Nvidia went to their GeForce blog again to demonstrate the optimizations they have in store for Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, for those PC fanatics who will be playing the game on Nvidia run computers. This is one for the tech freaks.
This follows their demonstration for Batman: Arkham Origins, which I wrote about here. It doesn’t seem like they made any special arrangements with Ubisoft for Black Flag like they did with Warner for Arkham Origins, but Nvidia have some effects to brag about nonetheless.
For example, Nvidia’s HBAO+ adds realistic ambient occlusion, which is fancy talk for approximating lighting and shadows as they appear in real life. In particular, HBAO+ boasts higher precision in simulating lighting around objects and surfaces that occlude it, superior to older techniques. Nvidia also has Percentage-Closer Soft Shadows, which improve image quality by adding contact hardening soft shadows throughout the game. Environmental lighting is improved even further with the use of high-precision light rays.
On another end, Nvidia’s TXAA provides a smoother, clearer image than other anti-aliasing solutions. Nvidia’s proprietary temporal filters are combined with high quality multisample anti-aliasing and post processes. If your computer has the additional VRAM and system RAM available, Nvidia will take full advantage to produce higher resolution textures, effects and assets. If your setup is 4K capable, you can play Black Flag at 4K, thanks to Nvidia.
Nvidia has seen it fit to even share some 3840 x 2160 and 1920 x 1080 screenshots to give you an idea of how good the game can look with its graphics cards. We have to tone down the quality of our sample here, but if you want to take a closer look, please click on to the source below.
Source: GeForce Blog