While we’ve known that Thekla Inc’s excellent first-person puzzle game The Witness would be getting a patch to support the PS4 Pro, we now know the exact specs. This comes from a blog post by the talented designer himself, as creator Jonathan Blow went into detail on how The Witness PS4 Pro will offer a better experience.
For starters, the game will now feature HDR support. Although, this update will actually add it for regular PS4s as well as the Pro model. Blow says that as long as the game detects an HDR TV, that the game will boot in the HDR mode. PS4 Pro owners playing on a 1080p television can expect improvements as well as the game will now render at 1080p, 60fps, 4x MSAA, which Blow notes is “substantially higher” than the regular PS4’s 900p, 60fps, 2x MSAA.
The most interesting news, however, was what the update will bring for owners of a 4K television. The game will feature two separate modes, one focusing on framerate, while the other focusing on visuals. I’ll let Mr. Blow describe the specifics:
If you have a PS4 Pro, and are outputting to a 4k TV, then you get a choice of two modes from the options menu:
(a) 1440p 2x MSAA rendering of the game world, upscaled to 4k, text and UI rendered at 4k, 60fps
(b) 4k 2x MSAA rendering for everything, 30fps
The Witness PS4 Pro patch is expected to arrive sometime in November, although the “exact release date for the patch” is currently unknown. Blow states that once the release date is finalized. he’ll announce it on the game’s website, but they are currently “nailing down all the little details.”
(Source: Jonathan Blow)
