Middle Generation Console Upgrade Discussion [Scorpio, 4Pro]

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Like check shirts, ROPS are so:yep2: 2014. You people need to move on.
 
I'd imagine Xbox One games would take some work to get running on Scorpio if that thing is going to be built to primarily to run UWP games.

I'm guessing all the work being done now first Microsoft first-part studios on PC games is tied in to scorpio....they are probably running the gears 4/forza horizon 3 UWP code on dev kits now to build software dev tools for Scorpio . I'm thinking Scorpio games will be just be a version of the uwp PC code. There will probably even be some automation software tool that creates a "Scorpio" version from the uwp PC version.
 
I've actually been wondering about UWP. The multi-vm thing on Xbox One is kind of interesting, but it handicaps performance in some ways. I understand reserving performance for the OS and system services and reserving a fixed amount of performance for games, but it makes their ideas about "multi-tasking" ... weird. There's really not much left for apps, because you want the vast majority of the performance for games. So then you have UWP apps that have far less resources available to them than they would on a smartphone. Not sure how Scorpio could solve that.
 
I don't know enough about the VM arch that's being used. But It wouldn't surprise me if their able to have a XO game(legacy) VM and UWP game VM.
I can see couple benefits in doing that, even if only to make sure that the game, regardless which game VM its running will have a consistent performance profile, especially when multi tasking/snapping.
Could also create UWP game VM for XO also. So would only be one game on all platforms.
 
There's really not much left for apps, because you want the vast majority of the performance for games. So then you have UWP apps that have far less resources available to them than they would on a smartphone. Not sure how Scorpio could solve that.
It's the same problem with Windows. The user has to accept that if they want to run apps in the background while gaming it will impact game performance. You can load balance and prioritise certain threads but I'd prefer they didn't. Let users learn. Or to put it another way, give the user the option. More apps or faster games.
 
That's counter to the "just works" console model. I suppose they could do what ios does and suspend the full app and only allow certain headless features to run
 
That's counter to the "just works" console model. I suppose they could do what ios does and suspend the full app and only allow certain headless features to run
Games will still work and no usability will be lost so things will still "just work". Performance has been variable in the greater majority of games for generations now and performance vector is only going to widen with people using different versions of consoles and different types of drive (HDD/Hybrid/SSD).

I say just embrace the diversity and give users choice. Any measures you put in place to ringfence gaming performance means you are prohibiting user choice in terms of running apps in the background. The Xbox can flag apps using significant system resources and which may significantly impact gaming performance. Task Manager knows what applications/threads using what CPU, GPU, network and disk I/O utilisation.
 
Games will still work and no usability will be lost so things will still "just work". Performance has been variable in the greater majority of games for generations now and performance vector is only going to widen with people using different versions of consoles and different types of drive (HDD/Hybrid/SSD).

I say just embrace the diversity and give users choice. Any measures you put in place to ringfence gaming performance means you are prohibiting user choice in terms of running apps in the background. The Xbox can flag apps using significant system resources and which may significantly impact gaming performance. Task Manager knows what applications/threads using what CPU, GPU, network and disk I/O utilisation.

That'll also require a ton of ram. Unless devs can rely on having a fixed amount of memory, the whole model falls apart. Unless they start paging memory, which makes me shudder.
 
That'll also require a ton of ram. Unless devs can rely on having a fixed amount of memory, the whole model falls apart. Unless they start paging memory, which makes me shudder.
It'll need a ton of RAM if you're using apps that need a ton of RAM, otherwise it won't. That's kind of the point. You appear to be taking from the position that for you games are the most import thing. For others, that may not be the case. PS4 already has a slot of RAM allocation which can be paged. The world didn't end. :nope: There are other solutions to RAM as well, like realtime compression.

Look at it the other way, RAM which is currently reserved for the OS but not used by any apps can be used by games. Even if it's only more space for streaming so there is less pop-in in GTA VI. Our server architecture allows us to dynamically re-size virtualised environments in realtime. As long as software is aware of this, things work well.
 
What makes you think the OS isn't already using dynamic file buffering with unused App Ram? That way sometimes the Game request for a file that's already been read is still in the buffer and can be read faster.
 
What makes you think the OS isn't already using dynamic file buffering with unused App Ram?

Because Microsoft have said the Xbox One hypervisor is type 1 and that is something that you would find in a type 2 hypervisor. The whole architecture of Xbox One was designed [presumably] so the games ran in an exclusive virtualised partition.

Xbox-One-runs-Windows-8.jpg
 
It'll need a ton of RAM if you're using apps that need a ton of RAM, otherwise it won't. That's kind of the point. You appear to be taking from the position that for you games are the most import thing. For others, that may not be the case. PS4 already has a slot of RAM allocation which can be paged. The world didn't end. :nope: There are other solutions to RAM as well, like realtime compression.

Look at it the other way, RAM which is currently reserved for the OS but not used by any apps can be used by games. Even if it's only more space for streaming so there is less pop-in in GTA VI. Our server architecture allows us to dynamically re-size virtualised environments in realtime. As long as software is aware of this, things work well.

I think the success of the PS4 showed that games really are the most important thing. I'm all for improving the app experience on Xbox, but they need to be careful to keep some of the things that make console gaming nice, one of which is simplicity.
 
I think the success of the PS4 showed that games really are the most important thing. I'm all for improving the app experience on Xbox, but they need to be careful to keep some of the things that make console gaming nice, one of which is simplicity.
It's definitely not an unsolvable problem. I'm sure there are people out there who would appreciate the Xbox OS having more RAM available for apps when not playing games. I use Kodi (previously XBMC) and that bastard can eat RAM when you have a big media library but having all those CD/DVD/Blu-ray covers and TV and movie info in RAM makes for a very slick experience compared running it on RAM hardware where it's constantly thrashing the disk.

Maybe they can let users download more RAM from the cloud.

Maybe Microsoft should deliver on the cloud promises they already made! ;)
 
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