Microsoft and Sony’s emerging 4K 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."
FURTHER READING
First impression: No, PS4 Pro graphics aren’t as revolutionary as SD-to-HD shift
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.
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Sony says the PS4 Pro's internal rendering pipeline and some proprietary upscaling techniques will improve lower resolution base signals to take fuller advantage of a 4K display. But no amount of upscaling can fill in those missing 4K pixels as well as hardware (and a game engine) that natively generates images at full 4K resolution—or so the argument goes.
FURTHER READING
Xbox Project Scorpio: Will it really do 4K?
With Scorpio, however, Microsoft seems to be arguing that every first-party game at launch will be able to generate and render nearly 8.3 million pixels (four times as many as a 1080p game) at an acceptable frame rate (i.e., at least 30 times a second). That would be quite an achievement. As we noted back at E3, it currently takes pricey, high-end PC graphics cards like the Nvidia GTX 1080 or the AMD R9 Fury X—cards that run $300 or much higher—to "barely scrape by" with a native 4K, 30fps game. And those PC cards seem to have significantly more raw power than what is being claimed by Microsoft—9 and 8.4 teraflops, respectively, vs. a claimed 6 teraflops for Scorpio (and 4.2 teraflops for the PS4 Pro).
This isn't a completely apples-to-apples comparison, of course: a tightly focused console might be able to generate more raw pixel-pushing power than a generalized PC with a similar teraflop rating. And Scorpio isn't coming out until the 2017 holiday season, which gives Microsoft and Moore's Law some time to up the power and lower the cost of such "native 4K" hardware.
Even if Scorpio games do run natively at 4K, though, the question becomes whether those added pixels offer a noticeable improvement over upscaled games running at smaller (but still greater-than-1080p) native resolutions. Insomniac CTO Al Hastings told Ars at the PlayStation meeting that the difference between "native" 4K and the PS4 Pro's output should be "nearly indistinguishable" in games like the developer's upcoming Spider-Man project.
FURTHER READING
Op-ed: Why I’m not too worked up about the next-gen console resolution wars
And as with the much-debated difference between 720p and 1080p "full HD" resolutions, whether you can see a difference in the bump to 4K at all depends heavily on your screen size and distance from the display. That means a living room TV gets less benefit from the resolution bump than a PC monitor two feet away. Improving upscaling algorithms might make the difference between sub-4K and 4K "Ultra HD" images on consoles even less apparent to all but the most trained eye (or the most devoted pixel counter).
We'll of course reserve any judgement on the Scorpio's "native 4K" claims for when we see the system in action and get a better look under its hood. Right now, though, the emerging pixel-pissing contest between Microsoft and Sony reminds up a bit of the counterproductive megapixel wars between digital camera makers a decade ago. There are a lot of factors that contribute to whether a game looks good or not, and the difference between 1440 and 2160 lines of native vertical pixel resolution isn't chief among them.
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tipoo Ars Scholae Palatinae
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I'd be surprised if even the Scorpio didn't end up having AAA games move to dynamic resolutions with upscaling as well. Even top end PC cards aren't fully comfortable in 4K right now, and sure, you could get a lock to 30fps by lowering settings, but I suspect devs would be more tempted to lower the resolution to be able to do more fancy effects.
I don't get the appeal of squandering 4X the GPU power on 4X the pixels right now (or 2.2X for PS4 Pro), when there's so much headroom to improve visuals at 1080p. I still see so many low res textures and jaggies on current console 1080p games. We have not saturated this resolution, yet a new one is just more easily marketable.
And if the Scorpio still uses Jaguar like the Pro, then I doubt many current 30fps games will be able to become 60fps on 1080p like I'd prefer, as the GPU can be as powerful as it wants, but the weakest link, the CPU, will hold back framerate.
From Microsofts perspective, while they ended up on a more powerful box in the second iterations, they did so at the expense of losing maybe a year and a half to the Pro, so expect them to drum up "native 4K" for their lives from now until launch. It's reminiscent of Sonys Next gen doesn't start until we say it does, full HD 1080p, potential of the Cell blah blah...It's like the two have agreements to alternate the same cycles of things
1296 posts | registered 5/27/2012
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/09/microso...g-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."
FURTHER READING
First impression: No, PS4 Pro graphics aren’t as revolutionary as SD-to-HD shift
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.
ADVERTISEMENT
Sony says the PS4 Pro's internal rendering pipeline and some proprietary upscaling techniques will improve lower resolution base signals to take fuller advantage of a 4K display. But no amount of upscaling can fill in those missing 4K pixels as well as hardware (and a game engine) that natively generates images at full 4K resolution—or so the argument goes.
FURTHER READING
Xbox Project Scorpio: Will it really do 4K?
With Scorpio, however, Microsoft seems to be arguing that every first-party game at launch will be able to generate and render nearly 8.3 million pixels (four times as many as a 1080p game) at an acceptable frame rate (i.e., at least 30 times a second). That would be quite an achievement. As we noted back at E3, it currently takes pricey, high-end PC graphics cards like the Nvidia GTX 1080 or the AMD R9 Fury X—cards that run $300 or much higher—to "barely scrape by" with a native 4K, 30fps game. And those PC cards seem to have significantly more raw power than what is being claimed by Microsoft—9 and 8.4 teraflops, respectively, vs. a claimed 6 teraflops for Scorpio (and 4.2 teraflops for the PS4 Pro).
This isn't a completely apples-to-apples comparison, of course: a tightly focused console might be able to generate more raw pixel-pushing power than a generalized PC with a similar teraflop rating. And Scorpio isn't coming out until the 2017 holiday season, which gives Microsoft and Moore's Law some time to up the power and lower the cost of such "native 4K" hardware.
Even if Scorpio games do run natively at 4K, though, the question becomes whether those added pixels offer a noticeable improvement over upscaled games running at smaller (but still greater-than-1080p) native resolutions. Insomniac CTO Al Hastings told Ars at the PlayStation meeting that the difference between "native" 4K and the PS4 Pro's output should be "nearly indistinguishable" in games like the developer's upcoming Spider-Man project.
FURTHER READING
Op-ed: Why I’m not too worked up about the next-gen console resolution wars
And as with the much-debated difference between 720p and 1080p "full HD" resolutions, whether you can see a difference in the bump to 4K at all depends heavily on your screen size and distance from the display. That means a living room TV gets less benefit from the resolution bump than a PC monitor two feet away. Improving upscaling algorithms might make the difference between sub-4K and 4K "Ultra HD" images on consoles even less apparent to all but the most trained eye (or the most devoted pixel counter).
We'll of course reserve any judgement on the Scorpio's "native 4K" claims for when we see the system in action and get a better look under its hood. Right now, though, the emerging pixel-pissing contest between Microsoft and Sony reminds up a bit of the counterproductive megapixel wars between digital camera makers a decade ago. There are a lot of factors that contribute to whether a game looks good or not, and the difference between 1440 and 2160 lines of native vertical pixel resolution isn't chief among them.
Promoted Comments
tipoo Ars Scholae Palatinae
JUMP TO POST
I'd be surprised if even the Scorpio didn't end up having AAA games move to dynamic resolutions with upscaling as well. Even top end PC cards aren't fully comfortable in 4K right now, and sure, you could get a lock to 30fps by lowering settings, but I suspect devs would be more tempted to lower the resolution to be able to do more fancy effects.
I don't get the appeal of squandering 4X the GPU power on 4X the pixels right now (or 2.2X for PS4 Pro), when there's so much headroom to improve visuals at 1080p. I still see so many low res textures and jaggies on current console 1080p games. We have not saturated this resolution, yet a new one is just more easily marketable.
And if the Scorpio still uses Jaguar like the Pro, then I doubt many current 30fps games will be able to become 60fps on 1080p like I'd prefer, as the GPU can be as powerful as it wants, but the weakest link, the CPU, will hold back framerate.
From Microsofts perspective, while they ended up on a more powerful box in the second iterations, they did so at the expense of losing maybe a year and a half to the Pro, so expect them to drum up "native 4K" for their lives from now until launch. It's reminiscent of Sonys Next gen doesn't start until we say it does, full HD 1080p, potential of the Cell blah blah...It's like the two have agreements to alternate the same cycles of things
1296 posts | registered 5/27/2012
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/09/microso...g-contest/
