Fans eagerly waiting for Project Scorpio will find its recent test drive a positive development.
Microsoft's upcoming Xbox console has shown it can run Forza Motorsport 6 at its highest settings: 4K resolution at 60 FPS. The console (under the code name "Project Scorpio") recently revealed its hardware specs, and the Forza development test showed Scorpio's power in real-time. Xbox announced the release of the console for holiday 2017.
'Forza Motorsport 6 Apex' Running At 4K 60FPS
An exclusive report says Forza developer Turn 10 has been working together with the Xbox division of Microsoft in the development of Project Scorpio. Together, they used Forza Motorsport 6 as test game in the console's final leg of development. They called it "ForzaTech."
"ForzaTech is really the place to let us prove out platform features like Direct3D 12 [on PC] and also lets us help with internal things that nobody else gets to see — in this case, the modelling that happened with Scorpio," shared Chris Tector, software architect for Turn 10. He took pride in saying that Project Scorpio was able to execute the studio's vision for the game.
The ForzaTech test took only two days, according to Tector. The team was able to run the game smoothly on a 4K resolution at 60 FPS. The GPU optimization hovered to about 66%, which means there's still a huge amount of overhead left to maximize performance. Turn 10 cranked up the Forza's settings to Ultra and the game still ran smoothly at 88 percent GPU optimization.
Forza Motorsport 6: Apex was released by Microsoft on March 1, 2016 as a free-to-play game for Microsoft Windows. While the upcoming Forza 7 wasn't used, the team is confident it can run at the same max settings using Project Scorpio.
The collaboration provided two-way benefits, according to Tector. As a first-party game developer, his studio can help improve the platform to the best one for all developers.
"Not only do they help provide the modelling, but they also keep us honest with the developer perspective as well as the consumer perspective in doing the right thing for our customers, so it's fantastic partnership," added Kevin Gammill, group program manager of the Xbox Core Platform.
Xbox's Project Scorpio Specs Revealed
Microsoft unveiled the hardware specs of Project Scorpio on April 6. The new Xbox will boast eight custom x86 cores clocked at 2.3 GHz CPU and a GPU with 40 customized compute units at 1172 MHz. But its prized part is the Scorpio Engine, which according to Microsoft can dish out 6 Teraflops of performance, which puts it in the same neighborhood as Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1070 video card.
Project Scorpio will also pack 1 TB storage, 12 GB of GDDR5 memory, 326 GB/s memory bandwidth, and a native 4K resolution.
