Mixed Information on Consoles or How I learned to loathe PR *spin off*
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Silent_Buddha
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Checkerboarding and other similar advanced rendering features are likely the future. The savings you gain from using it can then be put to better use elsewhere to increase the graphics fidelity of a game with a minimal hit to graphics IQ from using it.
In a similar way that deferred rendering allowed for much better lighting in games despite it coming at a cost. MSAA being made mostly ineffectual and we had to live through a horrible era of jaggied aliased messes (IMO) until shader based AA offered us slightly less horribly jagged aliased messes (or horribly blurred but not so jaggied messes).
Checkboard rendering and other reconstruction techniques should come with a much lower compromise than what deferred rendering had while still potentially offering the potential for a large leap in some areas of graphics IQ.
Ergo, the only difference between the 2 consoles.
- PS4-P requires advanced reconstruction techniques to hit 4k. This requires a significant investment in time and resources from a game developer, but Sony felt it was worth it.
- XBO-X can either brute force 4k or use advanced reconstruction techniques to hit 4k. This was done deliberately in order to allow an easy path to 4k for developers as well as to increase the library of 4k titles available at launch of the console as any 1080p title and most 900p titles would be able to hit 4k easily with only a few hours or work, if that.
Regards,
SB
What did you read? You couldn't have missed the point I was trying to make any wider if you translated my post to Japanese then to Russian and then back to English before you tried to read it.
The point was that people were pulling a couple of sentences from a full-page interview and solely reacting to those, some of them without ever bothering to read the full interview to even try to understand the full context and, beyond that, were completely ignoring these more nuanced statements because they didn't fit their preferred narrative.
The "True 4K" marketing needs to die in a fire, though. Just go with "Most powerful console". Simple, to the point, and indisputably true.
It's not you. It's the fact that people have to keep defending MS messaging because other people keep pulling out "True 4K" as if MS's PR is doing something outside the norm when it comes to marketing their console.
We don't have to try to fit a square peg into a round hole. "True 4K" is native and that's all it has to be. What separates the X from the S is that MS prefixes "4K" to gaming when it comes to the X. On the S, 4K refers to UHD playback and streaming. "True 4K" is just to push the reality that the X can do native 4K gaming more readily than any other console.
Nothing stops the vast majority of devs from taking their XB1 ports and producing 4K versions for the X. But every game isn't going to be native 4K because MS leaves the choice of resolution to the content providers. Most realize that is the right choice because it the devs who are in the best position to decide the IQ of titles not platform owners.
When UHD players and movies were launched, more than a handful of older films were just up converted from 2K masters. Some were 4K but had special effects that were produced at 2K. No one called out player manufacturers for falsely labeling their players as 4K or the UHD alliance for allowing such content. Their discontent lay at the feet of the content providers themselves.
The 4K HDR TV thread is one of the most active threads in the console forum. No one is arguing that Samsung, Sony, Vizio, LG, TCL and others are mislabeling their TVs because they allow non 4K and non HDR content on their sets. Hell there are three competing HDR formats that only a handful of TVs completely support. If LG and others branded their TVs with a "Real HDR" label because of Dolby Vision, no one would be arguing that that label is mis marketing because their OLEDs supported HDR10 content. At most the argument would revove around whether DV is more real than HDR10.
If we go and call out the MS and the X for "True 4K" labeling while not limiting all X content to native 4K support then we need to call out every piece of AV equipment for using branding like 4K, HDR, Atmos while supporting content that don't use those formats.
For the most part non 4K AAA content on the X will be an artistic choice or a question of cost not a technical limitation. That being true MS should have no qualms about using "True 4K" branding.
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Of course. It's my thread.
I would say to equate true 4k to this example, real 4k would be saying it supports hdr10 and Dolby vision.
some people will argue that Dolby vision is better and the only real 4k, and so coming up with real 4k is underhanded.
Checkerboarding will be forgotten, but temporal reprojection techniques will continue to evolve and become even more important than they are now. Nobody uses hardware MSAA anymore either. Games nowadays temporally reconstruct multiple subsamples to perform supersampling instead. It is both cheaper and better (hides specular aliasing, adds 2x aniso "for free" and enables stochastic techniques).
I don't believe that "native" brute force rendering will be used in future AAA games. We did our first temporal reprojection prototypes 10 years ago on Xbox 360. We could have shipped a 120 fps game with that technique back then, but it wasn't as nice as these modern techniques. There was just too many artifacts. Nowadays the GPUs have compute shaders allowing you to do custom rendering algorithms much more efficiently. Nobody will go back to "native". Checkerboarding saves 2x per pixel costs. Future techniques with more intelligently placed sample points will save much more than that, and will produce less visible artifacts. AAA developers will always choose better looking game over "native" rendering.
Returning to "native" rendering is like saying: Soon everybody has 10 gigabit fiber connections, in future everybody streams uncompressed 8K HDR (at 32 bit float per channel). It will never happen. Video compression algorithms will get better. In the future there will be less bandwidth used to store each video pixel, not more. The quality will still be better. If we wan't to reach photo-realism, we can't afford to waste majority of our GPU performance to repeat the same work again and again (instead of caching it + reprojecting if the caching method needs it). I have been doing research about texture space rendering techniques. Once the balance shifts towards techniques like that, most shading cost is not directly tied to pixel resolution anymore. The term "native" will lose its meaning.
This is my SIGGRAPH 2015 presentation. Most of this research has been already done in 2013. Page 49+ introduces one way to reconstruct an image from lower sample rate version:
http://advances.realtimerendering.c...siggraph2015_combined_final_footer_220dpi.pdf
I always invite people to read (and comment) in this thread, if you are interested in the topic: https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/modern-textureless-deferred-rendering-techniques.57611/
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Hope this time stamps at 6 min 27 seconds.
MS definition of "True 4K". Nothing of their presentation hints at selling True 4K as native resolution. As much as it sounds like it, in the end the presentation passes it off as describing it as 2160p frame buffer as opposed to up-scaled. I hope this ends further discussion on this topic.
MS definition of "True 4K". Nothing of their presentation hints at selling True 4K as native resolution. As much as it sounds like it, in the end the presentation passes it off as describing it as 2160p frame buffer as opposed to up-scaled. I hope this ends further discussion on this topic.
From the 1X store page.
Can't remember where they give the definitions of enhanced for 1X, True 4k, etc.
Rightly or wrongly they use the definition of checkerboarding like everyone else, as a blanket term.
So I expect in the future when a game uses a different technique, they will be called out on it not being true 4k, even though it's labeled as such.
But yea, I've decided it's not worth pointing out ms definition any more, as people know and even understand but choose to ignore it and say but it's not native.
I dunno, to me there's nothing nasty about "this is different than that." as a comment. Lumping it with 1S is somewhat offensive, considering its the bottom rung of performance.
But, AAA games on 1X do not require CBR or temporal techniques to reach 4K, but that doesn't mean as an industry we aren't going there anyway. The hardware supports native 4K, it's entirely up to developers to choose how they want to use that power, and as gamers, we all appreciate it when they decide to not waste it generating more pixels than they need to and to put that power where we want it to be, which is in fidelity. That takes effort and time though. And it's output isn't consistent.
In which the scenario where everyone is calling MS/Phil a hypocrite/falsely advertising 1X; whether native or reconstructed; 4P is going to be lacking 2 TF of power and be down a sizable amount of bandwidth, how will it manage to output the same resolution and with the same graphical fidelity?
Regardless of how you want to cut it, in every scenario where the image is reconstructed, the 1X will dominate the 4P. In every scenario there is no reconstruction, the 1X will dominate the 4P. The only possible scenario where the 2 come close, is going to be when some developer decides to 4K native 1X, and reconstruct for 4P. No clue why any developer would do that though and MS has made no mention that native >>> reconstructed. The 1X has the proper setup to brute force native (bare minimal of course), and that's the angle they are pushing here with respect to 4P.
Phil is doing his best job to market 1X to his people, in particular to stop the exodus of 360 folk to PS4, and ideally get some of those folks that transferred off back onto XBOX.
MS is going all in on 1X, they want their people back.
It's not MS job to market for 4P. It's not MS job to make 4P look good. It is MS job to listen to the groaning of Sony fans, when Sony themselves are not delivering for their own people. If a 4P owner connected with Phil on that comment, that means 4P wasn't delivering what Sony promised them. Much like when there was a mass exodus of folks leaving XBO for PS4.
And I'm not without empathy. People get pissed when someone trash talks their gear or at least they get defensive about it, some sleights become the worst thing in the world. This image sums it up:
But here's the thing; In the whole discussion leading up till, now I guess, readers, the audience, etc, has been building up this narrative entirely on our own. This narrative that 4Pro was going to be this perfect 4K machine, and all games would have 4Pro enhanced patch, and it would look great in 4K with significantly less power, and those MS idiots are pushing for native, it's going to be a waste and in the end the 4P will be this cheaper and better device. Somehow, this was the narrative. Whether you were on Sony's side or not. Everyone was like, why native? So much so , that PC users got offended too, cause consoles shouldn't touch the native 4K space.
But that narrative didn't turn to be true in the end. And like all things, it ended up somewhere in the middle. Where it could do 4K it could, but it's still better doing reconstructed. In fact it's better off doing reconstructed if it's doable, unless certain games require it to be native. But more painfully, the one narrative that didn't out to be true, was the 4Pro narrative. Not all games got the enhancement patch, not all games made it to 4K reconstructed. They sold people downsampling for 1080p users, but it didn't happen as advertised http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1340484
So why as an audience are we assuming/holding onto this notion, that 4Pro is able to keep pace? They've had a whole year+ to rectify these issues, send dev kits out, finalized hardware etc. Even i find myself defending 4P, just by assuming it could. And then when I find out it can't, or didn't quite make it, I'm a little shocked.
Come November, when the 1X is released, DF is going to have a field day. I suggest, if you want to be offended by Phil, let it be after DF proves/disproves anything.
You can ignore that bit, but how do the other two pieces reconcile?
“This is a true 4K console." “When I think about techniques to somehow manufacture a 4K screen like what some other consoles try to do, this is different than that.”
Ignoring the wording that can be read as a bit derogatory, to Sony and to the devs using reconstruction techniques ("somehow manufacture"), XBOX is claimed a true 4K console because it isn't using image manufacturing techniques. Ergo, any game that does use image reconstruction isn't true 4K. If the console has lots of games using 4K reconstruction, is it really any different to the other, non-true 4K console?
Wow that's a perfect counter point.
No rebuttal from me except; for your statement to be true, we must prove that MS believes a true 4K console does not leverage image manufacturing techniques. No advertising materials suggest this, and they've made no requirement for developers on resolution or anything.
Website states that true 4K is 8 million pixels. Reconstruction of any variety to 2160p provides this value, it's when you can only make it to 1800p where you are now up scaling the rest of the way to 4K, which he could be referring to. I know it's vague, and we're smart readers here at B3D to not call a spade a club, but he has some space to maneuver on that point if pushed to respond.
edited: for easier reading
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I don't think Spencer's comments represent MS position. I think Spencer made a faux pas in trying a PR assault. The reality is like the 1080p consoles of last gen - yeah, they can do 1080p games, but don't expect them all to be. I agree Spencer should have kept his mouth shut, and then the focus would just be on the specifics of MS's differentiation and marketing.
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1S manufactures 4k, the same way it manufactures many 1080p screens.
bad bad 1S
regardless of his comment, it's clear in black and white what their definition of true 4k is.
be interesting how many games will be native when it's launched, and if it's the majority of them, does it then make it a native 4k console, not true 4k? Or does every game have to be native?
could turn out his comment at launch is truer than ms official position.
bad bad 1S
regardless of his comment, it's clear in black and white what their definition of true 4k is.
be interesting how many games will be native when it's launched, and if it's the majority of them, does it then make it a native 4k console, not true 4k? Or does every game have to be native?
could turn out his comment at launch is truer than ms official position.
Yup. 1X had enough good stuff on it's plate to drive on it's own merit. A mistake on Phil's behalf. I guess either the result of trying to defend, being behind all the time, and thus over-desperately to prove himself, or he was too juiced to not notice his wording.
Either case, I don't think we will hear similar wording of that type again.
He is the head of Xbox, of course what he says represents MS when it comes to the Xbox products. It's not like we need to hear from Bill Gates.
I would just not try to reconcile MS speaking out of both sides of their mouth, who here gets paid for that? They are just trying to sell something, but should try to sell their product by its merits, not throwing shit like a monkey.
It's not the official company line, an official statement about what all of MS thinks True 4K is or how it's defined. It's Spencer giving an off-the-cuff response in an interview and trying to play the situation for the PR advantage. Mouthpieces do it all the time. cf. Kutaragi saying you should get a second job for PS3 - that clearly was his hyperbolic waffling and not Sony's business strategy to price their console so high and expect everyone to get a second job.