Topic: General Xbox Series X|S Thread

This shows some of that global illumination differences - missing shadows that are now present because Ambient Occlusion misses them where as RT Global Illumination does not

@MaccaMUFC The fact that there are shadows under the desk or other objects in the world is what Global Illumination is adding rather than an Ambient Occlusion or 'baking' in shadows does. If you watch the video, there is an overhanging ledge that has no shadows under it because Ambient Occlusion doesn't recognise it as a ledge and overhanging so would cause Shadow on the underside. Objects, like desks, bookcases etc can be a problem for Ambient Occlusion - the side in shadow nor being 'darkened' properly or maybe not being 'lit' properly either by light bouncing. That's why all the desks in the first image don't have any shadow underneath but do with GI.

It gives objects a sense of actually being part of the world, that the light is actually being affected by them and GI is a 'real time' solution that reacts to actual changes in light, objects, movement etc and means that areas that would be 'dark' are properly dark but can also be 'light' if the light changes. Baked in would always be dark..

There is going to be so much that is 'similar' - they are not rebuilding the game, changing ALL the assets and materials, the textures maybe higher res, but you may need a bigger screen to see those - and again may need to see side by side to actually compare. A good shot would have been Chapter 1 when they drop down into the hole - see the difference between the draw distances of the foliage, a side by side of a cut scene with higher res textures (you can't exactly show the change to 60fps for those), maybe show a 'video' of the differences in particles.

The Shots they chose are not necessarily the best to see the difference and even if you watch the Digital Foundry video, the differences may not be apparent until they highlight it. The ledge seems so obvious but its not until you see side by side that its actually missing shadow on the XB1X.

If you watch a LOT of DF video's, you can sometimes struggle to see the difference between medium and Ultra settings with low often being a bit more obvious - certainly in some areas - but some people don't even seem to notice a very low res and jaggy shadow - but notice instantly if there isn't a shadow. People don't even notice the fact that there is 'no' shadow, everything is 'dark' and as you get closer, the shadows actually form. Its better that everything looks dark/shadowed than have no shadows - even if light should be getting through and therefore create shadow shapes. So even if Devs push the Shadow quality up to max and draw distance out to max, people will still say it looks the same...

@BAMozzy I’m interested to see how the SSGI compares to something like Ray Traced GI where you get coloured shadows and even mix of them real-time. I’ve seen this in the case of Cyberpunk, Minecraft Series X path tracing (and maybe even in recent Nvidia marbles at night demo) and it’s actually very cool. But I’m quite convinced now that Xbox exclusives will be going to absolutely push the hardware for next-gen possibilities.

Quick question, I get that the Seagate expansion card is the only way to store and play Series X games but if I already have my own external SSD, won't that still load my One X games faster on the Series X than a regular external HDD?

@MAC26 Yep, have a look at this (it's almost as fast as the expansion card):

https://www.purexbox.com/news/2020/10/psa_you_dont_need_to_cl...

@FraserG Thank you sir!

Phil dropping some truth bombs. 🔥

@Senua Of course they don't. Even if they don't sell any games, they are already getting more than 15m monthly payments from game pass subscribers and that number will no doubt grow with the Zenimax Game studio's. Studio's are salaried and if MS are also funding any extra costs (like hire of actors for example), they are not relying on investors who want their cut of profits, not having to pay manufacturing costs and their profits, not having distribution costs and distributors profits, not having wholesalers and retailers taking some of the profits meaning they have to sell more and more and more to get their 'tiny' slice of the cost back. And, if you are EA or Activision, having to sell even more to appease their shareholders who are NOT happy with making a decent profit, they want big profits.

All that pressure on studios to make a game that sells at £70 (now) with so many people wanting their cut so their own 'profit' is incredibly small when now they can make a game that many more will play just because its on game pass and the continued income and growth of Game Pass on multiple platforms will mean that 'profit' isn't a factor. Its not on 'them' if their game doesn't sell for example because its on Game Pass and its more about reaching as many people as possible. MS as 'funders' and publishers will be getting a steady and probably growing income from subscriptions alone. Of course it can still sell on their own platforms and the majority will be buying digitally (PC and Series S is Digital so it stands to reason digital sales will be most prominent) that again works in MS favour as they get the 30% from buying through their store, profit from being the publisher and developer owner, no manufacturing costs, no distribution and wholesaler costs/profits so of course they don't 'need' to sell to Sony to get their 'small' slice of the profit margin after Sony take their cut on digital and physical sales on their platform as well as all the costs and profit margins others get for Physical releases.

Yes its still 'profits' by selling on Sony but its relatively small and could easily be offset by getting some extra Game Pass Subscribers into their ecosystem. Even if the game is well above average in terms of development costs, the fact that they could have 20m maybe even 25m monthly Game Pass Subscribers plus all the sales on their own platforms will offset that...

@Senua Currently PC only though...

2020 has been a great year for Xbox Studios PC. First Gear Tactics, Flight Simulator, now this and IV is also in the works.

@Senua Certainly has and I wouldn't be too surprised if they come to Console as the consoles do support Keyboard and Mouse controls too.

So these pics have surfaced re Gears 5...
First RTX3090 Insane settings 4k

next Xbox Series X

finally Xbox One X

Quite a difference to my eyes... Global Illumination makes a BIG difference in this shot

@BAMozzy Seems like we don’t need to wait for long. This is exactly what I have wanted to see.
https://wccftech.com/cdpr-talks-gi-vs-rt-illumination-in-cybe...

Dayum CDPR has worked on some incredible tech.

In addition to that, the Polish developers have added a ton of under-the-hood systems for Cyberpunk 2077, from simulation-based dynamics for clothing and liquids to multi-layered shaders, as well as an improved asynchronous compute pipeline (the game requires DX12, after all).
The crown jewel when it comes to tech innovations that can be found in Cyberpunk 2077 may be an unexpected one, though. We're referring to the use of JALI, a machine-learning-based software for automated facial animation.

@Senua Tech is only going to improve over the generation.

All you have to look at is games at the start of current gen and what devs were able to do towards the end. You can see how Frostbite games were able to deliver better performance metrics as well as actually improve the visual quality too. Forza Motorsport 5 vs FM7 too shows improvements.

Its not ALL down to developers becoming more accustomed to the hardware and understand how to extract more from it, a LOT of it comes down to tech, to improvements in the game engine, understanding where improvements to the pipeline can be made, understanding how to improve the efficiency and adding you new tools, new features etc too.

Interested to see Cyberpunks RT on Console, what they can bring - no doubt supplemented by traditional rasterisation techniques.

I am still surprised though that images like those Gears 5 ones exist and yet someone still says they can't see any difference. I know that you can pick scenes to suit a narrative if you want and in some scenes, the difference will be subtle. Even if you have RT reflections for example, there will be scenes where Reflections are not so prevalent and SSR may well do a decent job - just like baked in effects of Global Illumination and Ambient Occlusion may look very close to real time Global Illumination - especially in a 'static' image...

Amazing!

That was FAST!

Starting up from 'rest' mode is really quick. I haven't tried the Power save mode on Xbox One X but its probably as fast as that on PS4's rest mode too but that only suspends one game and if the power goes out, you lose that suspended state.

On Series S|X, you won’t lose the suspended state as the memory is dumped into the persistent storage.

@Senua Exactly - why its better than PS4's but as far as boot up time from rest and jumping into a suspended game, I don't think that demo is anything we haven't seen this gen. As I said, I haven't tried doing the same on Xbox One X, but you can definitely do that on PS4.

It was fast, but that twitter demo wasn't really anything we haven't seen or got now. Yes the Series S/X can suspend multiple games now and those games are not lost if the power goes out but booting from a rest mode to game is 'fast' now so I don't know what he was trying to show...