I'm going to quote this because I don't understand anything...
Maybe this "dynamic resolution" isn't actually so much something that's constantly reading framerates and dropping vertical scanlines to maintain the framerate dynamically, but rather just points tailored and set by the devs throughout the campaign that lower the resolution for what they know are more visually intensive segments?
Imagine you're playing on a PC that's getting maxed out to the brim. You can run it at 1080p 60fps for some segments, but then you run into some segments of the campaign with a lot of stuff to render, and you pause, go into the menu, and drop your resolution. Maybe the "dynamic resolution" is just a result of Sledgehammer doing a pass like this.
Multiplayer, being more open and unpredictable with regards to the action and what will be on screen at any given time, doesn't allow for this, much like how you can't just keep pausing and changing your settings manually while playing multiplayer.
Pure speculation from my ass, but what if the multiplat development process was something like this:
- Develop the game with the higher PS4 spec in mind at 1080p native and targeting 60fps. Get it to what they consider acceptable, as in "Mostly 60fps with some drops".
- For the Xbox One version, go through the campaign and drop the resolution during the segments where the framerates drop.
Considering the similarity of the architectures, this is probably a much more efficient way of handling multiplatform development rather than fine tuning the textures, lightning, and other details of each level. The approach probably wouldn't work as well for games or modes that aren't linear campaigns, hence the multiplayer not using it.
