Call of Duty Ghosts: current- vs next-gen visuals

Speaking to Eurogamer, Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty: Ghosts executive producer Mark Rubin discussed the differences between the game’s graphics on current-gen (Xbox 360, PS3) and next-gen hardware (Xbox One, PS4).

Dynamic lighting effects and geometry displacement mapping will be the most obvious visual disparities.

Dynamic lighting is fairly self-explanatory, as it relates to the calculation of light sources and the interplay of shadows and light as they are cast across different surfaces.

Displacement mapping is a neat geometry trick that modifies an otherwise flat 3D surface to look as if it has detailed depth, and can be used to calculate other effects, such and occlusion and silhouettes.

Both of these rendering techniques are resource intensive and still in the realm of PC gaming, and so the next-gen consoles with their extra firepower under the hood should be well-equipped to bring these into mainstream console gaming.

Said Rubin:

“One of the most obvious features next-gen has that current-gen doesn’t have is dynamic lighting. You get really cool lighting on next-gen that you don’t get anywhere near on current-gen.

The coolest is… and every time I just catch a glimpse of it I’m like, wow, that looks so cool, is displacement mapping. On current-gen you’ll walk by a brick wall and it’ll be mostly flat and it’ll just have a bump map or something. But on next-gen you can see the bricks, like, physically they’re there. You see that geometry and it looks so good.

It boils down to two things: geometry and lighting. Those two things are going to be significantly better on next-gen than they will on current-gen.”