Inside Xbox Series X Optimized: Dirt 5 - Devs talk SSD & ease of development on XSX

[SharpX68K]

Dynamic 1080p 120 most definitely
I don't see this gen barely doing 4K 30/60 to do reconstructed 4K at double the framerate

but people have stated they prefer fps > resolution

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I don't care if the resolution is variable, I do (obviously) hope the 120fps mode is locked at 120fps, or at least 99+ percent of the time.

I know that VRR TVs/monitors (AMD Freesync?) may help, though I'm unsure how well this might work vs Nvidia Gsync cards+monitors.

If anyone could break these things down, it would be appreciated.

 

[Prine]

Seems like the Velocity Architecture is so much more than raw SSD speeds. Can't wait to learn more about it.

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Honestly, I'm so pumped to see what's waiting for us. The XSX CPU is something that keeps coming up from devs, supposed to be something special, which seems to be missing in these conversations. Would love to know more about it however.

 

[robo_e]

there is a 4k mode and a different 120 fps mode

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I already knew that, just the way it was worded kinda made it seem they were targeting 4k 120fps together. Next Gen is going to be fun.

 

[Smashed_Hulk]

I dont think many people realize that the XSX velocity engine isn't too different from PS5. Both have dedicated hardware to drastically reduce cpu overhead from multiple cores down to a small fraction of a single core. Both have dedicated hardware decompression and more efficient texture streaming methods. They're very similar other than top speed.
2.4 GB/s uncompressed is pretty damn fast. It's not like they're going to be filling 100 GB of RAM full of data. There's only so much RAM to fill.
These 2 consoles are wayyy more similar than people realize. Instant loads and crazy streaming worlds will be practically the same on both systems. These are the consoles we've been dreaming about. So balanced

 

[DavidDesu]

God damn excited. What a generation of consoles upon us. I think they will have a rather long tail as well. Mid gen refreshes might actually be all we need for some considerable time, these will run amazing visuals and be so fresh to use with the speed and what that changes with game design as well. Bring it on.

 

[Deleted member 56752]

God damn excited. What a generation of consoles upon us. I think they will have a rather long tail as well. Mid gen refreshes might actually be all we need for some considerable time, these will run amazing visuals and be so fresh to use with the speed and what that changes with game design as well. Bring it on.

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I think what excites me the most is the opportunities with lighting and the toolset/optimization that will inevitably happen for RTX

 

[DavidDesu]

I think what excites me the most is the opportunities with lighting and the toolset/optimization that will inevitably happen for RTX

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Raytracing power is definitely the one area a mid gen refresh might make sense as RT starts getting used more and more but for sure these consoles have raytracing abilities and I can't wait to see how it's used and improved, as it will do over time. We are in for a hell of a decade of gaming.

 

[Prine]

Hi guys, it's me :)
If you want more information, check out the interview I did with Major Nelson over here on Youtube:

Interview: David Springate, Technical Director for Dirt 5

Larry Hryb, Xbox's Major Nelson talks to David Springate, Technical Director for Dirt 5. Learn more about how Dirt 5 will use the power of Xbox Series X. htt...

www.youtube.com

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Love the loft conversion. Holy smokes.

 

[TechBoss]

Love the loft conversion. Holy smokes.

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Thank you so much! You're the first person anywhere to comment on it! <3

 

[Deleted member 1003]

It should be faster than PC with the custom hardware both consoles have.

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I agree, it SHOULD be.

 

[ArchedThunder]

The thing that will be interesting to see with racing games with little to no load times to me are how they transition from choosing your car/track/etc.. to getting to the race itself. Will it go to a black screen for half a second, will the camera pull up behind your car and then the screen just explodes into the race track, etc...

Should make for some cool ideas.

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I imagine most games (not just racing) will fade to black and immediately fade back in on sudden transitions like that, but some games will do some stylish stuff.

 

[Convasse]

Finally, some discussion from a dev about the Series X's SSD.
Glad they're confirming it actually has one! /s

 

[Bloodforge]

The thing that will be interesting to see with racing games with little to no load times to me are how they transition from choosing your car/track/etc.. to getting to the race itself. Will it go to a black screen for half a second, will the camera pull up behind your car and then the screen just explodes into the race track, etc...

Should make for some cool ideas.

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I was thinking about this myself. Imagine the car select is in a garage and when you hit race it pans the camera around to the entrance with the door opening and the car just drives out into the pit lane.

 

[Jiraiya]

Hi guys, it's me :)
If you want more information, check out the interview I did with Major Nelson over here on Youtube:

Interview: David Springate, Technical Director for Dirt 5

Larry Hryb, Xbox's Major Nelson talks to David Springate, Technical Director for Dirt 5. Learn more about how Dirt 5 will use the power of Xbox Series X. htt...

www.youtube.com

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Posted as soon as class starts. It's a perfect length for the drive to work in the am though.

 

[Bugalugs214]

Racing games on series x are gunna feel so good.

 

[dedge]

Do you have a 120hz display :o

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Yes thankfully :)

 

[eso76]

The thing that will be interesting to see with racing games with little to no load times to me are how they transition from choosing your car/track/etc.. to getting to the race itself. Will it go to a black screen for half a second, will the camera pull up behind your car and then the screen just explodes into the race track, etc...

Should make for some cool ideas.

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Personally I hope this brings back Attract Modes as a side effect

SSD will make playing games so much more appealing; lately I found myself wanting to play FH4 but being discouraged by the initial load time. I think it's around 40/50 seconds before you can actually drive.
Doesn't sound like a lot especially from someone who grew up with MSX and C64, having to wait 10 literal minutes for the game to finish loading from the tape, but these days it's really scaring me away from many games.

 

[theAllseeingEYE]

Isn't Microsoft working to bring the SSD utilization technology they're using for Xbox to Windows at some point?

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I wouldn't be surprised at all to find that the new AMD X670 motherboards releasing this fall have extra hardware to help with i/o. It will probably/hopefully release on PC in short order once next-gen consoles arrive, but I could also see those being extra expensive motherboards.

That type of tech wouldn't just be great for games either, it could significantly improve game development and workstation tasks as well, if it works as reported. If it somehow helps situations where code is severely single-core bottlenecked when accessing, building, or linking thousands of small files, even a 2-4x improvement would be huge. If we get 10-20x improvement though, that would be groundbreaking.

 

[Outrun]

Hi guys, it's me :)
If you want more information, check out the interview I did with Major Nelson over here on Youtube:

Interview: David Springate, Technical Director for Dirt 5

Larry Hryb, Xbox's Major Nelson talks to David Springate, Technical Director for Dirt 5. Learn more about how Dirt 5 will use the power of Xbox Series X. htt...

www.youtube.com

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Thank you for the insights :)

 

[Deleted member 4970]

Yes thankfully :)

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Hell yeah then! Enjoy when the time comes! It's really something else

 

[AntiMacro]

I'm kind of going to miss loading screen tips... I learned a lot of stuff from them over the years.

 

[Prine]

Thank you so much! You're the first person anywhere to comment on it! <3

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That's what happens when I've got Homes under the hammer going on whilst trying to WFH 👀. I need an office 😫

More importantly, thank you for the technical insight! Wish Major allowed you to be more nerdy tbh, the Game Development Kit + comment about CPU utilisation was interesting to hear, hopefully we'll get to see the results soon!

 

[jett]

They're still using their old-ass Ego engine, right? I'm not surprised this game is running at 120fps.

 

[scrapple]

Dirt 1 was the best.... The car damage was awesome and your car basically got worse and ran like shit if you damaged certain parts... if you get a chance, pick it up... you will love it and wish all dirt games followed suit. No clue why they got rid of it.

 

[Fat4all]

I'm kind of going to miss loading screen tips... I learned a lot of stuff from them over the years.

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devs just need to find ways to better implement tips in the games themselves in ways that make sense

 

[Hey Please]

Good things, I hope for good things for this veteran studio. I can imagine SSD making lives of developers easier whilst they go for ever more expansive terrains to romp about on.

 

[Biggzy]

Glad to hear that with all the talk of SSDs , we are also getting a massive leap in CPU power as well, which honestly was the weak point and major hurdle for developers this generation.

 

[Omnistalgic]

Just to be clear, there's more specific talk about where we're at with 120fps in the video, so please, check it out :)

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How in the world does 120fps feel? And can we expect the same on the PS5 version?

 

[Dizastah]

Sounds delicious.....next gen cannot get here fast enough.

 

[Jaded Alyx]

Didn't take long for someone to downplay praise for XSX hard drive.

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How did you get that from what he said?

 

[Sota4077]

I've been saying it for awhile and this further cements it, some people are going to be in for a shock when games are virtually identical between the two systems. The differences that the advantages each system has over the other will result in such minor differences in multiplatform games that they will only be noticable in in depth head to comparisons.

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Exactly. This generation 90% of games ran better on PS4 and the few that ran better on the Xbox One were because they were a little more reliant on the CPU which, as far as I am aware, is a little better on the Xbox One. This time around the CPU & GPU are better on the Series X so if there is any discrepancy at all it will likely favor Xbox Series S. If there is a situation that is more bound by loading in or dumping of assets then PS5 is going to come out ahead.

It's just been so strange seeing people insist repeatedly that Xbox games are going to have long elevator scenes in games because of its SSD and the PS5 will not. They keep thinking that because the PS5's is faster than the one in the Xbox Series X is some trash HDD when its not. Those of us that have been saying this for ages now are constantly told we're just downplaying the SSD in the PS5, but it is the reality and we're not wrong.

It's going to be interesting and annoying when these consoles release and people are pointing to a 4k60 game on both consoles so they start to argue over load times of 3 seconds versus 6 seconds as though it matters.

 

[scrapple]

good interview... this guy is a gamer like us... he queued in lines for consoles... very cool

 

[lost7]

Seems like Microsoft did something really smart with their design too, next gen will be awesome

 

[Petran]

Hi guys, it's me :)
If you want more information, check out the interview I did with Major Nelson over here on Youtube:

Interview: David Springate, Technical Director for Dirt 5

Larry Hryb, Xbox's Major Nelson talks to David Springate, Technical Director for Dirt 5. Learn more about how Dirt 5 will use the power of Xbox Series X. htt...

www.youtube.com

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Hi David
You are the kind of technical director - game enthousiast that I like best
The part where you describe seeing all the new dev kits boxes, all with your name on it and how you handled it genuinely made me smile :)
Striving for 120hz and use of hdmi2.1 features is also so refreshing, especially after I read earlier some other technical director proclaiming that he wants to stick to 30hz "for the filmic feel and because people have bad displays"
Cheers!

 

[Deleted member 22750]

Hi guys, it's me :)
If you want more information, check out the interview I did with Major Nelson over here on Youtube:

Interview: David Springate, Technical Director for Dirt 5

Larry Hryb, Xbox's Major Nelson talks to David Springate, Technical Director for Dirt 5. Learn more about how Dirt 5 will use the power of Xbox Series X. htt...

www.youtube.com

Click to shrink...

Never played Dirt before which is weird because I like racing games. I'll definitely check this out on next gen hardware.

 

[ArchedThunder]

Exactly. This generation 90% of games ran better on PS4 and the few that ran better on the Xbox One were because they were a little more reliant on the CPU which, as far as I am aware, is a little better on the Xbox One. This time around the CPU & GPU are better on the Series X so if there is any discrepancy at all it will likely favor Xbox Series S. If there is a situation that is more bound by loading in or dumping of assets then PS5 is going to come out ahead.

It's just been so strange seeing people insist repeatedly that Xbox games are going to have long elevator scenes in games because of its SSD and the PS5 will not. They keep thinking that because the PS5's is faster than the one in the Xbox Series X is some trash HDD when its not. Those of us that have been saying this for ages now are constantly told we're just downplaying the SSD in the PS5, but it is the reality and we're not wrong.

It's going to be interesting and annoying when these consoles release and people are pointing to a 4k60 game on both consoles so they start to argue over load times of 3 seconds versus 6 seconds as though it matters.

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The GPU and CPU difference between the two consoles is very small this time. The SSD speed difference is pretty large, but with how much RAM there is in the two systems and the size of assets the difference won't mean much in most cases. Neither system is going to have 6 second load times, Xbox can fill its RAM in 3 seconds and the PS5 can fill its in less than 2, but with how games are built around streaming you're not going to have a game fill its RAM like that in a load screen, they will just load the stuff they need at the start and bring anything else in when they need it, which will bring the difference between the two consoles into milliseconds. A lot of people have pie in the sky theories about how the PS5 SSD will result in higher poly assets and higher resolution textures, but both systems can load those assets in milliseconds, the deciding factor will still be actually rendering those assets and the two consoles are so closely matched in that regard that there shouldn't be any disparity.

 

[Petran]

It's just been so strange seeing people insist repeatedly that Xbox games are going to have long elevator scenes in games because of its SSD and the PS5 will not. They keep thinking that because the PS5's is faster than the one in the Xbox Series X is some trash HDD when its not. Those of us that have been saying this for ages now are constantly told we're just downplaying the SSD in the PS5, but it is the reality and we're not wrong.

It's going to be interesting and annoying when these consoles release and people are pointing to a 4k60 game on both consoles so they start to argue over load times of 3 seconds versus 6 seconds as though it matters.

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its not strange at all.
these people could not talk about superiority in anything that has to do with CPU, GPU or bandwidth, because ps5 is slower in all of those.
you can be thankful that the spec speed of ssd is higher, otherwise there would be conversations about how a console will be superior because of its ...joypad :)

 

[E.Balboa]

All this is awesome because it directly addresses so many false confirmations people have manufactured about the Xbox Series X due to what has been confirmed for the PS5. That has been one of my frustrations reading stuff online for a while. There is this idea that because that PS5 SSD is so blazing fast that the Xbox Series X SSD is some slow slugging piece of trash and its not. The same goes the other direction too with the CPU and GPU. Folks see that the CPU and GPU of the Xbox Series X is superior so the talk turns to the PS5's setup being weak and slow. Both are completely untrue, but its this weird console warrior fad of confirmation of one being a failure of the other.

So when people talk about the SSD of the PS5 being able to virtually eliminate loading times because it is so fast the falsely manufactured reality some create is that the Xbox Series X cannot do that. It is always going to be on a game by game basis.

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I completely agree with you.
It has always been the case, obviously, but PS/Sony dominates the narrative. Fanbase is way bigger. Fans are more vocal. Series X SSD solution is ~50 times faster than what currently is available, but the narrative is "it's slow compared to PS5's". There's no indication that PS5 having a twice as fast SSD solution will have any impact whatsoever beyond what Series X will have, but there you go.

 

[4KLobster]

Though the marketing jargon is painful to go through (not sure that MS are doing themselves any favors here) but the 120fps in an actual game is quite surprising and promising.

Seems to mean that many games will offer good 60fps modes to those who have "standard" TVs that max out at this level and that's great news (even better for those who have 120fps gear).

Also, wondering re: games load in a few seconds stuff. On a PC with SSD it can still take veeery long (looking at you, Stellaris), so would be interesting to get more insights on how the I/O specificities make the whole setup that much more efficient.

 

[shark97]

Well this is the closest thing to an xbox hardware thread I could find on a quick look. I just noticed from a tweet and then going o Xbox Wire, Xbox is playing up "Most powerful gaming console" a lot now. Before they would asterisk it to say most powerful Xbox console or whatever. Now they're just saying it (I guess it's safe after PS5 Flops reveal).

Everything You Need to Know about Xbox Series X and The Future of Xbox… So Far - Xbox Wire

MORE IMMERSIVE AND RESPONSIVE GAMES FROM THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL CONSOLE The Xbox Series X will be the ultimate console for players who want the most immersive games from a device designed, built and optimized for gaming with zero compromises. Powered by our next generation, custom designed...

news.xbox.com

Examples

Xbox Series X, the most powerful gaming console, empowers developers to deliver on their creative visions and dreams.

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MORE IMMERSIVE AND RESPONSIVE GAMES FROM THE WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL CONSOLE

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Raw power is just part of the beginning

Xbox Series X delivers over 12 TFLOPS of sustained, consistent GPU performance, making it the most powerful console ever.
Designed to deliver games in 4K at 60 FPS with support for up to 120 FPS, Xbox Series X represents a superior balance of power and speed with no compromises for developers. Beyond the raw horsepower, the custom designed processor at the heart of Xbox Series X includes brand new innovative capabilities such as Variable Rate Shading (VRS), hardware-accelerated DirectX raytracing, and more, advancing console gaming on all technological fronts to deliver amazing, dynamic, living worlds that players want to be immersed in.

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They are laying it on thick. Maybe they have been and I just noticed?

 

[Scottoest]

They are laying it on thick. Maybe they have been and I just noticed?

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They've been playing to that tag line for a while now. As you'd expect, of course. I think Sony did the same thing with the PS4.

 

[Jiraiya]

Well this is the closest thing to an xbox hardware thread I could find on a quick look. I just noticed from a tweet and then going o Xbox Wire, Xbox is playing up "Most powerful gaming console" a lot now. Before they would asterisk it to say most powerful Xbox console or whatever. Now they're just saying it (I guess it's safe after PS5 Flops reveal).

Everything You Need to Know about Xbox Series X and The Future of Xbox… So Far - Xbox Wire

MORE IMMERSIVE AND RESPONSIVE GAMES FROM THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL CONSOLE The Xbox Series X will be the ultimate console for players who want the most immersive games from a device designed, built and optimized for gaming with zero compromises. Powered by our next generation, custom designed...

news.xbox.com

Examples










They are laying it on thick. Maybe they have been and I just noticed?

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It's been this way. Especially the high frames.

 

[mullah88]

I see the warriors are out in full force....the game is cross gen, glad this is what's to be expected. Hopefully more cross gen titles will feature these type of max settings.

 

[PHOENIXZERO]

Yay for SSDs not having seek times.

 

[Jaypah]

I see the warriors are out in full force....the game is cross gen, glad this is what's to be expected. Hopefully more cross gen titles will feature these type of max settings.

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?

Thread seems pretty civil.

 

[Marshall]

I just watched the trailer again, and man it looks fantastic. I can't wait.

 

[Hockeymac18]

Good read

 

[TooBusyLookinGud]

Yep, not from a dev that heard a dev, that told a friend, and then told their uncle, but from the source. This was good.

 

[MaulerX]

Well this is the closest thing to an xbox hardware thread I could find on a quick look. I just noticed from a tweet and then going o Xbox Wire, Xbox is playing up "Most powerful gaming console" a lot now. Before they would asterisk it to say most powerful Xbox console or whatever. Now they're just saying it (I guess it's safe after PS5 Flops reveal).

Everything You Need to Know about Xbox Series X and The Future of Xbox… So Far - Xbox Wire

MORE IMMERSIVE AND RESPONSIVE GAMES FROM THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL CONSOLE The Xbox Series X will be the ultimate console for players who want the most immersive games from a device designed, built and optimized for gaming with zero compromises. Powered by our next generation, custom designed...

news.xbox.com

Examples










They are laying it on thick. Maybe they have been and I just noticed?

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They've definitely never been this blatant. There have been people even up until recently that argued "But they only said most powerful Xbox". Well, here you go.

 

[Parcas]

The cpu thing is very interesting really looking forward to discover how much the cpu was holding everything back.