Hopefully some here in the know can shed some light on these, but here are my thoughts.

Ok, so Sony has a patent on the tech they use for PS4pro "checkerboard" upscaling or uprendering or whatever. Basically, a native 4k image is made up of 4 1080p images. This method natively renders just two of those 4 images and then reconstructs the other two images from the native pair. The end result is a "native" 4k frame buffer that is made up of 50% native pixels and 50% reconstructed pixels. 

Sony went the extra step of customizing their Polaris GPU from AMD with what I'll call henceforth Up Rez Engines (URE) which makes this process have zero cost to the developers rendering pipeline. 

It's left to be seen how effective this method really is without any side by side comparisons, but it's my guess that if its done in hardware and not a software implementation then it would yield all round better results than however it's been implemented in the past. We do however have a number of games shown so far that uses this tech; Horizon, Days Gone, ME:A. Tomb Raider....etc. 

I find this all somewhat intriguing. GPUs are constantly implementing things in hardware that automates a number of redundant rendering techniques so they don't all have to be done in software. That's arguably the key advantage of a GPU. But never has a GPU been built with hardware to make this pixel rendering technique possible/inherent. And I'm wondering why....

I've looked at screen shots of the Tomb Raider comparison, and while I still stand by my belief that we need more material to make such comparisons, I think it holds up very very well to native renders. 

So why are GPU manufacturers not baking hardware like this into their GPUs, it literally allows you create a passable faux 4k render while using only half the power requirement and massive reductions in the required memory bandwidth. In a machine that has the power overhead to do "native" 4k, this would mean that you have enough power to not just make its the prettiest looking faux 4k possible but even to make it run at 60fps. 

As I said, it's all still left to be seen, but if from comparisons it's extremely hard to tell the difference... then shouldnt GPU manufacturers at least consider making this an option? Unless of course sonys patent prevents them from doing that. 

Discuss!!

I would love it on my PC GPUs in the future. I love this technique because it solves the problem of diminishing returns with true native 4K. Native 4K simply isn't worth the x3-4 times investment in hardware power versus a 1080p image at this point, when GPUs already struggle to run modern games smoothly in high settings.

The idea to generate a checkerboard 4K image with only twice the hardware power is genious. True 4K does not look "twice as good" as the checkerboard 4K of PS4 Pro.

If I had a GTX 1080 PC that allowed this, I would choose the checkerboard upscaled 4K and run it in 60fps, instead of gaming in true 4K in 30fps. Nearly everyone would.

I wouldn't due to the blur it gives off. When I look at native 4k shots I see crisp detail, especially to games of old than what the "checkerboard" form deals in.

wow
Id love to see how the process works. which kind of 1080p images they work, which process of superresolution they employed that is fast enough to run 30 times every second for 4k images.

Blur? What blur? So fsr the only thing to ho off on right jow are comosrisons made with Tomb Raider. And we srent rvrn surr yet how exactky tomb rsider is achieving 4k on thr PS4pro and if they sre using the tech. But one thing is certian, its going to be significantly sharper than 1440p so basically somehere in between that and native 4k. 

And when you are that high on the IQ scale, such differences in resolution becomes a lot harder to spot. Either way it's a great tech cause it means GPUs would be able to accomplish a lot more with less.

There is also another thing to consider with this tech but I'll talk more on that in my reply below.

There are quite a number of docs out there explaining the tech and how it works. But it's basically something like this. 

1080p = ~2M pixels 

PS4pro Checkerboard = 1080p*2. = ~4M pixels (base)

1440p = ~ 3.6M pixels

4k = ~8M pixels

So what the PS4pro does is that it renders two 1080p images natively, 4k is the equivalent of 4 1080p images. So the PS4pto renders half the total resolution of 4k. Then instead of using software to reconstruct the other half, it had dedicated hardware that takes samples from the natively rendered pair and  uses those samples to reconstruct a pair of fake 1080p images so to speak.

Everything gets compiled into a 4k frame buffer. You end up with an image that is sharper than 1440p, that has been upscaled to 4k but without the artifacts that plague upscaling. 

One thing we know is that Digital Foundry was extremely impressed with the PS4 Pro.

Going with native 4k. I try to avoid blurry images at all cost. It's like buying a 4k monitor to play the games with 1440p resolution with msaa 4x...or something like that. A loss in details is a loss in details. No workaround can fix that.

Native is always better on paper. But Sony's processing methods are a stop gap until native 4k is more affordable.

Why GPU manufacturer didn't think of it? Because they want you to buy their high ends cards.

I still don't know why we are trying to basically jump from 1080p to 4k, there is a really big gap, the biggest gap in resolution in history of gaming.

Manufacturers are like "you want 4k", and people respond "hell yeah!", ""well you can't afford it so you'll have to stick to 1080p"

Someone had to have the balls to say, we can't do it right now, but we can give you something in between that will already be a big improvement from 1080p.

Meanwhile Microsoft is promising real 4K in a year, but it's not doable, well it's doable but it will be really expensive, we're talking at least 500$ probably even 600$. yes it's going to be a beast, but really pricey one. And console are meant to be affordable. That's what we learned from the overpriced first Xbox, PS3 and Xbox One.

In the end, the pro will be a better deal for the next two years, and then the PS5 will be near. Basically the scorpio is going to be a dreamcast.

Personally, I'm not into straight up native. I like mixed better.