Xbox Series X|S Catch-All

trueheart78 wrote:

I saw the tweet, didn’t realize the Exodus update wasn’t live yet...

No solid date yet either. Some time "later this year". Seems they are putting real effort into making it a good update tho. The PC version is getting much bigger improvements (an enhanced edition for free) but I don't have a good enough video card to take advantage of it so I'm sticking with Xbox for Exodus.

Random aside about these consoles. I’m a big fan of the Just Cause series, but 3 was almost unplayable on PS4. It stuttered anytime there were a large number of explosions going on at once. Which, if you’re playing Just Cause correctly, is frequently. Just Cause 4 was even worse.

I picked up 3 on sale for my Series X and it runs flawlessly so far. Even when everything on the screen is blowing up it maintains a steady frame rate. It’s quite the joy to play this game as it was no doubt intended.

pandasuit wrote:

Thankfully they are targeting 60fps with RTX for Metro Exodus. I've been waiting for the Series X upgrade before I replay the main game and finally play the DLC. I would have been very disappointed if they pulled a Control and hobbled it with low fps.

Metro Exodus will run at 4K / 60FPS with full Ray Traced lighting throughout on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. The base game and DLC expansions will feature both our ground-breaking Ray Traced Global Illumination (RTGI) and the Ray Traced Emissive Lighting techniques pioneered in The Two Colonels expansion across all content.

The next gen consoles will benefit from dramatically reduced loading times thanks to our use of their SSD storage optimizations, boast 4K texture packs, and a range of platform specific features including spatial audio and controller latency improvements on Xbox, and support for the haptic features of the PlayStation 5 Dual Sense controller – anyone who’s frantically tried to pump up the pressure on their Tikhar in the middle of a pitched battle will be able to imagine the kind of thing we’re aiming for!

We’re targeting 1080p on Xbox Series S, but the other benefits above will apply, including 60 FPS and full Ray Traced lighting throughout.

We’re also working on additional polish and quality of life enhancements, including the ability to change FOV for the first time in a Metro game.

These Gen 9 console versions will release later this year and will be available as a FREE upgrade to all current owners – and we’re delighted to confirm that we will support Smart Delivery on Xbox to deliver this upgrade.

For people keeping score on ray tracing implementations, they're using ray tracing for global illumination on the Xbox and PS5. These platforms will not have ray traced reflections. So, essentially, they're going to be using ray tracing in the same way that Gears 5 is already using it. Gears 5 also runs at 4k60.

So far, it seems like ray tracing assists in three general, but separate areas: lighting (illuminating the world in a more consistent and natural way), reflections, and shadows. Ray traced global illumination seems to be an easy win for a lot of modern graphics engines, especially if they vary the lighting a lot with changes in sun position and weather. Ray traced shadows appear to require a bit more performance, but can be a nice enhancement - especially if lighting is fairly static, as in the most recent Call of Duty. Reflections are the most costly use of the tech, but have the most visual impact. Control is probably the best current example of ray traced reflections on the consoles. Control uses ray tracing for reflections and probably for illumination, but does NOT use it for for shadows (on the consoles).

Anyway, in the near term, I think we're mostly going to see ray tracing used for global illumination or shadows. Maybe later in this console generation we'll see fancy implementations that dynamically load balance the ray budget across different visual requirements.

Once AMDs DLSS equivalent comes to consoles there will be a lot less GPU being spent on pixel count and more available for other things. Hopefully RTX is one of those things.

DSGamer wrote:

Random aside about these consoles. I’m a big fan of the Just Cause series, but 3 was almost unplayable on PS4. It stuttered anytime there were a large number of explosions going on at once. Which, if you’re playing Just Cause correctly, is frequently. Just Cause 4 was even worse.

I picked up 3 on sale for my Series X and it runs flawlessly so far. Even when everything on the screen is blowing up it maintains a steady frame rate. It’s quite the joy to play this game as it was no doubt intended.

I thought it ran acceptably on my X One X. I gave it a shot at being my replacement for the short-lived Mercenaries series. It did admirably, even though it's not quite the same in my heart. I should go back and finish it.

Fedaykin98 wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

Random aside about these consoles. I’m a big fan of the Just Cause series, but 3 was almost unplayable on PS4. It stuttered anytime there were a large number of explosions going on at once. Which, if you’re playing Just Cause correctly, is frequently. Just Cause 4 was even worse.

I picked up 3 on sale for my Series X and it runs flawlessly so far. Even when everything on the screen is blowing up it maintains a steady frame rate. It’s quite the joy to play this game as it was no doubt intended.

I thought it ran acceptably on my X One X. I gave it a shot at being my replacement for the short-lived Mercenaries series. It did admirably, even though it's not quite the same in my heart. I should go back and finish it.

I don’t doubt the One X ran it well. I’m mostly fascinated about how relatively dynamic these games run on new hardware. You might think they coded the games in such a way that they’d run equally as bad, but apparently most games can take advantage of the extra headroom, which is a fun surprise for games that ran poorly last gen or earlier.

I agree about that series being similar to Mercenaries. Fun stuff.

Looks like we're getting a Series X|S title in the next Game Pass update: Dirt5 (February 25th)!

IMAGE(https://news.xbox.com/en-us/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/02/TW_Available-Today_Coming-Soon_templates_2.16.2021_2.jpg)

QUOTE IS NOT EDIT.

Edit: Moved to the more relevant Game Pass thread, given the nature of my lame joke and what platform it IS coming to.

Microsoft announces new Xbox Wireless Headset, available March 16th for $99

It works on all Xbox consoles, PCs, and mobile devices
trueheart78 wrote:

Looks like we're getting a Series X|S title in the next Game Pass update: Dirt5 (February 25th)!

IMAGE(https://news.xbox.com/en-us/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/02/TW_Available-Today_Coming-Soon_templates_2.16.2021_2.jpg)

I fell in love with Killer Queen at PAX South 2020, after reading a long piece about it many months earlier. Came home and bought KQB on Switch immediately, and was really sad to find that it's very different. The article actually covered that, too, but imho KQB wasn't worth playing.

trueheart78 wrote:

Looks like we're getting a Series X|S title in the next Game Pass update: Dirt5 (February 25th)!

IMAGE(https://news.xbox.com/en-us/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/02/TW_Available-Today_Coming-Soon_templates_2.16.2021_2.jpg)

Between them including “launch window” Series X titles like the Falconeer, Dirt 5, and the Medium already AND cramming Yakuza 3-5 in January and Yakuza 6 announced for March, seeing Yakuza: Like a Dragon added to GamePass sometime in the second quarter of the calendar year seems pretty possible. I know a lot of people figured the game is coming, but most predictions I’ve seen figured it wouldn’t arrive until later this Fall.

So what exactly are these reward points that I'm accruing? Should I pay serious attention to them? Or should I just click the "give $1 to charity" button whenever that's an option?

Since we're talking headsets, how are folks getting around the lag for streaming services on your Xbox? I've got a Roku TV and there's always a half second lag between the action on screen and me hearing it via my headset when running thru the Roku app on my phone. Very annoying for things with dialogue; less of an issue w/sports since you don't see the announcers' mouths moving.

Anyone having this issue w/their Xbox? I may need to go back to using my Xbox for streaming movies/TV and with my new Series X I just didn't think I'd need to do that because of the Roku TV. Thoughts?

Are you using wired or wireless headphones on your phone? I had an issue with a considerable delay using the Roku app and Bluetooth headphones (on Android) but don't notice a lag when using wired headphones.

Hm. Hadn't thought about trying wired. I think I've got a set around here somewhere I could try out; heck, I could even use my SteelSeries Arc wired headset I plug in to my Series X controller. Those are comfy enough I probably wouldn't mind an entire movie in them. The volume on them is sometimes a bit too low for me at least on Xbox but maybe that wouldn't be an issue for Roku app.

I just bought some HyperX Cloud 2s that are wired. Work with everything.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Are you using wired or wireless headphones on your phone? I had an issue with a considerable delay using the Roku app and Bluetooth headphones (on Android) but don't notice a lag when using wired headphones.

Also, if you are using Dolby Atmos, I feel like that always has audio lag on the Xbox systems. I've had to turn it off when watching movies.

New 60fps Boost Mode for Backward Compatible Games. Rolling out slowly title by title, starting with FarCry 4, New Super Lucky’s Tale, Watch_Dogs 2, UFC 4, and Sniper Elite 4. New Super Lucky’s Tale can do 120fps(!).

That's neat enough to get me to download SE4, despite having played through half the game on PS4.

You know what the most telling thing for me is in the manufacturer page listing specifications for the Xbox Wireless Headset? The limited information on audio specs. Compare with the current highest rated (and most expensive) wireless headset for Xbox:

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/D5Fcbj7/xbox-wireless-headset-specs.png)

Microphone specs: IT'S BENDABLE! Meanwhile, the Arctis 9x:

IMAGE(https://i.ibb.co/JyD326t/arctis-9x-audio-specs.png)

lists just about everything but frequency response curves.

IMAGE(https://i.rtings.com/images/reviews/headphones/steelseries/arctis-9x/arctis-9x-raw-frequency-response-l-14-graph-small.jpg)

(L channel, orange dashed line is target, red line is average of 5 tests. Graph from rtings.com Arctis 9x review if you're curious)

If the Xbox Wireless Headset is anything like the 2018 Surface Wireless Headset (and they certainly look similar from the outside), the frequency response is not great (L channel again, orange dashed line is target, red line is average of 5 tests.):

IMAGE(https://i.rtings.com/images/reviews/headphones/microsoft/surface-headphones/surface-headphones-raw-frequency-response-l-14-graph-small.jpg)

If you're thinking "What am I, an audiophile? I don't care about frequency response curves!" I can tell you that based on that Surface headset curve, you will be able to hear the crappiness.

Not being able to remove the mic makes it a lot less appealing to me. I want them as headphones but don't give a hoot about being able to talk into them.

Well, it's retractable, so you can pretend it's not there.

I meant the official Xbox headset, which is just bendable. I'm not dropping $200 on an Arctis 9X.

From Microsoft's site:

Comfortable & Intuitive Design
Play comfortably for hours with the ultra-soft earcups, lightweight design, and customizable fit. The rotating earcup dials of the new Xbox Wireless Headset provide an intuitive way to change volume and game/chat balance. Quickly adjust and get back to the game. Fully adjustable mic tucks up and out of the way when not in use.

It look like the mic gets pushed back if not needed, but the larger part would probably still stick out a bit.

That's what I meant, yeah, it folds up.

https://youtu.be/ZPHvH7D6qQY?t=28

Vargen wrote:

So what exactly are these reward points that I'm accruing? Should I pay serious attention to them? Or should I just click the "give $1 to charity" button whenever that's an option?

About 30k reward points will get you 3 months of Game Pass for free. Doing some mildly involved but not difficult steps (using Bing, completing daily rewards sets on the web and weekly sets in the Rewards app on Xbox, completing whatever weekly or monthly Game Pass quests are easy, and launching the Game Pass app on phone and a Game Pass game once a day) is generating about 10k points a month so that I'll never need to pay for Game Pass for as long as the points stay at these values and I don't find this process too tedious. It isn't hard but it may test the limits of how much my time is really worth.