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curl-6 on 02 April 2017
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Nuvendil said:
curl-6 said:

The fact that it's sub-1080p on PS4 suggests to me that the game's resolution is less a matter of hardware and more a matter of the game not being quite as optimized as it could be. I don't know if I'd necessarily call the devs "lazy" though, it could simply be that they didn't have the time or resources to get all 5 SKUs as refined as possible. 

That said, I think there's a lot to be said for higher quality pixels rather than simply more pixels. Despite its low resolution, it's still an attractive looking game in my opinion. The first patch has apparently already improved graphics quality on the Switch version, reinstating shadowmaps that were missing at launch:

Oh and yeah, I think that this is a by product of relying a bit more than we may like on Unreal Engine 4's built in optimization tools.  I'm working on a game with the engine now and it has a lot of built in scalability that makes basic, ground level optimization pretty easy stuff.  But if you want to get it running the best it can, that requires more ingenuity, time, and resources.  I imagine the Switch version relies on it the most.  I can say with confidence the shadows that were seen at launch were based on the default medium mode in Unreal Engine 4 (seen those shadows *many* times :P ).  Good to see they are already looking to do better and further optimize.  The polygonal density and number of effects plus the high quality AA are all nice and if they can get it closer to or at 720p eventually, that would be lovely.

Yep, my month of exile if officially up today haha. Good to be back. :)

While I can't vouch for it myself, as I haven't worked on the engine or extensively played any games that do, I have heard a lot about how good UE4's temporal AA is, and I recall Digital Foundry saying that it's quality does mitigate Snake Pass's low res to an extent. Sometimes less pixels with better image treatment gets you better results than more pixels with worse image treatment. On 360 for example, Alan Wake is only 960x540, but due to x4 MSAA, it actually ends up with nicer image quality than some AA-free 720p games.