I meant games demoing the unique feature sets, not just games shown. Gears 5 is barely anything. But you would at least expect to see The Medium and a lot of exclusives where they didnt show any gameplay at all.
Xbox Series X [XBSX] [Release November 10 2020]
- Thread starter Megadrive1988
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I think The Medium had some gameplay shown after the July event IIRC. Wouldn't say the Gears 5 stuff is essentially nothing, it's up there in many ways with the Miles Morales visual upgrades on PS5, both games being cross-gen in this sense. But that's just my opinion.
The tardiness with Gamecore and RDNA 2 specs being finalized probably means 3P didn't have as much time to implement some of MS's features compared to Sony (where it's been consistent they've been further along in devkits). Still though, I think we'll start seeing more 1P content from MS showing those features off relatively soon.
D
Deleted member 11852
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Then they kicked themselves in the balls. It seems Microsoft really does hate Microsoft.
For me the work the back compat team at MS has done is enough to be excited along with some 3P games coming out for XBSX. I haven't really seen anything coming out on PS5 at launch that's blown me away either, but both consoles have some nice cross gen games and both offer solid backwards compatibility. For most people that's enough, we all know the games are coming eventually.
Then they kicked themselves in the balls. It seems Microsoft really does hate Microsoft.
Of course they could have had it internally for longer, but I figure they had to have a lot of various pieces coming together all at the same time to have a meaningful impact for GameCore -- VisualStudio 2019, DX12 Ultimate, Velocity Architecture APIs, Windows 10 (or Server 2019?), and then development kit hardware for Series X.
I think from a proactive planning perspective for a future proofing timeline, they should have had some sort of earlier version of GameCore in process since at least middle 2018. Maybe they were still spending time refining the previous XDK for OneX still? I don't recall what sort of updates they had after the One X release in November 2017. Even if it was built on already existing VS 2017 with DX 12, and only targeted Xbox One, One S, and One X, that would have at least provided enough time for external developers to get adjusted to the new tools and process. That would have been one less major sticking point for third party devs to take up.
Maybe they had time estimates on doing that work for existing software and it wasn't worth it in 2018? *shrug*
cheapchips
Veteran
Has Gamecore actual caused them any delays with games? It's not like they had a wealth of first party titles that have missed launch. Third parties seem to be delivering at least parity with PS5.
Have you played gears 5 on the xbox one and xbox one x ? Have you played it on the xbox series x ? The difference is night and day.
Its getting over shadowed by the other cross gen game on a different system but the technical achievement is amazing with gears 5
Then they kicked themselves in the balls. It seems Microsoft really does hate Microsoft.
MS decided to wait until certain features that they want to be included in their consoles were ready before they move forward. At the same time, they are trying to make cross-platform development among their supported platforms easier and more seamless. This actually ties into their need to have all the features of RDNA2/DX12U in their console so that it will be easier than before to develop for a common set of features and capabilities. All this necessitated a rewriting of the dev environment from one which is Xbox centric (XDK), to one which targets a base set of features and hardware capabilities (GDK) with paths to optimizing for the individual platforms. All this seems logical and one step has to be taken before the other.
From what has been presented so far it most definitely does not seem to be remotely the same situation compared to the X1 launch. There hasn't been any game shown yet that has a dramatic difference between the PS5 and the XSX version, certainly nothing to the level of COD: Ghost or MGS5. While we have to wait and see if such a case presents itself, communications from most third-party devs/publishers are calling out at least the same res/fps spec for both consoles.
What MS is trying to do to unify development for their platforms makes sense given the direction they are heading but it might involve some minor short-term inconvenience for a better long-term result. Comparing the launch situation of both X1 and XSX and trying to draw any sort of conclusion other than on a superficial level seems flawed IMO.
From what has been presented so far it most definitely does not seem to be remotely the same situation compared to the X1 launch. There hasn't been any game shown yet that has a dramatic difference between the PS5 and the XSX version, certainly nothing to the level of COD: Ghost or MGS5. While we have to wait and see if such a case presents itself, communications from most third-party devs/publishers are calling out at least the same res/fps spec for both consoles.
What MS is trying to do to unify development for their platforms makes sense given the direction they are heading but it might involve some minor short-term inconvenience for a better long-term result. Comparing the launch situation of both X1 and XSX and trying to draw any sort of conclusion other than on a superficial level seems flawed IMO.
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Well, we've not even seen much patched gears. Unless I've missed it.
But there's some differences in presentation that leaves people with views that PS5 is looking more impressive.
Example is spiderman mm.
It looks crazy impressive.
But that's especially true because not seen it on current gen where its going to look really good also. So people aren't thinking PS5 looks like a minor step up in comparison.
Where gears has a chance to be that kind of show case is on the dlc.
This is something I've said they should've done so I'm happy for it.
But it should be made with XSX as the target and pruned and cut back when making it work on current gen.
I'm talking graphically, and to make it work on current gen it will have to run at 30fps even on the 1X due to cpu.
That was the 2 week patch from what I remember, months ago, it should be even more impressive by now.
Also that's just a quick glimpse, not gonna bother watch it again but I swear actual footage was about 30sec in total.
It's not like your gonna spoil the story.
Coalition should put out a high quality before after slider type video in the vain of no mans sky and ark etc for starters.
I'm expecting a DF analysis of the XSX|S versions soon.
I'm expecting gears to be impressive. Thing is it was impressive anyway. Hence why you need the before and after.
OT: I've been using msvc since version 1.0 ( i.e over 25 years ) And whilst since version 5 or was it 6 its been stable. Esp the last decade or so its been a goldstandard product WRT quality, but the last year its really gone downhill, crashes, bad design choices eg not saving bookmarks/windows when I restart the project after its crashed, accidently ctrl-c with nothing selected will replace the clipboard with nothing, find in files removing ability to say what window to output results to etc, (the last month its been more stable though)
D
Deleted member 11852
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I think this is more the issue than the features. Sony has add to add the same features to PlayStation's SDK and Apple do this every year with whatever iterations their hardware undergoes. It would be interesting to hear from somebody who has used both intently, how different GDK is from XDK. What's been added, what's been removed, what's changed and what this has meant specifically for developers targeting Xbox.
It's clearly not slowing down third party developers but perhaps they favour their own cross-platform tools over Microsoft's default offering, just building the bespoke Microsoft tools into their own workflow.
Using VS for work here and yeah. Rider is becoming a fierce competitor, I would use that a lot more if I could afford it.
For VS I have learnt that whenever they go from 1x.x to 1x.x+1, I wait till 1x.x+1.6 before it is stable. This was worse in the time I worked with F# instead of C# and has been part of the reason for abandoning F# for me.
For VS I have learnt that whenever they go from 1x.x to 1x.x+1, I wait till 1x.x+1.6 before it is stable. This was worse in the time I worked with F# instead of C# and has been part of the reason for abandoning F# for me.
Are the enchantments even out yet
Probably from that 2 week patch half a year ago.Are the enchantments even out yet
Kugai Calo
Regular
I've gone through the last part of the Hotchips presentation, and there we're a couple more things that thought others might find interesting. The first is on the console version of DX12:
- There are Xbox specific enhancements to DX12 that "power users" or "power developers" can use. Overall MS trying for consistency though.
- They work with developers extensively in early stages of architecture to meet highest priority needs.
This bit is particularly interesting:
"We have a smash driver model that takes the HAL and the run time layer and smashes it together and the games on the game binary are ... implement the hardware laid out data that the hardware GPU eats directly. So it's not a HAL layer abstraction and it makes it significantly more efficient. MS also pretty much re-writes ... so basically we completely re-write the driver and smash it together ....[snip who does it, and they're fantastic!] ... and replaces that, and .. pretty much all the firmware in the GPU with MS written firmware and so it's significantly significantly [note: he said it twice!] more efficient than the PC."
He explains they've done this since the first Xbox. I think this basically sums up how the Xbox 1 is able to maintain solid frame rates on it's puny Jaguar cores when the PC needs higher clocks on cores with vastly greater IPC.
Finally this bit on clocks and power draw:
"There's been a lot of work in our team to have low dynamic range variation depending on the workload, so there's been a decent amount of work to ensure that ... so game developers don't have to deal with "oh I'm running through a certain code path of this dynamic data and now I'm seeing lots of variation in my frame rate." That's difficult for game developers."
So it sounds like MS and AMD really had to work for the high sustained clocks they achieved. I feel this may have been overlooked somewhat in the storm of interest (quite rightly) generated by Sony's variable clocks and unique liquid TIM based cooling solution.
Holding 3.8 ghz ST ("that's an all the time clock") with AVX 256 when Cerny was indicating that holding 3.0 had been proving challenging as a locked clock does indicate that this was no easy get for MS. Two very different, but very interesting, approaches.
- There are Xbox specific enhancements to DX12 that "power users" or "power developers" can use. Overall MS trying for consistency though.
- They work with developers extensively in early stages of architecture to meet highest priority needs.
This bit is particularly interesting:
"We have a smash driver model that takes the HAL and the run time layer and smashes it together and the games on the game binary are ... implement the hardware laid out data that the hardware GPU eats directly. So it's not a HAL layer abstraction and it makes it significantly more efficient. MS also pretty much re-writes ... so basically we completely re-write the driver and smash it together ....[snip who does it, and they're fantastic!] ... and replaces that, and .. pretty much all the firmware in the GPU with MS written firmware and so it's significantly significantly [note: he said it twice!] more efficient than the PC."
He explains they've done this since the first Xbox. I think this basically sums up how the Xbox 1 is able to maintain solid frame rates on it's puny Jaguar cores when the PC needs higher clocks on cores with vastly greater IPC.
Finally this bit on clocks and power draw:
"There's been a lot of work in our team to have low dynamic range variation depending on the workload, so there's been a decent amount of work to ensure that ... so game developers don't have to deal with "oh I'm running through a certain code path of this dynamic data and now I'm seeing lots of variation in my frame rate." That's difficult for game developers."
So it sounds like MS and AMD really had to work for the high sustained clocks they achieved. I feel this may have been overlooked somewhat in the storm of interest (quite rightly) generated by Sony's variable clocks and unique liquid TIM based cooling solution.
Holding 3.8 ghz ST ("that's an all the time clock") with AVX 256 when Cerny was indicating that holding 3.0 had been proving challenging as a locked clock does indicate that this was no easy get for MS. Two very different, but very interesting, approaches.
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