Sony’s new PlayStation 4 Pro is now available since November 10th and the question remains if Tom Clancy’s The Division will make use of its new power and other graphical features it provides today. Because questions like these are popping up every now and then, we tried to collect as much information as possible and would like to share it with you to be on the same page.
We all probably know that the dev-team’s focus was mainly on Update 1.4 in the last 1-2 months to improve the core of the game. At the same time the team was working hard on preparing the next major expansion called Survival, which is expected to be released on Tuesday next week. Counting these things together lets us safely assume that there wasn’t much free time for implementing additional features with lower priority the game as well as the community could benefit from.
DirectX 12
The latest build of The Division on the PTS included a new switchable video setting called “DX12 Renderer“, but it wasn’t further mentioned in the preliminary patch notes for Update 1.5 and Survival, probably because we shouldn’t expect it for 1.5.
DX12 is something we are testing on the PTS and are gathering as much information about it for a future implementation.Ubi-gabelikes, Community Manager
Although this doesn’t necessarily mean that DirectX 12 will be part of the next update, the developers are definitely playing around with it and it might be added later on to the final patch notes, or as Ubi-gabelikes forum post says, provided in a future update.
Regardless of that, players have already started to create benchmark comparison videos between DX11 and DX12, like this one. Also tech magazines like PC Games Hardware have reported about it in detail. Overall it seems to be performing better on old CPUs and lower resolutions while the performance could be slightly lower on higher resolutions. Keep in mind though that these were created based on the build that was running on the PTS!
Another indication for a release of DX12 could be NVIDIA’s latest GeForce Game Ready 375.86 WHQL Driver, which is optimized for The Division’s upcoming update and should provide a faster and smoother experience as described in their related article.
NVIDIA Ansel
The same goes for NVIDIA’s new in-game photography and screenshot capturing tool Ansel, which is currently only available for a small amount of games since the launch of their new Pascal architecture in May 2016. Imagine being able to create professional screenshots like the following one with Free Camera, Super Resolution and 360 Capture – only some of Ansel’s features and definitely something players and content creators would highly appreciate.
According to the official website of NVIDIA, Ansel should also come to The Division someday. This was posted a couple of months ago though.
Our revolutionary Ansel technology is coming soon to a number of top games, including … Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s The Division.
We haven’t heard anything official about it since the game’s release, however the latest PTS version is including a new file called AnselSDK64.dll and this presentation actually shows live footage with activated Ansel in The Division. One of the reasons for the delay could be a problem with the seamless transition into the Dark Zone and the cheating potential when abusing features like Free Camera. Similar to DX12, chances are there that it will be added in the near future!
PS4 Pro Update
Last but not least a quick note regarding the PS4 Pro. Community Developer Hamish Bode has reacted to a question about a PS4 Pro Update for The Division in the last SotG, but unfortunately there is no new shareable information at this time. An Update for the Pro version could, in theory, bring 60 FPS, 4K-upscaled gaming and HDR, but only the developers know what their Snowdrop Engine is capable of to achieve.
Summarized, we will have to wait and see, but it’s worth to mention that The Division’s current state would allow the developers to work on aforementioned as well as other features; and of course on improving the game!
