2024 Feb: DLSS & Static Lighting!
DLSS & Static Lighting
Tune in for a roundup of the latest updates from February!
DLSS
We finally managed to implement the newest NVIDIA's DLSS 3.5 integration in nanos world! This brings us a big performance boost to the game (for RTX users)!
Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) is an NVIDIA RTX technology which uses deep learning neural networks and Tensor Cores on RTX GPUs to deliver faster frame rates, better image quality, and great responsiveness. It provides games with performance headroom to maximize quality settings and increase output resolution and enhances image quality for intense ray traced content.
The DLSS settings can be configured through a new video settings section in the menu:
DLSS Video Settings section
DLSS Super Resolution
DLSS Super Resolution uses AI to boost frame rates by rendering fewer pixels and reconstructing high resolution frames. This feature is available for all RTX GPUs.
Here you can see a comparison of before and then when activating DLSS SR setting:
DLSS SR OFF
DLSS SR Quality Preset
DLSS SR Performance Preset
We could notice a 50% FPS boost when using Performance Preset, and a 15% increase when using Quality Preset! Without any very noticeable visual degradation in the final result! Just by toggling a setting 🤯!
DLSS Frame Generation
DLSS Frame Generation uses AI to boost frame rates by generating additional high-quality frames, all while optimizing responsiveness with NVIDIA Reflex. DLSS Frame Generation uses the new Optical Flow Accelerator in GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs along with NVIDIA Tensor Cores. DLSS Frame Generation requires a GeForce RTX 40 Series GPU and a Reflex SDK integration.
We also integrated the Frame Generation technique from DLSS. Unfortunately this only works for RTX 40 Series, but it's a great thing to have for who can use it!
More to come
In the future, we will implement more DLSS integrations in the game, such as Ray Reconstruction and Reflex for example, these were just to start and test the integration!
Also, we will be looking to integrate AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution plugin to have AMD's users happy as well to in a future update 😉.
Static Lighting
nanos world now supports Static Lighting on your maps!
City Subway Train Modular Map (with baked Static Lights and 300 FPS)
And good news: after some tests, it didn't break compatibility with previously cooked assets and maps!
Awful Network & Sync Bug
We finally managed to find and fix a terrible bug that was haunting us for several years, it was very rare but when the whole game happened was crazy and inconsistent.
This was a problem where the clients were sending network packets all in Unreliable mode, always. This caused some network packets to be lost or discarded, or even arrive in wrong order. It was completely breaking the sync and the consistency of the server, because we need to make sure they arrive in order (and arrive indeed).
It was hard to debug because it mainly happened in extreme cases such as bad connection or when the network wire was completely full.
One of the non-obvious consequences of this bug was the massive "safe called methods warning" (reported on this issue), which was how we managed to reproduce and find the bug!
Many likely many other strange bugs, sync issues and inconsistencies will were solved with this fix as well 🙏.
Miscellaneous
Some other minor things we added.
Console Password
We added a new server console command: password allowing it to be easily changed in runtime!
Menu Low Pass Filter
The escape menu has been improved with a new effect when opening it, before it was reducing the pitch and the volume, which caused some weird (and funny) effect to the game sound. But now we implemented a proper low pass filter to it, which makes it a better effect when opening it during gameplay:
Escape Menu with Low Pass Filter
Conclusion
We had some setbacks in the past months and we are just writing this News Blog now! A lot is happening but nothing is being left behind, quite the opposite: we are working hard to give a strong turn to continue the heavy work we always been doing!
Thanks for continuing to support us, your energies and cheers are extremely important for us to keep working and developing this game of our dreams!
We are planning much more great news for nanos world! Soon™! See you next time! Thank you so much!