Xbox One: Cloud Can Use Ray-Tracing, No Milo & Kate Reboot, And Install Times

[spenser.d]

Xbox One: Cloud Can Use Ray-Tracing, No Milo & Kate Reboot, And Install Times

 

 

Microsoft Game Studios corporate VP Phil Spencer has offered some interesting new details on the future of the Xbox One, especially regarding the potential behind its Cloud computing service.

 

On being asked whether the Cloud could be used for ray-tracing in the future, Spencer said, ?We?ve done experiments with real-time ray-tracing. A ton of potential with this tech, amazing visuals.?

 

Unfortunately, despite Microsoft revisiting franchises like Fable and Gears of War, Milo & Kate won?t be reappearing. ?Sorry, no Milo & Kate reboot.?

The central idea seemed good at first but according to Spencer, ?Idea was compelling and we learned a lot creatively but we struggled to get a full game out of it.?

 

Finally, Spencer said that the Xbox One has to improve on its install times. On being told by a user that he shouldn?t have to pick up a game only to go home and wait an hour for it to install, Spencer replied, ?I agree, we have to do better with install times.?

 

What are your thoughts? Want to see M&K back with a blast? Interested in what the future holds for Xbox One?s Cloud? Want faster install times? Let us know in the comments.

http://gamingbolt.com/xbox-one-cloud-can-use-ray-tracing-no-milo-kate-reboot-and-install-times

 

Well that's interesting.
 

[D. S. Veteran]

Content moved.

[trooper11]

As I said in the other thread, sounds like MS is currently experimenting with real time ray tracing that leverages their server hardware.

Hopefully we see some useful features come out of that work in the future.

Real time ray tracing requires a lot of hardware grunt, something that neither console can really offer, so it would be quite interesting to see remote servers used a way that created more options to developers.

[123456789A]

What is ray tracing exactly? Can it be combined with Gouraud shading for ultimate graphics?

[Ironman273]

Ray tracing actually traces, or follows, light as it interacts with objects in real time.

[George P Global Moderator]

Install times could be helped by a number of different methods, big one would be if the game developers didn't make their games 30GB in size with 3GB updates when they're really not that big in scale.    Using some compression could help as well, the long time is because the slower BD drive has to read so much off the disc.   Digital version could help by just allowing you to preload games and unlock them on release like Steam does.

[JonnyLH]

I'm fully confident that ray tracing is possible in the cloud, it's high floating points is ideally suited to CPUs. What I think though, is how much resources this would actually use. If there was a game which used this, it could essentially bring most of the platform to its knees with how resource hungry it is. I also can't imagine the latency of around sub 100ms being noticeable in this, you're looking at minuscule angle differences if you was playing an FPS for example.

 

Enough of the talk though Phil, show us something! 

 

EDIT: Also, things like this will make single-player games online-only if incorporated. For me, this is a no-issue but I can imagine quite a few people being unhappy.

[magik]

If they can really do real-time ray tracing, that's an incredible feat. I mean to be able to do that and account for network lag and especially for fast paced FPS type games, wow. Kudos.

 

Well, when I see it, of course. :)

[BannanaNinja]

Enron, on 04 Mar 2014 - 16:37, said:

What is ray tracing exactly? Can it be combined with Gouraud shading for ultimate graphics?

Yes it can. In school in my graphics class we built a simple ray tracer (not real time) that used Phong shading which is even better than Gouraud. Because ray tracing itself is so resource intensive the extra shading time is relatively small so its possible to go all out in the shader department.