PS5 gets ‘improved visual quality and lighting’
So earlier this month, EA shared their plans for next-gen Star Wars: Squadron upgrades.
The gist was that Xbox Series X/S consoles would get a 120 FPS option, while PS5 would simply be bolstered with “improved visual quality and lighting.” That patch has rolled out this week and did exactly that. Update 3.0 is now live for all you Squadrons players, which adds multiple toggles to the Series X/S editions, and the “same resolution and framerate as the PS4 Pro” for PS5.
But there’s a little more here than new visual sheens. The Fostar Haven map is now available for the dogfight and fleet battles modes, and numerous bugs have been fixed on all platforms. HOTAS (hands on throttle-and-stick) rigs will also now work with devices that support up to 128 buttons: a stark upgrade from the previously supported 40. That’s huge! Developer Motive was big on supporting that classic flight sim crowd pre-launch and they’ve stuck to that philosophy.
Also, more cosmetics are in too, including a paint job “inspired by the classic Kenner Products” Star Wars toys. Going off on a tangent, if you even remotely enjoy toy history, give The Toys that Made Us a watch on Netflix. They have an episode specifically dealing with the long and messy history of Star Wars products.
If you’re more interested in the nitty gritty of the patch notes, you can find a rundown of the general upgrades below, or the full notes here.
General
- Added Fostar Haven as a map to Dogfight and Fleet Battles (Solo/Co-Op vs AI and PvP)
- Added next gen improvements
- The game now supports up to 120FPS and up to 4K on Xbox Series X|S
- Added an option for players on the Xbox Series X|S to prioritize enhanced visuals or enhanced performance
- Improved visual quality and lighting on PS5
- Variable frame rate support added for TVs and monitors that allow it
- The game now supports up to 120FPS and up to 4K on Xbox Series X|S
- Fixed an issue where the game could crash while changing loadouts
- Improved support for matchmaking between players with highly divergent load times
- Players who are not finished loading when the match begins will now have an additional window of time to join the match-in-progress rather than timing out on start
- Tweaked the brightness of light sources on PC so that they’re no longer too bright in some instances
- Fixed issue where the sky color of Esseles would appear to change when entering/exiting the station
- Fixed an issue where the menu voice over accessibility feature could not play after entering a lobby
- Fixed issue where Steam players could fail to log in if their screen name included certain unicode characters or emojis
- Various stability improvements and minor bug fixes.
