Avalanche Studios: “Our Engine Is Evolving,” Experimenting With DX12 & Dynamic Tessellation


A couple of days ago, we had the pleasure of interviewing Avalanche Studios’ Alvar Jansson, Lead Graphics Programmer on Mad Max. When asked about the future of their engine, Alvar told us that the team is currently developing a new volumetric landscape system in the Avalanche Engine that will change what type of layouts we can have in open-world games.

Not only that, but the team is also working on implementing DX12 support to it (though we most probably won’t get a DX12 patch for Mad Max post-launch).

“The Avalanche Engine is definitely evolving. We’re developing a new volumetric landscape system that will change what type of layouts we can have in open-world games. A DX12 pipeline is also in the works, and we are researching different types of cluster-based shading. We are always aiming to support freedom and destructibility on a level that I think makes our games unique.”

Alvar also told us that Avalanche has a prototype of Dynamic Tessellation running on our upcoming landscape technology. In case you were not aware of, Dynamic Tessellation can solve pop-ins for environmental objects by varying their level of detail on the fly. And that’s definitely something that excite us for the next wave of current-gen/next-gen open-world titles.

“Dynamic tessellation is a very interesting tech. There has been some good looking examples of it being used to do detail in close-up meshes. We have a prototype of it running on our upcoming landscape technology.”

Our full interview with Alvar will go live later this week, so stay tuned for more!