Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s The Division was quite the looker when it launched back in early 2016. Although it never quite reached the visual fidelity which was first teased during that infamous E3 2012 demonstration, it actually managed to come quite close. At launch, The Division ran at a native 1080p resolution on the base PlayStation 4 whereas the Xbox One ran at a dynamic resolution reaching up to 1080p. Ubisoft recently released an enhancement patch for the Xbox One X version and the results are quite impressive.
Both consoles run at a dynamic resolution, with the PS4 Pro version running mostly in the region of 2880 x 1620 resolution. There were also some counts which indicate a native 4K, however those sequences are quite rare. On the Xbox One X, the same dynamic resolution buffer is utilized with counts ranging from 3200 X 1800 to a full native 4K presentation. But unlike the PS4 Pro, the Xbox One X runs The Division at native 4K most of the times. Both versions mostly run the game at a stable 30 frames per second. The difference between the two versions isn’t really surprising, but what is really surprising is the fact that Ubisoft somehow managed to reach native 4K on both consoles. The Division is a rather demading game and if anything credit must be given to Massive Studios for their brilliant optimization work on the Snowdrop engine. Other than the huge bump in resolution, both versions also benefit from higher anisotropic filtering, improved reflections, object detail and screen-space shadows.
So overall, this is a pretty great update for the Xbox One X owners, and perhaps one of the best enhancements we have seen for the new console. The PS4 Pro version isn’t really that far behind Microsoft’s console but the Xbox One X obviously takes the lead here with better image quality overall.
