Posted on Monday, September 30 2013 @ 18:01 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
NVIDIA has uploaded the GeForce 331.40 beta drivers, you can download them
over here. This new release promises better performance in the Battlefield 4 beta, which kicks off tomorrow, and introduces a new ambient occlusion method called HBAO+. You can see a demonstration of HBAO+
over here.
331.40 beta also includes a major update to our NVIDIA Control Panel Ambient Occlusion feature, which allows you to apply fidelity-enhancing, realistic shading and shadowing to games that do not natively support Ambient Occlusion. With a few simple clicks, you can greatly increase the image quality of your favorite games, and now, with 331.40 beta, the quality of the Ambient Occlusion shading will be significantly higher thanks to the introduction of HBAO+.
In this interactive comparison, note how the HBAO+ Ambient Occlusion shadowing is far more accurate, sitting correctly on and around objects in a non-uniform fashion. Also note the fence-like area towards the rear of the image. With HBAO, the technique’s poor sampling quality results in the area being uniformly shadowed.
Debuted in Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Blacklist, HBAO+ is a new, NVIDIA-developed Ambient Occlusion technique that utilizes the latest technologies to dramatically increase the precision, fidelity, and rendering speed of high-quality AO. For further details on HBAO+, please visit our HBAO+ technology page, and for more info on Ambient Occlusion itself, please head here. To implement HBAO+ in a DX9 or DX11 game, simply replicate the following settings in the NVIDIA Control Panel.
Rounding out 331.40 beta is a whole host of profile updates, adding new SLI profiles, updating existing SLI profiles, adding new Ambient Occlusion profiles, and updating other profile elements for optimum game experiences:
Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag – Updated Profile
Batman: Arkham Origins – Updated SLI Profile
Battlefield 3 – Updated Surround Profile
Battlefield 4 – Updated Surround Profile, Added SLI Profile
Crisis – Added SLI Profile
Crysis 3 – Added AO Profile
Dirty Bomb – Added DX9 SLI Profile
Dying Light – Added DX11 SLI Profile
F1 2013 – Updated SLI Profile
FIFA 14 – Added SLI Profile, Added AO Profile
Natural Selection 2 – Added DX11 SLI Profile
Outlast – Added DX9 SLI Profile
Space Hulk – Updated Profile
Splinter Cell: Blacklist – Updated SLI Profile
State of Decay – Added DX9 SLI Profile
Watch Dogs – Added DX11 SLI Profile
