Google Addresses Complaints of Sub-4K Image Quality On Stadia

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Since March, Google has been promising that its streaming Stadia platform would be capable of full 4K, 60fps gameplay (for users with a robust Internet connection and $10/month Stadia Pro subscription). But technical analyses since launch have shown that some of the service's highest profile games aren't hitting that mark. A Digital Foundry analysis of Red Dead Redemption 2 on Stadia, for instance, found that the game actually runs at a native 2560x1440 resolution, which is then upscaled to the 4K standard of 4096x2160 via the Chromecast Ultra. And a Bungie representative said that the Stadia version of Destiny 2 runs at the PC equivalent of "medium" graphics settings and that the game will "render at a native 1080p and then upsample [to 4K] and apply a variety of techniques to increase the overall quality of effect."

Over the weekend, Google issued a statement to 9to5Google that essentially places the blame for this situation on Stadia developers themselves (emphasis added): "Stadia streams at 4K and 60fps -- and that includes all aspects of our graphics pipeline from game to screen: GPU, encoder, and Chromecast Ultra all outputting at 4K to 4K TVs, with the appropriate Internet connection. Developers making Stadia games work hard to deliver the best streaming experience for every game. Like you see on all platforms, this includes a variety of techniques to achieve the best overall quality. We give developers the freedom of how to achieve the best image quality and frame rate on Stadia, and we are impressed with what they have been able to achieve for day one. We expect that many developers can, and in most cases will, continue to improve their games on Stadia. And because Stadia lives in our data centers, developers are able to innovate quickly while delivering even better experiences directly to you without the need for game patches or downloads."

The 4K Standard

[sexconker]

the 4K standard of 4096x2160

I would love for "4K" to mean 4K. But "4K" in this context means 3840x2160.
Get a brain, morans.

Re:

[lgw]

It's 4x as many pixels as 1K, aka 1080p. Makes more sense than hard drive sizes.

Re:

[mrfaithful]

That's 2K. Except it's not 2K because 2K is a cinema resolution of 2048 or something, same as 4K is a cinema resolution of 4096 I think. So it's 4x as many pixels as 1080p which is (not quite)2K.

Re:

[Luckyo]

They literally call 4096 x 2160 "4K x 2K". I'm not even joking. The "cinematic" naming system is pants on the head level of retarded.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

That's why there's several ways of calling 4K.

4K can be Ultra HD (UHD), or 3840x2160. Not to be confused with Quad HD (QHD), which is 4 times 720p, or 2560x1440 (aka 1440p). UHD may also be referred to as 2160p.

Ther'es also "cinema 4K' which is sometimes referred to as SMPTE 4K which is 4096x2160. This is much rarer since UHD is a consumer format and thus plastered everywhere.

And yes, 4K x 2K is common as well (usually referring to SMPTE 4K, but sometimes UHD as well), and 1080p is also referred to occasion

Re:

[lgw]

2K is 1440p. 4k is 2kp. Still less dumb than hard drive sizes.

Not All Aspects

[sexconker]

Stadia streams at 4K and 60fps -- and that includes all aspects of our graphics pipeline from game to screen: GPU, encoder, and Chromecast Ultra all outputting at 4K to 4K TVs, with the appropriate Internet connection.

I mean, you just said that doesn't include the game aspect, so...

Re:

[reanjr]

"from game to screen" is an exclusive set, not inclusive. Obviously, because the screen isn't under their control and will limit the games' resolutions and frame rates.

If I have high speed internet

[0xdeaddead]

I already have a fancy computer.

What else do as I doing with it?

Also, the lack of a Hong Kong rollout is laughable. In the city you can get 10gb residential connections

Re:

[zennyboy]

Also, the lack of a Hong Kong rollout is laughable. In the city you can get 10gb residential connections

Assuming you're not currently on fire / detained in China...

Re:

[AHuxley]

Re 'Hong Kong rollout"
Make a 4K game with Taiwan flags in 4K as part of the game art.
Test the good censor and its support for Communist China.

Then set it as a standard.

[AHuxley]

Why would a company only put in its own 1080 artwork as 4K?
Do they not have 4K artwork?
The system can support 4K, is been presented as 4K?
Ask for 4K from the game makers to then allow them to get a "4K" approved gui.
Cant/wont do 4K? Then give them a native 1080p but 4K ready gui setting.
Let the person playing "games" sort by real 4K, better than 1080p, 1080p ready for 4K, 1080p...
A game company that does not have 4K art ready? Thats not the users problem. Not a hardware problem.
Find a better g

Re:

[sexconker]

You don't understand. The games can't run at 4K because they're coded like shit. They're also mostly optimized for NVidia hardware, while Google went with AMD hardware for Stadia. So the games COULD run at 4K, but not with hardware utilization Google wants to pay for and not with frame rates users want to experience.

Re:

[AHuxley]

re 'The games can't run at 4K because they're coded like ....."
Then support and find brands that can code for 4K and give then a real 4K "tested and approved" gui.
Until then give the user a 4K and "not 4K" artwork listing option. Sort for 4K support.
The quality 4K ready games can be sorted for.
The 1080p as 4K can be sorted further down by users..
A brands lack of staff with 4K skill, lack of considering the need for 4K artwork is not the users problem..
Want 4K? Find the brands with skills that can w

Re:

[sexconker]

Google does not have the power to steer the market. Nearly all AAA games are rushed shit jobs.

Re:

[AHuxley]

The internet is 4K ready, the new low cost display is 4K, the hardware is 4K ready... the gpu is 4K ready..
What are the people doing who make game art and 3d art?
Native 1080p?
Where is the 3d app, game, artwork, design competition?

Re:

[lgw]

Nearly all AAA games are rushed shit jobs.

To be fair, that's true of nearly all software.

Re:

[_xeno_]

They're also mostly optimized for NVidia hardware, while Google went with AMD hardware for Stadia.

I'm pretty sure that's not true, because just about every console uses AMD GPUs. (The one current outlier is, weirdly enough, the Switch, and that's because it runs on Nvidia tablet hardware. But both the PS4 and Xbox One use GPUs from AMD, and the Xbox 360 and Wii/WiiU used AMD GPUs. The GPU in the PS3 was apparently from Nvidia but the PS3 is weird in its own ways anyway. So game developers — especially console developers — have some experience using AMD hardware.)

I expect the answer is much s

Virtual PC, not virtual console

[DrYak]

I'm pretty sure that's not true, because just about every console uses AMD GPUs.

Except that google isn't using a cluster of internet-connected console to stream the game.
They are (metaphorically) popping the Windows BD disc and installing it on Virtual Box instances running on google's linux cluster.

I expect the answer is much simpler: Google didn't give them enough lead time to properly optimize the games for Stadia. It seems fairly clear that Stadia simply wasn't ready to launch this month but Google decided to release it anyway. Presumably the performance will improve as developers get to spend more time with the Stadia hardware.

Yup, clearly the opinion of everybody else: it's still the 'mostly optimized for high-end PC on Nvidia' codebase that they are running from their PC port of the game, they probably spent whatever tiny time the had only to fix the most critical part: getting the game to run in the stadia env

Re:

[gl4ss]

its not that they're "coded like shit" it's that google didn't actually buy the hardware necessary for playing at 4k because that would have made stadia lose even more money.

from what it seems to me my laptop has more gpu power than what a google stadia instance has.

look, that wouldn't even be a problem if google didn't sell people the founders edition and the MOTHAFUKIN SUBSCRIPTION with the promise to play ALL THE GAMES AT 4k 60 FPS. you know, to make it worthwhile as in to make it better than just buying

haardware

[DrYak]

its not that they're "coded like shit"

it is. it's software. it had to be rushed to meet a deadline.
It's automatically going to be crappy as a rule.

it's that google didn't actually buy the hardware necessary for playing at 4k because that would have made stadia lose even more money.

According to people who have been following the stuff closely: their are using latest gen AMD cards,
The hardware could do 4k with proper optimisation, but that is not what the current code base of the games that had stadia re-release in that short amount of time.
They probably picked the existing PC Windows optimized for Nvidia codebase, and spent whatever tiny time they had to make *the thing run* on

Who decided the GPU budget?

[MobyDisk]

It sounds like marketing has meet engineering reality. Someone probably crunched the numbers and gave the engineers a GPU budget. One of the linked articles also says that turning on 4K cuts the frame rate in half. If they had infinite the computing resources then they render at full 4k + 4x MSAA.

What Google promised isn't profitable. A high-end GPU that can do 4k on Red Dead Redemption 2 might be nearly $1000. It would eat $100/year in electricity. I don't see how Google could offer that for $10/month. So logically, someone told them to cut the resolution and frame rates down.

It seems foolish for them to cut corners at launch when they know the reviewers are paying close attention. I wonder what other shortcuts will they pull when they have a larger subscriber base and not enough GPU resources to spread out?

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

People were expecting high end PC gaming but got console gaming. Yeah it's a "4k" console but the game renders at a lower resolution and upscales because cheap consumer hardware can't push that many pixels yet.

Re:

[swillden]

What Google promised isn't profitable. A high-end GPU that can do 4k on Red Dead Redemption 2 might be nearly $1000. It would eat $100/year in electricity. I don't see how Google could offer that for $10/month.

Google doesn't pay the same prices for electricity that you do; commercial rates are generally about 1/3 of consumer rates. So, make that $30/year in electricity. Also, let's assume that that $1k GPU must be replaced every two years. So the GPU portion of the hardware expense is $530 per year, or $44 per month. You need about five subscribers to break even on that. Maybe a little less, because Google is not paying retail prices for GPUs, either.

If your target market is gamers that play for 10 hours eve

Re:

[twocows]

I wonder what other shortcuts will they pull when they have a larger subscriber base and not enough GPU resources to spread out?

The most likely shortcut they'll take is the one that goes straight to the Google Graveyard

Re:

[lordofshadows]

We have the network bandwidth to stream 4k 60 FPS all day long, what's a graphics card? Oh, let me check, it's a geforce2 MX, so yeah we have you covered there too

Re:

[Anonymous Dotter]

Realistically you can barely get 4k 30FPS streaming Netflix, and that data payload is relatively small in comparison to the amount of data gaming requires.

The reality is Google bit off more than they can chew while over selling and under producing without realizing the full scale of what they were dealing with in real world scenarios.

Google's Stadia will never recover from this disaster as it only solidifies peoples concerns about cloud gaming as a whole. Best case scenario is this could only work in a worl

Re:

[nagglerdamus]

If they had infinite the computing resources then they render at full 4k + 4x MSAA.

Given infinite computing resources and today's off-the-shelf tech, it'd render at no less than 16k downsampled to 4k - 8k, w/ 32x MSAA, 8x transparency AA, some post-processing AA, 16x AF, and a custom .ini per game to push the graphics well past in-game settings.

Re:

[JThundley]

Shortcuts? That's not how Google rolls, the whole project will be cancelled in a couple years.

Re:

[golivef3db]

its all about saving and tweaking in my opinion

Real mature Google

[locater16]

Real mature Google, reeeal mature. "It's not our fault, lazy devs!" Sounding like a whiny basement dwelling fanboy in an official statement reveals the status of Stadia and the team behind it. I'll call it canceled within a year.

Excuses

[WaffleMonster]

Listening to Google peddling pathetic excuses for failure of a product that nobody cares about in the first place is a counterproductive marketing strategy.

Not surprising to hear 4k support is just another upscale scam and graphics quality lags significantly behind consumer GPUs.

Long been curious how it is companies have managed to get away with upscaling video and sometimes even audio in order to advertise content as something its not. In most industries you do shit like this and you get fined.

Who cares about 4k?

[AbRASiON]

You wanna stream to me? Send me 1080p as low as latency as possible with a codec or bitrate (or both) that allows for decent colour depth, something generally handled very poorly by streaming (on the go, not pre-encoded like netflix)

I've played Dark Souls over steam streaming and holy crap, dark games do NOT cut it with encoding on the fly tech.

AV1 can't get mature fast enough.

Re:

[iampiti]

AV1 uses less bandwidth but required much more computational power to encode. I'm not sure what kind of hardware takes to encode AV1 in real time but I wouldn't be surprised if consumer hardware won't be able to do it for a long time.

Stadia is an console and they can't make cash at

[Joe_Dragon]

Stadia is an console and they can't make cash at with the power to do 4K at $10/mo + full priced game (same other stores)

How do they know?

[nagora]

I guess they know it's not 4K by examining the data, because they sure as fuck didn't notice from looking at the image, unless they were projecting it onto a 40' wide screen.

4K is basically an idiot tax which also wastes shed loads of electricity.

like consoles

[sad_]

just like 'real' consoles which didn't do real HD (ps3) or current gen 4k.
and it for most part it doesn't matter, when everything is moving so fast and hectic as in a video game, the last thing you have time noticing is if this is really 4k or just upscaled 1080p.

Re:

[vyvepe]

I would not say it is fast and hectic with about 30 ms lag added by your internet connection. If you are lucky it may be that low. It is a streamed game. Players are supposed to admire the pretty graphics because there is no alternative of a quick action. Pretty graphics and some kind of game engagement(*) are the only things which stay.

(*) I'm sure psychologists are working hard on the parts which make it more and more addictive.

Re:

[iampiti]

Yep, with current resolutions a few more or less pixels aren't gonna make a big difference. I'd prefer more polygons and better textures (or even higher framerate) at 1080p over more pixels.

More of the same

[BPinard]

More lies, misdirection, and excuses from big G.