The dream of upgraded textures is not dead!

[Balmung_Griffin]

Interview with Shoichi Matsuzawa (Final Fantasy XIV Lead Project Manager)

"The PS5 open beta is bringing a lot to the table in terms of upgrades, but we aren’t stopping there—the team is looking to add even more in the future.

Matsuzawa: “We are thinking of eventually upgrading in-game textures in phases and are starting initial preparations for that update.

However, we do need to keep in mind that other platforms, including the PlayStation 4 version, are still in service. Since FFXIV is an MMO, we need to place some emphasis on being able to simultaneously render player characters and their equipment, while still ensuring everything works smoothly. We do need to take care when planning major updates like this and start with testing and verifying it all works well.

Plus, assets that we created nearly ten years ago didn’t factor in the possibility of being displayed at the high resolutions available to us today, so we have to think about how to revise quite a massive amount of assets efficiently."

More at:

https://blog.playstation.com/2021/04...-need-to-know/

[Sotaris]

Kinda old news but it is nice at they are moving forward and we'll get a higher res UI in 5.5.

[Enla]

I'm glad to hear they're still considering it. Though they could absolutely get around the frame rate concern for older systems/consoles by making the updates with the texture packs opt-in for awhile like LoTRO does.

[linayar]

However, we do need to keep in mind that other platforms, including the PlayStation 4 version, are still in service.

As a low-end PC user, I think that he didn't need to call out PS4 like that as people might ignore the "other platforms" part.

Then again, maybe he did just to not leave out PS4 users and to get them to upgrade to PS5.

[PMSJordan]

Wonderful news! FFXIV has great art design and still looks good for an MMO imo. However, some of the textures do look like soup lol. Any upgrades to them would be very appreciated.

[Sotaris]

I'm glad to hear they're still considering it. Though they could absolutely get around the frame rate concern for older systems/consoles by making the updates with the texture packs opt-in for awhile like LoTRO does.

Yeah it would be a good compromise. I think their reason not adding a system like that is to don't have to maintain 2 versions of the assets. Although they could have a AI scaling system in place.

[Vahlnir]

The PS5 is more than capable of having higher textures while running the game almost flawlessly. I'm pretty happy to see that they may be moving forward with this.

[Jin-]

High res textures have zero performance impact anyway as long as you have enough VRAM and any mid range GPU made in past 5 years is more than capable for 2-4 textures

[BristolRuss]

I'm glad to hear they're still considering it. Though they could absolutely get around the frame rate concern for older systems/consoles by making the updates with the texture packs opt-in for awhile like LoTRO does.

Hi Res textures don't effect frame rates. You just need enough V-ram to load them in a timely fashion otherwise you get texture pop in.

[Mykll]

Well, first we had PS3, now we have, PS4 limitations!