With the arrival of Sony’s upcoming next generation PlayStation 4 just around the corner, it seems like the comparisons between the Sony-based console and a heavily upgraded PC are still on, and staffers at studio Ready at Dawn have stated that the PS4 will be ‘more powerful than most computers on the planet.’
Speaking in an interview with Game Informer, Ready at Dawn Tech Director Garrett Foster and Art Director Nathan Phail-Liff talked about the upcoming generation of console gaming with regards to the PS4, and how it can be compared to a highly modified PC with the latest specs.
“The power speaks [for] itself. It’s more powerful than most computers on the planet, and it is the most powerful console on the planet. With that, they allow us bare-to-the-metal access [hardware free of pre-loaded software]. We can do whatever we want to,” Foster stated.
“Even the head of ATI a couple months ago came out and said graphics are getting held back by a software layer that PC developers just can’t take advantage of. What we’re able to do is take it to a new level where we can literally take advantage of every cycle and try to make it as best it can be.”
“From an art standpoint, with every generational shift you can do more of everything," added Phail-Liff. "You can nickel and dime – ‘Oh we have this many more polygons and significant more textures.’ There’s this standard order of magnitude growth on the whole detail of level. But some of the standout things for us, going from the PS3 generation to the PS4, are the shading and internal models. That’s a huge thing.”
“On PS3 there’s a lot more approximations of how objects look and respond to light. With the PS4 we can implement a much more reality-based, advanced shading model. So metals aren’t just shiny, they actually look like the physical samples in the real world. So that’s something that, for getting polygon and texture budgets just makes everything from lighting to physical objects really shine.”
Ready at Dawn is currently working its upcoming third person action title The Order: 1886, which takes place in an alternate history surrounding a group known as "The Order" and its pursuit to stop monster-like inhuman creatures and ancient foes threatening man’s existence.
The game, a PS4 exclusive and scheduled to release some time in 2014, is set in a universe where the industrial revolution came about as an effort to win a centuries-old war.
Sony’s PlayStation 4 is currently scheduled to release on Nov. 15 in North America and Nov. 29, 2013 in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.