Switch graphics on large TVs

[Pemalite]

SvennoJ said:

I played Breath of the wild on my projector, 92" screen. It was not the sharpest game but still looked very good from 12 ft away (30 degree viewing angle)
Mario Oddessey also looked fantastic on my 65" 4K tv, Windwaker HD on the WiiU looks stunning as well on that screen.

I made a chart a while ago what tv size and distance corresponds to 20/20 vision

Keep in mind also, that 20/20 vision doesn't represent the pinnacle of human ocular acuity either... It's a "Snellen fraction".
20/20 represents the distance from the visual-chart, aka. 20 feet and the second 20 represents the size/line of the text.

So someone with 20/10 vision has twice the sharpness of someone with 20/20... In-fact it's pretty normal for younger individuals to have superior 20/15 or better vision.

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I played Breath of the Wild on a 65" screen via the WiiU... So 720P. It looked... Well... Fine. - It looks better on the Switch with it's higher peak resolution of around 900P docked.
Sometimes I played it on the WiU's handheld at 480P... And again. It looked fine. - I'm not writing books about it though.

Slownenberg said:

Yeah I was playing Mario Kart and Splatoon which are 1080p and look fantastic. So I just played some Crysis on it which runs at 720p generally I believe, and guess, what, also looks fantastic! Maybe at times the half dozen graphically downgraded PS4/XB1 ports that are on Switch don't look crystal clear on a giant TV, I dunno I don't own those few games, but 99% of the time at least you're not ever gonna notice anything looking bad on a big ass 4k TV when playing Switch. So far I can confirm 720p and up is crystal clear as in you don't notice anything regarding resolution, it just looks great.

The most noticeable effect resolution has is on general clarity of an image, lower-resolution games will exhibit some graphical artifacts such as "stair stepping", this becomes even more pronounced on busy-scenes where there is a ton of micro-details such as in Crysis. (Although the console variant seems to be scaled back on foliage, so maybe not as pronounced.)

And it can also be noticeable with texture details as well, lower-resolutions again will hide those micro-details baked into texture maps... This was most evident with Halo 3 where allot of details in the texture maps were hidden by the Xbox 360's low resolution, but certainly "pop" on the Xbox One X 2160P output.

It doesn't mean the games visual artistic style looks different, it's the same game, with the same assets, it's just a clearer image and you can appreciate some of the finer details that artists worked on.



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Now why some might feel the Switch's resolution is not a big deal is because Nintendo doesn't typically invest a ton of effort into micro-details, they have very clean outputs... Even if the final image is marred by stair stepping, their games don't look bad, it's just a design choice.
Nintendo also have some of the best art teams in the gaming industry, so often keeping things simple and clean results in an image that looks great at lower output resolutions.

That's definitely a "pro" in Nintendo's camp, especially as they tend to be allergic to anti-aliasing.

So in short, the games never looked bad... But they can always look a little bit better thanks to the higher resolution, Breath of the Wild on PC at full 2160P with Ray Tracing is definitely a step up over the WiiU/Switch versions, but it's still the same game.



We also need to keep in mind of the resolution/distance chart above... But even that doesn't tell the entire story, different consoles have different upscalers, Microsoft has been amazing on this front with the Xbox One X, the up-scaling is great even for 720P and lower content.

But modern TV's will also do it's own up-scaling if you let it, but different televisions have different implementations and thus a 720P image scaled to 2160P at 75" may not be as good as the next TV due to various post-processing done. (Not to mention some displays add input latency.)

But you know what? If at the end of the day, you are enjoying the games irrespective of the technical shortcomings... Then non of this really actually matters.

I am definitely a graphics/resolution snob... I am a PC gamer.
But I have thoroughly enjoyed a few WiiU and Switch games in my time and I will likely enjoy Breath of the Wild 2.
In-fact one of my favorite games in the last few years is actually Links Awakening, the fantastic material shaders, depth of field and other effects provides a very clean, but charming presentation even if it is low-resolution... But it definitely would look a step up if it was higher resolution.