1080p v 4K

When you go from 1080p to 4K, the amount of game world you see on screen does not chnage. You get better quality image since you have more pixels to play with.

When you go from 1080p to say ultra wide 2056 x 1080, you do see more of the game world. I understand that the aspect ratio has now changed so see more.

What I want to know is, why don't games, draw more of the game world in 4K compared to 1080p? Anyone has simple explanation?

1080p and 1440p are currently standard resolutions on PC.
How would audience react if a game shown bigger area on 1440p capable monitors?

An example: League of Legends. The screen is 4:3 for any resolution and for everyone. The game is all about you noticing what's happening on the visible part of the map - by giving more visibility to players with bigger resolution capable monitor the rest of people would be discriminated. The community would go frenzy.
That's the simplest possible explanation.

I said before 4K is phones and TV gimmick used for apps/media that operate with 20ish frames per second, sometimes even less like facebooking or reading comics.
Videogames need 60+ frames per second, resolution (unless below 1080p) is irrelevant.
I'm unsure what resolution VR helmets should provide as bare minimum, but whichever it is, less than 60 FPS somehow feels as fail on them too.

A few do draw more; but a quality game tends to have a target visual size. I.e, the objective is for the size of the objects to remain the same else the world would shrink.

What you really seem to asking for is that (all?) games provide a slider that allows you to set the target size of objects on the screen. This could of course be implemented with games that do not use fix size textures.

Ultimiately there is a missing input to games and that is the size of the monitor (as well as the distance of the viewer from the monitor) but one could see that those two pieces of information would make things unnecessarily complicated and a simple slider would be pref.
-
Btw IMHO most games are not well implemented (I won't go into details as to the reason for this view) and that is part of the issue with games being able to offer this level of flexibility.

To give an example of what I am talking about (amount of game world) see the two images

one is 1024 x 728
other is 2056 x 1080

http://imgur.com/a/KJFnf

Bad example.
The Witcher 3, ultra, hairworks enabled… On 4K?
Unless you're hotel owner and paired two Titan X pascal you'd probably have 10 frames per second = unplayable.

You should pick some other openworld that looks like ZX Spectrum/C64 product. Unmodded Watch Dogs comes in mind. That game got massacred and released without any spectacular visual effects I dare to think it'd work on a phone.

joxer said:

Bad example.
The Witcher 3, ultra, hairworks enabled… On 4K?
Unless you're hotel owner and paired two Titan X pascal you'd probably have 10 frames per second = unplayable.

You should pick some other openworld that looks like ZX Spectrum/C64 product. Unmodded Watch Dogs comes in mind. That game got massacred and released without any spectacular visual effects I dare to think it'd work on a phone.

Click to expand...

Please don't derail this thread I am not interested in what is good or bad etc. I am trying to learn the relationship between resolution, aspect ratio and FoV and how they affect what we see on screen. Thanks!

I don't think it was derailing but okay, maybe I misunderstood the question.

lostforever said:

To give an example of what I am talking about (amount of game world) see the two images

one is 1024 x 728
other is 2056 x 1080

http://imgur.com/a/KJFnf

Click to expand...

Hmm. I really have no idea, but I know in some games you can go into the .ini file and tweak the FOV, I believe it's called. Skyrim, for example. If you change the number you see more of the game on screen.

Isn't this kind of like an aspect ratio thing? 16:9 vs. 4:3 ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspect_ratio_(image)

Dunno if that is it but maybe it will help.

lostforever said:

When you go from 1080p to 4K, the amount of game world you see on screen does not chnage. You get better quality image since you have more pixels to play with.

When you go from 1080p to say ultra wide 2056 x 1080, you do see more of the game world. I understand that the aspect ratio has now changed so see more.

What I want to know is, why don't games, draw more of the game world in 4K compared to 1080p? Anyone has simple explanation?

Click to expand...

As far as I know, some do. When you're using a 2.5d game (for instance BG : SE) the pixel count is the same because it's a 2D sprite with only 1 texture size. So when you increase the resolution, you just see more on the screen (otherwise it would look pixelated or distorted).

In a 3D game the opposite is true. Because you're able to zoom, you can't really increase the viewing of the game world if it's the same aspect ratio. Because as soon as you zoomed in/out it would be come the same viewing area as 4k/1080p (in other words, zoomed in 4k is the same as zoomed out 1080p. Or 1080p is the same as 4k. I don't know if i'm making sense. It's so cold out today my brain is frozen.

Some true 3D games do not do it, but it's because of the developer. Like Blizzard doesn't let you increase the viewing area on multiplayer games because of "unfair advantage"

lostforever said:

What I want to know is, why don't games, draw more of the game world in 4K compared to 1080p? Anyone has simple explanation?

Click to expand...

Simplest explanation - In a 3D game, it's not the resolution that affects how much of the game world you're seeing, it's the FOV.

The view in the resolution is not supported. It is a by product of resolutions that are supported during the design.

Product is designed to be seen in 1080 and 4k, what the player is supposed to see is worked on.
Then when switching to a resolution whose view is not supported in the design, the view might be larger, same or smaller.

JDR13 said:

Simplest explanation - In a 3D game, it's not the resolution that affects how much of the game world you're seeing, it's the FOV.

Click to expand...

Ah ic. In effect what you are saying that in my example above with witcher 3 and ultra wide, when I changed the resolution, the fov also changed?

Yeah - the game recognises that some resolutions must be on an ultrawide screen, and shows a wider scene.

On a screen of normal dimensions, if you kept increasing the FOV along with the pixel density, you'd end up with a really weird scene, like a panoramic view squashed into too small a space.

lostforever said:

Ah ic. In effect what you are saying that in my example above with witcher 3 and ultra wide, when I changed the resolution, the fov also changed?

Click to expand...

Right! Like this:



In a Witcher 3 example, 4K and 1080p are both 16:9 so that's why they see the same area. But 1024x768 is 4:3, and 2560x1080 is 21:9

Making sense now. Thanks all!

So the joxer right all along in that 4K doesn't really give you an advantage on 1080p What you need to ultra wide.

lostforever said:

Making sense now. Thanks all!

So the joxer right all along in that 4K doesn't really give you an advantage on 1080p What you need to ultra wide.

Click to expand...

You don't need ultra wide necessarily. You just need a way to adjust the FOV which some games offer in their options menu. In other games, you can sometimes adjust it by tweaking the ini file. Of course this only applies to games using a first/third person view.

Good comparision.

Oldish thread, but to add my two cents:

This has to do with how 3D is rendered. It's a bunch of polygons which are essentially vector objects. Now compare that with 2D sprites and you'll see the reason:

Sprites are essentially x by y grids of pixels which always take the same amount of pixels on screen. If you raise the screen resolution this x by y area becomes physically smaller but looks sharper because the pixels are physically smaller too (les noticeable aliasing). This in turn makes view area bigger (more pixels, more to see - makes sense).
Now, with vestor graphics (polygons in 3D) it's quite different. It's not a x by y grid of pixels anymore (technically it is, since that's how monitors work, but a computer doesn't see it that way). It's bunch of vectors with predefined starting points, lengths, and directions which are not determined by resolution but by coordinates which stay the same when you change the resolution. Raising the resolution makes those coordinates match more precisely to the x by y grid that is screen resolution. Add to that that there is less aliasing due to smaller pixels and you get a sharper, more precise image. Vector objects stay the same physical size and get sharper because although screen resolution gets higher, 'internal resolution', or the coordinates they are defined by stay the same.

Now, to get a 3D game to show more (or less) of the game world you need to change that 'internal resolution' and to do that you need to change an aspect ratio of the screen (or the window, if the game is running in windowed mode). Wider the screen, wider the 'internal resolution', wider area of the game world displayed. You can also change the field of view and it will display you a wider area of the game world, but it will also distort game objects. That's because although 'internal resolution' changes, screen resolution stays the same and proportions get messed up. Basically, a horizontal line of pixels coresponds to more 'internal pixels' and the image gets crunched horizontally.