Xbox’s press conference not only unveiled the “true” 4K-capable Xbox One X, but it also revealed a handful of high-profile games.

As it turns out, some of these games are using workarounds to hit that 4K mark. For example, Assassin’s Creed Origins is using checkerboard rendering—which is, to be fair, a common practice—to deliver an Ultra HD experience. That doesn’t mean the game won’t look good; it just means that it won’t be native 4K.

Unfortunately, Assassin’s Creed Origins isn’t the only premiere game that will be using checkerboard rendering for its Xbox One X version. BioWare’s upcoming third-person-action-RPG-shooter-that-isn’t-Mass-Effect, Anthem, is also using checkerboard rendering, as pointed out in another painstakingly in-depth video by Digital Foundry.

In picking apart Anthem‘s Xbox One X 4K demo from E3 2017, the video showcases the instances of artifacting (otherwise known as “jaggies”) that point to checkerboard rendering. This means that Anthem, too, will not be running in native 4K.

There are a handful of other small visual that can be seen in addition to the jaggies, namely texture pop-in on the ground and strange patches of visual clarity within the motion blur effect.

All of these visual blemishes, however, could be a good thing, because they might point to the fact that the demo, which already looked amazing in a pre-alpha build, was actually running on Xbox One X.

Yes, we know the presenters said (or, at least, implied) it was running on Xbox One X. But many demos that look as good as Anthem look as good as they do because they’re running on the highest-end PCs, not on consoles. The fact that these visual hiccups even exist might be proof that this is what the actual Xbox One X version will look like, if not better by the time the game is released.

We have a feeling that we’ll be seeing a lot of early “Xbox One X enhanced” games using the same old visual tricks they use for PS4 Pro and even the normal Xbox One and PS4, at least until developers figure out a good workflow for optimizing each of the different platforms available to them. Though, hopefully soon we’ll start seeing some native 4K visuals coming out of the Xbox One X.

Posted: Jun 17, 2017 12:09 pm
Last Updated: Jun 17, 2017 12:12 pm
Related Forum: Xbox Forum

Source: http://www.egmnow.com/articles/news/another-big-e3-reveal-is-using-checkerboarding-to-hit-4k-on-xbox-one-x/