Jim Kjellin and Andreas Larsson from Machine Games discuss Indiana Jones’s Hardware Ray Tracing with Digital Foundry’s Alex Battalglia ▉

Alex Battalglia from Digital Foundry does a fantastic sit down with Jim Kjellin and Andreas Larsson from Machine Games as well as Jacob Freeman from Nvidia. Alex does all the PC technical videos on the channel and is very good at explaining things so that everyone can understand what’s going on and why it matters.

This interview is no exception. Its technical but I don’t think it’s difficult to follow. It’s also a great example of why this is going to matter to single player, story driven games going forward.

It also goes to show that even in 2024, developers are still squeezing every ounce they can out of the hardware. I know that’s an unpopular take but anyone saying developers are lazy and intentionally not optimizing things doesn’t understand software development at all.

I love that when asked about being one of the first games to require 12GB of VRAM as well as bing the first major title shipping requiring hardware Ray Tracing, they took me down memory lane with Quake 3 Arena breaking new ground by requiring hardware Raster. As you can see in the video when it comes up, it looks crude but that was also 1999.

I keep saying it but only because I’m firmly of the belief that 2024 has been a year of a sort of line of demarcation in technology if you will. There are firm breaks happening and Indiana Jones is one example in that 8GB graphics cards are no longer in spec for modern games. I would push that to include 10GB cards as well and Nvidia’s silicon chops are only going to carry it so far. You can’t make up a lack of physical RAM in silicon. While for a completely different reason, Apple now requiring 8GB of RAM on all iPhones going forward and 16GB on all Macs underscores this. Microsoft doesn’t even offer a Surface with less than 16GB of RAM either, most likely for the same reason Apple bumped their specs (AI).

What’s fun is that it feels like the late 90’s all over again where game developers are putting their foot down and pushing new technologies forward, available hardware be damned. The even more impressive thing is that it’s still coming from the same place: idTech and id Software. Indiana Jones may not be an id Software title but it’s using idTech underneath.

I really truly cannot wait to see what’s in store for Doom: The Dark Ages.

> ▍