What do you guys think? Will PS5/XBone2 try to render all those pixels or will they stick to 1080p and try to max out the graphics at that resolution?
Will next-gen consoles attempt to push 4k or increase fidelity @ 1080p?
- Thread starter futurefields
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You're asking what unannounced consoles from an unannounced time in the future will be doing...we're talking 5-10 years down the road in a time where we've got the big-time companies aiming for power efficiency, and the current chip supplier's in complete turmoil and working on a new CPU core.
This answer's just a complete crapshoot, really a wish list. It's also obviously a developer question, not a hardware one. We've seen these consoles push visuals over resolution and framerate. We've seen them cut back on one thing to promote the other several times. I doubt any of the major developers will have some wild swing in philosophy to change that, either. Some will still favor resolution, some frame rate, some will sacrifice one for the other, some might sacrifice both for other things.
This answer's just a complete crapshoot, really a wish list. It's also obviously a developer question, not a hardware one. We've seen these consoles push visuals over resolution and framerate. We've seen them cut back on one thing to promote the other several times. I doubt any of the major developers will have some wild swing in philosophy to change that, either. Some will still favor resolution, some frame rate, some will sacrifice one for the other, some might sacrifice both for other things.
It's funny because you know 4k TV's will be pretty common by then. And a lot of PC gamers will be running 4k. So when the next gen consoles come out all the kids will be like "Oh man, but will it do 4k" and so then like Microsoft got pressured into doing 60fps on Halo 5 they will be pressured into pushing 4k resolutions and so they'll have to resort to a bag of tricks again in order to deliver on that. It just seems like the console makers face a really uphill battle with trying to deliver low-TDP units that produce "impressive graphics" while simultaneously keeping up with the resolution race.
cmdrdredd
Lifer
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I doubt it. Lets look at the PC. You need multiple GTX980Ti or Fury X cards to get the majority of games playable at around 60fps when running 4k. I don't see that type of power being available in an APU format suitable for use in a console. If they decide to go with a discreet GPU in the next round it will increase the size and power requirements not to mention cooling. I think it would take something just short of a miracle for consoles to be able to output 4k and hold 60fps.
As for it becoming common I don't know. People keep their TVs for a long time these days and some people have just recently bought a large 1080p set because 4k is still overly expensive.
As for it becoming common I don't know. People keep their TVs for a long time these days and some people have just recently bought a large 1080p set because 4k is still overly expensive.
Yeah, that's a silly assumption. People cried about the One and 1080p as well, yet Guardians is at a variable resolution that'll drop to around 720p at times. Both the resolution and the framerate will still be complained about on the next console, same as here, so how you decide resolution will change to more-valuable than frames in 5-10 years is confusing.
I think at 4k we're actually running into serious bandwidth issues and serious diminishing returns. I would rather have extra processing power going towards more interesting stuff @1080p rather than having the same stuff we have now at 4k.
Microsoft and Sony will probably market them as "4k consoles", it's a good buzzword. It'd be crazy to require the games to be at 4k however.
That people referred to the PS3/360 as having "HD graphics" showed the marketing worked out well
That people referred to the PS3/360 as having "HD graphics" showed the marketing worked out well
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I'd rather if they pushed more for VR (make it standard with the console even), but that's me just dreaming.
I doubt they'll push for 4k. As opposed to HDTV where people HAD to get to replace their old TVs, 4k is optional and, honestly, outside the tech circles (like us), it's not important at all.
I doubt they'll push for 4k. As opposed to HDTV where people HAD to get to replace their old TVs, 4k is optional and, honestly, outside the tech circles (like us), it's not important at all.
This is only true due to dev's pushing IQ for 1080p PC's. If they chose to, they could simply have lowered IQ and pushed 4K. The question is, what looks better, higher graphical visuals at 1080p or lower visuals at 4k? That will always be a compromise.
There are many people with 4K monitors that prefer medium settings to 1080p at high. But it is a personal preference. It does appear the dev's prefer higher visuals at 1080p or even 720p to higher resolutions, or they wouldn't bother with upscaling to 1080p on consoles.
PC's will always require multiple GPU's as long a dev's continue to target their high end settings towards 1080p with high end GPU's.
cmdrdredd
Lifer
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This goes back to the fact that a game looks better on Very High at 1080p than it does on medium at 4k. I (and many others as evident in previous posts on the forums) want more effects at 1080p than less fidelity at a higher resolution.
Just look at high polygon count models for example. I do not want lower amounts of characters, less and worse physics effects, worse texture quality, lower quality animation. To push resolution you need lower effects and an overall worse looking game because there is only so much horsepower available. If you want that why upgrade at all? You could just keep turning down settings.
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People didn't "have" to upgrade to HDTV. You literally could get a free digital conversion box from the government, and if you were using cable you could keep doing straight coax for years since they'd convert the digital signal to analog at their substations before sending it out.
I'd actually say that once OLED production gets into swing we'll see a lot of people upgrade as it is a rare tech that is both "sexier" as well as brings real benefits and also will likely offer size increases at lower costs (meaning people will be able to go even bigger for less money). Give it 3 years and it will be an easy sell to consumers. By Black Friday next year, I'm betting we'll see near $1000 50" 4K OLED sets (I want to say they're at about $3000 now, with 1080p ones being $1500, but we'll see what prices at Black Friday). Give it 3 and I think we'll see 50" OLED 4K sets for $500.
5 years time and the luxury sets will be massive 8K 100"+ 21:9 sets that can bend/unbend in a curve or could roll/slide up sorta like projector screens (or garage doors, where when they slide to the ceiling they could give off a star or aurora image).
That and they could probably double as bay windows/mirrors or something else so that it justifies taking up an entire wall; might be false windows where you have it display various super high res scenes, and/or you feed with a camera.
I'm very skeptical that it'll be even 5 years from now. I give it 2-3.
Fully agree on your second paragraph though. That's how it has always been in console development and that's how it will continue.
They'll output upscaled 4K but won't render at that resolution other than possibly some few simpler games, just like consoles have been doing for...probably just about forever? People act like technical cheats like resolution rendering/scaling is some recent thing, when it's been happening just about as long as consoles have existed.
What I find funny is how people act like the current consoles are a failure for not rendering at 1080p flawlessly, and say they'd rather them push other things, and that's exactly what they've done. Game worlds have grown immensely in size and local detail during these consoles. That hasn't translated to better games necessarily, but they absolutely have not just thrown out everything to try and achieve relatively pointless render resolution targets. They absolutely have many areas they could and need to improve on (AI, physics is still not advancing that much in mainstream games), but they're doing other things that are interesting and resolution has become mostly meaningless. And I'm not even someone who is a big fan of this "every game is an open world game now!" movement, but there's things they can do to make that much better in the future.
They will, which is exactly why we'll see new consoles sooner than the 10 years that a bunch of people seem to have convinced themselves of. Give it 3 years for Microsoft to improve their AR headset. That and Project Morpheus will be a lot more popular to package in with consoles than Kinect. Although funnily enough, Kinect would be a great compliment to these headset.
VR actually likely will as and quite possibly more difficult to render than 4K though, as it is going to bring higher than 1080p resolution, plus needs high framerates to really be good, and requires other processing to make it look correct (although some of that might actually help them go with lower resolutions since they'll be able to cheat some). 2K (2560x1440 which is I believe the expected resolution of the major VR headset releases) at 90fps falls in between 4K30 and 4K60. Of course we won't see them do that level of rendering other than simple stuff. My guess is for VR we'll see 45 be the render target (and then them do black frames every other frame to get the 90fps).
And resolution will grow too. By the time the next console generation comes out we'll probably be looking at 4K in the headsets too.
The smart thing would be for them to do a ton of work in finding ways of upscaling rendered images, so they could put specialized hardware that can do that well so they can do smaller incremental improvements to the rendering processors.
I'd actually say that once OLED production gets into swing we'll see a lot of people upgrade as it is a rare tech that is both "sexier" as well as brings real benefits and also will likely offer size increases at lower costs (meaning people will be able to go even bigger for less money). Give it 3 years and it will be an easy sell to consumers. By Black Friday next year, I'm betting we'll see near $1000 50" 4K OLED sets (I want to say they're at about $3000 now, with 1080p ones being $1500, but we'll see what prices at Black Friday). Give it 3 and I think we'll see 50" OLED 4K sets for $500.
5 years time and the luxury sets will be massive 8K 100"+ 21:9 sets that can bend/unbend in a curve or could roll/slide up sorta like projector screens (or garage doors, where when they slide to the ceiling they could give off a star or aurora image).
That and they could probably double as bay windows/mirrors or something else so that it justifies taking up an entire wall; might be false windows where you have it display various super high res scenes, and/or you feed with a camera.
I'm very skeptical that it'll be even 5 years from now. I give it 2-3.
Fully agree on your second paragraph though. That's how it has always been in console development and that's how it will continue.
They'll output upscaled 4K but won't render at that resolution other than possibly some few simpler games, just like consoles have been doing for...probably just about forever? People act like technical cheats like resolution rendering/scaling is some recent thing, when it's been happening just about as long as consoles have existed.
What I find funny is how people act like the current consoles are a failure for not rendering at 1080p flawlessly, and say they'd rather them push other things, and that's exactly what they've done. Game worlds have grown immensely in size and local detail during these consoles. That hasn't translated to better games necessarily, but they absolutely have not just thrown out everything to try and achieve relatively pointless render resolution targets. They absolutely have many areas they could and need to improve on (AI, physics is still not advancing that much in mainstream games), but they're doing other things that are interesting and resolution has become mostly meaningless. And I'm not even someone who is a big fan of this "every game is an open world game now!" movement, but there's things they can do to make that much better in the future.
They will, which is exactly why we'll see new consoles sooner than the 10 years that a bunch of people seem to have convinced themselves of. Give it 3 years for Microsoft to improve their AR headset. That and Project Morpheus will be a lot more popular to package in with consoles than Kinect. Although funnily enough, Kinect would be a great compliment to these headset.
VR actually likely will as and quite possibly more difficult to render than 4K though, as it is going to bring higher than 1080p resolution, plus needs high framerates to really be good, and requires other processing to make it look correct (although some of that might actually help them go with lower resolutions since they'll be able to cheat some). 2K (2560x1440 which is I believe the expected resolution of the major VR headset releases) at 90fps falls in between 4K30 and 4K60. Of course we won't see them do that level of rendering other than simple stuff. My guess is for VR we'll see 45 be the render target (and then them do black frames every other frame to get the 90fps).
And resolution will grow too. By the time the next console generation comes out we'll probably be looking at 4K in the headsets too.
The smart thing would be for them to do a ton of work in finding ways of upscaling rendered images, so they could put specialized hardware that can do that well so they can do smaller incremental improvements to the rendering processors.
cmdrdredd
Lifer
- Dec 12, 2001
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I disagree about the 2-3 years for the next console thing. Many of the anticipated exclusives we know about aren't even coming until next year. It will definitely be longer than that. Especially since we haven't had a game that maxed out the potential of the systems yet. To be honest I find the games right now to look very good and I don't feel the need for any graphics upgrade at all. I'm quite pleased with what they've been able to do so far.
Agreed. THe thing that gets me annoyed is what I feel are marketing-driven graphics requirements. Like "oh we HAVE to hit 1080p/60fps in this game, so we are going to cut our poly/fx budgets in half, pull a bunch of LOD tricks so that everything renders at half quality when its 10 feet away from the player" etc. etc. it's just like at what point do you say "enough is enough" let's render an honest image.
cmdrdredd
Lifer
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That kind of seems like the argument that someone made about games being open world. That takes up massive resources as compared to a smaller game world being displayed on screen. There can be more detail in the games with less to show at once.
I still think it's 50-50 there is another console gen; but another 5-6 years (Nov 2020-2021) feels about right. For the processor to be substantially better while not breaking the bank, you would need the foundries to be using EUV. That doesn't seem likely until 2019-2020 at the earliest.
RussianSensation
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No, it won't be, not even close. Don't confuse the average household in the U.S./Canada/Germany/U.K. and enthusiast biased PC forums such as AnandTech, HardOCP, TPU, etc. with the worldwide console gaming market. Also, don't assume that because many people in developed/high income per capita countries could afford a 4K TV from now until 2020 that the rest of the console's target market could also afford those TVs.
You are also missing another important point -- to fully benefit from 4K pixels on a 4K TV at 8-10 feet that most people use their consoles at, you need a rather large 4K TV. A puny 49-55" 4K TV will be mostly marketing as far as IQ is concerned compared to the 1080P IQ of a similar quality panel at those small sizes. Even though 4K TVs themselves will be better since LED/LCD panels are expected to keep improving with time, the pixel density itself won't be the primary factor that will make graphics look significantly better for consoles on those smaller 4K TVs, unless one is willing to get a 75-84" 4K TV or plays console games much closer than 8 feet from their TV.
Frankly, 4K for PS5/XB2 sounds more like e-peen (marketing driven sales tactic) rather than a tech spec which aims to provide real world practical benefits. What's better maxed out 1080P graphics @ 60 fps with AA, or low-to-medium 4K graphics @ 30 fps with almost no AA? In terms of graphics, I think many will agree that the former is way better. Now on these forums some say that 4K @ medium is better than 1080P/1440P maxed out but I think a lot of these gamers are just trying to justify the early adopter premiums they paid for 4K TN or mediocre 4K panels. Think about it, what looks better Crysis 1/Metro 2033 medium out at 4K or Crysis 3 and Metro Last Light Redux maxed out at 1080P/1440P? 4K isn't a free lunch as the load on the graphics card is enormous.
4K is completely different in a PC environment where we benefit from increased real estate for productivity and because we sit much closer to the monitor, our eyes can easily resolve the increased PPI.
Exactly. If we assume that $650-700 16nm HBM2 cards like 250W Big Pascal will be ~ 980Ti SLI/Fury X CF, it's going to take about 3 years before that level of GPU performance can be brought down to 100-130W TDP and $200 price level. By that time we are basically in 2019 but we haven't accounted for games becoming even more demanding between 2016-2019. Even if games stagnate a little bit after 2017 to 2019, PS5/XB2 would need to have a 5-6 year life cycle which means their GPU would need to cope with next gen 2019-2026 games. Not a chance they will be able to fit a 100-130W TDP GPU with enough power to drive 2019-2026 games at 4K with good settings.
What they will do is ship the consoles with HDMI 2.0 (or newer) and DisplayPort 1.3 (or something along those lines) and claim how the consoles are 4K but in reality most games will be running at some lower/dynamic resolutions. Before PS4/XB1 launched, many predicted that they should be able to hit 60 fps @ 1080P and look how that turned out. I think if they set out a goal to have good looking games with 60 fps @ 1080P for next gen, that would be the sweet spot imho.
Even if that were true, 50" 4K is nothing for the living room. The 4K aspect literally does nothing here, with 100% of the benefit coming strictly from OLED wiping the floor with LED panel in all IQ categories. And now let's look at the performance demands of 4K vs. 1080P on the same 50" 4K OLED panel. At 9-10 feet, the 4K resolution will look exactly the same as 1080P for 98% of humans without eagle vision while the GPU performance hit will be insane.
You are not looking at the overall trends predicted by professionals.
"The exploding 4K market: Nearly 50% of U.S homes to have UHD TVs by 2020 according to new study"
U.S. is one of the wealthiest countries/economies in the world. If only 50% of U.S. homes are expected to have UHD TVs by 2020 (and what fraction of those TVs will be 75" or larger?), then the rest of the console market worldwide should have a penetration of way less than 50% outside of wealthy economies of the U.K., Germany, U.A.E (or similar) and Canada.
Right now a 55" 4K OLED TV (2015 model) costs $3000 US. You think in 2-3 years such a TV will cost only $500?
I agree. People like to focus on the resolution because it's a mathematical number that's easy to compare but I'd much rather them focus on next gen AI, complexity of the game, physics, etc. and stay at 1080P @ 60 fps than go pointless 4K since I don't envision many people having 75" 4K TVs in 2020.
Ya, I am not sure who is predicting 10-year life cycle for current consoles before they are replaced. The last gen had to be delayed because the world suffered through the Great Recession and MS/Sony lost so much $ on expensive hardware that they needed more time to try to recoup those costs with software/peripherals over the lifetime of PS3/360. With this generation, neither MS nor Sony is losing millions of dollars on the hardware and unless there is some major financial collapse in 2018-2019, it's fitting to expect next gen consoles by 2019, December 2020 at the latest. I honestly would like to see PS5/XB2 in 2018 but I realize that's probably too early for MS/Sony to be able to produce a $399-449 console with 6-8X the GPU horsepower of the existing consoles.
If we look at the GPU life cycles on the PC, they tend to dictate the upper limits of what's going to happen in the console world because GPU performance is power constrained -- i.e., perf/watt is largely dictated by manufacturing nodes and architectures. We know that 980Ti is roughly 3X faster than R7 370 (~ PS4's GPU level). If we consider 2016-2017 the Pascal era, 2018-2019 the Volta era and assume very optimistic outcomes such as flagship Pascal is 2X faster than 980Ti and then flagship Volta is 70% faster than flagship Pascal, that means 3X * 2X * 1.7X performance increase = 10X the performance increase. But, Sony/MS will not be able to afford/fit a $650-700 250W 2019 flagship GPU inside a console. That means realistically if next gen consoles have a goal target of having 6-8X the GPU performance of PS4, it'll take at least until 2019 before that can be realized in a mid-range GPU.
It kinda doesn't make a lot of sense to increase GPU horsepower 6-8X and then wipe a huge chunk of that away with useless 4K gaming resolution that most console gamers worldwide won't benefit from since they won't have 4K TVs and the ones who will have them won't have large enough 4K TVs to resolve those 4K pixels at typical console gaming living room playing distances.
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I don't see any way they cut the generation THAT short. I think it HAS to go another 5 years to be moderately successful, given R&D costs and, in the case of Microsoft, to make up for all of the money being lost on free software and write-off Kinect stock. Honestly, I'm curious as to what kind of money the Xbox division is pulling now, when you factor in their having to probably compensate third-party devs for giving away games like Madden in a bundle to entice gamers to what it ultimately the inferior hardware.
Now, I don't think the release date of planned games is a factor. Look at how Nintendo is trying to get Pokken Tournament, Star Fox, and Zelda out on the Wii U next year, while planning to murder it viciously a few months later.
There HAS to be another console generation, though. I think it would behoove Microsoft to make its last generation turn the Xbox brand into a Steam Machine experience. That way, they can probably just give you a modular system and release incremental upgrades and make it just function like a PC for Dummies experience. We have Google's Project Ara phone, IDK why Microsoft couldn't try something like that, and make the Windows/PC and Xbox gaming experiences identical. That way, the console can have adjustable graphics (with software to auto-tweak it for users by reading hardware), and it can have longevity without an all-new console release.
That's probably impossible, given the stupidity of the masses with technology, but it's what I'd like the end the consoles with. "Xbox Infinity," because its core can last forever.
Now, I don't think the release date of planned games is a factor. Look at how Nintendo is trying to get Pokken Tournament, Star Fox, and Zelda out on the Wii U next year, while planning to murder it viciously a few months later.
There HAS to be another console generation, though. I think it would behoove Microsoft to make its last generation turn the Xbox brand into a Steam Machine experience. That way, they can probably just give you a modular system and release incremental upgrades and make it just function like a PC for Dummies experience. We have Google's Project Ara phone, IDK why Microsoft couldn't try something like that, and make the Windows/PC and Xbox gaming experiences identical. That way, the console can have adjustable graphics (with software to auto-tweak it for users by reading hardware), and it can have longevity without an all-new console release.
That's probably impossible, given the stupidity of the masses with technology, but it's what I'd like the end the consoles with. "Xbox Infinity," because its core can last forever.
That's not a "fact", that is an opinion that likely varies from game to game and from person to person, but that is the fundamental issue. Dev's target 1080p for their high IQ, and make it look as good as possible and then it is impossible to get good performance at 4K without multiple GPU's.
To step up to 4K, dev's would have to stop improving IQ as they are now. They'd either have to simply stop improving them for a few years, or lower them.
At some point, dev's will reach a point where they feel a higher resolution will look better for the performance hit than higher IQ settings, and 4K will finally become the target. Until then, upscaled 1080p will be the closest we get.
RussianSensation
Elite Member
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Ironically I was thinking about the future of consoles beyond PS5/XB2 and I think it makes way more sense to have it as a service rather than a Steam Box machine. Imagine buying a cheap $50-100 box that can stream all your games from the cloud and awe you with insane level of graphics and you don't have to worry about buying a new $400-500 console every 5-6 years. In fact, with cloud streaming from a cluster of 1000s of GPUs, it would be literally impossible for us to build our own rigs that could provide that level of AI, Physics, graphics and that in itself is a major selling point of shifting console gaming to cloud streaming subscription gaming model. You basically pay a monthly/annual subscription like Xbox Live and you can either buy games or rent games, etc. This is perfect for publishers, developers and MS/Sony since they don't have to worry about piracy anymore, complex and costly logistics of shipping large boxed console hardware, expensive hardware warranty costs, etc. The reason they can't pull this off yet is because Internet speeds and overall data bandwidth and reliability of the stream service isn't up to standards but once this becomes viable, console hardware starts to make a lot less sense.
Think about it like this: If I can stream all my games at 4K @ 60 fps and never have to build my PC, never worry about reselling old computer parts, never worry about upgrading, and I can stream these games to any TV in my house seamlessly, it provides a lot of incentive to just pay a monthly fee. Then if they go all-in on the entire eco-system, imagine if you purchase a Fallout or GTA game for your Xbox cloud console and you get access to this game's version for your smartphone/tablet as well? All of a sudden they are selling an entire eco-system to you and you are given the choice of where and how you want to play the media you are subscribed too. This would be a huge selling point of consoles over PC.
Sooner or later hardware manufacturers will not be able to advance CPU/GPU tech fast enough at the pace required to improve graphics enough to sell next gen consoles because of the diminishing returns:
Eventually, 6-8X the increase in GPU horsepower will be a drop in the bucket because we'd need 50-100X the power for the next level of fidelity. So what are they going to have 15-20 year console life cycles? They will have to use the power of the cloud and use supercomputers/clusters of flagship GPUs to deliver the content to us. I could be wrong but it makes sense to me.
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The only issue with cloud computing is the latency. And latency is a huge killer to VR and even normal gaming for some of us.
No, the only issue isn't latency. We still have general issues with speed (4K at 60 FPs, uncompressed?), and people will have to put up with data caps in the U.S. As long as there is a giant U.S. market for gaming and ISP data caps exist, you can't go with an OnLive-like service for all gaming. People couldn't afford the Internet overages.
RussianSensation
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Yup. That's one of the major points against 4K in a fixed hardware eco-system where you can't upgrade the hardware. Even if the next gen PS5/XB2 could start off the generation at 4K, they won't be able to maintain it at 60 fps at that resolution.
For consoles they also have to look at overall benefit of targeting 4K. If they are going to target 4K but very few gamers will have the required 4K TVs, it's now a particularly enticing reason to get a new console. Look at the PC. 4K was so hyped and I was convinced it would take off and it's barely moving. I would describe the uptake to 4K on the PC abysmal.
Sept 2015 - still only 0.07%. More alarming for 4K adoption is that 1080P gaming is growing in popularity.
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
Thankfully the situation is projected to be FAR better for 4K HDTV adoption vs. 4K PC monitor adoption. I am still not confident that 4K HDTV growth will be enough to make 4K TVs mainstream for next gen PS5/XB2 consoles.
That is the bleak reality when EUV won't be coming for a long time to reduce chip manufacturing costs ...
Improvements in perf/price is going to be VERY SLOW in the short and extended term ...
As the economy worsens and the population becomes dumber innovation will be less likely. However, stepwise upgrades will no doubt be sold
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