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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

I saw 8K demos at Yodobashi Camera a few years ago, and I couldn't tell the difference between 4K and 8K.

I can tell the difference between HD and 4K, so my eyes aren't completely shot. But I think we're getting to the point of resolution for resolution's sake. Like having a speedometer that goes to 200 MPH, when the legal limit in your state is 85, and the car simply isn't capable of 200.

I remember back when the Amiga came out. My friend who had one said it showed 4,096 colors because that was the limit of human perception. Now I know he was wrong, but it made sense at the time.

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What you saw was the limitation of display technology, not the potential in 8K. 70 mm IMAX is equivalent to something like 12K (5-perf) or 18K (15-perf).

What is needed is better display technology to exploit the 8K.

Or giant screens. The problem is density not resolution.

But your eyes can’t see the whole screen. Even at 40 degreees you lose detail at the edges.

Give me 120fps and HDR before 4K, let alone 8k

Anecdata, I know, but I am much happier with my 165Hz, 2560x1440 monitor than my same-sized 60Hz 3840x2160 screen sitting next to it. The extra fluidity given to mouse motions, text/window scrolling, etc is a much bigger improvement to usability than I would have initially guessed it would be.

Do you mind sharing what model that 165hz monitor is?

It's the Acer Predator G-Sync monitor from a couple of years ago that I picked up during a Costco sale. At the time I paid ~$500, not sure what they're going for now. It's been great. Wish I'd gotten two of them.

[edit] picture of the Costco inventory card, http://i.imgur.com/hNWgFt7.jpg

What card(s) are you driving it with?

Plain-jane EVGA GTX 1080SC. So chosen because it was the only 1080 I could find at the time that only needed a single additional power header, I was building a mini-ITX based workstation, and space for wires was at a premium. No complaints, though, it's held up like a champ.

(This is the card: https://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-Support-Graphics-08G-P4-... )

When you're stretching a movie across an IMAX-sized screen, you really want the pixels. I can't fit an IMAX screen in my living room though, so I can't really see the benefit.

And unless the movie was designed for that IMAX field of view, it's going to look some combination of ridiculous and terrible.

I remember sitting a bit up front in a theatre and thinking “I can see the pixels”. And worse it was slightly out of focuse (maybe intentionally to hide them).

From that day on every time I see a 4K film in theatres the low resolution bugs me. 8K should get us much closer to the old 35mm experience.

I hate it so much. Not only is the resolution totally shot now that we have fully digital projection systems, but the compression artifacts in some movies I've been to are worse than if I had just pirated the damn thing at home.

It took me multiple movies watching over time to start seeing the difference between HD and 4K. I certainly couldn't care about 8K at a single demo.

Really? The day I got my 4k TV I could see the difference the moment I put up some 4k content - I though to myself - holy shit, this is too good! Now I can see the difference when going back to HD the moment it happens :(

Consider this: 4K DCP, which is just a little larger than consumer 4K (4096x2160 vs 3840x2160) is good enough to project on 40 foot movie theater screens. 8K is FOUR TIMES that consumer 4K resolution. The benefit of that resolution on a 65 inch screen is, uh, negligible.

Right, but the size of the screen is irrelevant if you don't also take into account the distance you sit from that screen.

An 8k 360 degree immersive environment might not be quite enough resulution to get fine detail if you were looking at it through a VR headset.

I think the short way to say this is viewing angle. If you're seated where the angle between one edge and the opposite edge is more than a typical situation, then you'll want more than typical DPI and thus resolution.

One rule if thumb I recall hearing is that the TV diagonal size should be about 1/3 to 1/2 the viewing distance. I'd need to brush up on my trig to get degrees from that.

I'm gonna need a bigger living room.

Counter-intuitively perhaps, many of the benefits of 8K become readily apparent on tiny screens intended for use directly in front of one’s eyes, such as VR/AR headsets.

Discussions of resolution against screen size are meaningless without consideration of viewing distance.

For VR/AR the most important feature is be pixel density

I thought for VR it was refresh rate?

The refresh rate of the current generation of headsets is already enough for what we need. The next bottlenecks on the road to human vison like experience are peripheral field of view, pixel density and vergence-accomodation conflict.

But have you ever seen a film captured and projected in true 70mm IMAX? The difference between that and 4K DCP is immense.

Yes in Movie Theatre. But not at home.

"car simply isn't capable of 200"

what if it's going down a steep hill?

If it's my car, the wheels will fall off before it reaches the bottom. Mine starts to shake around 90, then smooths out until about 120, then starts to shake again.

My mother-in-law in the back seat was not happy.

And you think it's because of the bumpiness of the ride? You're going to kill someone driving like that on public roads.

I was in the backseat of a car driving like that in high school. Driver lost control while changing lanes, we swerved across multiple lanes of traffic, exited the interstate and flipped five times. The two people in the car not wearing seatbelts were thrown from the vehicle as we rolled.

Nobody died, but by rights any or all of us should have.

Seriously, stop.

It is absolutely common to drive that fast on German roads. With less accidents/mile than America. It needs good driver education, good roads and good cars, and then it's fine.

It's 200 MPH, not KMH. Going ~320 KMH is not absolutely common on German roads

Even seeing cars capable of going 200mph is a rarity. Very few cars can go 200mph and they're all rather expensive.

The parent was talking about 120 mph, which is close to 200 kmh.

And you think it's because of the bumpiness of the ride?

No, because of the flimsiness of the car.

You're going to kill someone driving like that on public roads.

Ordinarily, I'm on your side with that. But this was a one-off passing a Winnebago on a downhill in a part of the country where you can see the road is clear for 20 miles ahead through the valley up into the next mountain pass.

Most certainly no. Your best chance is putting the gearbox in neutral and even then an absolute free fall wouldn't even do it. You'd hit terminal velocity well before that.

aww :/

Most cars are drag limited well before 200mph. Terminal falling velocity is only about 120mph for a human, cars are less aerodynamic and a straight vertical drop isn't usually considered a hill.

There are other acting acting forces on the car other than gravity

Good luck getting tires rated to not fail at 200 mph even if your engine and transmission can propel your car to that speed.

Tires have a maximum speed rating. For my tires this is only like 120 mph.

How far away were you standing and how big was the TV?

This is certainly not the case for gaming. I use a 4k 24" at a desktop and still need to turn AA on to prevent noticable alising.

It looks like 5k is the sweet spot for 27", and 8k for 32".

Not to mention VR needs 8k to provide 1080p-like resolution over a large field of view.

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