GIANTS Engine 9 Improvements in Farming Simulator 22
Thanks to the recent version of our own game engine Farming Simulator 22, you enjoy improved performance and graphics. The GIANTS Engine 9 is available with DirectX 12, Parallax Occlusion Mapping and much more. Thomas Brunner, Lead Software Engineer explains the improvements you can expect. Watch his introduction below!
Why do we use our own engine?
Just put, we need our game engine, so that you can farm on virtual fields exactly what we need to do. While other game engines are available for several games of a genre, such as shooters or race games, and may offer certain things or features, the features of our GIANTS Engine currently cannot be included, there are a whole host of other requirements, like extensive mods support, which no other game engine can have.
Without major adjustments a motor is simply not interchangeable. To use another engine for the farming simulator a lot of customization would be necessary. And finally, basically, we'd have our own custom engine, what we already use. We can also only offer the extent of modability, for example, with our own solution. If you want to know more about this, in his above presentation Thomas explains it in more detail.
What performance features can you expect?
For the PC version of Farming Simulator 22, you can enjoy the benefits of DirectX 12. We used DirectX 11/OpenGL in previous versions of the Farming Simulator. The latest DX12 allows developers to control the way their game interacts with CPU and GPU compared to DX11.
That means that GIANTS Engine 9 can manage resources and states directly so that we can control and manage them more effectively. In consequence, we have less overhead driver and more free CPU resources for other tasks.
Texture Streaming
In addition, we have added Texture Streaming to the GIANTS Engine. This enables us to dynamically load up or down the textures based on what is actually visible on the screen. In this way, we can bring even more objects into the world, and reduce the slots used per vehicle, because we no longer have to ensure that we can load the entire textures of every vehicle. Loading times are also reduced because fewer texture data need to be loaded at the beginning.
Occlusion Culling
Occlusion Culling is another important technique of optimization. It enables us to make worlds even more detailed. Occlusion Culling prevents the motor from carrying out any costly rendering of completely hidden objects. For example, boxes hidden behind a barn are not rendered until they are seen - to increase performance by resource saving.
What new graphics features can you expect?
Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA)
Temporary Anti-Aliasing Farming Simulator 22 features. It is a means of reducing undesirable rendering artifacts like jagged edges or flickering specular highlights using previous frame information. The GIANTS Engine 9 uses a TAA algorithm by default but can also be disabled for performance reasons or if you don't like the results.
In previous games, we activated MSAA as an anti-aliasing solution by default. TAA is faster than MSAA and usually results better. For example, MSAA improves only the quality of geometric borders, but TAA also reduces other objects, such as specular flickering highlights.
Parallax Occlusion Mapping
Parallax Occlusion will increase the detail and dynamicity of terrain and other surfaces of the game when the feature is activated in the settings. The result looks very realistic and adds depth to the game's surfaces. Just like the tire paths on your field, trenching in the ground for example. This was covered in another article. Find out more about Parallax Occlusion Mapping!
Improved Shadows
We made several shadow rendering improvements in the GIANTS Engine 9. One of the most remarkable changes is that we can now remove the shadows much further. This helps improve visual quality in the distance and makes your farms more natural and realistic.