A radical improvement to Guild Wars 2 is coming

Very soon the popular MMORPG Guild Wars 2 will receive the Visions of Eternity expansion, and along with it a substantial graphics update. This was recently announced by the ArenaNet studio staff responsible for the game's development. In particular, shadows will be improved at all quality levels except low, their resolution will be increased for current systems, and the anti-aliasing technology will be polished. Gamers will be able to enjoy the graphical changes at the same time the long-awaited DLC is uploaded to the servers.

Progress never stands still, and every game developer understands this. MMORPGs are especially sensitive to aging, as they exist for ten or more years, steadily growing older over time. That’s why it’s vital to improve the graphical component — and the designers at ArenaNet decided to start with shadows, since the lower their quality, the less three-dimensionality there is in the 3D world. The tweaks will affect all settings except the lowest, so owners of outdated PCs can still enjoy the lands of Tyria. So-called cascade shadow maps have already been created, changing the image depending on the position of light sources and their distance from the shaded object.

The resolution of the new cascade maps will be increased from 512x512 to 1024x1024 on medium settings and from 1024x1024 to 2048x2048 on high and ultra. Since this technology interacts unevenly with pixels, anti-aliasing is necessary so that better shading doesn’t cause a “stair-step” effect on object edges. To solve the problem, the developers are applying discrete Poisson sampling. You’ll be able to judge the results of ArenaNet’s efforts on October 28.