Watch_Dogs Uses Custom SMAA For PS4 And Xbox One Versions, Frame Rate Important to Gameplay

Ubisoft Montreal’s Watch Dogs will finally be out in May, culminating in more than six months worth of controversies including a delay and accusations of visual downgrade. It will be worth the wait in terms of visuals at least, as team lead programmer Francis Boivin confirmed that it would use enhanced subpixel morphological anti-aliasing (SMAA) for both the Xbox One and PS4 versions.

After the Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag introduced a new custom anti-aliasing solution for the PS4 and PC versions, GamingBolt asked Boivin what kind of anti-aliasing the next gen versions of Watch Dogs would have. Boivin said, “Watch_Dogs uses the same post-process anti-aliasing solution on both Xbox One and PS4. Each frame, a custom SMAA filter is applied on the image. On top of that, we smooth the image even more by using a temporal solution; that is, by re-projecting each pixel to its position in the previous frame and by letting each go through a set of heuristics tailored for the game, we’re able to further reduce visible aliasing.”

For comparison’s sake, it’s important to note that the PC version uses TXAA or temporal anti-aliasing, an Nvidia-exclusive feature. While SMAA is inferior to the same, it’s still one of the best anti-aliasing solutions available today.

Though other third party developers faced frame rate issues developing on the Xbox One, Ubisoft hasn’t faced any real issues with the same. We asked senior producer Dominic Guay whether Watch Dogs would see the same solid frame rate as previous Ubisoft titles along with whether resolution or frame rate was more important for gameplay.

Guay said, “Frame rate is very important to the gameplay, to the controls. It’s not something you want to compromise on.”

Stay tuned for our complete interview with several developers from Ubisoft Montreal. Watch Dogs will be out on Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3, PS4 and PC on May 27th.