Killing Floor 2Â for Xbox One X Shows First Signs of Limitation
Earlier this week, Tripwire Interactive officially confirmed that the critically-acclaimed team shooter Killing Floor 2 would launch on Microsoft’s Xbox One console on August 29th, priced at $/€ 39.99 and £29.99 with all of the previously released content packs (The Tropical Bash, The Descent and elements of The Summer Sideshow). Now, what about Killing Floor 2 for Xbox One X? Read on.
The same press release boasted that Tripwire had been working on Xbox One X specific enhancements, including 4K support. That’s the great debate: how to achieve native 4K. The trick lately is to run everything at 1800p and call it QHD+. For example, PlayStation 4 Pro runs Killing Floor 2 using a checkerboard rendering at 1800p. To get more on the scoop, wccftech reached out to Tripwire Interactive in order to find out more details.
Dave Elder, Senior Graphics Programmer on Killing Floor 2, says:
“Xbox One X was a very smooth and easy platform to develop for. It took very little engineering effort to get our base Xbox One game running on the Xbox One X. It took maybe 4 hours of programming effort total.
Killing Floor 2 runs at native 1800p, fixed resolution (no checkerboarding) on Xbox One X. We did experiment with true 4k rendering, but the frame rate drop was a bit too significant. 1800p provides the optimal balance between visual quality and performance in Killing Floor 2.
We don’t have a specific frame rate target for XBox One X, although the game does run at higher frame rates than the base Xbox One, even at 1800p resolution. We will be using Ultra textures on Xbox One X. We are also increasing the resolution of our shadow maps and shadow draw distance.”
When asked if Tripwire would introduce HDR support on any platform, the answer was negative.
So the consensus: Xbox One X is a little better than the Playstation 4 Pro at rendering at higher resolutions in native 1800p. The bad news: native 4K is not achievable on Killing Floor 2 without significant framerate drops. But maybe that’s because Killing Floor 2 is an insane game with a million zombies, bullets, particle physics, lightmaps, and enough to be considered a benchmark test for the highest-performing graphics cards. Still, games are only going to become more demanding. I’d like to see each of you leave a comment with your thoughts on the discussion.