- The first proper look at crimson desert The execution on the PS5 Pro has been shared.
- Digital Foundry tested the console version and praises its ray tracing technology in all three graphics modes.
- Performance mode, “general”, hits its 60fps target with some drop-off in populated areas
crimson desert launches next week for PC and consoles, and the first proper look at PlayStation 5 Pro footage has finally been revealed.
Pearl Abyss’ open-world action-adventure game is scheduled to release on March 19. Still, the only promotional material we’ve seen decently during the month has been on PC, even though the game is also coming to PlayStation and Xbox.
Finally, after months of waiting and some skepticism from fans about the game’s performance on console, Digital Foundry was granted exclusive access to crimson desert running on PlayStation 5 Pro and looks really impressive.
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“His [Pearl Abyss’s] “The BlackSpace engine delivers nothing short of extraordinary results,” said DF’s John Linneman, and while there are some “tricks” to be content with, “the overall impression is striking.”
“From the acting to the crowd behavior, the animation, the freedom, the foliage, the lighting, everything. It’s an awesome game,” Linneman adds. “And on PS5 Pro here, you don’t actually lose that much.”
On PC, PS5, PS5 Pro and Xbox Series
The ray-traced diffuse global illumination that was highlighted in the PC preview of DF, the per-pixel solution, is also enabled on the console, offering a fully dynamic lighting system powered by ray tracing, and the footage looks gorgeous.
Performance mode offers 60fps, and Linneman said it “puts up a good fight” and “generally” gets the job done, adding, “I was surprised at how good it was overall.”
Look
DF also notes that the frame rate drops in areas with large crowds and locations involving many non-playable characters (NPCs), and also dropped “significantly” during an early game battle in the region of 30 fps.
A similar problem can also occur in big cities, but Linneman said this is “not the norm at all” for the game. The Game Quality mode at 30fps and the Balanced option at 40fps also seem stable, with 60fps being more “challenging.”
crimson desertPerformance, Balanced, and Quality modes also target 1080p, 1440p, and 4K, respectively, with the first two using PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution) to upscale to 4K output. But DF said this isn’t the latest upgraded version of Sony technology expected to be added to the game, as we saw with Resident Evil Requiemso the results should be improved.
Linneman adds that he prefers to play in balanced mode, “but if the new PSSR is as effective as we think, the base 1080p of optimal mode can still offer an impressive experience at higher frame rates.”
“In terms of GPU scalability, the game works. Yes, the optimal and balanced modes use upscaling, but the base resolution is high enough that even the original PSSR looks good overall, minus some artifacts that we should expect to disappear with the updated PSSR,” Linneman said.
“In terms of CPU, that was a more pressing concern: current mid-range PC CPUs are considerably more capable than consoles. Here, the limitations can be felt more, but never enough to feel like the game is ‘poorly optimized.'”
It’s important to note that we have yet to see proper images of the PS5 and Xbox Series Yes, but DF said: “The signs look good.”
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