How long series have been running on this point, EA Sports has found polish, disciplined and refurbished digital sports, it was amazing. Even with stand-out titles in Konami’s Pro Evolution Soccer franchise, FIFA is here to stay and FIFA 16 seems to be the best yet.
The Ignite Engine debuted in FIFA 14 two years ago and since then, it’s been used in every major current gen sports title from EA. It’s not all about better character animation, which has improved “ten-fold” over the previous generation or more realistic stadium members or even the improved physics to limbs and clothing. Ignite has also been pegged to feature better artificial intelligence calculations and allow its players to behave more akin to real-life athletes.
FIFA 16 on both the Xbox One and PS4 runs at 1920×1080 resolution and 60 frames per second. V-Sync is employed to ensure a steady frame rate during gameplay but this drops to 30 FPS in cinematic scenes like close-ups and replays, both manual and general.
MSAA 2x is employed for both versions of the game and does a great job of smoothening out any jaggies. The result is most apparent in objects with intense curves in their complex geometry – as a result, stadiums are of the highest image quality throughout. The PC version goes a step further with MSAA 4x which results in even better looking curves.
hen observing shadows throughout the gameplay, many of them appeared smooth but we noticed some dithering every now and then. This was noticed only on the console versions, primarily during cinematic cut scenes, replays and celebrations. The PC version doesn’t have this issue, thankfully. It should also be noted that Xbox One fans receive motion blur right out of the box along with all the other platform versions.
Oddly enough, FIFA 16 on the PC doesn’t sport a range of graphical options to tinker with. You can adjust the resolution, with choices up to 3840×2160, low or high rendering quality, MSAA 2x or 4x, locked 30/60 FPS or limitless FPS and the ability to disable the Windows Aero theme in case of micro-stuttering. We’re not sure if this is better or worse than PES 16’s three graphical presets though FIFA 16 looks way better on PC.
Testing the performance on an Intel Core i7-5960X with 16 GB of RAM, we benchmarked on two different GPUs at 1920×1080 resolution.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 – Average: 240 FPS, Minimum: 218 FPS
Nvidia GeForce GTX 950 – Average: 160 FPS, Minimum: 122 FPS
We then tested these at 4K resolution.
Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 – Average: 133 FPS, Minimum: 106 FPS
Nvidia GeForce GTX 950 – Average: 63 FPS, Minimum: 42 FPS
In General, all three versions are very similar to each other. PC version features better antialiasing and shadow quality and jitter-free despite the minimum screen tearing in addition, PS4 and Xbox version performed well.Unfortunately, it looks like we have to wait until FIFA 17 better character animation and physics.