Don Williamson discusses PS4 Pro's checkerboard rendering

The PS4 Pro is Sony's 4K console, but doesn't have the horsepower to actually push native 4K visuals on most games, so that's why Sony have resorted to shortcuts and technical wizardry such as checkerboard rendering. Checkerboard rendering is an upscaling technique to 4K and it works better than traditional upscaling.

Don Williamson, the owner and consultant engine programmer at Celtoys and also a former developer at the sadly now defunct studio Lionhead, thinks that it's a good way for developers to get associated with the challenge of outputting 4K resolutions.

"[PS4 Pro's checkerboard rendering is] a cute trick that fell out of the temporal anti-aliasing line of thinking," he said. "Like TAA it requires a big investment in a specific direction for your engine architecture: you need per-pixel velocity vectors, fallback strategies for the myriad effects that don't fit that design, well-designed reprojection systems and game systems that are aware of single-frame effect limitations. If you've already invested in TAA then it could be a lot easier for you to integrate but there are strains of developers who don't believe betting the farm on TAA is wise: you end up building a significant amount of code that stops working the minute you turn TAA off."

Williamson does think that there are advantages in using checkerboard rendering. "On the plus side? You get stunning performance improvements with visual idiosyncrasies that you might be happy with. That Sony have chosen to accelerate part of this for developers can only be a good thing for the short term as we figure how to target higher resolutions more efficiently."

The PS4 Pro released earlier this month. If you're interested in the specs of the PS4 Pro and what games currently and what future titles will benefit from the additional power then click here. What do you think of the checkerboard rendering?