FPS, Human vision, 4K

[IRFC Hawkeye]

Watch this whole thing.  Contains a LOT of surprising info!

 

[Klaiber]

Wow, what a great video.  Thanks a lot for posting it!

 

That definitely helped me understand FPS, human vision and the whole 4K trend.

 

Already shared this with my brother, who's a huge computer guy.

 

I'll have to check out the other videos on KnowingBetter.

[IRFC Hawkeye]

What's really cool is when you actually try the things he's talking about.  I pretty much knew about peripheral vision, and the macular blind spot which concerns night vision; but I didn't know about the other blind spot he talks about when an eye is seeing as an individual; nor really considered the loss of color on the peripheries....or a lot of the other things he talks about.

 

I did know a lot about the hardware evolution....being old, and an old electronics technician   ....but not so much how it related to the real world.

 

I would still like to see FPS for gaming be capable to render the absolute best that a human can see, instead of just what an average human can see; he mentions that at times (high on caffeine or cocaine ) that a human can discern up to 240 FPS.  Adrenaline is pumping many times when we fly and it would be cool never to have it be a concern, once the hardware can do it without any trouble or undue load.  I'm running 100 FPS on a bigger screen, and there's no time at which I ever notice any less than smooth effects, in any gaming condition that I run.  If hardware in the future could all do at least 120,  that would be cool.  

[Klaiber]

Upon reflection, I don't think the video's perfect.  In the year since the video's been released, I know that 4K stuff has become much more prevalent.  And there's also the factor of a larger screen needing a higher display resolution in order to keep the image clear and sharp.  So 4K does have a purpose, should you use a projector or have a massive screen.

 

But, he does stress in the video that the layman isn't going to care about resolution so much, so long as things look good and are sharp.  And I think that's pretty true.  Also, he made a good point about people only upgrading their player when they get a new TV.  And if you don’t get a new TV, there’s no reason to get a 4K player.  So, while 4K is out now and popular among videophiles, I can definitely see it taking a while for it to become the gold standard.  Why get a new player when your TV can't display it properly.

 

Either way, the main thing I liked was his exploration of biology and how it ties into how you view things.  I thought that was really interesting.

[EmerlistDavjack]

All that human eye/perception stuff and how your brain constructs images and adjusts for color is so fascinating. I wonder how many times I've missed a long range contact in RoF because he was sitting in one of those blind spots, lol! It's been a long time since Human Factors in college, but I recall your "resting focal distance" is around the same distance as the average car windshield.  Try actively relaxing your eyes while in a car and see how the crud on your windshield pops right out at you. 

 

I see his whole point about the format being a leap for the average consumer, but I disagree about "not seeing the pixels" meaning "overkill,"  since the entire point of a clear image is to *not* see pixels!  If I can discern pixels, something is not optimal.  That said...I feel almost no need for a better screen than a 1080p for watching movies on my couch. 

 

As for gaming, I think that 4k is absolutely necessary for us Big-Screen flight simmers, general public be damned!  And I agree with Luftritter that these flight sims can really ratchet up the adrenaline and so higher FPS might actually matter for us more than your standard shooter-gamer.  There's a big difference between Twitch-shooter playing and a combat flight sim.  At least for me, no other video game comes close to getting me worked up like Rise of Flight.  It's amazing how the "time slows down" effect is  linked to something like the ability to discern a single frame at high FPS.

 

Coming from a background in digital photography, I noticed that he only said the term "pixel density" at the very end of the video, and doesn't seem to point out why that matters.  It was a big deal in early digital photography when comparing images of a Crop Frame vs Full Frame camera with the same pixel count. 

 

Pixel density is the crux of 4k for me because ever since I was young, I have been fighting a battle against Aliasing.  I haaaaattteeee it.  So it does not matter at all to me that my eye can barely discern the dot of single pixel...nor do I think it matters to anybody watching a movie.  The image as a whole is better.   Much of the aliasing on a large screen have been quashed by the pixel density. I don't often go to theaters, but I think digital projection looks like straight up ass.  As said in the video, many movies weren't filmed in 4k, so blowing them up on a big screen with a digital projector instead of film invites artifacts and *shudder* aliasing where there should be film grain/blur.  I'd much rather see Dunkirk looking spectacular in 70mm IMAX. 

 

I thought I had Aliasing beat until I upgraded to a 46" 1080p TV-as-monitor for the immersive TIR/simpit experience.  The pixel density is not enough, and only 4k will solve that...whenever I get around to budgeting for the upgrades.  Right now it is ugly, but fine, and I am saving up for a Nikon D800.  36 Megapixels of full-frame image perfection down to the last crop.   

 

If anybody here does use 4k on a large 4k TV, I would be very interested to know if you can trade off GPU load of the 4k rendering by lowering/eliminating Anti-aliasing, and it still looks good rendering mid-range aircraft in RoF/BoX.  That's one problem with target identification:  at a certain range they all look like jaggy crap with wings.

 

Anyway, thanks for the video.  I'm kinda a nerd about this stuff heh. 

[IRFC Hawkeye]

I like hearing you guys' input.  Gives some insight to points of view that are not common.  I would say that as flight simmers, we are not that common.  Specifically, we may want or desire a big screen.  From the standard point of view, if you get a bigger screen, basically that means you're supposed to view it from farther away; that would be it's main purpose, as would a higher resolution.... i.e. when he shows old standard resolutions with respect to relative size of each other.  However, we don't want to move farther away; we want to be more "immersed" in our video, and see more in our basic FOV.  Optimal TrackIR operation is a consideration for us; it wouldn't be optimal from a far distance.  So in essence we have the potential to see pixels in the context of up close clarity, as opposed to simply a larger size, seen from a distance.

 

Personally, right now I have no real concern that my hardware couldn't handle a 4K resolution with decent performance, if I got a new screen.  However, it can't help but reduce performance from what it is right now, and the question is, for what gain?  That is why I chose the "2K" screen that I have, that is larger, and also has higher refresh rates.  In my own case, I think I've reached the limit in terms of size that I can see acceptably (everything is smaller with higher resolution, given the same physical size).  At times, I wonder if I am seeing as much as I did before using 1080p.  Honestly, I think many games like RoF are optimized for that resolution, and if you use anything else, you may not see everything as flawlessly.

 

At least, that's my theory  

[EmerlistDavjack]

Us simmers are not normals lol.  I have a good friend who plays FPS/RTS games, and he can't stand my giant screen because it places things in his periphery instead of in his central vision.     

 

You're probably right that RoF viewing distance is optimized for 1080p since it's an old engine, but the image must look better at higher res, since downsampling does help.  

 

Above I was talking only about image quality, like the OP video, but the real crux for flight sims is the viewing distance of aircraft, something the BoX forums discuss ad naseum, and my takeaway is that different games do it differently.  BoX seems to scale everything to be visible inside 10km or not at all.  DCS seems to use some calculation based on distance/viewing angle to decide when 1 Pixel should show up, and that results in different experiences across resolutions. 

 

You've likely seen this video comparing DCS at 1080 vs 1440p:

 

I'm intrigued by this comment on the page:

 

Thrash Sim:

"Maybe this would help you guys out, I had the same problem with other simulators but since I only do acrobatics on DCS I can't really confirm it. I have fixed this issue by turning off every antialiasing option in every game (IL-2, WT etc.) I'm not sure if its suggested in the video, so I apologize if I'm repeating something. Antialiasing simply "smooths" pixels and if the aircraft is 1/5 pixels it will most likely remove/smooth it. I'm also on 4k and I no longer have spotting issues. This is also the same reason why VR users can see everything till the horizon, basically low graphics, little or no antialiasing adn low pixel density on the VR screens."

 

Goes along with what I was saying above, that at 4k aliasing becomes much less of a deal.  Makes me wonder what that looks like up close, aliasing-wise, since I've never sat in front of a 4k TV playing a game.  Something to research before I drop the dough. 

 

He also claims that VR users can see better in some games (DCS?), whereas on the BoX forums, VR users have nothing but complaints.  Makes me think that the best thing to do is to find the sweet spot for the game you care about most, and just deal with it elsewhere.