Rise of the Tomb Raider's Xbox One X patch has been fully detailed earlier this week during Gamescom 2017. Let's recap:
- HDR display support for more vibrant and accurate color representation technology
- Spatial audio support, including Dolby Atmos, for true 3D audio
- Enhanced texture resolution for Lara Croft, NPCs, and environments, leveraging additional memory offered by the Xbox One X
- Improved anti-aliasing for immersive realistic details
- Improved volumetric lights
- Improved volumetric lights
- Improved reflections
- Enhanced foliage
- Upgraded polygonal detail
- Amplified texture filtering
If you were interested in how all of those stacked up against Sony's PlayStation 4 Pro version of Rise of the Tomb Raider, though, Digital Foundry just posted a video analysis.
As you can see below in the snapshots we captured, there are some instances where the Xbox One X version enjoys a massive boost in definition compared to PS4 Pro.
It should be noted that console users are able to choose between 4K resolution, enriched visuals and high frame rate (60fps) modes. However, 4K resolution is native on Xbox One X while PS4 Pro uses checkerboard rendering; the biggest difference can be probably found in the enriched visuals mode, though, since Xbox One X manages to keep a full 4K pixel count through temporal reprojection while PS4 Pro has to dial down the resolution to 1080P.
Digital Foundry notes that this technique isn't quite as effective as the checkerboard rendering 4K mode on PS4 Pro, but it has the noticeable benefit of higher tessellation, more refined shadows and overall higher "graphics settings".
Finally, the high frame rate mode also holds up better on Xbox One X: whereas during the final chapter PS4 Pro's version of Rise of the Tomb Raider hovered around 50fps or so, on Xbox One X frame rate is pretty much locked at 60fps even in these more chaotic sections of the game.
It will be interesting to compare the final build of Rise of the Tomb Raider on the Xbox One X with the game's PC version, which even sports high-end features like NVIDIA's VXAO (voxel-based Ambient Occlusion). Hopefully, with the game receiving HDR support on console, the developers can add that to PC as well as it was planned but never released.
