Microsoft reveals what Halo Infinite will look like on 32: 9 ultra-wide monitors and other PC perks

Microsoft has kind of neglected PC gaming, but it is trying to change that fundamentally – by promising its flagship product. Halo Infinite will feel like a native PC game when it arrives later this year. We’ve known for many months that this wouldn’t be the killer app for the Xbox Series X, but Microsoft is trying to make PC gamers feel like first-class citizens as well, with features so geared toward letting go. support for super ultra-wide 32: 9. monitors like the Samsung Odyssey G9 which I reviewed late last year.

This morning we learned that the game will support ultra-wide monitors, in addition to three-key bindings, advanced graphics options and both cross-play and cross-progression between Xbox PCs and Windows. But tonight the Halo Waypoint the blog went much further, revealing this Infinite will look like 32: 9 and an array of other PC gamer friendly details, like the ability to adjust your field of view up to 120 degrees – and the ability to host your own LAN multiplayer server!

In my review of the Samsung Odyssey G9, I lamented how even games that do The 32: 9 bracket usually looks anomalous, very stretched on either side, providing over a dozen examples of how they don’t properly adjust the shape and curvature of the window they open in the 3d game world. But Infinite halo Mike Romero, head of PC development, said the game is designed to support arbitrary window sizes and can scale its HUD, menus, and even in-game cinematics to larger proportions.

“There are dozens of people across the studio who had to put in dedicated effort to support something like ultra-wide throughout the game, and I’m very happy to say that I think we’ll have one of the best ultra-wide media I’ve ever seen in a game, ”boasts Romero.

Looking at these Infinite halo frames at 32: 9, it’s not immediately clear to me that Microsoft fixed the 32: 9 issue – looking at the hill to the right of this frame below, for example, it looks like the gaming world can still sound a little biased and distorted.

But it’s clear that you’ll see a lot more of the gaming world at once this way, if you’re one of the few to have upgraded to an ultra-wide monitor – and you’ve got a PC powerful enough to run it, of course. .

Here’s a short list of all the PC-esque benefits Microsoft promises:

• Local network play, hosting a local multiplayer server on PC that you can join from both PC and Xbox
• Crossplay, restricting ranked matches to entry type rather than console vs PC, with server side anti-cheat
• Adjustable field of view (up to 120 degrees) on PC and console
• Mouse and keyboard support on PC and console
• Triple keyboard and mouse connections
• Visual quality settings up to ultra presets on PC, with individual settings for texture quality, depth of field, anti-aliasing, etc.
• High refresh rate options
• Supports 21: 9, 32: 9 “and above” ultra-wide monitors on PC
• Minimum and maximum frame rate settings on PC
• Fixed and dynamic resolution scaling options on PC
• Full screen borderless option on PC
• FPS overlay and ping on PC
• Out-of-game multiplayer invitations let you join games through Xbox Live, Discord, and Steam

As my colleague Tom Warren notes, there is still more to learn, for example whether the game will support GPU dependent features on PC, such as DLSS improving Nvidia’s frame rate, ray tracing, etc.