Today I finally got to play some games on 1080p. For my surprise, I didn't notice any difference than my previous 1280x1024px on the TV. Also, I had a performance hit.

I took this screenshot from Split/Second for a closer look:

Even a beautiful game like this looks ugly in such resolution. The font is pixelated, the motion blur seems to be in low quality, you can see many texture issues and so on...

This makes me think: are games really ready for 1080p? After all, what's that about: show-off or quality?

It greatly depends on your setup as well. You wouldn't believe the difference between MY hdtv and my friends.

What do you mean? Your HDTV masks visual flaws?
I ran games on max settings though.

I can only assume you're using some sort of console. Never had any of these issues on PC games.
Probably console games do not yet expect widespread HD resolutions, so they don't support it very well.

Wut game is that?

It looks like that game just scales up a lower-res version of the game, lol. Properly made high-resolution games only look better on higher resolutions, because it gives more detail. That screenshot shows that game not having enough detail to give at that resolution. Don't blame the resolution. <_<

Well making games professionally is about making money. If creating a game to take advantage of 1080p would yield more revenue than some other resolution, most games would be made to take advantage of it. I can imagine that for a game to take full advantage of such high res would require a large amount of hardware resources, as well as more time from the developers to create things in such high detail.

1080p is only 1920×1080. How much of a difference did you expect with 56 more vertical pixels & 640 more horizontal? It's only a 9% difference in area.

I hear you Cencil. But is that really about time? I believe the developers create a pretty highly detailed environment already before "low-polying" everything for an optimized game.

Well, but if that's the problem, why not set a resolution limit for these games? Split/Second shouldn't be played on 1080p since it was cleary made for lower resolution, but why does the game provide it as an option anyway?

Centreri, you mean S/S renders on lower res and just scales it? Well, I don't think so, just look at the edges, Batman Arkham Asylum does that what you said though (AFAIK).

I'm not using a console. I'm on PC.

1920 x 1080 = 2073600
1280 x 1024 = 1310720
2073600 - 1310720 = 762880
7628800 / 2073600 * 100 = 36.79%

Watchoo smokin', Syphon?

If you see individual pixels not close up, it means something is wrong with the rendering. And that looks like, for that part of the screen, at least, it's scaling up. Or it's a crappy graphics engine. Anyway, don't blame the resolution.

Any. This 1080p bulls**t is highly advertised.

It is still only a few more vertical pixels, so the difference is really just between widescreen and non-widescreen.

Yes. However, that still definitely plays an important role in games. In WoW, the widescreen gives more real-estate for the interface and lets you see more of the environment; I believe in SCII, it also allows you to see more of the surroundings. It's not a meager 9% difference, and unless the problem is too MUCH detail, the problem isn't with the resolution but with the implementation.