At least Techland has implemented an extremely competent LOD (level of detail) system here - even at console settings pop-in never becomes a particularly severe issue. Gameplay critical elements, such as buildings necessary for platforming or zombies, are drawn out suitably far with little to no visible pop-in that would impact the experience. Most of the pop-in is limited to non-critical items such as trees and props which don't prove particularly distracting as they pop into view during gameplay. For our test system at least, we feel that dropping this slider to around 35 per cent is a good compromise that provides a reasonable view distance without bottlenecking the whole system. There's a tendancy to ramp up all PC settings to the max, then complain about dire performance - as it is, Dying Light is fairly scalable. On as close to console-level settings as we can get, a Core i3 PC with a GTX 750 Ti managed a console-like 30fps at 1080p.
The bolded is important. People really do this and it is irritating.
So let's get down to basics. As we mentioned in our performance analysis, Dying Light operates at a rendering resolution of 1920x1080 on PS4 while Xbox One is in the region of 1536x1080, with both seemingly using a variant of SMAA T2X anti-aliasing. That's usually one of the best forms of post-process anti-aliasing available but in Dying Light, there are some noticeable 'ghosting' artefacts.
Despite the resolution deficit, image quality is very good on Xbox One - conceivably, this rendering set-up should allow the developers to cram five buffers at 4bpp (bits per pixel) or two FP16 render targets plus depth into the Xbox One's 32MB ESRAM, with a fairly minimal impact on image quality. The PC version, of course, offers full arbitrary resolution support as one would expect. Unfortunately, the only included anti-aliasing option in the PC version closely mirrors the console version, suffering from the same temporal ghosting issues. We've seen some excellent implementations of SMAA, but the ghosting here is too severe to overlook, particularly at 30fps. Some additional AA options would be much appreciated on the PC side.
Despite our criticisms, Dying Light is a beautiful game in motion and works well across all three platforms. The animation in particular is very well done - motion has real weight and the way melee weapons physically connect with enemies is very effective. Backed up by excellent post-processing effects, densely populated environments, strong lighting effects and gently blowing foliage, Dying Light impresses even in the face of its drawbacks. Everything feels streamlined and solidly pieced together while the game itself is a joy to play.
As things stand, anyone with an interest in the game should be able to enjoy it on any of the three platforms. Between the two console versions we definitely have to give the nod to the PS4 version with its improved frame-rate and better texture streaming, its higher resolution, and a near complete lack of screen-tear. However, anyone with a decent gaming PC should definitely stick to the computer version as it offers excellent scalability alongside further improved visuals. Ultimately, we were impressed with Techland's first release on this new generation of gaming hardware and look forward to seeing more of Chrome Engine 6 in the future.
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