Sorry if this is a dumb question, but does anyone else feel like technology - specifically consumer tech - kinda peaked over a decade ago? I’m 37, and I remember being awed between like 2011 and 2014 with phones, voice assistants, smart home devices, and what websites were capable of. Now it seems like much of this stuff either hasn’t improved all that much, or is straight up worse than it used to be. Am I crazy? Have I just been out of the market for this stuff for too long?
TV resolution peaked about 10 years ago with 1080p. The improvement to 4K and high dynamic range is minor.
3D gaming has plateaued as well. While it may be possible to make better graphics, those graphics don’t make better games.
Computers haven’t improved substantially in that time. The biggest improvement is maybe usb-c?
Solar energy and battery storage have drastically changed in the last 10 years. We are at the infancy of off grid building, micro grid communities, and more. Starlink is pretty life changing for rural dwellers. Hopefully combined with the van life movement there will be more interesting ways to live in the future, besides cities, suburbs, or rural. Covid telework normalization was a big and sudden shift, with lasting impacts.
Maybe the next 10 years will bring cellular data by satellite, and drone deliveries?
Strong disagree about the 4k thing. Finally upgraded my aging 13 year old panels for a fancy new Asus 4k 27"and yeah it’s dramatically better. Especially doing either architectural or photographic work on it. Smaller screens you’ve got a point though. 4k on a 5" phone seems excessive.
I mean for television or movies. From across the room 4k is only slightly sharper than 1080p. Up close on a monitor is a different story.
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Yeah my wall limits the size of my TV to 55”, but I also have a fairly short viewing distance of 8 ft. That puts me in the 1080p range. The details of 4K show up better if I sit closer, but I still wouldn’t characterize it as a dramatically different viewing experience. I watch nature documentaries in 4k, but for close ups of faces 1080p is enough for me. I really don’t need to see every pore. And for action/CG I feel higher resolution, like higher frame rate or interpolation, seems to cheapen the effects. I like my movies choppy and blurry like they were meant to be.
Couldn’t that be just overall quality?
Source bought a lot of fullhd screens, some were just so bad, I only go with iiyama today.
Sorry to make you feel old but 10 years ago 4k was already mainstream, and you would have already had difficulty finding a good new 1080p TV. That is roughly the start of proper HDR being introduced to the very high end models.
Also, maybe you’ve only experienced bad versions of these technologies because they can be very impressive. HDR especially is plastered on everything but is kinda pointless without hardware to support proper local dimming, which is still relegated to high end TVs even today. 4k can feel very noticeable depending on how far you sit from the TV, how large the screen is, and how good one’s eyesight is. But yeah, smaller TVs don’t benefit much. I only ended up noticing the difference after moving and having a different living room setup, siting much closer to the TV.
My lower back makes me feel old, not TV resolutions. My TV is a 2020 LG OLED, 55”. I do notice the difference but I just don’t think it’s a big deal, because 1080p is sharp enough. I wear glasses when I watch TV correcting to 20/15. Or another way of saying it, is that my old eyes don’t care for big screens. The experience is the same.
I wouldn’t call 4K mainstream in 2014 - I feel like it was still high end.
I didn’t have a 4K TV until early 2019 or so when unfortunately, the 1080p Samsung one got damaged during a move. Quite sad - it had very good color despite not having the newest tech, and we’d gotten it second-hand for free. Best of all, it was still a “dumb” TV.
Of course, my definition of mainstream is warped, as we were a bit behind the times - the living room had a CRT until 2012, and I’m almost positive all of the bedroom ones were still CRTs in 2014.
I’ve been using a 720p tv up until last year
3D gaming has plateaued as well. While it may be possible to make better graphics, those graphics don’t make better games.
I haven’t played it, only seen clips, but have you seen AstroBoy? It’s true that the graphics aren’t really too much better than the PS4, but there’s like a jillion physics objects on the screen with 60fps. It’s amazing. Graphics are still improving, just in different ways.
Astro Bot looks pretty cool, but I think the same gameplay experience was totally possible 10 years ago albeit with fewer pretty reflections, and lower polygon counts.
I think the next breakthrough in gaming and/or VR will be when somebody figures out how to generate Gaussian splatting environments. It’s fundamentally different from the polygon approach and it feels so much more photo realistic.
