Xbox Series X Visual Upgrades
As a game developed in the Unreal Engine, Rayner said the team effort of getting Gears 5 up and running on the Xbox Series X only took a short time to test, polish, and demo features on the Xbox Series X.
"When we first showed that demo in March, at that time, we had already lit up a whole bunch of high spec, PC ultra spec features that we already support on the highest end [PC] hardware. We were able to light those up and turn those on and the [Xbox Series X] just sort of absorbed it and it. There were no performance issues. And then we went beyond that. I think even at that time, we didn't enable some of the new features we've added, like contact shadows and screen space global illumination, which really just increased the quality of the lighting and shadowing in the game. So yeah, that was about a two-week effort," Rayner said.
From The Coalition: "Here you are seeing contact shadows which allow us per-pixel accurate shadowing across our game-world. Contact Shadows essentially fill-in any missing shadow information on the scene as a result of limited shadowmap resolution allowing the shadows to be on all objects even the smallest piece of debris as well as preventing any sort of light leaking as every crevice in the world is shadowed properly. You can especially see how in this scene it shadows all the debris on the ground quite well while also making the existing shadows more accurate and filled-in across the world."Rayner said the speed of the Xbox Series X also enables a visual quality in an open-world, even when you're zooming past the details on, say, a skiff.
"We have some open-world elements in our game where we're streaming high-res textures and, you know, we have geometry streaming in and out. And so what you see is you see the highest-quality version of the assets as you kind of fly around the world as fast as you can, whereas before, especially at some of the lower-spec hardware, like the base Xbox One, you might see a little bit of popping or text or popping. These types of things are just a non-issue. In the future I think you'll be able to see – not that I should talk too much about future stuff – you're going to see the types of open-world games that just simply wouldn't have been possible on earlier hardware."
Another spot Rayner said players will notice a difference is in Gears 5's cinematics. They'll now run at 60 frames per second rather than 30 frames per second as they did originally. Rayner said this is just one of the many other visual upgrades they've been able to make on the hardware for a more seamless performance and a generally higher level of detail.
From The Coalition: "This shot really illustrates our newly added Screen Space Global Illumination which provides real-time lighting bounce across everything on screen. A component of the SSGI is the “broad Ambient Occlusion” which allows objects to darken adjacent objects with a much broader range than standard SSAO. This image illustrates that darkening as the characters dynamically occlude light behind them at the wall and the environment behind is properly occluding light in real-time looking more realistic."Excluding the visual upgrades specific to the Xbox Series X, all content updates are planned for all versions of Gears 5. They'll also
get a DLC expansion later this year, which you can read a little more about in IGN's announcement story. For more on all the games coming to the Xbox Series consoles, be sure to visit
IGN's Xbox Series X guide.
