Alan Wake 2 Dev Talks Integration of Mesh Shaders & DLSS 3.5, Explains Work Graphs Importance in Future Games

wccftech.com:

Hot on the heels of the tech-focused chat with Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt RED we published earlier this week, today we've got another brief technical talk with Alan Wake 2 developer Remedy Entertainment. The second triple-A game to implement path tracing after CP2077, Alan Wake 2 stunned once again with the latest evolution of the Northlight engine, delivering what has been described by some as the most visually impressive game made to date, and that's also largely true for the non-path traced version (which runs pretty well even on mid-range PCs).

After the praiseworthy launch, Remedy took some time to go through the specific advancements introduced to the Northlight engine compared to the previous outing (2019's Control). We still had a few follow-up questions, though, and we sent them to the studio for answering. While they couldn't respond to all of them, we received three hefty replies on big topics like the Mesh Shaders and DLSS 3.5 integration in Alan Wake 2, as well as a comment on the huge potential performance benefit of Work Graphs in future games.

How important was the integration of Mesh Shaders to the overall visual splendor seen in Alan Wake 2? Why do you think developers are only just starting to implement the feature despite the fact that it has been supported since Turing's launch in 2018?

Tatu Aalto, Lead Graphics Programmer, Remedy Entertainment: To achieve high geometric detail on rendering, it is crucial to select very accurately the geometry that contributes to the image and only draw that. When combined with GPU-based occlusion culling, mesh shaders provide a very efficient and simple framework to use GPU power where it matters. On Alan Wake 2, we not only started using mesh shaders but