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A few Digital Foundry readers have pointed out that the PS4 version of Final Fantasy 14 features an interesting option in the display settings menu that allows you to select between two different rendering modes, labelled 'Full HD Quality' and 'HD Quality'. We're sorry we missed this in the Final Fantasy 14 face-off we published at the weekend, but we've been looking into it over the last few days and it throws up some interesting results.Pixel counting reveals that the 'HD Quality' setting gives us an artificially edge-enhanced 720p presentation which is actually derived from a native 1080p image. Essentially, the game renders internally at 1080p before the framebuffer is downscaled to 720p, a sharpening filter is applied and it's all rescaled back to 1080p before being displayed. Anti-aliasing, art assets and all the effects work remain unchanged from the default 'Full HD Quality' mode, although image quality takes a hit due to the framebuffer being rescaled twice: long edges appear visibly more uneven, while the finest details appear smoothed over in comparison to normal 1080p.
More damagingly, the use of edge-enhancement introduces visible halos around a few objects in bright scenes. The effect also generates an illusion of sharpness around texture details that helps to slightly lessen impact of the blur, but it does so in a way which makes things appear fuzzy and artificial, so overall it feels unwelcome.
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