The Division 2: Technical interview - DX12 again faster than DX11
The Division 2 is just around the corner. Reason enough to talk about technology topics. PCGH was able to conduct an e-mail interview with the Technical Director Calle Lejdfors at Ubisoft Massive. Here are the answers.
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Ubisoft Massive releases The Division 2 on March 15 and the developer / publisher has a close partnership with AMD. We talked to Technical Director Calle Lejdfors about the Snowdrop engine, the anti-cheat measures, the netcode and other technical issues.
➤ PC Games Hardware: For The Division 2 you want to rebuild Washington D.C. as real as possible and true to scale. Also, The Division 2 offers compared to its predecessor significantly more visual variety in the environments and a very high object density. Do you need to incorporate changes to the engine? What do these look like?
Calle Lejdfors (Ubisoft): We have improvements to the engine in more ways that I can possibly remember. Among the stand-outs are support for GIS and LIDAR data, allowing us to use real-world data like that used in GPS's to reconstruct Washington DC accurately. We updated the render pipeline to support HDR displays and, while doing so, also changed the internal lighting model leading to more accurate, better looking visuals. We also added support for great looking water, terrain, reflections, skin shading, fog/volumetrics, better skies, etc.We have a lot of improvements to the engine
➤ PC Games Hardware: The Division was one of the early games with Direct-X-12 support and was able to impress with an improved performance over DX11 in our tests. Are you still using the API and are you using advanced, performance-enhancing features such as Rapid Packed Math, Async Compute or Variable Rate Shading?
Calle Lejdfors (Ubisoft): Yes, we are still very much supporting DX12 and in TCTD2, DX12 performance over DX11 should be even better. This is in large part due to us making better use of Async Compute to parallelize more graphics work to ensure maximal GPU utilization. When it comes to performance, we are not pulling any punches and will make use of all tools in the toolbox. The only thing we do not yet have is variable rate shading, but rest assured that is an active area of research for future performance improvements.
➤ PC Games Hardware: The Division used some very advanced effects like temporal supersampling, very nice screen-space-reflections and sophisticated physics and shaders to show small details like dynamic snow on vehicles. Can tell us something about their function and usage in The Division 2?
Calle Lejdfors (Ubisoft): TTemporal super sampling is still very much a core feature of the render pipeline, allowing us to improve quality greatly in a large number of effects. It also enables us to run the render pipeline at a lower (or higher) resolution that the display, leading to better performance or better visuals.
Since we are now in a summer setting and quite some time has passed, we have repurposed the dynamic snow to act as a dust overlay used for abandoned indoor locations. We are also using it for the telltale yellow powder visuals of the Dark Zone.
➤ PC Games Hardware:4) Can you explain to us how DC's various districts were so authentically implemented in the game? Did you use photogrammetry? What tricks do you use to make the world seem alive and threatening?the Snowdrop engine now has support for importing GIS and LIDAR data
Calle Lejdfors (Ubisoft): As I said above, the Snowdrop engine now has support for importing GIS and LIDAR data. This enables us to very quickly create a 1-to-1 scale version of DC. This present-day version is then what we base our version of a post-calamity DC on. This support is not limited to only roads and houses, but also the placement of garage entrances, lamp posts, and all the way down to individual road side trees. We do use photogrammetry to produce authentic textures and assets.
However, our living, exciting, and threatening version of DC to our players is the work of a lot of very talented, dedicated, and creative people, including everything from writers, artists, mission designers, programmers, sound effect specialists, composers, and so on. The only "trick" we use is to make sure that the people doing the work can do so in the most efficient way possible, ensuring that they can express their creativity in the most direct manner possible, regardless of position.
➤ PC Games Hardware: Is there one or more technical aspects that you are particularly proud of?
Calle Lejdfors (Ubisoft): The Division 2 and Snowdrop is the product of a large number of extremely talented people. Just the sheer complexity of bringing a game of the scope of The Division 2 is a monumental achievement of which I am very proud indeed. If I had to pick one thing, that would be the performance and quality of the visuals, but then again I might be biased having been deeply involved in that work before becoming the Technical Director for the project...(laughs)
➤ PC Games Hardware: The Division 1 appeared on the PC virtually without any anti-cheat system. Later server-side queries followed, to recognize the coarsest cheats and punish the players accordingly. RPM modifications (faster shots) and Aimbots e.g. still can be found in the game. Do you have plans for an improved anti-cheat system in The Division 2?
Calle Lejdfors (Ubisoft): We are taking cheating very seriously, and if there is something we have learned running The Division live it is that effective anti-cheat is something that needs to be considered at every step of the development process. For The Division 2 we are taking great care to strengthen our cheat detection. I cannot go into extensive details, but we will have more accurate server-side tracking, better technology for dealing with individual skills, and improvements to client-side tamper detection. A lot of these efforts have the added bonus of also improving lag and over all tolerance of network behavior.We are taking cheating very seriously.
➤ PC Games Hardware: Players complained for years about the servers and related netcode of The Division 1. In missions, there were always synchronization problems in the use of skills, especially with healings. In the Dark Zone players could "hang around". The situation has improved since the release, but is not perfect yet. Do you have any plans to further improve the server infrastructure or the netcode?
Calle Lejdfors (Ubisoft): In short, a resounding Yes! Issues generally classified as "netcode" can be due to a large variety of sources, and going into details how we are combatting those different problems is not possible. However, I can say that we are looking at everything from how skills are constructed on the design-side to using alternative network protocols to make the situation be drastically better this time around.
➤ PC Games Hardware: Destruction physics in The Division is already very strong. In the unveiling trailer for The Division (1) at E3 2013, the developers went even further than in the final game - signs and tarpaulins, for example, could be shot through (remember the iconic spot on the police station). Will the destructive physics in The Division 2 be further developed? If so, to what extent?
Calle Lejdfors (Ubisoft): The core of the fully procedural destruction tech remains very similar. We will make sure that destruction for The Division 2 is more consistent and that everything can be shot at and will break in an appropriate way. I wish we could take it even further, but the online aspects of The Division 2 puts some physical speed-of-light type limitations on what we can realistically do. For example, sending enough data to accurately represent large scale destruction events is simply not feasibly due to lack of end-user bandwidth for most users.
➤ PC Games Hardware: Thanks for the interview!
