As part of this week’s EVE: Valkyrie update, which includes AI improvements, balance tweaks, and stability fixes, the game has also received some visual optimisations courtesy of Nvidia VRWorks. Suitable for higher-spec Nvidia cards (GTX 1070 and above), the new ‘Ultra Settings’ option enables ‘God rays’, improved cockpit lighting and projectile effects.
The latest ‘2017_R3’ patch for EVE: Valkyrie rolled out yesterday, detailed on the game’s official site. According to an Nvidia press release, it is Valkyrie’s support for VRWorks’ Lens Matched Shading rendering technique (only possible on the Pascal architecture) that maintains the level of performance required to render these higher quality visuals.
CCP Games have incorporated Nvidia Volumetric Lighting to achieve the ‘God rays’ effect, along with a new anti-aliasing technique developed by Nvidia called ‘Multi-Sample G-Buffer Anti-Aliasing’, which reduces visible aliasing of geometry edges and specular highlights. ‘Ultra Settings’ also improves the fidelity of reflections and shaders, adds dynamic lights to projectiles, and upgrades the lighting and shadowing “in every area and level”.
Many more PC VR games could see Nvidia-specific visual enhancements, as VRWorks is now supported in both Unreal Engine 4.16 and Unity 2017.1.