Elite in 4k is ok-ish
- Thread starter wenkman
- Start date
What the hell is with the insane bloom on the 2nd picture? Are you Michael Bay in disguise?
ED is honestly the only game I've seen that really does get massively better with 4k. A lot of games just get a bit nicer, but many actually get worse and end up looking somehow retro and sparse. Doom 2016 looks terrible in 4k, for example. My wife often points out that HD movies look worse than film, and the reason is the same. Higher resolution reveals flaws and lack of attention to detail brutally. This really is a testament to ED's phenomenal graphic design. It's not just the technical quality of ED's graphics, which isn't stellar, but the stellar manner of application of it's graphics.
All Hail FD graphics department! Burn the blasphemers!
All Hail FD graphics department! Burn the blasphemers!
In ED I find myself regularly starting at minute details or distant objects & having physically smaller pixels helps with that 
Even on a 1080p monitor having the GPU power to be able to use supersampling as anti-aliasing is helpful, although not as helpful as smooth framerate delivery if one can't have both.
Even on a 1080p monitor having the GPU power to be able to use supersampling as anti-aliasing is helpful, although not as helpful as smooth framerate delivery if one can't have both.
I haf old Ducks
"Amazingly Realistic Immersion Mod"
thing active. youre right, was a bit bright with that sun.I really don't get the whole 'realistic immersion' mod, it really doesn't look that realistic, unless you're near a star you should be seeing all the stars you can, honestly it looks kind of boring with that black sky with nothing in it.
All Hail FD graphics department! Burn the blasphemers!
Still won't buy Odd-hissy.
Still won't buy Odd-hissy.
the
i did it mainly because i hoped the old GPU has less stress with less light sources.
but the black sky in the screens is from lack of stars. i'm in the formidine rift, not much stars going round here.
i did it mainly because i hoped the old GPU has less stress with less light sources.
but the black sky in the screens is from lack of stars. i'm in the formidine rift, not much stars going round here.
On my system, ED is the only game that I can actually run in 4K without taking a serious FPS hit. I much rather run at 1080p at 60 fps and use my TV's upscaler to get 4K than feed it 4K at 30 or even low fps. But on a game like RDO, I don't find 4K to be that much of a visual buff over 1080p due to the nature of the scenery I'm looking at. ED, on the other hand, has lots of "sharp" details which do benefit from the extra pixels - be it the HUD, ships in the distance, details of stations and outposts, and of course the starfield.
I am disappointed that ED doesn't support HDR. HDR is more of a game-changer than a resolution bump, and it really makes games like RDO and Flight Simulator look much better IMO. ED feels like a game that would really benefit from HDR, especially once we get these atmospheric worlds.
But to the OP's point, I think my recent acquisition of a 4K HDR TV was a huge nail in the coffin of my love for VR. Now if only Frontier would support the Dualshock's gyroscopic headlook function on PC, then I could have my high resolution cake and eat my easy intuitive headlook too.
ps - while my PC can currently handle Elite at 4K 60 fps in most settings, I have a feeling Odyssey is going to be much more demanding, forcing me back to 1080p.
HDR would be nice
I used to play ED on a 24" 1080p monitor, at 4k downscaled to get better anti-aliasing (it was very good), I now use a 43" 4k monitor at the same viewing distance so each individual pixel is a similar size & distance from me. Overall the 4k monitor is a better experience (everything is bigger in my FoV and more of my FoV is filled with display) but I have lost a little image quality because I'm no longer supersampling.
I have a 65" 4k telly too, but sit much further away from that & do not notice the difference between a DvD (720p), Full HD and 4k footage simply because each pixel represents such a small part of the picture at several metres distance even though each pixel is physically larger. If I move closer to the telly the difference becomes obvious of course
What's important (whether it's a tiny VR screen really close to your eye or a massive telly on the other side of the room) is the apparent pixel size (and the GPU power to display enough of them quickly & smoothly enough).
I totally agree with this. My 4k TV is a better display than the 1080 monitor it replaced, but because it's much bigger, many of my games actually look worse on it, because it's basically holding a magnifying glass up to the low quality textures of these particular games (Overwatch, for example). And on my 15 inch laptop, games like RDO often look better to me despite not being in HDR, because the pixel density is higher than my big 4K TV being fed a 1080p signal.
On the other hand, my TV gives me a better sense of immersion due to its size, so it's my preferred screen for games like Flight Simulator. Of course if my laptop could actually play* these games at 4K instead of being limited to 1080p, I'm sure my TV would look just as good, sharpness-wise, as my laptop screen.
Usually in my case it boils down to ease and comfort - RDO looks grander and more colorful on my TV, and it looks "sharper" on my laptop screen because of the reason you stated, but ultimately just plopping into my recliner with my laptop on my lap (technically a tray) is the easiest and most comfortable way to play a casual game, and when I take FOV into account, my 15 inch laptop screen isn't that much smaller than my big TV unless I pull a chair right up to it (which I do for flight sim).
* In case it's not clear, I plug my laptop into my TV to use it as an external monitor for games like FS.