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The Division's recent beta impressed us on a visual level on both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, particularly in terms of its lighting, effects work and solid performance - but it's on PC where Ubisoft Massive's technology really comes to the fore. You're going to need top-tier hardware to get the most out of the game at 60fps, but initial impressions suggest that there's enough scalability in the engine to get a good experience across a range of hardware.But let's talk image quality first. On a basic level, The Division offers up the standard goodies we expect from a PC port: the ability to run at an arbitrary resolution of your choosing, plus enhanced anti-aliasing options. Four levels of SMAA 1x post-processing are available, combined with two forms of temporal AA - stabilisation and super-sampling. The latter option is the one to pick, drawing upon visual information rendered in previous frames for superior edge-smoothing, while stabilisation is a much more basic affair with less refinement. Frame-rate caps are available too at 30, 60 and 120fps, though unfortunately these are not accompanied by proper frame-pacing when v-sync is engaged, meaning Nvidia owners will need to dip into their GPU control panels to activate this at a driver level.
Certain other benefits come to the fore by running the PC version on maxed. Firstly, there's the draw distance; we have an 'extreme streaming distance' slider in its options, which affords us fewer instances of pop-in on shadows and distant objects. From the very first helicopter fly-by scene, it's apparent PC already loads much of the geometry on show ahead of time, while PS4 still visibly draws these elements in on-the-fly. The extent of the difference is less apparent while walking New York's streets, but it's one distraction PC can happily side-step, as long as greater GPU resources are available.
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