The downsampling isn't for fun (Destiny)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Monday, July 31, 2017, 19:15 (2717 days ago) @ uberfoop
edited by Cody Miller, Monday, July 31, 2017, 19:22

As such, it's wrong to argue that rendering at 4K has no benefits for home viewing, even without sitting right up against the screen. Rendering at 4K has benefits even on a 1080p screen; the reconstruction at the output is only 1080p, but it's spatially and temporally cleaner.

You can render at 1080p and use various texture filtering and MSAA / EQAA / FXAA to get these same benefits at much less processing cost. That is the whole reason these techniques were developed.

The question is whether the benefits of higher resolution outweigh what else you could be doing with the power.

I don't think rendering your image at 4x resolution in order to downscale is a good use of power for a gaming machine. If you are Pixar and rendering a film, then sure.

Interestingly, I recall a trick I learned a long time ago in photoshop which is now incorporated as one of the scaling modes. Blurring your image slightly before downscaling resulted in a sharper image. As such, a straight up downscale is not always the best result.