*spin-off* Ryse Trade-Offs

The devkits probably received the up-clock first, no point having it if the devs couldn't use it .

 

Not necessarily. If the upclocks are a product of a respin then existing dev kits might not be privy to the clock increase.

 

I mean the hardware, no more powerful hardware (more memory for example) on devkits.

And there was something with the drivers.

Thanks, at least, the Gamescon devkits were the same hardware than retail units (can't remember if Penello or M. Nelson said that).

 

What was shown on dev-kits at PAX were on 1.6 Ghz Xones

Penello
"Devs should start seeing this soon - so any performance gains were happening on the 1.6 boxes. (everything at PAX was on the 1.6). This is a boost to developers on top of the optimizations going on."

 

Yes, some dev. kits aren't "exactly" the same as the retail kits. They feature an extra debug port. But, I believe it was mentioned that in the case of that port, it may only exist on internal Microsoft dev. kits, and not developer dev. kits. In which case, it's likely that developer dev. kits are exactly the same as the retail consoles.

Oh, and from shots of the MB that have been seen, the solder points for that extra debug port exist on the retail MBs.

Regards,
SB

 

Not to be a dick im just generally curious, can you source that for me.

 

But even if there was a devkit = retail downgrade, they just lowered the resolution, so nobody will notice anyway: I read on digital foundry that there is not a difference between 1080p and 900p, at least not visible to the average user anyway (you need a still frame and a magnifying glass in their examples (thought they do have (motion) blurred crysis 3 shot as examples.. which is a bit curious I must add..))

 

Yeah, I'd like a source as well. I'm hearing some whispers that I want validate against as well. I'm not talking about just the debug-port difference. Thanks.

 

I think he is referencing an additional port found on dev kits



And Bkillian noted that "It's a USB host port. Used for kernel debugging."

Is this port available or active outside Ms??


My bad, not about the port

What differences could be between internal devkits and what 2/3 parties would get?
apart from access to the kernel

 

Only source I have is the pictures showing the motherboard and those showing the USB debug port that Michellstar just posted as well as Bkilian's comments on it (also regarding the final launch X360 devkit, IIRC, although my memory might be off on that).

Regards,
SB

 

*ahem* No. We're not even going to go there.

 

Well I guess 900p will look great, just as 720p tv feeds look clear and fine. So I can see the character being 900p, but I thought the theory of using a display plane to get 1080p for the main took was an interesting theory. No clue where I read that now, so it could all be in my head. *razz*

 

It sounds good in theory but the Display Planes seem to be rather mundane, and are allegedly useful to swap apps and stuff like that, and that's about it. Perhaps we will get a more in-depth explanation on how they work when they reveal more info about the Xbox One, and maybe Penello succeeds in surprising us, but I can't say tbh.

 

"We've done things on the GPU side as well with our hardware overlays to ensure more consistent frame-rates," Goosen adds. "We have two independent layers we can give to the titles where one can be 3D content, one can be the HUD. We have a higher quality scaler than we had on Xbox 360. What this does is that we actually allow you to change the scaler parameters on a frame-by-frame basis."

 

Please forgive me ahead of time if I misunderstood your or Goosen statement. So, the XB360 pretty much had an across the board scaler - which scaled whatever render output resolution to the required resolution (720p RO > 1080p SO). However, this time around with the XB1, you're able to scale the frame-size to fit your needs during a given scene/situation - on keeping frame-rate consistence. So the scaler is more dynamic or programmable (900p RO > 1080p SO > 900p RO > 1080p SO > so-on-and-so-on).

Am I misunderstanding your or Goosen statement? If not, why not just use a dynamic render solution with the GPU alone? Why even tackle with the scaler in the first place? Or was it important to have certain XB1 games running at scaled 1080p resolution?

FYI: RO = Render Output and SO = Scaled Output.

Edit: Because there is some awful screen tearing and frame-drops at times in Ryse, that aren't showing any benefits of this dynamic scaling solution.

 

Panello said in an interview several weeks back that final dev kits are retail units in terms of hardware functionality. The difference is in the software loaded onto them. More specific info here:

http://www.gamepur.com/news/11893-t...ncluding-pcs-were-used-show-games-e3-201.html

 

i remember somene saying the display planes themselves will be doing stuff like rendering the game on two different planes like a foreground and background and make the background low res and the foreground high res and other stuff like depth of field. didn't make much sense to me. edit: actually i think it was astro who said that. but with this interview it seems like the display planes will do exactly what many people thought and thas to render the hud and game at separate resolutions.

could it be like this

Hardware dynamic scaler
-display plane 0 = os
-display plane 1 = hud
-display plane 2 = game rendering

• display plane 0 handles popups and overlays from the os. (developers don't have access to this one)
• display plane 1 handles all hud stuff
• scaler dynamically scales the game/display plane 2 based on whats going on rendering wise (like how wipeout scales, except the xbo scaler works with both vertical and horizontal resolution).
• display plane 2 holds all the rendered game minus hud and its resolution can be changed by scaler

?

 

Ok - your answer sounds plausible. So in theory, a game like Ryse would use 900p RO (1080p SO) for most of the close combat foreground scenes, a possible 1080p RO for HUD needs and possibly lower resolutions for background assets - correct? If that's the case, hopefully the Crytek team can resolve the screen tearing and frame-rate drops before the game is released. It's a beautiful game... hate to see it get bad reviews for some major flaws.

 

It's highly unlikely the display pains will be used like that. As described by MS they are handy for rendering your game at an arbitrary or dynamic resolution and overlaying a native resolution HUD over top for free, plus Snap windows and OS notifications. Trying to render distant objects at a lower resolution will just make them appear chunkier and more aliased. And any attempt to merge two unlike resolutions will likely produce ugly, hard transitions that will look like screen tears or mipmap transitions. By virtue of having them in different plains there is no practical manner I can think of to blend them together, beyond something like a parallax background for 2D games.

 

Why do you have to do this?
I (and many Xbox fans as well) was hoping this method could even the playing field.