Surely its not surprising that so few are playing in 4K?
4K is damn expensive. Not only do you need to splash out on the monitor / tv, you also need a good graphics card which can cost a lot. Its just not really worth it at the moment for the majority of people.
Have you had a look at 4K monitors? They are not that expensive and prices will drop by the end of the year. Everyone buying a new monitor or TV will pick up a 4K one this year because it would be silly to buy a 1080p crap if it's almost the same price. By next year 4K will be the new standard.
Why not buy a 4K Monitor. They can run in any resolution up to 4K.
All you need is a good NVIDIA card and you can play all older game in 4K. Newer games run in 2K or 4K with Medium settings. A GTX970 is really not that expensive and a new generation of NVIDIA cards are coming this year so expect some price drops.
"It's pretty simple, really. If your only intention in posting about a particular game or topic is to be negative, then yes, you should probably move on. Voicing a negative opinion is fine, continually doing so on the same game is basically just trolling." - Michael Bitton Community Manager, MMORPG.com
"As an online discussion about Star Citizen grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Derek Smart approaches 1" - MrSnuffles's law
"I am jumping in here a bit without knowing exactly what you all or talking about." - SEANMCAD
I love the single 20 something's explaining what is too expensive for others to be spending.
if you have a good career and family , 30k is nothing to spend on a good vehicle for your wife to take kids around in etc.
da feezy? no average joe is going to have a spare 30k cash. Thats not even middle class money. thats high class/rich money.unless you are financling the car no average joe will ever, EVER have 30k cash on hand like that.
Person A makes $40k per year and spends $40k per year. He's never got even $1000 to his name, and he's got a negative net worth because he can't manage money and carries a lot of credit card debt long-term.
Person B makes $40k per year and spends $30k per year. Within three years, he's saved up $30k. If he planned on getting a car, he may well have the money on hand; some people would have put it into longer term investments.
The difference is not income, but spending. People who can't manage money burn through money quickly, and no amount of income will help them. That's why winning the lottery commonly ends in disaster: people who play it are a self-selecting group of people who can't manage money and will blow anything they win on stupid stuff and promptly be broke again.
Now, most people do get a loan to buy a car. That, too, is a choice, as people could get through life without having a car until they save up enough money to buy one. I'm not saying that taking a car loan is a bad choice, but it is a choice.
I seriously know a family that between 2 of them bring 140k-150k a year. Husband brings in 120k. They can't even afford a washer dryer. Steal from their disabled dad. Shit you not. Someone doubts me I might just link to their FB page. They are even running from the irs. Took me a wile to piece it all together. He has gambling addiction. Both on pills,addiction. They move from house to house I guess when the irs finally catches up to there current address. It's crazy. off topic but long been derailed.
why is this suprise 4k is for the rich or those who get free stuff from "companys", if we all were rich evry one woudl be playing 4k but 4k isnt for who whants is for who can...
Rich?? Get a job and earn that moneys dude
Just make sure you do not get a family though! Or a really good job.
Honestly i just don't see the appeal, I'd just much rather have high framerates, 4k on a single consumer GPU still seems spotty at best, I'd prefer saving my money over spending it on SLI cards and a 4k monitor.
Seriously, think of all the other things you could buy for that money.
I am playing in 4k right now, i have a 32" monitor that is really nice. The price point for this was only $600.00 US. That price isnt so bad being it was like $1200.00 months ago. The main issue i am having it running it at max, I have a really good video card but I think I am going to buy two 980 ti's so I can run most high end games at 50fps or higher.
Most American adults spend well over $2000 on non-essential things in a given year. That's money that, if a $2000 computer monitor were a high priority, could be cut out of the budget to make room inside of a year. I'm not saying that people should do that. I'm saying that people could if it were a high priority. Which, for most people, it isn't.
I'm just saying that most American adults don't have any disposable income, let alone $2000.
I am not an American but nI can certainly afford 2K for stuff for my computer. The problem is more that if I want to spend that money I rather spend it on other stuff then a screen. I think most adult Swedes at least can afford that sum and so can most north Europeans who work and don't have too many kids.
I'm not saying that only Americans can afford a nice monitor. There are a lot of other countries about which I could have made the same claim. But there are also a lot of poorer countries where people live on $1000 per year, and I wanted to exclude such people from a claim that they could afford a $2000 monitor. It was easier to just pick one country and make a narrower claim than to try to give a list and worry about a cut-off.
Going higher with resolution is pointless to me; the issues of definition have largely been addressed (like power lines in the distance, or tree pixelation) by AA, or various techniques.
Were I to pour more money into improving my gaming visual fidelity, I'd invest in a dark room, projector, sound system, chairs, joysticks, etc. I.e., a home theater.
Why does this matter? Put another way, why ask this question?
Because both AMD and Nvidia accompanied by their armies of "objective" hardware testers are full of it.
-Look, our card produces +2fps at 4K. Wow....
All modern games run at least 30 FPS with a single GPU. Most will run 40-60 FPS with adjustments (disable AA because it's not needed any more). All games older than 2 years run 60 FPS or more.
Most graphical features are made to enhance the low resolution pixel mess of 1080p. These are not needed in 4K so you can turn them off by default.
You always have the option to go 2k or 3k if you want. All better than the pixelated 1080p mess.
Dying light distant Billboard and NPC:
In 4K:
in 1080p:
The amount of sharpness and depth it adds to games is staggering. Once you seen it side by side and played a few games with it you don't want to go back.
"It's pretty simple, really. If your only intention in posting about a particular game or topic is to be negative, then yes, you should probably move on. Voicing a negative opinion is fine, continually doing so on the same game is basically just trolling." - Michael Bitton Community Manager, MMORPG.com
"As an online discussion about Star Citizen grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Derek Smart approaches 1" - MrSnuffles's law
"I am jumping in here a bit without knowing exactly what you all or talking about." - SEANMCAD
Surely its not surprising that so few are playing in 4K?
4K is damn expensive. Not only do you need to splash out on the monitor / tv, you also need a good graphics card which can cost a lot. Its just not really worth it at the moment for the majority of people.
Have you had a look at 4K monitors? They are not that expensive and prices will drop by the end of the year. Everyone buying a new monitor or TV will pick up a 4K one this year because it would be silly to buy a 1080p crap if it's almost the same price. By next year 4K will be the new standard.
Why not buy a 4K Monitor. They can run in any resolution up to 4K.
All you need is a good NVIDIA card and you can play all older game in 4K. Newer games run in 2K or 4K with Medium settings. A GTX970 is really not that expensive and a new generation of NVIDIA cards are coming this year so expect some price drops.
Why Nvidia in particular on a thread about ultra high monitor resolutions? For architectural reasons, AMD does relatively better than Nvidia at higher resolutions and Nvidia relatively better at lower resolutions.
Waiting on 4k + high refresh rate + gsinc in a 21:9 format with the gpu to push that. Not sure what they'd call that though since it'd be higher than 4k. Ultra Wide 4K maybe?
If by gamers you mean "people who completed the Steam survey" then yes.
It would be interesting to see what the numbers are for all gamers tho
It will shock you how accurate something like a steam survey is when representing the world population playerbase. Ever watched the elections for US president? They pull in the votes from a few towns and surprisingly enough once all the votes from the entire state have been counted the numbers are almost exactly the same as those first few towns.
Actually, that's wildly false. Polls can often be decently accurate because they gather data by a given method and can calibrate results to this data meant the Democrat won by 4 two elections ago and that data meant the Republican won by 3 last election, and interpolate accordingly. But even the best pollsters are often wrong by several percent, which can be larger than the margin of victory in a close election.
If you can sample uniformly at random from among all gamers, then yes, a tiny sample would give a pretty good picture of what most gamers use. But getting data at random without making some demographics systematically more likely to be included than others is actually very, very hard to do. Political pollsters have a variety of ways that they reweight data, and every good pollster has his own special sauce on this.
But there's no reason to believe that Steam will sample gamers uniformly at random and plenty of reason to believe that it won't. For starters, it's going to exclude consoles. Even if you're only talking about PC gaming, some types of games are far more likely to go through Steam than others, so there's a huge genre bias. Personally, I've never used Steam, but I've played a lot of PC games.
Political pollsters have the advantage that they get to see ground truth every once in a while when the real election results come in. Thus, they can see how their previous methods were biased and adjust for the next election. Most surveys never get to see ground truth, so if they're wildly off, they can easily stay wildly off in the same way indefinitely.
So your argument that I am wrong is Steam rigged the poll? That doesn't sound a little absurd? They have more to gain from this poll being accurate then it being inaccurate. It shows what kinds of games they need to concentrate on selling. Bleh I don't fee like explaining the dynamics of polls. Its more accurate then you realize. And no it isn't perfect.
If by gamers you mean "people who completed the Steam survey" then yes.
It would be interesting to see what the numbers are for all gamers tho
It will shock you how accurate something like a steam survey is when representing the world population playerbase. Ever watched the elections for US president? They pull in the votes from a few towns and surprisingly enough once all the votes from the entire state have been counted the numbers are almost exactly the same as those first few towns.
Actually, that's wildly false. Polls can often be decently accurate because they gather data by a given method and can calibrate results to this data meant the Democrat won by 4 two elections ago and that data meant the Republican won by 3 last election, and interpolate accordingly. But even the best pollsters are often wrong by several percent, which can be larger than the margin of victory in a close election.
If you can sample uniformly at random from among all gamers, then yes, a tiny sample would give a pretty good picture of what most gamers use. But getting data at random without making some demographics systematically more likely to be included than others is actually very, very hard to do. Political pollsters have a variety of ways that they reweight data, and every good pollster has his own special sauce on this.
But there's no reason to believe that Steam will sample gamers uniformly at random and plenty of reason to believe that it won't. For starters, it's going to exclude consoles. Even if you're only talking about PC gaming, some types of games are far more likely to go through Steam than others, so there's a huge genre bias. Personally, I've never used Steam, but I've played a lot of PC games.
Political pollsters have the advantage that they get to see ground truth every once in a while when the real election results come in. Thus, they can see how their previous methods were biased and adjust for the next election. Most surveys never get to see ground truth, so if they're wildly off, they can easily stay wildly off in the same way indefinitely.
So your argument that I am wrong is Steam rigged the poll? That doesn't sound a little absurd? They have more to gain from this poll being accurate then it being inaccurate. It shows what kinds of games they need to concentrate on selling. Bleh I don't fee like explaining the dynamics of polls. Its more accurate then you realize. And no it isn't perfect.
There are two separate issues.
1) The first few precincts to report usually aren't terribly close to the final results. Don't confuse that with polling that is able to weight things intelligently.
2) It's not knowable how accurate the Steam hardware survey is, as we're never able to see ground truth of what people actually use. Political polling gets to see actual election results and adjust models based on that, but the Steam hardware survey never gets anything analogous.
I'm willing to believe that Steam hardware survey results are a relatively accurate representation of gaming computers.
That isn't the same thing as ~all~ computers.
Sure, there's some error in any polling, for lots of reasons. But for the simple fact that Steam doesn't really have anything to gain or lose by fudging or skewing the numbers, and that number of people submitting results helps to keep fraudulent entries from skewing the numbers too far, I'm inclined to believe they are more accurate than they are not - good enough for drawing generalizations from at any rate.
I'd believe 1% of gamers use 4k. That sounds plausible to me. However, what that data implies I think is the main argument here. I believe that's a pretty pointless statistic, at least by itself.
I make pretty good money, I have also paid for several properties, nice safety fund, 401k, ect ... I won't touch a cash shop, 4k , high end rigs, but I got a friend can barely put gas in his car, he plays in 4k.
I make pretty good money, I have also paid for several properties, nice safety fund, 401k, ect ... I won't touch a cash shop, 4k , high end rigs, but I got a friend can barely put gas in his car, he plays in 4k.
Thats to bad, I play in 4k and make really good money. What I am finding is 4k is nice to look at and alot of games are not optimized to run that way. Dying light on max settings runs and looks really nice in 4k. There might not be a mmo that runs 4k with something worth talking about, it might look good but nothing like dying light.
Well obviously if prices are low enough people will buy just because they need a new Monitor or whatever,maybe a whole system.Adding in expensive video cards,super fast cpu's,hi end monitors with fast seek times you'll end up with a VERY marginal improvement ,not nearly worth the cost.
I can tell you right now that when i went shopping back when 1080 was mass hyped,i lined them all up and could not tell the difference between 1080p and 720,they looked the same and at times the 720 looked better for what ever reason.People tend to let their brains dictate that well it costs more,is hyped,better on paper,i should buy it !!. Then of course you have to be careful of a storefront setting up the monitors to make 4k look way better.I do not foresee a single game needing these,we are lucky to see texture sizes of 1200x1200 being used,often times much lower resolutions.So in essence you'll be paying for a FAKE picture not really a better picture.
There are other factors that go into it as well,like your connections,if the connections are ancient tech your downgrading the purpose of going 4k.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Well obviously if prices are low enough people will buy just because they need a new Monitor or whatever,maybe a whole system.Adding in expensive video cards,super fast cpu's,hi end monitors with fast seek times you'll end up with a VERY marginal improvement ,not nearly worth the cost.
I can tell you right now that when i went shopping back when 1080 was mass hyped,i lined them all up and could not tell the difference between 1080p and 720,they looked the same and at times the 720 looked better for what ever reason.People tend to let their brains dictate that well it costs more,is hyped,better on paper,i should buy it !!. Then of course you have to be careful of a storefront setting up the monitors to make 4k look way better.I do not foresee a single game needing these,we are lucky to see texture sizes of 1200x1200 being used,often times much lower resolutions.So in essence you'll be paying for a FAKE picture not really a better picture.
There are other factors that go into it as well,like your connections,if the connections are ancient tech your downgrading the purpose of going 4k.
Or it could be some can tell the difference , and that it's nothing to do with more expensive.
I played in 1600x1200 long ago (98 on )and thought anything less looked rough to me, was Sony or Mitsubishi Trinitrons onlyl from then on. Then 2560x1600 30" for many years. Now it's Benq 3201's with Titan X SLI's running them , and even my wife whose not into PC gaming thinks they look amazing compared to 1080p.
720p regular HD channels look like shit to me compared to true 1080p blu-ray and so on.
Put a good 4k set next to 1080p and the 1080p is very , very noticeably more jagged and not as sharp.
There's nothing wrong with those who don't want to spend what it takes to run 4k well atm , it is on the expensive side , but to imply that because it doesn't seem that much different to you that it doesn't make a huge difference to others that IS worth the cost to them ,myself included.
Just as some spend 1000+ on good headphones because they say they can tell the difference , and I choose to stick in the 500 dollar range because I cant between 500 and 1000 dollar headsets , doesn't mean I think its not worth it for them.
Value is individual for each person's tastes and current situation.
I can tell you right now that when i went shopping back when 1080 was mass hyped,i lined them all up and could not tell the difference between 1080p and 720,they looked the same and at times the 720 looked better for what ever reason.
Most people can not tell the difference between 720p and 1080p from my experience.
But, I made a little experiment.
I took a high quality image still, in 1920*1080, from a movie. I made sure it's a sharp image with lots of fine detail.
I turned it into a 1280*720 image and put it on top:
What I did next is take that 720p image, and upscaled it to 1080p.
I won't tell where I put it..........I put it either above or below the 1080p image.
If you can't tell where I put it...you can't tell the difference between 1080p and 720p.
(feel free to click the image for the full resolution)
(only click the image to 100%, no extra "CTRL+ zooming" beyond the normal screen resolution, otherwise it's no longer fair)
Comments
plus, there are things you can do in the back seat you can't quit do with VR yet
Why not buy a 4K Monitor. They can run in any resolution up to 4K.
All you need is a good NVIDIA card and you can play all older game in 4K. Newer games run in 2K or 4K with Medium settings. A GTX970 is really not that expensive and a new generation of NVIDIA cards are coming this year so expect some price drops.
"It's pretty simple, really. If your only intention in posting about a particular game or topic is to be negative, then yes, you should probably move on. Voicing a negative opinion is fine, continually doing so on the same game is basically just trolling."
- Michael Bitton
Community Manager, MMORPG.com
"As an online discussion about Star Citizen grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Derek Smart approaches 1" - MrSnuffles's law
"I am jumping in here a bit without knowing exactly what you all or talking about."
- SEANMCAD
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Seriously, think of all the other things you could buy for that money.
-Look, our card produces +2fps at 4K. Wow....
Were I to pour more money into improving my gaming visual fidelity, I'd invest in a dark room, projector, sound system, chairs, joysticks, etc. I.e., a home theater.
Most graphical features are made to enhance the low resolution pixel mess of 1080p. These are not needed in 4K so you can turn them off by default.
You always have the option to go 2k or 3k if you want. All better than the pixelated 1080p mess.
Dying light distant Billboard and NPC:
In 4K:
in 1080p:
The amount of sharpness and depth it adds to games is staggering. Once you seen it side by side and played a few games with it you don't want to go back.
"It's pretty simple, really. If your only intention in posting about a particular game or topic is to be negative, then yes, you should probably move on. Voicing a negative opinion is fine, continually doing so on the same game is basically just trolling."
- Michael Bitton
Community Manager, MMORPG.com
"As an online discussion about Star Citizen grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Derek Smart approaches 1" - MrSnuffles's law
"I am jumping in here a bit without knowing exactly what you all or talking about."
- SEANMCAD
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1) The first few precincts to report usually aren't terribly close to the final results. Don't confuse that with polling that is able to weight things intelligently.
2) It's not knowable how accurate the Steam hardware survey is, as we're never able to see ground truth of what people actually use. Political polling gets to see actual election results and adjust models based on that, but the Steam hardware survey never gets anything analogous.
That isn't the same thing as ~all~ computers.
Sure, there's some error in any polling, for lots of reasons. But for the simple fact that Steam doesn't really have anything to gain or lose by fudging or skewing the numbers, and that number of people submitting results helps to keep fraudulent entries from skewing the numbers too far, I'm inclined to believe they are more accurate than they are not - good enough for drawing generalizations from at any rate.
I'd believe 1% of gamers use 4k. That sounds plausible to me. However, what that data implies I think is the main argument here. I believe that's a pretty pointless statistic, at least by itself.
I can tell you right now that when i went shopping back when 1080 was mass hyped,i lined them all up and could not tell the difference between 1080p and 720,they looked the same and at times the 720 looked better for what ever reason.People tend to let their brains dictate that well it costs more,is hyped,better on paper,i should buy it !!.
Then of course you have to be careful of a storefront setting up the monitors to make 4k look way better.I do not foresee a single game needing these,we are lucky to see texture sizes of 1200x1200 being used,often times much lower resolutions.So in essence you'll be paying for a FAKE picture not really a better picture.
There are other factors that go into it as well,like your connections,if the connections are ancient tech your downgrading the purpose of going 4k.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I played in 1600x1200 long ago (98 on )and thought anything less looked rough to me, was Sony or Mitsubishi Trinitrons onlyl from then on. Then 2560x1600 30" for many years. Now it's Benq 3201's with Titan X SLI's running them , and even my wife whose not into PC gaming thinks they look amazing compared to 1080p.
720p regular HD channels look like shit to me compared to true 1080p blu-ray and so on.
Put a good 4k set next to 1080p and the 1080p is very , very noticeably more jagged and not as sharp.
There's nothing wrong with those who don't want to spend what it takes to run 4k well atm , it is on the expensive side , but to imply that because it doesn't seem that much different to you that it doesn't make a huge difference to others that IS worth the cost to them ,myself included.
Just as some spend 1000+ on good headphones because they say they can tell the difference , and I choose to stick in the 500 dollar range because I cant between 500 and 1000 dollar headsets , doesn't mean I think its not worth it for them.
Value is individual for each person's tastes and current situation.
That is a massive loss for a very marginal gain.
And this is a linear loss. In a few years from now, you will still lose 70% of your FPS by using 4k.
It's not like an AA filter where the cost decreased over time.
It was different with 800x600, the gain was noticeable.
From HD to 4k is a very very small gain, some people can barely tell the difference.
But, I made a little experiment.
I took a high quality image still, in 1920*1080, from a movie. I made sure it's a sharp image with lots of fine detail.
I turned it into a 1280*720 image and put it on top:
What I did next is take that 720p image, and upscaled it to 1080p.
I won't tell where I put it..........I put it either above or below the 1080p image.
If you can't tell where I put it...you can't tell the difference between 1080p and 720p.
(feel free to click the image for the full resolution)
(only click the image to 100%, no extra "CTRL+ zooming" beyond the normal screen resolution, otherwise it's no longer fair)
Could you tell? I could not. At least not easily.
I notice a tiny tiny bit softer image in the bottom image perhaps, but I am kind of doubting myself.
Here is the proof the bottom image is the 720p image that I upscaled: