The Xbox One X Review: Putting A Spotlight On Gaming
by Brett Howse on November 3, 2017 3:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Consoles
- Microsoft
- Xbox One
- Xbox
- Xbox One X
Additional Gameplay Footage
We've only had a few days with the console, but we have had a chance to try out some of the games. Using the Xbox Game Capture features, some gameplay was captured to get a sample of some of the performance and quality gains could be made with the Xbox One X. The Game Capture does compress the video though, so it is not as pristine as it would be while playing, and it also converts the HDR video to SDR to allow for the proper colors to be seen when you share the clips, although if you look at the following clips, it doesn't do a great job with the transition to SDR from HDR.
Not all of the games are yet ready for the Xbox One X yet though, with only a handful that have the Xbox One X Enhanced logo ready to go for the review. Gears of War 4 was one of the games, which we showed some images of earlier, and there were a couple more ready as well, including Disneyland Adventures.
Although it may seem like a game that wouldn't stress a system, in 4K and HDR, the textures and high resolution made an impact. Here's a quick video of the intro of this game on both the Xbox One, and the Xbox One X.
Disneyland Adventures on Xbox One
Disneyland Adventures on Xbox One X in 4K HDR
One thing you notice playing the game is just how much more sharp everything is, especially things in the background. The castle comes into focus much earlier on the Xbox One X version of this video. As with Gears of War 4, there's still some issues with coloring on the HDR converted video. If you are doing a lot of gameplay capture, it may be best to set HDR to off. Also, there's a small hiccup at the start of the Xbox One X video, as the game is just finishing loading. This doesn't appear to happen once that load is complete.
Here's another clip from Forza Motorsports 7, which is one of the launch titles for 4K and HDR, but as of this review, the 4K support is not yet added, so this will be a demo of playing a title without the Enhanced option available. This is from the Autodromo Nazionale Monza, on the Curva Parabolica.
Forza Motorsports 7 on Xbox One
Forza Motorsports 7 on Xbox One X
Even though the 4K support is not there, the game does support HDR, which improves the look of the game quite a bit, even though you can't see it in the SDR converted video. Forza is a pretty lean engine, so the developers are targetting 4K60 for this title. The aliasing of 1080p content in this game is pretty strong, so it will benefit a lot from the 4K update when it arrives. When it's available, we'll post another clip to show the differences.
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4everalone - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
No sir! That happens due to an infra-red blaster on the kinect. So basically, no Kinect, no device control. Its mind boggling to me till this day that they failed to incorporate HDMI-CEC despite all of the media capability touted.Brett Howse - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
Don't believe there is any CEC support still. Just IR blasters.gorman42 - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
In the "Enjoying Meda" section you correctly mention the HDR problem with Netflix but completely fail to describe the situation with non-existant refresh rate switching. While we have specific settings to allow apps to switch to either 24Hz or 50Hz, according to content played back, those are useless for both Netflix and Amazon Prime Video (and for all other streaming services, such as Now TV in Europe).To add insult to injury, Apple has just announced a fix for this situation for their Apple TV product: http://www.avsforum.com/apple-tv-4k-will-automatic...
Brett Howse - Saturday, November 4, 2017 - link
Xbox supports all of this so it's again on the dev.BrokenCrayons - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
So if I understand this correctly, the One X will render everything in 4k and downsample to the screen resolution rather than rendering and displaying at panel res. Is that right?InlineV - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
In games, it is supersampling rendered resolution down to native resolution (2160p, 1440p or 1080p). For example, Titanfall 2 is able to render up to 6k before it is supersampled down to 4k. I don't know if it renders up to 6k before it is supersampled for 1440p or 1080p but it wouldn't surprise me if it did.BrokenCrayons - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
Thanks! I was just curious about what it was doing behind the scenes before pumping the image out to the screen.novastar78 - Monday, November 6, 2017 - link
They already have had the technique in their drivers for some time, it's called VSR (Vitual Super Resolution). The scene is fully rendered at the higher res and then downsized.alistair.brogan - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
yes but a ps4 pro would just give you a 1080p image, and your 1440p monitor would upscale itxbox one x downscales a 4k and outputs 1440p, and no monitor scaling is required, but the feature isn't available yet
jardows2 - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
I like the development of "revisions" rather than completely "new" consoles. With the Xbox, this appears to be a convergence of console gaming and PC gaming. With the PC, games don't have to be re-written by the developers or re-purchased every time there is a CPU or GPU upgrade. This seems to be the path MS is taking with the XBox, and I believe it will turn out very well for them.