Topic: The everything Xbox thread

@BruceCM It's impossible to know without knowing what sort of game it is, but I'm a sucker for sci-fi, body horror, and that sort of thing, so it's off to a good start.

I really, really want to know if The Medium is another walking sim horror game like Layers of Fear or if has more actual gameplay to it. I love what I've seen so far.

Yeah, I meant official Alien (tm), @Ralizah.... It's clearly alien in the general sense I potentially like that sort of game, too; just need to know rather more about it

Nope, you definitely weren't, @DarthNocturnal.... I'm not really familiar with HR Giger directly but when I googled for Scorn, several places described it that way

@BruceCM Well, if you like the Alien movies, or at the very least the character design, then you may definitely want to look into some of Giger's work, seeing as he is the original artist for all the aliens and their home world. And he's done some pretty interesting other stuff as well.

Cool, didn't know he'd (? I'm assuming it's a he) been involved in those, @DarthNocturnal & @ThanosReXXX .... Interesting!

@BruceCM Yup, it's a he...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._R._Giger

In his own country, he was known as the "Father of the Aliens", and he and his team have won an Academy award (Oscar) for their special effects and design on the first Alien movie.

This was his original design, prior to the movie, which actually inspired the Alien model:

It's actually a painting, and it's called Necronom IV.

Because of that, he was asked to join and lead the team for the movie, and then he adapted his painting into a design more suited to the movie and to what the alien was supposed to be able to do and convey.
This was the initial sketch, which as you can see, is still relatively humanoid:

Along the way, they apparently decided that a creature predominantly moving on all fours was more predator-like (pun intended), and more scary than a bipedal humanoid with a large head and a snake coming out of his mouth...

Cool, @ThanosReXXX .... I've seen those films quite a few times each

Gosh dang it.

Series X looks like such a great console. Everything about it is spot on. The power, the Backward Compatibility, the instant resume... But with only 1TB SSD space and expandable storage definitely not offering 4TB sizes, and most importantly without gyro, I just can't convince myself I should buy.

I guess that's why I bought a PC. I know I never play my X1X or PS4 anymore, I know that, and I know that probably won't change for the new consoles if I had them... yet some part of me is still trying to find reason to justify a purchase. Maybe it's just because of the excitement of a new generation and being part of the early adopters, talking about it with other gamers... I feel like I want to be a part of that. And it will suck just sitting on the sidelines.

At the same time, is it really worth buying just to be part of "the club"? even if it won't get used? Eh... I know the answer to that.

I'm back to work but with all OT cut off. If that wasnt the case I'd probably preorder just because the money is good. But with no OT, buying two $500 consoles, with games/larger SSD/extra controller is a harder sell. Idk if I can do another $1500 new console extravaganza like I did with Switch.

Do most of the games so far look like they could run on the Xbox One because the next generation isn't much of a graphical step-up?

OR

Do most of the games not look like much of a graphical step-up because they're being made to run on both consoles?

Tis a chicken and egg conundrum.

Probably mostly the latter, @Dezzy .... Those that are aimed solely at next gen are, presumably, not finished yet! So, whatever they could show recently, there might well still be tweaks that could make some difference to all that before release

@Dezzy This video provides a pretty good answer to that, for ALL next gen consoles:

@ThanosReXXX

Yeah I saw that. The one part I'm not sure he's correct about though is the increase of technological capability. Most of the data I've seen suggests Moore's Law is pretty much still as true as it's always been.

I think the explanation is much more down to diminishing returns of the conceptual side of it.

@BruceCM

Well I guess we need to wait for the PS5 reveal to see truly next-gen exclusives then.

But I'm leaning a bit more to the first option. I do think this will be the smallest graphical leap in a console generation we've ever seen.

I think we've hit diminishing returns on quite a lot of issues. Certainly things like poly counts have basically already peaked. I think screen resolution will more or less peak at 4K too, except for the biggest TVs in existence (which are themselves probably hitting a peak in maximum sizes that the average person might buy).

Maybe graphical techniques like Ray Tracing will end up making a huge difference, but so far the differences seem fairly minor and only in games that are deliberately designed to highlight their features (e.g scenes that have a lot of dynamic reflections). Also, the technique won't be usable at higher resolutions, so there'll be a big tradeoff there.

I hope I'm proved wrong though.

@Dezzy His videos are always quite thoroughly researched, so I actually do tend to trust what he says. And he's already play-tested the Series X too, and taken it apart, all under supervision of the Xbox team, as shown in the video that I posted in comment #10,030.

But yeah, diminishing returns are a thing, and it'll always be more about refining/fine-tuning and/or adding little tidbits, which is basically what HDR and Ray tracing also falls under, although the latter can have a BIG impact, when implemented in the right way, obviously.

I've never heard of it not being usable in higher resolutions, and seeing as it's already being used in 4K resolutions, that also seems highly unlikely to me. It would also kind of negate the effect of it being heralded as the next big thing for this upcoming generation, so that would be totally counter-productive, and much to the detriment of whatever they're planning to do.

@ThanosReXXX I am full on graphics, effects and scale of the games. Now I only want stable FPS and reliable (durable like the old) hardware.

@DarthNocturnal A relative ceiling, because of the value vs price ratio. It COULD go a bit faster in the console industry, if they would want to, and if customers would be willing to pay a lot more for a console, but seeing as they won't, we have now indeed more or less hit a ceiling, with mainly only cosmetics, frame rate, load times and storage media being improved upon.

@Zuljaras Well, there have been no RRoD's or YLOD's this generation either, so I think we're good on that part already...

Yeah, along with diminishing returns on at least the purely technical side, @Dezzy .... Improvements now will be people learning to use what's available better, which takes some time Then, they've talked about things like 'loading times', which should be either nonexistent or much shorter but you don't see that in a little bit of gameplay

Ray tracing isn't just 1 thing, that you can either turn on or off. It's a general rendering technique that can be used for a whole range of different effects.

So Ray traced reflections is a different thing from ray traced refractions, which is a different thing from ray traced shadows or ray traced global illumination. All of them are based on screen resolution though. The higher the resolution, the higher the ray tracing costs.

Doing every possible ray tracing effect simultaneously at 4K will almost definitely be impossible on these consoles.

The stuff we've seen running at 4K is usually just demonstrating 1 particular effect. Like reflections in Battlefield 5 or Control.

Inasmuch as they're making quite a big deal about 'ray-tracing' for next gen, though, it suggests there'll be significant steps in that & that might take some time for devs to learn how to use it to full advantage Whether the basic ideas are new or it's significant improvements in the software/ hardware capabilities, it all requires some learning, at least some of which has to be practical ....

@Dezzy I know that, but it IS one type of technology, that they've added to the roster, this generation, so whatever they're going to use it for, or will be able to use it for, is somewhat irrelevant.

On consoles, due to the obvious restrictions, they might very well combine and/or implement some additional trickery, such as combining old tech with the newer tech, to still get the most out of it.

On a side note: I obviously didn't mean to imply that they'll do every possible ray tracing effect simultaneously at 4K. That's probably not even possible on anything but the most high end PC's, if even that. So, what it ultimately comes down to, is that it actually IS usable, except only in certain areas, or when used in multiple areas, in moderation.

I'm pretty sure the people at team Xbox and the various on-board developers will know what they're doing, so regardless of there probably not being all that big of a step up in comparison, the games will more than likely still look (and more importantly: run) better than they do now.