Join for quick access. Enter your email below and we'll send confirmation plus sign you up to our newsletter.
By submitting your information, you confirm you are aged 16 or over,
have read our
Privacy Policy
and agree to the
Terms & Conditions. Geographical rules apply.
Stay On the Cutting Edge: Get the Tom's Hardware Newsletter
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Join the club
Get full access to premium articles, exclusive features and a growing list of member rewards.
An account already exists for this email address, please log in.
Enhance Your Xbox Cloud Gaming Experience with Clarity Mode in Edge
Today, in an Xbox news post,Microsoft announced a new image-enhancing feature coming to the Edge browser called Clarity Boost. The feature adds clarity to games streamed from Microsoft's own Xbox Cloud Gaming Servers. The service will be exclusive to Xbox's streaming service alone, with no word on Microsoft if the feature will extend to other platforms as well.
The feature is available to try now through the Microsoft Edge Canary Channel, which you can check out here. Clarity Boost will arrive officially to Edge sometime in 2022.
(Image credit: Microsoft - Xbox)
To demonstrate the feature, Microsoft has provided an image with both Clarity Boost on and off. The feature works very similarly to the clarity sliders you might find in Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop, in that it adds a bit of contrast to areas of the image with sharp edges. This makes the image sharper and reduces blurring for an overall cleaner image.
Microsoft seems to have tuned the Clarity Boost option very well, it's neither too low nor too high, and it really does make the image look a bit better. In addition, the adjustment is available as a toggle when you start streaming Xbox games from the Edge canary browser.
But strangely, the feature will be exclusive to the Edge browser and it doesn't appear to be making its way into the Xbox app for PC, which is another way you can stream Xbox games from PCs. We're not sure why this is the case, but possibly Microsoft is testing this feature out before it makes its way into the Xbox app or even Xbox consoles.
For full details on Xbox's Cloud Gaming streaming service, check our coverage here, and if you want to try streaming Xbox games from a Rasberry Pi, we have a tutorial you can check out here as well.
Stay On the Cutting Edge: Get the Tom's Hardware Newsletter
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Hmmm... Microsoft using the browser bundled with their operating system to only boost images on their gaming service. Let the lawsuits commence! (I'm talking to you, European Union)
Tangentially related, but I think it would be very interesting to see browsers implement DLSS, FSR, or XeSS, so people could stream videos (YouTube, Netflix, whatever) in 4k even if their internet connection can only manage 720p. Could be useful for game streaming too.
Tangentially related, but I think it would be very interesting to see browsers implement DLSS, FSR, or XeSS, so people could stream videos (YouTube, Netflix, whatever) in 4k even if their internet connection can only manage 720p. Could be useful for game streaming too.
Agreed, and for videos, it would be even better because you can make a DLSS algorithm that doubles the frame rate from say 30FPS to 60FPS as well.
