Xbox Series X|S Backward Compatibility Enhancements Detailed [XSX|S BC]

Key snippet:

Ronald also spoke with IGN, and when asked if "thousands" meant that the goal was every single Xbox One game – in addition the hundreds of Xbox 360 and original Xbox games already compatible with Xbox One that will also play on Xbox Series X – Ronald said, "The goal is definitely the thousands of titles that run on Xbox One today. If the game runs on Xbox One, it is our goal to get that to run on Series X. There might be some one-off exceptions here or there," he added, noting that "licensing or a technical issue" should be the only possible roadblocks. For instance, in the former case, a game with licensed music whose contract with the publisher has expired.​

 

on the bright side, whomever has been asking about using AI on XSX. There it is. Games that are going from SDR > HDR is an AI algo that is doing the tone mapping. I guess the games have to meet a specific criteria for the AI to work. (typical). Does sound like a lot of titles will be getting HDR upgrades from OG XB, 360 and forward.

30->60 fps, and 60->120fps are also likely possible as AI implementations. It's not as simple as just moving the framerate up, some games have locked 30fps animations etc. I wonder if they can use AI to interpolate.
EvilBoris comments on this here:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/al...evs-testing-unlocked-fps.175356/post-29935577

original MS posting:

Probably waiting for a good day to pick and choose the launch library etc that this will be available for. I will not lie, this is pretty awesome, I love the use of AI here. Sounds like AI texture resolution bumping may not necessarily be ruled out, so I've got my fingers crossed here, that would be hype levels for me. Might have to just buy a XSX just to see that happening in action.

 

It's interesting he mentions 11-bit or 16-bit, so I wonder if it depends on whether the title used those storage formats during the rendering process. i.e. R11G11B10 or straight up INT16/FP16 for the lighting/shading & post-processing steps.

 

I'd be extremely shocked if they were using AI for this rather than a more simplistic change to the game settings file. This would likely require the consent of the developer and/or publisher and might even be done at the developer/publisher level as it would require minimal effort (a few minutes? ). This could also allow for more BC enhancements than one would expect. IE - similar to increasing graphical options on PC.

In some cases the frame rate might be limited at the system level such that game settings wouldn't have to be modified. In that case, MS can just increase the system level frame rate limit of the game. Similar to the ability to set the max framerate limit in the AMD drivers on PC.

These would also be reasons why it can't be applied to all titles. If it was using AI for some form of interpolation, that would be something that could be universally applied to all titles. Unlike SDR to HDR tone mapping, it wouldn't require extensive training for an AI model combined with an SDR palette that is compatible with the AI model.

Regards,
SB

 

An analysis of older upscaled titles will be interesting.

 

I posted this in another thread but relevant here.

Some insight into the HDR conversation that MS is doing for BC games from EvilBoris.

 

2D games that have locked animations.
3D games in which the rule set is based on tick rate. If you are pushing the game faster than game code you could messed the game up or have an unfair advantage against other opponents who don’t have XSX. Big ones are like fighting games. Where the game is designed around 60fps and all the frames timing there. But if you want 120fps; interpolation will work.

 

Something I was curious about, if evilboris is correct about how the xsx is doing the sdr to hdr conversion on the display controller, how can it be using ML?
He also mentioned 0 impact to memory and gpu and gpu is where it would need to do the inference?

 

Maybe it's an ML trained system integrated into a bespoke hardware solution?

 

From my understanding, it will be able to use this additional information when available to help deliver a result, but will still work with lower precision data. In the latter case, the algorithm will have to do more guesswork.

 

This sounds like a relatively new development. So not sure if it would be a bespoke bit of hardware.
Guess they could leverage changes they had made anyway though.

 

Perhaps they found a way to intercept a buffer before output

 

Yes, this is the most interesting part IMO. A lot of games last gen had a very poor HDR implementation (even RDR2) so I wonder how you automatically upgrade a load of SDR games to an acceptable HDR quality.

 

I vaguely remember them saying that they've decoupled it now that you mention it.
It's part of the reducing the latency.

 

https://www.windowscentral.com/mercury-code-name-large-xbox-store-update-coming-soon


hmmm someone skimming my posts I guess

 

Only skimmed the article, but sounds like people was asking about the code name you put out there.
Either their research about it was wrong or right, but it was bound to be picked up sooner or later.
Don't suppose you could at least say it's wrong could you, as you may not be able to say their right?

 

Yea I can't say much maybe 50% of the time I can give more info but then the other 50% of the time is well the other half of the time? Makes sense ? Sometimes you gotta take that first step even when there is another 10 steps waiting for you and maybe you name each step something different but its all the same flight of stairs. But you know maybe that's a fat person thing ?

 

No probs, their usually pretty good with code names, so I'll choose to believe that their research paid off or that it's in the right ballpark at least.

 

Leaked screens are confirmed as genuine...

Spoiler: Screenshots

https://www.windowscentral.com/pictures-new-xbox-store-codenamed-mercury-may-have-leaked

Tommy McClain

 

Video hands-on from Brad Sams...



Here's Jez Corden's hands-on video...



Tommy McClain