Tweet
There's been a lot of talk about Firewatch and its sub-par performance on PlayStation 4 over the past few weeks and with the recent release of patch 1.02, we felt it was time to take a closer look. Frame-rate issues may not seem like a big deal for a narrative-driven adventure, but with a title based so much on traversing the environment, a wildly variable refresh and intrusive stutter definitely marred the experience. A patch was needed sooner, rather than later, and last week, developer Campo Santo delivered.The game's initial sub-optimal state was both puzzling and disappointing, but to be fair, the developer was very open with the community regarding these issues. Members of the studio kept players up to date on problems as they were being addressed and the comprehensiveness of the fast-tracked patch is impressive - but what exactly went wrong in the first place and to what extent has the game been fixed?
A quick look at the launch code paints a clear picture of the technical issues surrounding the game. First and foremost, in its original form, Firewatch operated using an uncapped frame-rate with double buffer v-sync enforced leading the game to bounce between multiples of the 60Hz refresh rate. When pointing the camera in a less demanding direction, such as the sky, the frame-rate shoots up to 60 fps. Conversely, when looking forward, things snap back to 30fps or lower creating a very unstable level of performance. From the beginning we felt that a 30fps cap would help smooth things out.
Read more…
More...