It’s been over six years since Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege released to critical acclaim but disappointing initial sales. Through word-of-mouth, exposure via talented YouTubers and streamers and an avalanche of positive press Siege pulled off a pulled a proverbial 1v5 and became a monster hit. While the servers have cooled, it retains a sizeable and dedicated following. In addition, Rainbow Six Siege still draws in new players tempted by the challenge it promises.
Today, we compare its PS5 release with that of PS4 Pro. PlayStation 5 screenshots are on the left throughout this piece; PS4 Pro shots are on the right. Both sets of screenshots were captured at 4K then downscaled using the same process.
Even before we compared screenshots we could tell the upgrade was mostly limited to resolution and framerate. The PS5 aims for a native 4K but fudges it during pans and other large-scale object movement. PS4 Pro has a far softer image in every scenario.
More than a Render (In my Little Red Book)
However, there is a little more to it than rendering resolution. There is certainly some improvement to textures on PS5. The tyres of Hereford Base (above) have a flat, ill-defined thread on PS4 Pro but a sharp-looking bump map on PS5.
Similarly, in our very first image (top) we can see the PS4 Pro’s (right) overall lack of sharpness in render as well as lesser textures in its vertical wall in the centre of frame. The poorer textures show themselves time and time again, as well as some nerfs to LoD and lower resolution bump and relief mapping.
House is another area where bump mapping and texture quality is so reduced that environment seems flatter on PS4 Pro. Player models in menus (below) also suffer noticeably from reduced texture quality on PS4 Pro. The fabric layer applied to the clothing texture is a faint detail but one that you can’t unsee once you have taken it in.
Two Modes
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege comes with two modes on PlayStation 5. Prioritise Resolution tries to keep the render as close to a native 4K as possible. Prioritise Framerate aims for 120 frames per second while downscaling more aggressively than the other mode.
The options menu of Rainbow Six Siege recommends players select Prioritise Framerate mode when playing online but I found it didn’t work well with my 4K60 television and it looked choppier than Prioritise Resolution mode.
However, Prioritise Resolution often fails to hit 4K. Even while standing still, outdoors scenes have a jaggy or two that the sharper-eyed or those sitting close to a massive TV may notice in play.
At Least it’s Free
While there is a little more polish, a little more sharpness and a lot more frames, we can’t help but feel like this upgrade took close to the minimum effort. While the upgrade is free, new Rainbow Six Siege players jumping into the game on PS5 may wonder if they’ve downloaded the correct version. We’d love to know if many other players find Prioritse Framerate to be as choppy on their 4K60 televisions. My LG model uses one of the most common panels of the last few years so surely others are finding the same.
It’s annoying when a whole graphics mode is unusable. It’s confusing when it’s the mode we are supposed to use for the main game mode of Siege.
What little extra that has gone into other elements is spotty with some scenes that we captured being virtually identical beyond PS5’s superior render resolution and some scarcely noticeable improvements to texture quality. Ubisoft have been offering a 4K texture pack on PC for a while now. This PC pack isn’t actually worth the 20GB download – something that seems to have foreshadowed this upgrade.
Thanks for reading the latest in our comparison series. We encourage you to read your fill of comparison pieces but may we divert you to FIFA 21 or Nioh 2’s comparision articles – these are both free upgrades and show what devs could achieve with the tiniest bit more effort. Is getting to 4K with a higher framerate enough or are we being harsh and possibly entitled, considering it’s a free upgrade? Have you played both on the same day? Could you tell the difference aside from the framerate? Let us know in the comments below…
