Assassin’s Creed Shadows Development Demands: 2 Years of Effort and 2TB Data with Baked Lighting; Xbox Series X Shows Impressive Console Ray Tracing Performance

Insights into Assassin’s Creed Shadows and the Shift from Baked Lighting to Ray Tracing

Recent revelations from the Game Developer Conference have shed light on the evolutionary journey of lighting techniques in game development, particularly through the lens of Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows. This year’s event saw a compelling presentation by Nicolas Lopez, who detailed the challenges and innovations surrounding global illumination in the acclaimed series.

The Evolution of Lighting Techniques

As the complexity of game worlds increases, developers are moving away from traditional baked lighting methods. Lopez discussed how Assassin’s Creed Unity showcased one of the best instances of baked global illumination, which thrived in a confined environment with a static time of day. However, this technique poses significant limitations. If the developers had relied on similar methods for Assassin’s Creed Origins, the project would have necessitated a staggering 450 GB of lighting data and nearly three months for rendering. In contrast, with Assassin’s Creed Shadows, given its expansive world, the data requirement soars to 2 TB, translating to almost two years of processing time.

Choosing the Right Method for Global Illumination

Currently, the development team is harnessing a combination of baked global illumination and ray-traced global illumination, adjusting their approach based on evolving hardware capabilities. Yet, the ambition is clear: a stronger emphasis on ray tracing moving forward. This transition is prompted by the limitations inherent in baked lighting as game worlds become increasingly intricate and expansive.

Performance Insights on Ray Tracing

Lopez’s presentation also provided valuable metrics regarding the ray tracing performance of Assassin’s Creed Shadows across different platforms. Utilizing an RTX 4080 GPU for ray-traced global illumination and a PlayStation 5 Pro for ray-traced reflections, the performance figures revealed interesting contrasts. When using quarter resolution for ray-traced global illumination, the Xbox Series X demonstrated efficiency, clocking speeds of 4.30ms, compared to 5.00ms on the base PlayStation 5. Interestingly, the Xbox Series S performed even faster, benefiting from its native 900p resolution against the 1440p of its higher-end counterparts. However, the PlayStation 5 Pro uniquely supports ray-traced reflections, making direct comparisons with other consoles challenging.

Accessibility and Availability

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is currently available to players globally on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S, marking a significant step in integrating cutting-edge lighting technology into mainstream gaming.

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