The concept of resource overhead, its something you need to be aware of before trying to make comparisons like.
As a base example Its a lot more demanding to render 100 square miles of open wilderness, than it is to render 2 guys and a wall. It would be a gaffe to try and directly compare the texture on that wall, with the textures found in the 100 square mile area, as the system can spend all its resources on that one wall, but with the other game, it has to texture 100 square miles, with the same amount of system resources.
Xenoblade X is 400 square km. Red Dead Redemption is only 32 Square Km. X has a much more demanding overhead.
Xenoblade X is a completely seamless experience during gameplay, the game streams everything, and doesnt stop to load. A lot of open world games on ps360 have lengthy load times that pop up with irritating frequency. Red dead was pretty good at this, except the dreaded boot load, and god damn multiplayer load. Skyrim was pretty bad.
Xenoblade X has a lot of unique geometry. Its really given it a signature appearence. Its also filled out with lots of alien trees and bushes and even small rendered rocks on the ground. For these things, you only have a handful of different models for, and then they are repeated to save resources, thats called instancing. However, Since a lot of large formations are unique, they cant be instanced, to save system resources. Games like RDR are heavily instanced, with not just repeating trees cacti and boulders, but entire hills, canyon walls and mountains are instanced as well. Having a less repetitive open world, over a larger area, requires a much higher resource overhead.
Open world games often have very bad problems with repeating textures, since they have to texture so much.
People who have strong pattern recognition will pick it up very fast in the foreground, seeing things like the same, maybe, scratch mark over and over again every foot. But everybody notices once it gets a bit further out. Its a very repetitive pattern, that gives a checkerboard effect.
X put a whole lot of resources into avoiding repeating textures that create that checker board effect, no matter how far out the camera gets:
Thats a pretty huge resource overhead.
Speaking of cool things like the hopper cam leads into another subject on resource overhead, predictable culling.
Open world games tend to try and exploit predictable culling. They love things like buildings, because you can cull, or not render whats behind them to save resources, and the shapes of things like buildings are really easy to work with. Other popular things are forcing players through canyones or tunnels, or forcing them to go around things like mountains. Since these large objects are in the way, the system doesnt have to render whats behind them, and has ample time to stream the assets while the player is forced to go through or around.
They also tend to stay grounded, or have restrictions on when a player can fly. For example players use planes or helicopters to fly in gtav, which is really cool, except all of the sudden a freaking london fog rolls in, and you are flying at speeds outclassed by a paper airplane. These are restrictions, to help manage the resource overhead it requires to do these things.
Some games, like RdR, are completely dependant on the player NOT going places the game doesnt expect them to, like flying. However, if you are super cool like me, you found out a way to fly baby. The game... Was not designed to be seen from that angle, and the visuals break down and show their 'tricks'.
Looks like a wii game.
X, being designed from the ground up to be able to handle anything the player can do, and anywhere they can go, which is, well, everywhere, no invisible walls, no barriers, no being held back, spent a lot of resources making sure the games visuals dont break like that scene from rdr. The game must be prepared, at all times, to show everything. You can see other continents if you fly high enough in x. These are things that are seen from farther away, than the complete distance of a game like RdR's map from end to end. And you can fly straight there, at very high speeds, something that also requires resource overhead.
X has a much higher resource overhead, than games like rdr or skyrim, which is something you have to take into account when you try and compare games. Its not as simple as finding a texture that hasnt streamed in, from someone whos running the game without the installs to prevent that from happening.
