With Assassin’s Creed Unity seeing the series make the jump to the new generation of consoles we’re finally getting a game that makes better use of our humongous PCs. Ubisoft’s released a trailer that details the graphical lovelies we’ll see on PC.
I warn you now it’s all HBAO+ this and PCSS that. It looks well good, though.
So, if you’re running an Nvidia card you will be treated to HBAO+ (Horizon Base Ambient Occlusion) which is a fancy way of saying that even a statue’s nose will cast a shadow. If that’s what your gaming’s been missing you now have it.
You’ll also have TXAA (Temporal Anti Aliasing) which reduces flickering. Considering its name, I’m assuming this is by your computer travelling back in time to draw the frames it missed the first time around. Also, that ‘X’ has been thrown in there for no reason other than to make it sound more extreme.
And finally, PCSS (Percentage Closer Soft Shadows), which provide real time shadows with softer edges. When I asked Nvidia for an explanation of how they achieved this they sized me up for a technical know how and said “A wizard did it.”
Assassin’s Creed Unity’s release date is set for 11 November.