World of Tanks players can enjoy another one of the War Stories campaigns today as “Runaway Tiger” launches on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Xbox 360, and enjoy an alternate history story in the game.

Supposing a history where the Allies have broken into a German production facility, players control French Resistance fighter Durieux, capture a prototype of the Panzer VI tank and deliver it to the Allied Forces. This is the fifth campaign to launch for the game under the War Stories banner, and can now be enjoyed for free.

Wargaming continues to build new content onto their World of Tanks game, and that rolling support means that we’re not likely to see a sequel, at least for now. Previously, Wargaming has said they would consider a Nintendo Switch version if the user base got big enough. Given that the Switch just hit a major milestone, that might be the next story out of Wargaming.

The Xbox One X is a powerful system, and it is a joy seeing games in all their 4K glory running on it. It is clear that initial fears about developers not utilizing its hardware, or only doing so to a token extent, were unfounded, too- it seems like they are legitimately excited to bring their games up to speed on the new console.

One of these developers is Wargaming, whose World of Tanks remains one of the most popular games in the world right now. World of Tanks has been enhanced for the Xbox One X- and speaking to Microsoft, TJ Wagner, Creative Director and Executive Producer admitted that just the prospect of showcasing the game in 4K and HDR on the Xbox One X was exciting enough for them as developers.

“Being able to render the full detail of the source assets for tanks and environments all at 4K resolution and with HDR lighting improvements is enough excitement in itself – plus it is very rewarding not only for us developers, but also for the players out there, as they can see what we have achieved on this great piece of hardware,” he said.

It’s good to see developers taking to the Xbox One X- the PS4 Pro, in contrast, had a more muted response and consequent uptake among developers last year. It seems like Microsoft’s more radical new hardware has galvanized the developer community far more.

Wargaming’s World of Tanks may not always receive the most hype but it’s still one of the biggest free to play titles in the world. On PC alone, there are 130 million registered players and considering the game has been getting more popular since releasing in 2010, that’s no small achievement.

The question then becomes whether Wargaming would look into a potential sequel. GameSpot discussed this at PAX Aus with Wargaming regional publishing director Alex de Giorgio who flat out denied that World of Tanks 2 would be happening. “World of Tanks 2? No.”

The reasoning is obvious – World of Tanks is seen as a games-as-a-service title that will be expanded and updated continuously. “It’s this constant evolution; that’s been the hallmark of the game,” said de Giorgio explained as he explained that a sequel “doesn’t really make sense to us.”

Other developers who have taken similar stances include Brendan Greene with PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Psyonix with Rocket League. Considering these games thrive on giving player’s some form of progression, transferring all of that over into a sequel would be tough (along with the financial issues that creating a sequel from the ground-up could cause). As it stands, World of Tanks will continue to receive updates which is good news for its burgeoning player base.

To begin with, can you please tell us about the engine that World of Tanks is running on?

World of Tanks Console uses the Despair client engine, developed internally by Wargaming-Chicago Baltimore, in combination with Wargaming’s BigWorld server technology.

What kind of improvements have you made to the engine in terms of physical based rendering, global illumination and lighting?

Our renderer uses a physically-based model which preserves high dynamic range values throughout the entire pipeline.  We were one of the first games to support HDR display output on the PS4, PS4 Pro, and Xbox One S, and of course we will support HDR display output on the Xbox One X (Scorpio) at launch.

"World of Tanks PC is developed independently from World of Tanks Console, so there’s no direct comparison between the two. "

The PS4 Pro version runs the game at 3200 x 1800 resolution. What kind of challenges you went through to achieve this?

We discussed the PS4 Pro extensively with Sony before and during our development effort so that we could maximize the performance of the game on the new hardware.  It was important to us not just to use the raw additional power of the PS4 Pro, but also to understand and take advantage of new features which could affect performance in very specific ways.  We constantly update our game with new content, so the biggest ongoing challenge is maximizing visual quality and performance on both the PS4 and the PS4 Pro with minimal disruption to our artists’ workflow.

Along with a boost to resolution, what other improvements were implemented in the PS4 Pro version?

Although the primary visual improvement for the PS4 Pro was the resolution increase, we made additional changes to improve shadow quality, ambient occlusion, and level of detail.  In addition, for those players who have a PS4 Pro without a 4K television, we use the extra GPU power to improve our antialiasing at 1080p.

World of Tanks PC is developed independently from World of Tanks Console, so there’s no direct comparison between the two.  When comparing the PS4 Pro version to the base PS4, though, we’ve kept the differences strictly to the visual improvements described above because it’s important to us to maintain a consistent user experience.  There are no new features that only exist on the PS4 Pro.

Mark Cerny, the lead engineer of the PlayStation 4 Pro claims that converting a base PS4 game to PS4 Pro version is just 0.2 Or 0.3% of the overall effort. Your thoughts on this?

It’s nearly impossible to measure some piece of work as a percentage of the overall effort of developing an entire game, so I don’t think we can speak to the accuracy of those numbers.  The level of effort required was what we would consider reasonable for a new hardware platform, though.

"The increase in power from the base Xbox One to the Xbox One X is a close match for what is required to bring a 1080p game up to 4K, so without significant additional renderer changes it’s not enough to also increase framerate from 30 fps to 60 fps."

Please share your thoughts on the advanced work distributor in PS4 Pro along with new Polaris features like Delta color compression.

Work distribution on the GPU generally happens automatically, so we see better work distribution just as improved GPU performance without requiring any manual effort.  Delta color compression is different because we do have to choose when to use it.  It benefits certain portions of the game rendering more than others, making it a useful optimization but not a game changer in terms of overall GPU performance.

Furthermore, the PS4 Pro’s capability run multiple wave fronts on the GPU compute units…has this benefitted development in any way?

Our renderer uses compute shaders extensively, so improvements to compute hardware provide a broad performance benefit for us.

In a recent Reddit AMA, the development team claimed you could potentially run the game at native 4K on the Xbox One X . I find that comment interesting because the Xbox One X has been designed as a native 4K console to begin with. But do you think it’s capable to run the game not only in 4K but at Ultra PC settings and that too at 60fps?

The increase in power from the base Xbox One to the Xbox One X is a close match for what is required to bring a 1080p game up to 4K, so without significant additional renderer changes it’s not enough to also increase framerate from 30 fps to 60 fps.

As for graphics settings, because we’re a console title we don’t have user-configurable “Ultra” settings but our artists work hard to ensure the game looks amazing on all of our supported consoles.

What kind of advantages does the PS4 Pro’s 2X16 bit operations have over the Xbox One X?

World of Tanks Console is at 30 frames per second on all consoles, including the PS4 Pro.  We’ve found that the ability of the PS4 Pro shader hardware to perform two simultaneous 16-bit operations is, like the earlier answer about delta color compression, a feature which is very useful for some parts of rendering but does not by itself result in significant framerate increases.

"We’ve actually found the CPU and GPU improvements to complement each other quite well.  Increasing the resolution from 1080p to 4K uses much of the additional power of the GPU but has basically no effect on the CPU."

Xbox One X has a ton of memory on board (12GB in total and 9GB of that is available for games). Do you think high-end PC game developers such as yourself, will now be setting your PC memory requirements even higher in the future due to Xbox One X offering even higher memory allocations?

World of Tanks PC is developed independently from World of Tanks Console, so improvements to console hardware won’t have any effect on them.  For World of Tanks Console, though, the additional memory on the Xbox One X gives us the ability to render more higher-resolution textures than we’ve ever been able to do before!

The Xbox One X has undergone minor but noticeable improvements on the CPU front but Microsoft’s push for DirectX12 for GPU seems to have done a lot of good for the console’s GPU. But do you think the somewhat mediocre improvement in CPU will hold back the Xbox One X?

We’ve actually found the CPU and GPU improvements to complement each other quite well.  Increasing the resolution from 1080p to 4K uses much of the additional power of the GPU but has basically no effect on the CPU.  With those extra pixels available to display fine detail, though, we’ve chosen to extend our LOD ranges so that more objects render in the distance.  That kind of change has CPU cost that is a good fit for the improved hardware there.

But given the PS4 Pro’s half step improvement over the existing PS4, how difficult was it, exactly, to get the game to achieve its enhanced visuals and resolution of 3200x1800p on it? Did the developers feel constrained by the hardware at all?

Speaking to GamingBolt, Chris McCue, Technical Director of the game, talked about the challenges that were inherent to bringing it to Sony’s new console.

“We discussed the PS4 Pro extensively with Sony before and during our development effort so that we could maximize the performance of the game on the new hardware,” McCue said. “It was important to us not just to use the raw additional power of the PS4 Pro, but also to understand and take advantage of new features which could affect performance in very specific ways.  We constantly update our game with new content, so the biggest ongoing challenge is maximizing visual quality and performance on both the PS4 and the PS4 Pro with minimal disruption to our artists’ workflow.”

It sounds like just a simple up-res job was not enough for these folks- they wanted to truly understand the hardware and leverage it properly. World of Tanks looks great on the PS4 Pro, so I feel like they have achieved that, and then some. Until the Xbox One X launches, the PS4 Pro version of the game will remain the best looking console version of the game on the market.

The ever popular free to play tank action game World of Tanks by Wargaming might end up coming to Nintendo’s hybrid console- if it continues to gain an install base, at least. Speaking in an interview published by GamesTM #191, Wargaming’s Senior Game Designer Darold Higa said that install base remains the primary consideration in bringing the game to Nintendo’s surging platform.

“Everybody is asking me this question and it’s not like we don’t have a lot of Switches in the office,” Higa said, explaining that the developers love the Switch. “Because World of Tanks is free-to-play and because we don’t have an ‘in’ on that ecosystem we have to see what the install base is. It has to reach a certain install base before we can include it [in our plans]. The way it works is that, because we aren’t selling a retail product, we do need a large number of players to support the cost of implementing the platform,” he continued, explaining that for a free to play game like theirs, it is important for there to be numbers to sustain the volumes necessary to make the product sustainable and viable.

“It’s more just a question of, we have to have an economically viable product. That’s why we have to watch the numbers real closely, and the executive team is always keeping track,” he said.

He also confirmed that from a hardware perspective, the Switch is more than capable of running the game. “Our engineers would spend the time to make it work. But that’s the thing, we have to make sure that we have enough budget to make sure that they can spend the time to make it work,” he said. Which should come as no surprise to anyone- after all, it did run on the Xbox 360, and the witch is several times more powerful than that system.

Until such time as the game does launch on the Switch, however, if it ever does, the best you can do is pick it up for yourself on the PS4, Xbox One, or PC.

[via WCCFTech]

Have you ever wondered exactly much effort goes into optimizing a game for the PlayStation 4 Pro? For that matter, is it possible that a developer could offer some benefit to the PS4 Pro version of a game that isn’t on other platforms? Granted, this varies from developer to developer but it was still interesting to speak to World of Tanks technical director Chris McCue for his thoughts on these questions.

We know that the PS4 Pro offers a higher resolution for PS4 titles but what other improvements were seen, especially when it comes to World of Tanks? McCue noted that, “Although the primary visual improvement for the PS4 Pro was the resolution increase, we made additional changes to improve shadow quality, ambient occlusion, and level of detail. In addition, for those players who have a PS4 Pro without a 4K television, we use the extra GPU power to improve our antialiasing at 1080p.”

McCue did confirm that there’s no direct comparison between the PC and PS4 Pro versions. “World of Tanks PC is developed independently from World of Tanks console, so there’s no direct comparison between the two. When comparing the PS4 Pro version to the base PS4, though, we’ve kept the differences strictly to the visual improvements described above because it’s important to us to maintain a consistent user experience. There are no new features that only exist on the PS4 Pro.”

PS4 Pro lead engineer Mark Cerny stated quite a while back that the overall effort to convert a PS4 title to PS4 Pro was roughly 0.2 to 0.3 percent of overall effort. Of course, since that depends on the developer and the resources available, we asked McCue if more work was needed than that.

He replied that, “It’s nearly impossible to measure some piece of work as a percentage of the overall effort of developing an entire game, so I don’t think we can speak to the accuracy of those numbers. The level of effort required was what we would consider reasonable for a new hardware platform, though.”

At the end of the day, the PS4 Pro is still a fairly powerful console but it’s obviously not the next big leap for the brand. Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter even predicted that it will become the base PS4 model in the next few years with the PlayStation 5 bringing true native 4K to the forefront. What are your thoughts on the PS4 Pro and the amount of effort to optimize PS4 titles for it? Let us know in the comments below.

In the midst of the Xbox One X hype, where does the PS4 Pro currently fit in? Looking at sales for the PS4, that’s not something Sony will have restless nights about it. With more than 60 million units sold since launch and strong software sales, Sony is more or less in the driver’s seat.

But that doesn’t mean the PS4 Pro has been ignored. At launch, Sony implemented an advanced work distributor with the console and new Polaris features like Delta colour compression. How does a developer take advantage of these things? We spoke to World of Tanks technical director Chris McCue about the same.

“Work distribution on the GPU generally happens automatically, so we see better work distribution just as improved GPU performance without requiring any manual effort. Delta color compression is different because we do have to choose when to use it. It benefits certain portions of the game rendering more than others, making it a useful optimization but not a game changer in terms of overall GPU performance.”

Given that the PS4 Pro is capable of handling 2×16 bit operations, which allowed Wargaming to achieve 60 FPS on the console, what advantage would this offer over the Xbox One X which doesn’t?

“World of Tanks console is at 30 frames per second on all consoles, including the PS4 Pro. We’ve found that the ability of the PS4 Pro shader hardware to perform two simultaneous 16-bit operations is, like the earlier answer about delta color compression, a feature which is very useful for some parts of rendering but does not by itself result in significant framerate increases,” said McCue.

So while the PS4 Pro may be useful in many ways, it’s not going to reinvent the GPU wheel – a criticism the console has been facing since its announcement. It’s even more pronounced now with the Xbox One X’s GPU and the huge leap forward it takes over the Xbox One.

Regardless, what are your thoughts on all of this? Let us know in the comments below. The Xbox One X is slated to launch on November 7th worldwide so we’ll find out for ourselves how it compares to the PS4 Pro.

While the Xbox One X represents a significant leap forward for consoles, how does it affect the development of PC games? When you consider how much additional power is there, will developers who work on multiple platforms – or even just for the PC and Xbox One – see the latter influencing the former?

GamingBolt spoke to World of Tanks technical director Chris McCue about the overall memory of the Xbox One X and how 9 GB of GDDR5 RAM was allotted to games. With World of Tanks making significant advancements over the years, will Wargaming look to up its PC memory requirements in the future as a result of the Xbox One X’s higher memory?

McCue revealed that since both the PC and Xbox One X versions were developed independently that this wouldn’t be the case. “World of Tanks PC is developed independently from World of Tanks console, so improvements to console hardware won’t have any effect on them. For World of Tanks console, though, the additional memory on the Scorpio gives us the ability to render more higher-resolution textures than we’ve ever been able to do before!”

The development team has already stated that World of Tanks will run in 4K on the Xbox One X. That being said, can the studio pull of graphical settings equivalent to the PC version’s Ultra settings and run it at 60 FPS?

McCue noted that, “The increase in power from the base Xbox One to the Scorpio is a close match for what is required to bring a 1080p game up to 4K, so without significant additional renderer changes it’s not enough to also increase framerate from 30 fps to 60 fps.

“As for graphics settings, because we’re a console title we don’t have user-configurable ‘Ultra’ settings but our artists work hard to ensure the game looks amazing on all of our supported consoles.”

Xbox One X arrives on November 7th for $499. What are your thoughts on its impact for pre-existing Xbox One titles? Let us know in the comments.

Though Microsoft’s Xbox One has been touted as the “most powerful console ever” – and make no mistake, it certainly is – there are some noticeable imbalances in its hardware. While the 12 GB GDDR5 RAM and GPU are certainly stellar, the processor seems to only be marginally better than the Xbox One. Though you could attribute this to Microsoft wanting to keep costs down, it certainly seems more like a half-step of sorts rather than a big leap forward. Or is it?

GamingBolt posed this question to Wargaming technical director Chris McCue, who’s worked on the free to play title World of Tanks. World of Tanks will certainly run in 4K on the Xbox One X but what are McCue’s thoughts on the Xbox One X’s CPU? Will it really hold back the console?

He replied that, “We’ve actually found the CPU and GPU improvements to complement each other quite well. Increasing the resolution from 1080p to 4K uses much of the additional power of the GPU but has basically no effect on the CPU. With those extra pixels available to display fine detail, though, we’ve chosen to extend our LOD ranges so that more objects render in the distance. That kind of change has CPU cost that is a good fit for the improved hardware there.”

Of course this is one example and we’ll have to see how other games, especially those like Forza Motorsport 7 which run in native 4K/60 FPS, will effectively exploit the Xbox One X’s hardware. The console is out on November 7th worldwide for $499.