You Don't See in 4K

[John_Cillis 2,406]

We see what we perceive, that is why 30fps can be so satisfying in a sim, although color depth is very important, the eye can perceive so many subtleties of color.  I am somewhat visually challenged in my left eye, almost perfect night vision and peripheral vision, but it cannot perceive letters and thus I fail certain eye exams with it, although I have never failed my car eye exams with it.  It is why I chose Light Sport, since a car's eye exam is enough to fly under Light Sport although I quit flying some years back due to the expense of renting and the difficulty getting air time given the demand for rentals for flight instruction.  So simming is my route of choice, and commercial flight, when I want to fly.  My high def monitor is enough, I have a high def copy of Avatar and it looks better than it did in 3D, the sensation of depth and detail is wonderful to behold.  Yet I have seen 4K TV's and do notice a difference in sharpness and detail at least from a distance of about ten feet or so.  I do not know whether it is the resolution or color depth that I notice the most.  I would not invest in one however since I watch movies on my computer monitor at a closer distance.  No room for a mega TV in my small apartment.

John

[n4gix 4,947]

I found the presenter to be excellent at communicating his points, yet managed to keep it light and entertaining.

[Guest]

45 minutes ago, Cactus521 said:

that is why 30fps can be so satisfying in a sim

I really prefer 60 on my PC. 30 is sort of smooth, 60 is butter smooth. 30 can't satisfy me.

Anyway, whenever I am going to buy a new monitor/screen I think it will be a 4K one.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

9 minutes ago, J van E said:

I really prefer 60 on my PC. 30 is sort of smooth, 60 is butter smooth. 30 can't satisfy me.

Anyway, whenever I am going to buy a new monitor/screen I think it will be a 4K one.

It would be amazing to sim with a huge 4K monitor in front of me, I imagine the immersion level would be quadruple what I have now on my 23 inch 1080i monitor, which is going on ten years old now, gotta hand it to Samsung, they know how to make things that last, no stuck pixels even after all these years.  I lucked out when I bought my daughter her hi def 4x3 TV ten years ago.  It was being discontinued, I was in a Walmart, saw it and wanted it, perfect size for her room.  It was $199 and they told me they were out of stock.  I asked how much they would sell the floor model for, they said they normally did not do that but the clerk went in the back, chatted with his supervisor, and they gave it to me for $170 and it has given my daughter years of service since and will go to college with her.  LCD/LED monitors and TV's are just amazing, the technology behind them so unimaginable.

John

[Guest]

Did this guy suggest watching a 4K Ultra HD 2160p movie looks the same as standard HD 1080p movie?  If so, then he was problems with his eyes or he's sitting too far back from the image source or the image source is too small ... I sympathize with him or people with eye problems (heck my eyes aren't what they used to be either), but why should that hold the rest of the world back and continue the research and development?  Doesn't seem to be much "science" in this video.  If the image appears to be too crisp then it's because the source display is too small.  The differences between 8K, 4K, 1080p are very obvious ... just so much more detail in each step up ... a good example is to compare fly over city scene, in 4K you'll see individuals walking in the street and their shadows, in 1080p it's just a blob with zero shadow detail.  

Can one still buy a new 1080p TV these days?  4K TVs are super cheap Sharp 43" $279.  And now that 5K to 8K is a reality and Japan plans to broadcast the Olympics in 8K ... sadly the US is lacking in 4K broadcast TV content let alone 8K even though most professional cameras were long ago recording in 4K or higher and down sampled to 1080p broadcast.  Some of the broadcast cameras used at sporting events are mind boggling good, 4-8K, f/1.2 at 800mm and capable of 1000 FPS bursts.

I recall I went thru a long thread regarding best resolution to size to distance ratio for the "average" human eye ... I think the math came out at about 65" monitor at 16K resolution with eye point 19 inches away from source ... that's where the eye couldn't distinguish.

As far as pixel rates, nothing currently beats OLED displays, not even close ... 0.001ms which is about 1000X faster than an average LCD.  But not that it matters because refresh rates (not pixel rates) are limited by cable bandwidth and video protocols (HDMI, DisplayPort, etc. - HDMI 2.1 supports 8K 30Hz 4:4:4 10 bpc upto 120Hz compressed).  You can run at 240Hz refresh, but if your source is only updating frames 30 times a second or 60 times a second, then 240Hz isn't going to make a difference.

These same debates come up over and over with each resolution increment, I don't why?  It's not some "elitist" technology, it's technology that benefits almost everyone.  The cost of OLED and high resolution displays is coming down to be very affordable for the mass market, just takes a few years.  I'll agree that broadcasting higher res content in the US is seriously lacking, but NETFLIX is my major source for 4K content as there is a lot of 4K content on NETFLIX.

Cheers, Rob.

[ahsmatt7 1,199]

When I bought my 4k monitor a couple of years ago, i was blown away at how clear and crisp everything in the sim looked. Even on the w10 desktops it was amazing. I couldn't see individual pixels anymore. All curved edges of icons and things in the sim were crystal clear without any pixelation. 

I sold my old 1080p monitor a while ago. I turned it on and plugged it in to see if it still worked and the difference is astounding. It looked like crap. Pixels everywhere and details were blurry and just all around bad.

I could totally see how someone with poor eye sight wont see any discernible difference when switching to 4k. However, if you have good eye sight (20/40 I presume...) you will see a difference.

[HiFlyer 9,343]

1 hour ago, ahsmatt7 said:

However, if you have good eye sight (20/40 I presume...) you will see a difference.

Your probably taking it a bit too far. The argument is not that there is no discernable difference, mearly that possibly quite a bit of that difference is lost on the average mark-one human eyeball, for perfectly plausible reasons.

I think the jump to 2K was a good one. But I'm not so convinced that the jump to 4K and the murmurs of 8K are based on an actual need, other than to give companies something else to sell after everyone is at 2K

Then 4K....

Then suddenly you'll be a peasant if you aren't 8K........

Then.........

It's interesting to me though that the theory is being consigned to technical luddites in a community that nowadays ardently advocates for 20fps as the best setting to get reasonable smoothness in our current sims on our massive 4K monitors.

I remember when it was a solid 30 or more... Now it's 4K monitors and 20....... 🤔

Will it one day be 8K monitors and 10? 😋

I'm playing devil's advocate here a bit, but there is a point where things get silly. Even now, at its native resolution, the writing on my 2K monitor is miniscule, requiring me to resize web pages, certain apps, my desktop, etc. I Imagine a 4k screen will present me with microdots that are supposed to be icons 😋

Everyone makes their own choice, of course, and this is not meant to "convince" anyone of anything, but it is food for thought. I hope nobody takes it personally.

[Guest]

Even when I had 20/20 I could not tell the difference between 720p and 1080p. I was never in the habit of sitting any closer to a screen than 4 feet away unless I was using a laptop. Anyway next move for me if there is one will be the Samsung Odyssey early next year.

Edited August 7, 2018 by Guest

[shivers9 1,174]

I have 4K just for the Flight Sim. Looking forward to updating GPU when the next ones are released as my 980TI is not the best choice for 4K as we all know. As for broadcast TV in 4K or 8K? I am afraid here in the US it has been years since a program was shown that needed more than Black and white. Hours of advertising that is interupted from time to time for a few minutes by a bit of unreliable news or pehalps some low level content. We need 8K for this?? LOL!! The silver linning....makes it easy to leave the TV and go fly!!😀

[ahsmatt7 1,199]

57 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

Your probably taking it a bit too far. The argument is not that there is no discernable difference, mearly that possibly quite a bit of that difference is lost on the average mark-one human eyeball, for perfectly plausible reasons.

I think the jump to 2K was a good one. But I'm not so convinced that the jump to 4K and the murmurs of 8K are based on an actual need, other than to give companies something else to sell after everyone is at 2K

Then 4K....

Then suddenly you'll be a peasant if you aren't 8K........

Then.........

It's interesting to me though that the theory is being consigned to technical luddites in a community that nowadays ardently advocates for 20fps as the best setting to get reasonable smoothness in our current sims on our massive 4K monitors.

I remember when it was a solid 30 or more... Now it's 4K monitors and 20....... 🤔

Will it one day be 8K monitors and 10? 😋

I'm playing devil's advocate here a bit, but there is a point where things get silly. Even now, at its native resolution, the writing on my 2K monitor is miniscule, requiring me to resize web pages, certain apps, my desktop, etc. I Imagine a 4k screen will present me with microdots that are supposed to be icons 😋

Everyone makes their own choice, of course, and this is not meant to "convince" anyone of anything, but it is food for thought. I hope nobody takes it personally.

Ahhh I see I see.

Yeah I agree with you lol

10 years from now....."64k" TVs hahaha

[HiFlyer 9,343]

And of course 8K is already here. Even on my poor 2K monitor, the image is almost sharp enough to cut my eyeballs, so......

 

[Montie 124]

While it’s a good video, it drops the ball on what the whole 4K is about. 

It’s about all about fidelity and the little details. While we do not see in 4K, rendering an image in native 4K brings out the detail lost in lower resolutions, we do not see in 480p either. 

While the “4K” phenomenon is used at a marketing tool, the 4K is more just a resolution (not referring to the image from a game). 4K not only offers more data in a single image, but larger bandwidth in it’s improved codecs which offers a huge technical advantage over lower/older resolutions, ei. the wider color gamut.

Nobody can deny that 4K image looks significantly better than a 480p, 720p and 1080p image.

 

[odourboy 1,287]

The fatal flaw in this video is actually brought to light in it but glossed over... a TV/Monitor doesn't (typically) track where you are looking, or your emotional state, therefore if must support the cone resolution of the center 1% of one's eye across it's entire screen and offer the frame rate perceptible when one is in the excited/agitated state, in order to provide a no-compromise vieeing experience. I would argue that not only is 1080p inadequate, but probably even 8K (depending on viewing distsnce).

[ckyliu 1,749]

Haven't watch the video posted but I recently did a lot of research before getting my new monitor; I found out the human eye can only discern detail down to about 1/60th of a degree, and that information can be used to calculate the highest screen resolution you can benefit from at any particular distance The Full-HD1080p standard was based around the maximum quality your eyes could see at normal viewing distances for a television, therefore to get much benefit you have to sit unusually close (like a monitor) or have a large TV over 55". Everyone offers 4K at 40"+ for marketing and scale economics, rather than for any appreciable benefit @Rob Ainscough, on a 50" screen you'd need to sit within 2m/7ft to even begin noticing the improvement! Indeed, most digital cinemas only operate at 2K (just over 1080p).

For monitors 1080P is really at it's max at 25" and thereafter looks fuzzy, but 4K doesn't really come in to its own until 30", which is why I ended up with 1440p on a 27" monitor as it's in the sweet spot and doesn't have the computational overheads of 2160p

Here's a handy calculator:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10Msgm6c28mpaFFtoVPyX29X9nWdSOI1kGk0u8aJuhEU/edit#gid=0

And here's a graph to illustrate what the calculator reveals:

Edited August 8, 2018 by ckyliu

[Guest]

28 minutes ago, ckyliu said:

on a 50" screen you'd need to sit within 2m/7ft to even begin noticing the improvement!

On my 65" I sit about 20-24 inches from the screen.  Increasing resolution is very much about increasing screen size and view distance ... I have a very small 4K monitor 27" (that I use for separate PC running LittleNavMap and weather) and that screen size is just too small for 4K resolution which means I have to scale the desktop up (125% or even 150%). 

Here is example of an 8K monitor that is being sold at the wrong size 32" Dell UP3218K, but if you desktop scale it, it will look very impressive but scaling it is almost a must at this size monitor (32" is just too small).

Increasing desktop scaling reduces the view area but enhances text/line quality as it effectively works like AA.  In fact, that's how most AA processing is done on video cards, the image is generated at a much higher resolution and then scale down to native monitor resolution.  That's why when one watches 4K videos on YouTube (assuming you select the 4K setting) on a 1080p monitor it looks as if there has been more AA applied (less jaggies, no shimmering, etc. etc.).

Is 8K overkill, not if used on the right size monitor.  Is 16K overkill, definitely not, if used on the right size monitor ... and upwards.  

Future monitors are most likely going to be 16K OLED that are very light and thin and flexible with a variety of mounting options ... no longer will we have a need of  putting 3,4,5,10 monitors together with a nasty bezel and image alignment issues, one seamless large canvas that could cover an entire wall or wrap around a center point (edit: this is why I think VR days are numbered when playing the long game) ... I'm almost certain this will happen within the next 10 years and will be affordable for the mass market.  But having a 16K monitor that's only 27" in size, that would be pointless ... size matters.

Cheers, Rob.