World Of Warships is making water prettier, as all video games should
Water is more important than any other graphics guff
To hell with raytracing. Nuts to your HDR. And VR, more like Very Rubbish. No, the only future graphics technology which matters is pretty water. One of the few games to understand this is Sea Of Thieves, home to some of the prettiest virtuawater you ever did see, while so many others neglect their duty to show me pretty fake water. So today I'm delighted to see that the next big World Of Warships update brings a graphics overhaul including pretty new water. It is pretty! Not Sea Of Thieves-grade pretty, but certainly a better use of resources than goggles.
That video shows off the new prettiness from 5:40. And the developers explain in a blog post (with GIFs and many pictures) that they fancied water up a bit last year, and now have returned for another pass.
"In Update 0.10.1, we reworked the way in which sun glitters on the water's surface with a sun path on the water," they say. "We improved the quality of reflections, waves, and areas with calm winds. Increased the amplitude and speed of waves on several maps." Important water business right there. They've also created pretty seabeds.
The update will also overhaul the look of the world above water with new land textures, new flora (and more flora), new animations for birds and flags and things, new fire effects, new fog, and more. But who cares about land? No one I trust.
I suppose Update 0.10.1 will also have new ships and the temporary return of Arms Race mode and other stuff, but that's not nearly as important. Don't they know this game is a looking-at-water simulator?
Servers will go down to roll out the patch Thursday morn. See this post for more details on that and other non-water newness. Ugh! Does seem wasteful to put resources into new boats when they could focus on making water even prettier.