Bethesda Shows Off NVIDIA GameWorks Enhancements In Fallout 4

To further whet the appetites of an almost ravenous horde of Fallout ‘victims’, Bethesda shows off some of its artistic team’s latest screenshots of Fallout 4, utilizing NVIDIA’s graphics technology suite – GameWorks.

With a rather appealing selection of screenshots to drool over, Bethesda made mention of a number of technologies it will be using to enhance the look and feel (through ambiance) of its latest Fallout game. With a clear focus on the tech enthusiasts amongst us, the list of enhancements is impressive:

• Tiled Deferred Lighting
• Temporal Anti-Aliasing
• Screen Space Reflections
• Bokeh Depth of Field
• Screen Space Ambient Occlusion
• Height Fog
• Motion Blur
• Filmic Tonemapping
• Custom Skin and Hair Shading
• Dynamic Dismemberment using Hardware Tessellation
• Volumetric Lighting
• Gamma Correct Physically Based Shading

While many of the listed effects will be familiar or variants of existing ocular stimuli, ‘Dynamic Dismemberment’ certainly sounds entertaining. The main focus of the effects is on more realism through dynamic lights and ever more gritty textures – the sort that just makes you reach out and be disappointed by the silky smooth texture of your monitor.

Fallout 4 also wants to inspire through it’s amped-up volumetric lighting – or god-rays as they are often called. The ever shifting weather patterns will bring rain, and with that, more wet textures, and howling winds that will send physics calculations through the roof.

This is all being updated from the original creation engine used for the last Elder Scrolls game, Skyrim. Of course, with all the extra enhancements on graphics and a long history of expanding games, I think the modding community are going to be elated at the new tools and options that are likely to come with the updated engine.

Bethesda also made it clear that these effects are not exclusive to NVIDIA. Expect to see these working on Radeon cards too. Many of the screenshots look a little bit too polished for what the majority are going to see, but we’ll soon find out on November 10th, when Fallout 4 gets its international release.