No One Really Cares About 1080p, Says Far Cry 4 Dev

[CaitSeith]

Damn! I arrived too late for the show. Is there any popcorn left?

OT: Personally I don't care about 1080p that much. However I know a lot of people does, and I would be a duchebag if I dismissed their opinions as Ubisoft does.

PS captcha: stay safe Yeah, captcha. Maybe it was a good idea not to arrive early.

 

[babinro]

True for me.

1080p is completely meaningless to me and always has been.
Same goes for things like 3D, touch controls, oculus rift, etc.

From a gaming standpoint...the only one of these things that can have an impact on my immersion and fun is the frames per second. 60 fps+ has genuinely improved my enjoyment of a game to that of 30fps.

They make a valid point but then again it's been engrained in our minds by the publishers that graphics are what sell new generation consoles and their AAA titles for DECADES. It's a funny situation but that's all it is.

 

[Ticklefist]

I think if graphic fidelity is that important to you then you should be playing your games on a medium that allows you that sort of control and not on a console where the decisions are made for you.

 

[GoodNewsOke]

I'm one of those who don't care about resolution. 1080? 720? pfft. The game needs to be fun, immersive, well designed, that kind of thing.

 

[Zipa]

So Ubisoft thinks that the majority of PC gamers are nobody, good to know.

 

[WindKnight]

*looks at the growing echo chamber in the comments and shrugs* I kinda agree with the guy. is something fun/interesting/new/etc, ie enjoyable to play, mysterious to explore, or exhilarating to blow stuff up......if so, count me in and screw the resolution and the frame rate. I only got a tv capable of 720 and 1080 in the past year or two, and still play anything from my snes to my wii games on it. as for pc stuff, not gonna kill my hardware to push "quality", or break games to force them faster than they run.

Again, I agree with you up to a point, but this obsession with graphics is something devs/publishers have pushed themselves. They've used uber-graphical dick waving as a selling point, and stoked up the faction who obsess about this kind of thing... and now are trying to backpedal when their not keeping up with the expectations they've created.

 

[Lightknight]

So Ubisoft thinks that the majority of PC gamers are nobody, good to know.

I don't think they're talking about PC.

 

[cikame]

As far as consoles and tv's go, yes, as long as the image is clean and clear with little aliasing it really doesn't matter what the resolution is, but there is one important thing to remember when developing your game. I'm playing most games for the foreseeable future on PC, when making a console first game PLEASE allow for further customization in the PC port, we PC gamers need resolutions native to our desktops for ease of use and even greater for the enthusiasts, support for custom resolutions is also helpful to some i imagine, and don't do a Far Cry 3 where the HUD didn't scale and looked awful on PC.

 

[Zipa]

So Ubisoft thinks that the majority of PC gamers are nobody, good to know.

I don't think they're talking about PC.

Giving recent events with Ubisoft I wouldn't be even a little surprised if they tried to force their games down to the level of the XB1/PS4. It does not bode well for PC ports either.

 

[Lightknight]

"With the 4K TVs and things - somebody was telling me that with a 4K TV, to even see it, your living room has to be big enough to sit like 12 feet from the screen. I don't know the exact numbers, but it starts to get a little crazy. I'm just in it for the experience, I'll play a SNES game if it's cool."

Hutchinson, while maybe having a valid point that the people complaining about resolution make up a minority of the gaming population, doesn't seem to quite understand how resolution works. For example, those retro indie games that he's talking about, while having quite low quality graphics, still indeed run at 1080p on most systems. Similarly, I'm no scientist, but I don't think that's how 4K TVs work...

What Hutchinson is talking about when discussing 4k resolution and distance is the old "when does a higher resolution matter" chart.

Basically, the human eye cannot resolve two points beyond a certain distance so higher resolutions don't make a differences as long as the pixels aren't resolved (because once they already look like one point they never look "more" like one point).

http://www.rtings.com/images/optimal-viewing-distance-television-graph-size.png

Many of us have a TV that is too small, too far away, or doesn't even support 1080p resolutions for this to matter.

For me, I sit around 10' from my 42" TV. So even though it is capable of displaying 1080p, it really isn't noticeable for me if you switch between 720p and 1080p. If I upgraded to a 55" TV then it would begin to be noticeable from that distance. I'm sure other people also sit closer to their TV than I do so I could easily understand the 1080p being relevant.

So, those of you complaining really have to do the math. What kind of TV do you have and how far do you actually sit from it? Most of us are sitting further away than we actually realize. If the math works out and you have at least average eye sight then this is a noticeable difference for you. Personally, I'd place a much higher emphasis on FPS than resolution.

It would be interesting to know what the average TV consumer has.

So Ubisoft thinks that the majority of PC gamers are nobody, good to know.

I don't think they're talking about PC.

Giving recent events with Ubisoft I wouldn't be even a little surprised if they tried to force their games down to the level of the XB1/PS4. It does not bode well for PC ports either.

Well, the good news is that he was talking about TVs and not monitors where you only sit a couple feet away and there are 4k monitors on the market for reasonable prices (compared to $1,500+ for 4k TVs).

 

[ryukage_sama]

I had been purchasing Ubisoft's games pretty regularly, but I haven't bought anything since they started talking down to me (somewhere during Watch_Dogs' development.

Some us do care about resolution. I, for one, like my PC resolution set to 1920x1200, a setting most PC monitors no longer list as their maximum resolution. Even if a game's 3D graphics don't look great, a higher resolution goes a long way to make a game's interface look better.

 

[Lightknight]

I had been purchasing Ubisoft's games pretty regularly, but I haven't bought anything since they started talking down to me (somewhere during Watch_Dogs' development.

Some us do care about resolution. I, for one, like my PC resolution set to 1920x1200, a setting most PC monitors no longer list as their maximum resolution. Even if a game's 3D graphics don't look great, a higher resolution goes a long way to make a game's interface look better.

Ubisoft has basically been aiming to topple EA in shitty consumer treatment policies for the past couple of years.

 

[RJ 17]

Far Cry 4 creative director Alex Hutchinson thinks its weird that people can enjoy a retro pixel game, yet complain about resolution in AAA titles.

The difference between retro pixel games and present-day games, Mr. Hutchinson, is that back in the day they didn't have the technology to give us 1080p...these days, you (presumably) do. The technology is out there to get us better resolutions and as such we expect better resolutions. That and, as a relatively recent Jimquisition points out, devs like you have been face-fucking us with the notion that "OOOOOOOOOOOO LOOK HOW AWESOME OUR GRAPHICS AND RESOLUTION ARE! BUY OUR GAME BECAUSE IT'S SO FUCKING PRETTY!!!!" soooooo why shouldn't we call complete bullshit on you when you fail to live up to the bar? A bar, by the way, that devs like you set in the first place.

 

[Callate]

It's going to be a fun generation. Wave after wave of developers trying to brush off the limitations imposed on them by the console hardware as unimportant... Ah, good times.

'Course, I'm still mostly playing on a PC, and some publishers seem to think we're supposed to consider ourselves lucky to get ports that are locked at 30 FPS and relatively low resolution. I once thought that the new generation was going to bring consoles and PCs at least closer to parity; instead, they often can't seem to keep up with current televisions, let alone the 4K and 5K monsters the television manufacturers are trying to sell us.

It's certainly true that 1080p doesn't make or break the game for me. But it's nice to have one's graphics not be stretched out and blurred by the upconversion process, and I wish the talking heads would either cop to that, or just not bring it up at all.

 

[Savryc]

I would agree with you Mr Far Cry Man, 1080p is nothing to me, but it was you and your ilk that pushed this "ooo shiny graphics so important" thing, not the consumer. So once you've finished Far Cry 4 for me if you could kindly roll into that grave you dug for yourself, that'd be great

 

[spartandude]

I thought they were in favour of higher resolution so they can lower frame rate.... You know what just fuck it. Ubisoft I will have more respect for you if you admit you have no idea what you are doing, or better yet higher me as a PR guy, i would be so much better then who you got now. Heck higher a monkey, people like monkeys and it would say more sensible things than you.

 

[MrFalconfly]

As long as AAA games cost 60 USD, I care about 1080p and 60+ FPS.

You want me to relax my expectations of graphical fidelity? Then drop the price.

 

[Mr_xx]

What mostly annoys me about this, is that the console limitation get forced onto each other (the PS4 seems to be able to handle more then the XBone) and onto PC Gamers.

*edit3* I stand corrected, ignore the old post...

Spoiler: old post

Unless you want to lower it for aesthetic reasons, the 'best' resolution depends on two factors (ignoring eyesight): The size of your TV and the distance you sit from it.

An example, the left part of the following image is rendered in a higher resolution than the right:

If you're sitting 0.5m (2') or maybe even closer to your ~20" PC Screen you should be able to see the difference.
If you move away from your screen the images will look identical at some point.
For Screen size, viewing this image on your smartphone, tablet or laptop, the image will look identical even at a really short distance. (Unless of course your phone has a 20" display)

Spoiler

The following graph (taken from http://www.rtings.com/info/television-size-to-distance-relationship) shows the relationship between resolution, distance and screen size:

Spoiler

If you can't tell the difference between 1080p and 720p on your TV than its perfectly setup for its size with 720p in mind.

It's important to keep in mind that 3D application also employ other means to achieve a 'better' image, e.g. Anti Aliasing, which is sometimes less resource consuming than using a higher resolution.

Spoiler: Not always successfully

Red Dead Redemption runs at 720p on Xbox 360 along with 2x multi-sampling anti-aliasing. PlayStation 3 renders at 1152x640, with a blur-inducing quincunx anti-aliasing.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-red-dead-redemption-face-off

I've played the game on both consoles and the PS3 Versions is quite eye straining in my opinion.
(The difference might not be obvious in the resized spoilers)

Spoiler: Xbox360

Spoiler: PS3

From an image quality point of view, resolution definitely matters.

Sadly the current consoles hardware is quite underwhelming, but instead of pointing this out, developers start throwing around 720pvs1080p or 30vs60 fps debates. Why not admit that the consoles cannot run their engine at 1080p@60hz?
Of course there are those who tie their physic engine to the frames...

Spoiler: Darksouls *cough* or the fun Need for Speed Rivals

The community was apparently able to somewhat fix NfS Rivals, but only if you're able to keep the game at a steady 60fps.

*edit* fixed the youtube link
*edit2* just saw that Lightknight already pointed out the relationship between resolution, distance and screen size while I was typing (got distracted while writing this...)

 

[The Lunatic]

You're right. I don't care about 1080p.

I've only ever been playing in 1200p and now 1440p.

 

[PrimePowerOn]

"With the 4K TVs and things - somebody was telling me that with a 4K TV, to even see it, your living room has to be big enough to sit like 12 feet from the screen.

Yeah, this is the point where we can put this down to the fact that a) he's an idiot, and b) he's talking to the official xbox magazine about a game coming out for the xbone and is therefore contractually obliged to make xbox owners feel like "first-class gamers".

Oh you are a gentleman and a scholar. This is the first use of the FCG quote from XBOX that I've seen used snarkily. Love it.

Mind if I borrow?