Whoops I bought a PS4 Pro.

[mobias]

Just setting it up at the moment. I was looking forward to my first night of 4K HDR gaming but apparently its going to take 4 hours to transfer over all my data over from my old PS4. Quite straight forward to set up. When you first power it up and log in it talks you through connecting your old and new PS4's with an ethernet cable. The PS4 Pro is a bit more of a beast of a machine compared to the standard PS4. Its much heavier and has a proper kettle power lead compared to the base model.

Now I'm just searching through all the games out there that take full advantage of the Pro's capabilities. Horizon Zero Dawn is first on my list of games to get. Tomb Raider and maybe Assassins Creed Unity. Funnily enough Farming Simulator 17 is one of the very few games at the moment which is natively in 4K on the Pro. 

I heard through the grapevine that CD Projekt Red do have plans to release a seriously pimped version of Witcher 3 but not until the Xbox Scorpio is out and has a decent instal base.

[biggytitbo]

Is there going to be a 4k version of Jet Set Willy?

[WesterlyWinds]

Do you want to give your old PS4 to your good mate WesterlyWinds?

[mobias]

Sorry Westerly I've got a buyer for my old PS4 I'm afraid. Offsetting the cost of getting a Pro was part of my justification for getting one.

Spent into the early hours gaming on the Pro last night and then have been doing some more today. I'm hugely impressed. I stood outside PC World yesterday for a good while trying to decide if I really wanted to spend 350 quid just to have some higher resolution gaming but as of right now I'm really glad I did. The Pro is a real step up from the standard PS4. I can totally see why all the games journalists have been saying that selling the idea of a PS4 Pro to people is really quite hard because until you see a game running in 4K with full HDR on a good TV with your own eyes its difficult to appreciate what its all about.

Booting up Farming Simulator in full 4K mode just made my draw drop. It reminded me of seeing the original Motorstorm running in high definition for the first time when the PS3 came out. Its just such a step up from what you're used to. That being said though the Pro does struggle rendering FS in full 4K. The frame rate drops noticeably, its usually locked at 60fps on the standard PS4. If you want to keep 60fps on the pro you need to set the resolution a bit lower than 4K, but you still get it higher than 1080p.

You can play an unpatched game like Witcher 3 on the Pro under boost mode where by it just tries to optimise things a bit. It doesn't really look any better but it maintains a better frame rate when things get going and from what I saw last night it loads faster. If you fast travel from Novigrad to Skellige it loads in the new map noticeably quicker than it did before.

Its difficult to convey but here 's some 4K chickens and agricultural machinery for you.

[falafel]

So do you think it is the 4k or the HDR that makes it look good? I mean, how big is the TV and how close are you to it?

I am still super sceptical because of this:

http://uk.rtings.com/tv/reviews/by-size/size-to-distance-relationship?uxtv=833f

Which suggests that the human eye is incapable of distinguishing 4K on even a 60 inch TV unless you sit less than six feet from it. And I haven't been very impressed by the 4K TVs I've seen in shops, though the fact they crank the rank-looking artificial sharpening up doesn't help.

So I still think 4K is a gimmick and a scam, but slightly more sold on HDR, can I borrow yours for a year or two to check?

Oh and I do hope you've turned the sharpening off to get rid of the horrible pencil lines around everything??

[mobias]

Yeah I shoved the sharpening right down when I first set up the TV. There's some useful online calibration guides to these 4K TV's to get the best out of them. Setting up the PS4 Pro and a 4K HDR TV is easy but not hugely straightforward. Uncharted 4 had its 'enable HDR' setting greyed out in the game menu and it wasn't until I searched online I found something telling me I had to set the TV's colour profile to a certain setting for the game to recognise it. I think that can vary from TV manufacturer to manufacturer, depending on what HDR system they're using, and also game to game so the whole thing needs a bit of simplifying.

Personally I think the 4K makes it look amazing. My sofa is about 6 feet from the TV, which is 55 inches in size, its about the perfect distance away. All these different resolutions are noticeable. A game in 720p is noticeably not in 1080p and a 1080p game is noticeably not in 4K. Whether to not it makes a jot of difference to your experience is of course an entirely personal opinion. Whats not at all massively noticeable is the difference between native 4K and Sony's chequerboard 4K that the PS4 Pro uses on most of its games. Farming Simulator gives you the option to play under either of those 4K settings the difference is incredibly marginal to the point of not being noticeable at all. Microsoft making a big song and dance about the Xbox Scorpio being able to output games in native 4K is great but from my experience so far not massively needed. Especially at the cost of reduced frame rate.

I don't think 4K TV's are any more of a gimmick and scam over selling 1080p TV's were to people that had a TV at a lower resolution. If you appreciate a beautiful picture then thats what matters really. People will always be behind the curve with resolution anyway. In 5 years time it'll probably be impossible to buy a TV which isn't 4K and we'll be having the same debate here over whether or not 8K is worth it.

[falafel]

Ah, to be fair it sound like you've got the right size TV for your setup to make sense. For my living room it would be something like 80 to 90 inches and I just can't justify a Goliath like that (cash or grief from my minimalist boyfriend). If only they made HDR 40 inch 1080P TVs, that would be my sweet spot.