Widescreen Gaming Forum

I play on a 30" 2560*1600 monitor. I have a pretty beefy PC, and need your help in understanding why it is some games look so much better than others. Please help.

I play all my games at max settings @ 2650*1600, and in my opinion games like Just Cause2, and Battlefield BC2 look spectacular. Other games such as: Borderlands, Bioshock 2, and the Mafia II demo look pretty good, but not near as good as the aforementioned games. I understand that many other factors cause a game to look better than others, but my question is this:

Do developers create games at a specific resolution, and upscale or downscale depending on the monitor? It seems that the Just Cause 2 PC game was originally made at 2560*1600, while others were made to play on a console, we get the port, and the pixels are just stretched to fit the screen. Is this true? If so, how do I find out what games run best at 2560*1600?

Thanks in advance. :bowdown

Older games used to be made with particular resolutions in mind. Most modern games(excluding a lot of casual games and the like) are not, although some are designed for specific aspect ratios.

The games you mention use vector graphics which allows higher resolutions to have better detail and clarity than lower ones.

Games look better than others because of various reasons. Also remember that when dealing with artistic works things can be subjective. There is generally a direct relationship between the quality of a game's graphics and the time spent on creating the game's graphics.

Some things that will affect the "look" of games...

The game engine
Textures
Models
Post-Procsssing Effects
Video Options Available
etc..

Thanks Tanuki. Is there a place that lists the games that are "truly" displayed at the resolution of 2560*1600? I just tried the Kane and Lynch 2 demo, and it looks terrible. I would imagine the game would have the same upscaling as the demo, but how would I know unless I buy the game? :oops:

Thanks Tanuki. Is there a place that lists the games that are "truly" displayed at the resolution of 2560*1600? I just tried the Kane and Lynch 2 demo, and it looks terrible. I would imagine the game would have the same upscaling as the demo, but how would I know unless I buy the game? :oops:

I haven't tried Kane and Lynch but if you can select 2560*1600 in the options there should be no upscaling what so ever. That goes for all the games you listed and some 98%+ of 3d games that came out in the last 5 years.

The game may look bad for other factors, resolution should not be one of them.

Sadly, demos can look vastly different from the actual game. Which defeats a lot of the purpose of having a demo.

Just make sure you have selected the proper resolution for the game itself. You system may automatically upscale a lower resolution to your default resolution which will look inferior to actually selecting the higher, default resolution.

There's also the possibility that a lot of ports use low resolution textures and didn't bother making them any better for the PC version. JC2 happens to be one of those where it looks like they made an effort to make PC specific graphics features so I wouldn't be surprised if they prettied up the textures as well.

JC2 looked damn good in general though even on consoles.

Do developers create games at a specific resolution, and upscale or downscale depending on the monitor? It seems that the Just Cause 2 PC game was originally made at 2560*1600, while others were made to play on a console, we get the port, and the pixels are just stretched to fit the screen. Is this true?

Resolutions do not work that way. 3D Games are not made at any particular resolution. Aspects of the graphics can be made with a particular resolution in mind (as in, "these textures are good enough - they'll never notice how bad they are since it's going to run at 1064x600"), but ultimately, the actual graphics are made up of vectors, which have basically infinity resolution. When you actually play the game, these vectors become rendered into a grid of pixels, the size of the grid being whatever resolution you selected.

And I third everyone saying that Kane & Lynch 2 is not "upscaling."

I haven't tried Kane and Lynch but if you can select 2560*1600 in the options there should be no upscaling what so ever. That goes for all the games you listed and some 98%+ of 3d games that came out in the last 5 years.

Actually, I do not think there has ever been a single 3D game on PC that works by upscaling to your native res. So I'd say that goes for 100% of 3D games that came out in the history of everything.

I haven't tried Kane and Lynch but if you can select 2560*1600 in the options there should be no upscaling what so ever. That goes for all the games you listed and some 98%+ of 3d games that came out in the last 5 years.

Actually, I do not think there has ever been a single 3D game on PC that works by upscaling to your native res. So I'd say that goes for 100% of 3D games that came out in the history of everything.

Just covering my ass, I'm sure that there's 1 terrible port that we have never heard of that renders at 720p only or something.

We've seen worse things.

Just covering my ass, I'm sure that there's 1 terrible port that we have never heard of that renders at 720p only or something.

We've seen worse things.

Wouldn't that be Final Fantasy XIV? :P

[quote]Just covering my ass, I'm sure that there's 1 terrible port that we have never heard of that renders at 720p only or something.

We've seen worse things.

Wouldn't that be Final Fantasy XIV? :P

Eh, the benchmark runs at 1080p aswell though ;)

I'm sure it renders natively at 1080p. right..? RIGHT?