4K resolution, native or upscale, Xbox controller and UI scaling

[reanor]

Will X4 support 4K?

I read that the UI will probably be friendly to higher resolutions, due to its positioning on the screen, what I am concerned about specifically speaking of 4K, if game will be just upscaled, or if it will have high Rez models created for 4K resolutions. I am thinking about getting 4K monitor, if it is so, if regular upscaling, then I'll probably stick to my 1080P old dell monitor.

Also, if 4K will be supported, will I be able to increase the size of the fonts on all the readable surfaces that contain text?

And the last but not the least, will the game support Xbox controller, so I can play on big screen TV? I read that game is primarily developed for m&k, but if controller support is added, will it be intuitive enough to even bother?

[adeine]

Don't see why it wouldn't support 4K (since UI scaling was explicitly confirmed), but judging by the 'recommended' specs, you will probably want to upscale 1080p to get acceptable performance.

[Combat Wombat]

I am not sure you understand what 4k textures means lol it has nothing to do with how the looks at any particular resolution

[BigBANGtheory]

I played X Rebirth at 4k so should be fine barring the usual performance demands

[StoneLegionYT]

Game for sure has Xbox controller support, joysticks, hota's stuff etc.

Xbox controller support seems to always been a decent thing they have supported even a while back. I remember even on PC not owning a gamepad loading and showing gamepad tips.

[reanor]

Ok, thanks all. So probably time to upgrade to 4K monitor then. Since I already have RTX 2080, performance should be 60fps at 4K.

[Engriffi]

Ok, thanks all. So probably time to upgrade to 4K monitor then. Since I already have RTX 2080, performance should be 60fps at 4K.

I regularly play Fallout 4 & Assassin's Creed Origins (both at max detail) at 4k and easily get flat 60 fps on my 1080 (average 90 to 100 for both if I unlock framerate [for those out there that don't know, but if your monitor's screen refreshes @ 60 Hz, you'll only ever see 60 fps]).
You, my friend, will definitely get excellent framerate. Especially since this is a Vulkan game.

For example; when Doom 2016 came out I would get, at best, 30 fps. But when they released the Vulkan enabled version i would get 200 fps, and had to lock the framerate to my TVs refresh rate (60 hz). Too fast.

Vulkan is to DirectX11 what windows 10 is to Windows '95

[CBJ]

I've said it before but I guess I will have to say it again: with X series games, the CPU is usually the limiting factor, not the GPU, and that is especially true with high-end GPU hardware. No matter what your screen resolution is, what API is used, or how fast your graphics hardware can process pixels, the game universe simulation still has to run in the background, and the framerate has to be synced to that to some degree. If things get busy enough then the framerate will drop, though by how much depends on many different factors. This is in the nature of the game and, however much it's tweaked and optimised, it will always be possible to find situations where it simply cannot maintain a particular minimum framerate.

If you start out with the position that your framerate should never, under any circumstances, drop below 60fps because you have bought an expensive graphics card, then I'd rather disabuse you of that notion now than have you come back when the game is released and claim that it's not what you were expecting.

[nemesis1982]

1 ...the CPU is usually the limiting factor, not the GPU...
2 ...and that is especially true with high-end GPU hardware...
3 ...it will always be possible to find situations where it simply cannot maintain a particular minimum framerate...

I broke up your message to make my reply more consise.

1. I understand what you're saying however when enabling 4k with high level antialiasing the GPU quickly becomes a bottle nek
2. I'd say that fully depends on the graphical settings a 1070 might perform much better on the lowest resolution with everything off then a 1080TI on 4k with everything on (I hope the 1080TI can handle 4k at max 60fps, baring any processor related bottle neks)
3. What I would be curious to know is what is the chance you get into such a situation during a 100 hour play through if you just follow story lines and have like 2 stations and 50 ships. Using recommended specs

Just to be clear I do not mind a slow down here and there and I understand what you are saying.

Thing is though if the CPU is the bottle nek (and the GPU has more then enough room to max it and then some). Graphical settings should have minimal baring on performance.

Also on a higher then recommended system you should not run into *"unplayable" situations when the game is vanilla and you own a *"manageble/normal" amount of assets.

*"unplayable": With this I do not mean the frame rate dropping to 59 frames a sec. I mean the game dropping to less then 20ish for longer then a minute for at least 5 times an hour.
*"manageble/normal": I'd say around 15 player stations and 150 player ships shouldn't be a problem on recomended specs. The 150 ships are estimated as 5 per station for trading and 3 fleets of 25 ships each.

****** All numbers in this post are completely arbitrary!

[Engriffi]

True, anti-aliasing at 4k is pretty intensive. But... why on Earth would anyone enable AA at 4k or higher res? (Not a sarcastic, nor subtly criticizing question.)
Even on a 55-inch display I can't see the pixels from 5 feet away. Not that I sit that close to my TV.

Edit: Just realized that if someone's playing on a projector, maybe there's an AA benefit.
EditEdit: Nevermind, also realized I'm derailing the thread.

[nemesis1982]

True, anti-aliasing at 4k is pretty intensive. But... why on Earth would anyone enable AA at 4k or higher res? (Not a sarcastic, nor subtly criticizing question.)
Even on a 55-inch display I can't see the pixels from 5 feet away. Not that I sit that close to my TV.

Well a higher resolution does not really mean AA will not be beneficial. AA blends a pixel with the surrounding pixels. If a object is drawn over another (assuming there are no other smart technologies at work atm) it will not look real since the transition from one object to the other is not blended. This is where anti aliasing comes in.

AA does not make a low resolution look smoother, if you run at 720P it does not magically create more pixels.

I think there is actually a case to argue that AA makes more sense at higher resolution and you would actually need a higher level of AA to get the same result. Since AA takes adjacent pixels and blends them, higher resolution means more pixels to blend for the same area.

@On or off topic, I think this grazes the topic sufficiently to merit a reply, since it's about the feasibility of 4k. If a mod disagrees feel free to split it.

[DavidGW]

Antialiasing will make any resolution look better. Aliasing is caused by artefacts caused by sampling high-frequency information. Changing the resolution of the screen changes the frequency of information that will cause real ugliness.

An example would be drawing a wire mesh. If the wire spacing is drawn around the same spacing as the pixel density, it will look HORRIBLE. If it's anti-aliased, it will look less horrible, as it will be more-or-less blurred. Either way, whether it's a 720p monitor, 4K or even 8K super-res, if you're the wrong distance away, the ugliness will be there without AA.

Aliasing of edges is much more common, but is less noticeable. Higher resolution screens will automatically reduce this ugliness (to the point it isn't that noticeable on a 4K monitor), but some AA will make this better too.

I am hoping that my 1080ti can run the game at 4K, max graphics plus some AA, at up to 60Hz without being GPU-bound. Slowdowns due to CPU may be unavoidable, but I also have a 8700K, which will hopefully help. Avoiding doing silly things like building 50 stations in one small area would also help.

I'm happy that X4 has UI scaling, so I don't have to choose between having to read tiny writing all the time, and running a nice high res. I'm not worried about the XBOX controller support, as XR's was great, as was the updated X3TC/AP.

[reanor]

I've said it before but I guess I will have to say it again: with X series games, the CPU is usually the limiting factor, not the GPU, and that is especially true with high-end GPU hardware. No matter what your screen resolution is, what API is used, or how fast your graphics hardware can process pixels, the game universe simulation still has to run in the background, and the framerate has to be synced to that to some degree. If things get busy enough then the framerate will drop, though by how much depends on many different factors. This is in the nature of the game and, however much it's tweaked and optimised, it will always be possible to find situations where it simply cannot maintain a particular minimum framerate.

If you start out with the position that your framerate should never, under any circumstances, drop below 60fps because you have bought an expensive graphics card, then I'd rather disabuse you of that notion now than have you come back when the game is released and claim that it's not what you were expecting.

Thanks for the comment CBJ, i definitely understand about the CPU. But as the mentioned above, at 4K GPU will e quite heavily taxed. I currently run i5-6600. Keeping in mind all that you know about X4 already, will you recommend to upgrade to i7, or do you believe I should be ok? I may sacrifice the 4K fluff and just get a late gen CPU instead, since they cost more than average monitors today, and will just use higher AA? I can run my i5 at 4Ghz without issues, so this should be enough during the mass battles, shouldn't it? I don't believe I ever ran into anything bigger than 20-25 ships a the same time in XR and that was on older hardware, which still ran great. I try to keep my PC upgraded top to bottom usually, to not create any bottlenecks.

[reanor]

Game for sure has Xbox controller support, joysticks, hota's stuff etc.

Xbox controller support seems to always been a decent thing they have supported even a while back. I remember even on PC not owning a gamepad loading and showing gamepad tips.

Hi Kane? Have you personally played any X games with a controller, or just reminiscing? I'd love to hear someone describe their experience with a controller in comparison to joystick. The X4 will have certain control features that are new to the X series, drawinf a square around the ships, for example, to select multiple ships at once. So I wonder how these new features will play out if controller is used, if I'll be able to create some certain bindings, or rebind certain commands to other button combos, if I for example find the default ones unintuitive or awkward. I understand that X4 primarily is developed with K&M in mind, but would be great to have some freedom and maybe try to play on my TV from the comfortable chair, for change of experience.

I'll try to check tonight how well the XR will run on my TV with the controller. If this is not going to be a good experience, I may just give up on the idea and do it on PC. The perspective of playing a game from a chair on big screen TV, is very tempting though and would be great if it was accommodated in X4 as far as controls, UI elements, and especially TEXT fonts go. In almost all previously X games the interactive menus on ships and NPCs were ridiculously SMALL? I hope they have come up with something better than these old awful menus. I am not talking about the one on the left side of the screen. But action menus on NPCS and ships that come up in XR for example, when you double click on them. I have a hard time seeing those even on PC... If they haven't redesigned these action menus and will be using the old awful tiny ones as in all previous X games, it will definitely be a huge obstacle to play X4 on anything but a huge monitor.

[reanor]

Have another couple of questions.

Question 1 - past bugs. When the XR came out, there was a serious bug, where game developed a memory leak, when asteroids would start popping in and using game and PC resources, which made game exec process to swell to like 7GB and game would eventually freeze. I don't remember the fix any longer, but I was hoping that these past bugs were taken in account while developing X4 so we wouldn't suffer from game freezes and crashes.

Question 2 - custom screen selection. In most of the modern games and if you use multiple monitors, you can select which screen the game will be running on. Heck, I believe that very few game developers use less than 2 monitors for their work today. I hope this customization feature was thought of and will be available in the X4 graphics settings. I can of course set my TV to be primary and blah blah, but this is not always the best solution, it's just a workaround for something devs haven't though through during the development process.

[Perkel]

I've said it before but I guess I will have to say it again: with X series games, the CPU is usually the limiting factor, not the GPU

Thanks for the answer and i can provide some evidence for people interested below.
Also i have two question for you since you are part of dev team :

1. Did move from DX9 to vulcan improved CPU situation ?
2. Will game use more cores than 4 ? Steam page reqs in recommended point out to 4 core cpu not 4+

I ask this because i am thinking about upgrading to "better" cpu with more cores for X4 but if game will use only 4 cores then it will be actually downgrade as usually more cores = less performance from each core.

Also bonus questions:
What CPU do you recommend for X4 ?
Is it possible to reach high minimal framerates (60+,100+) on current existing hardware or should we expect similar performance to X:R aka ~60fps on average in busy sectors with dips to 30fps on good cpus.

Worth noting is that a lot of initial bad reviews for X:rebirth was from people

For people interested i have:
i5-3570K @ 4,5Ghz which is basically top of the line 4 core cpu
980 - which is way more than mid end gpu

X rebirth:
- @1080p@Ultra i get around 50fps in Steady Mole (cpu is at 85% use and GPU is at 35-40% use)
- @4k@Ultra same sector i get around 50fps (cpu is at 85% use and GPU is at 70-75% use)

Which means that my top of the line CPU despite 85% mark actually is running at max it can for this game and without CPU bottleneck game should run about 100fps @1080p which is proven when i switch to 4k and my FPS is exactly the same despite the fact that i just increase 4 times pixel count to render.

Also you can hit PAUSE and CPU % drops by about 15-20% which seems to be simulation part.

[CBJ]

Question 1 - past bugs. When the XR came out, there was a serious bug, where game developed a memory leak, when asteroids would start popping in and using game and PC resources, which made game exec process to swell to like 7GB and game would eventually freeze. I don't remember the fix any longer, but I was hoping that these past bugs were taken in account while developing X4 so we wouldn't suffer from game freezes and crashes.

This is both easy and difficult to answer. The easy part is that from the very start of the development of X4, any fixes and optimisations that were applied to XR in patches were automatically also applied to X4 code, if they were still applicable, so X4 almost certainly won't suffer from those specific issues. In fact the reverse is also true; during the development of X4, a number of fixes and improvements were found which could also benefit XR, and these were back-ported and released in some of the later patches. However, it would be a brave (and foolish) developer who tried to claim their game couldn't possibly suffer from crashes, freezes, slowdowns, or memory leaks because they had been fixed in a previous game, because these are very general symptoms which can occur for a huge variety of reasons. It is true to say, though, that X4 does benefit from the experience gained with the underlying technology.

1. Did move from DX9 to vulcan improved CPU situation ?

Maybe a little. As I've explained before, the CPU is mainly busy with simulation, and that includes preparing data to send to the graphics API. Differences at this level between different graphics APIs are only of marginal relevance. There may well be differences within the API itself, but since those will often run on a different CPU thread anyway, it has little or no impact on overall performance if the game is CPU-bound by the simulation.

2. Will game use more cores than 4 ? Steam page reqs in recommended point out to 4 core cpu not 4+

I've answered this one before too. The game has a similar threading model to XR. It will use two cores pretty heavily, for its core activities, and a few others more variably for other tasks. There is no fixed limit to how many it will use for those other tasks, but at the same time just increasing the number of cores won't necessarily improve performance beyond a certain point.

What CPU do you recommend for X4 ?

As I've said before, it would be neither appropriate nor wise for me to make hardware recommendations. What I can say is that with current-generation CPUs, which can usually run at least 8 threads on 4 cores, you will probably gain more from a higher core speed than from adding more cores.

Is it possible to reach high minimal framerates (60+,100+) on current existing hardware or should we expect similar performance to X:R aka ~60fps on average in busy sectors with dips to 30fps on good cpus.

As I've said many times, "minimum framerate" in this kind of game is completely meaningless. Put yourself in a situation where there is enough going on and it will start to slow down, because we don't artificially limit how much can happen in once place at one time, and of course the universe simulation will be going on in the background regardless. So it's safe to assume that there will be some variation in framerate in X4, depending on where you are in the game and what you are doing.

Worth noting is that a lot of initial bad reviews for X:rebirth was from people

That's a relief. I was beginning to think that they were all from bots.

[Perkel]

Maybe a little. As I've explained before, the CPU is mainly busy with simulation

We can test that though easily by going to busy and empty region. Pause button also should stop simulation without interrupting graphics (thought it might stop animations but that should be minimal impact)
- 100fps empty region - 122fps paused (70% gpu used)
- 30fps very busy region - 35fps paused (30% gpu used)
Rule of thumb is that the more objects on screen the less performance which shouldn't be really any surprise.
What surprising is small impact of economy simulation and GPU low use.
The more things on screen the lower GPU usage and the lower frame-rate.

We can further test that with changing resolution like i did before.
- @1080p - 30fps in busy sector - 30% gpu use
- @4k - 30fps in busy sector - 70% gpu use
So the limiting factor here is obviously CPU like you mentioned.
In this case changing resolution doesn't add draw calls which means GPU% increases with res.

Which pretty much means CPU is hammered by mentioned draw calls.
Simulation does have impact but not that much.
And this is where i don't quite understand second part about Vulcan which is why i asked about it.

Main reason low level API like Vulcan or DX12 was made was to solve draw calls issue + other things.
Pretty much any FPS improvements for games that changed to those new low level APIs was precisely draw calls batching which basically reduced massively draw calls in various ways like batching and basically made removed need for fast CPUs to run GPU fast.

Obviously engine developement is ongoing thing and just by moving from DX9 to Vulcan doesn't mean anything improved as that move right now could be just move to start working on new API and then piece by piece improve engine.

Either way. I hope you will manage in future resolve draw calls issues Cheers.

Worth noting is that a lot of initial bad reviews for X:rebirth was from people

That's a relief. I was beginning to think that they were all from bots.

lol. I didn't finish sentence for some reason.

My point was that by reading your and other ego posts i get that performance won't be improved much from X:R and i think a lot of early reviews you got were about very poor performance on top end rigs or that performance contributed a lot to initial feelings people got from other flaws.

So imho as developers you should inform clearly people about expected performance because it would have a lot to do with reviews you will get just like in case of X:R where a lot of people expected at minimum average performance like 60fps on top end rigs and got 20-30fps with dips to 15-20fps for period of time in busy sectors. I myself back then had q9300 which was at the time pretty good cpu + hd7970 also v.good gpu and i basically had to play at 30fps average.

So by setting up expectations properly you might lose some buyers but you will get better reviews.

For example adding to specs:
minimal spec: 900p- medium - 30fps average
recommended 1080p- ultra - 60fps average (or whatever your prediction is)
Would give you a lot of goodwill when people will have game in their hands and when they will start to write reviews.

Other idea is to create FPS profiles. If you for example expect similar performance to X:R then maybe setting up 30FPS limit cap as default setting (which could be changed in options) would limit people bed experience with varied framerate at 60fps cap or Vsync cap which could give people a lot of bad time with very varied framerate.

[reanor]

Question 1 - past bugs. When the XR came out, there was a serious bug, where game developed a memory leak, when asteroids would start popping in and using game and PC resources, which made game exec process to swell to like 7GB and game would eventually freeze. I don't remember the fix any longer, but I was hoping that these past bugs were taken in account while developing X4 so we wouldn't suffer from game freezes and crashes.

This is both easy and difficult to answer. The easy part is that from the very start of the development of X4, any fixes and optimisations that were applied to XR in patches were automatically also applied to X4 code, if they were still applicable, so X4 almost certainly won't suffer from those specific issues. In fact the reverse is also true; during the development of X4, a number of fixes and improvements were found which could also benefit XR, and these were back-ported and released in some of the later patches. However, it would be a brave (and foolish) developer who tried to claim their game couldn't possibly suffer from crashes, freezes, slowdowns, or memory leaks because they had been fixed in a previous game, because these are very general symptoms which can occur for a huge variety of reasons. It is true to say, though, that X4 does benefit from the experience gained with the underlying technology.

1. Did move from DX9 to vulcan improved CPU situation ?

Maybe a little. As I've explained before, the CPU is mainly busy with simulation, and that includes preparing data to send to the graphics API. Differences at this level between different graphics APIs are only of marginal relevance. There may well be differences within the API itself, but since those will often run on a different CPU thread anyway, it has little or no impact on overall performance if the game is CPU-bound by the simulation.

2. Will game use more cores than 4 ? Steam page reqs in recommended point out to 4 core cpu not 4+

I've answered this one before too. The game has a similar threading model to XR. It will use two cores pretty heavily, for its core activities, and a few others more variably for other tasks. There is no fixed limit to how many it will use for those other tasks, but at the same time just increasing the number of cores won't necessarily improve performance beyond a certain point.

What CPU do you recommend for X4 ?

As I've said before, it would be neither appropriate nor wise for me to make hardware recommendations. What I can say is that with current-generation CPUs, which can usually run at least 8 threads on 4 cores, you will probably gain more from a higher core speed than from adding more cores.

Is it possible to reach high minimal framerates (60+,100+) on current existing hardware or should we expect similar performance to X:R aka ~60fps on average in busy sectors with dips to 30fps on good cpus.

As I've said many times, "minimum framerate" in this kind of game is completely meaningless. Put yourself in a situation where there is enough going on and it will start to slow down, because we don't artificially limit how much can happen in once place at one time, and of course the universe simulation will be going on in the background regardless. So it's safe to assume that there will be some variation in framerate in X4, depending on where you are in the game and what you are doing.

Worth noting is that a lot of initial bad reviews for X:rebirth was from people

That's a relief. I was beginning to think that they were all from bots.

Thank you CBJ for tuning in again. Can you also please comment if you know the reason why you guys decided to step away from the established tradition and decided not to do any kind of campaign in X4. If I am not mistaken, every previous game had a campaign. Was it due to the time constraints on release of X4? I understand there will be a "main plot" in X4, but to my understanding the plots are just series of missions you run without any kind of animations, cutscenes or voiceovers.

[atavistuk]

Neither X3: Terran Conflict, nor X3: Albion Prelude has a 'Main Campaign', and those two games are way more popular than X3: Reunion and X: Rebirth.

People seem way more interested in making their own story in the sandbox, so why shouldn't Egosoft cater to the majority? Seems like a no-brainer decision to be honest.