Watch Uncharted: The Lost Legacy running at 60fps
Check out Digital Foundry's first PS4 Pro 4K HDR video.
Naughty Dog's Uncharted: The Lost Legacy launches tomorrow and it's well worth checking out - we've already posted our take on the title, but with refinements to our video workflow combined with some useful tools provided in-game by the developer itself, we can push the game's presentation to the next level. On this page, we've posted a video of The Lost Legacy's PS4 Pro 4K output, in full HDR and running at 60 frames per second. Before we go on, we've got to stress that this isn't real-time gameplay - just like Uncharted 4, it's a 30fps title - but regardless, it still looks absolutely beautiful.
Thanks to YouTube's recent implementation of HDR support, we now have the means to distribute high dynamic range content on a robust, global platform - but there's a catch. Specifically, it's all about support for the format. As far as we're aware, viewing HDR content on YouTube right now is only possible via streaming with Chromecast Ultra, or else accessing the video on the YouTube app for higher-end Samsung displays (last year's KS and the recent MU line-up should do the trick). Alternatively, supporters of the Digital Foundry Patreon can head on over to digitalfoundry.net, download the 2.34GB file, copy it to a USB stick and run it on an HDR display directly. Alternatively, Xbox One S and Shield Android TV owners should be able to watch the video with no problem.
Non-HDR users watching on YouTube get a tone-mapped version of the video, effectively converting the content to standard dynamic range. You still get a great presentation though, with the full 60fps frame-rate in effect. Regular Digital Foundry readers may remember that we've pulled off this trick before, showing Uncharted 4 running at 1080p60. The methodology for The Lost Legacy is the same: game modifiers include the same slow motion mode found in the older game. We capture with this in effect, then run the footage at double-speed, giving a silky-smooth, game-changing presentation.
It's a time-intensive technique first brought to our attention by YouTube and NeoGAF's Kanuuna, and really pushed to the next level here, where user TQT1995 employed the slow-mo option to capture all four hours, 17 minutes of the game's cut-scenes - an awe-inspiring effort that apparently took two weeks to complete. Our project was altogether smaller, though moving from 1080p to 4K required around 900GB of ProRes capture across two SSDs, edited at the equivalent of 120fps.
While we can boost the game's frame-rate, the PS4 Pro's 1440p native resolution remains a lock - but thanks to Naughty Dog's excellent temporal anti-aliasing solution, the presentation still holds up beautifully on a 4K screen, resolving impressive levels of detail with none of the saw-tooth jaggies or upscaling artefacts you see on some sub-native Pro titles. Also of interest is that in slow motion, the real-time cutscenes also play out at a native 60 frames per second with the 200 per cent speed-up in place.
The implication is that Naughty Dog's state-of-the-art motion capture isn't tied to the title's 30fps target - it's designed for scalability. Compare and contrast with, say, LA Noire running on PC at 60fps. The gameplay's smooth, but facial animation runs at half-rate. Perhaps a few years on, we'll see Naughty Dog's PS4 title return to the next-gen PlayStation, running at the 60fps frame-rate seen here, but at full-fat 4K - a successor to the excellent Nathan Drake Collection.
We've tried to keep spoilers to a minimum, concentrating on the first couple of chapters of the game along with select areas of the game Naughty Dog has already showcased in its pre-release media, so we feel that watching the video shouldn't spoil the experience that much if you've been keeping up with the game through its development, or if you've been watching some of the video reviews out there. But we're fairly confident in saying that this will be the first time you've seen the title running at 60 frames per second - and it is glorious.