It's important to iterate on past concepts when creating sequels. The graphics team for Far Cry 4 was to lead on current-gen tech, which gave them constraints that affected a lot of our decisions throughout the project.
In this 2015 GDC session, Ubisoft Montreal's Stephen McAuley explains how the team rendered Kyrat, the world of Far Cry 4, and how it inspired the development of new graphical features to create a game that used the power of a new generation of hardware.
McAuley dives into a lot of technical concepts, like discussing how the high-resolution directional sky occlusion was implemented, and how the global illumination system was extended.
Programmers interested in learning how Far Cry 4's environment was rendered can now watch the talk completely free via the official GDC YouTube channel!
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