Game Optimization and GPU improvements - what can it take to truly push 4k UHD?

[Coffee Pancake]

No. not at all. It's in fact far worse.

Not only are your eyes limited in terms of raw sensory resolution, distribution of sensors is far from even. Human vision has a VERY small central cone that's capable of being sharp and accurate (extremely conditional based on image, insert optical illusions here) that rapidly looses both focus and accuracy. The further into the periphery you get the more everything smears together and desaturates.

Maximize this forum page. Focus on the "+ Quote" button, the like button on the other side of the page will be a fuzzy grey blob. Start moving backwards till both are in focus .. you will need at least 15 feet clearance behind you (depending on age) and excellent vision, but you wont be able to see the black plus anymore.

But it gets even worse. If things are in motion outside of the central cone you will be hard pushed to distinguish a 4k display from 720p one (or lower!)

Frame & refresh rate are far more important. Rather than 4k, 1080p @ 144Hz with frame rate to match will provide a far better experience for almost everything you do that involves looking at a display.

 

 

 

[cykarushb]

On 3/17/2019 at 11:40 AM, Solar Legion said:

Adding to the above:

Nor was Second Life - and the content within it - ever intended to run at such an insane resolution.

As one of my room mates put it once: There is no reason to be running 4k on something the size of a computer monitor. That assumes of course that you're being sane about that and not trying to use something pushing 40+ inches as a monitor ...

A 55+ inch unit as a TV or gaming display (for a console or in home streaming)? Sure, 4k is sane-ish. For Second Life or about any other general computer use case? No. Sorry, not even for 3D modeling. You're not going to use something that big for that, you're just not.

What's that? You say that 4k exists on smaller displays? And your point is ... what exactly? What you're using in that instance is a display size that has to have pixels crushed down to allow for such an insane display size. You're not really going to notice much improvement - no, you're not, don't even attempt to argue.

This absolutely irritating trend to make more and more content/PC games 4k is just that - irritating.

This is a really bad mindset for technology as a whole. There is no reason to not improve what we currently have. Our hardware can push 4k, and is only getting better. Why not do it?

Ive got a laptop from 2002/2003 with a 1400x1050 display, where theres a review up that claims "why would you ever need such a high resolution on a 14" display?"

And a 10gb hard drive from 1999, where on the box it claimed it was the largest hard drive you would ever need.

On 3/17/2019 at 6:21 PM, Theresa Tennyson said:

I did some math...

Turns out that there are more pixels in a 4K display than there are cones (the dudes that detect color and fine detail) in the human eye. By a pretty wide margin, too...

https://askabiologist.asu.edu/rods-and-cones

And that does not directly relate to the resolution of a digital display that you can see properly. The same kind of argument is used with the whole "the human eye cant notice more than 30hz", but theres still a noticeable improvement going from 30 to 60, 60 to 120/144, ive seen a 240hz display with my eyes before and even that is a massive improvement over 120hz.

[Coffee Pancake]

4 hours ago, cykarushb said:

And that does not directly relate to the resolution of a digital display that you can see properly. The same kind of argument is used

No  it's a really different kind of argument,  having substantially greater pixel density that you can perceive with your face pressed to the screen is a bit like owning trousers with 3 legs. Sure you can do it, but whats the point aside from bigger numbers more better. Bragging rights don't come free, every pixel your hardware has to push comes with a cost.

 

[cykarushb]

17 minutes ago, CoffeeDujour said:

No  it's a really different kind of argument,  having substantially greater pixel density that you can perceive with your face pressed to the screen is a bit like owning trousers with 3 legs. Sure you can do it, but whats the point aside from bigger numbers more better. Bragging rights don't come free, every pixel your hardware has to push comes with a cost.

 

Thats a personal opinion and a personal experience of how much pixel density you can notice.

If youre comfortable with the average 21-23" 1080p or 1440p display, then fine. If you cant notice the jump to 4k, then dont use 4k. Many people do notice the difference in visuals.

[Solar Legion]

No, they don't. Not on something the size of the average PC monitor - they just don't.

There's a reason I don't bother reacting or responding to you in general these days, Cykar - nowhere did I say innovations should not be made. In the future respond to what is present, not what you imagine was being said.

Improve the hardware's capabilities but be realistic in the application. You know, that thing you ignore when trying to answer users who ask about their hardware specifications: The average user doesn't care if a given hardware set is capable of starting the client program, they care about it being able to meet their expectations of a "decent" experience which often means being capable of more than 15 - 20 FPS (closer to 40 - 60) out of the box or with minimal fuss, in most situations.

[cykarushb]

9 hours ago, Solar Legion said:

No, they don't. Not on something the size of the average PC monitor - they just don't.

There's a reason I don't bother reacting or responding to you in general these days, Cykar - nowhere did I say innovations should not be made. In the future respond to what is present, not what you imagine was being said.

Improve the hardware's capabilities but be realistic in the application. You know, that thing you ignore when trying to answer users who ask about their hardware specifications: The average user doesn't care if a given hardware set is capable of starting the client program, they care about it being able to meet their expectations of a "decent" experience which often means being capable of more than 15 - 20 FPS (closer to 40 - 60) out of the box or with minimal fuss, in most situations.

I have fully explained this once before, i believe over the discussion of a chromebook and you injecting a personal opinion on how they are not laptops.

Hey look at this, i can make words bold too, like some kinda simplified wikihow article on a topic such as dog jousting or model boat hobbyist hunting for dummies.

The point that i made there was that im not looking at the requirements for "technically it runs", and i even stated there that i have run "technically it runs" and brought up a post i made a long while back where i ran below spec and where i ran the system requirements and said that while it will "technically run" it is not enjoyable or comfortably playable. Even going to the extent to explain that the system requirements page is entirely out of date and what is on paper considered technically playable should not be, because such an experience is not playable in the slightest. (namely, a 6600GT and 1gb of ram with a dual core from 2008 struggling to get over 1 frame per second as the "minimum"). Technically it runs, but that should not be considered any kind of minimum. Never have i looked at someones ages old A4 APU or a Core2duo laptop and gone "it will play" and leave it at that, i always make sure to mention that while the game will start, it will not be enjoyable.

In the same sense that when that person started talking about their chromebook and how to run SL on it, instead of immediately replying with something like "a chromebook is not a laptop" and not giving them any information on anything they actually wanted to know about, i told them a way to do it and warned them that it would be a very unpleasant experience depending on what hardware was in their chromebook, and potentially not possible if they didnt have an x86 based chromebook like an ARM model. But they later posted their machines specs and it would be capable of SL, likely low settings, but far from unplayable, and far from the above shown PC below minimum spec with its whopping 5fps. A fairly modern mobile ulv quadcore and 2 or 4gb of ram would totally be able to play secondlife and have it be more than a low FPS nightmare at minimum settings. My Athlon 5350 APU is outclassed by the current generation of mobile celerons and the IGP is as well, and that 5350 was doing me just fine for a while in 1080p on its own.

And if you had any idea what you were talking about and werent just replying to forum posts for the sake of argument and talking about your personal opinions rather than providing useful and relevant information, you would have known this as well and been able to recognize the general capabilities of a modern chromebook and share information gathered on the topic.

9 hours ago, Solar Legion said:

There's a reason I don't bother reacting or responding to you in general these days, Cykar - nowhere did I say innovations should not be made. In the future respond to what is present, not what you imagine was being said.

Been responding to me pretty much every time we're in the same thread and reacting to many of my posts with that little "haha" face.

I normally respond to you when i see you type out something the equivalent of middle school book report in a discussion entirely unrelated to such conversation.

Such as this thread which is a great example, where in a discussion on 4k resolution and if SL would ever be really playable at 4k, you came in here and started going off about a personal opinion on what you thought of 4k resolution and technologies related to it. Instead of any relevant discussion, you went straight for personal opinion. You would be a great clickbait news article writer.

So lets go over this sentence by sentence from your original footstep into this topic:

On 3/17/2019 at 11:40 AM, Solar Legion said:

Nor was Second Life - and the content within it - ever intended to run at such an insane resolution.

I doubt in 2003 there was talk about running SL in resolutions higher than what was around at the time for even the super high end enthusiast. There were 1920x1080 workstation monitors, mainly SGI stuff, that were incredibly expensive and most hardware wouldnt be able to display anything at that resolution, let alone actually game at such resolution. The highest end GPU of 2003, the FX 5950 Ultra, topped out at QXGA spec, 2048x1536 resolution. And that was just "it will run the display", it could not game at that resolution at all. That card was best in 1280x1024 which was the common resolution of the era. 1600x1200 being i guess the ages old equivalent of 1440p the way we see it today. 

But it wouldnt matter because its not an issue from the very start. Dynamic resolution scaling and adjustment has been a thing for a very long time and was a thing when SL was new. When you resize the window of this game, the game adjusts. It does not crash, it does not freeze, the window is not locked to a specific size you have to adjust ingame, it supports any resolution you can make the window. And its not like 4k has some special requirement, just like switching any resolution, the higher the resolution is, the more demanding it is on the system. They would not need to plan for SL to run at 4k because SL will really run at any resolution you want. 8k, 16k? itll do it. Im sure at some point you will start to see FOV issues more than anything rather than issues with the game not running at higher resolution.

On 3/17/2019 at 11:40 AM, Solar Legion said:

As one of my room mates put it once: There is no reason to be running 4k on something the size of a computer monitor. That assumes of course that you're being sane about that and not trying to use something pushing 40+ inches as a monitor ...

If someone wants higher resolution, they should have higher resolution. Thats the reason. Its a want, not a need. You can look at a 640x480 screen and go "wow, i really need a higher resolution to do what im doing". You do not NEED a higher resolution than 720p for 99% of things these days. Games will look ok, web pages will show ok, youtube videos will look ok. But 1080p is nicer. 1440p is a bit excessive but still looks nicer. 4k is definitely beyond overkill and some people likely wont even notice it, but why not have it? Theres no reason not to if you can afford it and your system can display things at such a resolution. 

Just to drop in as well, thats a personal opinion again. Thats your roommates words, not the general synopsis of the PC gaming community or even anything close. Who cares if its frivolous, im currently posting this from a PC with a GTX 970 in it, even though my monitor is 1680x1050 at 60hz, and nothing i could ever do on this PC would ever dip below 100fps at this resolution. But its a quiet card. Frivolous, its a want, not a need.

On 3/17/2019 at 11:40 AM, Solar Legion said:

A 55+ inch unit as a TV or gaming display (for a console or in home streaming)? Sure, 4k is sane-ish. For Second Life or about any other general computer use case? No. Sorry, not even for 3D modeling. You're not going to use something that big for that, you're just not.

So its reasonable if its a big display and not a computer monitor? I can understand where you're coming from, that at distance you would want a higher resolution rather than up close. But wouldnt that also be a matter of if youre far away, will you even notice the difference between a 55" 1080p display, and a 55" 4k display? 

3D modelling also is one of the places where 4k is extremely beneficial, more crap on your screen without your UI getting all scrunched up and low res. If you have 4+ different applications open on one monitor, having a higher resolution on that smaller display will give those applications much needed clarity and make them usable at those low window sizes on an average computer monitor. Even if its just one application, especially 3D modelling, where you will have multiple viewports open at once, and your actual workspace being fairly small, it would be very helpful for the high resolution of the monitor to make it easier to see.

"Youre not going to use something that big for that, you're just not."

Reading this im realizing there are two ways this whole phrase can be taken, so im going to cover both. Using a 55" 4k display as a monitor? A lot of people use large tv's as computer monitors, usually just because they sit farther away or their PC is a multipurpose device. My parents regularly use the 65" 4k TV in their bedroom as both a comcast/amazon streaming device, youtube streaming device, and have a PC plugged into it to web browse and do old people stuff from the couch.

Using 4k on a small screen is covered above.

Also, personal opinions once again.

On 3/17/2019 at 11:40 AM, Solar Legion said:

What's that? You say that 4k exists on smaller displays? And your point is ... what exactly? What you're using in that instance is a display size that has to have pixels crushed down to allow for such an insane display size. You're not really going to notice much improvement - no, you're not, don't even attempt to argue.

Have you seen a 4k display? Have you gamed on 4k? There is a noticeable difference between each resolution jump. Theres a reason its a popular topic and people want to game at 4k resolution, why there are consoles now that are promising 4k resolution, why TV's are marketed as "4k UHD" these days and why there are movies and streaming services that offer 4k options. People notice the change in visuals.

"dont even attempt to argue" try me

4k is a thing because people like the increase in visual clarity and visible detail. It is noticeable, if you cant notice it, either something is wrong with your eyes or you just havent been paying attention.

On 3/17/2019 at 11:40 AM, Solar Legion said:

This absolutely irritating trend to make more and more content/PC games 4k is just that - irritating.

It irritates you that technology is advancing? Dont get me wrong, i'd love if we aesthetically peaked with our PC's in 2002. Lots of UV plastic and aluminum, looked really nice. But technology always moves forward and always gets better. We've gone from 1080p being the norm to 1440p and 4k becoming realistic resolutions that many people can game at now. There will always be improvement, there will always be something better, everything has gotten better in the world of technology. Todays integrated graphics on 15w mobile processors are more powerful than the flagship gpus of 2006-2008. The lowest end desktop processor you can buy new today, the Athlon 200GE, destroys the best possible processor of 2008, the QX 9775. Your power supply is drastically more power efficient, your motherboard has double the estimated lifespan, you went from 2gb of ram being the average to 16gb, storage went from 250gb being a lot to 1tb being the norm, storage speeds and technologies of course also changing with SSD's, even in a short time span, going from SATA to m.2 and NVME.

Like, damn. Just another thing on storage, right now a 250gb Samsung 970 EVO NVME ssd is around 100$. But for 100$ you can get a 4tb WD Blue 7200rpm HDD. Thats 8x the capacity for the same price. But why would you ever buy a 970 evo then? Surely theres gotta some reason right? Yeah its faster, but most users wont notice too drastic of a difference between an NVME ssd and a hard drive. A lot of stuff would load much faster but how often are you really waiting on things to load?

Maybe its a want and not a need? Maybe its a want for people who want those small increases. That 3 second power button to desktop boot time.

In the same sense that people who want things like 4k will be the market for 4k and will be the driving force behind the development of 4k and 4k capable hardware and other technologies.

 

 

Edited March 21, 2019 by cykarushb

[cykarushb]

Oh and just before i forget, this whole "show up in forums and post your opinions before useful information" thing is more of an issue in questions or help sections rather than discussions. In a thread like this, who really cares. Your wrong and i pointed out why but its not a big deal.

But in the chromebook thread i mentioned, where a user asked for help and wanted information, and you instead gave them a personal opinion and insulted their hardware instead.

Heres how a help and support style forum works

1) user posts topic asking for help

2) other users who have useful information or potentially even a complete answer, answer the question

3) op says thanks

Heres exactly what you do not do:

1) insult OP

2) post personal opinions and thoughts on the topic

3) post in a topic at all if you do not know anything about what you are talking about

Thats a toxic and unhelpful way to deal with a person asking for help.

 

Even in this post, when i stated:

It will play secondlife with firestorm. Its just going to perform awfully because youre working through a VM layer on a machine thats best suited for older games and mainly for its original purpose, web browsing at best.

If you made an ubuntu chroot and installed firestorm on it, and it didnt run, its probably just not going to. I said it was possible, but not that it would work well at all. Its plain and simple not up to the task.

Yet for some reason we have you with this

You make a habit of pretending "loads the program" means "useful" or "works" - loading and actually being properly usable are not the same thing - at all.

Even though that is the exact thing i didnt do, and clearly explained that it would run but not perform well.

Please grow up and try to act like a remotely respectable person when you involve yourself in discussions on forums. Give actual information or valuable and relevant input instead of dropping in with a personal opinion and then dismissing everyone elses.

[Solar Legion]

Boy I really hit a nerve, didn't I? 

Nothing has changed, back into the bin you go. 

Oh and just to address a singular point: This isn't a support forum. That's over in the Answers section. This is General Tech Discussion, your quoted thread is in another general purpose section: Second Life Viewer.  That you don't understand the difference speaks volumes. 

Edited March 21, 2019 by Solar Legion
Left a detail out

[cykarushb]

1 hour ago, Solar Legion said:

Boy I really hit a nerve, didn't I? 

Nothing has changed, back into the bin you go. 

Oh and just to address a singular point: This isn't a support forum. That's over in the Answers section. This is General Tech Discussion.  That you don't understand the difference speaks volumes. 

ok 😗

[lupaspirit]

If you have really good near sided vision (like myself) you can tell the difference between a 1080p & 1440p display on a cellphone. That PPI is like comparing 6k with an 8k computer monitor. The average person, on the other hand, cannot see anywhere beyond 4k and barely notices improvement from a 1440p display. As for Color bit density, I honestly thought the human eyes were incapable of seeing beyond 6bit. Once I got an 8bit professional NTSC rating monitor I could tell there were more colors. I also thought it was pointless buying A monitor above 60fps; however, once I got my first 120fps monitor there was also a difference.

[Solar Legion]

Color perception aside ... about the only part of that that is actually believable concerns the FPS rate. I've met people for whom anything beyond 60 causes nausea so it's not too difficult to believe there are those who can see that sort of difference.

[Coffee Pancake]

On 3/21/2019 at 8:59 AM, Solar Legion said:

Color perception aside ... about the only part of that that is actually believable concerns the FPS rate. I've met people for whom anything beyond 60 causes nausea so it's not too difficult to believe there are those who can see that sort of difference.

I've found that playing at 60+ is great, watching someone else play at 60+ can make my stomach flip (especially older FPS shooters where the player camera acts like its on rails).