The PUBG update for the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 has been released and, among others, features the Flare and two new vehicles for the Survivor Pass: Vikendi.
Unlike other weapons, Flare Guns are rare with an average spawn rate of 3 Flare Guns per game for all maps.
When the Flare Gun is fired inside a safe zone, a special care package that has valuable gear is called in. The care package includes one set of items, regardless of the mode being played. When fired outside a safe zone, it calls in an armored UAZ. Overall, the Flare Gun can call in a total of two special care packages and two armored UZA per game.
The update also adds two new vehicles, with the first one being the Snowbike, a Vikendi exclusive. It replaces the motorbikes and while not as durable, offers better maneuverability and higher speed.
The second vehicle is the Zima, which serves to replaces Vikendi's UAZ. Despite being slow, it is easeier to manuever and has high durabiity, making it a good vehicle for combat situations.
The patch also brings performance improvements and bug fixes listed below.
Gameplay
- Improved reflective effects on the lens of scopes.
- Vehicle tires will now be destroyed immediately when a vehicle explodes.
- Modified conditions to prone, to prevent going prone on very rugged terrain.
- While prone and moving into a position where the character shouldn’t be able to prone, the character will automatically change to crouched position.
Performance
- Optimized character animations to improve performance.
- Completed AnimNode LOD optimization, which we previously introduced in Console Dev Report #3.
- When a character is very far away and takes up a small portion of the whole screen to the point where animations wouldn’t be visually noticeable, the animations are disabled, improving game performance.
- The more character models in an area which can have AnimNode LOD disabled, the higher performance gain compared to having AnimNode LOD enabled.
- Improved FPS by optimizing the in-game tree and foliage rendering process.
- We improved the way similarly shaped trees and foliage render by further optimizing GPU Instance Culling, which we previously introduced in Console Dev Report #2.
- Trees with similar shapes are rendered using “instancing” and draw multiple trees at the cost of drawing a single tree, this heavily reduces GPU load.
- With GPU Instance Culling, only the objects that must be drawn on-screen are rendered, which dramatically decreases the GPU processing time and improves FPS.
- Improved the game loading speed by optimizing the character loading process.
- Optimized the game server to improve performance.
- Optimized the hit criteria for Molotov when calculating character’s damage.
- Optimized certain elements of the HUD UI which were causing decreased performance.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed the issue where the S686 could sometimes be fired 3 times in a row due when a player had poor network connectivity.
- Fixed the issue of the loading screen image occasionally remaining in the lobby.
- Fixed the issue with character travelling certain distance with falling motion after landing.
- Fixed the issue where swimming animation incorrectly displaying under certain circumstances.
- Fixed the issue of interaction highlight and button being shown for destroyed motorbikes and scooters.
- Fixed the issue of throwables becoming invisible after being thrown and switching to a different weapon.
- Fixed the issue of reticle brightness getting reset when switching scopes or picking up dropped weapons.
- Fixed the issue of raining effects being shown indoors.
- Fixed the issue of dead bodies making footstep sounds.
- Fixed the issue which could cause the remaining number of rounds in a magazine to be displayed incorrectly when reloading.
- Fixed the issue where you’d sometimes see a flickering afterimage when coming out of ADS mode with a scope attached in FPP
- Fixed the issue of an animation being displayed backwards when the character is armed with melee weapons and walking backwards.
- Fixed the issue of a character and its shadow not displaying some swimming animations in FPP mode.
- Fixed the issue which prevented switching helmets, vests and weapons when the inventory is full.
- Fixed the issue where a smoke grenade’s fuse starts to go off when touching the ground instead of when the pin is pulled out.
- Fixed the issue of being unable to switch weapons when pulling out the safety pin of a grenade.
- Fixed the issue with the name of two skins being identical.
- Fixed the issue where Molotov’s flame sound could be heard over a 1km radius.
- Fixed the issue of care package being stuck in an abnormal motion when obstructed from landing.
- Fixed the issue with characters attacking with fists instead of throwing throwables when a player had poor network connectivity.
- Fixed the issue where shadow intermittently appears to the door in Vikendi
- Fixed the issue which could cause grenades to deal damage through walls of certain buildings.
