The Titanfall beta debuted with a not-so-standard resolution of 792p, and many speculated as to what the resolution of the finished game would end up being. According to a recent interview by Digital Foundry with Respawn lead engineer, Richard Baker, Titanfall will ship at 792p.
When Digtal Foundry asked Baker about whether we should expect post-beta resolutions shifts, he responded but stating,”We’ve been experimenting with making it higher and lower. One of the big tricks is how much ESRAM we’re going to use, so we’re thinking of not using hardware MSAA and instead using FXAA to make it so we don’t have to have this larger render target.”
“We’re going to experiment. The target is either 1080p non-anti-aliased or 900p with FXAA. We’re trying to optimise… we don’t want to give up anything for higher res.” Baker told Digital Foundry. “So far we’re not 100 per cent happy with any of the options, we’re still working on it. For day one it’s not going to change. We’re still looking at it for post-day one. We’re likely to increase resolution after we ship.”
Baker’s response regarding ESRAM is particularly interesting. Respawn seems to be emphasizing proper utilization of ESRAM for Titanfall, rather than focusing solely on raw GPU power. Digital Foundry writes that in theory, dropping multi-sampling anti-aliasing (MSAA) from a 1408×792 framebuffer could free up enough ESRAM to allow for a 1080p image to be rendered. However, Digital Foundry ran a technical analysis of the Titanfall beta,which illustrated that the beta had issues maintaining a steady 60fps at 792p. Would it be possible for Respawn to bump up the resolution of Titanfall without compromising the game’s framerate?
“A lot of the performance is on the GPU side. There’s still room for optimisation and we’re still working on it,” Baker stated. “Ideally it would have been a rock-solid 60 all the time when we shipped but obviously when there’s big fights going on, lots of particle effects, lots of physics objects… we’re still working to condense the systems, make them more parallel so we can hit 60 all the time, ideally.”
Though ESRAM plays a key role in resolution, Baker’s comment suggests that the GPU is key for making the game perform well. Due to numerous graphical effects working in tandem, it’s difficult for the company to hit a solid, constant 60fps. However, Baker did comment that we can expect the released product to see some increase in performance from the beta.
“There was an issue with decals taking a lot more time than they should which we fixed for launch,” Baker commented. “The worst-case scenarios are better, I think. The average is probably about the same as the beta.”
Even though Titanfall will launch at 792p, it is likely that this may be changed in the future with patches and updates. Stay tuned to see what Respawn has in store for the game throughout the coming weeks and months.