Horizon Forbidden West Expansion’s Impressive Cloud Tech Is a Big Reason It’s PS5 Only
Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores is right around the corner, but Guerrilla made the expansion PS5 exclusive for Clouds – literally.
Senior Community Manager Naae Lee wrote: playstation blog The developers upgraded the cloud system to make the game’s open-world cloudscapes look more realistic, but only as far as the PS5 could handle.
Principal FX Artist Andrew Schneider and Tech Programmer Nathan Voss extended the cloud system they developed for Horizon Zero Dawn in 2015 with voxel technology. This technology is supported in Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores, as well as time-of-day changes and realistic animations. Players can fly through the clouds as if they were in Cloud 9 and complete side his quests with Sunwing.
“The cloud system we developed for Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West does not store clouds as 3D objects, but rather instructions for creating 3D clouds from limited 2D information. It was fast because we were doing it,” says Schneider. “The PlayStation 5 can handle larger datasets, so after Forbidden West was wrapped, we were able to meet our quality standards and actually create voxel clouds that allow players to fly through highly detailed cloud formations. I started working on the renderer prototype.”
The developers achieved this by creating what Schneider called “Frankencloudscapes”. It includes a large cloud formation that serves as both a background element and an explorable environment. We then tested quality and performance by compressing huge amounts of voxel data to speed up the cloud rendering process and optimizing the PS5 code to bring the output below the current cost of cloud systems.
The PS5 has hardware capable of handling that much cloud power, so don’t be too disappointed by the PS4’s lack of DLC.
Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores is coming to PS5 on April 19th.
Christina Alexander is a freelance writer for IGN. She has contributed her work to various publications including Digital Trends, TheGamer, Twinfinite, Mega Visions and The Escapist. To paraphrase Calvin Harris, she has her love for Sonic the Hedgehog up her sleeve like a big deal – follow her on her Twitter @SonicPrincess15.
