Tom Clancy’s The Division has been billed as a game that is going to look really good when it finally releases. Now with just two months away, we’re getting some more information on just how Ubisoft’s latest game is going to look pretty good. One of the biggest draws in the game is going to be the Snowdrop engine that was built from the ground up in order to make the game.
It appears that Ubisoft is going to be showing off some more tech at GDC 2016, just ahead of the game’s eventual release. One of the most interesting aspects of the tech used to run the game, outside of the new engine is the use of PBR. As has been pointed out by other developers working in this realm, lighting can be quite a bit more realistic as it now follows close physics approximations of what light actually should behave in the real world. An additional benefit is also to alleviate the work of artists during development.
The company has also been talking about the dynamic Global Illumination system. The engine’s radiance transfer probes and allows real-time bounce lighting from completely dynamic light sources. All of that means that in the end, the light inside the game is quite a bit more realistic than what we have seen in games that are currently on the market. Photorealism is the goal for most games in 2016 and Ubisoft is working hard to get that with even the smaller touches like having light react how it would in the real world. Tom Clancy’s The Division releases on March 8, 2016.