Bethesda has released the 1.3 update to Fallout 4, and while the patch brings such useful features as the ability to rotate an object that’s being held or use a new menu to check the status of settlers, PC gamers - especially those owning nVidia cards - will have the option for radically improved graphics and physics.
For starters, the update brings the advanced version of Horizon Based Ambient Occlusion, HBAO+, which allows ambient occlusion shadows to be rendered far into the distance, resulting in deeper, richer shadows on every window, building edge and object. Players will be able to see the exact depths and heights of terrain, as well as different types of grass and small foliage.
Exclusive to nVidia card owners will be the “weapon debris” feature, which uses a high-end, GPU-accelerated particle rendering system powered by nVidia FleX. In regular Fallout 4, shooting soft surfaces such as the ground would cause debris to fly up then vanish. Players who own a card with nVidia FleX will have persistent debris and craters from weapon damage, all using physics, to boot. According to nVidia, ”at the highest detail level, up to 32768 rigid body particles are rendered.” And yes, the aforementioned HBAO+ will render every pebbles shadows as well.
The rest of the patch fixes glitches in gameplay and quests. For a full changelog, check out Bethesda Blog’s patch notes here.
