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538515-project-scorpio-specs-from-digital-foundry

Now that we've discussed the basic technical specs of Project Scorpio, Microsoft's follow-upwards to the original Xbox Ane, it's time to cover some of the ancillary information, similar 4K support, 1080p goodies, and VR functionality. Microsoft and Sony are pursuing dissimilar strategies with their new refreshed hardware, so information technology's worth exploring what each platform offers (at least, as of this writing).

Backwards compatibility, electric current game improvements

All Xbox Scorpio games (that's our shorthand, not Microsoft'southward specific nomenclature) are required to exist backwards-compatible with Xbox One titles. The only exception to this may be VR titles, which require peripherals that the original Xbox patently won't back up. The general implication from Microsoft is that it takes backwards and forwards compatibility seriously, and the company'southward piece of work on Xbox 360 emulation for the Xbox One besides illustrates that point.

Here's how Andrew Goossen (Microsoft Technical Fellow, Graphics) explained the state of affairs to Digital Foundry:

"In designing for compatibility, there are two choices that we can take from a performance perspective," Goossen said. "One of which is to design hardware to emulate the operation capabilities of the original [panel] as much as possible, or the other one is to say, we're just going to turn on all the performance and we're going to deal with all the issues."

Sony represents the emulation option that Microsoft is discussing here. Boost Mode has been made available then that existing PS4 titles that aren't optimized for the PS4 Pro can however take advantage of higher clock speeds — but non the second GPU implementation inside the panel.

Microsoft is taking the harder route of making the Xbox Scorpio's firepower bachelor to all games, but that means checking to ensure those titles run properly and don't suffer slowdowns or other issues.

Microsoft further clarified that while games should be able to sustain a constant frame charge per unit on Scorpio even if they struggled to do so on the original Xbone, the new console doesn't automatically raise the frame rate. That'southward typically the developer's decision and is tied to the game engine. (It appears developers will have the choice to add support for a faster locked frame rate, only that's up to them).

I'm not sure this is actually a problem. 30 FPS gaming gets a worse rap, in my opinion, than it actually deserves. While I nevertheless prefer 60 FPS targets, I'd much rather have a rock-solid abiding 30 FPS than a game that swings erratically from 20 FPS – 60 FPS depending on what's on-screen at any given time. It'southward been my personal observation that what most people don't like about 30 FPS is that a performance whack at 30 FPS pushes you downwardly into stuttering territory in the 20-25 FPS range, whereas the same per centum decline from a 60 FPS target puts y'all in the 40 – 50 FPS range. The slower the base of operations frame charge per unit is, the more than noticeable stuttering becomes.

Digital Foundry expects Xbox 1 games to run smoother, avert screen fierce, hold their maximum possible resolutions, and offering improved texture filtering — according to Goossen, the new Scorpio organization automatically converts bilinear and trilinear filters to 16x anisotropic filtering on-the-fly. In the image below, Forza Motorsport 6 Apex is using 4x AF on the left(respective to default texturing for the Xbox One) and 16x AF on the right.

texturefiltering

4x on the left, 16x on the right. Click to enlarge. Paradigm by Digital Foundry

This texture filtering improvement will also carry over for Xbox 360 games played via emulation. Microsoft is also promising faster loading and improved texture decompression performance to accelerate how long it takes to actually go far-game and playing.

VR support

Microsoft expects Projection Scorpio'due south firepower to exist primarily useful in delivering two kinds of content: VR and 4K. This does not mean that 1080p gamers are left out in the cold, but nosotros'll cover that separately. VR back up really isn't in question; the Polaris-class GPU inside the Xbox Scorpio is significantly more than powerful than the GTX 970 or R9 290 GPUs that are typically specced as minimum hardware for 1080p VR.

Microsoft is expected to announce Oculus support for Scorpio, given that it already has a partnership with Oculus to distribute an Xbox I controller. At that place are also rumors of additional, Windows 10-specific optimizations that volition improve VR performance in some degree, but data here is thin. Nosotros know that at to the lowest degree ane game, Fallout iv, is being converted to VR specifically for the Xbox Ane. But this situation is easily the murkiest of the various Project Scorpio questions. Ars Technica points out that the adjacent-generation Xbox doesn't seem to have the extra HDMI port yous'd expect for outputting specifically to VR, and information technology'southward not even clear if MS will still partner with Oculus given that it is making its own push into depression-price VR headsets.

Tin the Xbox Ane hit native 4K?

Digital Foundry'due south conclusion is that some Xbox One games, if properly optimized, should be able to drive a title at native 4K as opposed to simply upscaling 1080p textures and detail settings. The ane title Microsoft showed, Forza 6, was running a steady lx FPS at 4K resolution. While that's extremely impressive for any console, equally e'er, we don't recommend basing purchase decisions on the performance of a single, likely highly-optimized game.

Games that are bottlenecked by make full charge per unit are much less likely to hit 4K resolutions, for example, because Project Scorpio's GPU is express to 32 ROPS. Games that put heavy pressure level on memory bandwidth, on the other hand, could easily striking 4K on the Xbox Scorpio, even if they can't maintain that resolution on a PS4 Pro — the Xbox's 1.5x memory bandwidth advantage over Sony could exist sufficient to brand that happen.

Like Sony, MS has the option to use checkerboard filtering or other methods of scaling upwards to 4K, if they so want. Just every bit with Sony, I expect there volition be some games that actually hit native 4K and some that scale up to information technology. I'thousand not even sure that 4K targets are the all-time mode to use the boosted firepower — I'd prefer an upscaled 4K with better textures or peradventure higher frame rates equally opposed to a native 4K with a 30 FPS lock. We'll accept to wait and meet how studios have advantage of the new capabilities to return a verdict on whether Microsoft's approach works amend than Sony's. Redmond does seem adequately confident on this point; they've added support for 4K60p video capture with retroactive screen capture to the Xbox GameDVR app when running on Scorpio.

1080p goodies

Sony's initial PS4 Pro messaging was almost entirely focused on 4K, to the bespeak that you might accept wondered whether the company was aware that the vast majority of Tv owners (and PC gamers, for that matter) use resolutions far beneath that point. Co-ordinate to Microsoft, games rendered above 1080p resolution will be downsampled for 1080p televisions.

This is a peculiarly nice trait for Microsoft to offer. Downsampling and super-sampled anti-aliasing aren't technically exactly the same matter, mostly considering there are different methods to utilise for super-sampling (ordered grid, sparse grid, etc) and downsampling doesn't necessarily conform to these specific approaches. At a very loftier level, even so, here's how this works:

Supersampling AA: Improves image quality and reduces jagged lines by taking additional subpixel color samples and renders the entire prototype at a higher resolution earlier outputting at the target resolution. The grid type chosen will affect last epitome quality — some grid patterns are more probable to produce blurred textures than others. If you hate jaggies, SSAA is the all-time manner to eliminate them if your GPU can handle the much heavier workload.

Downsampling: The game is internally rendered at a college resolution before beingness output at a lower resolution. This stride is essentially identical between supersampling and downsampling, and in every game I've ever tested that offered both options, supersampling and downsampling have had practically identical performance hits and improved visual quality by the same amount.

A 1080p game downsampled from 4K still looks much better than a 1080p game rendered in 1080p — the just question is whether the GPU can keep upwardly. The unabridged reason why alternating antialiasing modes similar FXAA, SMAA, MSAA, CSAA, CFAA, Quincunx, TXAA  and MFAA were developed is because game devs and GPU companies accept continually pushed to observe new ways of improving image quality while reducing the GPU workload. Each of these methods uses a dissimilar approach to improve image quality, with results that range from "Practiced," to "Improve than zero," typically with respective performance hits. Downsampling is the gold standard for paradigm quality in a state of affairs like this, and it'south encouraging to encounter MS continuing upwards for information technology and enabling it by default, in hardware, when playing on a 1080p Television.

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3200×1800 downsampling compared with native 1080p resolution.  check the edges of textures to see where the downsampled paradigm smooths them compared with 1080p. Click to enlarge, image by Gamrs.co user VooDooPC.

Overall, this looks like an extremely impressive launch for Microsoft. If it comes in at the expected price ($499) and can actually hit 4K60 gameplay in more than than a handful of titles, this next-gen console should punch well above its weight class, even when compared with PCs. Honestly, that shouldn't be viewed as a surprise. In that location was a time when brand-new consoles were more than than capable of matching the graphics of equivalent PCs. The Xbox Ane and PS4 were less-capable (but more profitable) in this regard, but Microsoft, at least, intends to play a major round of catch-upwards. And Microsoft appears to have learned from Sony's mistake and is offering features that all gamers, including those with 1080p televisions, can benefit from out of the box.