Microsoft UWP Discussion

[Silent_Buddha]

I didn't think that has been an issue for years. Has anyone done any benchmarks recently on windowed vs. fullscreen exclusive? Personally I don't think I've seen any real difference in many titles for a long time.

It depends on the game. I know there's a few games (can't remember their names off hand) that performed significantly worse in full screen exclusive than they did in borderless windowed. There were also a few games that performed similarly in both, but if you alt-tabbed to another application and back, then performance in exclusive mode would tank until the game was restarted. Borderless windowed didn't have that issue. It's pretty rare now days for full screen exclusive to offer any benefits over borderless windowed, except if you want to run without v-sync.

What I hate are games that still force full screen exclusive mode without options for windowed mode(extremely rare) but it still happens from time to time with new games released on Steam.

That's almost as large of a pet peeve of mine as games that don't allow you to access options (to adjust graphics or more importantly audio settings) until you've started a game. No way to access options in the main menu. Like, WTF?

Regards,
SB

 

[pjbliverpool]

Improving on perfection?

http://wccftech.com/forza-motorsport-6-apex-update-adds-frame-rate-options/

In all seriousness, they could do with an 'overall' quality selector so that (as with most other games) you can select the overall quality level along the lines of 'low', 'medium' and 'high'. At the moment, you can only select 'dynamic on' or 'dynamic off' at the top level. If you want to change individual settings, you need to change each one in turn. And there are a lot..... which is good.... but it needs a higher level quality selector.

 

[Clukos]

You can change the dynamic quality and set it to low/med/high/ultra and i think it adjusts around that.

 

[pjbliverpool]

You can change the dynamic quality and set it to low/med/high/ultra and i think it adjusts around that.

Yes it seems so, but if I don't want the dynamic setting applied at all, e.g. I just want everything at medium, it's a bit of a pain changing everything individually. It's a minor gripe.

 

[Rurouni]

I tried to run Forza, but it kicked me out after the intial loading screen. Of course my PC is below the minimum recommended spec (Kaveri with 8GB RAM). Probably I need to at least add more RAM because the 2GB for GPU and 8GB of RAM min spec. I do set the VRAM to 2GB, so that leaves 6GB for the RAM. Tried to set the VRAM to 1GB, same result (kicked out from the game).
There was no warning, the game just force close without giving any error message. It do warn me when I wan't to run the game that my PC is below spec and if I want to still continue.

 

[orangpelupa]

tried APEX on my 1GB Radeon HD 7770.

at first it runs in really low resolution and everything looks like crap. but after i forced the resolution to 1440x900 @30fps and MSAA 4x while everything else in dynamic, its superb!

i want all PC games to have this "dynamic" setting

every turn, there will be "warning, low VRAM" notification at top of my screen. if only i can disable that notification...

the game works fine most of the time though. 30 fps only stutter a bit on turn. 60 fps randomly stutter. I guess its the VRAM getting filled.

btw Apex ate more than 4 GB of RAM at startup. Then it cleverly use pagefile instead of pouring everything into RAM.

at least thats what i got when watching task manager

 

[bgroovy]

It straight up refused to run on a 6970. :/

 

[orangpelupa]

It straight up refused to run on a 6970. :/

have you updated the driver? Apex at first refuse to run due to my GPU (i forgot the exact wordings). then it works after i installed the latest driver. dunno what version.

 

[bgroovy]

AFAIK they discontinued driver support for the 6XX0 GPUs last year. They added the Crimson control panel to the 15.11 drivers and that's it.

 

[Kaotik]

APEX is DirectX 12 only, from AMDs side only GCN GPUs have DX12 support (not sure if latest VLIW4/5 could support it technically, but driver wise they don't)

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Let's take Mass Effect: Andromeda. It sounds like from those tweets a developer could either modify/patch the XBO version OR use an optimized PC build for the Scorpio version.

Except here is zero chance of Bioware using UWP for Andromeda, this is restricting Andromeda to the Microsoft store on Windows. Remember you cant even buy Mass Effect 3 on Steam.

UWP = Microsoft Store and no mods. That sounds like a shitty future for Windows gaming.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

UWP = Microsoft Store and no mods. That sounds like a shitty future for Windows gaming.

I doubt this will be true forever. UWP games are becoming less limited as time goes on and the UWP platform matures. There isn't any reasons that games in the UWP store wouldn't be open to Fallout 4 style mod support in the future.

Considering how well UWP games developed by Microsoft studios run, there's no reason that UWP couldn't be the future of Xbox games, assuming that it can support closer to the metal rendering when run on Xbox and automatically deal with the PC issues of having to support multiple generations of hardware.

With that said, developers will still make Win32 versions of their games. As you mentioned they won't want to be limited to the UWP store. But if Xbox does move towards UWP as the method of deploying games in the future, then that'll just means developers support UWP + Win32 versus Xbox + Win32, and in some cases Xbox + Win32 + UWP (Quantum Break, Tomb Raider).

Regards,
SB

 

[mpg1]

Except here is zero chance of Bioware using UWP for Andromeda, this is restricting Andromeda to the Microsoft store on Windows. Remember you cant even buy Mass Effect 3 on Steam.

UWP = Microsoft Store and no mods. That sounds like a shitty future for Windows gaming.

I think we will we see games that are win32 or were originally win32 on Windows Store and Scorpio.

 

[Jay]

UWP = Microsoft Store and no mods. That sounds like a shitty future for Windows gaming.

uwp isn't just for the windows store. Win 10 maybe, which you may consider just as bad.
mods being a limitation now, doesn't mean that will always be the case. Not sure if they've talked about that or not.
uwp has a ways to go, but they do seem to be improving it relatively quickly

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I doubt this will be true forever. UWP games are becoming less limited as time goes on and the UWP platform matures. There isn't any reasons that games in the UWP store wouldn't be open to Fallout 4 style mod support in the future.

Sandboxed environments and signed code preclude user generated content and unauthorised patches. I'll believe this will change only after Microsoft have changed this. I can't see how Microsoft can change this because the virtualised sandbox environment is the basis on which UWP's technology is built.

Considering how well UWP games developed by Microsoft studios run, there's no reason that UWP couldn't be the future of Xbox games, assuming that it can support closer to the metal rendering when run on Xbox and automatically deal with the PC issues of having to support multiple generations of hardware.

Not many games have released in both UWP and generic WINxx versions. One game that did was Rise of the Tomb Raider and we know how that turned out. Maybe Microsoft studios will invest and get the best out of UWP but it's third parties who make up the bulk of game sales.

uwp isn't just for the windows store. Win 10 maybe, which you may consider just as bad.

UWP is indeed gated behind the Microsoft store on Windows. There has been no suggestion that this will change and since this is Window's store big selling point, what incentive is there for Microsoft to open it up.

I think we will we see games that are win32 or were originally win32 on Windows Store and Scorpio.

You can put WIN32 apps into the Microsoft store; it's UWP you cant have anywhere other than the Microsoft store. And to be clear, you think Scorpio will run WIN32 apps? I think this is unlikely for a million reasons, most of which is that Microsoft have to port great chunks of the WIN32 API to their game console. And the lower-levles systems on which the APIs reside.

 

[BRiT]

UWP is indeed gated behind the Microsoft store on Windows. There has been no suggestion that this will change and since this is Window's store big selling point, what incentive is there for Microsoft to open it up.

You do know you can side-load UWP programs, right?

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Sandboxed environments and signed code preclude user generated content and unauthorised patches. I'll believe this will change only after Microsoft have changed this. I can't see how Microsoft can change this because the virtualised sandbox environment is the basis on which UWP's technology is built.

Basically you also just described the Xbox gaming environment, which happens to support Fallout 4 style mods.

Regards,
SB

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Basically you also just described the Xbox gaming environment, which happens to support Fallout 4 style mods.

I'm guessing you're talking about Bethesda-hosted mods as opposed to Nexus mods. Sorry, I was talking about the latter.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

You do know you can side-load UWP programs, right?

My understanding is that this is quite limited and not suitable for widespread distribution. Am I mistaken?

 

[Scott_Arm]

You do know you can side-load UWP programs, right?

Yah, they've announced that any store can host UWP apps, as far as I know.