Halo Infinite [Fall 2021] [XO, XBSX|S, PC, XGP]

Apparently Beyond3D truly lost the plot years ago.. Microsoft's Xbox Advanced Technology Group (ATG) has been a thing for years.

 

Were they used internally or sent out to dev shops targeting Xbox consoles? (Sort of like the dev groups from Nvidia and AMD sent to clients). Any info on recent notable activity?

 

Given Halo's development woes, I think MS needs to get R.A.D.I.C.A.L.

Really
Angry
Deep
In
Coding
Around
Legacy

Spoiler

Logo:

 

Similar to square enix with crystal tools / luminous? But they use UE for most of their games

 

ATG works internally AFAIK (alongside 1st party devs) . They are the ones working on & creating the SDK, integrating & developing new DirectX features (audio, graphics & I/O).

 

While they don't mention Microsoft's ATG, according to an interview on DF with Mike Rayner (Technical Director at The Coalition), they got some help from a variety of Microsoft tech teams for Gears 4:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-gears-of-war-4-tech-interview

 

Is it? I don't know what modifications 343 has done to it but bungie still has issues with it. Even during destiny 2 development they were saying scene/areas took several hours to a day to import/alter in their dev environment. I'm sure they've reduced that by now but it seems the tools are still very much archaic by "modern" standards.

 

Lets continue the UE Open world discussion over here: https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/unreal-engine-vs-open-world-spin-off.61910/

 

I disagree with his use of the word insurmountable when describing 343 challenges in releasing Halo infinite for Series X launch. I agree that the pandemic definitely had an effect on them launching this year and that's ok, it's thrown a spanner into the works for most things.

But making it sound like designing a launch game with what sounds like a monster budget and 5 years as insurmountable is ridiculous.

 

I think perhaps the problems were insurmountable, but that many of the problems were of MS's own making.

The wrong priorities, prescribing a set of acceptable solutions regardless of the problems faced, and people above shouting about what they want with no consideration for what you can actually do.

 

With regards to the pop-in, you have to believe that this is going to be better on Series S/X with a solid SSD subsystem. I feel like this is an area where the PC they used really isn't "representative" of what One X is capable of delivering.

 

Is there actually any new info in that video?

 

Slow news month...them clicks and ad $$ have to pay the rent.

 

Yeah because as we constantly hear, the current PC can't do the things the XBSX can. It's not like PCI-e NVME running at over 2.4Ghz haven't been around for a long while now. Imo, the company doing the beta showing should have had the best PC out to show the best of the demo, I mean all that money they have and they can't run the demo as it's likely to be represented on the XBSX? That's what those little warning labels at the bottom of the demos they were showing was saying.

That said the engine is likely at fault for the pop-ins as iroboto said and nothing to do with the PC used.

 

Some of his analysis surely can't be right. I mean, he states that Microsoft didn't know the specs of Series X back when Halo Infinite was first announced in 2018 but you don't spend 5-6 years not knowing what your hardware is targeting, even if you do make some adjustments once silicon testing begins in anger.

 

Yeah I'm betting that speculation is just bad unless Xbox hardware team wasn't letting any of the MS Game Studios (especially 343i???) know any of the specs they were designing around. The 12 TFLOP number was basically set in stone 5 years ago. It was up to the Xbox hardware team to make it happen.

They've been investigating moving to alternative storage tech like SSD since 2007 (according to Hot Chips presentation). So that was likely locked down fairly early in the hardware design cycle as well.

Information on RT might possibly have come late, but certainly would have been known by 2018 (original release date for NAVI which likely was supposed to have RT...but something went really wrong at AMD and so everything got massively delayed and so NAVI got split into RDNA 1 and RDNA 2).

I think it's just more that 343i upper management just isn't very good at managing development of a game like Halo, especially when it's saddled with such a creaking engine.

Regards,
SB