If you’ve been impressed with the lighting in Alien: Isolation, you’ll feel right at home. The highlight of SOMA is the engine lighting technology.
#Uncharted 3 puzzle Ps4
Both versions use ambient screen space occlusion or SSAO and feature soft shadows.Ĭomparison of face-to-face screenshots between PCs followed by the PS4 version of SOMA.
#Uncharted 3 puzzle Pc
The texture quality also looks better in some places for the PC version.
Texture filtering is better in the PC version since it supports AF x16 while the PS4 version goes up to AF x4. In terms of anti-aliasing, the PC and PS4 versions use a custom FXAA solution to maintain per-pixel sharpness in the edges and do a great job overall. Stuttering issues could be noticed in places and overall performance was inconsistent. That being said, the performance was not consistent.
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A Radeon R9 290 2x AMD GPU for 1080p resolution and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 for 4K resolution were used and neither encountered any problem reaching 60fps.
#Uncharted 3 puzzle Patch
Hopefully Frictional Games is working on a patch because something like that stifles the very idea of a “seamless environment”.Īs for the PC version, we tested the game on an Intel Core i7-5960X with 16 GB of RAM. The problem is actually due to the engine loading other sections of the area from the console memory and this also happens in the PC version (a loading icon may be noticed when it occurs). Volumetric effects, especially in areas with water, could contribute to dripping, but it’s pretty hit and miss overall. However, random increments in frame gain and loss can sometimes be observed – frame rate sometimes hit 33 FPS and went down to 27 FPS in some places. The resolution is 1080p, which is really beautiful. The overall optimization brought to SOMA meant that a variety of GPUs would be able to run it without a hitch.Īfter getting a bit of a while with the PS4 version, we found out that SOMA’s frame rate was sticking to almost 30fps with V-Sync in use. As such, it doesn’t affect the overall look of the game much, but taking into account the processor speed of the PS4, Frictional dumped on the GPU as much as possible while also using multi-threading. While global illumination is one of the new features in HPL Engine 3, Grip said it was limited to spherical harmonics and was implemented late in development.
The reasoning was understandable – Frictional had some issues running the game at 60 FPS in some places and Considering the overall slow nature of the gameplay, we didn’t think there would be a big difference overall. Interestingly, SOMA was set from the start to run at 1080p resolution and 30 FPS rather than 60 FPS on the PlayStation 4. The goal is of course to create a homogeneous environment as a whole while incorporating a better scripting system and better pitch. Perhaps the biggest novelty is the engine-level streaming capability which aims to avoid loading screens when players travel between levels. Please select 1080p and 60fps for the best possible video playback quality.įrictional’s Thomas Grip actually spoke to GamingBolt earlier this year about some of the new features in HPL Engine 3. HPL Engine has been Frictional’s main engine since the days of Penumbra: Overture and HPL Engine 3 is certainly the next big step in its evolution.ĭirect comparison between PS4 and PC versions of SOMA. field and other pre-existing effects like SSAO and delayed shading. SOMA is different, however – it uses HPL Engine 3 for in-engine terrain generation, HDR lighting with filmic tone mapping, global sunlight and shadows, level scattering, dynamic terrain, depth of view. Frictional returned to the forefront of development about five years later with another SOMA horror title, and we couldn’t help but wonder about the visuals fueling this bizarre new entity.ĭespite all the praise Amnesia: The Dark Descent received, it wasn’t exactly the prettiest game released at the time (although it was far from the ugliest).
This has always been evident in the Penumbra games, but Amnesia: The Dark Descent captured this very well in a frightening way, thus starting what could be considered a revival of the horror game. EEven though Frictional Games has developed a handful of titles since its humble beginnings in 2006, the developer has made a name for itself when it comes to creating a scary atmosphere.