Tuesday, September 8th 2020
Microsoft Unveils the Xbox Series S: The Smallest Xbox Ever
Microsoft today surprised us with the Xbox Series S announcement. The Xbox Series S offers "next gen performance" and is the "smallest Xbox ever." The company promised to share more details, but when it goes on sale, it will cost just USD $299 (ERP). The announcement teaser had a pretty clear image of the finished product, revealing it to be barely more than two controllers in volume. A large fan intake makes up one of its side panels. It retains the general design of the larger Xbox Series X. Microsoft stated it will share more details about the new console.
Source:
Microsoft Xbox (Twitter)
113 Comments on Microsoft Unveils the Xbox Series S: The Smallest Xbox Ever
news.xbox.com/en-us/2020/09/09/xbox-series-x-and-xbox-series-s-launching-november-10/
Let me quote myself and add some enhancements to spell it out to you: See that? That means that it's not only determined by resolution, which you have been arguing for two pages of posts here, but by that and other factors. Given that absolute resolution is one of the factors in effective resolution it would take some seriously flawed logic to think that changing the absolute resolution has no effect on the effective resolution, right? No, we were debating your claim that with two console tier you can no longer expect to And ever since, you have been arguing that a drop in resolution is fundamentally incompatible with having a "consistent experience", while we others have been arguing that absolute resolution is a quite small part of what constitutes the gaming experience, and arguably one of the most flexible parts of that whole, with other metrics like frame rate/smoothness and the ability to play the same games at a similar level of perceived quality matter more than absolute resolution. Of course there is! The physical characteristics of your specific TV are part of the viewing context, as they are only valid for that model of TV and any others using the same panel. Pixel sizes, pitches and so on vary quite a lot within displays of the same resolution and size. And besides that, beyond a certain distance (depending on the size of the display, obviously), unless the 1080p panel is a particularly bad one with small pixels and huge gaps in between, the grid will be entirely invisible. At this distance there will likely still be a decently clear advantage in sharpness and clarity for a 4k display of the same size and overall image quality, but that advantage also drops off quickly once the distance increases. You're making it sound like the only 1080p displays you have looked at were downright terrible. Which might of course be the case - I have no idea. Or maybe you've only sat very close to them? I know for sure that I've used several 1080p displays and TVs that I've never noticed any type of screen door effect on at normal viewing distances. I can see it clearly on my TV from 1m or less, but ... I don't watch TV from 1m or less. A 40" display at that distance is quite uncomfortable, after all, especially when viewing full-screen media.
Just stop already, if you think that you are going convince me that more pixels don't translate to a batter image quality you are wasting your time. 1080, 4K, they are all the same because you can just make the pixels bigger, got it. Who would have thought it's that easy ? What can I say, me and a couple of other million people must a bunch of blind idiots.
Oh, and since you apparently need more, here's the count from the first ten games I have installed in my Steam library. Again, not representative (though I would say it covers a broad spectrum of games, only really missing very new AAA games), but nonetheless it provides far more relevant insight than your entirely anecdotal "mostly less than five and maximum about 10":
Deus Ex: Human Revolution: 11
Divinity: Original Sin: 13
Life is Strange: 9
Rocket League: 14
Among the Sleep: 7, one of which is an otherwise unlabeled "quality" toggle
Rage 2: 19
No Man's Sky: 16
Prey: 11
Everything: 1 (resolution)
Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams: 7
From my quick napkin math, that places most graphically intensive games (No Man's Sky, Rage, Prey, Deus Ex) at a minimum/baseline of "about 10" (your "maximum", for reference), with indies, platformers and the like fluctuating below, but even broad-appeal esports games like Rocket League can exceed 10 settings easily. One game had less than five settings. You're of course welcome to contest this, but the very least you have to do at that point is to provide some examples of comparable games with far fewer options. Even a non-representative selection of games is more data than a purely anecdotal statement, after all. Ah, yes, because the only optimizations possible are to shader performance or other things that are generally applicable to an architecture. Of course. How about tuning the VRAM usage so that it fits wihtin the frame buffer of the most popular GPUs at each resolution? How about tuning the auto-settings algorithm so that it sets the best geometry/texture/shader settings for the particular balance of features your specific GPU has? All of this is very clearly done, yet never documented, and of course it is tweaked over time. Well, that's too bad. I would suggest rereading, but seeing how I've already done that, I'm at a loss. My points are quite clear. Yes! Yes! Depends on what you mean, but sure. .... no. Not whatsoever. Again: I have very specifically been arguing about non-subjective factors. Viewing distance and display size are not subjective factors, they are inherent factors that affect all viewing situations the same way, and as such they are intrinsic to the perception of resolution. There is nothing at all subjective about this, as there is no way to perceive resolution regardless of distance or display size. Well, that's your loss. If you're not willing to accept that more pixels don't translate to better image quality when you can't tell that there are more pixels in the first place, then you have apparently hit some sort of mental block. I have never claimed that this isn't true when viewed at distances where one can actually tell the difference, yet you keep arguing that lower resolution will always result in a worse play experience. This is, put simply, just not true. Even with effective resolution there are significantly diminishing returns as you go higher on the scale. And there always will be. ... and here we go again - rather than actually arguing a point in a reasonable and polite way, you're presenting a ridiculous caricature to yell at. 4k resolution clearly and obviously has its value in situations where display size and viewing distance makes the increase in sharpness and detail perceptible over lower resolutions. It is of course especially valuable at distances where one might experience a screen door effect at lower resolutions, though as I've said I've never come across that in an actually realistic usage scenario. You're welcome to provide an example of a realistic usage scenario to contradict that, but so far you haven't. The fact remains that at normal TV sizes and at normal TV viewing distances, the perceived quality difference between a 1080p panel and a 4k panel of the same quality (colors, contrast, etc.) is so close to zero as to make nearly no difference. Is there a perceptible difference? Sure, and if you're attuned to one, you're more likely to notice the differences (the 1080p panel might for example feel vaguely less sharp), but in common usage for people who aren't explicitly looking for these things, and instead for example focusing on playing a game, the difference is so small as to be irrelevant. This of course changes if your TV grows or viewing distance shrinks, but that is clear from how effective resolution works, and in no way contradictory to anything I've said.
The fact of the matter is, the XSS will likely be an excellent next-gen console option for the millions of people out there who don't (yet) have 4k TVs, and will serve them well (with a perceptible step up in quality due to 1440p rendering and upscaling) if they do upgrade later. And it will just as likely provide an excellent gaming experience that is entirely consistent with that of the XSX, despite the lower resolution.
I haven't looked up every game that has ever existed to count how many graphics option exist on average and neither did you. I simply gave a ball park figure, it's going to less or more than that in reality, who the hell care, will you ever give up ? Most popular GPUs are Intel's integrated graphics which have dynamic memory allocation. So you might want to rethink that.
I have some insight in the game development world and I can tell you with certainty that no one is ever optimizing anything with regards to algorithms or whatever to scale up based on each individual GPU, you can take my word or not for it. That'd be insane, not feasible and really dumb.
The closest thing to a "per GPU optimization" is when they leave the compilation of the shaders "online", meaning they get compiled sometime at run time of the application which means the driver component that does the translation can use the latest optimization for the currently used GPU. You can see some games doing that when you boot them up for the first time, it's exceedingly rare though. Why ? Because they just don't bother with it, per GPU optimization are a waste of time.
The reason it's not documented is because no one is doing that. You bet I wont ever be able to accept that, it's an assault on my common sense, let alone any other objective measure out there. You are trying to convince me that bigger pixels and viewing distance can somehow make up for the colossal difference in density, which is straight up nonsense, the pixel gird doesn't scale like you think it does. If you make the pixels bigger then the individual sub-pixels become more apparent also and you get nowhere, you just can't get away from the lower density. It's always going to be inferior.
No one buys a 1080p TV in the detriment of a 4K one thinking to themselves : "Man, you know what ? I'll just sit twice as close to the TV and it will just be the same thing right ?".
So yes, caricatures are all I have left.
You keep trying to shift the goal posts, but it's not getting you anywhere. Remember, this is about discussing a next-generation console. People generally don't buy those for playing games that are playable on their laptop iGPU. Most of the point of next-gen consoles is next-gen graphics. Okay, so the auto settings systems in games just make wild guesses, not at all based on the hardware in your system? Got it. And the way you keep quoting me out of context continues to be a plain-faced bad-faith arguing style that just demonstrates that you aren't even remotely looking for a reasonable debate. There really isn't much common sense in that. Here's the full quote, since you apparently need it: See? I never said that "more pixels don't translate to better image quality" without any caveats, like you're wanting to make it out as if I did. And you still haven't provided even a single argument nor data point against the fact that at any fixed display size, the effect of absolute resolution on perceived resolution drops as viewing distance increases. So again, please stop making bad-faith misrepresentations of what I'm saying to derail the debate and make me look bad - it's backfiring, badly. What? I never said that. I said that outside of apparent edge cases like you seem to be describing, at normal TV distances and panel sizes the difference in quality between a good 1080p panel and a good 4k panel is quite small, typically to such a degree that it doesn't matter, and that as distance increases, the difference ultimately disappears entirely. ... well, no, nobody does that, as that is exactly the opposite of how this works. If you're sitting at half the distance, you'll notice absolute resolution to a much higher degree.
Besides, people's purchase decisions are rarely that rational. And that's the problem. I would recommend you take a step back and calm down a tad. Maybe try approaching this as, you know, a reasonable debate? Leave the bad-faith arguments, derailing techniques and (seemingly) purposeful misreadings at the door, and we might get somewhere.