What does ambient occlusion do

More technically, VXAO converts pixelated objects on the screen into voxels, which are 3D, cube-shaped pixels, hence the term voxel ambient occlusion. As a result of their 3D structure, voxels can estimate the dimensions of certain geometrical objects inside games, which results in precise and sleek light and shadow rendering. On the other hand, Ray Tracing , as a more recent technology, focuses on more factors including the geometry of different shapes and objects, surfaces, and light to render accurate and realistic shadows.

In other words, the approximation of lighting and shadows is only performed within the camera view field. Currently, not many gamers are able to use Ray Tracing , mostly because the feature is native to RTX , , and RX cards, and only a handful of games support this next-generation feature.

However, as the gaming industry continues to progress, more games will undoubtedly support this technology. Ambient occlusion is a technology that calculates and approximates the appropriate brightness in the in-game lighting, bringing players closer to reality in the digital world.

Different types of ambient occlusion have been developed throughout the years alongside new graphics cards. The primary reason is the demand it places on your GPU. Companies want to reach as many players as possible and not everyone has the latest GPU on their computers.

This can make it very difficult for a really intensive game to do well. This can most likely be attributed to one of the reasons that the Crysis series isn't doing as well as it once was. With time, other graphics effects have arisen that, while not necessarily delivering the exact same effect as ambient occlusion, create similar feelings of wonder.

Effects like distortion and bloom lighting create a realistic ambiance that makes the player feel like they are a part of the world. The best part is that it isn't nearly as taxing on your system. Bethesda's Skyrim is a really good illustration of these effects. It's now even playable in VR. The short answer is not really. Ambient occlusion is cool but ultimately a gimmick. I previously spoke about how there are other techniques besides ambient occlusion that make games and movies look good.

But the truth is that there are many factors that go into why a movie or game does well. Timing, story, content, and proper management of DLC also come into play. EA is a good example of why other things matter besides just looks. Star Wars Battle Front 2 missed its initial sales target because of the numerous microtransactions that hindered the gameplay and gave paying players an advantage.

While it was certainly a visually stunning game, it wasn't enough to save it and EA eventually had to address the microtransactions to remain successful.

Other games like 2D platformer Shovel Knight rely on a unique twist of action, nostalgia, and humor to bring in huge amounts of players. All of these are reminders that you can't rely on just one aspect to sell a game and that it takes a unique blend of design, graphics, and story to become successful.

There is absolutely no doubt that ambient occlusion is a really cool and great looking feature. There is also no doubt that GPU technology is improving year after year. So what does that mean for the future of ambient occlusion? It's tough to say but, as I stated earlier, gaming engines still support it, even if it's not currently widely implemented. Personally, I believe that ambient occlusion belongs on the big screen. It's true that something that you watch is created much different than something that you play.

In a movie, you aren't worried about the player looking in an unintended direction. There are no algorithms that have to predict what the player might do. Gamers are also notorious for purposely trying to find glitches in games, and these glitches may have the possibility to break your game and cause unintended issues. Without AO left Note that the shadow in the left image is caused by directional light, with AO right.

In traditional Ray Tracing ambient occlusion is simulated by sampling rays from a certain point, which takes a shape of a hemisphere, and then is checked for intersection with the scene also called Object Space AO. Because the ray tracing sampling technique is too slow to be used in real time computer graphics, other methods emerged that simulate this behavior.

SSAO is a screen-space technique developed by Crytek. The ambient occlusion is computed in a full-screen pass, using the Z-buffer as the only input.

The ambient occlusion factor kA of each pixel is estimated by testing a set of points distributed in a hemi-sphere around the pixel's location.

This effectively simulates the traditional ray tracing approach in screen space. The value of kA depends on the samples that are in front of the value in the Z-buffer. If half or more of the samples pass a depth test that is, they arec closer to the camera than the center pixel , then kA receives a value of 1. A smaller number of samples result kA less than 1. Ambient occlusion usually means applying data that represents how much ambient light hits a surface.

That data is usually a gray scale texture or vertex colors depending on the implementation. To compute the data the most common way is the render the scene with with a solid white texture and 1 point light multiple times, moving the point light each time to a different location on a sphere or hemisphere. The results of all the renders are averaged and that gives you the data about each particular location in the scene and how much light hits that location.

For example a place in the scene that in always bright no matter where you put the light will be bright where as a place that is dark no matter where you put the light will be dark. The result is that you get something that will put dark shadows in crevices and cracks and soft lighting where objects would generally cast a shadow. Ambient occlusion is a method to compute lighting on a surface of an object that takes into account light brightness due to occlusion of the surface in relation to light source.

Here is a bit of a simplified explanation. Ambient occlusion is a neat trick way of simulating global lighting which is faster than other methods we have so far. It is the least demanding out of all kinds of ambient occlusion, although the actual quality of the effect can vary greatly from game to game based on how well the developers implemented it.

These two technologies belong to Nvidia and AMD, respectively, and thus perform better on their own graphics cards. These two types of AO are fairly similar, both offer higher-quality ambient occlusion, but with a higher performance hit. However, they are not as commonly implemented in games as SSAO is. Today, however, the negative effect on performance is hardly noticeable due to the advanced GPU architectures used in modern graphics cards.