Indie Adventure The Touryst Renders At 6K On Xbox Series X

Excited to try this one with Gamepass! Shinen makes greats games that run great on the hardware. I recently played through nano assault on the 3ds and it was still great! Also love Fast RMX by them.

But I just bought a 4k 75 inch TV!!!
Now I got to upgrade it to an 8k one? 🤣

I've got this on Switch and it already looks fantastic on that console, really good game as well

@Medic_Alert Not really, it downsamples. It was never expected to run on a hypothetical 6K TV. The PS4 Pro and Xbox One X output a sharper image on 1080p TVs due to downsampling the 4K or thereabouts image and this will output a sharper image on 4K TVs due to downsampling a 6K image.

Supersampling doesn't make it 'sharper' as such, it can make it look cleaner though. Every pixel can be a single colour and at 1080p, you have over 2m pixels to create that image. If you have a thin 'black' line on a 'white' background for example, the game may have to decide whether to make the pixel black or white depending on how much of the line is in that square - so you get 'stair stepping'. Anti aliasing may smooth that by adding shades of grey which softens the line a bit also removes the appearance of stair stepping but also makes it a bit softer.

Where Super sampling comes in is that for 'every' 1080p' pixel, a 'higher resolution' image has more data for every single pixel. At 4k for example, you have 4 pixels, four colour samples to use to decide what that 'single' 1080p pixel should be. Going back to that black line on a white background, you could have 4, 3, 2, 1 or 0 pixels that are black and that can help determine whether that square would be White, Black or various shades of grey based on the amount of white or black squares in it. This happens before post processing.

It looks cleaner because its got more information to determine the individual colours of each pixel where anti-aliasing is a post processing option and has less information to sample from. Take a 'small' square of 4x4 pixels - that's 16 colours of which to sample compared to 8x8 pixels or 64 colours at 4k. Anti aliasing tends to work on the image that's rendered where as high res super sampling down works before. This means that you get a better aliased and cleaner looking image. Anti Aliasing can sample the colours around the square - which if its the Black line on a white background may have 2 black and 2 white touching it so maybe will decide to make it a 50% grey for example to smooth the stair stepping. A higher resolution image has more information about that pixel and can decide what shade of grey it would be best but also all the squares around it could be different too because each 'square' had more 'data' to use to sample from. Therefore it looks cleaner and better Aliased.

This game looked beautiful on switch let alone at 6k

@Medic_Alert Its not a 'waste' of time at all. Super-sampling has its benefits and its better than most anti-aliasing. Its not exactly taking away from anything either - its not like they are turning down graphical settings to push a 'higher' resolution image.

There is NO point in 'saving' resources to render at 1440p and use some 'resources' to use AI upscaling to render at 4k as a lot of AAA games are doing on PC to achieve the 'look' of 4k at higher frame rates. The 'highest' frame rate possible on the Series X at 4k is 120fps and this game offers a Native 4k/120 FPS mode but not everyone has a HDMI 2.1 TV to use that.

Therefore, they are offering a 60fps mode and using the 'extra' resources available on rendering at the highest resolution possible and super-sampling down. Nothing would be gained at all by rendering at Native 4k instead - The CPU and/or GPU would not be pushed at all and have a lot of overhead left over. The game isn't that 'complex' visually so can EASILY run at Native 4k and 60fps. They are using the 'extra' resources to further refine the image by pushing the resolution above 4k and super sampling down - not taking away 'something' to push higher resolutions.

More complex AAA games may not run at a native 4k/60 with all the settings turned right up so they opt to reduce the resolution down to 1440p or even 1080p and use some of the resources saved by rendering at lower resolutions to use AI upscaling. Its about making the game run at a 'higher' frame rate without having such a 'big' compromise on resolution because the Hardware cannot run the game at the visual quality (whether it has Ray Tracing or not) and the 'desired' frame rate with Native resolutions. Something has to be 'compromised' to run at that desired frame rate and AI upscaling, Temporal Reconstruction, Variable Rate Shading etc are ALL compromises to the image quality BUT give better results than dropping the resolution alone.

All of those options have a 'cost' (in terms of frame time) and require resources to use. Its the fact that the cost of using them is 'cheaper' than the cost of rendering natively. 4k may cost 20ms (+/-1-2ms depending on action) for example and 1440p may cost 14ms, and 1080p may cost 10ms. AI upscaling on 1440p may cost 2ms (an overall saving of 4ms (14ms + 2ms = 16ms) and maybe enough to hit 60fps but may also have a few dips) and at 1080p may cost 3ms (an overall saving of 7ms (10 + 3 = 13ms) but means a locked 60fps). CB rendering may save 6ms by rendering half a frame every frame and then add 1ms in reconstructing it to 4k an overall saving of 5ms and bringing it down below that 16.6ms threshold for 60fps. VRS drops the resolution essentially of various aspects in the image - some blocks are 1/2 res (2x1 or 1x2 pixels) and some are a quarter res (4x4 blocks) but if used well, its areas that you are not focussed on, in shadow or blurred with motion so saves time on processing but has a very small cost - save enough, and you drop below 16.6ms. In all of these its about reducing the 'cost' to render a frame within the allotted frame time for a higher frame rate.

If the game runs natively at 4k within 16.6ms for 60fps, there is no need to use any of those methods. If its rendering native 4k in under 8.3ms (for 120fps) as it is inn this game, you have a lot of extra overhead when running at 60fps - double the frame time so the developers have opted to use that overhead to render at higher resolution and super-sample down because they can. There is no point in rendering at Native 4k (or lower) to save resources at 60fps - at 4k, its able to hit 120fps so you are not using the full resources at all at 60fps - so its NOT a waste to push the games resolution up and have a more refined and cleaner 4k image at 60fps

@Medic_Alert It’s not really a waste of time because it’s still outputting at 60FPS. This way you have a choice of 4K 120FPS or 6K 60FPS. There’s no downside to choice and there’ll be a noticeable difference in the image if you choose the 6K option.

I will wait until this game gets a physical release to pick it up..

@Tharsman probably only if you plan to sit 2 feet away from your 75” 8k TV. At a certain point, out eyes can’t tell the difference. I think it’s after 10-12 feet you can’t tell the difference between 1440p and 4K on a screen that size. So I’m not sure how far it is for 8k..

The big news is that it can run on series S at 4k..now that's good optimisation. DF sadly missed off the specs for Series S even though they are available for the Falconeer and this game.

@AJDarkstar I've owned a 55" 4k TV since 2014 and sit 8' away. If I believed EVERYTHING the internet says, I should sit 2'6" away to be able to see any difference - but that is complete BS!!

I was amazed at how much 'extra' detail 4k movies/TV has at 4k - light blue jackets we know to be 'denim' was actually dark blue and white threads in 4k - because the extra pixels allowed that detail instead of 'merging' the threads to a light blue. Dark grey Suits in 1080p were actually black with white pin stripes, Animals have whiskers in the mid ground and fur retains its texture too. Lawns aren't 'green' blurs but have texture, sand isn't a beige/yellow blur, it has texture and different speckled colours. 8k will keep that detail further away from the camera than 4k can...

The thing is, not everything is close up and even when it is, hair, eyes etc are so much sharper and clearer. At 1080p, you have a lot of smoothing because the pixels are larger than the detail so it averages the colour. Eyes don't see in pixels so those details can be seen in real life. The amount of detail that gets lost as you move further away from the camera because you have fewer and fewer squares of colour to make that object.

A lot of games are third person so your character is in the mid ground. At 4k, the amount of extra detail is easy to see. Games tend to be a lot sharper and have a lot less foreground focus too than movies/TV. Movies and TV but a lot of the action in the foreground so its 'big' but games have more focus on the mid to far distance (unless its a cinematic cut scene) so having more pixels benefits even more.

Like I said, a lot of games are third person so your whole character is in the mid ground and not very big (relative to the screen) so having 4x as many pixels enables a lot more detail and sharpness...

The difference going from 1080p (or less) games to 4k was very noticeable and I sit 8' away from a 55" TV...