The Red Dead Redemption 2 gameplay trailer released last week is visually stunning. Spectacular vistas, exquisite fine detail and gorgeous lighting are on display in almost every scene. It’s sensible to wonder if we’re looking at in-game footage when a trailer looks this good, but a note at the trailer's end assures us we are. Since the trailer’s release, many sources have confirmed the footage was recorded on a PS4 Pro.
Both Rockstar and Sony advertise that the trailer showcases RDR2 in 4K resolution. This is surprising given that the Pro usually falls short of rendering games at native 4K (3840 x 2160). “4K” for the Pro usually means a less-than-4K render that’s upgraded with something like checkerboarding or a temporal reconstruction technique. Does the RDR2 gameplay trailer show native 4K footage playing on the Pro? Digital Foundry took a look with footage provided by Rockstar.
Let’s get the bad news out of the way. The footage shown in the trailer is not rendered at native 4K. Instead, the pixel count on the horizontal axis is cut in half resulting in a 1920 x 2160 render. In other words, the Pro removes every other vertical line from what would be a full 4K image. That’s a 12.5% increase in pixel count over the native 1440p (2560 x 1440) resolution that is observed for many games on the Pro, but it’s a 50% drop in pixels from native 4K. It’s a substantial loss. Digital Foundry notes that checkerboarding may be in play to improve the image but the evidence from the trailer is inconclusive.
What the RDR2 trailer lacks in terms of resolution, it makes up in visual quality. Draw distances are deep with no discernible pop-in. Textures on materials like cloth and leather are richly detailed and interact exquisitely with light. Volumetric lighting is beautifully effective, if a little heavy handed at times. Characters and animals are finely animated and interact with the environment smoothly and naturally. The trailer is a visual showcase.
On the performance front, the RDR2 trailer delivers a very clean profile. Frame rate is capped at 30 fps and Digital Foundry’s tests showed zero variance from this target. It’s a solid lock. Moreover, frame times were also rock steady. While 60 fps may have been preferred, an unvarying 30 fps with no frame-time jitter is better than an alternative that exhibits variable frame rates and times.
The Red Dead Redemption 2 trailer stands as one of the best examples seen to date that resolution isn’t everything when it comes to producing beautiful video game graphics. However, as good as it looks, it would look even better if it rendered at native 4K. The only console capable of a full 4K render is the Xbox One X. If Rockstar’s engineers can pull it off without falling back on dynamic resolution scaling while keeping the exceptional visual quality seen in the footage running on the Pro, the One X enhanced version of Red Dead Redemption 2 is going to be a show stopper.
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