although such threads tend to turn into ship here, i'll give it a try and see how it goes.

as far as i got it right, dynamic scaling is getting a new trend and heavily used in videogame industry since the current gen consoles xb1/ps4 release. its a feature that keeps a stable framerate in intensive gameplay moments of a game by dynamicaly lowering the graphics quality, more exact lowering resolution. so far i know this feature was used first in the game rage (2011 modified doom 3 engine) for whatever reasons. it had horrible impact on the game graphics for pc users, even if they had enough hardware power. who played the game back at the release surely can remember „ all the fun“.

i'm not an expert about dynamic scaling in detail and hope that users skilled and experienced in game graphics will provide more detailed infos about that topic and correct me, in case something isn't right with the content in this post.

now an example for better understanding. lets say a game company wants to release an fps on current gen consoles. its standart that it will be rendered at 1080p resolution and have a stable 30 fps framerate. due to very hardware demanding situations in combat scenes the fps drops to unplayable rates. so to make the game playable without dumping down the graphics (such as shadow quality, lighting, particle density, lod, …) and letting it look like a ps2 game, the devs just add a feature into the engine which scales the resolution of the game down to 720p so the game stays playable. i see 3 ways of how this works:

1. the full game pictures at the end get rendered at lower resolution.

2. the textures inside the game getting rendered at lower resolution, kinda dynamic lod for textures. full game pictures are still rendered at full resolution.

3. game objects with textures getting rendered at lower resolutions. full game pictures are still rendered at full resolution.

4. a mix of all 3 methods above.

since current multi platform games are already too demanding for ps4 and xb1, this feature gets heavily used. and according to a forum (can't remember which it was, more than a year ago), this feature is in almost every ps4 and xb1 game. there aren't much companies that admit that their games have dynamic scaling, for obvious reasons. for me its a scam, you play a game with promised game quality thats not there throughout the game. how do you see this?

also do i have to fear that this shit will start to infest pc games too? non-optional dynamic scaling on pc sounds terrifying for me.

if this wasn't enough, then you'll get here more details.

in case some retarded trolls post their shit on this thread, i'll ask the other participants to ignore them so the thread don't turn into shit. thanks.

I can't really see the problem.. I'd much rather the graphical quality dropped for a few seconds / minutes during a particularly hectic section then have the frame rate start juddering or slow to a crawl.

Then again, I don't really give a shit about graphics so I'm maybe not the best to judge...

Same for me? Might be helpful for those of us with hardware that lags behind the current stuff, giving us access to titles we wouldn't normally be able to play.

But I agree that making it optional would be the ideal situation.

If the technology gets perfected for PC and I can just tell a game "Run at constant 60FPS and don't make me fiddle with settings, please" which will then seamlessly change settings so that it does I'll be a very happy person indeed. I have no clue what exactly is supposed to be comparable to scam about this, it seems like an excellent way to advance technology - after all, the only reason why do you ever fiddle with graphical settings is to get desirable performance, why not allow your computer do it for you?

It's great for consoles on which games can't always guarantee perfect performance so that developers don't have to sacrifice portions of the game in order to achieve stable framerate, it's even better for PC with its multitude of configurations.

Oh and id Tech 5 engine is about as much of a modified Doom 3 (id Tech 4) engine as Unreal 4 engine is a modified Unreal 3 engine.

What was wrong with Rage, I quite enjoyed it... if dynamic scaling leads to games like this, I say bring it on.

Actually, I remember I had an addon for WoW who worked exactly as you describe, saved me many times when tanking and I had to be constantly on the ball, so...

I don't really see the problem. I prefer a smooth game experience and do not care so much if I loose a few feet if draw distance or the grass becomes a bit less shiny...

Yeah, the way I see it, a widespread technology like this would end up improving visuals for games on my PC as I always set them so that they run at 40-60FPS, even if larger part of the game would run fine on higher settings. This way, larger part of the game would be prettier and some more demanding bits would look like I'd set them in the first place!

I dont really see a problem with that either, assuming it runs flawlessly. Sounds alot better than having to manually adjust for a particular scene that might be over a few minutes later. Only thing missing would be "fps preference slider" since many people are probably fine with 30-40fps as well.

Scam? Why, wtf?

Games have been dynamically scaling visual details since like forever. Texture resolutions, polygon counts, lighting and generally environmental detail etc. change with distance and viewing angles in almost every game in order to ensure playable framerates. And some games have already been adjusting detail depending on the framerate ages ago. Quake 2, Kingpin and Messiah to just name a few early examples. Changing levels of detail on the fly is a necessity. Dynamically changing the resolution is just a different approach which I very much prefer over the texture pop-ins and shit that we've gotten used to, the latter is a much larger hit to the suspension of disbelief than a resolution change, presuming that it happens comparably seamlessly. And if the system is actually sophisticated enough to maintain solid 60 FPS on comparably weak machines while keeping the detail up - bring it on!

bump

so far there is a very positive viewpoint to dynamic scaling among the posts, interesting.

anyway, although i can see that dynamic resolution on consoles is an advancement if you look at it from the right viewpoint, it still stays a scam. as long as the publisher with support by or pressure by console manufacturer offer their games, which runs at 1080p resolution, according to the game box, although its using dynamic scaling with up to 1080p. if they would be open about that and inform their customers, then it would be alright. so they're scamming.

and if this feature spreads over to pc games and it'll be non-optional, then i can see 2 big problems:

1. it would work very crappy, there are just to many system configurations to adjust properly, especially if the engine had to adjust dynamically. rage (2011) showed this already. or play messiah on a modern system and see how it works.

2. i have my own way to lower graphics, with individual preferences, i'd rather sacrifice shadow quality and resolution before texture quality. and the first thing that gets disabled if there are fps problems is always the anti-aliasing. so forced dynamic scaling with no way to adjust graphics quality manually will just give me lower texture quality with some aa. yuck :(

I'm fine with dynamic scaling as long as:

1. I can switch if off if I want to, and it is not enforced to me as "we know better than you what you want", which leads me to the next point:

2. When enabled, I can dictate which detail settings have a higher priority and shouldn't be lowered or disabled as easily as some other settings that I personally don't care about as much.

This is the reason why I don't use NVidia Experience's automatic detail settings for games, where it would decide for me what settings I should use for which games to get the "best possible experience". Maybe they think incorrectly that e.g. edge antialiasing or motion blur are so important to me that they should be disabled only as a last resort, while in reality those would probably be the first things I'd switch off to increase the framerate.

What was the old one?
Paid DLC?

:D

But to answer your question - obviously, yes. Been going on for a while.

There is nothing scam related about trying to most effectively deal with technology barriers. LOD tricks have roots going all of the way back, and truth be told, a lot of game performance has always depended on being crafty. That's the business.

They are trying to fool you, but It's not about trying to trick you into thinking you didn't buy an under powered, box, it's about finding the best way to get the most out of something that doesn't have infinite power. They are paid to be magicians because that's what the job takes. When done right the user shouldn't notice slide of hand tricks. Lowering detail settings may not always be the most subtle way of going about this, but I don't think it's an inherently evil practice or even one where gaming companies are deliberately employing to somehow try and dupe the ignorant little consumer into thinking or doing something they want. It's just a thing that gets done to try and make things work the best they can get them to work.

Honestly, there is enough in this world and in the gaming world to get worked up and paranoid over without seeing conspiracy in this. For someone to take criticism seriously the source must be credible, and when someone sees conspiracy in everything or finds every gesture as an attempt to pick their pocket, that person doesn't come off as all that credible.

I'm all for believing in ulterior motives, but I just don't see that happening here. Not in any significant, scam the customer sort of way

BTW I do believe some basic LOD technology is more or less baked into graphic processing in general. Stuff like using lower resolution textures and lower poly meshes for items in the distance. It's been that way for a while because that just a part of managing the resources responsibly.

I may be thick, and it may be too late, but I have no idea what you are actually saying here...