Up until a point a good few years back, all those eyeball-melting E3 game reveals were real graphical showcases. Without fail we were shown games that looked better than anything we’d seen before. Games like Half-Life 2, Crysis, Tomb Raider and Metro 2033 seemed to push the very boundaries of what our graphics hardware was capable of. Then mulled over the last three years of E3 and realised there wasn’t really anything that had pushed the boundaries since. I can’t be alone in thinking that today’s AAA games look roughly as good as 2015’s AAA games. The likes of GTA V, The Witcher 3 and Batman: Arkham Knight look every bit as good as Resident Evil 7, Prey, and Mass Effect Andromeda.
I think we’ve hit a visual fidelity wall, and not because we haven’t got the graphics cards and assorted gaming hardware that could do it. Instead, anyone and everyone has become preoccupied with hitting 4K. Radeon RX Vega wasn’t revealed alongside a graphical showcase of what it could do that the RX 500 series couldn’t. All we got was the exact same games, running at the exact same settings, at a higher resolution.
We’re now stuck in a rut where we’re chasing more pixels rather than better pixels. You only have to look at the PlayStation 4 Pro and the Xbox One X to see this. They’re both practically useless unless you have a 4K TV, and yet they’re four times as powerful as their predecessors. Rather than making games look insane at 1080p, everyone seems to be happy with them look exactly the same yet at a higher resolution.
All that extra graphical firepower is purely being spent on pushing more pixels. For those of us not at the bleeding edge, who don’t have 4K monitors, there’ aren’t really many advances out there to be excited about. We’re going to find ourselves at a comparative standstill until we hit a new standardised resolution that everybody’s happy with. It’s an achievable goal for those willing to spend $600 on a graphics card, but there’s a long way to go until the entry level GPUs are comfortable at 4K.
I haven’t really been hit with the resolution bug myself, and never felt the pressing urge to go beyond 1080p. I think there’s heaps on untapped potential still waiting at 1080p and it seems a shame to miss out on that for the sake of a crisper image. Perhaps I’m alone on this front though, and 4K resolution really is preferred beyond other graphical niceties. The counterpoint is that perhaps the graphical advances are being made at just as fast a rate, yet diminishing returns makes it hard to distinguish genuine change.
What are your thoughts? Have gaming graphics not advanced much lately? Is making 4K the standard the next priority? Let us know your thoughts!
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Mobile gaming good games 800x600 resolution.
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as much as people complain and i agree with them visuals is more important then resolution, you can only make a game look so good at 1080p, i mean you can make the models better and stuff but at some point you also have to update texture resolution and 4k resolution textures would not make the game look better on a 1080P screen... and i guess that in this case the developers wanted to focus on resolution before they go any further with the models, who knows... maybe they will start focus on visuals after they perfect 4k ;)
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that is not how texture resolution works.
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Who cares about 4K? Companies need to focus on FPS, not 4K. I'll take 1080P @ 60+ FPS any day over 1440 or 4K.
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I feel 1440p is the sweet spot though
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I agree, I currently have 1440p 60FPS rig and it is absolutely awesome. Don't see the need personally to jump to 4K as of yet!
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What really needs to be improved upon more than anything else is AI and Physics engine and Animation quality (and gameplay mechanics). E.g. Take a game like Ghost Recon Wildlands great visuals but the AI seems stupid at times even on higher difficulty. Also the physics systems leaves a lot to be desired.
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Yes, AI definitely needs to be improved. Although this point is somewhat off topic regarding graphical improvements it is something that should get its very own article and be given the attention it deserves.
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I would say AI and animation quality are sort of off-topic because if I am not mistaken AI and animations rely heavily on the CPU. On the other hand, physics is on-topic because it could rely heavily on the GPU. I also agree that the extra GPU horsepower should be used for physics and not improved visuals or resolution
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Id rather have good performance than either one of those:
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so you do NOT care about the gameplay, mechanics, content, story, level and world design and sound?
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This article is about graphics and resolution, not gameplay, mechanics, content and all the other stuff you mentioned. yes, these things are important but not in the context of this article.
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I would love to see developer spent more money on creating new engine, optimization , developing new physics engine and improving Artificial Intelligence behavior, creating new game-play and game mechanics , creating New Ip.................
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4k is a gimmick , an commercial argument to sell consoles,TV's, monitors and Gpu's , that's all what is is, let us stop talking about it , It has not brought anything to the development of video games apart from the textures sharpening ....
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4k was a mistake...
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The error is when video game companies opened their capital to private shareholders, afterwards, it became only a matter of money and deadline, in results, games botched, not finished, and All that counts is the money of the shareholders
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the Only Developer that i support , and ( instead of downloading their game from Skidrow or another torrent website ) i will buy their games legally , is CD project Red, they spent 04 years to give us Witcher III, that's how you make games
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I don't even have the place to put a 4K monitor or tv. I would be more than happy with a good 1080p monitor.
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There are 24 inch 4K monitors so the space for a 4K monitor could easily fit in the space of a 1080p monitor. I would be concerned with the viewing distance because you would have to sit twice as close to the monitor in order to achieve the same amount of pixels per viewing angle degree.
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A 4K monitor is out of the question 4 me right now, need the money to live XD
But even if I could afford to buy 1 I wouldn't. I would rather buy a good 1080p monitor and have a monster GPU and play all the games for the next 5+ years to the max.
Also I had another thought, if I had the money I would rather buy a VR headset than a 4K monitor.
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If you upgrade your 1080p monitor to another 1080p monitor I do not think there will be a huge difference in visual quality. Therefore, I think it would be best to keep using your old 1080p monitor until it breaks, especially if you are on a budget. I plan on keeping my monitor until it dies.
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I currently only use my laptop, which has a 720p rez and I'm ok with that. The only annoying thing about my laptop screen are the viewing angles. Have to constantly adjust the screen, if I want to watch a movie on my bed. But you get used to it. XD
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In my opinion games looked great ever since Crysis in 2007. Therefore, I would rather have the extra GPU horsepower be used for physics which has barely improved (with the exception of the first Crysis and Battlefield 1) since the Havok physics engine was released back in 2000 and was last updated 5 years ago.
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xbox one s added hdr and got a gpu speed increase to compensate for the processing required for that. hdr is being bundled with 4k but in reality there are tv (monitors to a lesser extent) that have deep color which allows hdr levels of color without the brightness requirement. xbox one x adds 4k capability to the hdr and upscaling that xbox one s does.
i have a 4k hdr tv (lg 43UH6100) that when i watch 4k bluray movies or 4k hdr netflix, it automatically switches. im not stuck with some generic game mode because it recognizes i have a console connected to it. the tv recognizes the content and switches accordingly. when i play gow4, it switches to a hdr game mode.
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That's a nice piece of tech to have indeed... I see that it supports 120Hz, but in what resolution?
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I am guessing that you have a tiny bedroom or living room because for the optimal viewing distance to distinguish 4K from 1080p is 6 feet (1.829 meters) or less according to the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers?
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that means the optimal viewing distance is less than the length of my bed. also if you read that it all depends on what is being viewed.
i also find this chart a little bull. since i have been able to use my previous tv (43" lg 1080p) i can definitely tell the difference between the same shows in 4k and 1080p from the same distance.
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Optimal viewing distance is not based on the viewer's field of view preference nor what is being viewed. The optimal viewing distance is based on visual acuity and the point at which your eyes are not good enough to distinguish all the details. "Studies show that someone with 20/20 vision (or 6/6 in Europe) Con't Below
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(Con't From Above) can distinguish something 1/60 of a degree apart. This means 60 pixels per degree or 32 degrees for a 1080p television." Therefore, based on scientific research when viewing a 45 inch 1080p HDTV at a distance of 5.7 feet (1.74 meters) the human eye is unable to distinguish between 4K and 1080p.
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The difference between a 4K or 1080p HDTV you may be viewing as you stated above is most likely due to the a higher contrast due to the introduction of HDR in 4K HDTVs and not the increase in resolution.
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This generally provides good guidance, but users that use their TVs mostly for watching movies might benefit from sitting a bit closer to get a more theater-like. The SMPTE "reference" position for movie theaters and the THX recommendation is about 40°. The minimum angle of vision works well for most usages though and sitting at a distance where the screen fills 30° of your horizontal field of view should be comfortable for most people.
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For 4k, this distance is often too close for most people. This is because 1080p was designed around the field of view logic above. It is the cutting point at which both the optimal field of view and 60 pixels per degree meet. For lower resolutions, it meant sitting a bit further than preferable to not notice the pixels, 4k resolutions and higher give you a lot more freedom. Because of this, visual acuity isn't really the best way to find the right distance anymore, and it should instead be used as a way to figure out the closest point you can sit to a TV without hitting its resolution limitation.
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i can actually run netflix 4k stuff without hdr by disabling hdr with the xbox one s. the difference in resolution is easily distinguishable.
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The first paragraph in your response is based on the viewing distance required to achieve a specific field of view (FOV) and not the optimal viewing distance. Yes, you can sit at THX recommendation of about a 40° FOV. And yes you will see a distinguishable difference between 1080p and 4K (Continued below)
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(Continued from above) But to get the full benefits of 4K you need to sit at a FOV of at least 64°. This is where your second paragraph in your response states visual acuity should be used "to figure out the closest point you can sit to a TV without hitting its resolution limitation" (continued below)
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(Continued from above) for a 45 inch 4K HDTV you should not sit closer than the optimal distance (or the closest point you can sit to a TV without hitting its resolution limitation) of 2.6 feet (0.8 meters). However, the optimal distance for a 45 inch 1080p HDTV is 5.7 feet (1.74 meters). (Continued below)
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(Cont'd from above) This means for a 45 inch 4K HDTV you would want to sit no closer than the optimal distance of 2.6 feet (0.8 meter) but no farther than 5.7 feet (1.74 meters) because at any distance farther than 5.7 feet the difference between 1080p and 4K resolutions is indistinguishable. (Cont'd below)
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(Continued from above) Therefore, if you sit farther than 5.7 feet from a 4K HDTV your eyes won't be able to tell the difference between 1080p and 4K. In conclusion, the ideal viewing distance for a 45 inch HDTV is between 2.6 feet (0.8 meter) and 5.7 feet (1.74 meters). (Continued below)
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(continued from above) And if you sit further away then 5.7 feet from a 4K HDTV it will look just as good as a 1080p HDTV resolution-wise.
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actually my response was pulled right from that article. since you want to argue the point with me, the optimal viewing distance will vary from person to person. it actually says it in the article/your responses. since the "optimal viewing distance for a 1080p 45" tv is 5.7', then at the same distance, 4k will actually provide a difference based on the simple fact is is 4 times the resolution. the optimal distance is what the person perceives.
since this is based on perception and studies, it is not a fact.
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Optimal viewing distance as defined by the article as the "closest point you can sit to a TV without hitting its resolution limitation." If you read the paragraph with the subject line "How do you interpret the chart?" it explains the optimal viewing distance by the size of the television and resolution chart/graph.
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An excerpt from the paragraph "For example, let's say that you have a 50" television..." "between 3' and 7', an Ultra HD resolution does not matter anymore because you cannot see the extra pixels anyway. However, you are still too close for a 1080p resolution (it will not appear perfect)."(Continued below)
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"Above 7', the perceived quality will start to decrease for 1080p because your eye will not see all the details. You would notice the difference though, it if was 720p. For more than 10', it does not matter if it is a 720p or 1080p HDTV, your eyes are not good enough to see the difference." (Continued below)
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This excerpt "above 7', the perceived quality will start to decrease for 1080p because your eye will not see all the details." This means the human eye cannot make out all the details of a 4K resolution when sitting at a distance above 7' & the human eye is also not good enough to see the difference between 4K & 1080p.
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Scientific research is never a fact but a theory based on experiments and can be disproven at any point in time. But when numerous research & studies are conducted & reach the same conclusion. It should be generally accepted by the public & scientific community as the best answer to a particular scenario in question.
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If you still have your old 1080p HDTV, I would invite you to try an experiment with your 4K and 1080p HDTVs. Watching the same content using both of their HDTV's native resolution side by side at the same sitting distance of 7 feet. If you try this experiment I think you will understand what this article says is true.
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It you do not have your old 1080p HDTV and have a large room where your 4K HDTV is located, do this experiment; while watching 4K content on your 4K HDTV step backwards a total distance of 20 feet. Then while watching the same content switch-over to a 1080p version of the same content. Next switch back and forth between the 4K and 1080p version of the same content. (Continued below)
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(Continued from above) I almost guarantee that when watching your 43 inch 4K HDTV from 20 feet away and switching between 4K and 1080p while watching the same content, your eyes will not be able to make out the difference between 4K and 1080p. This means even though you are watching 4K content on your 4K HDTV when you step backwards far enough, the 4K content will appear to be 1080p content.
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I agree that viewing distance matters, but some people have better vision than others so where viewing distance matters varies from person to person. I have vision beyond 20/20, and I can easily see a difference from 20 feet away on my 50 inch 4K TV. However someone with vision problems may not see the difference even at 10 feet away while wearing their glasses.
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If you have beyond 20/20 vision the "Optimal Viewing Distance By Size of The Television and Resolution Chart/Graph" will not apply to you. But for vast majority of the population who have 20/20 vision with or without corrective lenses the Chart/graph will accurately give a viewer the optimal viewing distance they should sit at. (Continued below)
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(Continued from above) Therefore someone with 20/20 vision with or without corrective lenses should sit at 2.9' away from their 50 inch 4K HDTV and at 6.3' their 4K HDTV will appear to be 1080p because the normal human eye with 20/20 vision will not be able to make out the difference between 4K and 1080p. (Continued below)
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Another experiment anyone could try is to watch 720p content on a smartphone from 20' away. Then switch the same content to 480p and step back 20 feet. From 20 feet away the 480p and 720p content on your phone will look the same. This is due to your eyes not being able to make our all the details of 720p and shows the resolution fall-off that you can see with respect to distance. (Cont'd below)
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(Cont'd from above) Also in order to judge wether a 50" 4K HDTV will look distinguishable from 1080p at a distance of 20' you need to have 2 HDTVs; one 1080p and one 4K. You need 2 HDTVs because when watching 1080p content on a 4K HDTV the HDTV will interpolate (scale) the image to be larger and fill the screen. (Cont'd below)
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The end result is the image that the 4K HDTV displays will be less crisp or clear than it you were to watch 1080p content on a 1080p HDTV at its native resolution. Because of the interpolation and scaling for using a non-native resolution while watching 1080p content on a 4K the experiment requires 2 HDTVs displaying at their native resolutions of 4k & 1080p in order to achieve a proper comparison
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I actually have two 50 inch TVs sitting side by side right now. I just got the 4K a few weeks ago and I haven't decided where to move my 1080p TV to yet. I have tried 1080p content on both TVs and 4k content on the 4k TV. There is a noticeable difference. With both displaying native 1080p content the 4K TV looks smoother, but the 1080p TV looks more crisp and detailed with the native 1080p content. Of course native 4K content on the 4K TV is phenomenal. Now I just wish that I had a PC good enough to run games in 4K. However I am not sure the 4K TV I have would be good for that. Continue below
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Continued... The reason I am not too sure about the 4K TV for gaming is because it has like a 10ms response time. My older 1080p TV actually has a 1ms response time and is excellent for gaming. I am just not too sure that the 10ms response time on the 4K TV will feel right after having 1ms response time on the 1080p TV.
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I thing graphics may be trying to improve in subtler areas like draw distance, shadow detail, dynamic lighting, and so on; not so much the most obvious things, but the finer details. I agree that more can be done on 1080p, in fact waaaay more. How amazing would it be to play a game in which the graphics were on par with a Hollywood movie? This may be too high a bar for developers due to production deadlines more than tech barriers.
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You're pretty much spot on with that statement. There is practically no limit on tech barriers right now for developers, the main barrier is the labour one. Games keep getting bigger and more complex, and companies hire more people to compensate for that. It's really difficult to get 1000's of people on the same page
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Well, technically there is a tech barrier. The problem is that current GPUs can only handle so much before the frame rate bottoms out and when that happens, it's time to upgrade to a new and more powerful graphics processor and the cycle repeats.
I heard rumors that the PS5 will have 10 Tflops of graphics processing power, which should ultimately allow for a drastic improvement in graphics and from what I've heard it'll take just 40 Tflops to reach photorealism, we should be able to greatly exceed that requirement by the time the PS6 becomes a reality which should be a thing by 2027 as the Playstation 5 is rumored to (cont.)
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launch in 2019 (tho some say it will be by the end of 2018), I bet we'll hear something about come next E3).
Now before anyone starts throwing rocks at me, note that the 2027 prediction for PS6 is only an estimate taken from the latest date the PS5 is expected to launch and how long console generations tend to last which is about 6 years give or take so I added a couple of years to the equation.
There is more I would like to say but I think I said enough already so I'll just leave it at that for now.
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hahha before throwing rocks that's funny I'm going to use that next time I say something that may get heat on me
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usually i like to play in 4k uktra 60fps, if start dropping frames below 60 i just tweak some of the graphical settings until i get a stable 60fps at 4k
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I'd love to have a 4k 144hz monitor haha. even though with my current gpu i would probably be pushing 4k at around 30-50 fps i am guessing. based off of what i am playing.
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I'll stick to 1080p and one day 4k in the future maybe. I have no want for a 4k monitor as I can't begin to afford 4k capable hardware at this time anyway.
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I would love to see some new graphics engines developed, but I agree that while hardware and software developers chase the 4k or even 8k dream the graphics engine development side has kind of just settled into a rut. Why try creating better visuals while struggling to give higher resolutions? Unfortunately that is an honest problem that really has stagnated the graphical improvements of new games.
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I don't really care about either. I would prefer a fun game that keeps me engrossed throughout with challenging, entertaining gameplay that has layers of depth for the advanced and expert players to continue to find new combos and strategies.
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I'll be that guy and say that I prefer the framerate AND the visuals AND the resolution. Unfortunately, that's only possible with the best hardware around, so it's out of reach for most people...
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Well you'll have no problem with that rig.
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as long as we get better visuals for what ever native resolution we have that is what I see as most important in graphics issue
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nooooo we at a stand still because there's still a couple chumps saying that they need 144hz for it to be playable
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i have 1080p 144hz monitor and im totally ok playing 60fps any AAA game as long as its not online competitive.
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165Hz 1440p here and I prefet to hit 90+ fps. But then again - I have the hardware for the task.
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It makes me sad that ultrawide it's forgotten,best resolusions out there,2560x1080 and 3440x1440,not that demanding compared with 1440p and 4k and the visuals fidelity and extra fov are really good.