Getting older video games to run on newer consoles may seem like a simple idea: the new boxes are faster, so older, weaker games should work, right? Things never work that way, especially when the architecture changes dramatically between generations of consoles, which is why we were fascinated by the Xbox Team’s focus on “backward compatibility”.
The Microsoft engineering team has already managed to get hundreds of games from previous generations to work in the Xbox One family (and beyond). Now, engineers have paved the way for a completely different view for backward compatibility: making games from the past, particularly the Xbox One fragile base, rendering more smoothly in the X / S Series. This new feature, dubbed “FPS Boost”, it is particularly interesting because it does not require any code updates injected into older games.
Not remastered; more like ReShades
Unfortunately, Microsoft’s announcement about the feature on Wednesday does not explain exactly how it works. Instead, it leaves the narrative functions to Digital Foundry’s board analysts, who have exclusive rights to the story. In a video on Wednesday detailing how the feature works, John Linneman confirms that Xbox series consoles, while processing older game code, can “send data back from Direct3D [a longstanding API used in both Xbox consoles and Windows games] to the game faster than the original [consoles] did.”
As a result, all of the game’s internal logic continues to render at its original target frame rate, but the crucial material for 3D frame rate performance, from animations to camera movement, can achieve an increase in frame rate without breaking the underlying game. Linneman reports that this does not happen without modifications to the game code or with INI adjustments. During the broadcast, Digital Foundry’s Richard Leadbetter compared this to the ecosystem of PC game mods, particularly popular post-processing injector mods like ReShade, which fans often apply to PC versions left unattended by their creators (coughing) , cough, NieR: automata)
The Digital Foundry video joins us at Ars Technica to raise a serious eyebrow on how this feature is developing: in the form of five relatively unobtrusive games, all from the Xbox One generation. The increases listed below apply to Both Series X and Series S consoles.
- UFC 4 (increasing from 30 fps to 60 fps)
- New Super Lucky’s Tale (from 60 fps to 120 fps)
- Far Cry 4 (from 30 fps to 60 fps)
- Watch Dogs 2 (from 30 fps to 60 fps)
- Sniper Elite 4 (from 30 fps to 60 fps)
Three of the games listed have never received an Xbox One X compatibility patch, and FPS Boost receives no affect the resolution. So, games like Watch Dogs 2 and Far Cry 4 continue to operate at basic Xbox One resolutions while increasing the frame rate. Still, the results are impressive in terms of a set-it-and-forget-it patch to increase fluidity for older games (and keep those improved frame rates locked and stable) without breaking anything.
(UFC 4 it is a little more confusing in terms of its impulses, so I will clarify quickly: its existing version offered a lower resolution mode of 60fps on Xbox One X and was locked to 30fps on base Xbox One. Both X / S series can now access 60 fps modes, while the X series can achieve resolution up to 1800p at this frame rate.)
In addition, none of the above games has been formally published by Microsoft, which can be a powerful game to impress fans that these patches may appear soon for none older game, a long time ago not corrected by the original publishers – although Linneman confirms that Microsoft has to test game by game in terms of flaws introduced by this injection process. Still, if the $ 299 S Series is positioned to benefit from such increases in lower rendering resolutions, a larger FPS Boost ecosystem will make your value proposition even greater for anyone less interested in pixels and more interested in performance. absolute per dollar.
These updates are due to be released today on Xbox series consoles, while new series of visual alternators per game will be released “this spring”, according to Microsoft. This menu will include FPS Boost, Auto-HDR and, according to Linneman, perhaps other options like anisotropic filtering.
As Linneman and Leadbetter point out, Microsoft had already put forward plans to update frame rates for existing software, particularly Fallout 4 (a game over which Microsoft now technically holds publishing rights, thanks to the acquisition of Zenimax / Bethesda). But FO4 did not appear in today’s presentation, and it is not clear whether its frame rate plans require a complete rewrite of the code or whether Microsoft will take advantage of this clever FPS Boost trick. Exactly how many more games may have updates is still unclear, apart from a promise to “reveal more FPS Boost games soon”, and we have yet to hear any promise about FPS Boost possibly coming to Xbox 360 or OG Xbox games.
But it’s hard to imagine Microsoft creating system-level taunts about these updates and then updating, say, a dozen older games. Therefore, we are looking forward to more frame rate updates to come.