RATCHET & CLANK: RIFT APART

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

The intergalactic adventurers are back with a bang in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart! Go dimension-hopping with Ratchet and Clank as they venture onto a PC near you for the very first time. Help them take on an evil emperor from another reality as you jump between action-packed worlds and beyond.

At Nixxes, we are thrilled and honored to bring this iconic franchise to a new audience. If you haven’t played a game from this series before, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is an excellent one to start with. The game is a visual spectacle that is perfectly suitable for newcomers thanks to a standalone storyline and the introduction of two brand new characters: Rivet & Kit.

DirectStorage 1.2

To ensure a smooth dimension-hopping experience, our team implemented DirectStorage 1.2 in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart on PC, including GPU decompression.

Richard van der Laan, Senior Lead Programmer at Nixxes Software, explains: “To enable quick loading and instant transition between dimensions, the game needs to be able to load assets quickly. DirectStorage ensures quick loading times, and GPU decompression is used at high graphics settings to stream assets in the background while playing. Traditionally, this decompression is handled by the CPU, but at a certain point, there is an advantage to letting the GPU handle this, as this enables a higher bandwidth for streaming assets from storage to the graphics card. We use this to quickly load high-quality textures and environments with a high level of detail.”

Principal Programmer Alex Bartholomeus: “For Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart on PC, we added adaptive streaming based on live measurement of the available hardware bandwidth. This allows us to tailor the texture streaming strategy for the best possible texture streaming on any configuration. With DirectStorage, the use of a fast NVMe SSD and GPU decompression, this results in very responsive texture streaming even at the highest settings.”

DirectStorage is developed to fully utilize the speed of fast PCIe NVMe SSDs, but the technology is also compatible with SATA SSDs and even traditional hard disk drives. This means Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart on PC can use the same technology for loading data, regardless of the storage device in your system.

Ray-Traced Ambient Occlusion and XeGTAO

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart on PC features ray-traced reflections and newly added ray-traced shadows for natural outdoor light. Another option that further enhances the realism of light in the game is Ray-Traced Ambient Occlusion, with various quality levels to choose from.

Graphics Programmer Menno Bil explains: “Ambient occlusion is a technique used in games to simulate how ambient lighting affects a scene. Ambient lighting is a form of indirect lighting: the light reflected from other surfaces. This effect mostly appears at creases, cracks, and corners where surfaces are close to each other. Commonly used AO techniques are SSAO (Screen Space Ambient Occlusion) and HBAO+ (Horizon-Based Ambient Occlusion). These are not very demanding on the hardware, but they do not provide physically accurate results. RTAO utilizes ray tracing further to enhance the realism of ambient occlusion in the game. We have implemented RTAO as an addition for those with high-end systems with ray-tracing compatible hardware and processing power to spare.”

Menno and the team also implemented XeGTAO, Intel’s implementation of Ground-Truth Ambient Occlusion. Like SSAO and HBAO+, this solution is based on screen space. Therefore, this technique does not enable the level of realism that RTAO does, but the performance cost is much lower and comparable to that of the HBAO+ implementation. XeGTAO is selectable as an option in the game and works with graphics cards from all vendors.

“XeGTAO generates a very high-resolution ambient occlusion that shows even the smallest details in geometry,” says Bil. “Overall, the output quality of XeGTAO is very high and results in a pleasant look.”

Ultra-wide support

We know many PC gamers enjoy playing on ultra-wide monitors. For those, we added support for 21:9, 32:9 and up to 48:9 resolutions for triple monitor setups. Both gameplay and cutscenes are optimized for ultra-wide screens. This is possible thanks to our engineers, artists and QA team who have analyzed the game and adjusted all cinematics to ensure compatibility with panoramic aspect ratios.

PC features

• PC optimized graphics
  Witness the latest upscaling technologies, including NVIDIA DLSS 3, AMD FSR 2, Intel XeSS and Insomniac Games’ Temporal Injection. NVIDIA Reflex and image quality-enhancing NVIDIA DLAA are also supported. Tailor a variety of graphics quality options to a range of devices, from high-end PCs to portable PC gaming devices.
• Ultra-wide monitor support
  Wrap your eyes around delightful, diverse dimensions, with ultra-wide support for 21:9, 32:9, and 48:9 (triple monitor support) resolutions!*
• Ray-traced reflections and shadows
  See the omniverse brought to life with the option of unlocked frame rates! You can also enjoy ray-traced reflections, as well as newly added, ray-traced shadows for exteriors.**
• Controls and customization
  Play with the DualSense™ controller to experience haptic feedback and dynamic trigger effects.*** Or choose mouse and keyboard – with a wide range of control customization options.
• Includes support for achievements and cloud saves on PC game launchers.

* Compatible PC and display device required. 
** Compatible PC and graphics card required for enhanced graphics.
*** Wired connection required to experience the full range of in-game controller features.

© 2023 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC.

Developed and created by Insomniac Games, Inc. PC version by Nixxes Software BV.