Jimquisition: Children of the Resolution

[blackrave]

GLORIOUS PC GAMING MASTER RACE REPORT IN!

Let us overclock our graphics cards and re-bind the controls on our keyboards in a way that makes shooters barely playable while dismissing the ease and comfort of a gamepad in celebration of our innate superiority over the dirty console peasants!

REPORTING I--

Wait a minute.

re-bind the controls on our keyboards in a way that makes shooters barely playable

Why would we do that? They're already better than with a gamepad.

while dismissing the ease and comfort of a gamepad

Why would we do that? We can use a gamepad.

Oh, do you mean shooters?

With a gamepad?

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

No, hold on, lemme catch my breath.

AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Dude, don't strain yourself that hard, let Bender do it for you
After all that is why we invented robots

 

[Kittyhawk]

Glad I have my PC for higher res games. For consoles to catch up, we'll have to wait. I think part of the staged staggering of console 1080p is down to publishers possibly waiting for 4K tvs to become a big thing. TV manufacturers are fast running out of gimmicks to sell tvs on, so they are banking heavily on games (winks at MS) and films to help justify stitching customers up again. I bet they are loving this resolution staggering, probably even encouraged it.

MS being so keen to get into tv stuff too, probably stakes its claim as film/tv is easier to do in 1080p than games. No point losing steam over it. Titanfall still looks like an awesome CoD killer, even though its using the Source engine still looks crazy, few will care about that once the fun takes hold of a player in March 2014.

There will be many PS4 owners looking over their shoulders at Titanfall, wanting a go, I'm sure.

 

[Artemis923]

Yup, I'll just be sticking to my PC this generation.

I mean, we have Heroes of Might and Magic III. Instantly the best option.

 

[WeepingAngels]

Comparing PC to consoles will only lead to the death of consoles. I am not really sure that it's a fair comparison, PC will win everytime and everyone already knows this.

Anyway, just curious, does the Wii U do 1080p?

 

[CaptainOctopus]

You just described how DSLR cameras are objectively better than point-and-shoot cameras and are technologically superior. They are even subjectively better by your own admission if you take time to learn how to use them and invest in them. Thats actually a good PC vs consoles analogy, but it seems you missed your own point. PCs and consoles both have their niche, but PCs are objectively technologically superior, have bigger game library (20 000+ released games, you can play all of them with relatively little worries about backward compatibilities), versatile (you can plug in whatever gamepad you want, VR capabilities coming soon, can play videos, mp3, PS1-PS2 games with emulators, whatever you can think of really). The only saving grace of consoles is that they are easier to use compared to PCs, but as with DSLR cameras it is easily remedied just by putting some effort into it.

As for PCs being more expensive, well, all things worthwhile generally are expensive. Such is life. But you can pick and choose PC components you want based on performance and price, and find eventually that you paid less than you expected to pay.

Edit: I don't hate consoles or console owners in general, I would even buy PS3/4 if I had extra money for it. It does, however, rustle my jimmies when console fanboys start loudly proclaiming how much their console is better than all PCs ever. It's just not true.

My point wasn't that 'PC's are superior'. My point was that it doesn't matter if PC's are superior. Its all about whats best for whom; PC players whom declare that their platform is superior in every way forget that its not necessarily for everyone.

Take, for example, your dismissal of price and usability as "It is easily remedied just by putting some effort into it" (in leu of the fact that ease of use shouldn't need effort), and "all things worthwhile are expensive". Heres the thing though: some people don't want to put effort into their gaming (or photography), and don't want to spend massive amounts of money for something that they, personally, don't see as worthwhile; and thats OK. Not everyone needs to be an enthusiast. Not every photographer needs to know about the nitty gritty details of photography, and not every gamer needs to have a custom-built rig to have a little bit of fun.

And besides, while you dismiss usability and ease of use, those are both serious concerns for many consumers. (both of gaming PC's and DSLR's)

edit: I forgot to add: people who do decide that a console (or point-and-shoot) is better for them and buy that instead of the technically superior PC/DSLR should most definitely NOT be patronised for their purchase. The sort of flaming PS4/Xbone fanboys have against each other is bad enough, but the sheer elitism of PC users, comparing people who want to use consoles as 'dirty peasants' is somewhat tiresome. Just like I shouldn't admonish people for getting a point&shoot just cause I have a DSLR, PC users shouldn't look down upon console users either; they're just different platforms for different people.

Nah consoles today just suck dude. Lets face it all you get is a shitty PC with many of its problems and few of its benefits. Plus in the long run it can be expensive as hell to own a console compare to a PC. For the average price of 10-20 console games, you can on a nice sale get fucking hundreds of games on steam, gog, gamersgate etc. Not to mention the games you already own, together with all the countless petabyte of free stuff out there.

Also when did "think about the people who don't care" become a valid argument? Isn't at least partly because all of those people who don't care, we now have all of this shitty cash in games? I mean informed gamers don't spend 100$ on some crappy facebook game, right? So why should anyone encourage or respect that kind of behavior?

 

[Lightknight]

The thing I'd be most afraid of regarding the XBO, aside from it's terrible launch, is that Microsft's CEO forerunners are pushing for selling off the console.

Wait, that's actually(or supposedly) happening?

I know Microsoft shareholders weren't fond of the Xbox line to begin with, but are they really planning on attempting to sell off the line to another company? Or did you mean something else by it?


I thought they were just going to shut down the department as a trim the fat kind of thing.

While that particular person's statement was misinformed (and stupidly public shortly before a launch of the product he's talking about dropping), this push towards selling or dropping it has me incredibly concerned. The XBO is supposed to rely on online processing and this is the same company that just killed their live marketplace, leaving all customers in the dust there.

I have no confidence in their ability to maintain my games library or even to maintain an environment that I can play old games in.

 

[BetaEpsilon]

And that last joke which was obviously about PC pretty much summarises how silly it is that people argue over 720p and 1080p on consoles. I, too just can't really summon the strength to care all that much about it.

It is still rather pathetic that they can't do 1080 p at 60fps when the technology has been widely in use around the time the xbox 360 came out and was in its infancy when the orignal xbox came out.

For gods sake I thought the PS3 and xbox 360 could already run in 1080p I don't own either so.

 

[truckspond]

Meh; I am not really bothered by all of this console madness quite simply because I have a PC that only runs at 1366x768 - just a hair over 720p and games still look utterly AMAZING at the lowest settings possible at 1024x768 because that's what I had to do to run Bioshock Infinate and I am perfectly OK with that because I don't give a toss about graphics as long as the gameplay is good! Just Cause 2 has BRILLIANT and highly satisfying gameplay and yet they managed to get it to look good as well. Not because of the resolution but because of the aesthetics!

 

[Bravo Company]

Yet, one thing nobody every points out. People have their 40" TVs running at 1080p while my 24" monitor is at 1080P...


If I were to get a 40" monitor (if thats possible) I imagine the resolution is going to be MUCH higher than 1920x1080

and since I can't get the image to show:http://xkcd.com/732/

 

[OniYouji]

Yet, one thing nobody every points out. People have their 40" TVs running at 1080p while my 24" monitor is at 1080P...


If I were to get a 40" monitor (if thats possible) I imagine the resolution is going to be MUCH higher than 1920x1080

and since I can't get the image to show:http://xkcd.com/732/

That's because of proximity; you don't sit six inches away from a 40" inch TV, and you don't sit four feet away from your monitor. Bigger screens generally imply a larger seating distance.

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

Besides buying a PS3 for FFxiii (bad idea) and Child of Eden (good idea) I haven't played consoles in nearly a full generation now. Despite that, I'd like to add on to the list with Minecraft:

Any game using the Unreal Engine [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games]
WoW

Look at all those games thriving on engines built for weaker systems. As I said, I haven't played consoles in a bit, but having a high resolution never seemed to be the impetus for buying a console. That was always pc territory. Maybe I've been away too long.

Now that I think of it, won't the Steam Box and Ouya also just run pc games? A quick google search shows that the Ouya will scale to whatever res the developers make a game at.

 

[Fearzone]

PC gamers have long had to suffer playing games held back because they had to be able to run on the crappy XBox. It took moders to let us have a decent experience on, say, Skyrim. Finally consoles are updating from dinosaur age technology and the best the XBox can muster is 720p? My phone is 720p--that I bought last year, and I love it to death but it is a little embarrassing now. I'd get 1080p phone but I'm still on contract. Geez, microsoft. Too bad they didn't name it the XBox 720p then we could all laugh at it.

 

[Roxor]

Why bother upping the display resolution any more? A 1920*1080 monitor is big enough as it is. A 4096*2304 monitor would be too big for my desk.

 

[Saulkar]

The difference between keyboard and mouse and controller when it comes to flying is a night and day comparison.

Yeah, I mean, the controller is inferior in EVERY WAY!

Just testing my caps hypothesis.

OK, now you are just confusing me. Is Poe's law in effect?

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Comparing PC to consoles will only lead to the death of consoles. I am not really sure that it's a fair comparison, PC will win everytime and everyone already knows this.

Anyway, just curious, does the Wii U do 1080p?

Reports of the console's death have been highly exaggerated. PC sales are actually in decline, while console, tablet and smartphone sales have been rising. I doubt this trend is going to reverse anytime soon. It's likely that PCs will eventually be a niche only used in offices and in specialized niches.

I'm at a loss as to why so many commenters seem to think that consoles will be beaten by the PC in the gaming market. It's highly improbable, and such predictions are only being made by hardcore PC gamers, who have a rather skewed view of the market, I think.

P.S: The Wii U will output 1080p resolution, but not with particularly outstanding or complex graphics.

 

[Strazdas]

You know why PC's are so much better than consoles, when it comes to graphics? Why they can perform tasks that a puny console couldn't hope to do like 60FPS at whatever resolution it wants? Because they're ridiculously expensive, thats why. A high-end gaming PC that can do all those fancy graphics a console can't can cost over $1000, while a quick Google search suggests even an 'entry level' PC build costs over $600; suddenly Xbox One's $499 seems reasonable, especially when it has an extremely advanced camera thrown in, while the PS4 (which is often compared to a mid-range PC) is a downright steal at $399; not to mention the constant upgrading of PC's (often touted as a strong point of PC gaming) only adds to these astronomical costs, simply to play the latest games at the best quality.

It seems to be a point that people often ignore, to be frank. And why? It seems like PC's are getting off scott-free when it comes to criticism, with memes and jokes about how the 'PC gaming master race' laughs at anything related to consoles. As a person who much prefers gaming on consoles than a PC, its really irksome to have a barrage of PC players patronising us simply for our purchasing decision.

Ok, ill bite.
No, PCs are not riduculously expensive. at least not if you use comparative power. Xbox One is 500 dollars (and more elsewhere) and Microsoft claims it just about breaks even on the hardware. For 500 dollars you can buy slightly more powerful machine than Xbox. The thing is, new consoles use standart PC components, so thier price will be equal regardless. Besides, consoles hadp rice advantage only because it was selling at a loss. im sure you knew that.
PC is an expensive initial investment, which easily pays off with cheaper games. buy at least 1 game per month? youll break even within 12 months. and thats implying your not using humble bundles, steam sales, ect.
Of course, if your stupid enough to buy stuff like Alienware, where you pay double just for name and fancy LEDs in your box, then it will be expensive for you. BUildign yourself is even cheaper, and before you say it, not, its not complicated. KIDS DO IT.
PS4 is selling at a loss, so its bad price comparison, unless you expect hardware manfuacturers to take a loss for no reason for you with PCs.
The "constant upgrading" is a false rumor. I upgrade my computer every 5 years. well upgrade is not the best choice, because i replace everything but hard drive. Thats a healthy cycle in my opinion, and it lets you be powerful to run everything. Considering the resolution and graphical prowess of PCs, your really not getting anything worse than consoles even on 5 year old PCs. heck, i still use my 10 year old PC and it works and i can play old games on it. The old PC doeskin just dissapear.
Also if you update gradually, that lets you spread the costs over many years instead of having to save up 500 dollars for new console at once. This is beneficial for non-rich people.
I would also like to add this here to show that difference isnt just graphics.

Spoiler: large image

For the same reason that people worry when one company has a monopoly.

Also PC Gaming is still intimidating to a lot of people, whereas consoles are easily accessible.

Also if Sony loses to the pc, then it will not be a good thing to gaming as a whole, it and Nintendo going down would leave a sizeable mark on the industry for many years(Microsoft too, but they still have windows, even if it is in its current, degenerate form known as Win8)

Except that with PC there is no one company holding it over like with Consoles. With PC you have many hardware manufacturers and many software manufacturers. While it is true that there is one dominant distributor right now (steam), if it were to decide to "turn evil" we could just as easily go back to every publisher having its own publishing that we had before steam. If monopoly worries you, then console dominance is the most worrying thing ever. Consoles are the monopolistic thing, not PCs.

Nintendo wont go down in any foreseeable future, so hold your horses. they wotn go down even if they keep making looses, their working capital is enormous. They were extremely conservative with their spending.
Microsoft windows is dominant now, but is not the only one. Linux will get more popular with SteamOS, which is successful will be a healthy alternative for gamers at least. There is also sadly rising popularity of iCrap production that brings competition to MS. but iCrap is even more monopolistic stranglehold than consoles ever were.

Um, no, because 24fps is an arbitrarily number chosen by the movie industry because it hits a good balance between fluidity and economy. It's just as arbitrary as the bizzare 29.97fps of tv in some countries.

Human eye colbs process and send signals, rereshing every ~40 ms (the research found 38ms to be average). that would mean that over 1 second, it happens 26 times. Thus human eyes process 26 frames per second. Of course you will be fast to point out that the cobs can be taking turns, thus making it happen more often. however firstly, there is no medical evidence this happens, secondly, that would make the view unclear. Unless our brains fill in the blanks from the previuos signal, which would still make it 26 frames per second, just with "screen tearing" effect. Our brain is doing more thna you think. It fills in the blanks and creates motion blur. There is an easy expriment to test it. Take a camera, put it on your forehead and jump around looking at one spot. when you jumepd around the view looked quite clear and you could clearly see the object in focus all the time. now look at the camera footage. that is because your brain does plenty of post processing that is done to make you look like you werent shaking much at all. this helps us see better, and tricks us into thinking we see much more.
Now that is not to say that more frames per second in games is a bad thing. not at all. In order to see perfectly what happens in games we need to synch data from graphic card going into monitor and then sync monitor refreshing with your eye refreshing. First one is solved by V-sync (so turn it on), and you no longer need to produce more frames than monitor shows to jump into all of the monitor frames.
The second one is much ahrder to do, since we have no way to synchronize monitors to every individual looking at the screen. So what we do is increase refresh rate and pray the frams hit. we do 60, 70, 100+ frames on monitors and hope that this mean that every 5th frame will get synchronized with the eyes. thats why you can see a difference, because on 60 frames you likely see half of them "between" frames, thus you see "blinking" in monitors.

Yes, the 24 and 29.97 standarts are arbitrary and unrelated. Actually the latter is supposed to be 30, but since the processors need 30ms to get the next second ready it gets kinda wierd. frankly i watch all my video in flat 25 FPS.

Wonder how 780p or 1080p would look on my standard definition TV. Don't think it'll make much of a difference. Now on PC that's another story running 800x600 for some of my favorite games.

Standart definition TV cannot show either of those to begin with. you wont see a difference since in both cases you would be using 480p actually Then again, you wont see it anyway as neither of new consoles support SDTV. i saw how 1080p looks transmited into 720p TV though, and thats not pretty as the TV seems to be eating pixels to downscale it

Anyway, I can't really decypher what you mean by computer monitors being "downgraded" to 1080p after having higher resolutions, that one's kind of just straight up not true. Just because they like to put 1080p compatible on the box to prove it can do 1080p doesn't mean that's the maximum...

I dont agree with much of what he said but this part is true. 10+ years ago the standart monitor could do 1200p and more. however in the move of "omg everyone only watches movies so must be widescreen, derp" resolutions got downscaled a lot. the new crystal and plasma technologies being unable to be small enough for high resolution didnt help either (technology was starting). Essentially 10 years ago we had a drop in average resolution of monitors in order to keep them low enough so TV technolgy can be just copypasted into monitors, and we only recently (last few years) saw them rise above that again.

Artificial Intelligence (something that nobody has tried to sell their game on for a long time barring the new Forza.)

Case 1: make advertisement showing off new fancy graphics and pretty explosions.
case 2: make advertisement showing "smart tactical decisions of enemies".
quite clear why noone is selling AI, its much harder to sell these days sadly.

Why? Because sometimes I don't feel like taking 2 to 3 hours to get my game running perfectly, or dealing with a game that happens to not like my graphics cards very much, or paying for a game an then never playing it because the developer decided that his preferred key bindings were law. I also find it a little aggravating to spend my time searching for a server that doesn't have a pack of hackers and cheaters roaming around on it, with my only other alternative being install "Anti-Cheating" DRM that decides I'm cheating anyway when I win a few rounds.

Not sure what you built for your 3000 dollars, but i havent had to fiddle with a game to play it since, well, i guess 2005. exception being when im trying to run 1999 or older games on modern hardware, but thats not the case that your talking about. and even then, it never took an hour to google a solution.
Keybindings being unchangable you can thank consoles for. they port it and forget that there are mroe keys on keyboard than on a controller.
As for cheaters, i dont play much online so i cant claim either way, but the times i played cheaters were swiftly dealth with. now of cours back in 2005 or so cheaters were more "fun". we would find bugs to trap cheaters in to make them ineffective and all. good old days i guess.

Laptops aren't equivalent to computer monitors in total, since they're integrated. The market share of laptops has really dried up between being weaker than desktops and less portable than netbooks and then tablets, so I'm not surprised they haven't really moved forward. There's not much of a market for it.

Laptop market share is increasing dramatically and is overtaking PC sales. 46% of adults had laptops in 2010. There were news of them overtaking PCs now. Of course netbooks in the future will be more prominent, but currently laptops are the kings.
http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Social-Media-and-Young-Adults/Part-2/2-Computers.aspx

No one can point at a top of the range CRT from 1995, a device that likely costed $10,000+ in todays dollars, which compares unfavorably to a $200 LCD today, and say that monitor technology hasn't progressed.

I have a CRT from 2003 that is capable of 1200p. It cost less than 400 dollars back then. I still am unable to find a new desktop cheaper capable of this.

I think part of the staged staggering of console 1080p is down to publishers possibly waiting for 4K tvs to become a big thing. TV manufacturers are fast running out of gimmicks to sell tvs on, so they are banking heavily on games (winks at MS) and films to help justify stitching customers up again. I bet they are loving this resolution staggering, probably even encouraged it.

MS being so keen to get into tv stuff too, probably stakes its claim as film/tv is easier to do in 1080p than games. No point losing steam over it.

Just like they were waiting for 1080p TVs to become more popular last time.... and yet...
Bolded part: i see what you did there.

Yup, I'll just be sticking to my PC this generation.

I mean, we have Heroes of Might and Magic III. Instantly the best option.

im so glad people still ahvent forgotten that amazing game

Why bother upping the display resolution any more? A 1920*1080 monitor is big enough as it is. A 4096*2304 monitor would be too big for my desk.

not perfect for me therefore noone needs it!

Reports of the console's death have been highly exaggerated. PC sales are actually in decline, while console, tablet and smartphone sales have been rising. I doubt this trend is going to reverse anytime soon. It's likely that PCs will eventually be a niche only used in offices and in specialized niches.

I'm at a loss as to why so many commenters seem to think that consoles will be beaten by the PC in the gaming market. It's highly improbable, and such predictions are only being made by hardcore PC gamers, who have a rather skewed view of the market, I think.

P.S: The Wii U will output 1080p resolution, but not with particularly outstanding or complex graphics.

Consoles sales during lauch of new consoles are increasing. shock.
PC sales have been decreasing due to Windows 8 (since its laucnh PC was decreasing) however if you were to look specificalyl at high power PCs, their demand is increasing as more people are moving into PC gaming.
Yes, when we are able to ahve holographic proejction devices to play with our minds PCs will become pointless. TIll then, nope, PC is still going to be needed to provide enough power for high end gaming. unless you plan to start high end gaming with tablet streaming into TV, which while may be posible in 20 years or so, doubtlful to be superior.
As far as this launch goes, Consoles are already beaten by PC.

 

[Hellfireboy]

Lovely as usual, Jim

I'm pretty sure who argue that 720p is better than 1080p are the self-same individuals who claim that the human eye can only see at 24fps.

Cognitive dissonance much?

Let's get some science up in this piece. The human brain will start to perceive movement at 15fps. You can't actually "see" a framerate higher than 30fps and this is due to the fact that that number matches the speed of information going from your retina to your brain to produce an image which is around 1/30 of a second. Now the odd thing about brains is that just because you can't see something doesn't mean you don't notice it, which is why I put see in quotes above. It's like a comedian I once heard talking about people's reaction when he burned off his eyebrows. People knew something was wrong but they didn't quite know what it was. Even though you can't technically see 60fps over 30fps, you will perceive the difference between the two and 60fps will be perceived as smoother motion.

On the side of 24fps, which is the standard for film, that speed was decided upon since it was a balance between film usage and smooth motion. 24fps was the lowest you could go to create a smooth motion in a film and would use the least amount of actual film stock. Since most films are now shot on digital it is something that is no longer relevant but continues to stick around in a similar manner that the QWERTY keyboard is still around even though it was created to prevent people from jamming mechanical typewriters which is impossible for you to do on modern keyboards.

The difference between 720p and 1080p though is more like the difference between 15fps and 30fps. You can absolutely see it and that is a provable fact that you can test out just by going down to your local electronics store and looking at two TVs playing the same thing in different resolutions. I find it absolutely remarkable that MS overlooked this with the XBOne.

 

[romxxii]

Let's get some science up in this piece. The human brain will start to perceive movement at 15fps. You can't actually "see" a framerate higher than 30fps...

Tell that to all the people who couldn't watch Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit" at 48 fps.

Also, here's an article which talks about the upper limit for the human eye's responsiveness to stimuli:

http://www.cameratechnica.com/2011/11/21/what-is-the-highest-frame-rate-the-human-eye-can-perceive/

Yeah, it's closer to 60 fps.

 

[QUINTIX]

Let's get some science up in this piece. The human brain will start to perceive movement at 15fps. You can't actually "see" a framerate higher than 30fps...

Tell that to all the people who couldn't watch Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit" at 48 fps.

Also, here's an article which talks about the upper limit for the human eye's responsiveness to stimuli:

http://www.cameratechnica.com/2011/11/21/what-is-the-highest-frame-rate-the-human-eye-can-perceive/

Yeah, it's closer to 60 fps.

Your brain does not have a serialized connection to your retina, or through any major sensory chord for that matter. There's not much "sample aliasing" in the time domain. Though light may take (a lot) more than 1/60th of a second to fade from a few cone cells, that does not mean you are unable to detect changes that take less than 1/300th of a second in neighboring or distant cones.

 

[PuckFuppet]

Just to clarify something, that I'm sure someone has addressed at some point.

You don't have to spend that much to make a decent gaming rig nor does any mid-range rig need to be overclocked to play... pretty much anything you want.