Ben-DutkaWe know Electronic Arts and developer DICE will show off Battlefield 4 next week at GDC (March 26). But as you might expect, details are already starting to leak out.
The information comes from a tipster in the ChipHell forums and is cited at WCCF Tech . Some of these technical details are bound to impress franchise followers. Well, to some extent, anyway.
It appears the Frostbite engine will once again return but in contrast to Battlefield 3 , the new entry will utilize 80% of the engine's total power, as compared to only 30% used in BF3. Furthermore, the Frostbite 2.5 engine on display in BF4 will "feature much more enhanced visuals with PC being the lead platform for the game." Well, that's nothing new. As for performance, the game should maintain a steady 60 frames per second at 720p resolution on both next-generation consoles. This isn't quite what everyone wanted, though, as many were hoping for the max 1080p/60FPS target on the new hardware.
BF4 should also feature dynamic weather effects like rain, fog, haze and even sandstorms, and all of it will be random. Each map will see these effects depending on the conditions. This new iteration will show off the upgraded Destruction 4.0 system, which allows for a highly destructible environment. Lastly, the setting should be China 2020, and China and the USA will be the main factions in multiplayer. As for the single-player, we're looking at a 5-6 hour campaign, which I suppose isn't much of a surprise, either. Shooters are all about multiplayer these days.
Click through the link above to read up on more of the multiplayer details but we should know everything there is to know on the 26th. Battlefield 4 will be ready to go later this year.
Related Game(s): Battlefield 4
I really hope this is only the "new console" syndrome in that it's only at 720 and games will eventually go 1080. Because what's the point in a "next gen" if games will continue being 720.
There's a long list of "points" aside from just resolution. If higher resolution were the only difference we would not really need a new console at all, would we?
There is absolutely no reason for a developer to limit a game's resolution to 720p with the PS4 and Nextbox, all titles should EASILY handle running natively at 60fps and 1080p.
Hardware limitations are no longer going to be an excuse going forward, only developer laziness.
I think it's the matter of multiplatform titles. I may be wrong but the Nextbox and the PS4 isn't exactly equal according to the rumors.
This may be another generation where games will be best optimized in the Playstation. Basically, we'll have to again depend on exclusives to see what next gen can really bring to the table. Multiplatform will probably be reduced to the least common denominator.
Btw, I hope you mean they should be able to easily run current gen games at 60fps and 1080p, as it isn't necessarily true with next gen consoles, especially the rumored Nextbox. Increasing graphics and physics data to near photo realism, while increasing frame rate and resolution requires requires an exponential increase in power, and that's something probably only 1 thousand dollar plus hardware can achieve without hiccups.
That's not to say the PS4 may not be able to match or come close to it. I honestly don't know right now. Everything we've seen is just a teaser. But I just want to get the point out that there's more to it than just resolution and frame rate. Next gen capability can't simply boil down to those two specs. We have to SEE it, then judge.
@Daus,
I know the rumors say the Nextbox will be more oriented towards casual gaming and other living room experiences, but there is no reason to believe that it will be that much different as far as hardware specs are concerned, and I don't see software straining either system for a while.
720p = fail
Yeah resolution is a fail, but do note that these next gen games will run higher calculations of textures, shadowing, anti-aliasing, and such. In other words, better graphics. So even though we may not see 1080p/60fps in all the games, we're going to see a significant increase in visuals.
It's not like we're running the same graphics/physics calculations as the current gen.
720P = 921600 pixels
1080P = 2073600 pixels
It is understandable to go for a higher FPS when the difference between 720 and 1080 is not as small as one would expect.
However, I feel that the PS4 and next XBOX are powerful enough. My laptop is an ultrabook and plays Far Cry 3 a lot better than the PS3. IT IS AN ULTRABOOK. It is less than 2CM thick….
The 8GB of GDDR5 RAM will be wonderful.
Sadly though, 8GB of DDR5 will not convey any more CPU or GPU cycles to the system which is what is apparently required by this engine for 1080p60.
Whatever the case, even if the PS4 was 10x more powerful than the Nextbox, multiplatform games will probably only run with what the Nextbox is only capable of anyway.
That's what happened with the superior PS3 last gen. I don't think it'll be any different this upcoming generation, unless console games have the ability to run minimum, medium, high, max settings, or something… as PC games do.
but but but we're talking about "PC-in-a-console-box" thing here, PC games don't run at the lowest common denominator factor here. Last gen games (PS3,360) did not run the same on the PS3 as they did on the 360. Sure, a handful of them did but developers did not take advantage of the PS3's power because they were too dumb to learn the architecture. This time around, where the "consoles" will be easier to develop for they have no need to dumb down the games just because "one console cannot run it the same" because that's not nearly what happened last gen.
USA vs China?
720p60 not 1080p60? but I thought that the next generation consoles were beasts? All those extra cores and stuff, what happened? could it be that reality is not as good as the hype?
I feel that the power is there.
Think of phones, do you really see your phone working like a 1.5 GHz quad core beast?
The software is not efficient enough at utilizing this power yet.
PC gamers have always experienced this. Their gaming rigs can do more than what they do in reality. Unfortunately, the games are never optimized for one standard.
That is where I expected PS4 to kill it.
city96 you do realize that PC gamers have been playing most games in 1080p (or higher) for many years, right?
City, the power is where exactly? The CPU is approximately as strong as CellBE in raw computing terms. The GPU is better than RSX, but like with RSX, the TFLOPS figure is somewhat inflated.
The GPU resources in the PS4 should be better than 720p60. That's really no better than a well coded PS3 game can push. Have we really waited 7 years for a system that's only moderately more capable than PS3?
@Highlander
This is just the start.
They will learn to optimize the game engines and such to perform better.
Did you ever think the PS3 could pull off something like The Last Of Us or GoW3 when you first saw Resistance:FoM?
@Crabba
I know that. My laptop can play with settings beyond that.
A lot of PC gamers play across three screens which is a far higher resolution than any HDTV. But they are shelling out £200/$300 for a GPU alone.
City, next gen consoles are a bit different though. Developers, if they so wish may be able to optimize to the console's full potential early on, as they're very much accessible now, where as the PS3 actually took time to learn. However, not all developers may do that, so you would have a point there.
An example is the Killzone demo we saw running on the PS4, which only utilized about 2GB of RAM, and not the full 8GB. How much they're going to utilize the PS4 by release is still in question, but I personally think developers won't go all out with early games and reserve some power for sequels and such.
this wouldn't be happening if Sony had gone with Nvidia…jk.
gotta love it how people keep smoking on the optimization pipe.
sure it helps allot over time, but optimization is not going to turn a Volkswagen beetle into a Ferrari Enzo!
dont forget last gen most games were running on engines not properly designed for current systems, so that caused the poor launch titles.
the differences between launch titles and the final games for the system before it gets replaced is going to be FAR smaller this time!
if ps4 launch titles are 720P, i find it really hard to believe that ps4 final titles will be 1080P.
sure there will be a title here and there, but your not going to see every ps4 title suddenly switch to 1080P 4 years into the ps4s life cycle!
"As for performance, the game should maintain a steady 60 frames per second at 720p resolution on both next-generation consoles."
Wait, What?!? Battlefield 4 on NEXT-GEN consoles won't run at 1080p??
Does everyone still think the PS4 is everything they were hoping for, SuperCharged & 8GB of GDDR5 RAM 'n all?!
Remember, next-gen consoles are all PC hardware so there's no 'well it'll get better down the road when devs get used to the hardware' as normal with consoles..
To be fair, this is a multi-platform title. It doesn't necessarily mean PS4 exclusives may not be able to run 1080p/60fps. Sure it may not be able, but nothing's concrete right now.
well daus26 like I said in the first post, the next-gen consoles are basically just a PC in a box, so there's no new tech for developers to learn, they've already mastered this tech for many, many years so what we see is more or less what we'll get. Sure they might be able to optimize/make new better engines and what-not, but not nearly the same way as with the PS2 & PS3…
I know what you mean by that, as I've pointed out in my other post. My comment here has nothing to do with that. This is regarding a multi-platform game. We don't know the Nextbox's specs and whether it'll again hold back the PlayStation's full potential.
We're hearing about one multi-platform game running in 720p/60fps and you're already going to conclude that's how it'll be for every PS4 games in the next years? You don't even know how much they're utilizing the PS4 full potential. Just because the potential is easy to reach, it doesn't mean all developers will completely utilize it early on. If that's the case, they would've done that early with 360 games from its "easy" PC architecture, but as we know, even 360 games improved considerably over time.
Again, this is a multi-platform game. We can't judge the PS4's full capabilities by such games, unless the 360 will also have GDDR5 RAM and about 7.5 GB of it dedicated to gaming. PS4 exclusives is the best judgment for that. Unless I hear developers say they've maxed out the consoles, it's too early to say.
Last edited by daus26 on 3/20/2013 11:35:49 PM
Actually daus26, the 360 is not standard PC architecture, even though it's closer to a PC than the Cell, the 360 actually also uses a custom IBM PowerPC chip.
There really is no reason why the next-gen xbox should hold back the PS4 the same way the 360 did PS3, since both are PC based it would be very simple for devs to simply enable additional features/higher res on the PS4, if it actually turns out to be more powerful than the "nextbox".
Of course now that Sony has basically released the specs for the PS4, MS would be crazy to announce a new xbox that's so inferior to the PS4.
"You don't even know how much they're utilizing the PS4 full potential." – Look, there's no way that game will not utilize close to the PS4's full potential, since it will be made on & for PCs with far more advanced capabilities and performance than the PS4.
Multiplatform or exclusive will basically be irrelevant for the quality of next-gen games. The laws of the PS3 exclusives vs multiplatforms will no longer apply.
About the 8GB of RAM thing, I've said it before and I'll say it again, 8GB of RAM will never magically make games run at 1080p instead of 720p, because RAM is just internal storage, not a CPU or GPU that provides the actual performance.
Only 720p next gen? What a joke. I was hoping to be an early adopter of a 4K tv for higher resolution games.
We all should just wait and see what this game will look like. I'm not going to judge a game based on the fact that it will only run 720p/60fps. For all we know, it might be so visually appealing that we're going to forget it's running at those settings.
For those that play games up close with a monitor though, it may be bothersome to see those pixels, lol. I just hope that it's going to a solid 60fps. Whether it's 30 or 60fps, framerate drops are what really bothers me. It has to be locked and consistent.
Not quite sure what a lot of people are expecting out of a ~$400 console. Even now running BF3 and Crysis 3 at 1080p 60fps with stable framerate takes a $300-350 graphics card.
Last edited by enjoi on 3/21/2013 1:24:58 AM
No, that's not true. Check Toms hardware benchmarks on Battlefield 3 (1080p with detail high performance mode) here: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2012-vga-gpgpu/13-Battlefield-3-DirectX-11-B-Performance,2968.html
One of the cards with 60fps or more are Radeon 7850s which you can buy for between $100-$150, pretty far from any $300-350 cards you're referring to.
Oh come on guys. The console is not even out yet, ffs. This is just ridiculous. It *is* allowed to use your heads.
Did the first games on the current generation consoles define their capacities in any way, neither on the X360 nor the PS3?
Use your heads, indeed. Did any of the current-gen consoles use standard PC tech? No.
Is Battlefield 4 built for standard PC tech? Yes. Will the PS4 be standard PC tech? Yes. The conclusion is fairly simple.
did the ps3 use a architecture developers have been using for decades?
did the ps3 use engines created specifically for it?
no it dident, it was stuck with outdated engines which is why it really suffered with launch titles.
only reason we saw such a big leap a few years in was because developers started writing engines specifically designed for next gen systems.
isent it funny how when CE3, FB2, ect, engines designed speciffically for next gen systems, once they released, games started looking significantly better?
ps4 has a massive advantage with the standard architecture, and a even bigger advantage because the engines the games will be running on were designed to be running on that system!
current systems did not have that luxury.
look at halo reach and halo 4.
reach was running on the engine originally created for the original halo for f*cks sake!
halo 4 was a totally new engine, and its made 4 one of THE best looking games out there!
the gap between ps4 launch titles and ps4 end titles just before its replaced, is going to be a hell of allot smaller than it was this gen!
I'm talking about current gen, not PS3 specifically. What was the X360 built on? We saw the same quality rise over the years there. And how optimized is the Frostbite engine for the PS4 hardware? Does it even take into account this graphics chipset *at all*?
There's no need to answer those questions, I guess haters are gonna hate no matter what. But really, this is just silly.
Last edited by Beamboom on 3/21/2013 10:30:37 AM
ill say it again.
"look at halo reach and halo 4.
reach was running on the engine originally created for the original halo for f*cks sake!
halo 4 was a totally new engine, and its made 4 one of THE best looking games out there!"
I can't look at them cause I don't own a X360, I don't even know what came first, Halo 4 or Reach. So basically I have no idea what you talk about, sorry.
What I however *do* know is that the next generation will experience shoddy ports and unoptimized engines during the initial period just like eeeevery other generation has. It's just how it is.
Just wait and see! History will repeat itself again. It has to.
Last edited by Beamboom on 3/21/2013 12:08:54 PM
I'll repeat again: Did any of the current-gen consoles use standard PC tech? No.
Is Battlefield 4 built for standard PC tech? Yes. Will the PS4 be standard PC tech? Yes.
So there will be no such thing as "ports", shoddy or not. All games, both for PC, PS4 and Xbox720 will be built on the same engine, the same engine they've been fine-tuning for both AMD & Nvidia GPUs for years & years.
So no, history will not repeat itself, because circumstances are completely different this time. If the PS4 was powerful enough to run Battlefield 4 in 1080p there is no reason why it wouldn't be able to do it from the start.
Unfortunately like I've been saying before though, it makes perfect sense that they won't be able to get 60fps framerates, 1080p resolution and improved shading & effects with the poor GPU specs revealed by Sony.
dude, there going to be using engines they have been working on for 2+ years now, on architecture they have been working since they started uni!
how can the results be the same when the parameters are completely different!?
720P 60FPS, or 2560X1440 60FPS 32xMSAA, VSYNC, ATF, higher texture resolution, higher particle effects, ect, ect.
yea, next gen systems are a amazing total beast, especially when they cant even manage 1080P 60FPS!
PC games managed that, what 10 years ago!?
sorry, but $ony and M$ have f*cked themselves up the a$$ ROYALLY!
this has been by FAR the longest weve ever had to wait for a console transition.
consoles have by FAR the most competition now with mobile, cloud gaming, the rise of the PC, ect, ect.
and to rise to the challenge and convince people to buy a console over the competitors, this is how $ony and M$ respond?
they make us wait the longest we ever had, then reward us with lukewarm milk!?
yea, they really do want to kill themselves!!!!!
what happened to the technological marvel, the alien system sent to us from space, the system that would cost 3 times more if you were to buy a PC with similar specs!?
i could build a PC that embarrasses the ps4 for 800 bucks, a likely launch price, out of last years technology!
let alone when new chips such as nvidias 7 series GPUs finally release.
and here i was hoping next gen consoles would be offering ultra HD, or at least ray tracing, soft body physics, advanced post processing effects, high anti aliasing.
sigh.
$ony and M$ really have turned into ninty!
im starting to think if you pulled on iwatas face a mask would come off, and you would find out its actually father ken!