Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2024]

[Below2D]

Bad PC port, or rather bad port in general (even on PS5).

Seems alright. I wouldn’t call this a bad port since the game is just insanely demanding.

 

[LiveGamer]

Apologies for commenting on this older video but I found this fascinating and could possibly be a precursor to Xbox AI scaling.

For one this is basically a video upscaler as it works only on the final frame and can be applied to ALL games. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Nvidia first start with a video upscaler on the nvidia Shield before they moved on to DLSS? It was essentially the same as this but for video. Could MS be doing the same here? Working on their general algorithm before having a DLSS type solution?

Another thing I felt was interesting is that DF tested this on the Ayaneo KUN mobile gaming handheld. This handheld has an NPU with only 16 TOPS. I'm guessing it probably doesn't take the entire 16 for this algorithm but for simplicity's sake I'll just go with 16 TOPS needed. The Xbox Series X has a total of 96 TOPS for the whole GPU. So for around 17% of the GPU power (or roughly 8 CUs out of 52) they could push graphics at 720p and get a pretty impressive 4k final image in the end.

They also showed how MS essentially hijacks the internal resolution of the game before the upscale. Forcing the games to run at 720p. Perhaps they could do that for existing Xbox games forcing them to run at 720p and thus freeing up the 17% GPU performance needed to get this 4k image?

This also has great opportunity for a handheld as you essentially get a great 4k image when 'docked' from a mere 720p image. Pretty cool stuff IMO especially if it requires even less than 16 TOPS.

 

[davis.anthony]

720p to 4k is dog shit on any upscaler.

1080p as a minimum input resolution is required to hit 4k target using ML.

 

[LiveGamer]

720p to 4k is dog shit on any upscaler.

1080p as a minimum input resolution is required to hit 4k target using ML.

1080p would be even better but my question still stands. Could MS force lower resolutions on Xbox games to free up resources for this AI upscaling? It would essentially be MS's version of PSSR but using existing hardware and work for all games.

 

[davis.anthony]

1080p would be even better but my question still stands. Could MS force lower resolutions on Xbox games to free up resources for this AI upscaling? It would essentially be MS's version of PSSR but using existing hardware and work for all games.

Why would Microsoft want to ruin the image quality of their games?

 

[Seanspeed]

1080p would be even better but my question still stands. Could MS force lower resolutions on Xbox games to free up resources for this AI upscaling? It would essentially be MS's version of PSSR but using existing hardware and work for all games.

Microsoft cant 'force' anything no. They could provide potential solutions for devs, but it'd have to be up to them whether to use it. Or they could maybe offer an option for users, but it wouldn't change the source resolution of a game, no.

Like, all the work they did with their XB1X and XSX BC upgrades and whatnot required specific permission from each dev/pub of each game. It's not something Microsoft could just go in and hack into for any game no matter what. Devs/pubs would not accept such an overreach on Microsoft's part.

 

[LiveGamer]

Why would Microsoft want to ruin the image quality of their games?

Did you watch the video? The image quality would be better as Xbox can't reach 4k native anyway. Check out Final Fantasy on PS5 Pro. Way better image quality.

Microsoft cant 'force' anything no. They could provide potential solutions for devs, but it'd have to be up to them whether to use it. Or they could maybe offer an option for users, but it wouldn't change the source resolution of a game, no.

Like, all the work they did with their XB1X and XSX BC upgrades and whatnot required specific permission from each dev/pub of each game. It's not something Microsoft could just go in and hack into for any game no matter what. Devs/pubs would not accept such an overreach on Microsoft's part.

Are you sure about this? Yes MS got permission to add games to the BC program as they needed to be recompiled but from my understanding they did not need permission on what resolution or framerate to run them at. If the API MS uses allows them to hijack and set their own resolution they could theoretically use this for much better IQ.

 

[davis.anthony]

Did you watch the video? The image quality would be better as Xbox can't reach 4k native anyway. Check out Final Fantasy on PS5 Pro. Way better image quality.

I have watched the video and also played more than enough games with DLSS to know that 720p to 4k is dog shit.

Final Fantasy's performance mode also has dog shit image quality, which is why Pro looks so good, in your average game the difference won't be like that.