How we improved the graphics of World of Tanks Blitz for modern smartphones and tablets

FROMMade the game more realistic and did not lose users World of Tanks Blitz has a tradition to release a big update on the birthday of the project. This year was no exception: quite recently the game was updated to version 8.0, which visually made mobile “Tanks” even more realistic. Today I, together with Alexei Cherepanov, will talk about what I managed to implement in the new patch, how it influenced the game process and whether it is now necessary to buy a new phone in order to drive tanks. Discuss Alexander BabeyRender developer at Wargaming MS-1 mobile development studio

Table of Contents

• Dynamic suspension
• Main features
• New visual quality of equipment
• What's changed?
• Important to know
• What determines the appearance of a tank in the game?

About a year ago, an update was released in World of Tanks, in which several noticeable graphical improvements appeared at once: gun barrel rollback, vehicle hit marks, tracks from tracks, dynamic shadows, soft particles and soft water boundaries for all platforms. Some of them are useful from a gameplay point of view (hit marks), others made the game environment more beautiful.

Even before the release of Update 7.0, the studio began work on the next package of graphics upgrades and the technologies used, and in version 8.0 these improvements were introduced.

When introducing the update, the developers adhered to the main principle: graphical innovations should not degrade the user experience of owners of weak/old devices. Therefore, the minimum system requirements of the game itself do not change, a huge range of devices is supported. At the same time, devices with certain characteristics are required to enable and use new graphics features.

Dynamic suspension

During the existence of World of Tanks Blitz, tanks have acquired all the external attributes and effects inherent in real military equipment, including tracks from tracks, rolling back when fired by guns and tracks from hits. But there was one important point that made the tanks look a little unreliable: a fixed, static suspension.

Dynamic suspension

Suspension – also known as a suspension system – is designed to transfer the weight of the tank through the road wheels and tracks to the ground, to soften shocks and shocks acting on the tank hull, and to quickly damp hull vibrations. The combat qualities of tanks largely depend on the design of the suspension: speed of movement over rough terrain, accuracy when firing in motion, relative comfort for the crew, reliability and durability of all major components and mechanisms of equipment. The first tanks and other tracked vehicles had a so-called rigid suspension, where all elements of the tracked propulsion unit, except for the tracks themselves, were fixedly attached to the hull. But practice has shown that such a suspension device is applicable only at speeds within 3-5 km/h. The first-born of the world tank building (diamond-shaped Mark I of the 1916 model) once appeared temporarily in World of Tanks Blitz and was quite consistent with the real prototype in terms of the chassis design, but if in real conditions we had assembled almost any other tank from World of Tanks Blitz with a rigid suspension and launched into the field at medium speed, its chassis would collapse very quickly due to shock and extreme vibration, and the crew could get serious injuries. In fact, the overwhelming majority of prototypes of vehicles in “Tanks” had some kind of independent suspension, in which each of the rollers is mounted using a spring system of different designs (springs, torsion bars, etc.) and can move individually.

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Dynamic suspension

“The main difficulty in implementing this feature was that we did not create a suspension from scratch. Because in that case, it would not be difficult for us to initially prepare all the models for suspension operation and simulate each moving track. We had a lot of tanks that needed to be adapted for this feature. They had monolithic fixed tracks and rollers. To implement dynamic suspension, we had to programmatically cut the track into many separate segments and simulate their movement. And all this in code, no artists. ”

Therefore, dynamic suspension is a feature that players who are not indifferent to the visual component of World of Tanks Blitz have been waiting and wanting for a long time. The first active requests to add suspension physics appeared at the end of 2014. But we are talking about physical simulation in one form or another, and such functionality cannot but require computational resources. In the early years of the game, only the best mobile CPUs could provide any kind of comfortable performance in such a simulation, and players had few such devices. But progress does not stand still, and now it has become possible to add a dynamic suspension to the game so that most of the World of Tanks Blitz audience can appreciate it.

The new suspension does not affect gameplay , similar to the rollback of gun barrels or traces on the ground, but adds visual fidelity to each combat vehicle and battles in general.

Players have been asking for this feature for a long time. After all, many people who play “Tanks” are fans of this type of technology. Therefore, it is important for them to see the tank as it really is. If we draw an analogy, then, for example, there are toy cars that have neither opening doors nor turning wheels. And there are better quality cars that have it all.

It is the same for the players – it is important that the wheels of the tank spin, the tracks move, the barrel rolls back. Yes, this is not so important for gameplay, but users are just pleased when the tank looks like a real one.

Aleksey CherepanovRender developer at Wargaming MS-1 mobile development studio

Key Features

• The suspension uses a realistic physics model … Track roller movement, track tension and sag depends on the undercarriage design – the relative position of the drive and idler wheels, the presence/absence of carrier rollers, the size and location of the track rollers, the location of the balancers, etc. The dynamic and full travel of the rollers (their visual mobility) will be greater in the case of the Christie spring suspension and less in the case of the torsion bar suspension with chess rollers, as in reality. Finally, the dynamics of the suspension is gravity-dependent and differs between normal combat and Gravity.

Dynamic suspension

• Dynamic suspension is available on all tanks in the game , and for each it is configured individually – in accordance with the design features.

• Dynamic suspension is enabled by the corresponding option on the graphic settings screen (if supported by the device). The functionality has certain system requirements, but many players will be able to enable and use it.

System Requirements: Platform Minimum Requirements to Enable Recommended Requirements (target frame rate = 60 FPS) iOS SoC Apple A8, A8x or later (iPhone 6, iPad Air 2, iPad mini 4) SoC Apple A10 Fusion or later (iPhone 7, iPad 2018/2019, iPad mini 5) Android > GPUs with OpenGL ES 3.0+ support and gl_InstanceID (all supported GPUs Adreno, Mali T- and G-series) Frame rate depends on actual CPU performance Windows 60 FPS on Intel Core i5 series, Intel UHD Graphics 620 and more powerful macOS configurations60 FPS on Intel Core i5 series, Intel UHD Graphics 620 and higher configurations Nintendo Switch Currently not supported

New_Visual_Quality of Equipment

The general appearance of the tank is formed not only by effects and dynamic structural elements, of course, the 3D model itself and its detail play an important role. Early upgradeable branches and premium vehicles were created under very strict restrictions on model detailing, texture quality and technologies used. Gradually, the power of the devices grew, and the new technique gradually became more detailed and beautiful: developers began to use more complex models and, for some time, higher resolution textures. However, you always want more – both the creators of the game and users who have long been waiting for something like “HD-models” from World of Tanks on PC.

Today the developers are still limited in the detail of the models themselves, as they are used on a wide range of devices, but there are other ways to make the tanks in the game more realistic. Last year, after releasing a set of graphical improvements in version 7.0, the studio began large-scale improvements to the engine, which ultimately allowed to radically improve the appearance of equipment without sacrificing performance on weak and outdated devices.

Naturally, we always advocate modernizing graphics, introducing new features. But at the same time, we understand that we cannot exclude players who have old devices, and there are a lot of them. Therefore, we always compromise and do less than we would like, so as not to harm such users.

Alexey CherepanovRender developer at Wargaming MS-1 mobile development studio

What has changed?

Starting from version 8.0, the tank quality switch in the graphics settings works differently. High now activates ultra settings for vehicles that have already been redesigned for a new visual quality, Medium is now the former High, and the former Medium quality is Low. “Low” settings for the weakest devices became “Ultra Low” – thus the number of quality levels increased from three to four.
What does the new visual quality of the technique include?

The features we have introduced help to better fit the tank into the environment. When you see snow sticking to a tank, you more believe that it really is driving in a winter location, and this improves your perception of a particular battle

• New, physically accurate rendering of materials and lighting technology (physically based rendering, PBR), which uses the principles of light propagation in the real world. Metal, cloth covers, rubber rims, and other materials look more realistic, and the tanks themselves have a map-specific global lighting scheme.

• Effects of mud or snow sticking . The tank, moving across the battlefield, is gradually getting dirty (or covered with snow on the corresponding maps). There is a slight contamination already at the start of the battle – dirt or snow adhered during transportation.

• Wet effects . Driving into the water, the tank gets wet, and the adhering dirt is washed off. After leaving the water, the tank gradually dries up.

The PBR concept has been around for a long time on a PC. However, for mobile platforms, it began to appear recently, since for a long time mobile devices lagged behind computers in terms of power.

Previous rendering techniques were designed with a greater emphasis on computational ease, as the performance of the devices did not allow for complex lighting models.

Now that the power of GPUs has grown significantly, engineers have begun to think about physically correct rendering, which allows them to comply with most of the physical laws in terms of the interaction of light with a surface. And PBR allows you to make the picture realistic for users, and for developers it makes it possible to simplify content management.

Alexey CherepanovRender developer at Wargaming MS-1 mobile development studio

Important to know

• In the 8.0 update, all American heavy tanks from the new Yoh branch and the German Kunze Panzer light tank are available in a new visual quality.

• To “enable” a new quality for everyone the tank in the game will need rework … For recently released vehicles, it is simpler, for “veteran” vehicles of the first years of the project, it is much more difficult, because in addition to setting up new rendering capabilities and pollution/wetting, old tanks will also need to improve (or even replace) the actual 3D models to meet the current standards of detail. Therefore, the whole process will not be quick, but in each version the developers plan to rework several existing tanks for a new visual quality. All new technology will come with new quality support.

• The new quality is quite demanding on the performance of mobile devices , it will show itself best of all on the flagships of recent years. If the device “does not support” the new high tank settings, you should switch to medium – in this case, the visual quality will correspond to the high one in versions up to 8.0.

• In version 8.0, when using high quality vehicles, it will be impossible to use epic composite camouflages (with separate livery for hull and gun/turret). This is a temporary limitation that will be removed in the next updates after 8.0.

System requirements: Platform Minimum Requirements to Enable Recommended Requirements (Target Frame Rate = 60 FPS) iOS Apple A8 SoC or later (iPhone 6, iPad Air 2, iPad mini 4) Apple A10 Fusion SoC or later (iPhone 7, iPad 2018/2019, iPad mini 5) Android GPU with support for OpenGL ES 3.0 + Tank quality: high, other settings are medium → Devices based on SoC Exynos 9820/Kirin 980/Snapdragon 855 or more powerful (devices of the level of Samsung Galaxy S10 and more powerful) General graphics quality preset: high → Devices based on SoC Exynos 2100/Snapdragon 865 or better (flagships 2020-2021) Windows Video card with DirectX 11 support and 512 MB of video memory or more 60 FPS on Intel UHD Graphics 620 and more powerful configurations macOS Video card with Metal60 FPS support on Intel UHD Graphics 620 and higher configurations Nintendo Switch Currently not supported

What determines the appearance of a tank in the game?

The principles of physically accurate rendering (PBR) are not unique to World of Tanks Blitz and are used in many large projects. At the same time, in “Tanks” this functionality is implemented and implemented into its own engine on its own and with adaptation to its production process and needs.

Today, all new tank models are produced with a relatively high-poly model, and the geometry does not need to be reworked for them. But the textures for the transition to PBR have to be recreated. This is the job. Older tanks, introduced a long time ago, will need to re-create both the model and the textures to include all the small details protruding from the hull surface, such as various cables. “

Alexey Cherepanov Render-developer of the Wargaming MS-1 mobile development studio

Without delving into the technical jungle, we will consider a very simplified diagram of how and from what components the visual appearance of the tank is built in the old (non-PBR) and new (PBR) quality. The terminology is simplified, third-party software is used (in the game itself, everything happens a little differently), but the basic principles and differences are conveyed.

Thus, the new render allows for more realistic rendering of materials and uses a global lighting scheme on each game map.

Summing up, I would like to emphasize once again: no matter how global the plans of the World of Tanks Blitz developers in an effort to make the game more realistic, their main principle is to enable users of the widest possible spectrum devices to enjoy the product. But at the same time, they strive to show that they are keeping pace with the times and are constantly improving the “Tanks”.

All WoT Blitz 8.0 improvements on video