Fallout 4 is out next week. Everyone around these parts is mighty excited. In preparation of the big launch on November 10, Bethesda has released a new blog post (with sexy new Fallout 4 screens) detailing how the game’s updated Creation engine makes nuclear armageddon downright sumptuous.
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Now try to contain yourself, but the big addition to the engine, which once powered Skyrim, is a physically based deferred renderer. I could try to explain it and utterly confuse us all, or I could hand the mic over to Bethesda to help set you straight:
“This new renderer allows us to add many more dynamic lights to every scene, and paint our surfaces with realistic materials,” said the studio writing on its official blog. “We want objects and characters in the world to feel tactile and grounded, and a big part of that is ensuring that these materials are distinct – that metal reflects light in a distinct manner from wood, for example.”
Weather will also look super purdy, with a dynamic day/night cycle and volumetric lighting helping to give Boston that delicious doomsday feel. “To create that volumetric light spilling across the scene (sometimes called “god rays”) we worked with our friends at NVIDIA, who’ve we worked with dating back to Morrowind’s cutting-edge water. The technique used here runs on the GPU and leverages hardware tessellation.”
I’m sure this will all look lovely in action, but you’ll excuse me if I’m a tad terrified by god rays after Far Cry 4’s blisteringly bright take on the effect damn near singed my corneas.
A fuller list of the updates Fallout 4 brings to the Creation engine can be found in handy bullet point form below:
- 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
Hurry up, November 10.