PropellerEar
Member
But aren't you the DF sycophant on the looney bin forum?
You probably can ask Alex directly, as you probably "bogaloo" with him?
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Digital Foundry: Heard that Xbox Series S Is A "Pain" For Developers Due To Memory Issues
- Thread starter IbizaPocholo
- Start date
- Opinion Hardware
- Status
You probably can ask Alex directly, as you probably "bogaloo" with him?
DarkMage619
$MSFT
All console software requires optimization. The existence of the XSS doesn't change that. Game development is hard.
FrankWza
Member
If we’re qualifying posters, I have a list for you. Also, 3rd party is a thing. That’s why the matrix demo took a “gargantuan effort “ to get running on the s. Time and resources better spent to maximize the lead consoles. When people say held back, this is what they are referring to. The “scaling and flip of a switch” approach is not working.
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adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
FrankWza
Member
Gotta admit, the timing is definitely an eyebrow raising coincidenceStarfield delayed because of Series S??
Hero of Spielberg
Member
Just like the PS3 cell, the Series S ‘pain’ will force the devs to become better and set us up for amazing games in the future! I’ve been told that’s how it works.
Bernd Lauert
Banned
Still not even a hint of an explanation. Sad!
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Sure if it's even true in the first place.
One thing y'all forget is, regardless of pain or not, with Series S being the next gen console baseline, it means PS5 and SX versions of games will *ALWAYS* have good over head ensuring higher resolutions and frame rates.
Series S is clearly not a console meant or made for the hardcore crowd. It's an entry level device with entry level features for the new gen.
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DarkMage619
$MSFT
Seems to me the easy thing is to ignore it if it isn't for you. It being an option for casuals and kids seems to be pretty good for the gamers. Amazing to those affected the least with the most to say.
Werewolfgrandma
Banned
That's a bad quote that I don't believe says what you think it says
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Honestly, no. He's hardly the only offender.
Both PS5 and SX boxes tout 120 FPS, 8K etc. The number of games that run native 4K can be counted on a handful, let alone 120 FPS games. Jason was just saying what the Series S can optimally do in the best case scenario.
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FrankWza
Member
Why doesn’t a quote ever mean what it says when it comes to the series s?
We have the systems engineer saying it will have the same experience as series x at lower resolution. We have press and interviews saying the same thing. And we have a first hand account from developers that shared development of the matrix demo saying the effort to get the s version going necessitated an extra studio to get running at lower, scaled back res and features. Are all of these people being misquoted? Why are they all open to interpretation when they seem to be pretty clear in the point they are making?
DarkMage619
$MSFT
Still wonderful to see the XSS be held to its optimal settings while consoles significantly more expensive are allowed to run games at 1080p and no one bats and eye.
I'll take it. It was always ridiculous to have all sorts of conspiracy theories about how DF was out to get Sony. Now we can take everything Alex says as truth from here on out.What's truly impressive is all the same usernames who called out Alex "bogaloo" are now suddenly firmly believing what he said, without him naming any actual developers.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Hottest of takes. Spicy 🌶
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Didn’t I just read a thread about how the ps3 being difficult to program for was a good thing? So like you said I guess we will see.
His eyebrows aren’t raised so you must be wrong.
Shmunter
Member
Not so strange fanboys turning a blind eye to uncomfortable realitiesWhich is strange as the majority with the concern about the Series S and with the Series X being held back by the Series S seem to be from the blue team
Astral Dog
Member
Im not a fan of the Series S design, but developers just need to learn designing their games with the weakest hardware denominator in mind, its not like they are making games with 256MB of RAM this is not 2006 anymore
RayTracing is more interesting, forcing gamers to chose between 30fps/ lower quality image
RayTracing is more interesting, forcing gamers to chose between 30fps/ lower quality image
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sainraja
Member
Not necessarily. When I was a teen, I had a computer that was very low spec and it couldn't play Shogun Total War at all, let alone WarCraft 3 when it released. So developers who release games on PC aren't forced to develop for the lowest common denominator. They can simply choose to ignore it — I mean, that is why they release minimum requirement, do they not?
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Astral Dog
Member
nah don't worry, the main factor(s) that held back game design last generation was not the RAM, but the CPU and HDD, both of wich have been adressed on the Series S
Even with the gimped hardware, Series S wouldn't be holding things back THAT much lol, its still a much bigger jump than anything Xbox ONE/PS4 were, once cross gen games are over more gamers will see what these machines are capable of
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Hoddi
Member
I agree, I think people grossly overestimate how much memory is truly needed and especially for textures. Your 4k TV only has ~8.3m pixels which is just 31.6 megabytes (at 4 bytes per pixel) and, in an ideal world, you would also only need 1 texel per pixel. The whole point of SFS is to bring that ratio closer to 1:1 and, while that's not realistic, it doesn't mean that games need to be stuck wasting multiple gigabytes on textures that might not even be visible in the frame.
If you have a compatible PC then you can download an SFS demo from here that demonstrates this very nicely. It's pushing the equivalent of 350 gigabytes of texture data but the total VRAM allocation is just 1.8GB at 1080p, 2.1GB at 4k, and 3.3GB at 8k. The bottleneck instead shifts to the SSD where it streams ~50MB/s at 1080p, ~150MB/s at 4k, and ~450MB/s at 8k.
This obviously doesn't mean that your Series S will behave like a 350GB GPU since there are more factors involved than just textures. But older systems have wasted a lot of VRAM on texture data that wouldn't have been necessary with an SSD.
Haggard
Banned
The existence of the XSS multiplies the necessary time investment......
DarkMage619
$MSFT
Care to quantify thar sir? Perhaps you can detail the challenges in XSS development and why features that save RAM aren't used.
Hoddi
Member
Every PC game in existence has a Settings page that allows gamers to optimize them for their own PCs. It usually takes less than 10 minutes.
Smart for them, yes. But it is holding back progress in a very bad way and should not have been released.
The only way it “holds back progress” is if every studio is forced to drop rasterization and no advancements in bvh compaction / optimization comes through. Youre high af if u think more than a select few games will be fully dependent on raytracing to the degree that warrants such FUD. Matrix and Metro prove it is feasible. Developers are welcome to just go PS5 and PC only of their vision isn’t possible on Xbox.
Except even the consoles aren’t tailored well for such highly demanding RT titles because of the AMD APUs inside. Not even FSR 2.0 is going to save them if a game is going full RT.
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adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
It's not, but go on, please tell us how.
you know it takes time to add these features to engines? especially when studios are just working just to get their games out on time and working adequately.
and about engines like UE5, platform holders such as xbox provide their own fork of the engine with support for their hardware features.
You think it's holding back nextgen but really it's giving devs a reason to even make nextgen only games because without it the userbase would be smaller & publishers wouldn't make much return on their nextgen games.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Good point. Would you rather have developers continue making game with the PS4 and XBO as the baseline, or Series S and similarly spec'd PCs.
DenchDeckard
Moderated wildly
Jason shouldn't have said it but we literally have ps5 and series x delivering cross gen games and early gen games at 1080p to hit 60 fps. All these consoles are a joke if you want to look at it that way.
Craig of War
Banned
What did he say?
Bogroll
Likes moldy games
No. Just manage your expectations. If the big brother is hitting 1080p or thereabouts the SS with a 1/3 of the TF is going to be quite a bit less maybe with a few settings lower.
Bogroll
Likes moldy games
Exactly. I expected more out of the PS5 and SX and I have been more disappointed by those than the SS.
And that doesn't mean I'm disappointed by them, just expected a but more than they're delivering.
It is still early days though.
Riky
$MSFT
"“Developers have a whole host of different techniques, whether that’s changing the resolution of their title, things like dynamic resolution scaling frame to frame — that’s something we’ve seen a lot of adoption of, especially towards the end of this generation,” explains Ronald. “And obviously the ability to enable and display different visual effects, without actually affecting the fundamental gameplay.”
That's what he actually said before launch, which is exactly what has happened.
Dream-Knife
Banned
The drop in resolution is due to processing power and not memory. It's a 4tf machine competing against 10 and 12 tf machines.
Craig of War
Banned
Ok i don't see a probem with what he said
If you go and look at the DF video of Forza Horizon 5 it shows how it scale between Xone to One X to Series S to Series X & PC
It does scale with different enviromental foliage effects
So again what is the problem with what jason said? i don't see a problem
DenchDeckard
Moderated wildly
Well, there it is! Clear as day. Exactly what happens with the series s.
I take back my previous comment in here. Jason said nothing wrong and this comment here nails the series s perfectly.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
By that definition if you tailor the gameplay for Xbox One X you also have no problem. It is his “same experience at 1440p/1080p” we keep adding caveats to justify the stance for that is more of the issue. Again, there were other alternatives to fragmenting the HW specs to deliver a cheaper Xbox.
DenchDeckard
Moderated wildly
This is completely different, the cpu and ssd are identical. Less memory for lower resolutions and effects.
You should absolutely be able to deliver a next gen experience with lower effects and resolution on the series s. Yes it won't look as flashy but it shouldn't really hold anything back.
Banjo64
cumsessed
I’m happy with the S even if the games run at 30fps and sub 1080p.
I’m only rocking it on a 1080p monitor, and just wanted a cheap way of natively playing Halo, Gears, Avowed, TES6 (lol), Fable, Everwild and Perfect Dark. I wouldn’t have been happy to pay £450 for the X just for those games.
Although I am second guessing myself now and thinking that I could have just bought a £500 laptop which would play all of MS’s first party (EGS free games have made Plus and Game Pass look pretty crap).
I’m only rocking it on a 1080p monitor, and just wanted a cheap way of natively playing Halo, Gears, Avowed, TES6 (lol), Fable, Everwild and Perfect Dark. I wouldn’t have been happy to pay £450 for the X just for those games.
Although I am second guessing myself now and thinking that I could have just bought a £500 laptop which would play all of MS’s first party (EGS free games have made Plus and Game Pass look pretty crap).
Riky
$MSFT
Xbox One X doesn't have the i/o system, the Ray Tracing hardware, tier 2 VRS, Mesh Shaders or SFS support and an ancient CPU. So no it couldn't.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Just flick a few switches in the editor and voilà right? No, hence why for a fixed box console having a single unified HW would have been best for all (cut the disc, cut the SSD size in half and use the memory card profits to subsidise some of the cost too, etc… and a company like MS could have driven the price down to $349-399… but no, this is better <insert keywords>
).Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Considering the RAM is much smaller (considerable less bandwidth, CPU for multi threaded software also jumps down quite a bit but not far from PS5’s one, it remains to be seen how much CPU overhead you have on Xbox compared to PS though), and how much work that is not just pretty graphics easy to scale is now running on the GPU using its general compute capabilities (otherwise GPU general compute being limited by XSS and the rest just being prettier pixels is what you may get)… it depends.
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DenchDeckard
Moderated wildly
It has 8gb of ram fir games but I see that it is a little slow so that could be an issue, sure. Everything else seems pretty decent for what it is.
yamaci17
Member
its not about being slow, its about the amount itself
series x / ps5 has 10 gb allocated for gpu operations (most likely, typical) and 3.5 gb for cpu operations (sounds, physics and such). sx has a clear cut line between gpu and cpu operations, 10 gb @560 gb/s and 3.5 gb @336 gb/s (and an extra 2.5 gb for the system). towards the end of the generation, i expect the allocated RAM to increase to 4 GB and system for 2 GB with extra optimizations. so its 10 gb vram+3.5/4 gb ram config on SX and PS5, most likely
for series s, stuff is not good. 2 GB 56 gb/s goes directly to system (its too slow anyway, useless for both gpu and cpu operations). so they have one unified 224 gb/s 8 gb for cpu+gpu operations. amount of RAM is not easily scalable with resolution. we're talking about stuff like sound, physics et. Series S will have to at least allocated 3-3.5 GB of RAM for CPU operations. Then we have 4.5-5 GB VRAM for GPU operations, which is nearly the half amount what Series X/PS5 can allocate
and here is the part where problems starts, for example in rdr 2, you can run intended game textures with 4 GB @4K. But you cannot run the intended game textures with a 2 GB card even if you run the game at 360p (literally). the game needs a minimum of 3 GBs of buffer regardless of resolution for its intended textures. anything between does not work either.
in other terms, let me create an example so you understand;
ps4 / xbox one had 8 gb ram, which 3.5/4 GB they could allocate to their games for GPU operations and 2.5-3 GB for CPU operations.
say there was an additional console named ps3.5 and xbox half xd. say these consoles have a total of 5 GB RAM compared to ps4's 8 GB RAM.
now, this 5 gb console would need to at least allocate 1-1.5 GB to system. say they cut intricate corners and managed to fit CPU operations into 2 GBs of buffer. That lefts us with 2 GB of VRAM that GPU can use for its own operations.
Lets see how RDR 2 looks on 2 GB buffer ;
now back to the topic, if such a theroticail ps3.5 did exist, the low textures would not look like that. instead, rockstar would have to create a set of 2 GB compliant textures that looked decent. that's the "pain" part. series s will practically force developers to create an alternative set of textures specifically tailored for series s. they call it a pain because most of devs think the gains won't justify the costs and i totally agree with them. thats another topic of course.
as i said, some people in this thread are delusional and keep talking about "devs have to care for min spec and thats lower than series s". above picture is a proof that devs dont care about min spec either. do you really think rockstar gave any kind of care for 2 GB min spec gpus? those textures look okay to you? they just butchered their original textures probably with a generalized algorythm that created what we call "low" textures in mere hours and called it a day.
they cant do that for series s. if a ps3.5 existed, they couldn't do that for that console either. they would have to make "extra" effort to make the game look good in terms of textures on that potential ps3.5 with 2 GBs of budget for GPU operations.
all of this talk is relevant for series s. textures intended for a 10 GB buffer won't be easily turned down to 5 GBs just by reducing resolution alone. they would have to look like how RDR 2's low textures look like on 2 GB GPUs compared to 4 GB GPus if they only used a "flick of a switch". if they make extra effort, they will look okay (the pain part)
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Bernd Lauert
Banned
Won't stop dcmk7 from trolling though
still, good to know.- Status
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