With the PlayStation 4 Pro having been unleashed on the populace, you have to wonder which games benefit the best from its added power. There will likely be a few titles left behind and not brought up to support the Pro’s more powerful hardware. However, there are also a number of AAA titles that do…even if it’s not in earth-shatteringly new ways.
Given the different types of rendering techniques to output at 4K, including checkerboard rendering, it’ll be interesting to see how current PS4 games manage to match up. This is especially so in the case of DICE’s Battlefield 1. And honestly, with effects like dynamic destruction, tons of effects, improved AA and higher resolutions, one would expect DICE to really showcase its magnum opus in glorious 4K.
On the PlayStation 4, Battlefield 1 ran at a dynamic resolution from 1330×750 to 1800×1020 while targeting 60 frames per second. Frame drops could be observed in some of the more action-packed sequences so the frame rate was far from locked (it was still pretty decent for the most part however). Temporal anti-aliasing made for better image quality overall and as such, having that kind of fidelity makes up for the somewhat lower resolution. Think last year’s Star Wars Battlefront, which was praised for its image and animation quality, to get a better sense of the quality of Battlefield 1’s visuals.
This is where the PS4 Pro version steps in. It utilizes checkerboard rendering to upscale to 4K resolution but it also appears to be using a dynamic frame buffer, shifting resolutions even when running in 4K. This doesn’t sound all that different from Deus Ex: Mankind Divided which runs at a dynamic resolution on PS4 Pro despite also utilizing checkerboard rendering.
Nevertheless, if you want the best possible experience, your best bet is to run Battlefield 1 on a 1080p display. The resolution is native 1080p with a locked 60 FPS frame rate and it’s hard to go wrong with that combination. That being said, the other big improvement was the particle effects on PS4 Pro. It also seems like the Pro version has less shimmering, jaggies and texture streaming issues.
Everything else is pretty much the same between both versions and though excellent frame time is to be expected regardless of the mode you’re playing in, the lack of any other major new additions is kind of disheartening but not majorly surprising.
Then again, this is probably going to be the pattern going forward for most developers. Other techniques can be used to upscale to 4K and they take less time than checkerboard rendering. While DICE can be commended for bringing upscaled 4K to the PS4 Pro version of Battlefield 1 so early, this does appear to be a case of slightly boosting the resolution and frame rate for the sake of 1080p gamers more than anything else. Again, the game looks amazing in 4K and is worth a look.
What do you think about the quality of Battlefield 1’s visuals on PS4 Pro? Let us know in the comments below.
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