Fallout 4 has always been a good-looking game. While it doesn't necessarily have the same technical prowess as other games, the sheer size and scope of the world are more than enough reason to forgive a few muddy textures.
On a decently-powerful rig, PC players explore a genuinely gorgeous rendition of the post-apocalypse.
Console players, on the other hand, have had to make do with something slightly less pretty. While PC ports can adapt to any number of hardware configurations, console hardware is locked down — basically, PC games will usually look better than their console counterparts. These differences were especially noticeable in Fallout 4: while PC players could crank the graphics up to full 1080p at 60fps, console users were stuck with far less.
Ever since launch, Bethesda has been doing its best to improve the console ports' performance. Now, three months after Fallout 4 launched, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One owners are getting their first big graphical upgrade — though it's probably a bit more subtle than most would expect.
"Draw distance" typically refers to how a game handles object rendering. With a short draw distance, a game won't render an object until the player is close by — on the other hand, a game with a long draw distance will start loading objects earlier and farther away from the player. Games with longer draw distances tend to be more immersive, as there's little to no pop-in — however, in a game like Fallout 4, rendering a longer draw distance can take quite a bit of power.
Of course, draw distance is only one of the many issues that patch 1.03 has helped fix — for the full patch notes across all versions of Fallout 4, check out Bethesda's official blog.
