With the same games releasing on both SteamOS and consoles, Steam Machines will be the place to be for the best
graphical quality and performance in the living room.
Each involves a trade - off between
graphical quality and performance, but it's not always clear what each option does.
Not exact matches
By choosing «
Quality» (which is the default), the game will display in 1080p when docked
and run at 30 fps; by selecting «
Performance» instead, the game will sacrifice some
graphical power
and drop to 720p, but ramp up the frame rate to 60 fps.
Rocket League on the hybrid console has seen a huge
graphical improvement, now offering «
Performance»
and «
Quality» modes that run at 60 / 30 FPS respectively.
Online multiplayer supports 2 to 4 players with a choice from any of the 12 tracks in a single race or 4 races in cup mode including the championship points table; therefore reflecting the features found in single player even to the
quality of
graphical fidelity, sense of speed
and performance.
Performance runs at 60 FPS using dynamic resolution, while the new
Quality option limits the frame rate to 30, locks the resolution to 1080p docked
and 720p handheld,
and activates several
graphical feature, including Lens Flares, Light Shafts, Dynamic Shadows,
and Depth of Field.
The game has a plethora of options to adjust to get the right balance between
performance and graphical fidelity from anti-aliasing to shader
quality.
In a clear victory for
quality control Warner Bros., a publisher who has become well disliked among the gaming community for their attitude toward customers, has pulled Batman: Arkham Knight from Steam following a barrage of negative reviews destroying the game for its horrendous
performance and slew of missing
graphical features, all of which seems to stem from the PC version being developed by external company Iron Galaxy Studios.
Micro Machines: World Series» remote play
performance retains the
graphical qualities, audio
and general
performance from the PS4 version in single player
and multiplayer, although there are no control scheme optimisations as acceleration
and braking is mapped to the right
and left of the rear touch pad respectively which is still playable, but would have been much better suited to R
and L.
Before diving into the main topics of
graphical options
and performance, let's quickly cover all the other points that contribute to the technical
quality of a game.
The other thing was that I personally preferred to max out all the available
graphical options, frame - rate be damned, because the game is so beautiful,
and for me, at least in the case of this particular game,
quality trumped
performance.