Posted in: Epic Games, Fortnite, Games, Video Games | Tagged: epic games, Fortnite, xbox, Xbox Series X

Xbox Chats With Epic Games On Optimizing Fortnite For Xbox Series X

Published Sat, 14 Nov 2020 14:40:16 -0600

Last updated Sat, 14 Nov 2020 15:18:55 -0600

This week, Epic Games had a quick chat with Xbox Wire about how the company optimized Fortnite for the Xbox Series X/S. As the game makes its way onto the latest version of the Xbox, the company chatted with Ben Woodhouse, who is the Lead Console Programmer at Epic Games. In the Q&A they held they talked about upgrading the game for the console so that players get the most out of it with all of the enhancements Microsoft put into it. You can read a snippet from the interview below while the full chat can be found at the link above.

Now building forts and emote dancing look all that much more crisper, courtesy of Epic Games.

Q: Why did your development team choose to focus on dynamic visuals and physics as enhancement areas for Fortnite?

A: It goes without saying that we run at 4K and 60fps on Xbox Series X, and we've ramped up all the quality settings. But we wanted to go beyond the obvious visual upgrades and use some of the extra power to make the world feel more dynamic and alive. We added GPU fluid simulations for explosions and smoke and fire effects. These look great in motion and make the effects feel much more natural. We're also using GPU compute power to simulate physics fields. This allows us to generate shockwaves from grenade and rocket explosions, adding realistic motion to nearby grass and foliage and enhancing the gameplay.

We added raymarched volumetric clouds that have real depth. These look beautiful under different dynamic lighting conditions, especially when you're skydiving through them. The artists have made full use of the freedom the new hardware gives them. There's a host of new effects, for fire, elimination animations, and the storm. We're very happy to say that we managed to enable the vast majority of these features on Xbox Series S too. A few quality settings are lower than the Xbox Series X, but the main difference was simply resolution (Series S targets 1080p, whereas Series X outputs 4K).

On Xbox Series X|S, we use dynamic resolution and a new bleeding-edge temporal antialiasing algorithm (TAA2) to provide high-quality 4K output at 60fps, regardless of the GPU load. TAA2 will be a new feature in Unreal Engine 4.26.

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