Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2017]

Another interesting example regarding PS4 -> X1 would appear to be Wolfenstien 2. We know that iD battled to get performance up on X1, apparently because the game's many buffers simply didn't work well with the small amount of esram. So in the case of both X1 and PS4 Pro, I think we're seeing times when the available bandwidth (from DDR3 in the case of X1 and main memory for PS4Pro) makes the system fall below the performance you might otherwise expect.

This isn't to say PS4Pro is a bad design of course, Sony wanted to maximise bang for buck and likely wouldn't have known (or cared) about X1X. Extra bandwidth would probably have added significantly to BOM in a way that the relatively modest increases in die area and GDDR5 speed bins didn't.

I do think MS deserve credit for the X1X too. The say they did a huge amount of profiling of games on X1 and ran a lot of simulations on removing bottlenecks. The huge 12 channel memory controller (in comparison to the PS4Pros 4 channel) would seem to indicate that they were keen to minimise latency and the impact of contention, and maximise the real world throughput of the SoC. That could be an area where an extra year of R&D showed results.

 

How today's games could look and run better on future consoles
Xbox One X provides a compelling proof of concept. Digital Foundry talks to Microsoft's ATG team.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/d...-games-could-run-better-on-tomorrows-consoles

Yesterday, we published our discussion with Bill Stillwell of Microsoft's backwards compatibility team, but also present was Martin Fuller of the Advanced Technology Group: "My team works a lot with developers when they're making the games, whereas Bill's working with the games after they're made, so we are always kind of looking towards the future and helping developers adopt new technologies," he explains.

ATG provided the reverse tone-mapping technology that allows Xbox 360 games to run in HDR on Xbox One X, but there is more crossover between the two teams than you might imagine. A whole new back-compat opportunity arose with the arrival of the X, a chance to take the existing catalogue of Xbox One titles and run them better on the new machine. Smoother performance, improved texture filtering and faster loading are the main upgrades offered at the system level, but a small range of titles deliver all of that and more thanks to dynamic resolution scaling, a technique ATG has championed to game-makers.

...

At Digital Foundry, we've been firm advocates of SSAA for 1080p display users, which made the inconsistency of support in PlayStation 4 Pro titles puzzling and often frustrating. If a developer creates specific modes with different performance characteristics, all modes should be available to all users regardless of the display they use. This is what Microsoft promised to us when we visited Redmond in March and the firm's method of delivering it is pretty straightforward.

"The way we do that is incredibly simple," says Fuller. "We just don't tell developers what television they have connected."

...

And with so many of the latest games now utilising DRS, TAA - or both - and with Microsoft's commitment to older games running better on future hardware, we can't help but wonder what the true next-gen Xbox will bring to the party. It's not unreasonable to expect see system-level improvements similar to those seen in Xbox One X, but equally, with dynamic resolution now commonplace, there's built-in scalability in a range of games now, and their full potential could be unlocked in the years to come. Maybe Assassin's Creed Origins' dynamic 1700p-1800p general range will lock at full 4K. Maybe the move to Ryzen CPU cores paired with a big GPU upgrade will see Wolfenstein 2 hit a fully uncompromised 2160p60. While the next generation is still some years away, some of the impressive back-compat results seen on Xbox One X act as a pretty compelling proof of concept for what could be.

 

It seems MS had to put a lot more resources and risk into X1X while Sony didn’t have to. MS needed the reward and pushed for a more compelling design.

I assume we’ll see a more compelling design for the PS5.

 

BC was always going to be part of the platform. Scorpio was just a culmination of where they wanted to go with it.

The biggest risk and resource was the double down into content production and TV. And Kinect 2.0. Since then it’s been their greatest risks have been game pass and play anywhere.

 

I just meant with the mid-gen upgrade. MS had a greater motivation to push the boundaries since they were “losing” the generation. Technically they had the esram to adjust for as well. A bigger leap to make and a bigger reason to do it.

Sony’s attempt with the PS4P just looks like a cheap option fell in their laps and they took it. Low risk, low reward.

 

Oh. Yea lol I guess. I’m never too sure about the losing the gen comment. It’s not that you’re wrong. It’s just that when you're going to lose against a competitors strength, you're gonna pivot to something you're good at and they are bad at. I'm never sure where to attribute that to lol. Is that losing? Or just how businesses naturally survive?

 

Lets not speculate or discuss future consoles here as that's not the topic of this thread.

 

That’s why I put it in quotes. Obviously it’s selling less and the base console is less powerful than the Sony offering but it’s getting plenty of cross platform and even exclusive games and it’s making money.

 

This does confirm that Microsoft didn't overcome the base assumption that taking raw binary from a different architecture would have taken vastly more horsepower than modern hardware had on tap. There's trans-compilation with some form of static profile-guided optimization, then a battery of dynamic profiling and interception of various functions/resources was needed, as well as physical adjustments to the new hardware to make it align with elements of the old.
I'm not sure from the reading of it how much of that process matters for Durango to Scorpio compatibility, if there is any need for non-hardware intervention to map any specifics of the older architecture to the newer.

Perhaps it's not needed due to matching base features and brute force in areas that did not carry over.

This kind of investment does seem to indicate where the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X may have different underlying philosophies, given how the former was more paranoid about how it appeared at a hardware level, whereas the other is willing to invest a fair amount into ongoing software and engineering.

 

That's not how the console industry works. Console R&D is in train for many years. Sony announced a 1.8Tf console in February 2013, did they impact Microsoft announcing their 1.2Tf console in May?

 

at most they can decide instead to sell the SDK unit lol. At least that's been designed.

 

I know you're joking but before anything tries to run with thus, go google Sony PlayStation SDK and look at the kits, which are boxes with 3x to 4x the cubic capacity of the original Xbox One. This is hardware designed to be able to be deployed to developers ASAP. Often without anything approximating final hardware and that cost tens of thousands of your favourite, non-Zimbabwean, currency.

 

hm.. There's at least some sort of driver detection for forcing AF on XO titles, unless the base assumption is that any titles that aren't running a Scorpio package or updated for the Scorpio (or later) SDK will simply run forced AF. Dunno.

Need someone to leak a new SDK.

 

I also wonder where this happens as I'm sure I read that Xbox One games effectively came packaged up with whatever version of the OS their respective VM was created with, or updated to later. Lots of games won't have (nor will be) updated. Perhaps this is something the hypervisor can force.

 

Per this interview, it's described as a hardware change rather than some kind of software trans-compile.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/d...-five-ways-your-existing-games-will-be-better

That seems lower-level, and could possibly escape the need for the process used for bringing Xbox 360 or the original Xbox into the modern context.

 

hm... would be interested to see more AF comparisons.

360 running 360
One/S running 360
OneX running 360
OneX unpatched vs One/S

There was the Halo comparison, and the 4K patch certainly improves things in the distance, however, texture detail feels a lot more immediately improved sans patch depending on the map. That said, the latter might shimmer like crazy too.

 

Game can be rough...especially before you land. It's likely that it will performance will improve but seems like it could be an inherent CPU problem..

 

DigitalFoundry Article Link: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2017-pubg-xbox-one-and-xbox-one-x-performance

Also, as mentioned in the VGTech Thread ...

It's a good thing this is still in early access. Once you've landed and begin the phase of searching for weapons the framerate mostly stabilizes. I certainly hope they improve the framerates in the opening sequence, even if it means using dynamic resolution at that point.

The comments on YouTube show how juvenile fanboys can be. Those people are down right ugly.

 

General Reminder ... This isn't a general thread about the game or what early access means, so try to remain on topic which is technical discussion of Digital Foundry Articles. Try not to get too far off the topic.

 

DF takes on Injustice 2. No article link yet, but here's the video summary and video.

900p on Xbox One, 1080p on PS4, 1440p on Pro - so where do we go from here? In this video, pit Pro against X in full HDR, using our dual-wield technology to play the game simultaneously on both systems for the closest, most dynamic comparison.



Xbox One X runs permanently at native resolution of 1620p (2880x1620p) for a 26.6% higher resolution than 4Pro during gameplay. The One X also offers some spots of higher quality textures and texture filtering compared to the 4Pro.