The Clarity Boost feature for Xbox Remote Play and xCloud has successfully completed its Beta phase and is now fully released in all the XBPlay apps (excluding the TV versions). Now that Clarity Boost is out of beta, let's explore how to use it effectively in the xbPlay app.

Enabling Clarity Boost

• To enable clarity boost, open the options side menu and click the Clarity Boost item.

• There are two types of clarity boost options available: Upscalers and Sharpeners. As of this writing, there are 2 upscalers and 3 sharpeners available. Try them out and enable the one that looks best to you. You can use the sliders to adjust the strength of the clarity boost. Please note that only one sharpener or upscaler can be used at a time.

• Enable side-by-side comparison to see the impact of the clarity boost feature. The left side is the enhanced video and the right is the original.

Choosing the Best Settings

The "optimal" clarity boost technique relies on factors such as your device's performance, power consumption, display capabilities, and personal preference. There's no definitive right or wrong choice here; select what feels best to you. You might find that a clarity boost algorithm that looks great in one game doesn't have the same effect in another, so adjusting the strength or trying different options might be necessary. It's essential to consider the following:

• Upscalers are best suited for high-definition screens but consume more resources compared to sharpeners.

• Applying any clarity boost setting may negatively impact FPS and introduce delay. If you notice frame skips or lag, your device might not have the power needed for clarity boost.

Clarity Boost Algorithms

The best way to pick a clarity boost algorithm is to try them out and see which one looks the best on your device. However, I will give some high-level pros/cons of each algorithm here:

• Sharpener: High Pass Filter (HPF)

  • It is the most resource efficient, so it will use the least battery and keep your device cooler than the others.

  • It has the most obvious impact. Turn it on and you will definitely notice a difference.

  • It produces the most noise. You can see this by turning the strength slider all the way to the max. It will likely over-sharpen. When using the HPF on my device, I like to keep it between 0.3 - 0.6 strength.

• Sharpener: Unsharpen Mast (USM)

  • Similar to the HPF but is much more customizable. You can adjust three values that will impact the image look instead of one.

  • Increasing the radius value will negatively impact performance, making it less efficient than the HPF for configurations.

• Sharpener: Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS)

  • CAS is my personal favorite sharpener. It sharpens the low-contrast portions of the image without sharpening the portions that are already sharp. This produces a sharpened image without adding as much noise as the HPF and USM.

  • It uses slightly more resources than the HPF, but still less than the upscalers.

  • For most devices, this will likely be the best improvement to performance choice.

• Upscaler: FidelityFX Super Resolution:

  • Is superior to any sharpener on a 2k+ screen due to its first upscale pass.

  • Produces a balanced and sharpened image adding the least noise out of possibly all the others.

  • Is less noticeable due to its focus on keeping noise low.

  • Likely uses the most resources out of all the algorithms.

• Upscaler: Fast Super Sampling (FSS)

  • This is very similar to the CAS sharpener. In fact, its second pass runs the CAS sharpening algorithm. (The key difference is that it incorporates a first pass that upscales the pixels using a lacronze-2 kernel).

  • Uses fewer resources than FSR.

Known Bugs:

• Android: Enabling and disabling the clarity boost feature while using the "GeckoView" render engine may produce a black screen. Restarting the remote play session will solve the issue and it will startup with clarity boost enabled.

• iOS: Enabling clarity boost while in picture-in-picture mode doesn't work right.

More? If you notice any clarity boost bugs, please let me know so I can fix them. Thanks! :)

Looking for Steam beta testers for the "PC Play" (moonlight) feature of the app. This feature should allow you to stream PC Gamepass games installed on your computer (or any game on your PC really). It also allows you to add shortcuts to directly launch PC games from your steam library as well.

To get the beta open Steam -> XBPlay -> Betas and select "beta" from the dropdown.

Once the app updates you should see a new 'PC Play' button on the homescreen. You can click that to being.

Things I am trying to test:

- Works on all platforms (windows/mac/linux).

- Shortcuts created to moonlight games launch correctly.

- xCloud shortcuts still function.

- All artwork is shown correctly in the game picker screen and for shortcuts.

- PC Play settings work.

- New bugs, introduced to Xbox streaming.

Even if you dont use moonlight/pc streaming. Switching to the beta and reporting any new bugs here could help :)