Here's Why PS4K's Ace Will Be HDR Support, More Than Any Resolution Boost

Ever since the leaks began effectually PS4K, there'due south been a lot of speculation regarding this supposedly enhanced version of Sony'south PlayStation four. While information technology'southward non withal official past any ways, there accept been too many rumors from unlike sources not to believe that at that place'south something real behind it all.

However, the lawmaking proper noun itself might lead some to believe that PS4K's biggest accomplishment may be running games at 4K native resolution. This article looks into debunking such conventionalities and showcasing the truthful ace in the hole of PS4K.

Even if the nigh contempo rumor suggesting a GPU 2 times more powerful than PS4'south turned out to be truthful, we would still be quite far from the raw horsepower needed to return games natively at 4K.

The electric current version of Sony's console outputs most games (dissimilar Microsoft'due south Xbox I) at a native FullHD resolution, or 1920x1080 (1080P), which is equivalent to 2,073,600 pixels; conventional 4K (3840x2160), on the other mitt, requires iv times the number of pixels (viii,294,400). Right now, there is no single GPU capable of treatment 4K rendering in performance intensive games while maintaining sixty frames per second; information technology is speculated that the nearly powerful GPUs from AMD and NVIDIA of the upcoming generation, Polaris and Pascal, might be able to do and then.

But those loftier-cease graphics cards will cost $500/600 at release, and it's a known fact that consoles use mid-range GPUs to keep the price down. A much more realistic goal would be to increase the native resolution from 1080P to 1440P (2560x1440), or 3, 686, 400 pixels. That would translate into a 77% increase over 1080P in terms of pixels and definitely something that a GPU twice every bit powerful as PS4's could handle.

The 1440P native resolution would then be upscaled to 4K, of course, but don't expect earth-shattering graphics improvements in this case scenario; in fact, some of the less tech savvy customers may barely notice it. Does that hateful PS4K won't have any entreatment for enthusiasts? Not at all, as the biggest technical advocacy may well be another ane: HDR support.

High Dynamic Range rendering has been used in games for many years now, but display technology has severely limited its results until now. That'due south because even the best HDTVs have been stuck with the Rec.709 standard, showtime approved in 1990. Now this is all changing thank you to the push for Rec.2020, approved in 2022 for UHDTVs (4K and 8K) and supported by the HDMI two.0 standard. First of all, Rec.2020 says cheerio to interlacing, thus only allowing progressive browse frame rates.

More importantly for our topic, Rec.2020 is defined by a ten/12-bit color space whereas Rec.709 was limited to 8-bit. With the introduction of Wide Colour Gamut support, we'll be able to see over a billion possible colors with 10-bit while we have been stuck at sixteen million with our current eight-bit displays.

They say that a movie is worth a 1000 words. In the one just higher up, Rec.709 is represented by the smaller triangle while Rec.2020 is the far bigger one inside the CIE 1931 curve of colors that humans can perceive.

Wide Color Gamut goes hand in mitt with HDR. In fact, it is no coincidence that the HDMI 2.0a revision added HDR support and Polaris (the new AMD architecture upon which the PS4K'southward GPU may be based) has been confirmed to have HDMI two.0a support.

Those of you who followed CES 2022 closely already know that HDR had its heyday in Las Vegas this year. All of the major display manufacturers (including Sony) committed to the engineering, while Netflix, Amazon, YouTube and Vudu have announced more HDR video content coming to their streaming services. But what is HDR, exactly?

It is the ability to brandish much brighter and much darker pixels whenever necessary, allowing for far more contrast between bright and nighttime spots in a scene than we're used to. Rec.709 confined displays to a luminance between 0.ane to 100 nits, while Rec.2020 allows a much greater variance - from 0.0001 to ten.000 nits, in theory.

The slides higher up are taken from a Build presentation hosted by Microsoft. A very similar 1 took place at GDC 2022 and the content was substantially the same: Microsoft is a large believer in HDR and Wide Color Gamut support. According to their tests, it's a more noticeable improvement to finish users than 4K resolution and they will be adding support for both technologies to Windows 10 in 2022.

They aren't the simply ones, though. AMD itself made a big deal of their push for HDR during CES 2022 in what they called the Better Pixels Initiative.

A couple of the slides from that report will exist quite useful once again. AMD went as far every bit saying that 1080P+HDR looks better than 4K+SDR (Standard Dynamic Range), every bit you can read below; of course, it goes without saying that 4K+HDR is the superior choice.

The other slide is an example of SDR versus HDR. Given any source content, the difference between the two will be similar to the epitome beneath.

Of form, developers will have to make adjustments, simply Microsoft said in the aforementioned Build presentation that it will be fairly trivial to add HDR & Wide Colour Gamut back up for those who are using a PBR pipeline. That'southward because a lot of the HDR data is already existence generated, information technology'south but not displayed; Microsoft estimates that the actual engineering work may be even less than a week.

The practiced news is that at that place won't be any operation price for games. The bad news is, equally y'all should have guessed by now, that an HDR uniform display volition exist needed. In case you were planning to purchase a 4K brandish right at present by taking advantage of some peculiarly enticing offering, with the idea of being ready when the PS4K ships, don't. As explained before in the article, despite the name that's been circulating it is highly unlikely that games volition exist rendered natively at 4K resolution for obvious performance reasons and you would be left without the truly major advancements in graphics, HDR & Wide Color Gamut support.

You will be able to recognize displays that accept both technologies if they sport the UHD Premium badge, which has been chosen by the UHD Alliance as the official characterization. To exist thorough, there will be ii UHD Premium standards: displays with 0.05-1000+ nits will be classified in the Standard 1, while those with 0.0005-540 nits will be in the Standard 2. That'south because LED displays allow for improve peak brightness but less deep blacks (Standard one), while the opposite is true for OLED displays (Standard 2).

PS4K is rumored to launch in Q1 2022, which is when many more UHD Premium displays will be available and also when Microsoft plans to deploy HDR & Wide Colour Gamut support to Windows x. Needless to say, Sony would gain a huge advantage in the panel market amid enthusiasts until Microsoft and Nintendo can offer the same with their consoles.

Source: https://wccftech.com/heres-why-ps4k-ace-will-be-hdr-support-more-than-any-resolution-boost/

Posted by: lewisovelly1950.blogspot.com

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