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Microsoft and Sony Are Debating Over Whose Console Really Offers 'True 4K' (arstechnica.com)
Sony's PlayStation 4, which will go on sales in two months, comes loaded with rendering pipeline and some proprietary upscaling techniques that can improve lower resolution base signals to take fuller advantage of a 4K display. Microsoft is seemingly upset with how Sony is marketing this, and it is not shying from telling people that no amount of upscaling can fill in those missing 4K pixels and the hardware inefficiency to produce native and "true 4K" images that the Project Scorpio, its gaming console that is coming next year can. Microsoft has also said that any game that it will launch during the Scorpio timeframe will "natively render at 4K." But the debate is anything from over because Microsoft keeps reminding everyone that the processor and GPU in its upcoming console is more powerful. As ArsTechnica explains: With Scorpio, Microsoft seems to be arguing that every first-party game at launch will be able to generate and render nearly 8.3 million pixels (four times as many as a 1080p game) at an acceptable frame rate (i.e., at least 30 times a second). That would be quite an achievement. As we noted back at E3, it currently takes pricey, high-end PC graphics cards like the Nvidia GTX 1080 or the AMD R9 Fury X -- cards that run $300 or much higher -- to "barely scrape by" with a native 4K, 30fps game. And those PC cards seem to have significantly more raw power than what is being claimed by Microsoft -- 9 and 8.4 teraflops, respectively, vs. a claimed 6 teraflops for Scorpio (and 4.2 teraflops for the PS4 Pro).Microsoft's head of Xbox planning, Albert Penello said, "I know that 4.2 teraflops is not enough to do true 4K." In an interview with Eurogamer, Penello adds:I think there are a lot of caveats they're giving customers right now around 4K. They're talking about checkerboard rendering and up-scaling and things like that. There are just a lot of asterisks in their marketing around 4K, which is interesting because when we thought about what spec we wanted for Scorpio, we were very clear we wanted developers to take their Xbox One engines and render them in native, true 4K. That was why we picked the number, that's why we have the memory bandwidth we have, that's why we have the teraflops we have, because it's what we heard from game developers was required to achieve native 4K.
Penis length comparison, rather.
Seriously, anyone giving a shit about higher resolution? What I care about is sensible gameplay and fun. You remember fun? Try to put it back into games and I'll bother buying some again.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
None of these consoles is actually 4K.
The term "4K" is originally the name of a cinema standard, which has 4096*2160 pixels.
A 4K image is either 4096 pixels wide or 2160 pixels high (or both), but a 4K screen must have the full 4096*2160 to be compliant to the standard.
The television standard's real name is "Ultra High Definition", abbreviated as "Ultra-HD" or "UHD". It is only 3840*2160.
Some 4K images do fit inside that, but not all. A UHD screen is therefore not a 4K screen.
A "4K TV" is just a marketing term to sell UHD TVs, because it is in the "same order of magnitude as 4K" or "about the same as 4K".
Real 4K monitors do exist, but they are often very expensive, and they also tend to have better support for the colour space in the cinema standard.
The only somewhat affordable screen I know of that is 4096 pixels wide is the one inside of the late 2015 21.5" Apple iMac, at 4096*2304 pixels. It even has support for cinema colour space.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley