Comments on: Dying Light Enhanced Edition On Xbox One Will Not Have Improved Resolution, Dev Looking Into DX12 Support

By: shane

shane — Sun, 31 Jan 2016 06:38:00 +0000

In reply to shane. *edit* 15 chips no 17

By: shane

shane — Fri, 29 Jan 2016 00:58:00 +0000

In reply to shane. I believe there are 17 special purpose processors 8 for their sound,4 movie engines and 4-5 twizzle chips. Also XB1 is able to use the tech that they use in CGI movie's called ray tracing, but i really don't think that tech will ever be used. Another interesting thing when i went over XB1's schematics it shows it can reach 4K display but it didn't go into much detail about that. It's possible it was talking about steaming movies from company's like Netflix. This might not be all accurate that I'm saying because its been sometime since i seen the diagrams & schematics of the XB1.

By: shane

shane — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 18:51:00 +0000

In reply to Graeme Willy. Also there are 8 of the special purpose processors that is XB1"s custom sound set up which it pretty impressive but also there are twizzle chips for offloading to help with additional processing.

By: Graeme Willy

Graeme Willy — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 15:02:00 +0000

In reply to shane.

True, there are move engines in the Xbox that could benefit from DX12, but it was to my knowledge that those were useable in 11.1.
The 30% difference you mentioned was 20-25% CPU boost and a rough 5-10% GPU boost, or something similar to this. Either way, the CPU benefits tremendously from DX12. That’s why I previously mentioned “better physics,” at the most.

Now there can be an indirect gain, to be fair. Because the CPU efficiency would allegedly be running 20-25% faster, this could prevent the need for various graphics engines to send CPU-bound tasks to the GPU. As we know, GPU’s can perform general CPU-bound tasks, which by comparison is light work, compared to what GPU-bound data, but it does add up if the GPU is receiving too many CPU tasks(the CPU cannot process GPU tasks, however). So, by eliminating the need for 20-25% less CPU tasks being sent to the GPU(assuming much is ever being offloaded there), you are technically freeing up more GPU resources and that may already be figured into their prediction of 5-10% more GPU performance in DX12.

By: Graeme Willy

Graeme Willy — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 18:08:00 +0000

The stupid thing is, is people’s expectations. Because everyone has in their head, “1080p,” developers feel like they need to cling to that 1080p mark, just to make everyone happy. Mind you, 1080p is just the height of the pixel, not the width. I have no f-ing clue how the f- 1080p ever became a marketing lingo. It just have just stuck to 1920×1080, to avoid misdirection and false advertisement. Because now, anything can release at 1080p, and so long as it hits that pixel height, be marketed as 1080p, even if the end user is not aware that the width is being scaled horizontally. Which makes a far uglier picture, than a more uniform scaling.
The smarter thing to do is to run a more obscure, but proportional 16:9 resolution, even if it was something like 1680×945 or 1792 x 1008. Instead, you make ugly the game by running native 1080p pixel height and stretching horizontally. Killzone Shadow Fall got into trouble because of this Temporal Re-projection/ fake 1080p in its multiplayer component. It marketed the game at 1080p, because it was technically 1080p, but the width was being scaled up from something stupid like 1200.
I’ve used sub-1080p cards, in the past…although, cards considered sub-1080p is subjective, as PC game requirements go up, a card that would have once been a high end 1080p card, became sub-1080p as it aged…but regardless. The interesting thing that I found about sub 1080p GPU’s, be it, a once high end card in the modern age, or a true, sub-1080p released card by design, such as the R7 260/ 260x that the Xbox One uses, is that they will play fantastic when hovering around 900p, but you can also push really close to 1080p in forcing an obscure resolution in your games, like 1792×945, or 1862×1008 and could run great. It’s just right at that 1920×1080 mark where it becomes to much bandwidth that you begin to have to decrease graphical effects, draw distance and shadow quality to hit that mark. That’s just the nature of the thing with a sub-1080p GPU. I guarantee you, that unless you are right at the monitor/ TV, you would not spot a bit of difference between something that pushes awfully close to proper 1080p, and a resolution that brushes just beneath that point. It’s the same thing with this whole 60FPS movement. So what if the f-ing game runs at 45FPS, you can’t spot much difference! Most of my PC games, on my 2012 era build, I optimized to run at 44-50FPS, and at an obscure custom resolution that I would often have to write into the config file, but was close to 1080p resolution. This way I could afford most of the nice graphical effects, and high settings, but have a native look.

By: shane

shane — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 01:12:00 +0000

In reply to Graeme Willy. It will help on the software side.XB1 it will allow for more draw call's,Async shading,improve use of the ESRam, just to name a few things. StarDock even said DX12 will increase the XB1's by a minimum of 30%. XB1 was made with DX12 in mind. Not DX11,11.1,11.2, 11.3,etc. Also make better use of XB1's special purpose chips. Like you said it's not magic, its better use of what XB1 has more efficiently and better tools for developers. Also there is no reason that XB1 & PS4 should be able to hit 1080P. XboX 360 & PS3 could hit 1080P, these next Gen system's are said to be roughly 6-8 times more powerful.

By: Graeme Willy

Graeme Willy — Tue, 26 Jan 2016 16:19:00 +0000

There would be no need fo a DX12 variant in the future. It’s not going to do anything for the console, but allow it to push better physics on the CPU side, and maybe afford just enough GPU processing power for more graphical effects. There’s no way DX12 is just going to magically unlock more CU’s for more 1080p games, so I’m not even sure why media even has to mention it anymore. The Xbox shipped with a 7790/ R7 260x GPU. On the PC that is considered a 720p-900p GPU, and more consistently 720p. The box shipped with a sub 1080p architecture. So they have to utilize temporal reprojection to fake 1080p(e.g. 1536×1080). This is that technique that landed Killzone Shadow Falls into a lawsuit because they advertised it as 1080p, but the multiplayer did a similar thing and ran it at an unconventional 1080p specification without telling anybody. I game on the Xbox, as well as a PS4 and PC and even I can tell you the Xbox is weak, and the PS4 honestly isn’t that far ahead., but the Xbox does great considering the hardware.

They’re waving this DX12 crap in everyone’s face, getting up false hopes, making everyone think it’s going to be some secret ingredient. It’s just an API. All games would benefit of not even having an API there and giving developers complete control. API’s are just things that get in the way, maybe make some tasks easier for developers, but at the cost of, well, software overhead/ bulk and just taking up resources and creating latency. I hate that we live in an era where API’s are given a rockstar image and most serious devs would benefit more on a performance level, if they weren’t even there. Let the devs write directly to metal. Complete control over the hardware. The ultimate goal of an updated API, these days, is to pretend that it’s not even there. To allow the system to function as if it wasn’t even there. That ought to tell you/ show you how the old days of writing games used to be for consoles. There weren’t API’s. Developers wrote directly to the system on a component level. Ever since API’s became an instrument for hardware manufactures to restrict access to resources, it’s been a game of “who can create the best API that makes you think that it isn’t there, but offers a service in simplifying development, in return for having to be there, while still achieving the intended goal in limiting what developers can access/ use.”

By: sircolby45

sircolby45 — Mon, 25 Jan 2016 15:28:00 +0000

In reply to cosmicrays. Screen tearing only occurs when the framerate is higher than the TVs refresh rate, so no that would not happen as the lowest refresh rate of any TV on the market is 60 Hz(aka 60 FPS). The way screen tearing occurs is the TV begins rendering a new image and before the other half of the screen finishes rendering the PC/Console sends a different image causing the screen to tear because it has a slightly different image on the bottom of the screen than the top. So in order for this to occur the PC/Console would have to be able to refresh the image faster than the TV.

By: Jason Mounce

Jason Mounce — Mon, 25 Jan 2016 04:52:00 +0000

In reply to FreeRyu.

You didn’t ask him why he hates Microsoft.

His post specifically has nothing to do with hating on Microsoft.

How does this sentence make any sense: “if I hated M$ I would have never asked him why he did” ? Implying that if you hate a company, you don’t ask questions about why people hate companies? A little strange to me unless you’re trying to say that Haters don’t need to question why haters be haters as long as they simply acknowledge they’re like-minded in objectives.

People formally stay close to things they hate and let it be known online, it’s quite clear people never stay away from the things they hate, most humans are hypocritical like that as well.

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 24 Jan 2016 21:51:00 +0000

In reply to Cyshox. Yeah but we gotta remember that devs have been still supporting the old gen systems too, which held the newer games back. 2016 will be different imo.