AMD just announced its FidelityFX technology is now available for Microsoft's Xbox Series X and Series S consoles — giving gamers a big graphical boost and developers the ability to optimize games even further.
While the recently integrated tech means developers will have a much easier time "to write cross-platform games" from PC to Xbox, it also means developers can further enhance next-gen visuals for the Xbox Series X over the PS5.
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In the announcement, AMD stated developers can get access to the FidelityFX tech in the latest Game Development Kit (GDK), allowing them to tap into "Contrast Adaptive Sharpening, Variable Shading, and Raytraced Shadow Denoiser" tech.
Adaptive sharpening lets developers sharpen and scale images without losing quality, while variable shading increases image quality by varying the shading rate for different regions of a frame.
The shadow denoiser is an interesting one. As AMD explains, this feature cleans up jittered rays to make ray-traced lighting look less grainy. This effectively makes what is seen on screen look much smoother.
AMD's FidelityFX has more graphical effects that it will hopefully roll out for Xbox, including; screen space reflections, ambient occlusion, downsampler, parallel sort, and an HDR mapper.
As the FidelityFX tech has only been made available to developers, there's no mention of which games will adapt graphical effects. For now, it seems cross-platform games for the Xbox Series X will be getting an advantage in graphics over the PS5.
Microsoft continues to impress thanks to its continuous updates to Xbox Game Pass, with its Xbox Cloud Gaming service coming to all Windows 10 and iOS devices very soon.
(H/T GamesRadar+)
