New World's latest post touches on some interesting topics if the technical side of games is of interest to you. The newsletter touches on improvements made to performance, as well as a look ahead at possible DirectX 12 implementation and the technologies that opens up for the studio.
In the post to the New World website, one of the AZoth Engine team leads, Mike Boccieri, touched on a variety of topics concerning the game engine and performance. As part of this Q&A, Boccieri discusses development towards DirectX 12 support, and the technologies that can unlock for the New World team.
While reminding readers that DX12 isn't a "magic bullet" to fix performance issues in the MMO, it does have the potential for better performance and graphical fidelity. Though Boccieri mentions that transitioning to DX12 can open up different "challenges" because of how the API works.
"A DX12 update alone - to the contrary of some online opinions - is in no way a "magic bullet" for performance optimization. If anything it can present new challenges toward performance optimization because the core technology leaves much of the control of the system hardware in the hands of the graphics engine. Previously, a game could reasonably rely on the DirectX11 API to handle giving you resource allocations at the OS level. With DirectX12, now you have to build your own methods for handling those resources within your game engine."
Boccieri also touched on DLSS support and whether or not the team is looking at implementing Nvidia's tech into the MMO. DLSS is often used by developers as a way to improve performance, especially in ray-tracing titles. In order for New World to get DLSS support, though, the team would need to get the MMO running on DX12. That said, it, and eventually ray-tracing support, are of "interest" to the studio. Curiously, no mention of AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution was mentioned here.
"DLSS support is dependent on implementing DirectX12 support, so we will investigate DLSS support in greater depth once we've brought DX12 to at least a beta-ready state for players. We have several technology possibilities that we can unlock on the other side of our initial DX12 delivery: DLSS, ray-tracing support, etc. These are both possible and of interest to us."
Earlier today, New World also dropped the latest Forged In Aeternum video, this time with the team responsible for the backend of New World's infrastructure. They talk about the QA process, character transfers, and the "not so glamourous" side of the systems they build that power New World. Check it out in the embed below.
