Microsoft XBOX (XBox One X / Project Scorpio) - Prerelease News and Rumours

[orangpelupa]

I've got a couple of questions, and I'm not sure they are "techie" enough for that forum.

First - the DF commentary makes mention that they ran the Forza Tech Demo at settings equivalent to PC on Ultra settings. What? Is that because the tech demo has those settings because it was based on the PC version? I've never seen an option on any XB1 game to select my graphics settings. Additionally, those settings usually include other things in addition to larger textures such as physics and shaders, etc. This is why I sometimes laugh when people say that higher resolutions at lower settings are superior than lower resolutions at higher settings in PC discussions. There's actual environmental actions that change, not just the number of pixels.

maybe he was just eyeballing it?

Second - a bit related to the first. How can 900p games be scaled up to 4k resolutions? In order for that to happen, wouldn't the textures need to be there at that size detail to begin with? Why would they exist in 360 or XB1 games if those consoles were never able to output at those resolutions? All they would do is take up additional space and cause increased loading times for zero benefit. I can understand if some games also have PC ports so the assets exist and would simply need to be downloaded or patched into the Scorpio, but I don't see that as the case for most titles.

Can somebody shed some light on these for me?

Thanks

the render resolution could be higher. For example, i played almost all Wii games on PC at beautiful 900p (monitor native resolution).

Zelda SkySword looks absolutely marvelous despite still use the same low res asset as the SD Wii.


but for forza scorpio, i think richard mentioned that they use 4k textures too.

 

[AzBat]

Been reading coverage all day from my phone. Phone is not a great way to post. Wished I could post from work but it's blocked.

Anyway some of my thoughts. Disappointed in no Zen. I think for Scorpio to be a big hit with hardcore they needed to hit all the high-end buzzwords even if would have been too expensive. Now the hardcore will just say it's not much better than the competition when that's not totally the case. So I still think even with Jaguar & all their customizations it's still pretty good. Price will be key...

Anything more than $450 & they'll be hard pressed to sell as many as the PS4 Pro. Which is sad because you're getting a device with ~43% more compute, but would be only a 12.5% premium over the Pro at $400. At $500 it would have to something more than just performance. Which kinda brings me to an idea I had...

What if there are no Scorpio exclusive games because they are just Windows 10 DirectX 12 games? Basically Scorpio is the hardware representation of the Xbox Plan Anywhere initiative. It plays all your XB1 and 360 games, but in order to take advantage of all the special hardware features 4K, VR, etc, games will need to be written for Windows 10 & DirectX 12. Makes sense with Richard's mention of "a hardware implementation of DirectX 12 being directly integrated in the command processor". Why the requirement that games written for Scorpio also need to run on XB1? They have make money somehow. Plus "nobody left behind" from last year. So basically you get a XB1 game & a DirectX 12 game for one price, just like we do with XPA. Crazy idea, but I don't think the tech itself will be enough to sell at a premium over the PS4 Pro. Hopefully it comes in at $400.

Those are just a few ideas, probably silly but we still have a few months before E3.

Tommy McClain

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

a) the game engines are designed to be able to do more, sometimes for photo mode, or replays, or advertising, sometimes for PC etc. They have all these additional graphical options that would crush performance during gameplay so they are disabled.
The demo picture you saw was Forza Apex running at XBO settings. Hence the 66% GPU utilization. Leveraging PC Ultra it hits 88%.

Game engines or individual games? Meaning that is it a feature that is built into the Unreal (or whatever) engine and all the games using that engine would be able to run with the additional graphics options if they were "unlocked" at the engine level?

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

the render resolution could be higher. For example, i played almost all Wii games on PC at beautiful 900p (monitor native resolution).

Zelda SkySword looks absolutely marvelous despite still use the same low res asset as the SD Wii.

How cam the render resolution be higher than the resolution of the assets? Wouldn't that just mean the system is using some sort of approximation algorithm to guess the pixels that don't actually exist and wouldn't that result in a more blurry rather than more clear picture?

 

[BadTB25]

Been watching a lot of emu vidz on Twitch streams and it's pretty amazing how much better some of these games look with higher resolution even with original textures.

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

What if there are no Scorpio exclusive games because they are just Windows 10 DirectX 12 games? Basically Scorpio is the hardware representation of the Xbox Plan Anywhere initiative. It plays all your XB1 and 360 games, but in order to take advantage of all the special hardware features 4K, VR, etc, games will need to be written for Windows 10 & DirectX 12. Makes sense with Richard's mention of "a hardware implementation of DirectX 12 being directly integrated in the command processor". Why the requirement that games written for Scorpio also need to run on XB1? They have make money somehow. Plus "nobody left behind" from last year. So basically you get a XB1 game & a DirectX 12 game for one price, just like we do with XPA. Crazy idea, but I don't think the tech itself will be enough to sell at a premium over the PS4 Pro. Hopefully it comes in at $400.

Those are just a few ideas, probably silly but we still have a few months before E3.

Tommy McClain

What would happen if Steam made a UWP W10 app?

 

[AlNom]

Been watching a lot of emu vidz on Twitch streams and it's pretty amazing how much better some of these games look with higher resolution even with original textures.

We still aren't at last gen bull shot sampling. Have people forgotten unreal engine 3?

 

[mpg1]

Second - a bit related to the first. How can 900p games be scaled up to 4k resolutions? In order for that to happen, wouldn't the textures need to be there at that size detail to begin with? Why would they exist in 360 or XB1 games if those consoles were never able to output at those resolutions? All they would do is take up additional space and cause increased loading times for zero benefit. I can understand if some games also have PC ports so the assets exist and would simply need to be downloaded or patched into the Scorpio, but I don't see that as the case for most titles.

Can somebody shed some light on these for me?

Thanks

The 900p to 4k is for future games or patches...not backwards compatible games.

 

[babcat]

It is still Jaguar CPU. Optimizations can improve performance only to a certain degree. An optimized Ryzen would have been much more interesting.

 

[iroboto]

Game engines or individual games? Meaning that is it a feature that is built into the Unreal (or whatever) engine and all the games using that engine would be able to run with the additional graphics options if they were "unlocked" at the engine level?

my mistake, games.
I don't know many engines that come with that many features out of the box.

 

[cheapchips]

I'm looking forward to seeing what the box looks like. The One S is a really fantastic looking offspring of a bland looking parent.

The slight offset on the third set of RAM chips is bugging me though. -0.01% of a point for that MS hardware folks.

 

[Jay]

I think it wasn't forza apex but x1 forza 6 that was ported.
There's a distinction and important goal and message in that.

1. Taking an x1 1080p60 game and how quick it can be ported and patched to run at 4k. (Although we don't know size of the team that ported it, but 2 days is still VERY impressive)

2. Ease of adding 4k assets if available.

3. Fact that it has such raw power that it doesn't need to be optimized to be able to do it.

4. Overhead that's left to up the settings without even getting to optimization stage yet, and still be performant.

4. 900p games can be done, but may need optimising to get to 4k.

This was a demonstration of x1 games and running them at 4k and what it takes to do it. Although only a single engine. So without having to checkerboard may get a few more updates to x1 games(past and upcoming) to run at 4k (with higher quality assets if available) as the effort to do it isn't much for most engines most probably, compared to adding checker boarding or having to optimise heavily due to less raw power.

900p games (multi plats) don't have 900p assets, they have 1080p ones, same as ps4 and 4pro. Using them but at a higher resolution isn't as nice as 4k assets but still give a visual benefit.

3p game/engine that runs at 900p would be interesting to see what it takes to run at 4k. Even if it didn't make it all the way to 4k, 1800p(?) but with 4k assets, it would still be a huge difference in visual quality.

This is the problem with a spec reveal, without any direct feed media to go with it. It needs the forza 6 vid, and a couple 3p to show what current/old games can look and perform like on it.
Especially if their so far ahead of schedule, final Dev kits should be out or rolling out, and alpha and beta dev kits with target performance should've been out from last year.

 

[mpg1]

I'm still a little confused about the Forza thing. So it was 4K with about 66% gpu utilization and then when they implemented 4K assets it went up to about 88% gpu utilization?

So for 900p we could possibly expect something like 4K native or 1800p with 4K assets? Is that probably about right?

 

[chris1515]

I'm still a little confused about the Forza thing. So it was 4K with about 66% gpu utilization and then when they implemented 4K assets it went up to about 88% gpu utilization?

So for 900p we could possibly expect something like 4K native or 1800p with 4K assets? Is that probably about right?

It was 4k with Xbox one level of effect and it use 88% of the GPU power in 4k with at PC ultra level of effect...

 

[BRiT]

And they claim that was without any real level of optimizations and achieved in just 2 days.

 

[ramr]

It was 4k with Xbox one level of effect and it use 88% of the GPU power in 4k with at PC ultra level of effect...

Not quite. It was 66% for XBO settings using 4K assets. The 88% came from cranking the engine settings up to the equivalent to PC Ultra settings.

 

[ramr]

Overall - disappointed by no zen. Having said that, as someone who has used simulations to optimize things in the past, I am quite intrigued by their use of simulations to identify bottlenecks across a range of engines and game and then using that data to create custom hardware solutions to those bottlenecks. I could definitely see using some Forests of Forests approach to optimize output v. size / cost of APU.

Also, is there any reason to say it is Polaris-based instead of Vega? There were no quotes from MS folks in the articles that i saw that said that, only RL's comments. Given that Vega hasn't launched yet, MS very well could still be under NDA about Vega.

Hopefully, the box is $399.

 

[Johnglen]

First post.
I am a console hardcore gamer that buys every Sony/ms console at launch day and prefer the Xbox brand ,with very little technical knowledge. I am really disappointed with Scorpio. Not because it is "slightly" better than the pro, which I own, that's fanboy bs , it is substantially more powerful. The problem is that ms had positioned Scorpio as a statement, as a return to the pre-Xbox one days and I am not seeing this. Instead of using the latest cutting edge technology , it seems to be using "old" technology only finely tuned. No vega is pretty telling and worse than no zen. Honestly had Ms returned to their xbox360 days Scorpio would definately have , at least, a vega-based Gpu . I will buy it on launch day cause I want to play the ms exclusives, which again despite what some fanboys claim are many and great, and the occasional "better in Scorpio than in pro" 3rd party game but I can't help that the "no holding back" talk was bs.

 

[Jay]

First post.
I am a console hardcore gamer that buys every Sony/ms console at launch day and prefer the Xbox brand ,with very little technical knowledge. I am really disappointed with Scorpio. Not because it is "slightly" better than the pro, which I own, that's fanboy bs , it is substantially more powerful. The problem is that ms had positioned Scorpio as a statement, as a return to the pre-Xbox one days and I am not seeing this. Instead of using the latest cutting edge technology , it seems to be using "old" technology only finely tuned. No vega is pretty telling and worse than no zen. Honestly had Ms returned to their xbox360 days Scorpio would definately have , at least, a vega-based Gpu . I will buy it on launch day cause I want to play the ms exclusives, which again despite what some fanboys claim are many and great, and the occasional "better in Scorpio than in pro" 3rd party game but I can't help that the "no holding back" talk was bs.

Welcome.
I'm curious what would you have been willing to pay for vega & zen at equivalent performance?
For sake of argument, let's say Scorpio costs $4-500, would you have payed $100 odd more.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Honestly had Ms returned to their xbox360 days Scorpio would definately have , at least, a vega-based Gpu . I will buy it on launch day cause I want to play the ms exclusives, which again despite what some fanboys claim are many and great, and the occasional "better in Scorpio than in pro" 3rd party game but I can't help that the "no holding back" talk was bs.

I'm hesitant to say that Microsoft lucked out with 360 but they were able to leverage a confluence of technology developments, like unified shaders, in a good package that compared exceedingly well to PCs. That Sony were fumbling PS3 didn't hurt none either! But unless there is another seismic shift in architecture paradigm that a console manufacturer can leverage quicker than PC can benefit, you're really unlikely to see that kind of things again.

Microsoft were in the right place at the right time with the right partner (AMD). We know the 360 almost launched with half the RAM (256mb) but Epic were able to convince Microsoft to put 512mb RAM in when many PCs had less free in Windows.

Welcome to the forums!