If all goes to plan, Microsoft's next-generation system is scheduled to arrive this holiday season. While we already know it'll come packed with 12 teraflops of GPU power and various other fancy features like Variable Rate Shading and Hardware-accelerated DirectX Raytracing, there's nothing quite like some free developer endorsements prior to release.
Earlier this week, T3 spoke to some developers about the visual capabilities of Microsoft's new console, and let's just say they seemed to be quite impressed. One anonymous developer praised the Xbox Series X, stating how it allowed it to achieve things that it "couldn't even dream of before".
Former Naughty Dog Creative Director Bruce Straley elaborated on this, explaining how "the availability" of new tools and this much power gave developers far and wide "more opportunities" to experiment with different styles, concepts and ideas. The same tools will be readily available to smaller studios and can help do the heavy lifting.
Something like a Pixar rendering system will rely heavily on subsurface scattering for flesh tones and skin. If you wanted to make something rendered like The Incredibles, where you have light coming through the earlobes of your character – we faked it at Naughty Dog.
We had all sorts of ways to simulate it, but it wasn’t real. If now I can write a shader that has subsurface scattering on it and hook into the ray tracing system, then more people are going to be able to do that.
The Xbox Series X's GPU processing power will also supposedly help create more realistic renders of basics like "smoke water, wind" and even help when it comes to the animation of hair or perhaps luscious beards (see above).
It’s always been really difficult to make really good hair. And then hair responding to different environments – hair and water, hair and wind, hair and hair gel, are all reactions that can be processed.
Of course, it's not all about making experiences as realistic as possible. According to the industry veteran, who co-created the PlayStation 4 hit The Last of Us, there should be focus on how to "make games more compelling and experiences richer" with all of this power.
[source t3.com]
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