Guerrilla Games’ Decima Engine was put to the test by Digital Foundry for the upcoming release of Horizon: Zero Dawn. They examined the frame-rates on both the PS4 and PS4 Pro, revealing that the standard PS4 version runs the game at native 1080p and 30fps, while the PS4 Pro runs Horizon at native 2160p at 30fps. That’s right, the PS4 Pro actually runs Horizon: Zero Dawn in full native ultra HD at a true 4K resolution.

Guerrilla Games managed to utilize checkerboard rendering for Horizon: Zero Dawn, yet still managed to stabilize a crystal clear output at 4K. Despite being critical of the PS4 Pro in the past, I will admit that the spec benchmarks are impressive… for this particular game.

The frame-rate and resolution test was carried out by Digital Foundry.

One of the things that they mention in the video test is that the dynamic weather system does not affect the frame-rate. Fog, sand storms, rain, thunderstorms and day and night shifts will not cause stuttering or drops.

They did mention that there are slight drops – by one or two frames – in crowded villages. They also noted that when AI teammates and enemy AI engage in battle, the game will see frame drops go down by one or two frames, dipping from 30fps to 28 or 29fps.

For the most part, Guerrilla managed to nail it as far as performance and optimization is concerned. A lot of people in the comment section were happy that Kojima went with the Decima Engine for Death Stranding.

They did note that there was one house in particular where the frame-rate dropped down by about four frames. It appeared as if the house may not have been optimized properly and had a lot of non baked objects inside. That’s just speculation on my part. Usually a lot of actively rendered actors/entities within a scene can cause frames to dip that low at such a consistent rate.

The cluttered house was a bit of a mystery to Digital Foundry, though, and they couldn’t figure why exactly this particular house – with no battles or massively complex lighting entities being rendered – would cause the FPS to dip in the way that it did.

Overall, Horizon: Zero Dawn performs properly, unlike some other PS4 Pro titles… like Final Fantasy XV. It maintains 30fps at nearly all times on both the PS4 and PS4 Pro, and it runs native 1080p at 30fps on the vanilla PS4 and native 2160p at 30fps on the PS4 Pro. It’s one of the few native 4K games available for Sony’s new system that actually runs well.

Horizon: Zero Dawn is due for release on February 28th.