I start to wonder sometimes if games like this might benefit from a 900p render target instead of the full 1080p on PS4. I understand that the frame drops usually result from specific, performance-demanding effects, but having the render overhead reduced some is bound to help, right..?
Feels to me like 1080p outside of last-gen remasters is pretty spotty this gen. PS4 can hit it more often than the XB1, but there are times where I feel like the potential performance gain from just going 900p right away would've been far more beneficial to the play experience in some areas of games than trying to wow everyone with the 1080p render, mostly because I don't think most console gamers seem to mind the 900p rendering, as long as the engine supports decent AA solutions, post-FX, and gamma correction to reduce some of the IQ issues that come from that resolution -- and those solutions don't seem that hard to integrate for most games.
I feel like I say this coming from having had a capable gaming PC alongside my consoles, too. I'm guilty of double-dipping for the PC version of the PC version is reported to be well optimized for the PC platform, and while the wow factor of well-handled PC versions of games isn't quite as high as it was compared to last-gen, it's still surprising to me just how outclassed these current gen consoles are from a graphics standpoint.
I also admit that my actual understanding of game engines and display technology isn't super-savvy. I know a decent amount of strategies to optimize my settings in PC games, and a general sense of how hard certain settings can impact performance, but I still come away from my own limited knowledge with a strong understanding that the current-gen consoles are going to likely struggle to hit and maintain a 1080p render target with high-end effects enabled in most releases these days... And if I were running a similar experience on PC, with similar specs, I'd personally target a lower-than-1080p render to help with performance. Makes me wonder if Sony has some sort of 1080p-target-licensing deal with developers to push the idea that the PS4 is the most capable machine... But the amount of time that it fails to hold up outside of last-gen remasters kind of makes me prefer that they go for 900p, especially now that I currently don't have a gaming PC and *have to* play on console.