Freeing up the Kinect Reservation *spawn*

[Scott_Arm]

From the article, "Xbox One software will get better from a technological standpoint, but it will come down to a range of factors - the most dramatic of which has little to do with Kinect. Development sources indicate that the DirectX driver is improving rapidly, but developers' increased familiarity with the hardware is also paying dividends - a state of affairs exemplified by the new Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, which even in its pre-production form offers a 50 per cent resolution boost over its 720p predecessor, while also incorporating a wealth of new rendering technologies."

Interesting article. Sounds like between driver improvements, some more GPU time and Directx12, the Xbox One should see some appreciable gains in performance.

 

[Oneofthesedays]

Interesting article. Sounds like between driver improvements, some more GPU time and Directx12, the Xbox One should see some appreciable gains in performance.

Yup. The gap will close as Microsoft iterates their SDK and drivers and devs get more familiar with the system. Keep in mind the X1 OS is orders of magnitude more complicated than the PS4. There is simply a lot of optimization work left to be done that couldn't be finished by launch time.

 

[XpiderMX]

From the article, "Xbox One software will get better from a technological standpoint, but it will come down to a range of factors - the most dramatic of which has little to do with Kinect. Development sources indicate that the DirectX driver is improving rapidly, but developers' increased familiarity with the hardware is also paying dividends - a state of affairs exemplified by the new Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, which even in its pre-production form offers a 50 per cent resolution boost over its 720p predecessor, while also incorporating a wealth of new rendering technologies."

Well, IMO:

DX Driver improvements + devs familiarity + Kinect resources

Is better than:

DX Driver improvements + devs familiarity


Maybe the 10% form the Kinect is not an "awesome" improvement, but It is better than nothing (I guess).

 

[taisui]

I think the point is just flexibility. Gamers had voted with their wallets.

 

[blakjedi]

Interesting article. Sounds like between driver improvements, some more GPU time and Directx12, the Xbox One should see some appreciable gains in performance.

they were saying that the next xdk is the May/June update. So we should see some optimizations in time for fall game releases.

 

[eastmen]

if it hits may/june it may be to late for fall games to really take advantage of the new stuff. I would think 6 months or so is needed to implement everything. I think any improvements this fall would come from changes in 2013

 

[Scott_Arm]

if it hits may/june it may be to late for fall games to really take advantage of the new stuff. I would think 6 months or so is needed to implement everything. I think any improvements this fall would come from changes in 2013

I don't know. If there are some easy gains that require little to no work, like having more GPU time available, that could help with getting stable framerates during later development when you're trying to optimize things. Depends how much work developers have to do to take those Kinect resources. Driver and OS optimization should give developers basically free performance, so if the updated SDK has some gains in that area it will definitely impact late-year titles. June is definitely early enough.

I'm not expecting any miracles, but it could be the small bump that's needed to get rid of some tearing or stabilize framerate in some situations.

 

[HTupolev]

if it hits may/june it may be to late for fall games to really take advantage of the new stuff. I would think 6 months or so is needed to implement everything. I think any improvements this fall would come from changes in 2013

If it's a raw GPU time slice boost, I wouldn't be shocked if some games saw measurable improvements literally overnight.

 

[Lalaland]

If it's a raw GPU time slice boost, I wouldn't be shocked if some games saw measurable improvements literally overnight.

Or issues, it seems the recent lifting of the FPS cap in Titanfall on PC has allowed those with 120hz or 144hz screens to lock on in less than half the time of standard players. This is why even if they release time back to devs they'll probably not release it for existing titles just in case some weird edge case crops up.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Or issues, it seems the recent lifting of the FPS cap in Titanfall on PC has allowed those with 120hz or 144hz screens to lock on in less than half the time of standard players. This is why even if they release time back to devs they'll probably not release it for existing titles just in case some weird edge case crops up.

?

I think he meant with the new SDK could see benefits "overnight" meaning something like compiling/build with the new SDK and you get the benefits without having to do much if anything else.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

if it hits may/june it may be to late for fall games to really take advantage of the new stuff.

Indeed. Most fall games will probably have a first submission milestone in august or september.

 

[taisui]

plenty of time, it's just a SDK drop.

 

[Lalaland]

?

I think he meant with the new SDK could see benefits "overnight" meaning something like compiling/build with the new SDK and you get the benefits without having to do much if anything else.

If that's the case then I misunderstood and thought he meant current titles.

Would time slicing the GPU be a SDK thing? I would have thought the hypervisor would simply have assigned GPU time between O/S and system differently (ie from the current 90/10 to 95/5 or whatever). Is the 10% GPU allocation for a service that runs within the Game VM?

 

[taisui]

If that's the case then I misunderstood and thought he meant current titles.

Would time slicing the GPU be a SDK thing? I would have thought the hypervisor would simply have assigned GPU time between O/S and system differently (ie from the current 90/10 to 95/5 or whatever). Is the 10% GPU allocation for a service that runs within the Game VM?

It was explained in the previous page by Oneofthesedays

 

[Oneofthesedays]

If it's a raw GPU time slice boost, I wouldn't be shocked if some games saw measurable improvements literally overnight.

This. It literally is a GPU time slice boost.

Once game devs retarget for the new SDK and enable the "turbo" mode, they will see immediate results (assuming their games are GPU bound).

 

[SedentaryJourney]

I don't own an Xbox One so I'm not familiar with the facial recognition/skeletal tracking features but I had the impression they were always on and part of the system UI. Unless the 10% was an inflated reserve in order to hedge bets about future functionality, wouldn't reserving less GPU time mean the removal of these features?

 

[function]

Only activate those features when you bring up the dash. Let developers know the dash will take a few percent of GPU time back, and to make sure the can handle it. Dropping a few percent of frames with the dash up happens on the 360.

 

[SedentaryJourney]

Some features were billed as "always on", such as skeletal tracking for log-in and seat switching. So I guess Microsoft have decided to nix the Kinect background tasks in favour of something just short of 10% extra GPU time.

 

[BoardBonobo]

I don't see that freeing up the resources used by Kinnect is going to make a lot of difference to anything. The ~50% deficit it has regards the PS4 is still going to be ~50% no matter how many resources get freed. It may make the consoles none gaming features slightly snappier (see what I did there) but not a lot else.

 

[liolio]

I don't see that freeing up the resources used by Kinnect is going to make a lot of difference to anything. The ~50% deficit it has regards the PS4 is still going to be ~50% no matter how many resources get freed. It may make the consoles none gaming features slightly snappier (see what I did there) but not a lot else.

Nitpicking but if you speak of a deficit compared to the PS4, in your percentage calculations the PS4 has to be the reference.
The deficit is ~29% percents. Not that it changes the values but it sounds better.

THe other way around the PS4 provides a increased ALU performance over the XB1 of ~41%. Closer to 40% than 50%.

If the XB1 had a 41% deficit in ALU compared to the ps4 that would make the number of CU ~10 taking in account the slightly higher clock speed.

Though the XB1 is at a 41% deficit against the ps4 when it comes to ROPs throughput.

End of my nitpicking.