Microsoft Xbox One X (XBOX) Reviews and Impressions

Sadly, no DOAX VR on Xbox.

 

Yeah I agree they should have something ready for launch. Truth be told though, the pro didn’t have a flagship new exclusive at launch too and its marketing was based on COD:IW and if we compare what Sony had ready for the pro launch , and I remember them quite well cause I bought a pro at launch, and what ms has I don’t believe that Sony had the superior offerings. A 1440p uncharted 4 , infamous with broken hdr(that crushed blacks) and a remaster of a ps3 game (the last of us) . The best pro showcase was ratchet and clank. Ms has 4k versions of halo5, gears 4, forza 7, killer instinct and a 1440p version of quantum break. Not a bad launch and it could have been better had they not be holding off the patch for Forza Horizon 3 .

 

Launching hardware in November means you don't have to push out software as there is so much of it anyway. Anything exclusive is likely going to be lost in the noise unless it's absolutely outstanding. Look at Rise of the Tomb Raider last year.

 

Last year was a pretty crazy year too if I recall correctly. Titanfall 2 had no place to breathe between COD and SWBF, ROTR, and others.

 

Yup. I'd say the best time for exclusives is the traditionally quiet release months - January to March and June thru August, which whether by coincidence or design is where most of Sony's recent AAA exclusives have landed. Why fight to compete when you can stroll in and grab all the attention?

 

perhaps all the delays for SOT, State of Decay, and Crackdown are meant to follow this formula. Stay away from the holidays don't get wtfBBQ by the 3P AAA studios.

 

Played Gears 4 on my OLED in calibrated mode (f' game mode seriously).

This feels like a bigger generational leap than what we got with the X360 > XB1.

HDR is proper game changer and having the horsepower to run these game at that level of fidelity is just amazing.

I'm looking forward to Assassin's Creed Origins tomorrow which I have no doubt will look even better.

The next Halo is going to be nuts on this thing!

Played few mins of Ninja Gaiden Black and it's a proper wow moment to really such an old game playing so well.

 

Hoping to hear your Forza 7 thoughts. There is an enhanced demo if you don't own the full title.

 

Battlefield 1 plays so incredibly well on One X. I'm actually worried that when they patch it, it'll ruin the framerate. That's one thing Dice tends to do and push things a little too far so that multiplayer has some slow downs. Maybe not though. Maybe the slowdowns were mostly cpu related, and the cpu boost will keep it covered.

 

Tried Gears 4, Cod WWII and AssCreed Origins with 4k HDR settings and were thoroughly pleased with the results. This is an excellent console with very low noise level, cool and powerful. The resolution leap isn't nearly as drastic compared to the Pro but appreciable non the less, from now on it's all multiplatform on the X while enjoying all the sweet exclusives on the Pro, doesn't get any better than this.
Also love how you can view the screenshots in HDR now on the X, such a wonderful yet simple function that's completely overlooked on the Pro, damn Sony better get it fixed, what's the point of capturing screenshots of your HDR games when you can't view them correctly right?

 

I played through the Demo a few times and will pick it up when on sale down the road.

The HDR implementation on the Dubai track seemed ok enough but I think they have some glaring issue with their overall approach to lighting. The tunnel is the biggest offender here. The tunnel is way too dark first of all. Then you have a sunlight opening part way through the tunnel along with large light fixtures on the right hand side of the tunnel. Based on these light sources alone, the average brightness level for the tunnel should be much higher but it just isn't.

Also the interiors are too dark in HDR mode. The bright sun should lighten up the interior and the instrument panel should not light up as if it's nighttime when you're outside!

I'd say T10 is more focused on the overall "punch" of the image than the accuracy of it.

 

yes some stuff in the forza 7 lighting model still doesn't work right with the dubai tunnel being the main offender. sometimes i think they don't have correctly calibrated monitors at turn 10. or they like it better that way.
but forza 7 is still way better than 5, there you need sunglasses on most tracks.

 

You bring up a good point about calibrated monitors. It's the quality of monitors that's just as critical.

For example, in movie land, you have very expensive reference monitors being used by authoring houses where they're sitting up close, adding bit rate here and there, turning the colors, looking out for banding, artifacts, etc.

A calibration just let you know you delta errors for color and gamma tracking. Hard limitations such as black levels and peak nits aren't going to change by calibration beyond what the panel can support. So how are they mastering and turning for HDR? What displays are they using? and what's their background in performing such functions?

A lot of the games look cartoony by the mere fact that the color palette and lighting tones are just done poorly even in the spectrum of what's possible. In the gaming community we call it "art style" but in reality, most of the time it's just not knowing what they are doing.

There's more to IQ than resolution, AF and AA numbers but majority of the gamers don't really seem to give a shit because they're not hard metrics they can argue over. This coupled with gaming modes on the TV means you're sacrificing the processing prowess of high end sets for lower input lag which further gets your away from good IQ.

End.

 

I would guess most of the artists are probably working on calibrated pro monitors, so color should not be an issue. For HDR, I'm not really sure what would happen. There arent' really any acceptable hdr monitors yet. Material definition is a difficult problem, and I'm not sure how the artists define the material properties in a pro environment. I'm not sure if they have charts with reference values, or what.

Level designers would be in charge of all the lighting, and I hope they'd be testing on reference displays at the big studios.

 

Updates for HDR Blurays soon...

 

Wonder how that got messed up (vs OneS)

 

Just tried Quantum Break for the first time, and it looks really great. The lighting is unbelievably smooth & natural, and it's still SDR.
People are saying it's not sharp or not 4k, but I don't really mind, it's awesome.
There are a lots of flickering artifacts though, not sure it's due to one x or if it was present in the original version, too lazy to dig old threads.
And I'm not sure I enjoy the game though, but that is another topic.

 

Quantum Break had a lot of artifacts. Looks way way better on Xbox One X. So whatever artifacts you're seeing, imagine a lot more

 

from what I've read there's new ones, like messed up shadows and flickering.
be nice if those things got cleaned up, not sure what the chances of that is though. Fix the new issues and it could be another exclusive show case.

a lot of games seems to be shining on the 1X compared to the response they got at release

 

Yes it's like a texture/shadow flickering in & out on top of another texture, very annoying. Mostly seen on some walls
It looks like a zbuffer precision error, if that thing still exists