Watch Dogs Legion on Xbox Series S to Run at Dynamic 1080p Resolution - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 04 November 2020 / 2,217 Views
Lead programmer at Ubisoft Galvin Whitlock in an interview with Wccftech said Watch Dogs Legion on the Xbox Series S will run at a dynamic 1080p resolution. Ray-tracing will fundamentally be the same on all platforms and only experts will spot any differences.
"The Highest target resolution on Xbox Series S for Watch Dogs Legion will be 1080p (dynamic)," said Whitlock.
"The fundamentals of the ray-tracing are the same across all platforms that support it," Whitlock added. "For RTX on PC, we do ray-tracing for rougher surfaces in more situations. Ray-tracing relies on a simplified version of the world that we trace rays into. This has been optimised individually for each platform to maximise the number of rays we can process.
"Overall, the look is similar on all platforms supporting ray-tracing, but side-by-side, only experts will be able to spot differences."
Watch Dogs Legion is now available for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC via the Epic Games Store and Uplay, and Google Stadia. It will launch for the Xbox Series X and S on November 10 and for the PlayStation 5 on November 12.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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It would probably be best if the game had options. Like ray tracing disabled for 60 fps or resolution. However, if their goal was to show off next gen graphics, I think dynamic 1080p and ray tracing was a good choice. I mean ray tracing for this game is pretty stunning and previous gen consoles can't emulate that.
1080 with Raytracing is what expected in Series S
Does that mean the ceiling or floor is 1080p? Because it is odd that so early in the gen Series S is receiving sub 1080p games.
Understood. But well it is Ubi so probably the engine isn't that optimized thus needing to lower the resolution on Series S. I was expecting sub 1080 only by the middle of gen when even Series X would have several games being under 4k.
@DonFerrari
Expect the best performing games at the middle of the console lifecycle. Usually games perform the worst at the beginning and the end of the lifecycles.
At the beginning devs are unfamiliar with the hardware, they are using new and unproven features and drivers are not optimized yet. At the end devs tend to stress the hardware too much. The middle of the generation is the sweet spot.
Well we already knew Yakuza on Series S 900p/60 fps. So I'm not surprised Watchdogs is dipping below 1080p due to the ray tracing.
Like I said before, developers will simply have to decided what is best for each title. The Digital Foundry video looking at the PC version showed ray tracing does greatly enhance the presentation. Therefore resolution had to be impacted to push visuals.
This is true Pug, we have DF saying in several titles their pixel counting got confusing because it was hard to really detect the pixels (so sure a 900p could be perceived as much more), and also agree that with the novelty and all I would rather have good RT than resolution. And that is certainly is a good differentiator between Series S and X1/X1X
Agreed, the effects used to improve a low resolution is certainly worth considering as well. I would assume Series S will utilize newer options with low overhead.
"ray tracing will be the same on all platforms", ahh, Ubisoft style parity as par the course, like it was with texture res with most of the Creed series.
so when they say on the box nextgen games and specify ray tracing, and a highlighted 1440p gaming, what will consumers think when they pick this up and see "1080p" ?
so when they say on the box nextgen games and specify ray tracing, and a highlighted 1440p gaming, what will consumers think when they pick this up and see "1080p" ?
so when they say on the box nextgen games and specify ray tracing, and a highlighted 1440p gaming, what will consumers think when they pick this up and see "1080p" ?
Most likely they are being lazy and using assets of the base PS4 with RT enabled instead of using X1X. Same way the BC of Series S will use X1 instead of X1X. Probably to align with MS message that Series S is a 1080p machine.
I'm skeptical about how capable the Series S is compared to the Xbox One X. I think its a mixed bag, in practice some aspects my be better than others.
Thus far I am getting little reason to believe it trounces the Xbox One X in GPU power. For example, it only runs select OG Xbox and 360 games at 1440p, even though the hardware is capable of 4K. Meanwhile the Xbox One X runs the same content at 4K. So I am curious to see what it does in practice.
Pug for some reason MS decided that Series S uses the base X1 BC instead of X1X, even though I would think it could handle X1X. My guess is ust to keep aligment with 1080p console without creating confusion with older games being 4k.
I'm guessing the primary reason the Series S runs games like a Xbox One S is because it simply doesn't have the power to run games like a Xbox One X. I'd guess the RAM and GPU just weren't up for the task. The Series S actually has less RAM than a Xbox One X.
Something I find interesting is the Series S doesn't completely handle BC like a Xbox One S. The Xbox One S runs OG Xbox games at about 960p, while all Xbox 360 games were native resolution. The Series S will apparently run OG Xbox games at 1440p and select Xbox 360 at 1440p.
Furthermore, the Series S will improve some Xbox One games. MS already demonstrated Fallout 4 running at 60 fps on Series S. I think its certainly possible some games may even get a resolution to 1440p via some emulation level, much like OG Xbox and select 360 games will.
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