DCS World where a higher resolution is a disadvantage due to how the visibility works. Essentially at a certain distance planes are only rendered as a single pixel. so a 4k resolution would make the pixel 4x smaller than 1080p, making it MUCH harder to find

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Just now, BlueScope819 said:

Your argument appears to be that you prefer to the less visual fidelity of a lower resolution, which is really personal preference. From the performance side of things 4k is very inefficient to run your game at, as it's literally 4x the number of pixels to render as 1080p.

The same thing could be said about lower resolutions. I use to play at 24fps then 75. It took years to become more aware of how framerate affects my ability to track and shoot objects. The sight downgrade was more obvious to me, since it's almost always there in battlefield. There's always something you wish you could see, but have bad glasses on. 

 

My surprise was going from 75fps to 60fps was so bad. lol I couldn't play doom anymore!

[Kisai]

13 minutes ago, LOST TALE said:

I once read a random comment claiming that lower resolutions are easier because there's less detail to see (sounds outrageous?).

 

Higher resolutions in a game tend to increase the depth of field more than they increase detail in the foreground.

 

In general, you should favor the higher resolution over higher frame rate unless you are playing competitively, in which case, you want the higher frame rate since the input latency is tied to the netcode in games. It literately gives you an advantage by running a game at a higher refresh rate. We're talking like maybe 8ms, but it's enough to make a difference.

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1 minute ago, Kisai said:

Higher resolutions in a game tend to increase the depth of field more than they increase detail in the foreground.

This. However when I hear depth of field, it reminds me of the settings that blur it, we mean the opposite, that farther objects are clarified.

[jones177]

4k is great for near distant detail in some games. That is object detail before the LODs come into play. 

On games that this is not a factor I usually play on my ultra wide or at 1440p at a high refresh rate.

 

So I only us 4k for flight sims, space sims, building games and modded games. 

 

I use depth of field in games that have object LOD and texture pop ins. For these I use ENB, Reshade or both to add DoF. It usually uses up to 50% of my frame rate and for that a 2080 ti is needed at 4k.

 

There are some games that are so well visually designed that 4k adds little to them. The best are Witcher 3, RDR 2 and Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I am not talking optimization but visual balance.

 

Here is AC:O at 1080p, 1440p and 4k. Even though I could get all frames over 60 in 4k I chose to play it on my 3440 X 1440 ultrawide.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

[Chen G]

I would say there is, some games look worse in 4k for one very specific reason, for optimal image quality you want the sharpness of textures to roughly match the sharpness of geometry, because that's what happens with real life captured images. The level of detail in real world is infinite and you're only limited by capture resolution so everything will be equally sharp, that is, as sharp as your camera system is.

However in games the sharpness of geometry is determined by render resolution where as the sharpness of textures is determined by the textures themselves. So if you have your geometry significantly sharper than your texture it looks worse, and you aren't getting any benefit from the increased resolution.

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On 7/12/2020 at 1:13 PM, Chen G said:

I would say there is, some games look worse in 4k for one very specific reason, for optimal image quality you want the sharpness of textures to roughly match the sharpness of geometry, because that's what happens with real life captured images. The level of detail in real world is infinite and you're only limited by capture resolution so everything will be equally sharp, that is, as sharp as your camera system is.

However in games the sharpness of geometry is determined by render resolution where as the sharpness of textures is determined by the textures themselves. So if you have your geometry significantly sharper than your texture it looks worse, and you aren't getting any benefit from the increased resolution.

things very quickly run out of resolution as they move away from the player. So much so that 4K clarifies more textures than the inveriority fo the ones closer is ''revealed''

 

> ome games look worse in 4k

 

I disagree, making some part of the image look better, doesn't make the experience worse, especially with a consistent effect form higher res, instead of a change in art style in one part of the image but not the other.