*spin* Devs Showing Games on PC/Console HW

[XpiderMX]

Microsoft has a credibility problem. Xbox One launches in less than six months and yet its E3 press conference featured visibly poor performing software and a bunch of games actually running on PC-based surrogate hardware. We're told that these computers are either "target hardware" or "debug environments" but debate still surrounds the technological make-up of this kit - photos from E3 have emerged showing watercooled CPUs with Nvidia GeForce hardware, a world apart from production Xbox One silicon. We have reports of games crashing to Hewlett Packard branded desktops, stories of crashed game executables being terminated from the Windows Task Manager, and a conference reveal replete with the groan-inducing chicanery of "in-engine" footage and CG trailers.

Suffice to say, it's somewhat dismaying and very concerning that the majority of Xbox One games we saw at E3 were not actually running on console hardware, to the point where we were wondering whether the title of this article was somewhat disingenuous. ...

And yes, there were some games that were - categorically, without a shadow of a doubt - running on Xbox One hardware. It'll come as little surprise to learn that first party software was more likely to be showcased running on the new console, with Turn 10's Forza Motorsport 5 the most high profile title we saw that was visibly operating on the actual console.

From Digital Foundry.

 

[COPS N RAPPERS]

I'm still wondering If the absences of proper XB1 devkits are because of the memory architecture used. If the rabbit hole ends up being deeper than fathomed then they should just scrap it and find something parallel or better. the costs of repairing could be more than what it's worth.

they've already got their butts whopped on proper E3 kits. it's going to even more catastrophic when this hits shelves and ends up going through a major recall. their launch is within months. the only two things i want to hear is a successful launch, or stalled way more than a recall.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Wow, recall? Seems like the speculation in this thread has been out of control since the start.

 

[XpiderMX]

From the Digital Foundry article...

Games confirmed on real Xbox One hardware:

- Forza 5 (1080p/60fps)
- Ryse (1080p)
- Killer Instinct (1080p/60fps)
- Project Spark (1080p)
- FIFA 14 (1080p/60fps)

Games on "PC debugging environment"
- Dead Rising 3 (bad framerate on PC, 30fps target on XO hardware)
- Battlefield 4 (1080p/60fps/64players target on XO hardware)

 

[BRiT]

From the Digital Foundry article...

Yup, that's what we already knew and what some of us were saying earlier in this thread. So right now this seems to be flogging a dead horse.

 

[XpiderMX]

Yup, that's what we already knew and what some of us were saying earlier in this thread. So right now this seems to be flogging a dead horse.

Oops, sorry, I wasn't seen the DF article.

 

[AzBat]

Tommy McClain

 

[Jedi2016]

Bottom line, DF will get to the bottom of this once the consoles are released and the first wave hits.

We'll just wait for this. DF will tear all of these games to pieces to see how they stack up against the early videos & screenshots. There won't be much guessing at that point, we'll know how much BS Microsoft was or was not spewing at E3 this year. Hopefully MS is aware of this and would have taken into account, making sure not to show anything that was too far out there.

 

[Prophecy2k]

Tommy McClain

Either its a midget mountain, more like a small hill, or that's one helluva colossal sized mole dude ;-)

 

[AzBat]

Either its a midget mountain, more like a small hill, or that's one helluva colossal sized mole dude ;-)

It's all relative. The mole hill is a lot closer to the camera & the mountain is massive & farther away.

Tommy McClain

 

[warb]

Wow at the 1080p and 60fps target for Battlefield 4. I though it was 720p and 60 for next-gen consoles?

There's a while to go yet, and a lot of those games are not set for launch day releases. The ones that are, like F5, had good showings. As long as the X1 hardware spec hasn't changed this doesn't suggest some super secret problem, just that final X1 hardware isn't yet as available for demos.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Wow at the 1080p and 60fps target for Battlefield 4. I though it was 720p and 60 for next-gen consoles?

Expect resolutions and framerates to drop over time. At launch, games tend to 'under-target' what the machines are capable of, and later titles start to load up more rendering effects that eat into what's available for resolution and framerate.

Also we should be wary of what we're calling the game resolution as games are made out of lots of buffers often at different resolutions. Some years ago we were talking about this on some game or other and I took to distinguishing the 'opaque geometry resolution' as the 'game resolution'. It's quite possibly time to abandon the notion of a game's resolution and talk instead of something like information density. What people perceive as resolution can be divided in geometry resolution as perceptible edges, and shader/texture resolution as blur and shimmer. There are different ways to tackle these. MSAA itself is basically X times geometry resolution, so a 1080p game with 4xMSAA is rendering 2160p geometry and downscaling, while rendering 1080p shaders and textures. Textures could be lower resolution than screen space resulting in upscaled image buffers, effectively rendering a texture at lower than screen resolution (consider a 512x512 texture viewed so it fills 1024x0124 pixels on a 1080p screen. That's effectively 540p rendering upscaled for that part of the screen). Then we have particle/transparency buffers rendered at different resolutions, subsampled or supersampled buffers, lower res reflection buffers, UI layers, etc.

The only thing the given rendering resolution tells us a maximum information density/fidelity for any given part of the screen. It's kind of like using FLOPS to sum up a total system architecture - technically it means something, but realistically it's way more complicated than a single metric.

 

[warb]

It looks like some games might be running video for background effects, so there's something else.

Geometry aliasing is still the big one though? At least it was as for PS3/360 games. Sort that out and your game looks much cleaner.

 

[James Car]

Expect resolutions and framerates to drop over time. At launch, games tend to 'under-target' what the machines are capable of, and later titles start to load up more rendering effects that eat into what's available for resolution and framerate.

Also we should be wary of what we're calling the game resolution as games are made out of lots of buffers often at different resolutions. Some years ago we were talking about this on some game or other and I took to distinguishing the 'opaque geometry resolution' as the 'game resolution'. It's quite possibly time to abandon the notion of a game's resolution and talk instead of something like information density. What people perceive as resolution can be divided in geometry resolution as perceptible edges, and shader/texture resolution as blur and shimmer. There are different ways to tackle these. MSAA itself is basically X times geometry resolution, so a 1080p game with 4xMSAA is rendering 2160p geometry and downscaling, while rendering 1080p shaders and textures. Textures could be lower resolution than screen space resulting in upscaled image buffers, effectively rendering a texture at lower than screen resolution (consider a 512x512 texture viewed so it fills 1024x0124 pixels on a 1080p screen. That's effectively 540p rendering upscaled for that part of the screen). Then we have particle/transparency buffers rendered at different resolutions, subsampled or supersampled buffers, lower res reflection buffers, UI layers, etc.

The only thing the given rendering resolution tells us a maximum information density/fidelity for any given part of the screen. It's kind of like using FLOPS to sum up a total system architecture - technically it means something, but realistically it's way more complicated than a single metric.

Great post.

You touched on many of the issues regarding modern rendering resolution and what all is involved, I just wanted to add to that the new "out" so to speak for putting a marketing checkbox on something like 1080p without really delivering on that promise which would be dynamic resolution.

It might hit 1080p if little to nothing is happening on screen and the character is standing still. While moving, it might only manage 720p (not as noticeable).

One thing I do hope to see standard across the board on nextgen though is vsync. Screen tear is such a distraction and takes away from the experience. Another is stuttering framerate. I'd much rather see a dynamic resolution shift than stuttering.

/offtopic

 

[warb]

Dynamic resolution with as much detail as can be presented at any one time is far better than capped image quality, as long as the transitions are not jarring.

 

[dagamer]

The only way most people can tell something is low resolution is the UI layer. If that's always 1080p I think most people won't notice.

 

[COPS N RAPPERS]

Wow, recall? Seems like the speculation in this thread has been out of control since the start.

we're within months away. I get the idea of microsoft countering the spotlight with XB1, but i think they should have just picked a later schedule. the time frame leaves them very little for testing, and the pricing involved is really serious cash.

From the Digital Foundry article...

Games confirmed on real Xbox One hardware:

- Forza 5 (1080p/60fps)
- Ryse (1080p)
- Killer Instinct (1080p/60fps)
- Project Spark (1080p)
- FIFA 14 (1080p/60fps)

Games on "PC debugging environment"
- Dead Rising 3 (bad framerate on PC, 30fps target on XO hardware)
- Battlefield 4 (1080p/60fps/64players target on XO hardware)

Did they check thoroughly? :smile2:

 

[Dave Baumann]

From what I saw at E3 2005 it seems like there is greater coverage / readiness of XBOX One relative to XBOX 360.

 

[XpiderMX]

Did they check thoroughly? :smile2:

And yes, there were some games that were - categorically, without a shadow of a doubt - running on Xbox One hardware

Software running on genuine, visible Xbox One hardware falls in with a small first-party club, including titles like Forza Motorsport 5, Killer Instinct and Ryse.

I guess yes.

 

[James Car]

From what I saw at E3 2005 it seems like there is greater coverage / readiness of XBOX One relative to XBOX 360.

I would hope so! x86 hardware and dx11 gpu. Should be pretty well understood by the dev community at this point...