Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart PC will feature support for DirectStorage 1.2, GPU decompression, ray-traced ambient occlusion, and Intel XeGTAO, Nixxes Software and Insomniac Games have announced ahead of the port’s July 26 release. The former duo, which is being accelerated by NVIDIA RTX IO, is set to deliver a more pleasant experience for players via faster loading times, while ray-traced ambient occlusion (RTAO) is being coupled with ray-traced reflections and newly added ray-traced shadows to ensure greater visuals than the PS5 release. XeGTAO, a version of Ground-Truth Ambient Occlusion from Intel, can also be enabled in the game for those who are seeking a less-demanding alternative to RTAO. (Details regarding ray-tracing support for AMD GPUs are coming soon.)
“To enable quick loading and instant transition between dimensions, the game needs to be able to load assets quickly. DirectStorage ensures quick loading times, and GPU decompression is used at high graphics settings to stream assets in the background while playing,” said Richard van der Laan, Senior Lead Programmer at Nixxes Software. “Traditionally, this decompression is handled by the CPU, but at a certain point, there is an advantage to letting the GPU handle this, as this enables a higher bandwidth for streaming assets from storage to the graphics card. We use this to quickly load high-quality textures and environments with a high level of detail.”
“For Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart on PC, we added adaptive streaming based on live measurement of the available hardware bandwidth,” said Principal Programmer Alex Bartholomeus. “This allows us to tailor the texture streaming strategy for the best possible texture streaming on any configuration. With DirectStorage, the use of a fast NVMe SSD and GPU decompression, this results in very responsive texture streaming even at the highest settings.”
“Ambient occlusion is a technique used in games to simulate how ambient lighting affects a scene,” explained Graphics Programmer Menno Bil. “Ambient lighting is a form of indirect lighting: the light reflected from other surfaces. This effect mostly appears at creases, cracks, and corners where surfaces are close to each other. Commonly used AO techniques are SSAO (Screen Space Ambient Occlusion) and HBAO+ (Horizon-Based Ambient Occlusion). These are not very demanding on the hardware, but they do not provide physically accurate results. RTAO utilizes ray tracing further to enhance the realism of ambient occlusion in the game. We have implemented RTAO as an addition for those with high-end systems with ray-tracing compatible hardware and processing power to spare.”
Discussion (5 replies)
Join Discussion →It's a stupid little platformer game, isn't it? Why does it need any of this?
It's a third-person shooter with platforming sections.
Still hoping for another good port like Spider-Man Remastered was. Still just so dang happy to see this game coming to PC. It was one of the ones I was waiting for. I recall @Denpepe not caring for it though.
Did Forspoken use DirectStorage 1.1? If I recall from DF's testing, the game did at least have faster loading than the 9th-gen consoles, but it still wasn't using the full-blown version of DirectStorage. I wonder how DirectStorage usage will turn out for this game. Well I can't fully make use of it anyways, cuz I don't use Win11 and I don't have any PCIe 4.0 drives. Some of these 9th-gen games have blistering load times on consoles, so it's nice to be able to get those games on PC and not have worse loading.
I wasn't even aware Intel had their own AO.
[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.thefpsreview.com/2023/07/13/ratchet-clank-rift-apart-specs-recommend-32-gb-of-ram-for-ultimate-ray-tracing-ssd-recommended/[/URL]
Sounds like Nixxes continuing from where they left off with Spider-Man Remastered. Being a console game it was light on RT stuff, I think just reflections and shadows. Looks like the PC version also adds RT AO. Whatever we can get that's better than on the console versions, I appreciate, no matter how small.
I had a 1080 Ti when I played Spider-Man Remastered so I stuck with IGTI and it looked very good. With an RTX 3090 I didn't need the performance boost from DLSS at 1440p (also in that game I am very CPU-limited). I doubt I will need it for Rift Apart either. Still, I like to experiment with sh1t, so I will probably still try out DLSS2, FRS2 and XeSS just to see how they present the image. But in general I avoid upscaling techniques unless I absolutely need the performance. I sure as f*ck needed the help of DLSS for Portal RTX.
I don't have a DualSense so I didn't get to see what it was like for Spider-Man Remastered on PC. I might borrow one when I play Rift Apart on PC, just to see what it's like using the exclusive DualSense features. Insomniac has made decent use of even stupid sh1t like SIXAXIS motion in the past. I've messed around with a few PS5 games that use the adapter triggers, and it was kinda interesting. Insomniac usually puts more effort into using the features of Sony controllers, so might be interesting to check it out. Still, I mostly stick with Xbox-family controllers, I tend to prefer their layouts and ergonomics. I haven't spent much time with a DualSense controller, but I could NOT stand every single other generation of PlayStation controller. Everything before the DualShock 1, and the entire DualShock family. DualSense at least seems pretty decent compared to those. Spider-Man Remastered played just fine with XBSX controller though. I ain't gonna go outta my way to check out a DualSense with Rift Apart. In any case, it will be a long time before I get around to Rift Apart, so what controller I'm gonna use for it is not even remotely a concern at this point. Still, very glad to see the game on PC, one less reason to get a PS5. Keep those exclusives coming to PC.
Spider-Man Remastered had nVidia Reflex. I went through the game on the 1080 Ti so I didn't have access to it then. When I got the 3090 I tried it. There was a slight improvement in input response, but it wasn't anything to write home about, and it's not like the game really needed it to begin with. Still, doesn't hurt to just leave it on. I'll f*ck around widdit for Rift Apart too and see how it works out there. I'm guessing it's gonna be the same case as Spider-Man Remastered.
At least on PC we get cloud saves for free, unlike on Sony systems. Of course I still make manual local backups.
I'm a big fan of tghe R&C series (https://forums.thefpsreview.com/threads/sony-is-rumored-to-be-releasing-its-next-triple-a-game-for-pc-sometime-in-july.12727/post-71839), but I don't know much about Rift Apart, so I will probably check this out:
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I assume DF will also be doing a video for the PC version.
NVIDIA Reflex is really good to use if you're pushing high frame rates, since screens are fast enough these days to outpace input latency in a lot of cases. I noticed a minor difference as you did in my use case where I'm usually at sub-100 FPS, but I never noticed any downside, so I turn it on whenever it's available.
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Related article: https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2023-can-ratchet-and-clank-rift-apart-on-pc-match-and-exceed-the-ps5-experience
(haven't seen or read yet)