Metro Redux which was recently released on the PlayStation 4 runs at 1080p and 60fps on Sony’s console. Given that Sony’s first party studios like Naughty Dog have somewhat struggled to achieve consistent 60fps in their games, it’s surprising that such a demanding game is running in full HD on the PlayStation 4. So how did 4A Games achieved it?
“There is no secret. We just adapted to the target hardware,” 4A Games’ chief technical officer Oles Shishkovstov said in an interview with EuroGamer. “GCN doesn’t love interpolators? OK, ditch the per-vertex tangent space, switch to per-pixel one. That CPU task becomes too fast on an out-of-order CPU? Merge those tasks. Too slow task? Parallelise it. Maybe the GPU doesn’t like high sqrt count in the loop? But it is good in integer math – so we’ll use old integer tricks. And so on, and so on.”
He also added that eSRAM itself is not a pain to work with but the amount of eSRAM on the Xbox One is actually challenging. Regardless it’s sufficient performance wise. “Actually, the real pain comes not from ESRAM but from the small amount of it. As for ESRAM performance – it is sufficient for the GPU we have in Xbox One. Yes it is true, that the maximum theoretical bandwidth – which is somewhat comparable to PS4 – can be rarely achieved (usually with simultaneous read and write, like FP16-blending) but in practice I’ve seen only a few cases where it becomes a limiting factor.”
Metro Redux is now available for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and it’s pretty solid remaster. Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.