Next gen console support for consumer level Occulus Rift?

[Fredz]

This is the same kind of debate people have had for years every time a new higher resolution standard comes on the market and the bottom line is YES people can tell the difference and a large number of people already own screens with higher resolutions than 1080p.

There is no need to increase resolution for a given screen size and viewing distance when it's already above normal visual acuity (1 arc minute).

It makes sense to have retina displays on the iPhone or iPad, but something higher than 2K on a 42" TV viewed at the recommended SMPTE viewing distance doesn't really make sense. Your eyes won't be able to discern more details, except if you're a fighter pilot.

It certainly makes a lot of sense for displays with higher FOV such as the Oculus Rift though, but with a 90° HFOV a 8K wouldn't even be enough.

[wuliheron]

This is the same kind of debate people have had for years every time a new higher resolution standard comes on the market and the bottom line is YES people can tell the difference and a large number of people already own screens with higher resolutions than 1080p.

There is no need to increase resolution for a given screen size and viewing distance when it's already above normal visual acuity (1 arc minute).

It makes sense to have retina displays on the iPhone or iPad, but something higher than 2K on a 42" TV viewed at the recommended SMPTE viewing distance doesn't really make sense. Your eyes won't be able to discern more details, except if you're a fighter pilot.

It certainly makes a lot of sense for displays with higher FOV such as the Oculus Rift though, but with a 90° HFOV a 8K wouldn't even be enough.

The first TV's sold had 12" screens and today most people might agree that a 55" TV is about as large as anyone could ask for, but the newest one coming on the market I know of is 80" and theoretically it should be possible in the future to literally wallpaper your entire house with cheap printed OLED screens that provide ambient light as well as wall sized video screens. Every year people argue about how big is too big, how much resolution you need, and how far away to sit when the simple fact is they just keep getting bigger and higher resolution and mothers everywhere keep telling their kids not to sit so close to the screen. When and if people finally start to demand smaller screens and lower resolutions I'll be the first to let you know. Until then I'd say it's a pretty safe bet they are not satisfied yet since despite all the controversy they keep buying them which explains why all the major LCD manufacturers are retrofitting their assembly lines to produce cheap ultra resolution screens and keep producing ever larger TVs and monitors.

[cybereality]

The thing is, we are getting to a point of diminishing returns. Its not like people's houses/apartments are getting any bigger. So TVs will not continue to grow in size at the same rate they have been. Really they are as big as is practical to get. I mean, I have a 720P DLP 3D projector. At the max size I can get about a 110" screen in my living room. Really I don't need or have the space for anything bigger. Maybe in the future I will upgrade to 1080P or whatever else they bring out. But its already as big as its gonna get in my apartment.

Fredz does bring up a good point: in the case of HMDs the resolution certainly would help. Even with things like the Sony HMZ-T1 (720P) you can see the pixels, I can only imagine how the Rift will look with its huge FOV and lower-res. So in that case I think 4K will be an advantage moving forward.

That said, I don't think adding more and more resolution is going to make games look more "realistic". Think about back in the day of CRT TVs and VHS movies. The quality was junk, and the resolution was a joke (around 333x480) but, hey, it looked real. With live action movies you never stopped and thought that a characters face was not a human, or anything like that. Realism has nothing to do with visual fidelity. It has a lot more to do with believable animation, very subtle body language, interactions between light and shadow and all those little details. 1080P is more than fine for now. We need to be making more advanced interactivity with head-trackers, motion-controllers, force-feeback devices, and all that type of stuff. That is where we will see serious gains.

[Fredz]

Every year people argue about how big is too big, how much resolution you need, and how far away to sit when the simple fact is they just keep getting bigger and higher resolution and mothers everywhere keep telling their kids not to sit so close to the screen.

I didn't say TVs were too big, actually I'm using a DLP projector with a 100" projected image and I would gladly have a TV with the same size or even a bigger one.

What I've been saying is that increasing resolution doesn't necessarily make sense since there are physiological limits for which higher resolutions won't give a better perceived image. For now these limits have been defined at 1/60° for visual acuity and around 30° for viewing angle by the SMPTE organization and TV manufacturers, which gives an optimum resolution of around 2K for HDTVs.

These limits may change in the future as we don't know enough about the subject yet to be sure that they are valid, but for now there is pretty much a consensus over these numbers.

You may read this excellent Wikipedia article for more information on the subject :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimum_HD ... g_distance

[Nogard]

The problem i have with all this is as i have seen it resolution really doesn't make or break an gaming experience by far it is frames per second. Resolution only seams to factor in when people observe it in contrast with other lower or higher resolutions and it only takes a few moments for any grievances to fall away(unless there is heavy artifacting) when playing.

As for the graphics, They don't really matter as long as you know what you are looking at(ie the style and function) the rest doesn't matter. What is important is feedback, when you interact with the game. The game must give a response that "feels right" for instance you flick a switch and a light comes, a door opens, and engine starts or your character starts regaining health points. Good AI and better physics help. AI that can navigate intelligently interact with the world in a natural way, when a npc gets stuck behind a foot high wall or a chess opponent just sends there queen to be ganked by a pawn for no apparent reason, the feedback fails and the immersion breaks. The same thing with physics, if you shoot something in a game and it looks "loose" (like a pill bottle), but when it is shot it remains stationary you stop seeing the loose object and see a part of level, that is not physical simulated because of the CPU budget. This is what makes the rift so tantalizingly tasty is that fact that it will allow the programmers to envelop you with the game thus improving feedback.

I don't think the next generation of consoles are going to be future proofed, when i studiedly the history of game development specifically the transition from arcade to home console. consoles are not really made to be future proof there usually made to be cheap(even when sold at a loss) the important part about consoles i just standardization, what works on one xbox 360 will work on all xbox 360(in theory ).

Well that my two cents

P.S. There has to be at least a billion spelling mistakes feel free to point them out if you feel you should have too.

[wuliheron]

The thing is, we are getting to a point of diminishing returns. Its not like people's houses/apartments are getting any bigger. So TVs will not continue to grow in size at the same rate they have been. Really they are as big as is practical to get. I mean, I have a 720P DLP 3D projector. At the max size I can get about a 110" screen in my living room. Really I don't need or have the space for anything bigger. Maybe in the future I will upgrade to 1080P or whatever else they bring out. But its already as big as its gonna get in my apartment.

Fredz does bring up a good point: in the case of HMDs the resolution certainly would help. Even with things like the Sony HMZ-T1 (720P) you can see the pixels, I can only imagine how the Rift will look with its huge FOV and lower-res. So in that case I think 4K will be an advantage moving forward.

That said, I don't think adding more and more resolution is going to make games look more "realistic". Think about back in the day of CRT TVs and VHS movies. The quality was junk, and the resolution was a joke (around 333x480) but, hey, it looked real. With live action movies you never stopped and thought that a characters face was not a human, or anything like that. Realism has nothing to do with visual fidelity. It has a lot more to do with believable animation, very subtle body language, interactions between light and shadow and all those little details. 1080P is more than fine for now. We need to be making more advanced interactivity with head-trackers, motion-controllers, force-feeback devices, and all that type of stuff. That is where we will see serious gains.

The argument that higher resolution screens don't make games look more realistic is demonstrably false and saying something like the original Doom looked "real" is absurd. As I have already pointed out higher resolutions screens make things like antialiasing totally pointless and you require higher resolutions just to make the pixel density of the screen itself undetectable by the human eye. Even photographs and cinematography look more realistic at higher resolutions. So much so you could use a high resolution screen to substitute for a window and people might never notice. Try doing that with your 720p projector. That's why they are becoming commonplace because people want that higher quality picture.

However, I think you are correct we are approaching the point of diminishing returns but, like I said, when people stop buying larger TVs and higher resolutions I'll be the first to tell you.

[wuliheron]

Every year people argue about how big is too big, how much resolution you need, and how far away to sit when the simple fact is they just keep getting bigger and higher resolution and mothers everywhere keep telling their kids not to sit so close to the screen.

I didn't say TVs were too big, actually I'm using a DLP projector with a 100" projected image and I would gladly have a TV with the same size or even a bigger one.

What I've been saying is that increasing resolution doesn't necessarily make sense since there are physiological limits for which higher resolutions won't give a better perceived image. For now these limits have been defined at 1/60° for visual acuity and around 30° for viewing angle by the SMPTE organization and TV manufacturers, which gives an optimum resolution of around 2K for HDTVs.

These limits may change in the future as we don't know enough about the subject yet to be sure that they are valid, but for now there is pretty much a consensus over these numbers.

You may read this excellent Wikipedia article for more information on the subject :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimum_HD ... g_distance

I've read the wiki already. Those are merely recommendations from manufacturers like not removing the tags from a mattress. They're certainly a good baseline to use when buying a TV or monitor, but that's all they are. If you prefer to sit closer to the screen then you might want a higher resolution. Eventually as I told Cyberreality we will reach the point of diminishing returns and I'll be first one to tell everyone higher resolutions and larger screens no longer matter.

[wuliheron]

The problem i have with all this is as i have seen it resolution really doesn't make or break an gaming experience by far it is frames per second. Resolution only seams to factor in when people observe it in contrast with other lower or higher resolutions and it only takes a few moments for any grievances to fall away(unless there is heavy artifacting) when playing.

As for the graphics, They don't really matter as long as you know what you are looking at(ie the style and function) the rest doesn't matter. What is important is feedback, when you interact with the game. The game must give a response that "feels right" for instance you flick a switch and a light comes, a door opens, and engine starts or your character starts regaining health points. Good AI and better physics help. AI that can navigate intelligently interact with the world in a natural way, when a npc gets stuck behind a foot high wall or a chess opponent just sends there queen to be ganked by a pawn for no apparent reason, the feedback fails and the immersion breaks. The same thing with physics, if you shoot something in a game and it looks "loose" (like a pill bottle), but when it is shot it remains stationary you stop seeing the loose object and see a part of level, that is not physical simulated because of the CPU budget. This is what makes the rift so tantalizingly tasty is that fact that it will allow the programmers to envelop you with the game thus improving feedback.

I don't think the next generation of consoles are going to be future proofed, when i studiedly the history of game development specifically the transition from arcade to home console. consoles are not really made to be future proof there usually made to be cheap(even when sold at a loss) the important part about consoles i just standardization, what works on one xbox 360 will work on all xbox 360(in theory ).

Well that my two cents

P.S. There has to be at least a billion spelling mistakes feel free to point them out if you feel you should have too.

I'm the last person you want spell checking anything and my recommendation is to get a spell checker for your browser.

I like higher frame rates too, but most people want higher resolution textures and usually it is optional. There is no reason video games can't continue to provide the option and leave it up to consumers to decide for themselves.

[Fredz]

I've read the wiki already. Those are merely recommendations from manufacturers like not removing the tags from a mattress. They're certainly a good baseline to use when buying a TV or monitor, but that's all they are.

You may have missed papers like this one cited in the article, it's not a mere recommendation but a scientific study about the human factors involved in designing UHDTV specifications :
Research On Human Factors in Ultrahigh-Definition Television (UHDTV) to Determine its Specifications.

In the Wikipedia article there are also many references to the configurations recommended by home theater enthusiast and by books on home theater design. They don't have a vested interest in selling low res TVs, they simply studied what works best for them. And all these sources converge to the same numbers.

[Nogard]

I like higher frame rates too, but most people want higher resolution textures and usually it is optional. There is no reason video games can't continue to provide the option and leave it up to consumers to decide for themselves.

Well i was really going on about sustainable frame rates, bad frame rate will ruin a game far more then texture resolution, the whole point of games high end video games is to see how much can be done with out impacting the frame rate. You are i agree about leaving it as an option, my feeling was that texture res', screen res' graphics in general, have very little to do with immersion, only in terms of being able to understand what you are seeing dose it matter. Having a higher fidelity to textures is cool no doubt but it doesn't really add much to the immersion. A good exsample of how little graphics matter when it comes to immersion is books, when you are reading a good book the world and the characters are painted in your head you can see them and see what they are doing as the worlds are decoded by your brain, no graphics and no sounds just printed letters on a page.

Now i may have just gone on a rant that had little to do with anything, but then i guess forums wouldn't work with out that

[wuliheron]

You may have missed papers like this one cited in the article, it's not a mere recommendation but a scientific study about the human factors involved in designing UHDTV specifications :
Research On Human Factors in Ultrahigh-Definition Television (UHDTV) to Determine its Specifications.

In the Wikipedia article there are also many references to the configurations recommended by home theater enthusiast and by books on home theater design. They don't have a vested interest in selling low res TVs, they simply studied what works best for them. And all these sources converge to the same numbers.

No one is disputing the science, what I am disputing are the recommendations. If people want to sit closer to the TV than they recommend or buy a higher resolution that's their business and the manufacturers are not going to stop selling them what they want.

[wuliheron]

Well i was really going on about sustainable frame rates, bad frame rate will ruin a game far more then texture resolution, the whole point of games high end video games is to see how much can be done with out impacting the frame rate. You are i agree about leaving it as an option, my feeling was that texture res', screen res' graphics in general, have very little to do with immersion, only in terms of being able to understand what you are seeing dose it matter. Having a higher fidelity to textures is cool no doubt but it doesn't really add much to the immersion. A good exsample of how little graphics matter when it comes to immersion is books, when you are reading a good book the world and the characters are painted in your head you can see them and see what they are doing as the worlds are decoded by your brain, no graphics and no sounds just printed letters on a page.

Now i may have just gone on a rant that had little to do with anything, but then i guess forums wouldn't work with out that

Again, increasing textures need not affect the frame rates and you are confusing the two. Games like Rage have enormous textures, but are designed to produce a steady 60fps. If for any reason your computer slows down at all it simply reduces the textures momentarily until your computer is back up to 60fps. The textures don't even require a lot of processing power that can slow the computer down, just a lot memory. That's the issue is how much memory the next generation consoles will have and ram is dirt cheap. There is no reason whatsoever for them not to support higher resolution textures just as every console has since the first ones were made.

[Namielus]

when you are reading a good book the world and the characters are painted in your head you can see them and see what they are doing as the worlds are decoded by your brai

I agree that graphics are not everything, and a good story is important.. but!
Your example is strange in my opinion.
When you are reading a book, your mind has to imagine what is going on because thats the platform. Your minds eye. You dont get images in your head while looking at an image. Not like when something is described to you in a book, anyway.
You see the image, and get reactions/feelings from that.
If you include a picture in that book, that will take over as the primary reference to how something looks.

Imagine reading fellowship of the ring, with a detailed description of gandalf the grey, you turn the page and this drawing illustrates
gandalf;




Now once you make the decision to help someone along with visual art, it better help the immersion and not work against it.
If text alone created the immersion, we would still be playing Zork.

[wuliheron]

Now once you make the decision to help someone along with visual art, it better help the immersion and not work against it.
If text alone created the immersion, we would still be playing Zork.

Just to be clear that was Nogard who wrote that and not me.

[Namielus]

Wow, I have no idea why that happened. I just selected the text and hit quote like usual. Will fix right now

[wuliheron]

Wow, I have no idea why that happened. I just selected the text and hit quote like usual. Will fix right now

Thanks.

[android78]

Wow, this thread has become a little heated! (I'm sure that comment will settle it all down)
I would love for the next generation to have native support for the rift, or rift-like HMD, but I fear it will end up being like the PS3 supporting 3D. By that I mean that, it has HDMI that can be upgraded to support the 3D packet framing, but the developers need to work out if they want to render it in 3D or not.
Technically, the current generation could support the rift, but it would be up to the game developers to write the code to render in proper format for SBS. There could be some issues with the format used for USB communications with the head tracker, but I'm sure nothing that a firmware upgrade wouldn't fix.
I do kind of wish that one of the major console manufacturers work with the Oculus to create the next console with the primary/optimized viewing method was on the rift or rift2 and would come with one when it shipped, but I've a feeling this would be too risky for them.

[wuliheron]

Wow, this thread has become a little heated! (I'm sure that comment will settle it all down)
I would love for the next generation to have native support for the rift, or rift-like HMD, but I fear it will end up being like the PS3 supporting 3D. By that I mean that, it has HDMI that can be upgraded to support the 3D packet framing, but the developers need to work out if they want to render it in 3D or not.
Technically, the current generation could support the rift, but it would be up to the game developers to write the code to render in proper format for SBS. There could be some issues with the format used for USB communications with the head tracker, but I'm sure nothing that a firmware upgrade wouldn't fix.
I do kind of wish that one of the major console manufacturers work with the Oculus to create the next console with the primary/optimized viewing method was on the rift or rift2 and would come with one when it shipped, but I've a feeling this would be too risky for them.

Yeah, it's all money, money, money and they have to prioritize. All the developers are screaming for as much ram as they can get with Crytek insisting they need at least 8gb and most people speculating they'll be lucky to get 4gb. I'd say making it Rift friendly out of the box is not in the cards since it isn't their own proprietary technology and people are screaming for ram instead. Still, you never know.

[Namielus]

To be honest I wasnt trying to be rude when I posted the "gandalf" picture, I was just making a joke.
Hope nobody got offended

[android78]

To be honest I wasnt trying to be rude when I posted the "gandalf" picture, I was just making a joke.
Hope nobody got offended

Well I went and saw King Lear play with Ian Mckellen (also played Gandalf)... gives that picture a whole other meaning.