Xbox Cloud Gaming Titles Get A Sweet Clarity Boost But Only If You Follow These Steps
Perhaps in an effort to bolster usage of its own Edge browser, Microsoft is adding an exclusive feature that will benefit Xbox Cloud Gaming players who choose it over other alternatives. The feature is called Clarity Boost, and just like it sounds, enabling it will make Xbox Cloud Gaming titles played through the Edge browser look a little bit better.
Xbox program manager Milena Gonzalez describes the effort as a partnership between the Xbox Cloud Gaming and Edge teams, though obviously both fall under the Microsoft umbrella. It's sort of like mom and pop telling the kids they're partnering on an upgraded stove and new recipes to level up dinners and other meals, so long as they eat at home.
In this case, the recipe for the new Clarity Boost feature consists of "a set of client-side scaling improvements to improve the visual quality of the video stream." That's as detailed about the back-end as Gonzalez is willing to get at the moment, though there is a high-resolution image that lets you compare a still frame with and without Clarity Boost...
Click to Enlarge (4K Resolution)
To our eyeballs, the image with Clarity Boost enabled is sharper than the one without Clarity Boost—the image on the right pops with a bit more detail. Of course, this amounts to pixel peeping so we can't say for sure if there is a discernible difference when actually playing games with Clarity Boost turned on (we have not tested the feature yet).
If you want to try it yourself, however, you will need to download the latest Edge Canary build (it needs to be version 96.0.1033.0 or later). This is essentially a preview version with near-nightly updates to test the latest features. Edge Canary installs separately from Edge, so you can have both on your PC at the same time.
Once you have Edge Canary installed, fire it up and navigate to Xbox.com/play, log into your account, and start playing a game. From there, open the actions (...) menu and select Enable Clarity Boost.
While only available in Edge Canary for the moment, Gonzalez says Clarity Boost will expand to all Edge users by next year.
