bystander :
wedouglas :
Devs must have target resolutions otherwise they could end up with a game that is unplayable for many people. Imagine if BF4's visuals were such that a top of the line card could only get a playable fps on low settings at 640x480. It would be a disaster. They create games based on what kind of hardware is out there.
I am getting the impression though that a lot of visual quality is being left on the table. I say this because I see a high-end AMD card pushing 40fps @ ~4K @ max quality.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I have to believe the visuals and experience would be significantly better if they were such that a high-end card could only get 40 fps @ high quality @ 720p, and that these high quality settings were in fact uber ultra amazing settings that we think of today.
If you know there is processing headroom, why leave it just for increasing resolution?
If there is a target resolution, it is 1080p. That is what most users have in their system.
You're not wrong, but you're also not quite right about the point I made.
Quite specifically, when software is developed, the supported resolutions must be *specified* in order for the game engine to adapt the objects and textures to the given resolution with the result being that everything is properly proportioned.
In other words, the game must specifically support 1080x1920, 1200x1920, 2160x3840, etc.
The point is, the textures and how they appear is literally linked to the resolution because it HAS to be; the game engine needs to know precisely how to scale the polygon size and texture size in order to display the image at the selected resolution.
The point is the OP's suggestion that resolution doesn't matter ignores the fact that resolution dictates what can and can't be displayed and that raw processing power must support ALL of these: texture depth, resolution and polygon count in order to display a rendered image.
You can't have one without the other, period. You can't just scale to ridiculously detailed textures and massive polygon counts at 720p and see an equivalent image to 1080p, or for that matter, a BETTER image.
The result would be a scaled-down version of the texture, even if polygon count was the same.
Does that mean some existing titles wouldn't benefit under these conditions when viewed on 720p, no, they certainly could.
But this change can't be made at the HARDWARE level - it has to exist in the SOFTWARE in the first place. Hence upgraded texture packs for games.