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Watch Dogs Image Quality Preview

We have previewed the performance experienced in Watch Dogs, now it is time to preview image quality and look at some specific image quality differences. We will look at texture quality and the great differences between modes, anti-aliasing, and Horizon-Based Ambient Occlusion effects, AKA HBAO.

Introduction

Watch Dogs is out on the PC and we have published our Watch Dogs AMD & NVIDIA GPU Performance Preview. In that article we look at performance aspects of the game in terms of texture performance and HBAO performance. We found out that Watch Dogs requires video cards with 3GB of more of VRAM to run at "Ultra Textures."

In this image quality preview, we are going to look at some image quality comparisons to see if there is a difference between "High" and "Ultra" texture quality. We will also look at some HBAO image quality comparisons and some anti-aliasing image quality comparisons. This is a preview, we will have a full evaluation of the game to follow which will dive more in-depth into image quality comparisons where we will also include "Medium" texture quality. The goal today is to find out if it is worth it run at "Ultra" textures versus "High" textures, and turn up HBAO quality and AA.

Texture Quality

We are going to directly compare "High" texture quality versus "Ultra" texture quality on a GeForce GTX 780 Ti. All screenshots are in PNG format, and thus large file sizes so that there are no compression artifacts. Remember, "High" requires 2GB of VRAM and "Ultra" textures require 3GB of VRAM.

On these first two screenshots we are not zooming in on the scene. What we are doing is simply looking close at the textures on this wall in-game with our character in third person view.

You can clearly see a difference between "High" and "Ultra" textures. With "Ultra" textures more detail is displayed and the image is overall sharper. In the second screenshot the picture on this wall is of a higher resolution, which means less aliasing and a sharper image.

In this third image we are looking at another poster image on the wall. We are finding a pattern here that with "Ultra" textures these wall posters and wall art are being rendered in higher resolutions with "Ultra" textures enabled as it should be, and the differences in quality are highly apparent.

Granted, these images are dark, taken at night, but there are some differences we can see in the outdoor world. In the first screenshot the quality of the ground with the shimmering shader effect of water is definitely sharper and clearer with "Ultra" textures enabled. In the second screenshot this wall painting is much sharper and clearer with "Ultra" textures. In the third screenshot the detail of this wall is much better with "Ultra" textures. Make sure to scroll down to the bottom and look at the detail of the concrete at the bottom of it as well.

Finally, we have our main character. It is easier to see in-game, but the clothes on our character do look more detailed, sharper, and overall better with "Ultra" textures. His sweater and jacket look better in-game assuredly.