Friday, November 13th 2020
AMD, Blizzard Showcase World of Warcraft: Shadowlands DXR
As part of its road towards release of their Radeon RX 6000 series, AMD has posted a video showcasing the raytracing effects that are being baked into World of Warcraft: Shadowlands. This comes as a result of a strategic partnership between the two companies. World of Warcraft: Shadowlands will be making use of AMD's FidelityFX Ambient Occlusion, where Blizzard says they were able to achieve "(...)a perfect balance between quality and performance..." which allowed them to achieve "(...)a significant performance advantage over our previous ambient occlusion applications."
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands will also be making use of DXR Raytracing technology as well as Variable Rate Shading (VRS). Raytracing is being used to calculate light interactions between light sources, objects and characters on the screen, while VRS will enable the game to reduce shading resolution on areas closer to the corners of the frame, or in fast-moving objects, where detail would be lost either way, to achieve higher frame rates. The higher the resolution, the more impactful the benefits of VRS. So it seems that Blizzard has decided to implement two performance-increasing and one performance-decreasing features available from the DXR repository. Catch the video explaining these features and showcasing their implementation after the break.
World of Warcraft: Shadowlands will also be making use of DXR Raytracing technology as well as Variable Rate Shading (VRS). Raytracing is being used to calculate light interactions between light sources, objects and characters on the screen, while VRS will enable the game to reduce shading resolution on areas closer to the corners of the frame, or in fast-moving objects, where detail would be lost either way, to achieve higher frame rates. The higher the resolution, the more impactful the benefits of VRS. So it seems that Blizzard has decided to implement two performance-increasing and one performance-decreasing features available from the DXR repository. Catch the video explaining these features and showcasing their implementation after the break.
41 Comments on AMD, Blizzard Showcase World of Warcraft: Shadowlands DXR
C'mon AMD, there are better ways of showcasing your latest tech, than picking the least evolving title from the most hated video game company of 2018-2020.
But I get what everyone is say they want to see a demo on a AAA title.
But that is just a guess on my part.
Me I'm probably done with WoW for good. I've tried it a few times the past year and I just can't get through Legion. It's really bad, but I hate the idea of a level boost even more.
It does have a pretty heavy performance penalty when there is a lot of NPCs around, so majority cities etc (but WoW has ALWAYS Been like that in major cities).
I play at 2K/144 and it'll take my FPS from 144cap down to 60-70fps in major cities sometimes even lower with raytracing on *any* of the 3 levels. Out in the world it goes back up to my gsync cap.
It's a barely noticeable difference half the time in the content i've seen, it *may* be more visible/noticeable in the actual shadowlands content rather than the "old world" due to it being newer and intended to have raytracing.Legion was fuckin epic, what ya talkin bout lol.
BFA was a freakin nightmare of godawful systems.
Going full-ham pathtraced lighting and such would ruin that.