Mixed Information on Consoles or How I learned to loathe PR *spin off*

[mrcorbo]

I'd bet at launch the number of Xbox one X titles at native 4K will heavily outweigh the number of 4Kc. Simply because I doubt the pubs of many of those 30+ titles confirmed for a post 4K patch are willing to invest in some CB solution for free. But I also think it will remain that way for awhile.

CB benefits are obvious but how much effort (cost to pub) does it take to implement and make performant?

I ask because while the PS4 Pro was designed with CB in mind and while it seems some aren't all that positive about associating the Pro with native 4K. There are plenty of native 4K titles on the Pro and far more than CB titles. CB seems to be limited to just high budget AAA games.

Ubisoft obviously have their version of the tech and have been using it since Rainbow Six Siege. EA have it in the Frostbite Engine (I had to look this up after Anthem was revealed to be using checkerboarding, so I guess SWBF2 is likely to be CB after all!)). So, yeah, AAA is probably pretty well covered as I doubt that those are the only multiplatform publishers who will integrate that support into their engine. It isn't just good for PS4 Pro, but will help boost marginal (for 4K rendering) PC configs to 4K as well. But, I also see some studios choosing to use Sony's ready-made solution for PS4 Pro and then just running native on One X because it's easier.

Honestly, I think the "True 4K" stuff is unfortunate, but I see why they are doing it. If they can make that matter to people, it's another selling point for their console. But, it's going to be fodder for so much ignorant shit from fanboys. And it really doesn't matter. I'd rather they just continued to bang the drum on hardware specs.

 

[djskribbles]

Spencer has said:


You think that is appropriate? He is slinging mud and not being honest about his own console. I know people love the war, but let's hold these console heads to some standard that is slightly above politicians.

This. I get why he's doing it... he's trying to differentiate themselves from the competition, trying to justify the price difference and it's a tough sell. But I think he's doing it in a pretty shady way.

I think Phil has done a very good job since taking over, but I don't agree with some of the things he has been saying lately to promote XB1X.

 

[Recop]

I'd bet at launch the number of Xbox one X titles at native 4K will heavily outweigh the number of 4Kc. Simply because I doubt the pubs of many of those 30+ titles confirmed for a post 4K patch are willing to invest in some CB solution for free. But I also think it will remain that way for awhile.

An easy way to know is to look at the original resolution on XB1. Basically, 1080p should mean native 4k and conversely for sub-native resolution.

I ask because while the PS4 Pro was designed with CB in mind and while it seems some aren't all that positive about associating the Pro with native 4K. There are plenty of native 4K titles on the Pro and far more than CB titles. CB seems to be limited to just high budget AAA games.

Another reason is because AAA games are the most demanding ones and native 4k would be impossible without some substantial downgrades.

 

[mrcorbo]

This. I get why he's doing it... he's trying to differentiate themselves from the competition, trying to justify the price difference and it's a tough sell. But I think he's doing it in a pretty shady way.

I think Phil has done a very good job since taking over, but I don't agree with some of the things he has been saying lately to promote XB1X.

Remember, though, it was a major design point of the console. It's what they designed the console to do, and it does it, so it's not unreasonable that they mention it. He really should stop cyberbullying the poor PS4 Pro, though. It hurts people's feelings.

 

[djskribbles]

Remember, though, it was a major design point of the console. It's what they designed the console to do, and it does it, so it's not unreasonable that they mention it. He really should stop cyberbullying the poor PS4 Pro, though. It hurts people's feelings.

"Cyberbullying" has nothing to do with it. I mean I don't agree that he thinks Pro is more of a S competitor, but that's not what I have issue with. He's calling out Sony for using techniques to manufacture a 4K screen and that XB1X is different, yet those same techniques are being used on XB1X and are in fact part of their "True 4K" label.

Other than that, I don't have any issues with what they're saying or them calling it a true 4K console. But I think they're going to receive a bit of backlash because of how they're marketing it.

 

[Recop]

He's just making his PR job. It's completely normal in my opinion. He's paid by MS for that.

 

[bgroovy]

Some people manage to do the same job without acting like duplicitous weasels.

 

[sebbbi]

At this point it's only a matter of time when most of the third party AAA games are "non true 4k" which directly contradicts to what Phil has advertised the system to be. I think everyone all saw this coming no? It's a powerful system alright but MS really need to change their way of advertising and be more honest.

Why would a developer choose "native" 4K over checkerboarding? Brute force 4K is a huge waste of GPU resources. Checkerboarding saves 50% of pixel shading cost at a very small IQ cost. Better to use the saved GPU power to render better looking pixels than spend time on doing the same calculations again and again (brute force rendering with no data reuse). This isn't about what some marketing guy said, it's about what is the best technical choice for the developer.

Even if the next gen consoles are 10x faster, most developers will be still choosing checkerboarding or other more advanced reprojected data reuse technology. If they don't, competing games will simply look better. Checkerboarding is only the beginning.

The main reason why some games are still "native" 4K is that good checkerboarding technology requires huge amount of engineering work and research. The whole rendering pipeline needs to be designed around this technique. Resolve filters and error case handling (reprojection fail) are still topics under heavy research. But it is all worth it, since it is a big waste of computational resources to generate 60 brand new frames per second instead of reusing most data from the previous frame (similar to video compression codecs). The difference between two frames at 60 fps is pretty small. Lots of opportunity to reuse data. Checkerboarding is simply reusing half of that data. More clever techniques are already under development.

 

[Clukos]

I'm excited for the next gen consoles because of Zen, now that AMD can provide both a competitive CPU and GPU we might actually see more developers aiming for 60 fps (more balanced architecture between CPU/GPU can help with that). That in turn helps with checkerboarding (or any temporal filter) because as Sebbbi said the difference between 2 frames at 60 fps is very small.

 

[Jay]

Why would a developer choose "native" 4K over checkerboarding? Brute force 4K is a huge waste of GPU resources. Checkerboarding saves 50% of pixel shading cost at a very small IQ cost. Better to use the saved GPU power to render better looking pixels than spend time on doing the same calculations again and again (brute force rendering with no data reuse). This isn't about what some marketing guy said, it's about what is the best technical choice for the developer.

Even if the next gen consoles are 10x faster, most developers will be still choosing checkerboarding or other more advanced reprojected data reuse technology. If they don't, competing games will simply look better. Checkerboarding is only the beginning.

The main reason why some games are still "native" 4K is that good checkerboarding technology requires huge amount of engineering work and research. The whole rendering pipeline needs to be designed around this technique. Resolve filters and error case handling (reprojection fail) are still topics under heavy research. But it is all worth it, since it is a big waste of computational resources to generate 60 brand new frames per second instead of reusing most data from the previous frame (similar to video compression codecs). The difference between two frames at 60 fps is pretty small. Lots of opportunity to reuse data. Checkerboarding is simply reusing half of that data. More clever techniques are already under development.

this is expressing my thoughts but in a much clearer way.

even on pc i expect the same, the only difference is you may be able to choose to change from the default to run in native instead.

it's no different than not running every and all effects at full resolution.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

The main reason why some games are still "native" 4K is that good checkerboarding technology requires huge amount of engineering work and research. The whole rendering pipeline needs to be designed around this technique. Resolve filters and error case handling (reprojection fail) are still topics under heavy research. But it is all worth it, since it is a big waste of computational resources to generate 60 brand new frames per second instead of reusing most data from the previous frame (similar to video compression codecs). The difference between two frames at 60 fps is pretty small. Lots of opportunity to reuse data. Checkerboarding is simply reusing half of that data. More clever techniques are already under development.

I think this will be the main reasons why some developers will still do brute force 4k. Some developers just can't afford to do checkerboarding (or other advanced rendering techniques) or don't have the expertise to do this. I imagine that it'll rapidly gain in popularity once the major engines (UE, Unity, CE, etc.) support it.

Regards,
SB

 

[djskribbles]

I'm excited for the next gen consoles because of Zen, now that AMD can provide both a competitive CPU and GPU we might actually see more developers aiming for 60 fps (more balanced architecture between CPU/GPU can help with that). That in turn helps with checkerboarding (or any temporal filter) because as Sebbbi said the difference between 2 frames at 60 fps is very small.

Why would a developer choose "native" 4K over checkerboarding? Brute force 4K is a huge waste of GPU resources. Checkerboarding saves 50% of pixel shading cost at a very small IQ cost. Better to use the saved GPU power to render better looking pixels than spend time on doing the same calculations again and again (brute force rendering with no data reuse). This isn't about what some marketing guy said, it's about what is the best technical choice for the developer.

Even if the next gen consoles are 10x faster, most developers will be still choosing checkerboarding or other more advanced reprojected data reuse technology. If they don't, competing games will simply look better. Checkerboarding is only the beginning.

The main reason why some games are still "native" 4K is that good checkerboarding technology requires huge amount of engineering work and research. The whole rendering pipeline needs to be designed around this technique. Resolve filters and error case handling (reprojection fail) are still topics under heavy research. But it is all worth it, since it is a big waste of computational resources to generate 60 brand new frames per second instead of reusing most data from the previous frame (similar to video compression codecs). The difference between two frames at 60 fps is pretty small. Lots of opportunity to reuse data. Checkerboarding is simply reusing half of that data. More clever techniques are already under development.

This and this. I posted elsewhere that I think CBR and dynamic res will probably be used next gen. I welcome it if it means more 60fps games. I think there's diminishing returns at these resolutions so the trade off is well worth it IMO. I truly hope ~4K CBR/60fps is the standard next gen.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

He's just making his PR job. It's completely normal in my opinion. He's paid by MS for that.

Good PR can't come back to bite you in the butt. MS should be pulled up on this in a couple of years' time when many games aren't 4K native (unless they are). Just like a politician's job is to say what people want to hear to get voted in, they need to be held to account if they don't deliver on their promises. Otherwise you offer carte blanche for spokespersons to spread FUD and muddle the public's understanding to make a fair choice.

In this case, someone can be sold on getting pure 4K native games and then not seeing that on their TV (not that they'll notice!) which is being missold. Similar to the ruckus over the appearance of reconstruction in Killzone, where Sony weren't transparent and the response was highly negative; if they'd talked about rendering approach in a tech interview up front, no biggie (Guerilla would probably instead have got a lot more respect for their work). Or nVidia's 4GB GPU with 512 MBs slow RAM. Be genuine up front and we're fine with it, but otherwise you deserve whatever fallout happens. Criticising 4Pro for using reconstruction when your own console is doing the same is hypocritical, so running with that as your PR line is going to be dangerous.

edit: Also Sony's bollocks about protecting the children for excluding Minecraft cross-play. None of these PR people should be excused lies and nonsense.

 

[Jay]

I've been very critical of MS messaging.
But I've not seen anywhere where they define true 4k to be native 4k.
At the start they were using the term native.
At least they've now defined what UHD 4K is, or whatever that label is.
What does dynamic 4k mean?

I've not read or watched the interview where he compares the 4pro to the X1S yet though.
Maybe he shouldn't have mentioned 4pro at all, I don't know the context.

But they could call the X1S a dynamic 4k machine if they wanted to, it upscales to 2160p. But that would be more confusing and not give the separation of devices they need.
Unless someone can point me to where Sony has defined what dynamic 4k means?

But yea, MS should just come out and say that true is just what that UHD 4K label is. Although to me it seems pretty obvious, and has been a pivot from native, as saying native when most/many engines are moving to CBR is just stupid.

Sooner they say it the sooner articles won't bring it up, clarify message before machine is out, but people on the net won't forget for a long time.
This was part of the problem with the XO reveal....

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I've been very critical of MS messaging.
But I've not seen anywhere where they define true 4k to be native 4k.

MS criticised PS4Pro using upscaling tricks in an earlier interview, implying they wouldn't.

 

[Jay]

MS criticised PS4Pro using upscaling tricks in an earlier interview, implying they wouldn't.

CBR by itself isn't upscaling if it's 2160 framebuffer though.
Stupid to even mention 4pro, even to get point across though.
Be easier just to say X1S upscales to UHD but we don't consider that to be true 4k.
Once they had said what 1X was supposed to do, I always felt they should've moved away from saying native last year.
Anyone with a bit of foresight could see what was going to happen.
I remember the discussion on here about what is 1080p, when QB got released.

Although I know both companies are trying to push their product, MS isn't exactly the sharpest tools in the shed when it comes to talking.
I fully except that unlike Sony and Nintendo they put themselves out there more often, but if your going to do that you need to be even more careful of what you say and how you say it.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

CBR by itself isn't upscaling if it's 2160 framebuffer though.

The reference I recall was clear about being natively rendered 4K versus any form of reconstruction or upscaling. However, my Google-Fu has failed me.

 

[Jay]

The reference I recall was clear about being natively rendered 4K versus any form of reconstruction or upscaling. However, my Google-Fu has failed me.

Your probably right

I can just imagine them saying it.
Especially when they was focused on XO games running on the 1X, it probably sounded good to them to say we can run them native, no tricks. Yea true, but short sighted to the point may as well register blind.

 

[Nesh]

Good PR can't come back to bite you in the butt. MS should be pulled up on this in a couple of years' time when many games aren't 4K native (unless they aren't). Just like a politician's job is to say what people want to hear to get voted in, they need to be held to account if they don't deliver on their promises. Otherwise you offer carte blanche for spokespersons to spread FUD and muddle the public's understanding to make a fair choice.

In this case, someone can be sold on getting pure 4K native games and then not seeing that on their TV (not that they'll notice!) which is being missold. Similar to the ruckus over the appearance of reconstruction in Killzone, where Sony weren't transparent and the response was highly negative; if they'd talked about rendering approach in a tech interview up front, no biggie (Guerilla would probably instead have got a lot more respect for their work). Or nVidia's 4GB GPU with 512 MBs slow RAM. Be genuine up front and we're fine with it, but otherwise you deserve whatever fallout happens. Criticising 4Pro for using reconstruction when your own console is doing the same is hypocritical, so running with that as your PR line is going to be dangerous.

edit: Also Sony's bollocks about protecting the children for excluding Minecraft cross-play. None of these PR people should be excused lies and nonsense.

Totally agreed. It is disturbing that there is tendency to normalize what's unacceptable either because it happens often or because someone is assigned a role where we got used to get unacceptable/immoral behavior from it.
And the scary part is that we are ok with it for reasons that cant truly excuse it

 

[Nesh]

He's just making his PR job. It's completely normal in my opinion. He's paid by MS for that.

It is not normal to misinform because he is paid to do it. What you describe is an increasing and serious problem in our "civilized society" of bribery, manipulation and corruption. It exists in various forms and faculties, some examples more serious than the other.s
We cant seriously be ok with someone misinforming us simply because it is his "job" to do it. We need to demand more transparency and clear messages.
This reminded me of this BTW