Current State of Xbox Series Tech Utilisation

[invictis]

I was wondering how much of the Xbox Series Tech developers have actually utilised until now.
I am referring to Mesh Shaders, VRS, SFS, RT, ML, Velocity Architecture and raw SSD speed.

We have a number of games that are using Variable Rate Shading, so that's a tick. Obviously the SSD speed is being used for improved game loading speeds, but I don't think much has been used with regards to in game performance gains.
We have Ray Tracing being used on a number of games as well.
Outside of that I don't think much has been much use of the other extensions.
When can we expect to see developers tap into these?
Is SFS something that needs to be included in game engine developments, or can it be used outside of that like VRS?

 

[Remij]

I was wondering how much of the Xbox Series Tech developers have actually utilised until now.
I am referring to Mesh Shaders, VRS, SFS, RT, ML, Velocity Architecture and raw SSD speed.

We have a number of games that are using Variable Rate Shading, so that's a tick. Obviously the SSD speed is being used for improved game loading speeds, but I don't think much has been used with regards to in game performance gains.
We have Ray Tracing being used on a number of games as well.
Outside of that I don't think much has been much use of the other extensions.
When can we expect to see developers tap into these?
Is SFS something that needs to be included in game engine developments, or can it be used outside of that like VRS?

Yea, it's interesting. You'd expect games like Halo and Forza to be utilizing a lot of this stuff, and the developers actually marketing that fact.. but it's been rather quiet so far. Which is actually understandable because these are games which had started development long before the Series X/S were finalized, I'm sure.

VRS is definitely being used in games, I believe Halo has it, which is why the image blurs quite a bit when in motion. I guess that could be a TAA issue, but I'm not entirely sure.. But we know 3rd parties are using VRS, Dirt 5 and Doom Eternal are examples off the top of my head.

RT is getting use, although we really have yet to see MS' first party make that push yet. There's pieces here and there, but strangely they've fallen behind Sony on that front. Minecraft was shown, but has never been seen nor released since. There's games like Forza which make very limited use of RT.. and I'm guessing we'll just have to wait for UE5 games to start coming before we see much first party utilization. Everything has really been limited so far. I'm thinking that their focus on cross-gen, as well as their dev tools possibly being behind have contributed to them not putting as much emphasis on it early on as expected.

Mesh shaders has been a let-down to me personally. I was quite hyped for this since Nvidia started marketing it.. but it seems there's other ways in which developers are either matching it or surpassing it for their use cases, and thus we're not hearing much about it. Hopefully the upcoming current-gen/PC only games will be tapping into it.

And the same goes for SFS.. They hyped this quite a bit.. they aren't dumb, they know that PRT has been a thing for a while, they know about virtualized textures.. yet they made this sound like it was special, and that the Series consoles would make good use of this.. so we've got to start seeing something soon when the actual "next gen" games start releasing.

I think we'd all appreciate some developer doing a direct comparison of SFS in conjunction with the Velocity Architecture and showing just how much better it is, and what it allows for compared to how it would be without those two specific technologies. Everyone is waiting MS..

 

[invictis]

Yea, it's interesting. You'd expect games like Halo and Forza to be utilizing a lot of this stuff, and the developers actually marketing that fact.. but it's been rather quiet so far. Which is actually understandable because these are games which had started development long before the Series X/S were finalized, I'm sure.

VRS is definitely being used in games, I believe Halo has it, which is why the image blurs quite a bit when in motion. I guess that could be a TAA issue, but I'm not entirely sure.. But we know 3rd parties are using VRS, Dirt 5 and Doom Eternal are examples off the top of my head.

RT is getting use, although we really have yet to see MS' first party make that push yet. There's pieces here and there, but strangely they've fallen behind Sony on that front. Minecraft was shown, but has never been seen nor released since. There's games like Forza which make very limited use of RT.. and I'm guessing we'll just have to wait for UE5 games to start coming before we see much first party utilization. Everything has really been limited so far. I'm thinking that their focus on cross-gen, as well as their dev tools possibly being behind have contributed to them not putting as much emphasis on it early on as expected.

Mesh shaders has been a let-down to me personally. I was quite hyped for this since Nvidia started marketing it.. but it seems there's other ways in which developers are either matching it or surpassing it for their use cases, and thus we're not hearing much about it. Hopefully the upcoming current-gen/PC only games will be tapping into it.

And the same goes for SFS.. They hyped this quite a bit.. they aren't dumb, they know that PRT has been a thing for a while, they know about virtualized textures.. yet they made this sound like it was special, and that the Series consoles would make good use of this.. so we've got to start seeing something soon when the actual "next gen" games start releasing.

I think we'd all appreciate some developer doing a direct comparison of SFS in conjunction with the Velocity Architecture and showing just how much better it is, and what it allows for compared to how it would be without those two specific technologies. Everyone is waiting MS..

I wonder how many of them require the game engines to have them integrated for them to be used? It's my guess that Forza MS will be the first game from MS to really try and capitalise on them. As they all part of DX12 U API you would expect MS to push them by showing what can be done with it.
My reason to think this is that there has been a big gap between Forza 7 and F MS. There was two years between every game from Forza 1 to 7. Since 7 there has been 5 years so far, and it could be up to 6 years between the last games. That is a massive re working of the game engine to drag it out that long, and can only really be explained by them creating a game engine to totally use all the new tech offered by D12 U.

 

[Remij]

I wonder how many of them require the game engines to have them integrated for them to be used? It's my guess that Forza MS will be the first game from MS to really try and capitalise on them. As they all part of DX12 U API you would expect MS to push them by showing what can be done with it.
My reason to think this is that there has been a big gap between Forza 7 and F MS. There was two years between every game from Forza 1 to 7. Since 7 there has been 5 years so far, and it could be up to 6 years between the last games. That is a massive re working of the game engine to drag it out that long, and can only really be explained by them creating a game engine to totally use all the new tech offered by D12 U.

Well, we know Sampler Feedback Streaming requires game engine integration. SFS and DirectStorage are both components of the Xbox Velocity Architecture.. so to TRULY take advantage of the Velocity Architecture, game engines will require SFS integration. Aside from that, what we're seeing right now ar3e simply the effects of faster CPU-based decompression and SSD's inherent benefits over HDDs, such as instant seek times, and higher bandwidths in general. I don't think we're seeing much of anything on Xbox lean too hard on the Velocity Architecture and that SSD. It's pretty much verifiable because we can test these games on PCs as well.

I hope we see something soon. It would be nice for MS to show off a game, or something, meant to push that aspect of the system.

 

[techuse]

AFAIK no games yet use ML or Mesh Shaders. I think I recall a game using SFS but I’m not positive.

 

[Jay]

Mesh shaders - devs are having a harder time with it than they expected. In general not an xbox thing.

Games are cross gen. So that affects a few things e.g.
SFS - why bother implementing it when the raw speed of the drive already gives it a huge loading time speed boost.
They'll not make anything gameplay related as its cross gen, and don't need to worry about fitting assets in memory either.
Therefore added development and qa for very little to no benefit.

ML - if talking DLSS type of usage, this will need to be either XeSS or XboxSS and included into relevant engines and provided in GDK. Xbox would be smart to work with Intel to create an optimized binary of XeSS for XS even if they have their own XboxSS in the works.
Be beneficial for both parties.

Regardless we may see titles with XeSS on XS once PC titles starts shipping with it.

 

[orangpelupa]

Obviously the SSD speed is being used for improved game loading speeds

Not really. Some (like... Only less than 3 games) Xbox Series games can be played on external USB storage and their load time is the same (or close e onough. I just time them using the unprecise 1 1000, 2 1000, and so on counting) with being installed in the internal storage.

 

[iroboto]

I feel like most game engines are finally moving towards using 12.1 feature set right now. So we are seeing more GPU based dispatch, CR. I think once the main plumbing is done you can take on more plumbing tasks like SFS, mesh shaders etc. but you can only do so much at one time. I expect most of these features to hit by near end of generation.

 

[Riddlewire]

AFAIK no games yet use ML or Mesh Shaders. I think I recall a game using SFS but I’m not positive.

Didn't Microsoft say that Auto-HDR is accomplished with ML?
That would mean a lot of games use that particular feature. Even though they're older games.

 

[BRiT]

Didn't Microsoft say that Auto-HDR is accomplished with ML?
That would mean a lot of games use that particular feature. Even though they're older games.

IIRC, it was an ML Generated algorithm and that resulting algorithm is run on the display output chip. It's not run by games.

 

[cwjs]

VRS is definitely being used in games, I believe Halo has it, which is why the image blurs quite a bit when in motion.

The image blurs due to their temporal reconstruction -- I believe the most obvious vrs artifacts are the blocky, large-aliased edges visible throughout, especially visible in combination with effects that blur the screen.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Why would VRS affect polygon edges? It should be performing LOD on the shader level for shading pixels, and should only be applied on low-visibility surfaces unless it's being completely misapplied in something like a post effect (is that even possible?). It's only impact as I understand it should be reducing the quality of pixels, and broader surfaces of the same shader; any other visual artefacts must be coming from elsewhere like dynamic scaling, image reconstruction, and problematic AA solutions.

 

[dobwal]

Justice MMO implemented mesh shading back in May.

 

[cwjs]

Why would VRS affect polygon edges? It should be performing LOD on the shader level for shading pixels, and should only be applied on low-visibility surfaces

Should is subjective - its quite visible in halo.

It's only impact as I understand it should be reducing the quality of pixels, and broader surfaces of the same shader

It's reducing the number of pixels in the fragment shader -- the surface is rasterized with the same resolution, but the pixel shader of any pass you apply vrs to -- the normal map, any kind of parralax mapping, even your deferred lighting pass, etc, will be rendering at lower res where specified.

 

[techuse]

Justice MMO implemented mesh shading back in May.

Any benchmarks? Also is it on Xbox?

 

[invictis]

Justice MMO implemented mesh shading back in May.

Do you know what engine they are using?

 

[senis_kenis]

The Matrix Awakens uses mesh/primitive shaders for hardware rasterization.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It's reducing the number of pixels in the fragment shader -- the surface is rasterized with the same resolution, but the pixel shader of any pass you apply vrs to -- the normal map, any kind of parralax mapping, even your deferred lighting pass, etc, will be rendering at lower res where specified.

What constitutes the blocky edges? Are these texture details or polygon boundaries? Can you provide a screenshot illustrating?

 

[dobwal]

Do you know what engine they are using?

Messiah or NeoX.

 

[mr magoo]

Interesting blog on mesh shaders

Blog - Tellusim Technologies Inc.

"The Mesh shader performance is not where AMD GPUs shine."