capturing the screen in 4K resolution without a 4K monitor - with an NVidia graphics card on Linux

There's a very pretty visualization of all life on Earth - tree of life - on onezoom.org and I wanted to capture videos of zooming in and out.

Via https://old.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/tjkvyd/i_made_a_nvidia_shadowplaylike_screen_recorder/ - gpu-screen-recorder

Next, I wanted to see if I can do a 4K capture without needing to change the existing monitor, which runs on 1920x1080

Exploring the "NVidia X Server Settings", found a ViewPortIn setting after hitting the Advanced button under X Server Display Configuration. After setting it to 3840x2160, gpu-screen-recorder could still capture the screen at 60fps without any fuss. 

The Apply button worked, but the Save to X Configuration File did not - most probably due to some difference in the path. But an issue faced after making this change was that after every boot, the display would come back to this 4K setting, which made everything on the HD display too small for daily use. Even after changing back the ViewPortIn to HD, the Panning to HD, and Apply, the change would not remain after rebooting. The solution, which persisted across reboots, seemed to be to change the Scale from 2x to 1x in Display settings -