4K, HDR, RTX, OLED, frame rates, raw power - which visual tech actually makes a difference?

From recent Digital Foundry videos its been clear that we're really hitting at the marginal end of visual differences between a moderately powerful system and a mind bogglingly powerful one.

As I mentioned elsewhere I shifted from a Ryzen 3400g + 1080 to a 5600x and OC 3800, mainly because I could (#ceolife), but also out of a curiosity to see how much it elevated the gaming experience. I also use a HDR capable ultra-widescreen monitor. So I thought it would be interesting to see how people rank what's important to them these days. Here's my HOTTAKE

To me, ultimately getting the framerate above 60 is the most important. And after all the tech upgrades that's the bit I've enjoyed the most. Apex is running at 290fps. Cyberpunk at 70fps with everything turned up. Even Sonic Transformed is now silky smooth. I was able to do this before to an extent, but on Apex I literally ran it with everything turned to 0 to try to maintain framerate. Seems crazy to use a £1k card just to improve the boat sections in an ancient cartoon racer but that's PC gaming for you.

Another tech I think Garwoofoo has also sung the praises of is HDR. When done well I think this is a far more visually arresting tech than RTX or simply chucking polygons at the screen. Destiny 2's HDR implementation is partially broken and often terrible, but when it clicks it's absolutely stunning. Switching it off is like coming off a coke high. I also like the fact I can now oversample on Destiny by running it at 200% and then having it scaled down. The fidelity and art design at times is stunning. HDR though has to be right up there as a key tech for making games look amazing and next-gen (if done well).

OLED, would be next on my list. Having seen OLEDs in action I think a properly tuned one is an absolute thing of beauty. Framerate, HDR and OLED together would be my goal over the next few months. As the saying goes - "how do you know if someone has an LG OLED TV? they'll tell you".

Less important to me is 4k. I think the difference between it and 1440p (and even 1080p) isn't really that incredible. Especially on a monitor at short view distances. I think the Star Wars Jedi Order game is one of the few I genuinely thought the 4k implementation was good. For many other games it's sort of visible, but not really. I'm going to hook the PC up to my 4k TV and revisit this, but even on 4k content on amazon/Netflix etc you have to go full Leadbetter to really appreciate a massive difference.

And bottom of the list has to be the difference between Low/Ultra graphics settings and even RTX on and off. Low in videogames today normally looks like you'd need a DF video to distinguish it from higher settings. And the difference between High and Ultra is often laughable at times.

Ray tracing is also clearly a bit of a busted flush. Metro Enhanced looks….. different? maybe? Not better. Cyberpunk looks…. different? too. Again, it's a sort of impressive tech, but when deployed it really looks a bit videogamey - like an overt Photoshop touch up on a model or something. Quake RTS is fun, but at the same time, I can't say I'm totally convinced. One game I have been impressed with is Ghostrunner that at top fidelity levels really meshes into a visual feast that uses all RTX and other approaches to create stunning levels (and it's also a great game). I do wonder if we're in a bit of a first phase of tech while people try to work out how to deploy it artistically. I think the Lego building game offers a hint of where the tech could go - sort of hyper-real, dense, tactile environments. But I'm not sure we're there yet. As Gar says, we're at the shiny gun phase.

Ray-tracing has impressed me in a few very specific circumstances, mainly in Ratchet & Clank or Spiderman, where the floor is 100% reflective for no discernible reason. It makes zero sense, but it does look pretty. It reminds me of the early Xbox 360 days, when developers worked out they could do wet-looking surfaces really well, so every level was randomly shiny.

Completely agree about 4K. If I flick between 1080p and 4K in quick succession, I can tell the difference. But if the game didn't tell me, and I had to guess, I wouldn't have the first clue. If you get reeeaaallly close to your telly (I'm talking a few inches away), you can see just how sharp 4K is, and the level of detail is impressive. But, y'know, that's a bit silly.

HDR is the biggest one for me (provided you've got a good telly for it, #IHaveAnLG). I've been using it for months now and it still knocks my socks off. (My wife's usual response: Yeah looks a bit brighter).

I reckon raytracing is really going to shine (ha!) is in shadows and lighting, rather than reflections. Screenspace reflections have gotten pretty good, especially with more powerful hardware to push it, so the changes there are going to be tougher to spot in most cases.

The lighting in that Unreal 5 tech demo was incredible, though.

Yes, ray tracing is definitely in the early 360 Unreal 3 tech days where games randomly inserted moist slime over every (brown) surface just because they could.

Also a fair call on Ratchet and Clank, and I think along with Ghostrunner that's a game where a studio with a coherent art focus has used the new tech to support a stunning vision, rather than slapping tech bits and bobs over something more traditionally made.

Goddammit, I hate it when I agree with cavalcade. But framerate > HDR > OLED sounds exactly right.

I've had an LG OLED TV for a couple of weeks now after my previous TV imploded, and apart from the fact that I've spent most of that time obsessively tweaking menu options, it's really quite stunning. Dolby Vision, the advanced version of HDR, has been a particularly impressive upgrade for TV and movies, it'll be interesting to see how much difference it makes when it's rolled out for Xbox games in the very near future. It's also nice to get 120 fps and VRR on a console, Microsoft Flight Simulator at least makes good use of this allowing it to use an unlocked framerate whereas on non-VRR TVs it's locked down to 30 to avoid stutter and tearing. Microsoft seem to be leading Sony slightly when adopting all this new technology, it's nice to be on the cutting edge.

Ray tracing I think will come into its own when it becomes ubiquitous, but that's some way off right now. Xbox and PS5 don't have the power to use it for much more than shiny puddles, and PC owners that can make use of it are very much the minority. My understanding is that eventually it should make games easier to develop - designers will be able to plonk a couple of light sources in a room and let the ray tracing work everything out, rather than laboriously creating baked-in lighting and shadows as happens at present - but until we get to a stage where that's actually useful for everyone, the "old" solutions will have to continue to be used so it's not actually a time-saver at all.

4K? Maybe makes a difference for PC users sitting right up to a monitor, but for the average console player at average TV viewing distances I doubt anyone can tell the difference. I was playing Mario Kart on the Wii U at 720p today and it looked absolutely fine. Any game that offers a cut in resolution in exchange for a higher frame rate gets that option turned on instantly.

I realised that Shadow Warrior 2 had an HDR option I hadn't switched on. And oh my, for what is (I believe) the first game on PC that really supported HDR (maybe?) it's a spectacular implementation in bits. Absolutely makes the visuals pop. Also was quite impressed with the oversampling feature, which works even better than the one in Destiny 2 which gave the visuals a hyper clarity to them.

It's also a great game, in a stupid, Serious Sam, sort of way.

With regard to frame rates, I do find there's a real case of diminishing returns once you've hit 60.

The gap from 30 to 60 is massive. There's a huge difference in image clarity as you pan the camera around, and snappier response times too. It's been great having almost everything on the Series X run at 60fps, definitely the first console gen where that has been the case.

From 60 to 120? Not nearly so much. You kind of notice it a bit when you switch over, then you just get used to it and after a while it's like you've not made the switch. My son plays Fortnite at 120fps and I'd struggle to tell the difference from 60 just as a casual observer.

Above 120? Genuinely cannot tell any difference. My PC monitor does 165fps, pretty much everything north of 100 looks exactly the same to me.

I just take the various options on the Xbox on a case-by-case basis. Stuff like Halo where there's no hit to image quality, I'll happily take the 120fps. With other games like Star Wars Battlefront, it'll run 120fps but it takes a massive hit to resolution and graphic settings, and I'd far rather have the shinies.

I think VRR / G-sync / Freesync / whatever makes more difference than raw frame rate in terms of perceived smoothness, to be honest.

I notice framerates up to about 120 in competitive shooters. Apex, for example, really benefits from an unlocked frame rate as high as you can get it. After that there is a diminishing return, but I have been surprised at how much going above 60 does make a difference to the feel of games (on MK, not so much on pad). It's sort of the difference between smooth and buttery smooth. Doesn't really make me any better (I'm sure it's all in my head) but it does make the experience a little more enjoyable.

Another tech I am still debating is ultra-widescreen. I run a 34 inch UW monitor (uncurved) and I do like it, but I'm still not sure if I'd prefer a big square instead. I can see the arguments that a wide narrow field of view is more naturally triggering your peripheral vision, but I still think there's something about having just an enormous lump of square in front of you.

A few things I am going to introduce to the discussion:

Motion Blur - it's dogshit right?
Chromatic Aberration - no
Film Grain - NO

Motion blur - it's actually OK if it's high-quality per-object motion blur and you are running at high frame rates already - try Doom 2016 as an example if you've got it on PC, it actually makes a very smooth game look even smoother. But generally on console it's used to try and cover up the fact stuff is running at 30 fps and it does that by smearing the camera every time you turn. Surely everyone hates it and I suspect it will quietly go away this gen now most stuff is hitting 60.

Chromatic aberration, I dunno, a bit overused perhaps but Batman Arkham Knight did some good things with it from what I remember. Bloodborne too maybe?

Film grain - nah. I even dislike it in films and TV shows. There was a trend a couple of years back for stuff filmed digitally to have artificial film grain added, the Netflix Marvel shows (Jessica Jones etc) were particularly heavy-handed with this - such a stupid idea. Nowadays stuff looks pristine, and it's much better.

DOOM Eternal's update for Series X/S made me feel uncomfortably weird and I immediately stopped playing. That rules me out of this entirely, I think.

Like queasy uncomfortable?

Like spinny 'everything is too fast, too smooth' uncomfortable. Not sick, not headache, just uncomfortable.

Then again, that might just have been DOOM Eternal.

I think everyone has triggers for motion sickness with FPS games, they might just not realise what triggers it. Field of view, smoothness, turning ratio… there's always something. VR of course is notorious for making people feel unwell.

There's one game on Game Pass called Supraland… neat little first-person puzzler, I was quite enjoying it until after half an hour I just wanted to vomit. And so did the person who was set next to me watching me play. No idea why. Combination of low frame rate and fish eye lens, I think, but never had that before or since. I can play DOOM for hours without issues.

Like spinny 'everything is too fast, too smooth' uncomfortable. Not sick, not headache, just uncomfortable.

I remember the first time I played The Last of Us on PS4 at 60, I had a visceral reaction to it – not motion sickness, just a sense that it was wrong somehow. Turned out the TV I was playing on (in the break room at work) still had some level of motion smoothing or interpolation turned on; I assume there was some conflict going on there.

Playing a game on a TV with bad input lag (usually something that isn't in Game mode) is a definite trigger, anything that breaks that feedback loop between what you're doing and what you're seeing is classic motion sickness territory.

Like spinny 'everything is too fast, too smooth' uncomfortable. Not sick, not headache, just uncomfortable.

Then again, that might just have been DOOM Eternal.

Ah right, this is vaguely similar to why I couldn't play Super Mario Galaxy, all the spinning and movement in that made me feel horrendous though.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice got a big Series X update yesterday with a variety of graphics modes to choose from - 30fps with ray tracing and other enhancements, 60fps at 4K, or 120fps at 1080p. It's probably the current best example of all this new technology at work, on console at least.

I tried out the ray tracing mode and I have to say the results are pretty extraordinary. There's an amazing consistency to the image that I don't think I've seen before. Water on the ground reflects its surroundings perfectly and there's a thickness to the air that I can't quite describe. There's definitely something impressive going on with the lighting, over and above fancy puddles. And the game is designed to be as disorienting as possible - the viewpoint is pulled in extremely close to the character and there's a disconcerting babble of voices (seriously, play this game with headphones) that question your every move. The whole thing - art design, game design and technology - adds up to more than the sum of its parts, it's one of the most believable and tangible game environments I've seen and it's hard to say exactly how that's been achieved.

Strangely enough, 30fps doesn't harm the game at all - in fact it adds a further air of slight unreality that works together with all the other elements. I tried the 60fps mode and it immediately felt more "gamey", didn't look quite right and the way the reflections shifted and disappeared every time you moved the camera detracted a great deal from it all. I didn't even try the 120fps mode.

So - having agreed with cavalcade initially that frame rate was most important, and that ray tracing was pretty much pointless - I'm forced to concede that in this specific instance, it's exactly the other way round.

I tried to play this on PS4 and it sounded like the machine was trying to take off; I've been meaning to try it on Series X. Might drag the machine down to my PC monitors for a 4K screen as well.

It was always a good looking game - so more good lookingness must be impressive. I remember I played a bit of it and found the gameplay a bit underwhelming, but I did always want to take another look.

I was quite surprised at how good Bioshock Infinite looked when I played it last night. Absolutely chokka full of that fuzzy bloom blur every game had in that era, but shows how coherent art design can elevate visuals past technical prowess. It was also running at 400pfs, which was nice. Since trying to get Monster Hunter looking not shit on PC though I have tinkered a little bit with ReShade and I do wonder if that sort of thing might be good to have integrated into Steam - a sort of standardised post-processing layer that you can use easily and have a shared community around to tame the visuals of older games.

More Senua stuff: it's weird how your brain adapts to 30fps. The first day I played it I just kept thinking how blurry it was. Second day, the same. Third day, looked absolutely fine. Genuinly I can't see why I ever had a problem with it.

I had the same experience moving from Yakuza Kiwami 1 at 60fps to Kiwami 2 at 30fps. Three days to adapt. Then it was fine.

I guess I just have to be careful not to play anything similar at 60 until I've finished it, in case I undo my conditioning. I think I've got into the habit of focusing on the central character when I turn the camera, which obviously doesn't blur, so the whole picture appears to retain its image integrity as the camera moves. But whatever it is, it's something my eyes and brain have decided to do automatically.

It really is a stunning-looking thing, though, and it breaks all cav's rules on what looks good and what doesn't, simply by chucking them all at the screen at the same time. There's a section late in the game where you're facing off against some enemies while wading waist deep in a sea of corpses, and it just really goes for it: motion blur, god rays, heavy depth of field, chromatic aberration, HDR particle effects absolutely everywhere - all while the soundtrack is going berzerk and there are voices screaming in your ears from all directions. It's by some distance the most incredible thing I've seen on console, and this is on a four-year-old game that's had every technology from HDR to ray tracing bolted onto it after release. I can't imagine what we're going to be looking at by the end of this gen.

The Gamepass version of this on PC is fucked and offers virtually no graphics customisation. Yay.

I bought a Kuro Plasma TV off a dude on rllmuk and while picking it up had a demo of his very, very expensive LG OLED. I now want one.

The Plasma is interesting though. It's 2008 era tech, which my brain has trouble working out is 13 (THIRTEEN?!) years ago. It's also 720p. The resolution is quite noticeable at times, but on animation and other more colourful stuff it looks absolutely glorious, with deep blacks and wonderful colour handling. The fact it's massive, heavy, can suffer from burn in, and consumes about as much power as a small nation state is probably why the tech died, but it's impressive and I'm going to use it mainly for older consoles and watching HDDVDs in the office.

I have a lot of HDDVDs.

So I was at my mates today and finally got to play on a PS5 and Series X and all on his 4k TV. I did like it, looked very rich, it 'looked better' than I was anticipating, and I did like the PS5 controller even though I was convinced I wouldn't as I don't like rumble features.

I just upgraded my monitor from a 34 inch ultrawidescreen IPS panel with a 75Hz refresh/1080p to a curved 34 inch ultrawidescreen 144Hz VA panel at 1440p.

It's absolutely the very definition of an incremental tech improvement. I fancied trying a curved panel, and I was getting slightly annoyed at the 1080p resolution on the other panel for general desktop work, so the rez was also a big draw.

The question I had was can you tell the difference between a 75hz and 144hz panel for games? And, while there's a danger I have a massive bias, it certainly does seem make a slight difference in Apex (along with the increased fidelity on objects at range). I am still shit, but I'm now a little more smooth and shit. I'm not overly convinced by the curve, though the monitor takes up a lot less desk space for the same screen size.

VA vs IPS is more interesting. The colour depth is slightly better on the new monitor, but there certainly are issues with ghosting, removed by an overdrive feature (but which also introduces a bit of smearing, very visible on black text on white backgrounds in the web browser). It's fairly incremental and neither one is definitively better than the other, just different, I guess.

Overall though, considering the expense, I am just about whelmed. Which is kind of where we are with tech. I remember the first time I put a 360 through a HDTV and played Geo Wars in the living room. I don't think there'll ever be that level of tech buzz again :(

I went from a 60Hz 1080p monitor to a 165Hz 1440p monitor and thought it was one of the more significant upgrades I'd bought. It was the GSync that made the most difference, I think, suddenly everything was just smooth without having to worry whether it was running at 50fps or 120fps. No more screen tearing or weird Vsync judder. My PC wasn't really strong enough to max it out but it was a good upgrade nonetheless. Felt like I was at least making the most of what it could do.

Yeah, in my case both monitors had variable refresh tech, and the older one was 75hz not 60, so it's not a huge technical leap. But I definitely think there's a difference in feel between the two. Not a gulf like 30 to 60, but more than I thought it would be.

I've ended up disabling VRR on the Xbox Series X. Thought it would be a great feature but it causes weird gamma issues on OLED screens, and it doesn't really deliver much benefit given that most console games are locked at 30/60/120 fps anyway by design. Maybe later in the gen when games are struggling to hit their targets, it'll be worth turning it back on, but for now I reckon it's best off. Very different situation to PC, where you're rarely dealing with a nice even frame rate and VRR makes a massive difference.

I have a nice even frame rate of 290 in Apex.

The Xbox consoles (Series at least, not sure about One/One X) have recently gained support for Dolby Vision for games - and the various LG TVs are starting to get firmware updates to support it. Again it's quite impressive to see Microsoft continuing to push the tech in this way as I don't think this is even on Sony's radar, and it's never even taken off on PC yet.

For now what this means in practice is that games that previously launched in HDR now launch in Dolby Vision - I've tried this with a couple of titles that I'm familiar with and it does look like a slightly more refined presentation with a bit more visible shadow detail and brighter highlights. Not an amazing difference by any means, but as we start to see titles that support DV natively it will be interesting to see how much benefit there is in this. Halo Infinite is going to be one of these titles and I think both Gears 5 and Psychonauts 2 are on the list so I'll be interested to see what happens there. At the very least this should allow newer games to read the TV's capabilities automatically which should eventually lead to the end of all the confusing HDR sliders that are plaguing games at the moment.

HDR via the PS5 on my TV is hot garbage. It's certainly something a new, generic, standard should be applied to.

What TV do you have? HDR can be a bugger to set up properly but you might be able to get decent results with a few tweaks.

Nah, even with intensive tweaking it's just shit. It was mentioned in a lot of the reviews it was sub optimal. I traded good HDR for Ambilight and a reasonable picture. I'm waiting to see if Phillips get their shit together with OLEDs (as I do love Ambilight) and then I might jump if something is available that's comparable to LGs stuff but with additional flashing lights.

The Unreal Engine 5 Matrix demo that's available now is genuinely astonishing. Do give it a download.

Which platforms? VR only?

No, Xbox and PS5.

It's amazing, doubly so when you read about how it's done: barring a couple of very short filmed shots at the beginning and two pre-rendered snippets, the whole thing is rendered in real-time on your console.

Interesting, I'll have to grab this if it's good. I assumed it would be shite.

It's impressive in a lot of ways, but I can't help feeling like we all knew it'd be really good at concrete-and-glass cityscape stuff. The architecture is stunning, but the people still have a hint of the plasticine about them.

Unreal is the shiniest, wettest engine around. Everything made in it looks the same, but that's less about the engine and more about the inability to use it on a developer level.

The fact that CGI Keanu is virtually indistinguishable from real Keanu says a lot about Keanu, I feel.

The fact that CGI Keanu is virtually indistinguishable from real Keanu says a lot about Keanu, I feel.

That's quite the stretch, it's not that good. I mean, it's good, it's a step up, but still. Having the likeness doesn't stop it being lifeless in the eyes. And while it's proof of concept, I can picture the car chase segment being in an actual game that I would undoubtedly hate, purely because it's all style over substance.

Bring the shiny shiny all you like, Unreal, it isn't going to make the games any better. We'll still be pressing X for Jason and walking through soulless cities until Unreal 6.

The fact that CGI Keanu is virtually indistinguishable from real Keanu says a lot about Keanu, I feel.

That's quite the stretch, it's not that good. I mean, it's good, it's a step up, but still. Having the likeness doesn't stop it bring lifeless in the eyes.

The hair was the big giveaway, for me - the CGI one is just too… fluffy. The cloth still isn't quite there either - shiny stuff seems like the goal much more than matte.

Well I thought it was a video of real Keane to begin with. 🤷‍♂️

And we’re not talking Pixar here, this is in-game (ish) graphics. I think you’re all being a bit picky…

Well I thought it was a video of real Keane to begin with. 🤷‍♂️

Some of it is. The initial speech by Keanu is real, up to the point young Neo and Morpheus appear, then the Keanu you see in the mirror is also real. All the rest is rendered, including every shot of Carrie-Anne Moss.

The bit that gets me is the second half of the chase, just after the helicopter appears: there’s something about that sequence that, just for 30 seconds or so, fools my brain completely.

Well I thought it was a video of real Keane to begin with. 🤷‍♂️

Some of it is. The initial speech by Keanu is real, up to the point young Neo and Morpheus appear, then the Keanu you see in the mirror is also real.

I'm not sure that's right. But to check, I'd have to install it again and then play it, and meh who's got time for that.

I mean the fact that we’re even unsure is a good sign.

It was pretty clear what was real Keanu and what wasn't. I'm surprised there would be much debate about it. I didn't think Keanu looked much more real than he does in Cyberpunk, maybe the total body animation was better? But they're both flavours of uncanny valley.

I'm in the mart camp here. I can't say I was amazingly impressed with this. I think there's clear steps forward in some of the city (I like the rendered interiors, sound stage and some of the lighting tricks) but I've seen more impressive sights in Cyberpunk with all the sliders cranked to the max. The floaty car physics, strange flame effects, plastic humans and usual videogame world destructibility issues mean it looks, feels and plays pretty much like any other videogame. The shit framerate didn't do it any favours either.

And the car chase, I mean, at no point was that anything other than a green tinted version of every car chase in any open world game from recent times. It was fine and looked good. But it was also achingly videogame - nothing in the world has weight*. Overall, I think there's aspects here I think will be great going forwards - my favourite bit definitely was whatever they were doing with the soundscape which worked very well and moving on from flat textured windows everywhere was pretty cool. But I suspect videogames will still rely very much on art design over throwing tech at rendering issues.

*not a gameplay comment - just the way assets move around like they're sitting in 50% gravity

It's not designed to sell a game, though, is it? It's an engine tech demo, so the fact that the animation, and art, and gameplay are sub-par it uninspired is distracting, but ultimately besides the point.

I'm still last-gen, so I only watched it on youtubelol, and it didn't look markedly better there than, say, TLoU2 - but the sheer volume of shit it's throwing around, and the speed and complexity of the lighting changes, I found very impressive.

The proof of concept which looks a bit like Tomb Raider is still the best Unreal 5 demo. This is fine. Sure. I do get it's a tech demonstration, not a game, I'm not game reviewing the content just saying, that however attractive it is, it still features floaty physics and plastic people.

It probably would've been best just stuck on Youtube.

It probably would've been best just stuck on Youtube.

I don't really agree with this, though the rest of what you've said about it is pretty spot-on. Having it running for real on consumer hardware is a big deal, albeit from a PR/selling the engine standpoint more than the consumer perspective. It shows the engine is robust and performant in the real world (ha matrix lol) in a way that the traditional smoke-and-mirrors high-end-PC capture wouldn't be.

I'd still be much more interested to see the Tomb Raider demo "in person", though.

Everything is better on youtubelol