Video story about ray tracing, VRS and other AMD technologies in The Riftbreaker

In the AMD Radeon RX 6000 Partner Showcase video series, AMD continues to talk about games that have been optimized for RDNA 2 thanks to the company's cooperation with developers. We have already seen the videos about DiRT 5, Godfall and World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, and the 4th episode is dedicated to The Riftbreaker from EXOR Studios.

Co-Founder and CEO of the studio Pawel Lekki noted that working with the RDNA 2 architecture allowed developers to optimize the game both for PCs with Radeon RX 6000, and for new consoles. The game, thanks to cooperation with AMD, received a number of the latest DirectX 12 Ultimate technologies.

For example, through the DirectX Raytracing API the action movie got support for dynamic shadows based on hardware ray tracing. They look pretty good and enrich the picture. The environment in the game is completely destroyed, so you can't use baked lighting and real-time raytracing is an excellent solution.

The shadows are especially impressive when bright and fast moving light sources appear. In addition, the Ambient Occlusion shading model based on ray tracing is used. This is a sophisticated algorithm that imitates soft shadows from global lighting by simulating the darkness perceived in corners and at intersections of polysettes, in folds and cracks where ambient light is closed or blocked. This made the picture more realistic. Also the game supports shadowing with variable accuracy (Variable Rate Shading 2, VRS), which is designed to save resources of the video card and, as a consequence, increase productivity. The technology allows you to reduce the load when calculating the peripheral objects, low-value zones or fast-moving parts of the scene, keeping the detail where it is most needed. Sometimes this, judging by the video, allows the game to produce twice as many frames as in the mode without VRS. Also The Riftbreaker has gained support for Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS) technology from AMD FidelityFX. It helps to improve image quality by achieving increased sharpness with minimal artifacts, eliminating the loss of detail after the application of Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA) technology.

 The Riftbreaker will be released in 2021 on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Steam already has a demo version of this action movie with construction, base protection and role-playing elements. Promised the Russian language in the form of subtitles.

Video: AMD told about ray tracing and VRS in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands

Earlier we wrote that the eighth addition to World of Warcraft called Shadowlands, along with DIRT 5 and Godfall, is included in a small number of games with support for ray tracing and other optimizations for new graphics cards Radeon RX 6000 due to participation in the partner program AMD. The company shared detailed video stories about cooperation with the developers of DIRT and Godfall, and now has released a video dedicated to Shadowlands.

Game producer John Night and technical director Frank Kowalkowski in the third episode of the AMD Radeon RX 6000 Partner Showcase cycle told about a number of new graphic technologies implemented in partnership with AMD specialists. For example, the game supports Variable Rate Shading 2 (VRS), which is designed to save graphics card resources and, as a result, improve performance. The technology allows to reduce the load when calculating peripheral objects, low-value zones or fast-moving parts of the scene, keeping the detail where it is most needed.

In addition, the popular MMORPG has also received DirectX Raytracing support for dynamic shadows based on hardware ray tracing. However, as in the case of Dirt 5 and Godfall, the difference cannot be called fundamental. By the way, AMD has not yet shown other effects based on tracing in games from its partners; for example, reflections. This could have been more spectacular, and NVIDIA usually focuses on reflections. Finally, in World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, the AMD FideltyFX Ambient Occlusion shading model was applied, resulting in significant performance improvements over similar past Blizzard implementations. The visual difference is difficult to notice. It seems that mainly from the cooperation with AMD will benefit the end players, who will get the most out of the new graphics cards with RDNA 2 architecture. By the way, the video mentioned that the high-speed 128 MB memory buffer of the new graphics cards, Infinity Cache, also contributes to the performance improvement. It's a pity that World of Warcraft: Shadowlands can't be called a visually rich game where you can actually see the performance gain on such powerful solutions. By the way, World of Warcraft: Shadowlands together with Godfall is included in the new promotional package « Join the game in all-around» for buyers of AMD Radeon RX 5000 in partner stores. In particular, players will receive both games if they purchase RX 5700 XT, RX 5700 and RX 5600 XT or only code for Godfall if they purchase RX 5500 XT.