Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart’s PC features include DirectStorage and extra ray tracing

rockpapershotgun.com:

It looked like the upcoming PC version of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart had already exhausted its supply of glossy, Windows-exclusive features to show off; we already knew it’s coming with DLSS, DLSS 3, FSR 2 and ray traced lighting and shadows. Turns out there’s plenty more, as port developers Nixxes Software have used a Sony blog post to detail quite a few new tech toys – including Rift Apart’s Microsoft DirectStorage 1.2 support.

DirectStorage is simultaneously one of the most exciting recent developments in gaming hardware, and one of the most underutilised: it basically adapts your PC’s process for reading data from an SSD or hard drive in a way that can massively reduce game loading times, but has so far only made it to prime time in Forspoken. I suppose the upside is that once Rift Apart is out on July 26th, DirectStorage’s compatible games list will increase by 100%?

The blog post, penned by Nixxes Online Community Specialist Julian Huijbregts, also announces that Rift Apart’s PC version will also get fully new ray-traced ambient occlusion effects and – for those without an suitably RT-capable graphics card – support for Intel XeGTAO. This is another form of ambient occlusion that, according to the post, should go easier on performance than conventional AO techniques like SSAO and HBAO+. Rift Apart will in fact be the very first game to release with XeGTAO up and running.

The post concludes with Rift Apart’s PC system requirements, which were already in the wild after the seemingly accidental publishing of a Steam announcement last week. Good thing I was too busy to write them up then so can just put them here now like it’s all brand new info, eh?

Those who also follow console gaming news might recall how Ratchet &