Theoretical vs Practical reserve capacity (Destiny)

by Kermit , Raleigh, NC, Thursday, August 13, 2015, 01:56 (3488 days ago) @ narcogen

Point taken regarding unnecessary integration, but about the 1080p issue, that had more to do with Microsoft unlocking more processing power when they removed the Kinect requirement, from what I recall.

I don't understand quite how that works for folks who do use Kinect. Was the simple "requirement" hogging processing power?
Either way, I doubt that's the cause for the existing quirks. I blame much of it on the OS. Hopefully the NXE alleviates a number of these issues.

The requirement was that game developers not utilize the entirety of the console's CPU resources. So no matter how much CPU the game wanted at a given time, it would not be given all that was available because some was reserved for Kinect in case Kinect would need to use it (presumably to respond to voice/gestures).

With the requirement removed, those who do not have Kinect will, presumably, be running games that can invade the CPU capacity formerly reserved for Kinect. What I don't know is, if you HAVE a Kinect, does that also mean games can invade that reserve CPU, presumably degrading the performance of Kinect in favor of allowing more resources for the game? Or does the dropped requirement only apply to those who do not have a Kinect, and for whom that reservation was always theoretical?

Short answer: some Kinect features do become unavailable in-game in this scenario, but they don't seem to be features used often while in-game or, at least if they are, developers are aware and wouldn't use the extra capacity in that situation.

See http://news.xbox.com/2014/06/xbox-one-xdk-qa