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sc94597 on 16 January 2015
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JustBeingReal said:
sc94597 said:
JustBeingReal said:

Image quality is the whole range of things that relates to how a picture looks, that relates to the overall level of detail you're seeing, picture degradation would be a part of that.

Perhaps if you were using IQ in a topic like Camera or Film you'd be talking about the level of artifacts in the image or filtering, but when you're talking about a video game or perhaps a movie visual effect, like a CG thing then Image Quality is a fitting term and it works fine in that context.

Since there is no dictionary definiton that applies to image quality of video games and movies I can't appeal to that. However, I will say that the overwhelming majority of people when speaking of a video game, define image quality as the level of degredation in the image, caused by artifacts and resolution. That is how Digital Foundry uses it, that is how most people on gaming forums use it, and that is how developers use it. Often you see disusssion about the tradeoff between "image quality" and "other graphical features." There a plethora of articles about this. I can't think of a single other time I've seen it refer to all graphical features, as you seem to use it. 

I disagree regarding Digital Foundry's use of the term Image Quality, they use it as a blanket term to cover everything related to how the game ends up looking.

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-vs-mario-kart-8

Look at digital foundry's use of image quality in this article. 

"Starting from the top, then, there has been a surprising amount of confusion surrounding the resolution of the game with some sources even suggesting a native 1080p presentation. We can finally put that rumour to rest right here and confirm that Mario Kart 8 instead operates at what is effectively the console's standard 1280x720. Of course, considering the quality of the visuals, this can hardly be considered a disappointment especially when other developers are struggling to hit 1080p consistently on more powerful hardware. What is surprising, however, is the complete omission of anti-aliasing in any form. At the very least, Nintendo has previously utilised a basic edge-smoothing algorithm across its Wii U titles and such a feature could have demonstrably improved image quality without a serious performance hit. As it stands, however, we're left with a heavily aliased presentation filled with obvious stair-stepping and pixel-crawling artefacts throughout most scenes. "

"Thankfully, the lacklustre image quality does little to spoil an otherwise magnificent visual package. It's immediately apparent that a lot of effort is invested in creating rich, vibrant courses loaded with peripheral detail. Tracks are alive and bursting with colour and animation backed by an overhauled lighting solution and a smattering of excellent texture-work. The addition of gravity-defying magnetic sections has also allowed the designers to go a bit crazy with track design, giving way to massive moving structures and detailed metallic obelisks rising sharply out of the terrain."

So if anything that is visual affects image quality, why would they say despite the lackluster image quality the game has an otherwise maginficent visual package? Obviously image quality only has to do with the actual clarity of the image, as they were only talking about resolution,artifacts, and aliasing in reference to image quality. They weren't talking about texture detail, lighting effects, or polygon count iuntil they were contrasting it with the poor image quality.