And there is a reason the +/- (?) buttons literally changed the render window for DOOM and the like. Like... those iconic HUDs were specifically so that those playing on a 640480 monitor might actually only have to worry about a 640360 game and so forth.

Same with those of us who played games like Unreal Tournament at 18-24 FPS on an 800*600.

Like I said, there are definitely some problem children (again: Team Ninja). But it is also worth remembering that most games are still targeting a previous gen console SKU at 1080p. And, ironically, the optimizations are going to be geared more towards that.

Which... is why upscaling is such a big deal. Yeah "AI Upscaling" is a great buzzword. But it really is no different than when we used to run OFP at a lower resolution on the helicopter missions. It is just that now we can get "shockingly good" visuals while doing that rather than thinking Viktor Troska looks extra blocky.

Like, I'll always crap on Team Ninja's PC ports because they are REALLY bad... even if that is my preferred platform. But it took maybe 2 minutes of futzing about (once I got to Yokohama proper and had my game slow to sub 20 FPS...) to get the game to look good and play at a steady 60 FPS. No, it wasn't at Epic (or whatever they use) but most of the stuff was actually on High. Is it the same as just hitting auto-detect and defaulting to everything maxed out? Of course not. But that gets back to "Can it run Crysis?"

Much of this specifically is devs implementing MSAA, which once upon a time was cheap, efficient, and looked fine. Nowadays with RT added into the mix MSAA just simply can't function well on modern hardware, to the point where even city builders like Cities Skylines 2 will crawl to 14-15fps on low settings if you haven't overridden the graphics pipeline to remove msaa and replace it with one that actually functions.