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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Xenoblade Chronicles X Tech Analysis (Digital Foundry)

curl-6 on 03 December 2015
Mr Puggsly said:
curl-6 said:
Mr Puggsly said:

Its all about trade offs. They settled with 720p/30 fps, no AA, lots of pop up in some areas, etc. They game was essentially designed to stay at 30 fps, polish be damned.

It has AA.

And Digital Foundry certainly thought it was polished: 

"Ultimately, Xenoblade Chronicles X is a beautiful and expansive game. It's also really the only game of its kind on the Wii U right now and it works wonderfully. Even with some of its blemishes, it's hard not to be impressed by what has been achieved on Nintendo's home console. The slick presentation, rich gameplay, and incredible soundtrack all comes together to create one of the most polished open world experiences we've encountered in quite some time - even in the face of obvious technical compromises"

Ah, it does have AA. I must have been confused with Splatoon. They seem feel the AA impletned isn't great though.

When I was takling about polish, I'm obviously refferring to 720p, pop in, low quality effects, etc. Halo 5 is a better looking game with trade offs in polish so it could achieve 60 fps.

As it points out in the quote you posted, there were compromises to get that 30 fps virtually locked.

Yeah, it's Splatoon and Mario Kart 8 that forego AA.

As for Halo 5, well, it has the advantage of significantly more capable hardware. On Wii U, hardware just slightly more capable than PS3/360, running a game of this scope at a near locked 30fps requires stricter tradeoffs. 

By and large, I think Monolith has made the right calls in terms of realizing their vision without compromising performance.



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Skullwaker on 03 December 2015
curl-6 said:

Yeah, it's Splatoon and Mario Kart 8 that forego AA.

As for Halo 5, well, it has the advantage of significantly more capable hardware. On Wii U, hardware just slightly more capable than PS3/360, running a game of this scope at a near locked 30fps requires stricter tradeoffs. 

By and large, I think Monolith has made the right calls in terms of realizing their vision without compromising performance.

Not to mention that this game is of a much greater scale and scope than Halo 5.

The comparison is a little arbitrary to begin with.



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Zekkyou on 03 December 2015
Wyrdness said:


It has plenty to do with it in regards to the quality of the final products output you must have ignored or not read the whole debate as the point is about performance and quality. MGSV would not run at 60fps if it wasn't segmented as well as have as much going on as other mentioned games and it would certainly have to make compromises to do that and be seamless like the other mentioned games.

Ofcourse MGS is focused on what's locally that's the whole point, even when something is rendered in low quality at a distance it is still taking up resources, in MGSV's case it loads one segmented area and makes it run at 60fps with detail and less going on then the other games, that's how it focuses on the player locally, you wouldn't get the same result if the game wasn't segmented. We can also factor in that in cases like XCX's and Just Cause that rendering also extends horizontally further then most games.

I think you've misunderstood me. I was simply pointing out that LOD fields and the like are more relevant to your argument about performance than linear world size. You could make MGS5's maps 10 times larger, and as long as you implemented the appropriate LOD fields, it would still run at 60fps.  Heck, make it the size of earth and this would still be true (though you'd need a damn big HDD :p). If instead you kept the map the same size but made its central LOD fields 10 times larger, it would run like a power point presentation. Get where i'm going with this? Performance = LOD quality/size > linear world size.

Again, i agree that MGS5 and XCX make for a less than perfect comparison. They have different prioritize for their render budgets. That budget just isn't inherently tied to linear world size. Good thing too, or else Space Engine would melt my PC



Wyrdness on 03 December 2015
Zekkyou said:
Wyrdness said:


It has plenty to do with it in regards to the quality of the final products output you must have ignored or not read the whole debate as the point is about performance and quality. MGSV would not run at 60fps if it wasn't segmented as well as have as much going on as other mentioned games and it would certainly have to make compromises to do that and be seamless like the other mentioned games.

Ofcourse MGS is focused on what's locally that's the whole point, even when something is rendered in low quality at a distance it is still taking up resources, in MGSV's case it loads one segmented area and makes it run at 60fps with detail and less going on then the other games, that's how it focuses on the player locally, you wouldn't get the same result if the game wasn't segmented. We can also factor in that in cases like XCX's and Just Cause that rendering also extends horizontally further then most games.

I think you've misunderstood me. I was simply pointing out that LOD fields and the like are more relevant to your argument about performance than linear world size. You could make MGS5's maps 10 times larger, and as long as you implemented the appropriate LOD fields, it would still run at 60fps.  Heck, make it the size of earth and this would still be true (though you'd need a damn big HDD :p). If instead you kept the map the same size but made its central LOD fields 10 times larger, it would run like a power point presentation. Get where i'm going with this? Performance = LOD quality/size > linear world size.

Again, i agree that MGS5 and XCX make for a less than perfect comparison. They have different prioritize for their render budgets. That budget just isn't inherently tied to linear world size. Good thing too, or else Space Engine would melt my PC

Ahh that makes more sense, misread the post earlier.



Kane1389 on 03 December 2015
curl-6 said:
JRPGfan said:
Yeah... Wii Us 1gb memory is probably holding things back abit.
This game would have looked alot differnt if it had had 8gb instead, like the PS4 does.

By that logic though, every PS4 game would look better on PC.

Games will always be limited by the hardware they are designed for, devs just have to make the best of what they have.


On specific PCs that is considerably stronger than a PS4

...whereas xenoblade would look better on any PS4 period.



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curl-6 on 03 December 2015
Kane1389 said:
curl-6 said:

By that logic though, every PS4 game would look better on PC.

Games will always be limited by the hardware they are designed for, devs just have to make the best of what they have.


On specific PCs that is considerably stronger than a PS4

...whereas xenoblade would look better on any PS4 period.

PCs considerably stronger than a PS4 are not a rarity.



Goodnightmoon on 03 December 2015
curl-6 said:
Kane1389 said:


On specific PCs that is considerably stronger than a PS4

...whereas xenoblade would look better on any PS4 period.

PCs considerably stronger than a PS4 are not a rarity.

Any mid range PC today is stronger than a Ps4. 



Pavolink on 03 December 2015
Goodnightmoon said:
curl-6 said:

PCs considerably stronger than a PS4 are not a rarity.

Any mid range PC today is stronger than a Ps4. 

But...but 8GB are something never seen before!



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Mr Puggsly on 03 December 2015
curl-6 said:

Yeah, it's Splatoon and Mario Kart 8 that forego AA.

As for Halo 5, well, it has the advantage of significantly more capable hardware. On Wii U, hardware just slightly more capable than PS3/360, running a game of this scope at a near locked 30fps requires stricter tradeoffs. 

By and large, I think Monolith has made the right calls in terms of realizing their vision without compromising performance.

Agreed, I think Monolith made good compromises for that hardware. We're really only discussing this because someone made a stealth jab at Fallout 4's frame rate. But that game obviously opted for polish versus frame rate. It may just need optimization as well.

However, that city area is Xenoblade is objectively ugly for the hardware.



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curl-6 on 03 December 2015
Mr Puggsly said:

However, that city area is Xenoblade is objectively ugly for the hardware.

I think a lot of that comes down to it looking somewhat bland and sterile compared to the more naturalistic areas with all their wildlife, animated foliage, and more varied colours and landforms.