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Only Xbox One X will download the 4K assets.

EvB

Member
They are actually way worse than everyone else by far, and their games doesn't justify that in any way.

How are they "way worse"? as it stands, you are required to download the Pro patches on a standard PS4 which are often several GB of 4K video.
 

Shin-Ra

Junior Member
How are they "way worse"? as it stands, you are required to download the Pro patches on a standard PS4 which are often several GB of 4K video.
Horizon: Zero Dawn's the only game I'm aware of with 4K video, for the intro, and it's all on the BD-ROM.
 

EvB

Member
I'm just saying it's obnoxious to be pushed 50gb+ patches for lots of retail releases, most of which are MS published. I don't own a PS4 so the only frame of reference is PC and Nintendo platforms, where I don't often (or ever) have these issues.

Is that because your PC purchases are all digital to begin with?
 

big_z

Member
Crackdown 3's one of these games with supposedly 'high density textures' but they look much worse than games like inFamous Second Son for base hardware, released years ago.

It's because 4k assets typically means uncompressed textures in a lot of cases, not better textures in terms of detail or artistic value.

I'm willing to bet forzas 4k assets are simply uncompressed and while sure that provides highest detail it also hugely inflates the game size. They could probably reduce the file size by 2/3rds if they smartly compressed the assets and they would still look and sound identical in game. I know that takes time and money but I really hate how bloated games have become.
 

EvB

Member
Horizon: Zero Dawn's the only game I'm aware of with 4K video, for the intro, and it's all on the BD-ROM.

There will be more than you realise as lots of games use in engine video to give a seamless experience.
If you don't patch these videos you will drop from 4k straight down to 1080p and it would stick out like a sore thumb

As an example, Infamous's Pro Patch added 3.6GB


If the game has 4k native resolution*

^
If it has anything higher than 1080p actually
 
Crackdown 3's one of these games with supposedly 'high density textures' but they look much worse than games like inFamous Second Son for base hardware, released years ago.

Crackdown-3_Screenshot_Alley-Fight.jpg


Crackdown-3_Screenshot_Agent-Marshall.jpg


https://gifyu.com/images/Crackdown-3_Screenshot_Dreadnoughts.png
https://gifyu.com/images/Crackdown-3_Screenshot_New-Providence.png
https://gifyu.com/images/Crackdown-3_Screenshot_Orb.png
https://gifyu.com/images/Crackdown-3_Screenshot_Cars-On-Fire.png
https://gifyu.com/images/Crackdown-3_Screenshot_Agents.png
https://gifyu.com/images/Crackdown-3_Screenshot_Agent-Roll.png
https://gifyu.com/images/Crackdown-3_Screenshot_Agent-Dash.png
https://gifyu.com/images/Crackdown-3_Screenshot_Action-Hero-Shot.jpg


Both games have very different artstyles..I don't even know what you are getting at but I love the look of Crackdown.
 

RedRum

Banned

You don't think it's strange to try to compare two games with a huge difference in art styles with each other? If not that, wait until Crackdown is polished and release first before judgement? I think this would be like me trying to compare Sunset OD to Spiderman.

Edit: Beaten by posters above. I'm glad I'm not the only one that picked it up.

I am very excited to connect this to my new 4k TV. But this games sizes..., the X will only hold 10 games with those sizes. If anybody is looking for a way to expand their storage, I bought this. Seagate STGG8000400 Game Drive Hub for Xbox 8TB Storage With Dual USB Ports https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072QH2JCL/?tag=neogaf0e-20

This isn't bad for the price actually!
 

napata

Member
Both games have very different artstyles..I don't even know what you are getting at but I love the look of Crackdown.

You don't think it's strange to try to compare two games with a huge difference in art styles with each other? If not that, wait until Crackdown is polished and release first before judgement? I think this would be like me trying to compare Sunset OD to Spiderman.

Edit: Beaten by posters above. I'm glad I'm not the only one that picked it up.

It has nothing to do with artstyle and everything to do with budget. Crackdown is just a lesser budget title and that's fine. Despite different artstyle you can still compare the quality of textures. Look at the bricks and graffiti for example. The artstyle is probably used to mask the lower budget as much as possible.
 

RedRum

Banned
It has nothing to do with artstyle and everything to do with budget. Crackdown is just a lesser budget title and that's fine. Despite different artstyle you can still compare the quality of textures. Look at the bricks and graffiti for example. The artstyle is probably used to mask the lower budget as much as possible.

Let me get this straight. The reason Crackdown, Crackdown 2, and now 3 uses cel-shaded artstyle is to mask it being a low budget game? But it's still okay to compare textures.. which are based around the artstyle.

...ok. I think that's enough GAF for tonight.
 

Shin-Ra

Junior Member
There's nothing inherently difficult about Crackdown's art style that makes it more difficult to texture clothing fabric for example, properly.

If anything, the larger areas of flat colour make textures compress down better compared to a realistic style with more contrasting micro-detail.
 

napata

Member
Let me get this straight. The reason Crackdown, Crackdown 2, and now 3 uses cel-shaded artstyle is to mask it being a low budget game? But it's still okay to compare textures.. which are based around the artstyle.

...ok. I think that's enough GAF for tonight.

Yeah I knew this was coming. There's a good reason there are almost no cel shaded graphics anymore. Back in the day they were used often because a realistic arstyle was held back by technology. Today they are not necessary anymore unless you want to keep the budget down. A realistic artstyle is much harder and expensive to make. Anyway I'm not going to convince you otherwise so believe what you want to believe.

I can take a look at the wall in the first screenshot and I can see blurry bricks and blurry graffiti. I can compare that with any other game just fine. The same goes for the clothes on the model or the gun. You can make the argument that a cel shaded artstyle requires lower quality textures but then we're just going back to the lower budget argument.
 

Night.Ninja

Banned
There's nothing inherently difficult about Crackdown's art style that makes it more difficult to texture clothing fabric for example, properly.

If anything, the larger areas of flat colour make textures compress down better compared to a realistic style with more contrasting micro-detail.

Ok buddy
 

Dunkley

Member
I am already anticipating the faux outrage over this...

For supersampling purposes, this a good thing.

I mean I admit I did too but I didn't expect it to be instead derailed to a discussion about Crackdown 3's textures.

To bring this back on topic, I wanna say I think this is probably the best choice. At first, I was going to argue that people who can afford an Xbox One X probably can afford internet good enough to not have to worry about these download sizes, but I admit I don't think the correlation simply is there.

Still, not requiring users of the OG XBOne and the S to download these files is a huge benefit to them especially with ISPs being so keen on data limits. While it sucks that the X will have to download additional stuff at least the rest of the userbase doesn't have to download a crap ton of assets their game won't even use. I heard someone mention localization files as well, and I think that's positive too. Steam does that for some games as well and I'm all for keeping filesizes at a minimum as opposed to having stuff take up space your game effectively isn't making use of.

I do wonder however if future releases will contain the X content as well should they have room for it on the disc.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Yup, some folks really can't wrap their heads around this "4K assets" idea.

I really hate this terminology that's used all the time. "4K textures", what the hell does that even mean? Are the textures literally 4K-sized (3840×2160 or 4096×4096 or whatever)? And what about the size of the model this texture is applied to? It seems like it's often used just to say that they are large enough to hold up at 4K rendering resolution. But yeah, it confuses a lot of people who don't understand how any of this actually works, and who believe that to render at 4K you need 4K textures.
 

Peterpan

Member
I really hate this terminology that's used all the time. "4K textures", what the hell does that even mean? Are the textures literally 4K-sized (3840×2160 or whatever)? I guess it's supposed to indicate that they are simply large enough to hold up at 4K rendering resolution. But yeah, it confuses a lot of people who don't understand how any of this actually works.
I don't know anything about game development or nor am I knowledgeable about textures, so if I am wrong it's okay, I am not trying to assert anything. So don't jump on me Gaf.

But I assumed textures were just images overlayed over assets, so to me 4K textures just made sense, as the resolution of that image would simply be higher. That's why we get blurry textures. Feel free to correct me.
 

SPDIF

Member
Yeah I knew this was coming. There's a good reason there are almost no cel shaded graphics anymore. Back in the day they were used often because a realistic arstyle was held back by technology. Today they are not necessary anymore unless you want to keep the budget down. A realistic artstyle is much harder and expensive to make. Anyway I'm not going to convince you otherwise so believe what you want to believe.

I can take a look at the wall in the first screenshot and I can see blurry bricks and blurry graffiti. I can compare that with any other game just fine. The same goes for the clothes on the model or the gun. You can make the argument that a cel shaded artstyle requires lower quality textures but then we're just going back to the lower budget argument.

This is Crackdown we're talking about. The series has always had a cel shaded art style, and that's not going to change anytime soon. CR3 could have the largest budget of any game ever made and we'd still end up with a similar look.
 

Trup1aya

Member
Press the second disc, stop being cheap. There are two reasons to buy physical, first it's always cheaper, secondly so I don't have to download the goddamn game. Put the 4k assets on a second disc. Do it. For your consumers.

Press a second disc that less that 10% of your customers will use?
 

dr_rus

Member
How will this affect discs?
My guess would be that it won't affect disks at all. All assets will be on the same disc.

I would hope so, otherwise downsampling isn't possible.

Wouldn't you need that for downsampling?

Downsampling has nothing to do with the quality of assets. I'm also pretty sure that better assets will help the image quality even without downsampling - XBO's games are pretty far from maxing out what's possible in 1080p IQ wise.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
I don't know anything about game development or nor am I knowledgeable about textures, so if I am wrong it's okay, I am not trying to assert anything. So don't jump on me Gaf.

But I assumed textures were just images overlayed over assets, so to me 4K textures just made sense, as the resolution of that image would simply be higher. That's why we get blurry textures. Feel free to correct me.

Yes, that's correct. But that has nothing to do with the resolution the game is rendered at. You can have a 4K game with 64x64 textures if you want. The textures will be really blurry, but it'll work just fine. You can also have a 4K game with 8K textures, or a 1080p game with 4K textures, etc. These are completely unrelated matters, but some people believe you need "4K assets" to be able to render at 4K (and downsample to 1080p).
 

Trup1aya

Member
I really hate this terminology that's used all the time. "4K textures", what the hell does that even mean? Are the textures literally 4K-sized (3840×2160 or 4096×4096 or whatever)? And what about the size of the model this texture is applied to? It seems like it's often used just to say that they are large enough to hold up at 4K rendering resolution. But yeah, it confuses a lot of people who don't understand how any of this actually works, and who believe that to render at 4K you need 4K textures.

Perhaps the more accurate terminology would be HQ textures.

At the end of the day, I think technical discussions are going to be tough for less technical people so using less terminology actually reduces confusion.

I think it's just best to be consistent. The messages should be that even if you have a 1080p TV you will benefit from the system rendering at 4K and pushing 4K assets.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Perhaps the more accurate terminology would be HQ textures.

At the end of the day, I think technical discussions are going to be tough for less technical people so using less terminology actually reduces confusion.

I think it's just best to be consistent. The messages should be that even if you have a 1080p TV you will benefit from the system rendering at 4K and pushing 4K assets.

Yep, for sure. And that's why using terms like "4K textures" is problematic, because it makes less technical people believe you need those to be able to render at 4K (as we've seen several examples of in this thread alone). Calling it something like "HQ textures" would perhaps not sound as impressive, but it would probably be less confusing.
 

nOoblet16

Member
I really hate this terminology that's used all the time. "4K textures", what the hell does that even mean? Are the textures literally 4K-sized (3840×2160 or 4096×4096 or whatever)? And what about the size of the model this texture is applied to? It seems like it's often used just to say that they are large enough to hold up at 4K rendering resolution. But yeah, it confuses a lot of people who don't understand how any of this actually works, and who believe that to render at 4K you need 4K textures.

Exactly, what does 4K texture even mean? And like you said, what size is the model?
If it's using 4096*4096 textures then is it using them everywhere? If it's not everywhere but only on some models then 4096*4096 textures are used even on Xbox One and base PS4 versions. So is it using more of them? If yes then why not just call them what theyve always been called i.e. high quality textures.

Or is that that when they say 4K textures they mean high resolution textures appropriate for viewing at 4K? Lastly, in select cases you won't see any benefit of that higher resolution texture because even if you are downsampling you are not increasing that number of pixels displayed on your screen so if a texture tops out at 1080P on your screen then going any higher resolution on that texture (even with downsampling into effect) you might not see the benefit of the higher resolution texture. But similarly in other areas where the texture resolution isn't topping out what you can see at 100P, having higher quality textures would improve the look.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Exactly, what does 4K texture even mean?
If it's using 4096*4096 textures then is it using them everywhere? If it's not everywhere but only on some models then 4096*4096 textures are used even on Xbox One and base PS4 versions. And like you said, what size is the model?

Or is that that when they say 4K textures they mean high resolution textures appropriate for viewing at 4K? Lastly, in select cases you won't see any benefit of that higher resolution texture because even if you are downsampling you are not increasing that number of pixels displayed on your screen so if a texture tops out at 1080P on your screen then going any higher resolution on that texture (even with downsampling into effect) you might not see the benefit of the higher resolution texture.

Yeah, and it's also affected by how close you can get to a model in the game. If you can get very close, so that only part of the model is on-screen, even a "4K texture" won't look so 4K anymore, but will be pretty blurry. Etc, etc.
 

Shin-Ra

Junior Member
This is Crackdown we're talking about. The series has always had a cel shaded art style, and that's not going to change anytime soon. CR3 could have the largest budget of any game ever made and we'd still end up with a similar look.
We already got a sneak peak how that might look (Gamescom 2015 renders) and character rendering at least is well within the realm of possibility with current technology.

 

JaffeLion

Banned
While it sucks that the X will have to download additional stuff at least the rest of the userbase doesn't have to download a crap ton of assets their game won't even use.


to be fair, people who can afford xbox one x AND a 4K can usually also afford a good internet connection. Also, in europe we dont have caps, I dont know why this is still a thing in the us
 
to be fair, people who can afford xbox one x AND a 4K can usually also afford a good internet connection. Also, in europe we dont have caps, I dont know why this is still a thing in the us
Political influence and lobbying here have continued to allow companies to stranglehold customers as they see fit
 

leeh

Member
to be fair, people who can afford xbox one x AND a 4K can usually also afford a good internet connection. Also, in europe we dont have caps, I dont know why this is still a thing in the us
When British Telecom support unlimited packages in rural areas, albeit for a bit more than cities, you know somethings up.
 
to be fair, people who can afford xbox one x AND a 4K can usually also afford a good internet connection. Also, in europe we dont have caps, I dont know why this is still a thing in the us

I don't think that's being fair at all. Living in Australia I know exactly what shit internet is because I, along with millions of other Aussie's have it.

I'm getting an X1X, own several 4K TV's but I'm stuck on a 6Mbps connection with no other options available, regardless of how much money I have.
 

KageMaru

Member
That sweet, sweet supersampling though. 👍

Asset quality has nothing to do with supersampling.

We already got a sneak peak how that might look (Gamescom 2015 renders) and character rendering at least is well within the realm of possibility with current technology.

That's from a pre-rendered video isn't it?
Also there's no way the game would look like that on current console hardware. Those renders don't take into account things like a dozen cars with a dozen characters being blown up by a building sized explosion.

I don't know anyone who actually expected the game to look like that.
 

Trup1aya

Member
We already got a sneak peak how that might look (Gamescom 2015 renders) and character rendering at least is well within the realm of possibility with current technology.

Yeah I really hoped the campaign would look more like this, Given how good other Open World games have looked this gen. Cellshading isn't an excuse for bad textures, models and lighting. That said, hopefully the low quality is a result of using the budget on being able to handle the chaos.
 

mrk8885

Banned
Asset quality has nothing to do with supersampling.

I don't know anyone who actually expected the game to look like that.

How would asset quality have nothing to do with supersampling?

Isn't the whole point that you start with the higher resolution and then downsample from there? I guess I don't understand how the tech actually works. But I would think you have to start with the higher quality asset. But if that's not the case please explain supersampling to me.
 

itf56

Member
Don't really object to enormous downloads or file sizes, but I really need a 2tb or 3tb SKU given my existing XB1 already has a full hard drive + a full 3TB external. :(
 

Vashetti

Banned
How would asset quality have nothing to do with supersampling?

Isn't the whole point that you start with the higher resolution and then downsample from there? I guess I don't understand how the tech actually works. But I would think you have to start with the higher quality asset. But if that's not the case please explain supersampling to me.

Assets = textures

Rendering resolution =/= assets/textures

I can set a game to 4K on PC and put the textures (assets) on low, the game is rendering at 4K resolution.

Supersampling/downsampling = rendering at high-resolution then downscaling that resolution to a lower one, e.g. 1080p. Nothing to do with the resolution of the textures/assets.
 

mrk8885

Banned
Like clockwork.


What about my comment is "like clockwork" faux outrage?


I assume the "supersampling" of the 4K output to a 1080p tv requires the 4K assets to be present. So it makes sense to me that anyone with the X, regardless of what kind of tv they're using, should be downloading the larger patches.

No idea where that comes across as "faux outrage" unless you've completely missed my point.


And once again, if it's technically wrong to say supersampling requires starting with the 4K assets someone please enlighten me because I admittedly don't understand how it works.


EDIT:

I see someone replied above but I just don't get it. I would think if the game is rendering at 4K and being sampled from there, it would make sense for assets like textures to also be 4K before the sampling. But apparently I'm wrong. I guess I just don't understand.
 
How would asset quality have nothing to do with supersampling?

Isn't the whole point that you start with the higher resolution and then downsample from there? I guess I don't understand how the tech actually works. But I would think you have to start with the higher quality asset. But if that's not the case please explain supersampling to me.

He is right that asset quality is not tied to supersampling. BUT, it's being a bit dismissive. Higher quality textures will look better than what is currently seen on XB1/PS4/PS4Pro when running on a 4K screen or downsampled on a 1080p screen
 

Vashetti

Banned
What about my comment is "like clockwork" faux outrage?


I assume the "supersampling" of the 4K output to a 1080p tv requires the 4K assets to be present. So it makes sense to me that anyone with the X, regardless of what kind of tv they're using, should be downloading the larger patches.

No idea where that comes across as "faux outrage" unless you've completely missed my point.


And once again, if it's technically wrong to say supersampling requires starting with the 4K assets someone please enlighten me because I admittedly don't understand how it works.

see:

Assets = textures

Rendering resolution =/= assets/textures

I can set a game to 4K on PC and put the textures (assets) on low, the game is rendering at 4K resolution.

Supersampling/downsampling = rendering at high-resolution then downscaling that resolution to a lower one, e.g. 1080p. Nothing to do with the resolution of the textures/assets.

Rendering resolution does not equal texture/asset resolution
 
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