id Tech 5 was designed from the ground up for 60fps gameplay, so what kind of results could be extracted from it now all the power of the new generation of consoles is at its disposal? With last week's release of Machine Games' Wolfenstein: The New Order, we finally found out. In our initial performance analysis, we went in search of the first cross-platform 1080p60 first-person shooter and while the game mostly delivered, the dicovery of a dynamic resolution suggested that, once again, PlayStation 4 had managed to trump its Microsoft rival.
After first isolating an obvious example of the tech at work on Xbox One, a more detailed look at the captures revealed that both versions of the game achieve their locked 60Hz update by adjusting the amount of pixels rendered at any given point, in effect balancing engine load in order to put consistent refresh and controller response first.
Having now completed our analysis, it's clear that the PS4 gains an advantage with smaller drops in resolution that occur less frequently than they do on Xbox One. Metrics in the area of 1760x1080 are found on PS4, while on the Xbox One this can drop to an extreme of 960x1080 in some scenes. This is usually identifiable by an increase in the amount of jaggies on screen, along with a slightly fuzzier appearance to the already gritty aesthetic that Machine Games employs throughout the game.
Wolfenstein: The New Order - the Digital Foundry verdict
John Carmack's pursuit of megatexture technology has come in for plenty of criticism over the years. Some believed that the texture-streaming issues and limitations in dealing with dynamic light sources and effects were too high a price to pay compared to the variety that the tech introduced into the gameplay. Others were disappointed in an id Software title that put veteran console technology ahead of high-end PC rendering. Wolfenstein demonstrates that given more powerful hardware to work with, id Tech 5 can still deliver a highly worthwhile experience.
The new game demonstrates that the engine is highly adaptable, with the quality of the artwork and the number of effects and light sources scaling up nicely to meet the demands of newer, far more capable hardware. While the rendering tech does feel a little old compared to the likes of Killzone Shadow Fall and Battlefield 4, this is still a good-looking game that plays very well - and the locked 60fps frame-rate plays a big part in that.
Outside of the more aggressive dynamic framebuffer on the Xbox One, there's little to separate it from the PS4 game. Shadow quality is slightly better on the PS4, but the artwork, effects and lighting are all basically identical. The PS4 holds up the closest in delivering a native 1080p experience at 60fps, so benefits from slightly more consistent image quality. As such, once again it's the PS4 release that is our preferred console choice. However, the differences between the two consoles are minor and Wolfenstein is really a worthwhile purchase no matter which one of these systems you own.
So many of these Face-Off articles result in a technical win for the PC version, and by any visual quality metric you choose, once again it is the 'best' release available thanks to its improved effects and the ability to support resolutions in excess of 1080p. However, it's hard work calibrating the game to play as consistently well as the locked frame-rate console versions. With their ability to tweak visual quality on the fly in order to produce the best 60fps experience available, it's actually the PS4 and Xbox One versions that are more immediately and consistently gratifying.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-wolfenstein-the-new-order-face-off
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