NVIDIA Touts its GameWorks Technologies for Lords of the Fallen, AC: Unity & The Crew

NVIDIA has been heavily promoting its GameWorks program this week, and with the weekend upon us, I thought it’d be a good idea to take a look at what’s been revealed so far. Before that, though, it might help to understand what GameWorks is, and why NVIDIA deems it to be so important. To help with that, Rev Lebaredian, the company’s Senior Director of Engineering for Content & Technology took to a blog post to lay it all out on the table.

We’ve seen many GameWorks technologies before, and chances are some of them, you didn’t even realize fell under the GameWorks umbrella. Take TXAA and HBAO+ for example, and of course things like PhysX, fluids, and particles. When a game developer decides to take advantage of GameWorks, they pick and choose which features would work the best in their game; while NVIDIA is adamant that all of its GameWorks features are easy to implement, we won’t see a game with “everything” simply due to the amount of development time it’d require. Thus, all of the forthgaming GameWorks-infused titles just put a couple of features to work.

Earlier this week, NVIDIA announced that Lords of the Fallen, released earlier this week, takes huge advantage of particles, as well as PhysX Clothing – which is pretty self-explanatory. It also uses PhysX Destruction, which I’m a big fan of, especially in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel.

Another title being worked over by GameWorks will probably come as no surprise at all: Assassin’s Creed: Unity. I saw this game in action at NVIDIA’s Maxwell press event last month, and I was simply blown away. While Ubisoft has been taking a lot of crap lately for catering to console gamers and ignoring PC gamers, the game I saw in action was simply the best-looking title I think I’ve ever seen. The detail, especially when standing atop a rooftop, was seriously impressive.

Unity makes use of HBAO+, TXAA, PCSS (percentage closer soft shadows), and tessellation.

Last but not least is the game I’ve been looking forward to ever since its announcement: The Crew. This is a game that I’d like to consider “Test Drive Unlimited 3“, as much of the development team from the last TDU title is working on this one, and while I haven’t touched the betas, I’ve heard from many different sources that The Crew lives up to what TDU fans would hope for.

The Crew makes use of both HBAO+ and TXAA, and as you’ll see in the above video, both can make a dramatic improvement to the scene. Oy, I cannot wait for this one.

Something tells me that NVIDIA’s not done talking about GameWorks-enhanced titles coming out before the end-of-the-year. If I happen to be right on that, you can expect a follow-up.