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If CES 2013 is anything to go by, it looks like living room TVs are set to veer off in two different technological directions: screens are going to get thinner with the introduction of cutting-edge OLED panels, while some displays are going to get bigger. Much bigger. This physical increase in the size of HDTVs will be matched by an appropriate boost in resolution, with standard 1080p seeing a 2x boost in both directions, resulting in the emergence of a new 3840x2160 "ultra-HD" 4K standard.With Sony at the forefront of this new wave in displays, rumours are already circulating that the next-generation PlayStation (codenamed Orbis) will feature some level of 4K support, and of course we know that Polyphony Digital has also ported across a small array of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue content onto a 4K-compatible set-up powered by four PS3s operating in parallel, each rendering a quarter of the display at 1080p. All of which leads us to wonder: just how much 3D rendering power is required to produce a compelling 4K experience, how do cutting-edge games look in ultra-HD, and will the next-gen consoles have the horsepower to run advanced titles at this resolution?
At Digital Foundry, we like to include screenshot and video assets - it lends weight to the arguments we're making and shows how games look as they are actually being played. But 4K represents something of an issue as the richness of the experience can't really be embedded into a webpage. Our YouTube embeds feature an 'original' 4K option but a 10mbps bitrate limit strips out most of the detail. There's also the small matter that virtually no-one has a 4K screen. But to give some idea of the experience, we've provided screenshot galleries for each of the games tested along with download links to the original 4K files we submitted to YouTube for re-encoding.
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