How does resolution scaling work in BF4?

[moeburn]

I noticed BF4 has a resolution scaling feature. Well I'm playing on a 1080p monitor, and I know that when I play Xbox 360 on this monitor, almost every game is actually 720p upscaled to 1080p.

BF4 allows you to downscale or upscale the graphics, while keeping the fonts and HUD and such at full resolution, to any percent you wish. But what percent would equate to what the Xbox 360 does? I know that the number of pixels in 1280x720 is 44% of the number of pixels in 1920x1080... so should I set it to 44%?

Or are they talking about just one dimension? 1280 is 66% of 1920, and 720 is 66% of 1920. So should I set it to 66%?

This is really confusing me! I just want to try and match the resolution upscaling of the xbox 360.

 

[TechBoyJK]

it gives you a free ipod

 

[PieIsAwesome]

I believe it would be X% of the resolution you have.

So if 720p is 44% the size of 1080p, then it would be 44%.

Size of the image is the total area, so either go by total pixels (as you did) or the diagonal length in cases with the same aspect ratio.

 

[Paul98]

I would expect single dimension

 

[Anteaus]

I think the way it works is that the game engine uses textures to build the environment you play in, and then thats when all the various AA/AF/etc is appied at the driver level. The scaling feature dictates the resolution of the textures prior to being integrated into the environment. So, at 100% the textures are at the design resolution for the game. If you reduce to less than 100%, then the textures are reduced in quality to increaes performance at the engine level, similar to how you might see a 720P game on a console scaled to 1080P. If you increase to above 100%, then you start supersampling textures at the engine level and thus increase overall graphics fidelity.

AA/AF at the driver level helps, but it can't do anything about the source, which is what resolution scaling does. If you have the power, you can actually increase the source resolution thus increase texture quality. The catch is that high resolution texture take a ton of GPU memory. Since the source textures developers use to create content with is often much higher resolution that the game itself, they down samples to save space and performance. Instead of releasing the game with down sampled textures and then releasing a high resolution texture pack down the road, they actually included the source textures and built-in in-line down sampling.

That's why the install size is so large.

Anyways, I hope I got that right.

 

[mizzou]

This is really confusing me! I just want to try and match the resolution upscaling of the xbox 360.

pretty sure "upscaling" is just a fancy term for stretching pixels to fit your screen.

native resolution is the ACTUAL resolution of your monitor, how many pixels it has.

if you choose a lower resolution that is not "Scaled" to your actual monitor, you would see black areas sort of like letterboxed movies

In order to force the object to fill your entire screen, it is "Scaled" and stretched across.

"Upscaling" has nothing to do about quality, it just means it will fill your screen.

That's why they always tell you to play stuff on LCD screens at the native resolution, because it will look the best.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_scaler

 

[Okedokey]

pretty sure "upscaling" is just a fancy term for stretching pixels to fit your screen.

native resolution is the ACTUAL resolution of your monitor, how many pixels it has.

if you choose a lower resolution that is not "Scaled" to your actual monitor, you would see black areas sort of like letterboxed movies

In order to force the object to fill your entire screen, it is "Scaled" and stretched across.

"Upscaling" has nothing to do about quality, it just means it will fill your screen.

That's why they always tell you to play stuff on LCD screens at the native resolution, because it will look the best.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_scaler

Nonsense.

When using 200% scaling the game renders double resolution in both axis, meaning 4xSSAA.

 

[futurefields]

How is that nonsense?

 

[crazzy.heartz]

I have a 22" 1680x1050 monitor (16:10).

I tried lower resolutions: 1440x990 & 1280x800 with higher settings but the graphics look blobbed/ washed out.

However, at native resolution, game is looking far better; despite lower settings.

 

[JeffMD]

This resolution scaling feature sounds like sub-pixel sampling. Essentialy it does change the internal resolution of the game (if you play in 720p, it renders in 720p. If you play in 1080p but the sub setting is 720p then it is still rendering 720p and upscales in using video hardware). I believe the advantages to this are #1 your tv may not have as nice of an upscale algorithm, #2 post process effects can still be applied at 1080p offering slightly better graphics then playing in 720p, #3 it isn't always 720p. sub-pixel sampling Could be just a small drop below the current res, just enough to be only a tad noticeable and help improve performance.

Sub sampling is probably most ideal if your 3d performance is bottle necked by the video card, but helps nothing if you are being cpu bound.