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
For a game like WoW, that would be a huge set back on the number of polygon each asset have. Also, there a way too few cards right now that support Ray Tracing with enough performance to make that possible.
But don't worry, that day will come. when? i don't know, but full ray traced AAA games will definitively happen at some point. Just dont know if it's in 2 years or 10 years.
Was this game always subscription based? $15/mo and out 2004 so $2880.00 not including upfront cost/expansions.
I'm not into wow at all but AMD should of reconsidered having this as their first demo of the tech.
BFA nearly broke me...
Shadowlands so far is off to a good, if frustrating start lol.
Seriously, though, do you know what is common between Minecraft and Quake?
They TOTALLY LACK LIGHT/SHADOW EFFECTS without RT.
And that is the big secret of the "RT hype", that new unseen visuals promise is, actually, falling short, but to add insult to injury, so is "ease of development" and if you add "it tanks your fps" into the mix, what have you got? Oh, wait, that CP2077:
Guess which of these shots are with RT and which without:
It just looks very visually simulating either way, I like shiny.
Squirrel!
As for "lack of shadows" without RT - this should only happen if you haven't prepared textures with baked shadows and are relying entirely on shadows generated from RT. And yes, it is an ease of use, because otherwise you'd have to bake new shadow maps each time you change something in the scene.
It comes at great cost right now but don't expect it to go away.
i think we maybe 2-3 year before there is a really beautiful RT game around that run somehow correctly.