Playing Old PC Games in 4K

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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This is something we have done from time to time; pulling out an old game and dusting it off, like the original Quake. This Youtuber takes the time to go through a few of our old favorites and sees if he can actually run these games today at a 4K resolution. His takeaway is that many 20 year of games are still doable today. The big hits are in-game UI not scaling well and causing playability issues. Maybe it is time to fire up Crysis at 4K on the 48" display?

Check out the video.
 
So the games look better. Fun. I will say it has been nice to Xbox start making their BC games look better on the Xbox One and the One X. I hope that is something hey continue to do.
 
I did Ultima Online in 2k and 4k with "ORION UO" client a project from russian developers. WOW. I couldn't believe how nice it looked, along with zoom, antialiasing etc ... I find it ironic a few free developers can do it but EA cannot (and therefore lost millions in revenue over 15 years instead of earning millions).

Anywho OrionUO recompiled the code and graphics libraries then enaabled a bunch of features (like not locked at 15fps).. looks awesome. Most of it was hand drawn or old school "sprite" drawn graphics.... that dont "zoom well" however with antialiasing and higher resolutions it does.

I cry at night knowing they could make high res textures and a modern client, lol

dear EA, your dead to me.
 
My god that video is a cure for insomnia!!!! Boooooooooooooooooooriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing!!!!

Anyway, I've been running several old games at 4k and for the most part its great. Some games just won't work at 4k as you just can't set the resolution. For example Rogue Squadron. But games like Mafia, Max Payne and JediKnight/Jedi Academy look awesome, specialy with Mods.
 
Once you do 4k, you can't go back. If my "old" games won't work in 4k I won't play them...ok not really but they can look better with the inherent anti-aliasing effect you get in 4k, I've noticed this in old flight simulators especially. And in older games with anti-aliasing settings I just turn it off no sense wasting cpu/gpu cycles.
 
It's mouse/keyboard but I'd also recommend "The Thing". First played on PS2/Xbox, essentially 480i, and the PC version blows 'em away. Old DX8 or something, but still looks great in 1080p to 4k. If you like the original movie I think this is a great sequel story. J.C. even commented on how much he liked it back in the day.
 
As of this writing, there are several issues that I have with 4K gaming... all of them in the technological camp. I'm sure that, in five years, technology will catch up.

First of all, monitor limitations. A quick check of Newegg monitor listings shows that the 4K monitors have a maximum refresh rate of 60Hz, thus 60 FPS. My current GSync monitor is capable of up to 144Hz overclocked to 165Hz.

Second is video card performance. In HardOCP's own benchmarks using the highest-end cards from nVidia and AMD, the average framerate was 45-58 FPS for Far Cry 5, 42-58 FPS for Kingdom Come: Deliverance (depending on settings), 54-71 FPS for Wolfenstein II, and 30-47 FPS for Watch Dogs 2. Those FPS numbers were based upon the best available video cards and the latest video drivers available at time of review. Those numbers will no doubt improve as both nVidia and AMD are expected to release their next generation of cards in the next few months. Still, many of us consider 60 FPS minimum for smooth game play.

Of course, there are those game manufacturers who simply were not forward looking enough beyond one year past game release to even consider high-resolution gaming in their testing. But, then again, if we look back five-ten years, we would see the struggle for 1080p and 2K gaming.
 
wolfenstein4k.jpg
 
I was surprised at how well Oblivion scaled at 5k downscaled. UI didn't even become stupid small and no patches required. Runs at hundreds of fps.
 
I was out of PC gaming for a bit, got out during the COD modern warfare 2 days, and there was also entire series of games I had not played.

So when I built my new rig to run all the 4k goodness. I either played the first of the series or none of them.

Payed all the Mass Effect series , Deus Ex, Skyrim, Wither 3, in 4K, Doom, Tomb Raider and it was glorious!

Working through FEAR , Bioshock, and Crysis and Farcry. Maybe a few others after that. Love old games in 4K.

Want to go back and play my old favorites.
 
I recently ran through Mass Effect 3 at 4K with a ton of texture mods. Its amazing how well the game holds up given its age and even being dated on release.
 
exiled350 said:
Crysis at 4k... The only way to kill a video card faster than mining on it.
Click to expand...
Well that certainly didn't take long ... but I'm not a hypocrite, kind of the first thing that went through my mind, ok the second thing the first was "I don't remember running Crysis at 720, I did at 1080 from the beginning" granted I didn't ultra everything but I still preferred the higher resolution over the grass swaying perfectly.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Well that certainly didn't take long ... but I'm not a hypocrite, kind of the first thing that went through my mind, ok the second thing the first was "I don't remember running Crysis at 720, I did at 1080 from the beginning" granted I didn't ultra everything but I still preferred the higher resolution over the grass swaying perfectly.
Click to expand...

I ran it at 2560x1600 from nearly the beginning. It was several generations of graphics cards before I could truly enjoy the game.
 
Honestly, this is how I felt when I bought a 9700pro and could finally max out everything. It felt like going from pong to oblivion. The trivial bumps in performance we get in modern day generational leaps from graphics manufacturers can't hold a candle to the resolution and AA arms races of the early 2000s.

In addition to the glorious looks of playing games in 4k, many of your old favorites have incredible mod communities that often re texture most or all of the imporant visuals of a game, including characters. Anytime you're reinstalling an old favorite to take a trip down memory lane, don't forget to texture up before going to war.

JosiahBradley said:
I was surprised at how well Oblivion scaled at 5k downscaled. UI didn't even become stupid small and no patches required. Runs at hundreds of fps.
Click to expand...

The best graphics mod for any game I have ever played is Qarl's texture makeover for oblivion. I cannot sing its praises enough. It was a decade above its paygrade when originally released and still smashes at 4k today. What he was able to accomplish put almost every developer on notice of what could really be done when you care enough about your craft. Let me know if you have trouble acquiring it and I'll post it on my g drive. It's almost time for me to give it another run through myself and see what else has been improved for Oblivion.

exiled350 said:
Crysis at 4k... The only way to kill a video card faster than mining on it.
Click to expand...

Crysis with max AA was the only thing other than furmark that could force any card into uncomfortable territory. I would use it as my stress tester while running a pentium 8600 at 4.7ghz and tweaked for days to get my sli/cfx rigs tuned to the breaking point.
 
jnemesh said:
Someone needs to get "Tie Fighter" running at 4k! :)
Click to expand...
It isn't real 3D so it won't scale at all. Might still be fun to see that old classic on a big wide-screen though. I've done the same with emulated arcade classics and the low-rez blockyness was fun and authentic.
Mario 64 emulated at high-rez 16:9 with AA looks phenomenal to me.
 
zamardii12 said:
I did Morrowind at 4K recently but it was unplayable because of how small all the text was.
Click to expand...
That's the biggest problem I've found. But it is worth it to poke around in the files, some times you can make the text bigger (though it tends to get clipped that way but it's often good enough to play a game). It's too bad UI size adjustments weren't common...but who would ever want more than 640x480?
 
What's up with the third person Half-Life? I didn't even know you could do that, an dI doubt I ever would have.
 
This is why it's almost always an eye roller seeing a PC game advertised as being 4k. The vast majority of games for the past 11 years or so that run in widescreen have already been 4k capable since they launched.
 
tried playing NES and SNES on my 70" 4k

eye bleeding/gouging insued...
 
I recently tried a few games in 4K like quake 1/2 but man did that console get tiny. I just prayed I typed in the command correctly and hit enter, sometimes I hoped it worked lol.
 
oROEchimaru said:
I did Ultima Online in 2k and 4k with "ORION UO" client a project from russian developers. WOW. I couldn't believe how nice it looked, along with zoom, antialiasing etc ... I find it ironic a few free developers can do it but EA cannot (and therefore lost millions in revenue over 15 years instead of earning millions).

Anywho OrionUO recompiled the code and graphics libraries then enaabled a bunch of features (like not locked at 15fps).. looks awesome. Most of it was hand drawn or old school "sprite" drawn graphics.... that dont "zoom well" however with antialiasing and higher resolutions it does.

I cry at night knowing they could make high res textures and a modern client, lol

dear EA, your dead to me.
Click to expand...
Wish this could be done with ff7 and ff8. Do you think it's possible? Square said no and made that whatever thing with ff8 name that's nothing like it...
 
funkydmunky said:
It isn't real 3D so it won't scale at all. Might still be fun to see that old classic on a big wide-screen though. I've done the same with emulated arcade classics and the low-rez blockyness was fun and authentic.
Mario 64 emulated at high-rez 16:9 with AA looks phenomenal to me.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I know its graphics don't scale that way, hence the smiley face...but I miss the perfection of that particular space combat sim...and mourn that we will never see it properly updated for a modern age...
 
I recently played through the original Call of Duty at 5K. The UI scaled perfectly with the resolution. It was actually the first time I played through the whole campaign and it was fun as hell.
 
jnemesh said:
Someone needs to get "Tie Fighter" running at 4k! :)
Click to expand...
I forgot to add that I had just got Rogue Squadron up and running in 1440p a couple of weeks ago. Once I found the weird trick to get the 360 controller to work it was awesome again. Main glitch for it is the AI ships move in a very jittery, spastic kind of way. Otherwise it looks pretty cool.
 
Btw, if you guys want to jump into quake (1), higher res is just the tip of the iceberg. Look into "dark places". It's an engine overhaul that adds a ludicrous amount of features, and you can also get really awesome high res texture packs to add to that too.

Be careful though, you may lose half a day just fiddling with the settings!

Enjoy!
 
Almost forgot, on the note of movie/sequel games the Ghostbusters game from around 2010 was pretty cool. Most people complained how the PC version didn't include the co-op mode but honestly it looks fantastic in 4k. Always loved it since it had most of the original cast from the first two movies doing the voice acting and the story actually serves to complete the movies as a trilogy. One of the first games I was able to play in 4k/60fps back when I had my 970 SLI setup. I still occasionally replay it about once a year just to experience the movie they basically never got to make.

Another kind of fun one is AVP 2010. Many have complained how it doesn't stand up to the originals, and I agree, but overall not a horrible experience and it does gain something in 4k. Once again, I thought the story was pretty cool by the end. I've got AVP2(2001 I think?) along w/ Primal hunt. Still fun but not much different once you get to 1080p with 'em. Replayed both more times than I can count and one of the really rare occurrences where the games were better than the post Aliens movies.

Doom BFG in 1440p 3d is f**king awesome! Got it a couple of years ago when I found out it was optimized for 3d.
 
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BloodyIron said:
Be careful though, you may lose half a day just fiddling with the settings!
Click to expand...

That's been a lot of my gaming time for the last 4 months or so. Just been in the mood to see what could be done with a lot of my old games recently.
 
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