[chemgear]

Gameplay is looking pretty nice, but I wonder if they should just lower resolution on the Xbone to stabilize the framerate and prevent the horrible screen tearing. They still have time but PC is looking the way to go. I wouldn't be surprised if the 360 is also "good enough" for most people. If you can't see 720p to 1080p, you probably don't notice a difference between a 360 or an Xbone.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/di...-tech-analysis

It may not be a gargantuan number as-is, but it pulls the game away from the ho-hum 1280x720 that was on most peoples' bingo cards - a step up, if not a remarkable one, in terms of the final image.

Titanfall is a healthy 60fps shooter as promised, but only as long as it's played with an on-foot Call of Duty mindset. With Portal 2's Source engine at its core, it's as fluid and responsive as you could hope for when pistolling Pilots and kicking AI grunts.

However, it all changes once you buckle into a Titan, and in this build we see lengthy passages of play (particularly by the end of a mission) falling within the 35-45fps range. Neither one of the levels on show is especially worse than the other in this regard, and it's clearly the barrage of alpha effects that ends up pressing the hardware too far.

It's also impossible to ignore the tearing that creeps up during such dips. Adaptive v-sync is in play, which taps in any time the engine detects a frame going over budget and missing a slot within its 60Hz refresh. Temporarily removing this lock helps to make control over the action feel smoother than it otherwise would, but at a big - and regular - cost to the overall presentation. As a game with a heavy focus on competitive multiplayer, these are clearly optimisation problems that need tackling before the game goes to market in March - with screen-tear high on the list.

In its current form, it's difficult to understand Titanfall's resolution choice considering the variable performance. As it renders at 792p, The game relies on the Xbox One's scaler to output at 1080p.

That said, it's unfortunate that once you stop to have a look around at the arena that the environment appears so clinical. Much of Fracture, for example, is built to a very strict and rigid wireframe, with no evidence of next-gen technologies such as tessellation to round off the more egregious corners. Shading is also largely missing, outside of baked-in shadows and ambient occlusion that fades in we near objects.

All of which leads us back to the assessment of the Xbox One version's fate. Titanfall is only a month shy of its final March release, and the tussle in this early beta is clearly between performance and effects-work. Given Respawn's reputation in the business, we'd hope frame-rate does indeed prove to be king. However, with recent suggestions of the internal resolution being pushed up higher to the 1600x900 mark, it's not clear where the GPU power can be found to maintain a large boost in pixel count while at the same time clearing up the frame-rate issues we find in the current 1408x792 version.

However, while the Xbox One beta has its own fair share technical quibbles, there is an undeniable entertainment factor to the game that takes precedence. It's a simple package, but the commitment to 60fps so far is strong enough to convince that the right talents are working on the project. In the meantime, while we have a firm handle on the Xbox One and PC versions of the game, we can't help but wonder how the Xbox 360 version will compare.