DOOM Eternal will not support 4K capabilities on Google Stadia, despite previous reports. The platform is Google's effort in creating their own on-demand game service. As part of its marketing efforts, Stadia boasted games like DOOM Eternal would be able to be run at 4K resolution.
Reality has suggested that optimizing games for Stadia is more difficult than previously thought, however. For instance, Red Dead Redemption 2 renders between 1080p and 1440p, well beneath 4K standards. In fact, the Google service's "4K streaming" isn't technically 4K at all. Destiny 2 developers gave technical insight into how games are run on Stadia. They explained games like Destiny 2 render at 1080p, then are upsampled. Bungie says Destiny 2 runs at the PC equivalent of medium in-game settings, a far reach from 4K.
According to Engadget, DOOM Eternal will run at 1800p and then upscale to 4K. While much higher quality than 1080p, it's on the same level as the quality produced by Xbox One X rendering. For a game to be "true 4K" it would have to run with a horizontal display resolution of 4 thousand pixels, closer to around 3840 x 2160. On the other hand, DOOM Eternal will run at 3200 x 1800. Upsampling the game from 1800p means extra pixels are calculated to a near-4K level. While the image quality of 4K is similar to an upsampled resolution, the process is oftentimes criticized for not producing as sharp of an image as true 4K.
On paper, Stadia should easily support 4k. Stadia's GPU should be on par with the highest-end PC hardware. When Stadia's specifications were released, gamers were excited at the notion of high quality, cloud-based gaming made accessible on a myriad of devices. At GDC in 2019, a significant selling point of Stadia was that game titles like DOOM Eternal would run at 4K. As consumers learned more about Stadia, it was unveiled that 4K capabilities are locked behind a paywall. Stadia Pro members pay a monthly 10$ fee for 4K support, which is found to largely unavailable to them on most titles.
Since then, Google has faced backlash for not upholding promised specifications. At the moment, Stadia representatives insist the platform outputs 60 FPS at 4K, and put more of the responsibility on the developers to improve the quality of their games on the platform. Until Google takes a more proactive role in ensuring its customers receive what they're paying for, Stadia will continue to garner frustration from the gaming community.
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DOOM Eternal releases for Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Google Stadia on March 20, 2020.
Source: Engadget