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Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

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Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#141

After reading the more detailed Wired article, I can assuredly place myself in the "cautiously optimistic" car of the hype train for the PS5 (I myself own a PS4 Pro that I've been happy with). There are a lot of solid boxes that Sony's ticking: backwards compatibility with the previous generation, sticking with physical game copies instead of moving towards a "games-as-a-service" cloud model, updates to hardware that…

Regarding 8K... even though 4K TVs are readily available, my guess is most of those TVs don't display 4K content. Netflix will often give you 720p. Game consoles have a difficult time simply pushing 4K pixels down the pipeline. Some games have taken to something akin to interlacing, except with the pixels divided in a checkerboard pattern.

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#142
post #129
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PS4 works fine as a 4K Blu-ray player though. Having the hardware to support 8k output means you have that covered when it becomes widespread

PS4 (even the Pro) cannot play 4K Blu-rays. I'll predict that the PS5 won't be powerful enough to handle 8K AV2 video or whatever ends up coming out.

PS4 Pro has the power to play 4k blu rays but doesn’t have the capability due to either the drive or licensing fee.

Power isn’t the issue as the Xbox One S is equivalent to a base PS4 and handles 4k discs fine.

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another possible reason, now that I think about it more, is future proofing. If that's the case, then props for forward thinking on their part. Recently on a whim I decided to plug in my N64 to a 1080p TV, and I was surprised how terribly the graphics scaled to the higher resolution.

My understanding is it's not just the resolution, but CRT vs LCD. N64 looks best on a a CRT.

The N64 is also mainly hampered by it's texture memory. You only have 4KB total to play with for a texture (it's manually managed memory, not a cache) and with mipmaping, that's effectively 2KB. That's one 32x32 picture at 16bit color.

Additionally, developers didn't have a great handle on how the more modern memory hierarchy (read high DRAM latency) affected things yet so a lot of techniques they used sort of fought against the architecture and led to low resolutions, and they used heavy blurring and antialiasing to compensate.

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another possible reason, now that I think about it more, is future proofing. If that's the case, then props for forward thinking on their part. Recently on a whim I decided to plug in my N64 to a 1080p TV, and I was surprised how terribly the graphics scaled to the higher resolution.

My understanding is it's not just the resolution, but CRT vs LCD. N64 looks best on a a CRT.

Perhaps, but a huge part of this is the shoddy decoding circuitry that most LCD TVs have. You can do a lot better. For example, you could buy a Framemeister, or you could retrofit the N64 with HDMI output.

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another possible reason, now that I think about it more, is future proofing. If that's the case, then props for forward thinking on their part. Recently on a whim I decided to plug in my N64 to a 1080p TV, and I was surprised how terribly the graphics scaled to the higher resolution.

My understanding is it's not just the resolution, but CRT vs LCD. N64 looks best on a a CRT.

Many artistic techniques in pre-LCD-era games are designed for the physical effects of composite cables and CRT screens. A simple example is transparency via dithering, where intentional color bleed produces the effect in the display equipment rather than the console: https://i.imgur.com/F6aW3dG.png

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is it's not just the resolution, but CRT vs LCD. N64 looks best on a a CRT.

The N64 is also mainly hampered by it's texture memory. You only have 4KB total to play with for a texture (it's manually managed memory, not a cache) and with mipmaping, that's effectively 2KB. That's one 32x32 picture at 16bit color. Additionally, developers didn't have a great handle on how the more modern memory hierarchy (read high DRAM latency) affected things yet so a lot of techniques they used sort of fought…

To add to this, this is why GoldenEye N64 has so many grayscale textures... they use less memory.

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#147

After reading the more detailed Wired article, I can assuredly place myself in the "cautiously optimistic" car of the hype train for the PS5 (I myself own a PS4 Pro that I've been happy with). There are a lot of solid boxes that Sony's ticking: backwards compatibility with the previous generation, sticking with physical game copies instead of moving towards a "games-as-a-service" cloud model, updates to hardware that…

Regarding 8K... even though 4K TVs are readily available, my guess is most of those TVs don't display 4K content. Netflix will often give you 720p. Game consoles have a difficult time simply pushing 4K pixels down the pipeline. Some games have taken to something akin to interlacing, except with the pixels divided in a checkerboard pattern.

Sony sells TVs. Getting consumers more familiar with the 'next' format helps them down the road. Also bigger is always better, unless it's fractional.

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#148

Is there any prediction on the future of stand-alone gaming consoles with 5G and streaming games(e.g., Google Stadia) coming soon? While I'm not really much of a gamer now I spent a lot of my childhood playing video games and the thought of dedicated home game consoles going the way of arcades makes me sad. I think I'll finally pick up that Switch I've been planning on...

There's a rumor that a new switch is due any week now for what its worth.

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#149
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming that there are basically two reasons to support 8K now. One is that it gets them higher resolution for a potential future VR headset. The other is that it is bigger than 4K and that sounds good in their marketing.

Another possible reason, now that I think about it more, is future proofing. If that's the case, then props for forward thinking on their part. Recently on a whim I decided to plug in my N64 to a 1080p TV, and I was surprised how terribly the graphics scaled to the higher resolution.

[deleted]

Re: Sony reveals PlayStation 5 details

#150
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

have you run 4K video through things like Handbrake? They've been proven to seriously reduce the amount of space (and, therefore, bandwidth) that video files need, and considering that 4K videos have about three times the resolution [1] they have a lot of space to gain from it. I would guess that there are appliances that can run some flavor of compression in real-time to get 4K to stream well. Yes, it will take more…

4K is 3840x2160, or 4 times 1920x1080. Pedantically, 4K is 4096x2160 but UHD has come to resonate as 4K thanks to TV marketing.

Nuts! I must have had a typo somewhere. I could've sworn it was 4 times. Thanks.
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