Is this true?

[Owen]

I do understand what you are getting at guys, but I just don’t see the need for 1920x1080 output resolution for a game.

The game can be rendered at what ever resolution required to give a decent image quality, say 4000x2000, and then downscaled to 720p for display without noticeable loss.

720p can convey much greater detail then any of the pics posted.

The problem seems to be in the way game graphics are created.

Hopefully the PS3 will be able to do a better job, not that I care, as I will never own one.

Already got a 7800, but it will never see a game.

[DavoNogo]

Please don't tell me you're one of those people that think the HD moniker has anything to do with HD captured from a camera, because it doesn't. Please don't compare a game rendered at 720p versus a video recorded at 720p. It's like comparing a Volvo to a SR-71 Blackbird or an apple to an orange or a book to a movie.... The only similarity between a game and a video is the resolution. A game doesn't have the same limitation as video captured from a camera. No Kell Factor or loss of perceivable horizontal or vertical resolution here. A game can never hold the same amount of detail as captured video but that doesn't mean we shouldn't want to run the game at a higher resolution.

Games ARE defined by their output resolution, and my screenshots, regardless of how ugly they may be, or how unrealsitic they'll look compared to the real world, show precisely what increasing the resolution does and that AA and AF are NOT a compromise for increasing the resolution and only serve the purpose of removing jaggies and keeping textures the same regardless of distance. You'll still be stuck at the same resolution, hence, there'll be no change in sharpness or detail when you use AA or AF. The bigger picture here is that increasing the game resolution increases the game detail.

Point is, a game rendered at 1080p is still a HUGE improvement over a game rendered at 720p, and there IS a point for it. People don't buy the latest graphics card just to play at 1024x768. No, they play them at the highest possible resolution that their shiny new card can handle. Be it, 1600x1200, 2048x1536 or 2560x1600, no amount of AA or AF will come close to running the game at a higher resolution. That's right, even if you were to render the game at 4000x2000 then downscale it back down to 720p, it still won't be the same as actually running the game at 4000x2000. That's what those screenshots prove with the AA tests.

And finally, I'll say this once more, a GAME is completely different to VIDEO captured from a CAMERA, so let's NOT compare the two.

[Skiller]

I don’t know if you have ever seen good quality 720p video, but no game comes even remotely close to requiring that level of REAL detail, let alone 1920x1080.

720p video never has true 1280x720 resolution due to capture and compression constraints, yet looks outstanding on very large screens.

U got that around the wrong way man, games NEED a MUCH higher resolution than ANY video or movie.

For example, games are interactive so you need to react to a sniper in a bell tower over 1k away, in a movie it doesn't matter if you can't see the sniper in the tower. At low resolutions a sniper in a tower may not show up at all but at high resolutions it will, so clearly this'll have a big effect on your game, if you can see the sniper you can avoid him, if not u die. In a movie if you dont see the sniper you see a character die and it doesn't make a difference if you you did see the sniper.

Also movies are made in a way that any detail of importance will get it's own close-up so it takes up half the screen and can't be missed, this means that you can watch pretty much anythin in as low as 320x240 and you will barely miss anything. In games it's easy to over look things of imortance since it's up to the user to decide what to look at, a high resolution helps here too, a thin line might be overlooked at low res but if at high res it looks like a sword the user is far more likely to investigate.

I always try to run every game I play in the maximum resolution my monitor can handle, I even prefer it if it means I have to turn down EVERY other graphical option so it still runs at 60fps.

I could give several other good examples but this post is pretty big already and I'm still at work (programming games as a matter of fact).

[Owen]

The real world is rendered in unlimited resolution, and when we capture it to video and display at 720p, the results looks great at a normal viewing distance.

Now if we render a game at very high resolution 8000x4000 so that it mimics real life, and scale it back to 720 for output to a display, which would be fare less lossy then a video camera, why will it look bad at the same viewing distance ?

Obviously rendering a game at high resolution is of great advantage, however I challenge the notion that the display needs to be of the same very high res.

I would much rather have a game rendered at 8000x4000 and displayed at 1280x720 then have a game rendered at 1920x1080 and displayed at 1920x1080.

That’s the point I am trying to make, nothing more.

For people that sit very close to the display, as some gamers are likely to do, 720p res will never be adequate for anything.

[spaceman]

The real world is rendered in unlimited resolution, and when we capture it to video and display at 720p, the results looks great at a normal viewing distance.

Now if we render a game at very high resolution 8000x4000 so that it mimics real life, and scale it back to 720 for output to a display, which would be fare less lossy then a video camera, why will it look bad at the same viewing distance ?

Obviously rendering a game at high resolution is of great advantage, however I challenge the notion that the display needs to be of the same very high res.

I would much rather have a game rendered at 8000x4000 and displayed at 1280x720 then have a game rendered at 1920x1080 and displayed at 1920x1080.

That’s the point I am trying to make, nothing more.

For people that sit very close to the display, as some gamers are likely to do, 720p res will never be adequate for anything.

First I was going to disagree, but actually I'm going to agree.

A game rendered at say 8000x4000, then CAPTURED at that resolution, then descaled to say 1280x720p would look pretty good giving it a natural blur or anit-aliasing. And I believe it would look better than a normal rendered 1280x720p frame with alot of AA.

Problem is that no such thing exists. And if it did it has to be very quick to render the game at say 8000x4000 then do the scaling without any delay. Though this isnt a problem with say a "movie" like Shrek.

[Skiller]

The real world is rendered in unlimited resolution, and when we capture it to video and display at 720p, the results looks great at a normal viewing distance.

Now if we render a game at very high resolution 8000x4000 so that it mimics real life, and scale it back to 720 for output to a display, which would be fare less lossy then a video camera, why will it look bad at the same viewing distance ?

Obviously rendering a game at high resolution is of great advantage, however I challenge the notion that the display needs to be of the same very high res.

I would much rather have a game rendered at 8000x4000 and displayed at 1280x720 then have a game rendered at 1920x1080 and displayed at 1920x1080.

That’s the point I am trying to make, nothing more.

For people that sit very close to the display, as some gamers are likely to do, 720p res will never be adequate for anything.

I think i can safely assume you dont play games, or at least not competitively online. When playing seriously you want every advantage you can get, being able to see something that someone else cant is a BIG advantage. Ignoring framerate issues, if you are running a game at a higher resolution you can see stuff that ppl running in a lower res cant (even in it's downscaled from a massive res), also the extra sharpness of the high res makes it easier for you eyes to notice smaller changes. This can help alot in games, particularly FPS games.

However, I totally agree that the game running at 1280x720 downscaled from 8000x4000 would look much nicer than the 1920x1080 native, but it's not as good for most games . There are some games that wont particularly benefeit from high res and would be much better when they look their best though, these are usually the "family" games like mario party and such where there are no details of any importance.

BTW Owen you spell far F A R not fare I keep getting confused reading your posts about TVs and then theres something about paying for a cab or something?

[Chopstar]

I think i can safely assume you dont play games, or at least not competitively online. When playing seriously you want every advantage you can get, being able to see something that someone else cant is a BIG advantage. Ignoring framerate issues, if you are running a game at a higher resolution you can see stuff that ppl running in a lower res cant (even in it's downscaled from a massive res), also the extra sharpness of the high res makes it easier for you eyes to notice smaller changes. This can help alot in games, particularly FPS games.

However, I totally agree that the game running at 1280x720 downscaled from 8000x4000 would look much nicer than the 1920x1080 native, but it's not as good for most games . There are some games that wont particularly benefeit from high res and would be much better when they look their best though, these are usually the "family" games like mario party and such where there are no details of any importance.

BTW Owen you spell far F A R not fare I keep getting confused reading your posts about TVs and then theres something about paying for a cab or something?

I doubt very much if their is a game maker who insists on detail that fine.

The object of the game maker is to sell the bloody thing on as many resolutions possible.

[Skiller]

I doubt very much if their is a game maker who insists on detail that fine.

The object of the game maker is to sell the bloody thing on as many resolutions possible.

I assume you mean other than me and even still there are quite a few others that want all sorts of extra detail (especially the artists). And the object of a game developer is to make a good game, but to keep ourselves from poverty we have to make sacrifices so the game is more marketable. It's the publishers objective to "sell the bloody thing on as many resolutions possible".

It's not so much the detail being too fine that causes the problem but that things can be much further away because the user controls the camera, so often ppl miss things of importance.

Play counter-strike (yes I know it sucks), to get headshots you need to aim at the head. At 5-10m this shouldn't be a problem the head is plenty large enough to aim at. But at long ranges the head may only take up a pixel or 2, if you didn't already know it was a head it'd be too hard to tell what it was, higher res gives the extra detail to see that it is indeed a head and to shoot it.

In fast racing games objects you need to dodge may only be on screen for a second and every frame extra that you have to dodge it helps. So if you run it at high res that thing that used to look like a texture detail could now look like a kurb that makes you car flip and you'll have that little extra time to avoid it.

ect. ect.

Like I said there are many examples.

[DavoNogo]

Let's not forget that the PS3 will in fact render games at 720p then upscale to 1080p, which makes it worse than if it were rendered at 1080p and displayed as 1080p, which is the whole point of my argument. It'd be nice if the consoles (or even PCs for that matter) could handle running at 8000x4000 then downscaling, but let's be realistic here.

My point is that rendering games at 1080p instead of 720p upscaled to 1080p is FAR from pointless, and that's what I'm arguing here.

[Chopstar]

I assume you mean other than me and even still there are quite a few others that want all sorts of extra detail (especially the artists). And the object of a game developer is to make a good game, but to keep ourselves from poverty we have to make sacrifices so the game is more marketable. It's the publishers objective to "sell the bloody thing on as many resolutions possible".

It's not so much the detail being too fine that causes the problem but that things can be much further away because the user controls the camera, so often ppl miss things of importance.

Play counter-strike (yes I know it sucks), to get headshots you need to aim at the head. At 5-10m this shouldn't be a problem the head is plenty large enough to aim at. But at long ranges the head may only take up a pixel or 2, if you didn't already know it was a head it'd be too hard to tell what it was, higher res gives the extra detail to see that it is indeed a head and to shoot it.

In fast racing games objects you need to dodge may only be on screen for a second and every frame extra that you have to dodge it helps. So if you run it at high res that thing that used to look like a texture detail could now look like a kurb that makes you car flip and you'll have that little extra time to avoid it.

ect. ect.

Like I said there are many examples.

Im sure skiller you are a perfectionist when it comes to game artistry and thats what the industry apsires to

however on many games the detail will never be seen, as the bulk of the consumers wont be running the state of the art screen definition, even though they wish all to have the same.

Personally I think the skill of the game is not so much how much money is spent on what resolution or the time frame but the art of the player.

Im not a person who feels they should have the upper hand because of the technology advantage even though it does happen in many professional sporting arena.

[Owen]

There are three main issues here.

1. The games rendered resolution.

2. The Games output resolution , which does not have to be the same as the rendered resolution although it always is on a PC, but need not be on a platform like PS3.

3. Display size, resolution and viewing distance

As discussed, the games rendered resolution needs to be high to provide a clean detailed image without jaggies and blocky textures, unless a better way can be found to render games.

However, how any game or video appears to the viewer, is very dependant on viewing distance and display size, not just game res or display resolution.

Unless you view from four times screen hight or less, 1080 resolution is just not resolvable by the average human eye.

Now I am sure that many PC gamers sit very close the their PC monitors, but how many people are going to sit that close to a big screen TV?

For those that do, well they will need as high a resolution setup as they can get their hands on, for both video and games.

For those that view from greater distances, game, video and screen resolution become much less critical.

Why pay for resolution you cannot see at the viewing distance you use.

[Skiller]

Why pay for resolution you cannot see at the viewing distance you use.

You wouldn't, but who says you cant see it at the viewing distance, the difference between 1280x720 and 1366x768 is fairly clear at under 10m at 32" (under 3m it's just blatent) so I'd imagine 1920x1080 would be an even bigger difference. And really who sits more than 5m from a 32" screen?

Edit: Forgot to say that that was for PC/Gaming use, for video I doubt it'd be that easy to tell the difference.

Edited February 22, 2006 by Skiller

[xtractdigit]

dont forget that 1920x1080p is considered the new industry standard.

quote from toshiba:

"But work is ongoing to enable high-def discs and display equipment to display 1080 lines of fixed resolution (1080p) - a capability which Blu-ray proponents claim their discs will support, even with the first wave of movie releases. Toshiba's language today appears to concede that the first wave of HD DVD discs, although playable sooner, will not support the full capability that the industry is working toward."

[Owen]

Here is one of the high res 1600x1200 game images Davo posted.

http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/3144/image19nn.png

It is a cut from a full frame, and is only 520 pixels high, so it will not be a problem for any PC monitor to fully resolve.

Since the image is less then half the vertical resolution of 1080 it needs to be viewed at 8 times the hight of the image to simulate viewing a 1080 image at 4 times screen hight.

A viewing distance equal to four times screen hight is about the limit for most people to fully resolve 1080 resolution.

Display the picture on your monitor, and measure the vertical hight of the image.

Now measure out a distance 8 times image hight from your monitor, and have a long hard look at both the left and right side of the image.

Can you see a difference, and which side looks best or most natural?

The killer here is that the right side image has been scaled to effective 720p resolution, by down scaling (dividing image size by 1.6666) and up scaling back to original size.

If you can see a useful difference between the left and right image, at that viewing distance, well good luck to you I say.

Remember we are comparing a 1200p image to a 720p image in my example, at a distance close enough to resolve 1080p resolution.

A 32” 16:9 screen has an approximate hight of 17” or 43.2cm.

Four times that is 1.72 meters, so you need to view from less then that distance to be able to fully resolve 1080.

1080p is 1.5 times the res of 720p, so the maximum viewing distance for 720p works out at about 2.6 meters for the average human on a 32” screen.

[xtractdigit]

Sorry owen I'm mixed up here ,also had a few beers. The left side looks better to me. Especially the right eye which is the only thing in focus and you can see that from a couple a mtrs away. Sometimes soft filters as used here dont have an obvious focal point. A shot without soft filter would be a better image.

[Skiller]

Just because you can't fully resolve a resolution doesn't mean you cant still see a significant differance in PQ. On my 15" (diagonal 4:3, at 1280x1024) LCD moniter at about 4m the left is still clearly better than the right, the colors are clearer and the image is alot sharper.

[Drizt]

The pictures quote 1600x1200 but clearly these are screen shots that are no longer at the resolution..... there about 1/4 the quoted resolution..

how can this be a valid test if its not the correct resolution ? The pictures have already been down scaled....

You would need to take a 1600x1200 screen shot and then keep the original scale and resolution.... do your 720p down scale, then upscale back to 1600x1200.. and then we would definately see a difference

Here is one of the high res 1600x1200 game images Davo posted.

http://img161.imageshack.us/img161/3144/image19nn.png

It is a cut from a full frame, and is only 520 pixels high, so it will not be a problem for any PC monitor to fully resolve.

Since the image is less then half the vertical resolution of 1080 it needs to be viewed at 8 times the hight of the image to simulate viewing a 1080 image at 4 times screen hight.

A viewing distance equal to four times screen hight is about the limit for most people to fully resolve 1080 resolution.

Display the picture on your monitor, and measure the vertical hight of the image.

Now measure out a distance 8 times image hight from your monitor, and have a long hard look at both the left and right side of the image.

Can you see a difference, and which side looks best or most natural?

The killer here is that the right side image has been scaled to effective 720p resolution, by down scaling (dividing image size by 1.6666) and up scaling back to original size.

If you can see a useful difference between the left and right image, at that viewing distance, well good luck to you I say.

Remember we are comparing a 1200p image to a 720p image in my example, at a distance close enough to resolve 1080p resolution.

A 32” 16:9 screen has an approximate hight of 17” or 43.2cm.

Four times that is 1.72 meters, so you need to view from less then that distance to be able to fully resolve 1080.

1080p is 1.5 times the res of 720p, so the maximum viewing distance for 720p works out at about 2.6 meters for the average human on a 32” screen.

[Owen]

Extractdigit,

Can you be specific about image hight on your screen, and the maximum viewing distance at which you can see a differenced.

I also asked the question, which side looks the most natural, or real if you like.

If you would like to post an image that you feel would be better, please do, and I will scale it in the same way as the last example, and post the result.

[Owen]

Just because you can't fully resolve a resolution doesn't mean you cant still see a significant differance in PQ. On my 15" (diagonal 4:3, at 1280x1024) LCD moniter at about 4m the left is still clearly better than the right, the colors are clearer and the image is alot sharper.

You cant be serious man.

You recon you can see a significant difference in clarity on a 15” 4:3 screen at 4 meters.

I don’t know what planet you are from, but you are clearly not human..

Any colour differences are due to the conversion in file format, NOT the rescaling, so they should be ignored.

Any other super humans here?

[Drizt]

Any colour differences are due to the conversion in file format, NOT the rescaling, so they should be ignored.

Any other super humans here?

color difference could be due to scaling...... you lose quality when downscaling, and this quality is not just resolution but definable colors...

[Owen]

The pictures quote 1600x1200 but clearly these are screen shots that are no longer at the resolution..... there about 1/4 the quoted resolution..

how can this be a valid test if its not the correct resolution ? The pictures have already been down scaled....

You would need to take a 1600x1200 screen shot and then keep the original scale and resolution.... do your 720p down scale, then upscale back to 1600x1200.. and then we would definately see a difference

I explained in my post that the images are obviously cropped down.

Because the image hight is only 521 pixels, or less then half 1080, we need to view it from double the distance that you would normally view from to correct for the cropping.

If we want to get the effect of viewing a 1200 line image we need to move even further back from the screen.

The advantage in using a cropped image is that screen resolution is not a limitation.

Even an SD TV can reproduce a 520 line image.

If you want to post a more suitable image, feel free.

[Owen]

color difference could be due to scaling...... you lose quality when downscaling, and this quality is not just resolution but definable colors...

Any change in colour due to scaling is insignificant.

All TVs scale video, both up and down, and colour definition has never been an issue.

As a HTPC user, I regularly scale up 720x576 SD video to 2160x1728 and then back down to 1712x1080 for display, and colour is not affected.

[madmax]

Hmmm, an interesting test........

My image size is 14cm, I focussed on the eyelashes and I found they looked about the same at 120cm. In fact at this distance the fine eyelashes were becoming invisible on the left image......(hmmm, in this case is it better to be able to see the eyelashes or not see them? I guess the purists would say not, because you wouldn't be able to see them in real life....). Anyway so using Owen's Law, 120/14x2 = ~ 4 x image height.

Damn, better get my eyes tested.....

[Owen]

Look guys, I am not saying that 1080p is a not better then lower resolutions, of cause it is.

Personally, I would never consider a display with less then 1080 resolution, and can definitely see the difference between 1080 and 720 resolution, but that is only because of the close viewing distances I use. (currently a 57” screen from 2.8 meters, and hopefully soon a 70” screen from the same 2.8 meters).

At those kind of screen size – viewing distance ratios, 1080 is a MUST.

What I am trying to get across to people is that 1080 is a VERY high resolution, and unless you use a viewing distance of about 4 time screen high or less, the improvements it offers are marginal to non existent.

If you are a PC gamer, and using a PC monitor, you are no doubt sitting very close to the screen, probable about 500mm, or about 2 times screen hight, so obviously resolution is very important.

I cant imagine anyone viewing a TV, from 2 times screen hight.

[madmax]

You can't? But yours will be only 1.6! (he says jealously). But you're right, most people wouldn't.

Girls, forget about using eyelash thickener - downscaling will do it for you!