Metro Dev: Kinect GPU Boost Isn’t Actually 10%
As you might be aware, 4A Games and Deep Silver just released Metro Redux, an improved version of Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light, for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Digital Foundry took the opportunity to talk with their Chief Technical Officer, Oles Shishkovstov, to learn about their experience while developing for the next generation consoles by Microsoft and Sony. We highlighted a few interesting tidbits about the Xbox One and DirectX 12; first of all, the Kinect GPU Boost isn’t a solid 10% increase, at least according to him.
Well, the issue is slightly more complicated - it is not like ‘here, take that ten per cent of performance we’ve stolen before’, actually it is variable, like sometimes you can use 1.5 per cent more, and sometimes seven per cent and so on. We could possibly have aimed for a higher res, but we went for a 100 per cent stable, vsync-locked frame-rate this time That is not to say we could not have done more with more time, and per my earlier answer, the XDK and system software continues to improve every month.
He then commented on DirectX 12, both in a general purpose and in relation to Xbox One, saying that both DX12 and Mantle are paradigm shifts in API design, although he believes the latter to be just “temporary”. Xbox One should also benefit because of DX12, despite already having a lower CPU overhead than PC.
Aside from them being much more close to the (modern) metal, those APIs are a paradigm-shift in API design. DX11 was ‘I will keep track of everything for you’. DX12 says ‘now it’s your responsibility’ - so it could be a much thinner layer. As for Mantle, it is a temporary API, in my honest opinion.
No, it’s important [for Xbox One]. All the dependency tracking takes a huge slice of CPU power. And if we are talking about the multi-threaded command buffer chunks generation - the DX11 model was essentially a ‘flop’, while DX12 should be the right one.
4A Games proved an incredibly capable developer so far, especially from a technical standpoint. Personally, I can’t wait for their first next gen only title.