'The Witcher 3' Xbox One Version Employs Dynamic Scaling To Emulate PS4's 1080p Capability

CD Projekt RED, the polish developer of the highly anticipated RPG "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt," has released a brand new gameplay trailer showcasing the Xbox One version of the game. The trailer has caught gamers by surprise because it showcases Microsoft's prime console achieving what everyone assumed wasn't possible – 1080p visuals. In reality, the Xbox One doesn't really render the game in Full HD, but uses a clever post-process trick dubbed dynamic scaling to achieve the illusion of a higher native resolution.

With Nintendo bowing out of the contention with a generation old Wii U, the console wars are being fought between the dominant players Sony and Microsoft with the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The best way to establish the technological superiority of a console is to see which one can render the most graphically demanding game out there. The game in question is CD Projekt RED's "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt," and so far PS4 has the upper hand on the Xbox One because Sony's flagship console can run the game at 1080p, while Microsoft's pride and joy cannot.

The Xbox One's inability to render "The Witcher 3" in 1080p was a sore point in the Microsoft camp. According to an earlier International Business Times Australia report, Microsoft fans had expected the new DirectX 12 SDK to address that shortcoming of the console. In response, CD Projekt RED had pretty much ruled out the possibility. However, the developer had assured that it will be trying out every avenue to optimise Xbox One's performance. The dynamic scaling feature does just what the developer had earlier promised, by working within the limitations of the console to deliver improved visuals.

The video embedded below gives insight into how the faux 1080p effect achieved by dynamic scaling improves the 900p native Xbox One version to look somewhat comparable, if not as good as the 1080p resolution of the PS4 version. The result isn't comparable to the natively Full HD PS4 version, but it's still an improvement over original Xbox One version which was locked at 900p and 30fps.

"The video you're now watching is grabbed directly from an Xbox One console. We've been working to give gamers an even better experience on Xbox One and, on day one, we'll bring you dynamic scaling from 900p to 1080p," CD Projekt RED said in a statement, as reported by Polygon. "We're not much more than a week before launch, but we're still fighting for every line of code—we want gamers to get the best possible experience we can deliver."

Gamespot reports that the developer is currently optimising "The Witcher 3" across all platforms to eke out the last bit of performance, even as the game is less than a week away from launch. Considering that the game has already gone gold, these optimisations are most likely to be passed onto gamers in the form of a day one patch.