Horizon: Zero Dawn PS4 Pro enhancements detailed

Horizon Zero Dawn is an action RPG set in a lush, post-post-apocalyptic open world in which humanity is no longer the dominant species. Machines, not mankind, rule the Earth.

We’re very excited about HDR, 4K TVs, and PS4 Pro in general, but to be clear, the game we demonstrated at the past two E3s was running on standard PS4 hardware. We’re dedicated to making a game that looks great regardless of the model it’s played on; it will look beautiful on PS4, and will look even better on PS4 Pro — particularly if you own an HDR-compatible 4K TV.

As we showed at the PS4 Pro reveal event last September in New York City, the extra power of the new hardware allows us to get even closer to our vision for a lush and vibrant living world. The extra detail in the natural environment and the enhanced colors really add to the experience.

There are the enhancements for the PS4 Pro:

Better image quality for 1080p TV owners including supersampling: This is a very high-quality anti-aliasing technique, which internally renders at a higher resolution (close to 4K) before shrinking it down to the final 1080p resolution. More detail survives before the image is shrunk down to 1080p, resulting in smoother edges, virtually no jaggies and a more stable image.

Enhanced quality of shadow maps and increased quality of anisotropic filtering: This is a technique which increases the quality of texture sampling, resulting in more detailed environment textures.

Full support of users with 4K TVs, outputting at a much higher resolution: The game is being rendered on a 2160p checkerboard, which is a special technique that brings forward many subtle details, from stitching on Aloy’s outfit, individual leaves and branches swaying in the wind, kilometers away in the distance, and more detail in all the machines and NPCs in the world.

High dynamic range (HDR) support: a brand-new feature that enhances the range of colors we can display. This is a new feature for most, and it will ensures a high degree of color fidelity that normally gets lost in the conversion process. According to Guerrilla, “The only thing that you can compare HDR with is reality.”

Check out some Screenshots:

“We normally have to do a lot of work in the engine to take an internal high dynamic range image and then make it suitable to be displayed on a normal,” explains explains Michiel van der Leeuw, Technical Director, Guerilla Games. “A lot of colour fidelity gets lost in the process. If you own an HDR-enabled TV, we don’t have to lose that data and you’re looking at the image in its full glory, with brighter and deeper colours, more contrast and vibrancy, in its pristine state. The benefits are truly awesome.”