The Last of Us Remastered's day one patch improves the quality of shadows when running the game at 30 frames per second, Digital Foundry has confirmed.
The PS4 port, which launched today in the US ships with a toggle to cap the frame rate at 30fps, half the game's usual 60fps speed. Prior to the patch, players who activated the toggle wouldn't notice any difference besides the lower frame rate. But after installing it, those who choose to run the game at 30fps will benefit from higher resolution shadows.
"At 60fps the PS4's shadows are already clearer than the PS3's, but admittedly there are still some rough, pixelated spots," reads Digital Foundry's report. "Standing your character near a wall exposed to direct sunlight tends to bring out the PS4 remaster's ugly side, but the 30fps toggle resolves this in an instant.
"At the flip of a switch, aliasing is removed from long straight lines projected onto walls, and more granular shadow details - such as plant-life - become sharp and defined. It's an issue most noticed around the Bill's Town section, where sunlight is at a low angle - though curiously not for shadows produced from the characters torchlight.2
The report adds, however, that activating the toggle introduces a "shadow glitch" that removes "crucial shadow maps around interior areas".
"This is most keenly felt while traveling through the warehouses with Bill, where streaks of light line the corners of each room. It's an immersion-breaking glitch that disappears on returning to the 60fps mode; perhaps suggesting that the patch's enhanced 30fps mode could have benefitted from a little more testing."
Enabling the 30fps cap does not enable any further graphical enhancements.
