As Scott has discussed already, scaling is the main issue for me.
Hardware for gaming at this resolution is insanely expensive or impossible to reach. Scaling down to 1920x1080 introduces some blurring.
You're missing an absolutely crucial point here. The 5K Retina is 5120x2880, which means that you can simply run all of your games at 2560x1440. There won't be any blurring at all, because effectively all that needs to be done is to map 2x2 blocks of pixels into single pixels.
Basically, if you have a 5120x2880 screen, it can function 100% perfectly as a 2560x1440 screen.
EDIT: Granted, this is under the assumption that either your monitor or video card is smart enough to recognise that there is a simple mapping of 4 pixels to 1 pixel that it can do instead of applying the smoothing algorithm. However, I don't think this is too much to expect from expensive hardware...
EDIT2: If (for example) your video card can do 2560x1440 with 2x FSAA, then it really should be able to do 5120x2880 without the FSAA, and the latter will be of overall higher quality because you're better off showing 4 pixels than downsampling them back to one pixel.
The problem lies in the assumptions, I am looking at the 4k and 5k monitors that are starting to come out however I'm weary of jumping on board with the initial models.
I assumed that my last monitor would last a long time as it had good reviews, and was expensive hardware only to have it die after only 6 years of use.
Is it appropriate to measure displaying 4x the number of pixels is the same work as full screen anti-aliasing? Full screen anti-aliasing is not the only thing the graphics card does. Fill rate would become a problem for many after effects.
The greater problem lies with scaling. While in Windows 8, Microsoft programs scale appropriately, not all 3rd party applications do. This is much worse in games which do not account for higher resolutions. This happens mostly when video cut scenes, text in game and menu screens are encountered. (I have had to deal with this is in the past as an early adopter of a 2k monitor. Games which I should have been able to run in full screen, I had to play at regular hd so I could read the text and navigate the game menu or use the HUD).
I guess one option would be to run all the games at 1080p but with display port 1.2 on some of these monitors switching away from the native resolution to change to display port 1.1 requires a restart of the system in addition to just the monitor.
However Asus is making an IPS panel with 60hz refresh specifically for game playing market, it might be able to fix all the issues.
My point about these big 5k screens is that a game doesn't have to run full screen on a 32 inch monitor. It can run in box of pixels that's tuned to the game and the hardware capabilities. That will leave some space around the edges and THAT space can run chat windows and/or streaming previews.
It'll take a few years, but tools and video cards for this sort of thing will pop up.
Life is hard, and there are no guarantees. This reality is the guiding force behind all of human history. Every facet of our lives, historical and present, good and bad, ugly and beautiful, stems from the struggle for survival in an uncaring world full of others struggling just as we are. In the beginning, we had tribes and clans, connected through shared blood. As time went on, the structures of these naturally occurring social groups were formalized and codified into governments. This formalization and abstraction has continued to the point where many nowadays imagine themselves to be living in totally different and superior organizations than their ancestors, when the reality is nothing has changed but the words. Nobody will ever be willing to sit down and make decisions for the good of mankind while ignoring or sacrificing their own good. World peace will never be an option as long as there is one person who is unsure of how they will eat tomorrow. Inequality is an unsolvable problem because mankind craves it. Survival will always be a struggle because we will never be able to see past our own self interest. There is no hope, because pessimism is pragmatic and practicality always trumps dreams, however beautiful those dreams may be.
For a while now I keep hearing about the evil "1%" and read countless articles about how much of the pie they have. One thing that bothers me is that the term has become such a trope that no one really knows what it means or who it refers to.
When I see an article that talks about how the 1% have made all their money back since the last crash are they referring to the same static group of people who were the 1% at the time or are they just looking at income charts and ignoring the fact that a portion of the 1% of 2008 NEVER recovered from the crash. Are they ignoring the reality of upward income mobility?
I started my first job when I was 14 and I made minimum wage. Over the ensuing decades I moved up the income ladder to where I sit today so I know that, personally, I am not in that bottom XX% group I started out in.
I think people also confuse two different types of one percenters. One type is the high income earners (CEOs, hedge fund managers, etc) the other is high value people (People who are wealthy and no longer work.)
This is why when I see the 1% term tossed around in an article and the writer does not specify which type or acts as if being a one percenter is an imutable quality like race I just get irritated and tend to discount most of what the writer is trying to say.
I have the same reaction when I read the newsletter from my union where on one page they talk about fighting for their fair share of the corporate profits and then switch to a discussion about unionized government employees and... switch to talking about how rich the given state is.
My point about these big 5k screens is that a game doesn't have to run full screen on a 32 inch monitor. It can run in box of pixels that's tuned to the game and the hardware capabilities. That will leave some space around the edges and THAT space can run chat windows and/or streaming previews.
It'll take a few years, but tools and video cards for this sort of thing will pop up.
You're 100% right. They're resisting you or not understanding you probably because it feels too far out for it to "just work." Recall my conversations about the future of AR/VR devices: people like to focus on "why it doesn't work now" and can't really grok "what it will be like when the near term limitations are eliminated."
The only future use case for multiple monitors is having physical monitors at different viewing angles (e.g., turn my head to the right and still see a screen). As screen size increases, it'll need to curve or split so that the far edges don't increasingly have adverse viewing angles.
But that's about it.
I do believe that there will be a future beyond even this where only "shared" screens (for consuming media in a group) will even be physical, and we'll wear AR/VR devices that create arbitrarily large screens of arbitrarily complex size and shape on demand.
The future beyond that is one where all of that is embedded in our eyes or visual cortex, and we "share" screens directly.
I almost got the retina display on the new iMac I bought last week, but I just couldn't justify the additional $500 for it. It looks pretty sweet in the shop, but honestly the difference is pretty subtle unless you're working on very, very fine text.
Some colors seem to render better with more pixel density, and if I were a professional artist getting paid for my image work I'd probably justify the $500. As it is, I just went with the ordinary 27" at 2560x1440 and I've been pretty happy with that decision. I have trouble getting up and going to bed at night because I just like to sit and stare at it. I'm so happy to be back in Mac land.
iPhoto is simply a killer app for me. Although I did pick up Logic Pro X as well and have a MIDI controller coming in the mail... that's just a side project. I outgrew Audacity and Fruity Loops is kinda meh.
This year I'll buy a new MacBook Pro to replace this one, as it's 5 years old now, and I can't wait for my computing life to be 100% retina. I couldn't imagine not spending the extra $500 for something that will last 5 years. Over 5 years, you're spending about 20 cents per day for retina vs non-retina. That's a bargain deal, in my opinion!
Yeap. By buying an amazing computer in 2009, I've avoiding buying any more computers since then, and I've had an amazing computer for a long time that's only now becoming an average computer.
This year I'll buy a new MacBook Pro to replace this one, as it's 5 years old now, and I can't wait for my computing life to be 100% retina. I couldn't imagine not spending the extra $500 for something that will last 5 years. Over 5 years, you're spending about 20 cents per day for retina vs non-retina. That's a bargain deal, in my opinion!
I have to agree high dpi displays are on all the phones and even my laptop, hoping to get a higher resolution monitor this year.
I agree. My laptop lasted a good four years for me. Just this past month I dropped about $1500 on a new desktop and monitor. Except for a video card upgrade in a year or two this new machine should have no problem lasting another four or five years easy.
I used to cheap out on such things but it is not worth the short term savings.
As Scott has discussed already, scaling is the main issue for me.
Hardware for gaming at this resolution is insanely expensive or impossible to reach. Scaling down to 1920x1080 introduces some blurring.
You're missing an absolutely crucial point here. The 5K Retina is 5120x2880, which means that you can simply run all of your games at 2560x1440. There won't be any blurring at all, because effectively all that needs to be done is to map 2x2 blocks of pixels into single pixels.
Basically, if you have a 5120x2880 screen, it can function 100% perfectly as a 2560x1440 screen.
EDIT: Granted, this is under the assumption that either your monitor or video card is smart enough to recognise that there is a simple mapping of 4 pixels to 1 pixel that it can do instead of applying the smoothing algorithm. However, I don't think this is too much to expect from expensive hardware...
EDIT2: If (for example) your video card can do 2560x1440 with 2x FSAA, then it really should be able to do 5120x2880 without the FSAA, and the latter will be of overall higher quality because you're better off showing 4 pixels than downsampling them back to one pixel.
The problem lies in the assumptions, I am looking at the 4k and 5k monitors that are starting to come out however I'm weary of jumping on board with the initial models.
I think running a 5120x2880 monitor at 2560x1440 whenever necessary is pretty reasonable.
Yes, there are assumptions, but the solution to that is to research or test those assumptions first. If smoothing from scaling algorithms is a major concern, you could test the scaling algorithms (which are, I think, typically offered both in your video card driver software as well as directly in the monitor hardware) to see if you can get a half-native resolution scaling that doesn't apply any smoothing. If your video card can do the obvious 4:1 mapping, you're set. If not, you can still check because it's entirely possible (especially in such an expensive monitor) that the monitor itself does a perfectly fine job with scaling anyway.
I assumed that my last monitor would last a long time as it had good reviews, and was expensive hardware only to have it die after only 6 years of use.
Is it appropriate to measure displaying 4x the number of pixels is the same work as full screen anti-aliasing? Full screen anti-aliasing is not the only thing the graphics card does. Fill rate would become a problem for many after effects.
FSAA (aka SSAA) literally means "render 4x the number of pixels and then downsample afterwards". It's horribly inefficient, and it's not usually seen. Hence the "if" in my comment is a pretty big one; your video card probably can't handle 2x FSAA, even if MSAA or FXAA is totally OK.
I guess one option would be to run all the games at 1080p but with display port 1.2 on some of these monitors switching away from the native resolution to change to display port 1.1 requires a restart of the system in addition to just the monitor.
Well, that's pretty horrible. Definitely something to check up on...
My point about these big 5k screens is that a game doesn't have to run full screen on a 32 inch monitor. It can run in box of pixels that's tuned to the game and the hardware capabilities. That will leave some space around the edges and THAT space can run chat windows and/or streaming previews.
It'll take a few years, but tools and video cards for this sort of thing will pop up.
I don't think anyone has disagreed with you on that front; the issue is that many people who might buy a 5k screen need fullscreen-oriented apps to work right now rather than in a few years' time.
I specifically said that when the hardware is available for non Apple computers, as in Windows PCs, tools for gaming will catch up. I also specifically said that there is no need or call for any gaming tools for this or any Mac.
There's some non-trivial issues to be resolved there (likely at the operating system level, and quite possibly at the video card level), so I think there will be maybe a year or two of lag between the monitors becoming more widespread and them working well with the majority of games and the like.
I can't remember setting a timeline. My original point was that playing with a 27inch 5k screen with an operating system that can handle it for a few minutes convinced me that I was seeing the future of desktop computing. It's going to be waaaaaay more useful to have a single 27 to 32 inch retina screen (be that 5k or 6k) that can display an endless variety of windows of different tools than to have two 21 inch displays with full screen apps in both.
Some weird shit going down in my street. Handful of cop cars about, one ambo, police chopper was cruising overhead. They're down to one car and the ambo now, with the ambo just chilling with the doors open, engine running, cops just standing around.
I wrote a stupid little game called "WIZARD COPS" for the panel I'm drafting that exists pretty much 100% to demonstration how to boil the core of your game down to simple processes. Unfortunately the simple process in question is kind of awesome and now I kind of want to write it up for real.
I may have developed an (un)healthy addiction to Type Racer when I visit my parents house (they have a new Das Keyboard 4, I still haven't moved away from a silly membrane keyboard).
I spotted this font while hunting for stuff for Steel Titans. It took me about a minute to go "You know, that would be great for a font for like, an original flavour Warhammer Fantasy style wargame. Maybe playing on the original surrealistic imagery and stuff. Like Torchbearer but for WHFB."
Within five minutes of that I was talking to historian friends about 15th century combat and making notes for BattleAxe - The Game of Grim Fantasy Combat.
Comments
I assumed that my last monitor would last a long time as it had good reviews, and was expensive hardware only to have it die after only 6 years of use.
Is it appropriate to measure displaying 4x the number of pixels is the same work as full screen anti-aliasing? Full screen anti-aliasing is not the only thing the graphics card does. Fill rate would become a problem for many after effects.
The greater problem lies with scaling. While in Windows 8, Microsoft programs scale appropriately, not all 3rd party applications do. This is much worse in games which do not account for higher resolutions. This happens mostly when video cut scenes, text in game and menu screens are encountered. (I have had to deal with this is in the past as an early adopter of a 2k monitor. Games which I should have been able to run in full screen, I had to play at regular hd so I could read the text and navigate the game menu or use the HUD).
I guess one option would be to run all the games at 1080p but with display port 1.2 on some of these monitors switching away from the native resolution to change to display port 1.1 requires a restart of the system in addition to just the monitor.
However Asus is making an IPS panel with 60hz refresh specifically for game playing market, it might be able to fix all the issues.
It'll take a few years, but tools and video cards for this sort of thing will pop up.
For a while now I keep hearing about the evil "1%" and read countless articles about how much of the pie they have. One thing that bothers me is that the term has become such a trope that no one really knows what it means or who it refers to.
When I see an article that talks about how the 1% have made all their money back since the last crash are they referring to the same static group of people who were the 1% at the time or are they just looking at income charts and ignoring the fact that a portion of the 1% of 2008 NEVER recovered from the crash. Are they ignoring the reality of upward income mobility?
I started my first job when I was 14 and I made minimum wage. Over the ensuing decades I moved up the income ladder to where I sit today so I know that, personally, I am not in that bottom XX% group I started out in.
I think people also confuse two different types of one percenters. One type is the high income earners (CEOs, hedge fund managers, etc) the other is high value people (People who are wealthy and no longer work.)
This is why when I see the 1% term tossed around in an article and the writer does not specify which type or acts as if being a one percenter is an imutable quality like race I just get irritated and tend to discount most of what the writer is trying to say.
I have the same reaction when I read the newsletter from my union where on one page they talk about fighting for their fair share of the corporate profits and then switch to a discussion about unionized government employees and... switch to talking about how rich the given state is.
The only future use case for multiple monitors is having physical monitors at different viewing angles (e.g., turn my head to the right and still see a screen). As screen size increases, it'll need to curve or split so that the far edges don't increasingly have adverse viewing angles.
But that's about it.
I do believe that there will be a future beyond even this where only "shared" screens (for consuming media in a group) will even be physical, and we'll wear AR/VR devices that create arbitrarily large screens of arbitrarily complex size and shape on demand.
The future beyond that is one where all of that is embedded in our eyes or visual cortex, and we "share" screens directly.
Some colors seem to render better with more pixel density, and if I were a professional artist getting paid for my image work I'd probably justify the $500. As it is, I just went with the ordinary 27" at 2560x1440 and I've been pretty happy with that decision. I have trouble getting up and going to bed at night because I just like to sit and stare at it. I'm so happy to be back in Mac land.
iPhoto is simply a killer app for me. Although I did pick up Logic Pro X as well and have a MIDI controller coming in the mail... that's just a side project. I outgrew Audacity and Fruity Loops is kinda meh.
I used to cheap out on such things but it is not worth the short term savings.
Yes, there are assumptions, but the solution to that is to research or test those assumptions first. If smoothing from scaling algorithms is a major concern, you could test the scaling algorithms (which are, I think, typically offered both in your video card driver software as well as directly in the monitor hardware) to see if you can get a half-native resolution scaling that doesn't apply any smoothing. If your video card can do the obvious 4:1 mapping, you're set. If not, you can still check because it's entirely possible (especially in such an expensive monitor) that the monitor itself does a perfectly fine job with scaling anyway. Probably just bad luck, on the whole.
FSAA (aka SSAA) literally means "render 4x the number of pixels and then downsample afterwards". It's horribly inefficient, and it's not usually seen. Hence the "if" in my comment is a pretty big one; your video card probably can't handle 2x FSAA, even if MSAA or FXAA is totally OK. Well, that's pretty horrible. Definitely something to check up on...
EDIT: OK, I guess this counts as a disagreement: but that's a Mac-specific point that I won't bother to comment on.
With regards to PCs, I think your timescale is off when you say this: There's some non-trivial issues to be resolved there (likely at the operating system level, and quite possibly at the video card level), so I think there will be maybe a year or two of lag between the monitors becoming more widespread and them working well with the majority of games and the like.
"I dunno, what about a mountain?"
"Brilliant!"
http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/07/intel-compute-stick
Never forget
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/bitcoin-investor-who-renounced-us-citizenship-now-cant-get-back-in/
I spotted this font while hunting for stuff for Steel Titans. It took me about a minute to go "You know, that would be great for a font for like, an original flavour Warhammer Fantasy style wargame. Maybe playing on the original surrealistic imagery and stuff. Like Torchbearer but for WHFB."
Within five minutes of that I was talking to historian friends about 15th century combat and making notes for BattleAxe - The Game of Grim Fantasy Combat.
Help me.
Bad news - It's a pretty limited catalog at first. But it will improve.