It's finally here. Or rather, it's been hither for a expert while but either way, Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain is finally available to all and sundry to play, enjoy and curiosity at. From a technological standpoint, the game interests us greatly. Even though Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes offered a look at the capabilities of FOX Engine and its overall performance in the open up globe, the outcome is at present roughly 18 months erstwhile. Kojima Productions would have had time to refine and optimize the engine for The Phantom Pain, specially to take reward of current gen consoles, while showcased just how well it performs in larger game-based scenarios.

The Fox Engine itself was adult by Kojima Productions to serve as a multi-platform engine for previous and current gen platforms going forward. The engine is meant to cutting downwards on the production time of such titles and has been featured in the likes of Pro Evolution Soccer 2014/2015/2016 every bit well as Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain. Despite frame rate drops in Ground Zeroes for previous gen consoles, the FOX Engine stood out for its material based rendering, photo-realistic detail and incredibly powerful nugget streaming.

Caput to caput comparison betwixt the Xbox 1 [left] and PS4 versions.

This immune for some awesome vistas seen in Ground Zeroes though there were limitations on the PS3 and Xbox 360. The PS4 and Xbox One were a different matter however, mixing 60 FPS frame rates with a 1080p resolution on the former and 720p resolution on the latter. Even the lighting organization, environmental effects, ambient occlusion, motion blur and draw altitude stood out amazingly well despite the somewhat limited anti-aliasing, similar looking buildings and express environmental devastation.

It'due south important to note that the PS4 version of Ground Zeroes was the superior one of the bunch only with The Phantom Pain, there's the PC version to consider too. Correct off the bat, the PS4 version has several advantages. Forth with a 1080p resolution and 60 FPS, it makes use of superior skin shading on character models. If you take a look at Kaz'southward face or for that affair anybody's face you will see that they give off a more subtle outcome compared to the Xbox One.

The PS4 version besides has much better motion blur than the Xbox One, however draw distances across both current gen consoles in Transitional islamic state of afghanistan and Africa remain the aforementioned. The game also features similar volumetric and alpha effects including object geometry and details. The FOX Engine'southward materials-based lighting results in flower and alpha effects on both the current gen versions. The PS3 and Xbox 360 versions compromise greatly on the above fronts for understandable reasons.

Metal Gear Solid five The Phantom Hurting: PS4 vs Xbox 1 vide comparing along with PC 4K and 1080p minimum frame rate benchmarks.

Konami has made a fairly big bargain almost the differences of Metal Gear Solid v: The Phantom Pain beyond different platforms. The Xbox 1 and Xbox 360 versions accept been compared to show off the differences in resolution, with the former being bumped upward to 900p resolution and the latter still stuck at 720p resolution. When comparing the Xbox One's resolution to PS4, image quality manifestly suffers a bit at 900p resulting into artefacts on nearby objects at times since the panel is upscaling information technology to 1080p. However the crash-land from 720p resolution to a native 900p resolution on the Xbox 1 version of Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain is much appreciated though. It'south a great improvement on the 720p resolution in Ground Zeroes and matches upwards better to the PS4'south native 1080p rendering.

Just like Ground Zeroes, the game uses hardware based AA which is close to FXAA post processing. Due to this image quality on consoles takes a slight hit merely the physically-based lighting is a treat to look at and Kojima Productions doesn't shy away from the several gimmicky effects, further enhancing the cinematic quality of the game.

Head to head comparing between the PS4 [left] and PC versions.

Unfortunately, there are some drawbacks. Shadow dithering can exist observed at times which seems to be a major problem on current gen consoles. The implementation of ambient occlusion is also inconsistent at some places. Fortunately, both consoles maintain a solid sixty frames per 2d operation with some drops during more strenuous and action packed sequences.

For a change, the texture filtering quality is very similar for PS4 and Xbox One. Ironically, information technology looks poor on both consoles with the PS4 offering a slight reward. In contrast the PC version takes the lead here with ameliorate Anisotropic Filtering.

Then we come up to the PC version, which received an Nvidia GeForce 355.82 WHQL Game Ready driver at launch. This enabled the use of Nvidia's Dynamic Super Resolution which renders the graphics at college resolutions similar 4K and and then downsizes it dorsum down to fit your monitor, delivering crisper details overall. Of course, 2K and 4K native resolutions are also supported here. The PC version also takes advantage of ShadowPlay and HBAO+ Ambient Occlusion, the latter being a giant improvement over SSAO. Other graphical options include motion blur, post processing, lighting, furnishings, ambience occlusion, textures, model detail, texture filtering, shadows and Auto settings for frame rate with V-Sync included as an selection.

Metallic Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain'due south PC Graphics Settings and Options.

We tested Metallic Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain at 1920×1080 resolution on an Intel Cadre i7-5960X and xvi GB of RAM and achieved the following frame rates beyond differing GPUs:

1920×1080 [minimum fps]:

GEFORCE GTX 980 4GB: 55 fps

RADEON R9 290X 4GB: 48 fps

RADEON R9 290 4GB: 45 fps

RADEON R9 7970 3GB: 39 fps

GEFORCE GTX 950 2GB: 31 fps

GEFORCE GTX 750 Ti 2GB: 23 fps

3840×2160 [minimum fps]::

GEFORCE GTX 980 4GB: 24 fps

RADEON R9 290X 4GB: eighteen fps

RADEON R9 290 4GB: sixteen fps

RADEON R9 7970 3GB: 12 fps

GEFORCE GTX 950 2GB: nine fps

GEFORCE GTX 750 Ti 2GB: 7 fps

Both versions all the same resemble each very close when it comes to depict distance, shadows and frame rate operation which is good news overall. The weather effects, volumetric effects, lighting effects during day-night cycle, rain and sandstorm and several other alpha, volumetric and physical effects are identical beyond all iii versions. As it stands, Metal Gear Solid five: The Phantom Hurting does indeed evidence off the capabilities of the Fox Engine on current gen consoles, even with the odd few limitations in anti-aliasing and ambient apoplexy.

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