The comms continue to rumble forth from New World; just last week, we had a fresh pair of development videos, and over the weekend the studio posted the Happenings from Aeternum community newsletter, which has gathered up some of those recent videos and offered some new insights regarding the MMO’s performance improvement plans.
This portion of the newsletter provides answers from AZoth Engine team lead Mike Boccieri, who provides some in-depth answers to player questions about New World’s performance. Boccieri first begins by talking about implementation of DirectX 12, which he explains has not been applied primarily because he and other studio leaders want to ensure tech updates benefit devs as much as players. Boccieri also argues that DX12 “is in no way a ‘magic bullet’ for performance optimization” despite online opinion stating the contrary. With that in mind, the studio is still working on integrating the renderer with a focus on making the transition comfortable for developers.
That’s not to suggest that performance improvements aren’t a focus: Boccieri discusses how his team continues to look at ways of making the MMO perform better, and he points out that most optimization issues are CPU-bound rather than GPU-specific. It’s here that Boccieri promises some “significant” changes to the game client’s streaming technology that will arrive with upcoming content releases, while the 2.0.2 update will address hitched frames.
Finally, Boccieri discusses integration of DLSS technology, which once again circles back to DX12 integration steps. He also warns against players “oversimplifying the narrative” of how API updates change game performance, while also believing that there’s more improvements that can be made whether New World runs in DX11 or DX12.
