World of Warcraft's New Patch Introduces NVIDIA HBAO+ & Other Graphics Upgrades

PRESS RELEASE

| Source: Nvidia Author: Mark Campbell

World of Warcraft's New Patch Introduces NVIDIA HBAO+ & Other Graphics Upgrades

World of Warcraft is the world's most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game, and today it gets even better with the release of Patch 6.1, which adds new graphics options in addition to gameplay changes, colourblind features, and a whole lot more. Of these new graphics options, "SSAO Ultra" will have the biggest impact on World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor's expansive worlds, adding immersive NVIDIA GameWorks HBAO+ Ambient Occlusion shadowing game-wide.

Compared to "SSAO High", Ultra's HBAO+ shadows are more accurate and realistic, and free of aliasing and artifacts. Click the images below to load our interactive comparisons, where you can see the improvements for yourself.



(NVIDIA HBAO+ greatly improves image quality, most evidently in object-filled cities and towns where players congregate.)



(HBAO+ can help reveal depth in detailed objects and world geometry, further improving image quality.)



(Foliage benefits from HBAO+'s improved accuracy and fidelity, too.)

A further four examples of World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor's "SSAO Ultra" NVIDIA HBAO+ enhancements can be seen by clicking the thumbnails below.

In addition to HBAO+, World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor Patch 6.1 introduces Multisample Anti-Aliasing (MSAA) to the DirectX 11 game client, giving players with more powerful hardware the ability to significantly reduce the visibility of jagged, aliased edges. By adding MSAA, World of Warcraft is now also compatible with NVIDIA Multi-Frame Sampled Anti-Aliasing (MFAA), a new anti-aliasing technique exclusive 2nd Generation Maxwell GPUs, like the GeForce GTX 980, 970 and 960, which reduces the performance impact of MSAA by 10-30%. This gives gamers more performance, and the option to reinvest that performance in extra eye candy.

Talking of extra eye candy, the additions to World of Warcraft's graphics don't end at MSAA and MFAA as Patch 6.1 also sees the introduction of Supersampling, a high-quality anti-aliasing and image-improving effect that works similarly to NVIDIA Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR). Last but not least, there's a new lighting option, too, which illuminates game features around lanterns and other light sources, further improving image quality.

If you're now wondering how to enable these many effects, and whether they'll work on your system, don't fret. Our handy dandy GeForce Experience application can automatically enable and configure them for you with a single click, getting you ready for action in an instant. GeForce Experience can also update your drivers, record gameplay with ShadowPlay, stream your gameplay to Twitch, and stream the game itself for remote play using GameStream, making it an essential application for all GeForce GTX PCs.

Together, the numerous graphics enhancements in World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor Patch 6.1 make the venerable MMORPG sharper, more detailed, more realistic, and more immersive. And for those with high-end systems, World of Warcraft can now be enjoyed with HBAO+, MFAA, Supersampling, andDSR enabled simultaneously for unprecedented fidelity running at an effective 7680x4320. Jump into the European servers now to see for yourself.

My Thoughts

Adding Nvidia features to World of Warcraft is a wise business move for them. As many of you know WoW has a very large subscriber base, which is currently around 23.4 million at present, while this is only 2/3 of it's peak size which it achieved in 2010 it is still a very large group of gamers to market to.

While WoW isn't what most gamers would call a demanding game, Nvidia are now marketing that the game will play the best and look the best on Nvidia hardware. MFAA (Multi-Frame Anti-Aliasing) will allow Nvidia users to to decrease the load on the GPU compared to traditional AA solutions and Nvidia HBAO+ and DSR will allow users with more powerful hardware be able to put it to good use.

While it is hard to tell how long World of Warcraft has left as the king of MMOs, it will almost certainly be entertaining a large number of players for a long time to come.

Join the discussion on World of Warcraft adding Nvidia HBAO+ and other graphical upgrades to the OC3D Forums.

World of Warcraft Patch 6.1 brings NVIDIA HBAO+ Effects & Other Graphics Upgrades. http://t.co/B934oivFU5 pic.twitter.com/hGZYDObu1O — OC3D (@OC3D) February 25, 2015

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