Digital Foundry takes on Star Wars BattleFront II, 4Pro / Xbox One X
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/d...-battlefront-2-xbox-one-x-pc-ps4-pro-analysis
In many respects, we're looking at a virtual re-run of what we saw recently with
Bethesda's Wolfenstein 2. The id Tech 6 engine shares a clutch of technologies also found in Frostbite, designed to maximise the visual return on all systems while targeting 60 frames per second action. First amongst them is dynamic resolution scaling, where both Wolfenstein 2 and Battlefront 2 adjust pixel-counts on the fly in order to sustain performance. PS4 Pro tops out at 2560x1440 on both titles, while Xbox One X pushes further - much further - delivering a maximum of 3840x2160, or full-fat 4K. That's a 2.25x increase in pixel-count, a surprising uplift bearing in mind the respective specs of the two systems.
Of course, dynamic resolution scaling could conceivably close the gap, but the variance in resolution between Pro and X remains wide: based on several measurements we took, the range varies between 1296p and 1440p on the Sony console, rising to an 1800p-2160p window in the same scenes tested on Xbox One X. The numbers are stark then, but another technology shared with id Tech helps to mitigate matters to a certain extent - temporal anti-aliasing. The Frostbite implementation isn't quite as intensive as id's, but it does the job in smoothing off the jaggies and eliminating the most obvious, glaring signs of upscaling.
The net result is, again, similar to Wolfenstein 2. Star Wars Battlefront 2 on Xbox One X sits nicely on a 4K screen, offering up an excellent presentation overall, even if dynamic scaling ensures that you're not seeing a native resolution image all of the time. Meanwhile, PlayStation 4 Pro is significantly blurrier as its framebuffer is upscaled up to the machine's 4K video output. There's a kind of double-whammy for Pro users here as texture filtering quality is intrinsically tied to native resolution, so not only does the Pro look blurrier overall, but ground artwork can lose even more detail, further muddying image quality.
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The scope of the issue isn't exactly huge. Watch the video above and you'll see that it's literally a small collection of clustered frame drops resulting in some occasional, mild stutter that can manifest in any of the game modes. However, the point of the dynamic scaler is surely to ensure a consistently locked 60 frames per second throughout and it's this level of flawless performance that PlayStation 4 Pro delivers in like-for-like areas where Xbox One X does not. Bearing in mind that the frequency of the drops isn't exactly prolific in the scenes we tested across both platforms, the chances are that further tweaking to the dynamic resolution technology could iron out the stutter, but as good as it is, Xbox One X isn't quite the conclusive winner in all areas right now.
However, for console users with 4K displays, the new Microsoft console delivers a significantly improved presentation overall compared to its Sony counterpart, and the gulf in clarity and pixel counts is just as surprising as it was with
Wolfenstein 2.
wish they just pushed all the way to 16AF
