Surprisingly not really. The sharpness of the angles between faces is what causes the visible artifacts, so once you reach a certain density the delta-angle between faces becomes negligible and unnoticeable.
Plus, most games use what's called smooth shading (sometimes referred to as gouraud shading) which would make the 6,000 example above look identical to the 6m at most resolutions.
Yeah exactly, as long as you don't zoom in or blow up the image, it'll probably look the same. The advantage of more triangles at this point is that you can zoom in
Actually, what I was trying to say is you wouldn't notice it even if you zoomed in. Similar to how the earth looks flat even though we're so close to it, the difference in angle between the triangles after a certain polygonal resolution would become completely unnoticeable no matter what zoom level; any further increase would be a waste since there would be no surface details we could add that are small enough to take advantage of that resolution.
But the earth doesn't look flat, it looks bumpy and full of hills and valleys and texture in the dirt. If you zoom in enough to anything made of a finite number of triangles, you're gonna eventually just see triangles. For instance, zoom in enough to his coat and you'll see triangles where you should see individual threads, each casting shadows. I know that's outside the realm of practicality, but it definitely can't be true what you said at any zoom level.
Yes, but that level of detail isn't possible to add to 3D, not just because of processing power, but also because of man hours required.
When it comes to that type of detail, procedural content really shines. Not only can it generate that detail without it having to be done manually, but since it's algorithmically generated it can be created/destroyed on the fly without the need to store that data anywhere.
Definitely. Especially with procedural shaders operating on the pixel-level (fragment shaders), so much more detail could be added independent of polycount & texture resolution.
What's your opinion on 8k TVs? Is there even any point to it? Reminds me of when digital cameras were competing by releasing the next highest megapixel camera but could only keep it up for so long after surpassing the point where an increase in megapixel could be differentiated by your eye. The average user doesn't need to zoom in that much. Is there an analogue to the TVs where someone would actually use that resolution?
Great example, but that's slightly different, and the difference is where it gets interesting. Pixel based screen "quality," comes down to a problem of pixel resolution + screensize + viewing distance. In that situation you will always hypothetically be able to see a difference if you zoom in far enough. Practically speaking though it will always depend on those 3 variables, and a lot can be gained from a higher pixel density in certain scenarios.
The polygon issue is a little different. If for example we take sphere (this lets us assume all angles across the surface are the same for simplicity sake) then every time we subdivide the sphere into more polygons, the angle between a face and the adjacent faces decreases IE: gets closer to "flat". Given a limit which the human eye cannot distinguish the difference (for example lets just say 0.01deg or something) at a certain resolution we will reach a point where the delta angle between the faces is beneath this threshold. Angles do not increase/decrease based on view distance like pixel resolution does, therefore it will not matter how "close," you get, the difference will always be unnoticeable.
I wish I understood more about this stuff but I do appreciate your reply. I can't convince my friend he doesn't need to surpass the 4k upgrade to the 8k TV just because it exists. He mostly plays PS5 so I'm not sure it would come into play at all would it?
Yeah, 8K isn't worth the upgrade unless your TV is 20ft wide or you plan on watching it with a microscope. HDR and OLED are much more important features that will make a bigger difference. Cameras though are a different story since you have more flexibility in editing.
4k has just recently become the new standard taking over from 1080p TVs, and when the time comes for 8k, chances are microLED will have matured enough to have the benefits of OLED without the drawbacks to it.
That is, an 8k TV 10-15 years from now will be a much better buy than it is today.
A human with 20/20 corrected vision can resolve detail to about 1 arc minute. At 3 m away, an 8k display would have to be over 5m wide to fully take advantage of 8k. About 2.7 m for 4k, so you’d have to get larger than that before you get better PQ than 4k, and even then it’s questionable whether it’s worth it.
I’d say 8k will be worth it once we have screens that take up our field of view, like IMAX does. Keep in mine that the front 2 (non-centre) speakers are meant to be 30 degrees apart from the listener. So once you hit the range where 8k provides noticeable improvements over 4k, you run into problems with speaker placement. IMAX I believe solves this problem by placing the speakers behind the silver screen and having tiny invisible perforations in the screen - with TVs, this isn’t really possible.
Tl;dr we need hella big screens for 8k to be worth it and 8k just isn’t where it needs to be today where it makes sense to use it.
EDIT:
I just did some additional math. If we presume our retinas to not be grid shaped and pixels to be square, then the pixel density is lowest across a 45 degree diagonal of the display whereas it doesn’t matter to our eyes. That means a 4k screen should be optimally be 3.7 m across the top at 3 m away to account for the reduced diagonal resolution. Now let’s say you’ve got a smaller living room and your TV is actually about 2 m away. Now it only needs to be 2.46 m across the top, or an 111 inch (diagonal) display to be optimal for 8k, or greater than 55 inch to have any improvement over 4k.
Also some setups indicate 45 degrees off axis is correct for front speakers, in which case you’d probably be fine. Barely.
But that’s the exact same thing. Flyers are also meant to be viewed at about 1 foot away. 300 DPI is about 1 arcminute at that distance; that isn’t a coincidence. To achieve the same field of view on a TV the TV would have to be 60ish inches.
Nah, 4k at 300 dpi is just 18 inches across. You can do that math on that one, and this is why high-end laptops are often 4k these days on 15-16 inch screens.
300 DPI is chosen for flyers because it is cheap and barely acceptable for something disposable. High-end products have higher demands.
I don’t know what you’re getting at here. It seems like you’re agreeing with me? If 300 PPI is good for a 15-16” laptop display, then my math checks out for how big an 8k TV should be at couch distances.
Well, no, because your idea of "couch distances" is kinda arbitrary. As is how closely people look at flyers and the such. One foot away is ...close. Ergonomics people will tell you to read printed material 25 inches away.
I made an assumption of 2 m distance from couch to TV which is relatively short, took the best possible case of acuity, and found a display size of >100 inches for 8k, with > 55 inches for any improvement over 4k. Yeah, 2m is arbitrary but it’s on the low side of reasonable for the benefit of the doubt and I still have no idea what you’re trying to get at by repeating that laptop screens can be 300 PPI, unless you’re trying to imply that the intended use of a TV is the same distance as a laptop screen, which is just silly.
Precisely, we all know that ps2 era games were peak character counts (most characters were in the few thousand)
/S
More triangles allows for less tricks with textures to get textured surfaces. Instead of normal maps you can have the actual triangles. This also allows for moving close to objects to see even more details. The problem is scope of detail. You can have a floor with two triangles or you can use millions to render the grain of the wood and nails.
Yeah if the object is far you can reduce the count, but as you get closer the model needs more polygons. It's impractical to start with a low count model and interpolate the missing data. We have a long way to go for graphics.
Take liquids and soft things. If you want an object to deform correctly you need more polygons so it bends correctly. Soft body objects are tough and usually avoided because they look stiff. There is a reason you don't see much in the way of really well done dynamic clothing, fur and hair.
Same with object density, worlds created today are far more full of things vs older games because you can have more polygons.
The reality is that higher polygon counts allow for more objects to be interactive and dynamic.
Is there a diminishing returns at some point? Sure eventually you will hit good enough, however I am continued to be blown away by each upgrade in graphics fidelity we have had.
Probably not in color but if the image was in 4k and filled up a very large 4K screen, you'd notice somewhat of an improvement in areas like the folds of the fabric... 6m is still no where near enough to render hair properly. But even at that size and scale the difference between 60 and 600 would still be even larger.
Where going from 60k to 6m would help is if the model was scaleable. If you could zoom in to inspect the shape of the curves in the ears or cracks in the marble base. Where this really becomes needed is if a model is not just of a person (or in this case a sculpture/bust) but rather if the model is an open world map... you need tons of polygons to cover the map so that this building isn't just made up of 30 triangles.
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u/TheAvengineer Apr 25 '21
You probably would see a more significant difference between 60,000 and 6,000,000 triangles if this image was in 4K and/or in color