Earlier today, Microsoft revealed the specifications for its upcoming next-gen Xbox Series X and those specs surely look impressive. What's more impressive than the specs is the technology that Microsoft is implementing to make the Xbox Series X a one-of-a-kind gaming console.
Today, we are taking a brief look at Xbox Series X's Smart Delivery feature. The Smart Delivery feature allows the Xbox to render software at a level that its hardware is capable of running smoothly. While new games will look great, this also means that older games will receive a visual upgrade when running on the Xbox Series X. The upcoming console from Microsoft will be using a machine-learning algorithm to upgrade older games with HDR colors.
According to Digital Foundry, Halo 5 and Fusion Frenzy were shown to be running with HDR on the Xbox Series X and heatmap results indicated that the dynamic range in both games went beyond the standard HDR. Even though this test seems to be a technical demo, Microsoft's Software Engineer Claude Marais told Digital Foundry the technology was already used in the past and it will become even more consistent on the Series X.
“It can be applied to all games theoretically, technically, I guess we’re still working through user experiences and things like that but this is a technical demo. So this [Halo 5] is four years old, right, so let’s go to the extreme and jump to a game that is 19, 20 years old right now – and that is Fusion Frenzy," Marais said. "Back then there’s nothing known about HDR, no-one knew about HDR things. Games just used 8-bit back buffers.”
Marais also discussed about how the team at Microsoft was able to create “highly convincing, perceptibly real HDR” for an older Fusion Frenzy, which has only extended the life of the game.
Even though HDR is a pretty awesome technology, one has to be very careful when implementing it in games. Even games with dedicated HDR colors fail to impress many enthusiasts and we just have to wait and see how Microsoft's "highly convincing" HDR replication turns out to be.
