If you didn’t know already, Umbra Software is a middleware company that specializes in providing occlusion culling solutions for video game developers. Their solutions have been utilized to speed up rendering for scenes in video games, with occlusion culling deciding which objects to render based on their visibility to the player. The company was present at this year’s GDC and they explained how Umbra 3 will be utilized in CD Projekt RED’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, along with its use in Oculus Rift for averaging 120 FPS easily. Interested readers can click here to know more.

We followed up with Umbra regarding DirectX 12 and how it would help the middleware’s occlusion techniques. “We haven’t really looked at DX12, but no, it won’t have any effect on our tech. Faster CPU’s help,” an Umbra representative said to GamingBolt.

That seems about in line with developer reactions to Stardock CEO’s Brad Wardell article about DirectX 12 effectively doubling Xbox One GPU speed (the API will be releasing next year for both the PC and the console). DirectX has always served as more of a communication interface between the hardware and game, thus allowing for increased efficiency in performance rather than physically changing the CPU/GPU speed in any way. As it stands, faster hardware indeed does help but DirectX 12 is helping to unlock the potential that said hardware brings. It is interesting to note that it won’t have any effect on techniques such as Umbra’s occlusion culling though but that’s a given.

We’re still very interested to see what Umbra 3 is capable of. If The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has told us anything till now, it’s that we’ve barely scratched the surface of what Umbra Software’s occlusion culling techniques are capable of. What are your thoughts on DirectX 12 having no effect on the tech? And how do you feel about Umbra in general? Let us know in the comments.

Umbra Software’s automated Occlusion culling is a method which makes sure only the objects seen by the camera are rendered, hence saving a lot of GPU/CPU compute process. This technology is being used in CD Projekt RED’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt [no wonder it looks stunning].

Umbra Software will be present at this year’s GDC and the technology’s lead programmer Jasin Bushnaief along with CD Projekt RED’s Engine Programmer Przemyslaw Czatrowski will be talking about how they are using Occlusion culling in the game. The session will also focus on how Umbra was required to develop a custom streaming and an LOD system in order to meet the game’s needs.

The sessions will take place on Thursday, March 20th 2014 at 2:30pm-3:30pm. For more on Umbra Software, check out our in-depth interview with the developers over here.

GDC will take place from March 17th to 21st in San Francisco. Are you looking forward to this session? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Nonetheless, when it comes to how much RAM is being used by each console for game development, which console is more beneficial when it comes to rapidly creating open worlds? We asked Thomas Puha, director of developer relations at Umbra which offers world creation solutions for games like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Destiny and other titles the same question.

We also asked, assuming that the Xbox One offers 5 GB DDR3 RAM for development and the PlayStation 4 using 7 GB DDR5 RAM, if there was a marked difference between what both consoles could achieve in creating worlds.

Puha stated that, “I cannot comment on how much memory the consoles use for their Operating Systems etc and how much is available for us developers, though the numbers are out there so…”

“Really, the more memory we have, the better. It’s as simple as that. Right now, as most developers are porting their current systems and engines to next-generation platforms, the engine pipelines cannot even take advantage of the PS4’s 8 gigs of super-fast RAM as we simply cannot push data fast enough into memory right now.

“So really at this point, everybody’s just really taking advantage of the memory to make life easier on making the first next-gen games, and then a few years down the the line you will see really memory, CPU optimized games just as in this generation. Right now on PS3 and Xbox 360 Umbra 3 data for a level can be between a 1-3 megabytes and on current gen every byte of memory counts.

“On next-gen, devs tell us right now it doesn’t matter if we take 30 or 80 megabytes, there’s plenty of RAM to spare. I’m pretty sure in a few years, memory will again be at a premium!

“At the end of the day, both systems are quite close to each other. I really think this generation will be about services and there I see a big challenge for Sony to step up and compete with Microsoft.”

An interesting view, but it’s pretty much in line with the common perception. First generation games for any console always lag behind in visual quality from games released several years into the console’s life-cycle. So will it be for the PS4 and Xbox One. However, when it comes to services, does Sony really need to step up and compete with Microsoft? Let us know what you think below.

Stay tuned for our complete interview for Umbra in the coming days.