Beta review of BF4 with good info
Posted: Thu Oct 17, 2013 4:16 pm
http://hothardware.com/Reviews/Battlefi ... e-Preview/
Jim and I were messing with this the other day but now I understand what this setting does/means.
"One of the more interesting features of the BF4 engine is the ability to scale resolution upwards or downwards. Let us explain what this means, since the slider sits apart from all other graphics options. If you change the resolution scaling, you change the resolution that the GPU renders internally as opposed to the displayed resolution. Most of the time, these numbers are identical -- but let's say you've got a GPU with really limited VRAM. How do you deal with that? You render at a low resolution internally, then scale up.
But the problem with this method is essentially the same issue that can limit FXAA's ability to replace MSAA as an antialiasing method. You're working with an output stream rather than the underlying data, and upscaling to 1920x1080 never looks as good as natively rendering the same image. It's a fundamental limitation of the technology, and so we're not surprised that the game engine struggles. But the comparison, for all that, isn't very good. Here's a pair of screenshots that illustrate the difference. First, on the left, is a screenshot from 1366x768 set as the native resolution, with 100% scaling. On the right, here's 1920x1080, set for 70% scaling (to achieve roughly the same resolution)."
Jim and I were messing with this the other day but now I understand what this setting does/means.
"One of the more interesting features of the BF4 engine is the ability to scale resolution upwards or downwards. Let us explain what this means, since the slider sits apart from all other graphics options. If you change the resolution scaling, you change the resolution that the GPU renders internally as opposed to the displayed resolution. Most of the time, these numbers are identical -- but let's say you've got a GPU with really limited VRAM. How do you deal with that? You render at a low resolution internally, then scale up.
But the problem with this method is essentially the same issue that can limit FXAA's ability to replace MSAA as an antialiasing method. You're working with an output stream rather than the underlying data, and upscaling to 1920x1080 never looks as good as natively rendering the same image. It's a fundamental limitation of the technology, and so we're not surprised that the game engine struggles. But the comparison, for all that, isn't very good. Here's a pair of screenshots that illustrate the difference. First, on the left, is a screenshot from 1366x768 set as the native resolution, with 100% scaling. On the right, here's 1920x1080, set for 70% scaling (to achieve roughly the same resolution)."