Do you think there will be a mid gen refresh console from Sony and Microsoft?

[arandomguy]

I think there's a semantics argument here that might need to be clarified. I'm guessing real-time used in this case doesn't neccesarily have to be strictly real-time but just fast enough to be done client side during game play. For example existing procedural generation on level loads is already fairly common even though it's not actually real time.

Also in terms of asset creation the scope doesn't need to be completely from scratch. For example take Starfield, or any Bethesda game, it already has an established character creation system via "sliders." AI could just be leveraged to manipulate those sliders more efficiently than manually hand tuning and/or more effectively than the current algorithmic approach to generate NPCs.

 

[rntongo]

Spencer has stated that there are no plans for a midgen console.

1. I am convinced that the next desktop Xbox will be seen as a new generation console in 2025 or 2026, which will be based on artificial intelligence. Because it is the only way to present spectacular graphic and gameplay innovations at an affordable price with technologies available in the coming years.

2. Maybe there will be a mobile Xbox in 2025, or just that.

A "next gen" console even if some sort of Xbox Desktop in 2025/26 would be a catastrophic blunder especially looking at the current title line up. You wont get much difference between that system and getting a PS5 pro. The PS5 pro is going to be the best value for "high end" gaming until the next gen sometime end of 2027 or 2028. I think it would be much smarter for MS to release a smaller cheaper Series X as an alternative to the PS5 pro.

 

[rntongo]

Just to be clear. I think MS should bring out an X Pro for $599 in 2025 that has all the enhancements for better ML and RT that they feel they can take advantage of with X|S titles. Then follow that with the X2 in 2029.

The X Pro should be ~100% faster than the PS5 Pro and showcase Gears 6, Fable, and Forza Horizon 6.

MS told DF when they showed them the Series X that it was indeed they're pro console! DF were also told to keep this a secret which they did until around last year. Releasing a Series X pro in 2025 would require prior years of planning of at least 2 years. According to the leaks from FTC they are actually currently working on the next gen Xbox. I also think Sony will start putting in most of their efforts on the next PS after they release the PS5 pro this year. So I think we're more likely to see a cheaper smaller Series X this year or next year than a "pro console". Also with the developer issues they've had with the Series S, asking devs to support 3 machines to meet console title requirements yet one has less than 16GB of ram would be a tall order. Most devs prefer working on the PS5 then Series X. Remember even with Sony and the PS5 pro developers can choose which games to put in that extra work, otherwise they can recompile the games to run on the PS5 pro and if they dont have fixed frame rates or resolutions they can automatically see improvements. So an Xbox pro in 2025 would require all this kind of planning. Quite a task to achieve in a year.

 

[DavidGraham]

With an upscaling factor of 4x, there's no upscaling method out there that can produce comparable quality to native rendering ...

However, 4x ML upscaling gives you 2x the performance of native for maybe ~10% reduction in certain image aspects, so ... It's a no brainer bargain really.

If you factor in ML denoising (Ray Reconstruction) into the equation, then 4x upscaling exceeds native TAA -quality wise- in path traced rendering.

Show me a REAL WORLD application for AI in real-time rendering OUTSIDE of temporal filtering techniques! (upscaling/frame generation/denoising/radiance caching/etc)

RTX HDR is providing massive visual gains for games, even better than many games native HDR implementation.

 

[arandomguy]

A problem has always been in evaluating upscaling as a comparison to native when from the user experience perspective the comparison point should always be the alternative options. The real world options are not going to be ML upscaling vs. native. They are either going to be ML upscaling vs. other upscaling methods, or lower graphics fidelity, or lower frames rates (possibly unplayable) or just more expensive hardware.

 

[davis.anthony]

If you factor in ML denoising (Ray Reconstruction) into the equation, then 4x upscaling exceeds native TAA -quality wise- in path traced rendering.

Sorry, but until they get rid of the ray reconstruction 'look' then it won't look as good as native.

 

[DavidGraham]

Sorry, but until they get rid of the ray reconstruction 'look' then it won't look as good as native.

Disagree, native path tracing lacks reflections clarity, lacks dozens of shadows entirely, and have flickering unstable and laggy indirect lighting, It's simply no match.

 

[davis.anthony]

Disagree, native path tracing lacks reflections clarity, lacks dozens of shadows entirely, and have flickering unstable and laggy indirect lighting, It's simply no match.

But that's nothing to do with native rendering with TAA and everything to do with the ray tracing itself.

 

[fehu]

but it will probably have many more *unused* features than the current Series S/X.

you are welcome

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Can you please phrase more technical arguments than that. Notably, I had to go look up the context of that post to understand your point - I didn't know you had edited the quote from the original. A better response would have been to quote QPlayer and then reply saying you expect those features to go largely unused.

 

[fehu]

Series X had a lot of interesting technologies, that went unused because games were targeting the market's leader features, to the point that even having higher clocks/tf suffered in some games.
Some of these cool techs have even been surpassed by software methods, so at this point is just silicon junk inside the apu.
But ms has a helluva of developers, they will use them! Until now they haven't bothered, there's no sign that things will change, and in the future, they will be discouraged from doing it because they know that at some point maybe or certainly they'll have to port to ps5/6 and switch1/2.

See? My first method was way more efficient in conveying the same information.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

See? My first method was way more efficient in conveying the same information.

It was more efficient for you to write, but less efficient for all the subsequent readers. Was that *unused* in the original quote or added? You knew, and QPlayer knew, but the rest of the people in this conversation didn't unless they had memorised or recently read QPlayer's post from two pages back. This post OTOH is clear in meaning and anyone arriving at the conversation at this post knows exactly what is being talked about.

Cute "fixed that for you" posts only work when immediately following the post so the conversation can be followed.

 

[Nesh]

Series X had a lot of interesting technologies, that went unused because games were targeting the market's leader features, to the point that even having higher clocks/tf suffered in some games.
Some of these cool techs have even been surpassed by software methods, so at this point is just silicon junk inside the apu.
But ms has a helluva of developers, they will use them! Until now they haven't bothered, there's no sign that things will change, and in the future, they will be discouraged from doing it because they know that at some point maybe or certainly they'll have to port to ps5/6 and switch1/2.

See? My first method was way more efficient in conveying the same information.

We keep saying this all the time as an excuse that it's the market leader the reason.
But I have this question.

Why hasn't MS taken advantage of these technologies themselves?

When the PS3 was failing it's initial years and the 360 was the leader, developers weren't taking advantage of PS3's weird innards, but Sony was putting the effort through its exclusives. Even Uncharted1 was doing remarkable things and pushing out visuals like nothing else on the 360.

The Sega Saturn wasn't been taken advantage of by devs but Sega was finding ways to use it's weird capabilities exploiting VDP1 and VDP2 in ways that it produced visual features that were impossible or hard to mimic on PS1. Such as Panzer Dragoon Zwei's and Sagas perspective correct infinite planes and incredible water effects. Or Fighter's Megamix's high res perspective correct infinite planes

 

[Sonic]

We keep saying this all the time as an excuse that it's the market leader the reason.
But I have this question.

Why hasn't MS taken advantage of these technologies themselves?

When the PS3 was failing it's initial years and the 360 was the leader, developers weren't taking advantage of PS3's weird innards, but Sony was putting the effort through its exclusives. Even Uncharted1 was doing remarkable things and pushing out visuals like nothing else on the 360.

The Sega Saturn wasn't been taken advantage of by devs but Sega was finding ways to use it's weird capabilities exploiting VDP1 and VDP2 in ways that it produced visual features that were impossible or hard to mimic on PS1. Such as Panzer Dragoon Zwei's and Sagas perspective correct infinite planes and incredible water effects. Or Fighter's Megamix's high res perspective correct infinite planes

What's this about fighters mega mix high resolution? You may be mistaking things as that game took a hit to resolution and didn't use the Saturn's high res mode. It is a great example of a game taking a hit on resolution and overall clarity to have light sources.

 

[fehu]

Why hasn't MS taken advantage of these technologies themselves?

Don't know, they don't care. Even for stuff that's supported by PC dx12 isn't used as a tech showcase.
I have the impression that ms is behaving like they are the landlord and pass by just to collect the monthly fee. They leave the developers completely free to do whatever they want without giving a direction or sharing a vision, and the developers themself don't care to waste time tinkering with their engine to implement something useful just for the series x.

 

[Riddlewire]

We keep saying this all the time as an excuse that it's the market leader the reason.
But I have this question.

Why hasn't MS taken advantage of these technologies themselves?

I'm still of the opinion that Covid, or rather Microsoft's response to it, set them back much more egregiously than Sony or third party publishers.
Their "health security" measures were extreme. They were still trying to do game development through video-conferencing long after everyone else had returned to work.
By the time operations returned to normal, any advanced technology research was probably mothballed in favor of just getting games out at a reasonable pace.

 

[iroboto]

We keep saying this all the time as an excuse that it's the market leader the reason.
But I have this question.

Why hasn't MS taken advantage of these technologies themselves?

You can’t control what developers need or do with the hardware. And mainly it takes a while for some of these to plumb. They can only integrate so much as it makes sense for them to integrate (you have to integrate on the engine and possibly the tools side of things- and that’s where content creation happens).

Integration for the sake of it, doesn’t lead to better results, likely worse.

Ray tracing is a wonderful feature barely
Found in a small percentage of games. Why wasn’t all PS5 exclusives running with primitive shaders, super fast SSD streaming coupled with RT?

It’s largely for the same reasons. The profit motive isn’t there to rush to do it. That doesn’t mean later in the generation as you continue to push boundaries, you won’t eventually come around to it.

 

[Nesh]

You can’t control what developers need or do with the hardware. And mainly it takes a while for some of these to plumb. They can only integrate so much as it makes sense for them to integrate (you have to integrate on the engine and possibly the tools side of things- and that’s where content creation happens).

Integration for the sake of it, doesn’t lead to better results, likely worse.

That doesn't sound like a good explanation. It's been almost 4 years since release. It is MS's own studios. Nobody is preventing MS's own developers from using any extra juice available to them. If there is room for gains, unless it is too costly to explore,you would expect them to dive into. Especially with high production titles that aim very high.

Either the technological advantages offered by Series X aren't as worthwhile, or even MS's own developers and MS themselves don't bother due to pure negligence. There is no indication so far that the reason we dont see these Series X unique perks been taken advantage of at all is because PS5 is the market leader.

We can surely suspect that it contributes to being used less. But zero usage goes beyond this explanation.

 

[iroboto]

That doesn't sound like a good explanation. It's been almost 4 years since release. It is MS's own studios. Nobody is preventing MS's own developers from using any extra juice available to them. If there is room for gains, unless it is too costly to explore,you would expect them to dive into. Especially with high production titles that aim very high.

Either the technological advantages offered by Series X aren't as worthwhile, or even MS's own developers and MS themselves don't bother due to pure negligence. There is no indication so far that the reason we dont see these Series X unique perks been taken advantage of at all is because PS5 is the market leader.

We can surely suspect that it contributes to being used less. But zero usage goes beyond this explanation.

Depends on the bottleneck for the title. You don’t need VRS if you aren’t compute bound. You don’t need mesh shading if you aren’t geometry bound. Etc etc.

The reason we don’t see greater adoption is because PS5 and PS4 and everything below SM6_4 represents the bulk of the population of configurations moving into next gen. As we move into the latter half of this generation and continue to push boundaries, PS5 could be a culprit for resistance for some third parties, getting them instead to explore custom examples that would work on PS5, and by relation Xbox.

And sometimes the hardware features suck.

There’s nothing wrong with that, I’m sure the reality is that things lie somewhere in between.

 

[Nesh]

What's this about fighters mega mix high resolution? You may be mistaking things as that game took a hit to resolution and didn't use the Saturn's high res mode. It is a great example of a game taking a hit on resolution and overall clarity to have light sources.

Yes sacrifices were made. I m not talking about Saturn's high resolution mode. The floor though in Megamix was allowing more pristine definition, stretching into the distance due to using Saturn's scaler rather than normally textured polygons.