Its unfortunate that Gears of War: Ultimate Edition released in such a buggy and unfinished state as its population practically evaporated overnight, but I'm glad the developers are still working hard on ironing out all of the remaining kinks.
The upcoming Update 3 brings with it support for ultra-wide resolutions, fixes for mouse sensitivity issues, slightly increased performance, and a couple of bug fixes. Besides the update itself, the developers are also currently working on a couple of other features I will list out below, but first let's start with the patch notes:
• Ultra-wide resolutions (2560x1080 and 3440x1440) added to the game.
• Pipeline state object cache optimizations to reduce hitches during level transitions.
• Fixed a bug that could cause full Unreal garbage collect unnecessarily, leading to minor visual hitches.
• Fixed a visual corruption bug that would rarely affect Nvidia cards when changing resolutions and VRAM became over committed.
• Added support for setting anisotropic filtering level through the INI file (details on how to do this coming soon).
• Fixed lack of mouse input when using lowest mouse sensitivity and fully zoomed in with sniper rifle and moving the mouse very small amounts.
• Adjustments to low (1GB VRAM) texture setting.
• Added ability to toggle an FPS counter. Press the "Delete" key at any time to turn the counter on/off. (Why Delete key? Because we have it reserved from rebinding).
We're also testing service side updates to improve matchmaking. I will update you all when these are rolled out:
• Restriction on number of strict NAT's removed.
• Allow games to go to lobby and start with 6 players, new players can continue to back-fill the match.
Other items still in development:
• Reduce audio stutter on older CPU's.
• Multi GPU support.
• Identify cause of large hitches seen by some users.
• V-sync tearing support.
Items still under consideration:
• Ping displayed in scoreboard.
• Push to talk.
• FOV adjustments.
Some comments on the coming patch:
One of our goals for patches is to keep the download size as small as possible. We've found that changing the UI requires a full re-download of the UI files which is 1+GB. Changing other content (cameras or script, for example) can cause a full re-download of the maps, based on the dependencies within the content. Based on this, we made a few decisions with TU3:
• FPS Counter / AF settings to be controlled through keyboard shortcut or INI.
• Benchmark cameras not updated for 21:9 (required a content change). Benchmark will appear in 16:9 for now.
• UI generally supports 21:9 properly but may appear stretched.
The only bad thing about the patch is that FOV adjustments and push to talk are apparently items only worthy of simple consideration. I can understand FOV being difficult to change if the entire game is designed from the ground up as a console title, but push to talk? That should've been a feature from day 1 as I doubt anyone is interested in listening to other people breathe, yell at their dogs, or whatever else "that one guy" always seems to be doing mid-match.
Update 3 is currently going through certification, and if the previous track record holds it will be available next week, possibly with a small delay due to Easter.