Well, folks, it looks like Xbox is getting back to its winning ways. Project Helix has finally received more details, and Jason Ronald, the Vice President of Xbox’s Next Generation division, had a lot to say about how the upcoming console is preparing for a new generation of gaming experiences.
For starters, it brings a lot of performance to the table, with “step-change functions and gains in efficiency, scale, and visual ambition” courtesy of its new custom AMD SoC, which is poised to bring fewer CPU bottlenecks thanks to GPU-directed graph extensions. Ray tracing capabilities are going to see a significant bump as well with next-gen ray regeneration for RT and Path Tracing. Ronald also promised “an order of magnitude increase in ray tracing performance and capability beyond what’s currently possible with the Xbox Series X and S.”
There’s also the matter of rendering and upscaling, which have become hot topics when one discusses how a game performs today. Good news on that front, as Helix is bringing AMD FSR integration to the table for next-generation machine learning upscaling and Multi Frame Generation, with new versions of the software already on development kits and test consoles.
Of course, performance is only one part of the equation, but it’s important enough to merit deeper consideration. Nevertheless, there’s more on Project Helix coming in the next few months (maybe even in June at the Xbox Games Showcase), so stay tuned.
