4K Resolution FFXI And PS4

I've noticed even on a game as old as FFXI that 4K resolution is a reality. So why does Sony, and developers too, continue to claim that PS4 is not capable of 4K gaming when it's a simple update and presto?

This feels alot like PS3 where devs refused to go 1080p and stuck ya w/ 720p for no reason whatsoever. Am I missing something or this as halfass as it sounds?

At the moment of ranting I'm currently running FFXI on a laptop w/ 4K resolution and to think that PS4 is incapable of such is nonsense when my PS4 processing power blows away my laptops.

I can tell you this, the PS4 graphics card can handle 4k but its HDMI spec can only handle 4k @ 30FPS(1.4) so that might be one reason. Would need HDMI 2.0 to handle 4k @ 60FPS. I do know some of the games even at 1080 are only 30FPS on the PS4 though, so it might coem down to yes it can handle 4k but at what cost to the quality of graphics.

Thanks for the input. See that's my point though. Why not allow us the choice of 4K resolution @30fps over 2K resolution and 60fps. Extremely frustrating cuz I've seen the difference alone between 720p vs 1080p and now we're talking double the current HD resolution. The improvements in visual clarity would definitely be noticeable enough, and just like 1080p over 720p, I'd much rather play games like MGS5 in 4K. Not to mention. The human eye can't even register 60fps. So yeah... unless you're a mutant of some sort then 60fps is an excessive waste.

See I'm not a huge visual guy more into audio and even that has its limits to me but I can say this I defiantly see a difference between 30FPS and 60 FPS. You are correct that the human eye can't see 60FPS BUT the human eye isn't perfectly in-sync with that 30 FPS so it does IMO look worse; after 60 FPS though I can't tell a difference for the most part when people start talking 120FPS+ etc.

Personally if I could play a game at 4k @ 30 FPS or 1080 @ 60 FPS. I would pick the 1080 @ 60 all day.

The problem I have is we are not given that choice and for reasons unjustified. Being able to decide on one over the other on a game to game basis is alot better than being forced into something and given bs reasons. Just like PS3 games being 720p. You couldn't toggle into 1080p mode....
Shame on you Sony.

The reason are very justified, it's not because you don't know / understand them, that they aren't justified. I've been working in the game industry for AAA games for the last 10 years. I make graphics, that's what I do for a living. When you double the resolution, you quadruple the cost in rendering. In the case of the PS4, yes, it can do 4k@30fps. but at 4 times the cost of 1080p@30fps, or 8 times the cost of 1080p@60fps.

Resolution is pricy as *** in terms of performance, the amount of sacrifice you need to make in your game's graphic to actually make it work are not worth it at all. And the reason it isn't worth it is because of you, the player.

The vast majority of the players don't care about what resolution the game runs what they do care about is how pretty it looks. So to make the game run at ...well to even achieve 30 fps on ps4, while running 4k... you gotta sacrifice a great many things. Transparent lighting is going to suffer a lot, tesselation is out of the question, shader complexity has to go down... so forget about parallax, reflection will have to be removed, HBAO+, forget about it...

In the end, even on a 4k supporting screen, the game is going to look so spectacularily better as a 1080p game anyways because of how much more processing power we can devote to making it pretty (4 times as much). So even if as a dev we'd give the option to run in 4k.. you'd run at an unplayable 7.5 fps (if no sacrifice are made from the 1080p version) -OR- You'd basically be running the game on "laptop low" settings... So it really doesn't seem like a smart choice to spend dev time, and thus money, on something nobody's (vast, vast majority of player base) going to use anyways.. that just bad business choice.

And if that wasn't enough, when you grab the number of ps4 vs the number of 4k able TVs out there in living rooms it really makes no sense at all to even think about it for this generation.

Remember Heavy Rain? when it came out, people were raving about how beautiful it looked. While the Ps3 was capable of 1080p, Heavy Rain ran in 720p and upscaled, then 2xAA. Some games on PS3 were even more agressive such as Jericho (576p) or Diablo 3(586p) or GTA4(640p) and upscaled and added some form of AA.

Resolution is really not cost effective in terms of making a game pretty, better graphics most often than not, is achieved on the back of a great many things and almost never on the back of resolution. Whe nit comes to resolutions, we try to get as much as we can but it is really down there in the list of priorities and solutions to make a game look good. So in reality, for a game to run in playable framerate on a Ps4 in 4k resolution, it'd end up looking like a ps3 game, and that, frankly, just wont sell and is going to get shot down in any reviews.


You couldnt be more wrong, that's a myth!
For the record:

Source

I'm talking up-converted 4k gaming. Not naitive 4k gaming development. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think FFXI cost anyone anything for me to play it w/ 4k resolution. That is not something too complicated for PS4 to be given an update to up-convert all current and future PS4 gaming into 4k resolution.

You're talking the development side and I respect your point of view and agree w/ you 110%. I don't expect developers to program PS4 gaming in a naitive 4k mode. I don't even think PS4 is capable enough of achieving such. I just want it up-converted is all.

That needs no programming... Just plug a 4k TV / monitor It'll do its best to upscale it and it'll look liek it will look... It'll still render in w/e resolution it was programmed in, then stretched out to fit your screen.


FFXI doesn't do that magically, Windower does... (someone created that with their time / money even if you are not charged for it someone still "paid") by hacking the the resolution targets to render the game is higher resolution (like 4k) It's not "up-converted" at all.

Windower actually changes the render targets (imagine the canvas in which the game is drawn, before it is brought to your screen) so windower found where the resolution target is locked in, hacks it, and lets you override it. After that, FFXI is not "up-converted" it is actually rendering in 4k. (or w/e you put). And that puts a lot more strain on your graphic cards than originally... But you barely feel any impact because FFXI is realy cheap on the graphic side of things. (basically 4 times practically nothing still is practically nothing)

Now to do that on PS4 is basically giving everyone with the know how acess to hacking everything in the console...

If the develloper even could give you those handles (IIRC it's agaisnt the sony restriction and policies) Then all you would do is make your FPS suffer by an exponational factor.

That's cause there is only 2 option, either you render in X by Y resolution of your choice and end up with whatever FPS you end up with... Or you dont... The up scaling isnt done on the console at all since the game still renders in its programmed resolution, then its all up to the screen and how it deals with upscaling.. basically the screen can have processors to apply additional smoothing and AA so your image doesnt look as crappy.. but thats not on devs, and that not on sony.. That 100% on your TV / monitor's quality / algorythms / make etc...

@Elizabet I know of the test you talking about and that is a single afterimage in a dark room. The average human can't tell the difference after 45ish FPS some lower(bottom end is about 30) some higher(top end 60, some do go higher ofcourse) from the studies I've read. I may have simplified my answer in my first post to agree with the OP more then I should of but the average human isn't getting much out 220FPS of continues images.

Yep, still though, saying that "can't see past 30 fps" is just... well wrong. ;)

Considering people are pushing above the 99,999 chat log damage cap, doing a 4k Resolution isn't very good these days!

I guess I'm just seeing this all wrong. I turn on my PS4 and it shows MGS5 running in 1080p while my laptop is running FFXI in 4k resolution. I was thinking it was more of the hardware not allowing my TV to display the images with any further clarity but I guess I am mistaken. Maybe 720p vs 1080p was hardware restriction w/o reasonable justification but I can see how 2160p could be a different situation all together.

1280x720 = 921 600 pixels
1920x1080 = 2 073 600 pixels

1080p has 2.25 times more pixels to draw!!

So basically without changing anything in the game, going from 720p to 1080p makes the game run 2.25 times slower. So a game running at 30fps in 720p... if you suddenly push it in 1080p its going to run at 13.3333333333 FPS... That's why a lot of old gen (360 and ps3) made the choice to render in 720p. It allowed for more than TWICE computing power to make the graphics. Also, at the time, 720p TVs were the norm. 1080p TV became the norm later in the PS3 life... And consoles don't get hardware update (even when they do, you still got to make games for the frist configuration so its moot)

Alternatively, a game that could run in 1080p@30fps could probably very well run at 720p@60fps. Most often that not, the FPS was prefered. But in most cases, the vast majority of games of last gen ran 720p@30fps so it could look as good as Uncharted3(720p)

Some niche stuff though like flOw ran in 2560x1440 and Flower in 1440x810. (on PS3) And some cheated like Grand Turismo 5 with 1280x1080 instead of 1920x1080 (for 1080p) stretching the image horizontaly.


Apples to oranges my friend! :) Its got everything to do with how much the game cost to draw each frames, vs how much drawing power each system has.

Basically, Imagine it this way: A strong PC (Halfthor) is required to lift things (render image) such as MGS5@1080p (1 car) and FFXI@1080p (1 feather). So Halfthor can definitely lift 16 feathers (FFXI 4k) but can only lift 1 car (MGS5 1080p). Saying why can he not lift 16 cars? (MGS5 in 4k) is basically ignoring how different it is to lift both things, and only caring about the "16 things left the ground" part.

So your laptop (Dennis Nedry) is lifting 16 feathers and because of that, you're wondering why Halfthor can't lift 16 cars and can only just lift 1.

In the case of XI, XI uses a lot of its own 'software drivers' to render and execute graphical functions in game and they're pretty poor at it. From a purely technical perspective XI is and always has been a very poor game. This often leads to very warped results with various hardware and explains why some people with very good computers have terrible graphical lag in XI. Over sampling will likely cause problems on a lot of systems, regardless of how good their specs are, because XI's software drivers were just not written to handle it.

No matter how good your card or PC is, the game will use its own software drivers over your GPU to render certain elements. One excellent example is the telepoint crystals and fluxes in Abyssea. These are a renowned source of lag for many people even on good computers; so much so that Windower plugins were made to fix it. And yet anyone who monitored their GPUs during this seemingly graphically intensive moment noticed near 0% usage.

Wait, there are windower plugins to fix Conflux lag?

Were. I don't know if there still is as my newer PC doesn't have any problems so I never looked. Most of the time they were just .dat swaps anyway, I remember one plugin replaced the telepoints and fluxes with a Nyzul/Salvage Lamp.

You don't need windower or anything to change resolutions, it's a registry value, 0001 to 0004.

I don't see any purpose of playing ffxi beyond 1080p unless you got a huge tv that makes everything looks horrible when trying to upscale everything in order to compensate the lack of native anti-alias.

I actually went down from 4k monitors in favor of 1080 for 2 reasons. The lack of available content was really frustrating and the demand on the system to maintain really high resolutions and high frame rates. For FFXI, I don't think you can even oversample that much, but the game actually started to look pretty dated, and I've always said that FFXI looks amazing compared to anything from the early 2000's.

All that game industry crap about fidelity and the human eye drives me up a wall, though. My vision isn't great, but I can easily tell the difference between 30 and 60 FPS, and the biggest factor in seeing frame rates above 60 is matching the refresh rate of your monitors.

I can notice the difference very easy, even if i look on a gaming video @ youtube. Maybe it's because i play games on pc only/ no frame cap.

Yeah, I have no clue why people think that more frames isn't better beyond 30-60, but a lot of it is just compromising between fidelity and smooth play. It really does cost a lot to have both. It just irks me that developers think we're too stupid to understand that.

One word on that:
"PlayStation 2"

Because that stuff was done by the CPU and it's vector units (VLIW floating point processing units) on that architecture, the game had to be coded that way.
When porting it to Windows(and XBOX) they had to keep that kludge for sake of code compatibility. So some kind of wrapper had to be used.

It can still make my GPU very very hot if I stay near something with lots of particle effects (confluxes, telepoints, homepoints) and that's the only time when FFXI takes it out from "MS Word mode" (aka the fan spins up and starts to be noisy).

We're not thinking that at all. It's just that its heavily proven that on a console market, framerate is less valued by the people who buy games than graphic bells and whistles.

Take FFXIV on PS4 for instance... It make more sense (market-wise) for the game to get better lighting, and nice reflections and eye candy stuff you can show in a screenshot. Than to have it look the same way it does on PS3 but running at 60 fps.

Take GTAV they run at 30fps (sometimes lower) in a resolution around 720p because bigger world, and seeing further away and displaying more objects matters much more...

So most of the time, unless you are making a competitive shooter. 60FPS is not worth the sacrifice, high resolution isn't either.

And the reason people say more frame don't matter passed 60 fps is an assessment based on actual things that are true... but its also omitting a big part of the story. For instance, running at 80 FPS on a 60hz monitor means you are asynchronous to the screen so it will feel more choppy than 60 FPS because theree is frame rendered, but skipped on display causing tearing on high camera movement and such. So the solution to that is to V-Sync, essentially forcing the game to 60fps so the extra 20 are wasted right? Nope not at all..

Actually when the game V-sync, if force your FPS to a number that can sync to the refresh of the monitor. So if you are doing 60 but you are at the limit.. when it would fall to say 59 or 58.. your V-sync is going to drop you down to 30 fps. And boy will you feel that one. So any more framerate you can get beyond 60 FPS (on a V-sync'd game, on a 60hz monitor) is buffer that can allow the game to remain silky smooth even in areas where the game demands more rendering powers.. (IE: getting in middle of town with ppl spamming all kinds of spell FX) So unless you get a very very stable 120 FPS... on a 60hz monitor, V-syncing at 60fps is likely to feel more smooth if you are getting varying rates in the 70-110 ranges. Unless your vid card does some fancy motion blurr stuff.. but w/e..

Now if you actually have a 120hz or 144hz monitor... then the whole ballpark changes... And this is also why game devs don't really care about that.. its too small of a market.. These are as rare as 4k TVs in your usual customer's array of things.


For reference Check this out:
http://www.testufo.com/#test=framerates&count=3&background=none&pps=240

A lot of PS2 game do that. The PS2 was *really* good at dealing with overdraw and transparent object compared to computers. Also better than the PS3/4 when you put in comparison their respective power of transparent vs opaque. We could do a lot of special FX for spells and stuff on PS2 and when PS3 came out, the special FX took a dive...

I know it's not what the thread is about, but PC gamers have had a very legitimate gripe for quite a while now over poorly ported games. We get that consoles have some hardware limitations. If they didn't, they'd cost as much as a gaming PC. But, a lot of PC gamers have much much better hardware. My PC isn't even remotely a gaming PC and I can run basically anything on the market at max settings and 60FPS without even kicking my case fans into high gear. Developers know these things, they know that PC gamers want the ability to push their systems, and in most cases, the option isn't given for extremely trivial reasons. The engines have the ability to set farther render distances, to uncap frame rates, many already have much higher resolution textures than are rendered, etc. By all means make standard settings a compromise, but give PC gamers a configuration tool that lets us get the most out of our hardware.

DirectX 8.1

the bane of our existence.

Yeah, as it was designed to work that (non standard) way. It was designed in 1999 and by then there were no "standard" way to design graphic cards yet. Even nVidia themselves used quads instead of triangles on their first graphics card (the NV1)...

I have hopes FFXI might be "resurrected" as a product when they no longer need to service PS2 clients, they could maybe think of a FFXI client rewrite. They could likely reuse all the work they put on making FFX HD...


Edit: (reply for Jet)


Actually FFXI employs a trick to make the code compatible "as is" so they don't need to mess with the game engine (much).

They use native PC textures on the data, their proprietary mesh data format and to make PS2 source code work compiled as Windows application they wrote additional code which "wraps" around the engine making it talk with the DX8 stuff. That's what I was talking about. Not the DX8 itself, which indeed is another layer of wrapping. lol

I feel your pain, and as a dev it pisses me off too.. and the irony is that the whole duration of the game's dev we're building it on PCs...

But what's happening is that most of the time, a console game is made at a studio and the PC port (not even going to try calling it "version") is offloaded to a outsourcing firm / studio / company... The people actually making the game do very little for a pc version (if its not a pc main sku game .. so basically any console game really..) Studio just pay a service to get the console game ported. and a lot of times its happening in parallel with the game's console version (so sometimes some bugs slip through the PC version more, and its more sensible due do a much more varying hardware).

As a dev, I hate that my studio does that, and I think its a shitty thing to do. BUT, I understand the higher ups PoV too. The amount of money you get on a PC version barely pays for the service of porting you paid to get it done.. (which is cheaper than doing it in house) and so... there is very little incentive for a company to do those things differently... Unless you are valve / blizzard and PC gaming is your main thing.

Right, but that still wasn't exposed to you anywhere in a ps2 client. On the PC, it was exposed in the FFXConfig tool but it didn't let you haywire super high res till.. well.. not too long ago... windower has let you bypass that first and for a long time before FFXIConfig could let you choose.

Still, manually changing registry values is hardly "the game letting you choose settings" which is where I was going with it.