Xbox Series X/S Resolution?

[obtuse knoll]

I've been playing on Mac and switched over to Xbox and was surprised to see significantly reduced visual quality, there. I've attached three side-by-side screenshot comparisons, described below.

• Mac (Fullscreen 1512x945) vs. Mac (Fullscreen 3024x1964)

Even with the difference of upscaling to monitor output resolution, there is again almost no distinguishable visual difference between the two. Both look equally clear. This is my "baseline," essentially.

• Xbox Series X (4K, 70% CRT, 50% Shake) vs. Mac (Borderless ~4K, 70% CRT, 50% Shake)

I would expect to see comparable resolution/clarity, but Xbox is significantly muddier, enough that it's pretty hard for me to play without dropping CRT and Shake to 0%—and even then, looks a lot worse than Mac.

• Xbox Series X (4K, 0% CRT, 0% Shake) vs. Xbox Series S (1080p 0% CRT, 0% Shake)

Here there is almost no distinguishable visual difference between the two, despite the significant difference in tangible resolution. I've used the no-shake, no-CRT versions here, but it's pretty much the same with them turned on.

[flint oxide]

Interesting. 🤔 It’s visible from photos even the photos are probably compressed on Discord.

[obtuse knoll]

Yep. I've probably overly tried to quantify the issue, but it's night-and-day, going between the two. It's like the Xbox is upscaling (poorly) from a pretty low-res source, rather than resolving at its actual resolution, so you're getting a remarkable amount of blurry artifacting that turns the gorgeous visual aesthetic into a hard-to-look at mess. It's less bad (in person—the screenshots don't show this) on the Series S, I think because it's outputting 1080p and then being upscaled by the Xbox/TV into a 4K output, rather than outputting directly at an upscaled 4K, but that's mostly speculation.

[flint oxide]

You are probably right. I hope that the dev Localthunk will react to this.