A Huge Generational Leap in Technology
Windows Central published multiple interviews they conducted with many prominent game developers on their thoughts about the new Xbox Series X. It included figures that have worked on titles such as The Long Dark, Ori and the Blind Forest, Deus Ex Human Revolution, Gears of War, and more.
Many seem to be really excited about the inclusion of solid-state hard drives. A simple change that results in a massive reduction in load times means that developers can put in much more grand set pieces without worrying about making gamers frustrated about down times between rooms.
Joel Baker from Hinterlands Games shared his thoughts by saying “The most exciting thing for me is the addition of an SSD and the custom hardware surrounding it to help get data into memory faster. This is not only going to allow for better streaming and load times but also make it easier to work with larger data sets that don’t easily fit into memory.”
Additionally, the capability to run more games in 60-120fps provides an essential upgrade for action games, platformers, and shooters, especially ones leaning towards competitive player vs player gameplay.
Gennadiy Korol from Moon Studio explains his excitement in saying, “Playing games at a high refresh rate, at those crazy resolutions, is the next big thing in gaming. Anyone that played Ori and the Will of the Wisps in high resolution in 120 hertz will know what I mean. Previously this was only something that PC enthusiasts spending thousands of dollars on their machines would be able to experience.”
Of course, we can’t leave out talking about graphics, and one of the hot topics right now is ray tracing. Alexandre Sabourin from Snowed In Studios explains the technology and its relation to Xbox by saying “Ray-tracing will allow for more realistic and flexible art direction. There’s a lot of research around raytracing that can be leveraged here that could lead to some very interesting concepts. Reflections, soft shadows, refraction, transparency. But all these operations have a cost. Raytracing hardware allows us to do some interesting things, but usually, production raytracers can take quite some time to converge to a reasonable image. The limit on samples per pixel means that there has been an interesting race to determine who can write an efficient denoiser. I’m interested to see what this new tech will lead to in terms of new research being done. Denoiser’s are one interesting avenue, but maybe it will allow developers to write their own light mappers, or pre-render cinematics more effectively.
What does it mean for game graphics? It means that developers are creating new ideas on how to use this tech, pushing the boundaries in a different direction than it’s been pushed before.”
There are plenty more insights in the source article, and it is truly a fascinating read if you are interested in technology, game development or the Xbox Series X. I highly recommend you take a look below!
Source: Windows Central