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Ubisoft - We Care About the PC...Really

by Aubrielle, 2016-01-24 01:25:46

In a conversation about the upcoming RPG-ish Tom Clancy game, The Division, Ubisoft Massive, the game's developer, says "PC is incredibly important to us."

Creative Director Magnus Jansén released the following statement to Rock, Paper, Shotgun in a lengthy interview on The Division:

PC is incredibly important to us. There are plenty of incentives to do a good PC version. Personally it’s important – a I play on PC whenever I can and I want the thing they play at home to be the best possible version. That is not to be underestimated as a driving force. Secondly, both of the studios, Massive and Red Storm started out on PC so it’s a matter of pride, or heritage and pedigree if you will. We feel kind of ashamed if we don’t do the PC version really well. It really is something that we care about.

We’re a very technical studio as well. Sweden is a very technical country – we’re good at infrastructure and design, and a lot of our staff come from the old demoscene as well. There’s a lot of that heritage in the Swedish dev community and that is true here at Massive as well. It comes very natural to us. The engine, Snowdrop, enables the artists to do all of that great UI work and makes it relatively easy to expose all of those options on PC.

Ubisoft Massive also shared a fact sheet highlighting the main PC features of The Division.

  • Flexible user interface: move, scale and adjust the opacity of the HUD.
  • Intuitive controls: navigate easily through the interface, inventory panels and map designed specifically to be used with a mouse or a controller.
  • Full mouse & keyboard support: opt for the high precision mouse and keyboard experience and switch to a controller in the middle of any encounter without interruption.
  • Text chat: team up with more agents of The Division by using the in-game text chat.
  • Optimized graphic settings & customised GPU effects: adjust a vast variety of technology treats, from realistic lighting, shading, snow particles, local reflection, fog volumetric scattering, depth of field and much more…
  • Multi-GPU support: unleash the graphic power of the best computer set ups for jaw-dropping graphics powered by Massive Entertainment’s game engine Snowdrop.
  • Multi-screen support: play with up to three screens for the most immersive and stunning experience of The Division.
  • Multi-resolutions: opt for 1080p or 4k and automatically adapt the resolution to fit multi-screen configurations with FOV correction.
  • Unlocked framerate: let the most powerful computer reach the highest framerate.
  • HBA0+: enjoy the most realistic shadowing, lighting algorithm and ambient occlusion.

There’s more, though. NVIDIA confirmed that The Division will also feature NVIDIA PCSS (Percentage Closer Soft Shadows); those are contact-hardening, realistic soft shadows that progressively soften as the distance from the casting object increases, further increasing realism.

There’s even support for certain LED keyboards. For example, the button mapped to your medkit will begin to flash when you’re low on health. You can also map a key for teammates, and that will flash too when they are in need of support.

...

Respected German website PCGamesHardware seems to agree. In a hands-on preview posted just yesterday, they said that the game on PC looks so much better than the console versions that it’s worlds apart, and there hasn’t been such a drastic difference in a very long time.

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