The Witcher 3's Xbox One day one patch improves frame rate at the cost of visuals/cutscenes - Report

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The Witcher 3’s 588MB day one patch improves the frame rate found in the Xbox One version, but comes at the cost of various visual elements, including shadows, texture filtering, and the playback of pre-rendered cutscenes, according to a report by Digital Foundry.

After comparing the game before and after the day one patch, Digital Foundry states that applying the Xbox One patch introduces “aggressive stuttering” to the game’s pre-rendered cutscenes, causing videos to play as low as 22fps.

Texture filtering during the initial tutorial sequence is also said to have been “downgraded” after installing the patch, leading to blurrier textures. The site claims that this isn’t an issue beyond the opening sequence, however.

Shadows are said to have been affected by the patch, too, with some shadows “missing in spots on patch 1.01”. The site speculates that the difference could be linked to the optimisation of draw distances.

Frame rate, however, is alleged to have been improved, with the game said to at 30fps or above for the most part. The dynamic resolution introduced in the patch doesn’t appear to offer much improvement over the earlier 900p target, however, with Digital Foundry stating that the Xbox One version only seemed to render at full 1080p during the title screen and pre-rendered cutscenes. The game is believed to run at native 1080p on PS4.

“The Witcher 3 is predominantly a 900p game, and the only scenes we’ve found to run at a full 1080p are the in-engine rendered title screen, and the video cut-scenes,” Digital Foundry says. “Even reducing the GPU load by looking directly up to the sky shows the game is still rendering at a native 900p. We do notice some indoors scenes rendering at what seems to be a higher resolution than 900p, but even here, it is clearly not a full, native 1080p output.”

The site has yet to test either the PS4 or PC versions, though, and it isn’t clear whether similar issues are introduced following the application of the day one patch in either of those two versions.

Regardless of the differences, however, the site states that the post-patch version is “clearly preferable in most regards”. Digital Foundry’s full report on the Xbox One day one patch can be found here.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt launches on Xbox One, PS4 and PC tomorrow.

Source: eurogamer.net