HDR, perhaps not a big deal now but it will be. (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Monday, July 31, 2017, 09:49 (2717 days ago) @ DEEP_NNN

Headline:
A Cody Miller was dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, the 20th before that and the 19th before that.

Life's lessons.
Your parents may be old enough to know a true story like this. My father was one of the first TV repairmen in Nova Scotia in the first years of 1950's. As such, it was deemed to be a good idea that he own a TV. No TV signal of any strength was available at the time. Many people, visited our tiny house to see their very first snowy TV images from CBC. Try before you buy was probably invented in my house.

I'm sure at that time there were many Cody Millers who said audio was good enough and it was amply available via radio. They no doubt expounded upon the use of one's own imaginative visualization to fill their minds using the context of the spoken word.

Here we are today, in the 21st century. Nobody listened to the Cody Millers of the 1950's. We all have a TV. Soon we'll all have 4K and what ever comes after that.

Sometimes the cart really does come before the cart.

A bit of pain for a bit of gain for a bit of pain for a bit of gain and etc.

You should not try to hold back the clock.

I understand, and largely agree with, the spirit of your point here. But in this specific circumstance, Cody really is right (at least partially).

When you take into account the average screen size as well as the average viewing distance of people's TVs at home, the human eye can barely detect the difference between 1080 and 4K, or in some cases, can't detect it at all. Console makers are dedicating huge amounts of processor power to an improvement that is barely perceptible for the average gamer. It's not an efficient use of hardware. However, it fits nicely into marketing trends and buzz words.

I'd much rather see the extra horsepower spent in ways that have more meaningful impacts on games, even if the impacts are purely visual. HDR, faster and more consistent frame rates, HD textures (just because a game runs at 1080 doesn't mean every texture being displayed is a 1080 texture).