The Xbox series has been on the market for two months and some games are already making use of a good range of the new technologies from these machines. This is the case, for example, with the titles in the Gears license. In the fifth episode of the series, the textures or shadows and lights, as well as the arrival of 60 FPS in the cutscenes, have been improved. The same improvements also appeared in the strategy game title. Gear tactics. But that’s not all.
VRS Tier 2: Késako?
In fact, we learned from a post on the DirectX development blog that the two games are now benefiting from it VRS level 2. As a reminder, the acronym matches Variable rate shadingA technology that allows the information of an object on the screen to be modulated as required. This can be in terms of its position, its meaning in a scene, or its speed. The interest is to free up resources for the important elements that require a high level of fidelity and to facilitate the others. Like any new technology, it is rarely fully mastered from the start. Because of this, the titles that support the VRS only did so at the first level. Forza Horizon 4 is a good example of a game that supports level 2.
What exactly are the profits and the contribution of this second level? Well, it’s mostly performance gains. In fact, Tier 2 is up to 14% more efficient with no visual impact. The second advantage is the precision and functionality. When Tier 1 has worked for each object individually, the second layer works for the entire rendering. This brings so-called better granularity and thus a reproduction that is more true to the original. To illustrate this you can see the difference in the two pictures below:
In the future, more and more games will use this technology. All of this is made possible by the DirectX12 Ultimate support on the Xbox series X | S. Just like AMD and Nvidia graphics cards on the latest generation PC. We can’t wait for future Xbox Game Studios productions to get the most out of our consoles!
