On the One-X’s internal, when I press A at the splash screen, it gets stuck with the spinning circle for a good 25-30 seconds before moving forward. When I play it off my external HDD, it barely takes five seconds to display the next series of loading screens that appear before the game’s main menu/Free Roam.
All in all though, interestingly enough, load times to get from from dash/home game launch to free roam is the same: around 2:25, sometimes 2:30 or more.
Timed it again just now - took 2:25 to get from xbox home launch to free roam where I was parked at the Sunflower Meadows house. I’m in performance mode right now. Not sure if these last two factors have an impact.
To sum it up, put your load intensive and open world games on an external - you’ll get smoother more seamless loading performance.
Sure, the menu and going into/out of events can be laggy if you’re on the internal. On my external it’s smooth as a baby’s behind. My only issue is texture pop, if it can be called that, since it’s built into the game that way. Nothing an external can do about that.
Even though I’m not using an SSD, things load noticeably faster than the internal, possibly because it’s on USB 3.0.
It may be game architecture, rather game engine architecture, and how it handles asset streaming. A good example of bad tech is Watch Dogs 1. It had severe, absolute severe texture popping, even on SSD’s, because that’s just how the streaming technology was implemented.
I must say that I haven’t noticed popping on the xbox or the PC in Forza, but I will take a closer look. I am running on performance mode (the 60 fps mode) and not quality (the 4k one), if that makes any difference.
Performance/quality doesn’t matter - the pop is there, and I’ve been around software engineers and PC games long enough to know that it’s just how the game ‘processes’ or handles textures. Asset streaming engine, like you said.
It’s definitely there in both Forza 7 and FH4, though to a greater degree in the latter. You’ll see stuff spawning/unspawing/respawning in the exact same spots as you go back and forth or move the camera in PM back and forth, for instance. Only exception being when you catch big air and wipe out next to a house or something that comes into view… you’d see the textures on it load a second or so later, LOL!
I’ve gotta say other games do a better job of it - for example, you’ll barely see texture popping in GOW4 or SoTR, but look hard enough and you just may find it. I wonder how many terraflops or computing power it’s going to take to get rid of texture popping once and for all.
I am playing FH4 on an XBOX 1X, and on my PC. The PC is mid-range - i7 4790k, 16GB RAM, GTX 970.
BUT!
My PC has an SSD. It makes SUCH a difference. The areas that irritate me the most are the car collection, the upgrade menus, and going in and out of events. The car collection takes MINUTES at times to load on the XBOX, it’s horrible. The same car collection loads in 5 seconds or less on my PC.
So, I bought an SSD for my XBOX, a Samsung T5 to be exact. I will hook it up tonight, and I will compare the results, but I think the only way to solve this problem is to have an SSD for the game, either on PC or XBOX
Sorry, but I do not think that’s a fair comparison at all. In fact, it’s downright illogical. GT Sport doesn’t have to load assets like FH4. There’s much, MUCH more going on in FH4, and their open world assets are massive compared to the former’s closed circuit racing assets. See how quickly FM7 loads compared to FH4?
Let’s see how the PS4 loads up FH4 if that were ever possible. I bet it would take well over 3 minutes.
One-X has significantly faster hardware than PS4 Pro, and that’s a fact - no fandom there.
There’s more to it than that. The Xbox itself takes a long time to start up. And I saw someone say that if you disconnect the network, FH4 starts up miles quicker, so it can’t be the loading of assets from the drive that takes so long.
Personally I think it’s the syncing time (ping / lat) of the servers both within Microsoft and PG. The game continuously syncs your save data, liveries, tunes, and PR, Speeds etc. Combine this with the rendering times and if your internet is playing up, results in long delays and loading times.
Might be wrong but going on the theory that everything loads quicker when offline / disconnected from internet, saving/reading to local SSD is hundreds of times quicker than over the internet.
Further to this on a 1GB connection fast travel takes meer seconds compared to on a home connection of average 25-78Mb a good 30 seconds at worst of times.
Your last sentence - that can’t be right. I’m on a vdsl broadband 15mb connection - and it hardly takes a few seconds - nowhere in the range you mentioned!
Anyway, I think the loading times is something we will have to happily bear as you certainly don’t want more texture popping in the game than what’s already there.
Also, did someone notice how there’s a 1-2 second delay when you go below bridges and underpasses at really high speeds? It’s like the “whoosh” effect comes almost 1.5 seconds later. No, there’s no lag on my TV, all enhancements are off, nothing running in the background, 8ms response time on my panel and this happens in both performance and visuals mode. I noticed it in the demo too and didn’t give it much thought then.
Damn I’d love it to be a few seconds. On PC yer it has a vast difference on same network but on Xbox for me it’s taking ages to fast travel anywhere on the map on a 58mb connection!?
Haven’t noticed the whoosh effect under bridges but have definitely experienced it coming north to south just before first tunnel on motorway looks like a serious rendering catch-up issue / buffering effect.
I’m lost then on what causing my travel time to be so slow? As said previously the only time it’s fast on Xbox, is when it’s connected to a faster internet connection or offline.
I’ll need to look deeper into the cause. * away scratching my head.
I’ve been thinking about adding an external hard drive (SSD) for some time and finally did it yesterday. Most people recommend a SATA drive with a USB 3.0 caddy but the large size of the caddy put me off and I didn’t want to open up my XBox One X.
In the end I opted for a portable Samsung 500GB SSD which doesn’t need a caddy, is only slightly bigger than a credit card and is USB 3.1 with backward compatibility.
Tried driving the Ferrari at maximum speed in various challenges and scrolling as fast as I could through the images in the garage but couldn’t get the game to stutter or display the wrong images.
Loading times and fast travel are quicker. Fast travelling from the Wind Farm south of Edinburgh to the main Horizon Festival Site took 3 seconds. So far I can’t fault the game from a speed point of view with this configuration.