[chemgear]

In case anybody is getting the Witcher on consoles (Day One patch effects on the Xbone - article is also updated with the PS4 at the bottom):

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/di...-day-one-patch

After a weekend of testing The Witcher 3 on Xbox One, it's fair to say installing its day one patch (version 1.01) is something of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the 588MB file improves frame-rates slightly during play, while fixing minor bugs scattered across the game. In many ways it's a more polished experience with the patch - notably we have less geometry pop-in during cut-scenes, fewer instances of flickering shadows, and a great many more tweaks elsewhere.

But the downsides pack a punch too. It's apparent after switching between the game's default and patched states that these improvements come at a cost. Chief among these is the aggressive stuttering during pre-rendered cut-scenes.

Encoded video files stutter horribly after patch 1.01 is installed, with drops to as low as 22fps causing the playback to lurch in a manner that's impossible to ignore during any action. We've tested this several times with and without the update, and in every case an unpatched build of The Witcher 3 delivers a much smoother return, even if it's not perfectly locked at the intended 30fps.

Indeed, even with the patch removed, these videos still stutter owing to frame-pacing issues. However, the choppy playback on patch 1.01 is a greater evil overall

Xbox One's dynamic resolution scaling may also help to uphold this level of performance - in effect before and after the patch. In theory, this allows the framebuffer to switch between a 1600x900 resolution to a native 1920x1080 on the fly, seemingly based on GPU load at any given point. However, in practice this doesn't switch as much as we'd expected - The Witcher 3 is predominantly a 900p game, and the only scenes we've found to run at a full 1080p are the in-engine rendered title screen, and the video cut-scenes. Even reducing the GPU load by looking directly up to the sky shows the game is still rendering at a native 900p. We do notice some indoors scenes rendering at what seems to be a higher resolution than 900p, but even here, it is clearly not a full, native 1080p output.



UPDATE 19/5/15 14:03: We've now had the opportunity to test the 1.01 patch on PlayStation 4, and can report that the FMV stuttering issue introduced in the Xbox One day one patch is much less of an issue on the Sony platform - video playback is much more consistent. Engine visual settings appear to be a match between the two consoles but curiously, the PS4 version does appear to run with a capped 30fps, giving a more consistent update than its Xbox One counterpart. We can also confirm native 1080p resolution throughout.