One of the clear highlights of the PS4 unveil last week was the live demo of Killzone: Shadow Fall. For fans of the PlayStation, it looked like an amazing sign of things to come. But for the PlayStation haters out there, or just those who have become jaded and cynical with games in general, many were either unimpressed or simply unconvinced.
And hey, it's not like we haven't had smoke and mirrors at video game pressers, so any skepticism is ultimately warranted. But that's where Digital Foundry comes in. Previously, they gave us the full rundown of the Wii Mini, and this time, they put the microscope on the aforementioned demo. And the result? Mighty encouraging.
"All material we have available suggests that the new PS4 Killzone runs at a rock-solid 30 frames per second at 1080p full HD resolution."
As expected, Digital Foundry's rundown is exhaustive and through. First they looked back at the PS3, which began with full HD looking games. Meaning 1920×1080 resolutions and 60 FPS. But the following seven years saw a significant shift; sharper textures, higher-poly counter environments, fancy lighting tricks, and advanced physics have forced games to adopt sub-HD frame-buffers and 30 FPS, if we're lucky.
So what of the future? Well, if Shadow Fall is any indication…
"Fast forward to the present, and we should take it as read that full HD is now the standard. Killzone: Shadow Fall is set to wave the 1080p banner when it arrives, and based on close, frame-by-frame scrutiny of the trailer, we can confirm this target is being [realized] fully here, giving us a crisp level of image quality we seldom see outside of PC gaming."
The rest of Digital Foundry’s analysis can be found here and is a must read. Especially if you can makes heads or tails of the immense amount of technical data they lay out.
