Games’ PS4 Pro Modes Being Detailed

September 9, 2016

With the announcement of the Playstation 4 Pro yesterday, it was confirmed that games would come with multiple modes, one to take advantage of 4k screens and rhe other to enhance a 1080p experience. While a large number of developers have yet to confirm exactly how their games will utilise this new power, reports and announcements have begun trickling through.

Jonathon Blow, for example, has just released a new blog post detailing how The Witness will receive a bump up to native 1080p and receive upgraded anti-aliasing, among other features, when running in 1080p mode. On the other hand, 4k mode will be up scaled from 1440p, resulting in more detail being obvious to the eye.

The best implementation looks to be Crystal Dynamics port of Rise of the Tomb Raider, with Digital Foundry confirming that the game will ship with three different modes you can select from. In 4k mode you will take advantage of the increased resolution and detail, while keeping a steady 30fps. The best part, however, is in the two separate 1080p modes the game will ship with. First, youu have 1080p with a higher unlocked framerate, which currently sits at 45+ frames per second. Otherwise, if you’re happy with 30fps, you can swap to at 1080p mode where the framerate is locked and instead all other graphical settings are turned up to ultra.

While exactly how developers implement these different modes seems to largely be up to themselves, I’m excited to see that whether or not you have a 4k screen there are still improvements to be found.