Rise of the Tomb Raider Graphics & Performance Guide

Crystal Dynamics' Foundation Engine returns for the sequel with upgrades galore. Physically Based Rendering gives materials a natural look under all conditions, HDR and adaptive tone mapping create stunningly bright zone transitions and highlights, deferred lighting with localized Global Illumination increases the realism of lighting, volumetric lighting adds God Rays and other shafts of light, dynamic color grading gives artists control over the appearance of individual areas, reactive water enables dynamic water ripples game-wide, physically correct forward lighting enables translucencies to be accurately lit, particle lighting enables particles to be dynamically lit by light from their surroundings, and Subsurface Scattering and Backscattering increases the quality of lighting on characters' skin.

Of the many additions, Crystal Dynamics' use of Side Effects' Houdini software is the most impressive. With this package highly realistic water effects and avalanches were created offline, recorded as Bink videos, and dynamically merged into real-time cutscenes to display visual effects that would be otherwise impossible to render. Less accurate effects could be rendered in real-time, though they wouldn't appear anywhere near as dramatic or thrilling.

As well as those enhancements, the PC release of Rise of the Tomb Raider also sees several game settings improved with new features and functionality, and the addition of entirely new settings. Not to mention the option to utilize NVIDIA technologies like DSR, G-SYNC, SLI, and Surround.

In this guide you'll see all of those effects in our screenshots as we examine Rise of the Tomb Raider's many settings and PC-only upgrades. We'll also show comparisons that highlight their benefits, and reveal their relative performance cost at 1920x1080, the most popular PC gaming resolution. Furthermore, we'll reveal the GPUs you require for a max setting experience, and demonstrate how NVIDIA technologies can enhance your time in Rise of the Tomb Raider's stunning environments.

• System Requirements
• Rise of the Tomb Raider's PC-Exclusive Graphics Enhancements
• Graphics Settings
  • Ambient Occlusion
  • Anisotropic Filter
  • Anti-Aliasing
  • Bloom
  • Depth of Field
  • Dynamic Foliage
  • Film Grain
  • Lens Flares
  • Level of Detail
  • PureHair
  • Screen Effects
  • Screen Space Reflections
  • Specular Reflection Quality
  • Shadow Quality
  • Sun Soft Shadows
  • Tessellation
  • Texture Quality
  • Vignette Blur
  • Settings Wrap-Up
• NVIDIA Dynamic Super Resolution
• NVIDIA Surround
• G-SYNC: Eliminating Stutters & Tearing For The Ultimate Experience
• Game Ready Rise of the Tomb Raider Driver
• GeForce Experience: Optimal Playable Settings With A Single Click
• Overclocking
• 4K Screenshot Gallery
• Conclusion

The official Rise of the Tomb Raider system requirements recommend gamers equip their systems with GeForce GTX 970 or GeForce GTX 980 Ti graphics cards for High-quality, 60 FPS gameplay at 1920x1080 and 2560x1440, respectively. These settings deliver an excellent level of detail, and at 60 FPS it's a super smooth experience free from stuttering and stalls, translating to fluid, responsive gaming. Learn more here.

This being the PC, you can of course crank many of the settings to Very High, bolstering graphical fidelity that bit further. To discover the system you'll require for a maxed out experience skip to our settings summary.

As is the case with the vast majority of multi-platform titles, Rise of the Tomb Raider looks even better on PC thanks to graphics settings that can run at higher detail levels. In addition, there's a new game-wide application of tessellation, a new shadow setting that applies realistic softening, supersampling anti-aliasing options, and NVIDIA HBAO+ ambient occlusion shadowing. Combined, the PC-exclusive options and other enhancements increase fidelity far beyond the level seen on other platforms, delivering the definitive Rise of the Tomb Raider experience.

For detailed explanations of every enhancement, and demonstrations of their capabilities, keep reading. For a first look, check out our Rise of the Tomb Raider Tech Trailer below:

Ambient Occlusion (AO) adds contact shadows where two surfaces or objects meet, and where an object blocks light from reaching another nearby game element. The AO technique used and the quality of the implementation affects the shadowing's accuracy, and whether new shadows are formed when the level of occlusion is low. Without Ambient Occlusion scenes look flat and unrealistic, and objects appear as if they are floating.

In Rise of the Tomb Raider, the Ambient Occlusion option enables players to choose between Microsoft and Crystal Dynamics' custom Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) technique, called Broad Temporal Ambient Obscurance (BTAO), and our own HBAO+ and VXAO techniques.

BTAO, seen originally in the Xbox One edition of the game and further tweaked for this PC release, is inspired by a 2012 AO technique called Scalable Ambient Obscurance (SAO). Microsoft built upon the ideas presented in the linked SAO paper to create BTAO, and worked with Crystal Dynamics to customize it for Rise of the Tomb Raider. The result is a technique that is better and faster than Horizon Based Ambient Occlusion (HBAO), which we developed back in 2008.

In 2013 however we improved upon every aspect of HBAO to create HBAO+, and now in 2016 the latest iteration of HBAO+ is found in Rise of the Tomb Raider, creating richer, deeper, more accurate ambient occlusion shadows that further bolster the visual fidelity of the game's fantastic graphics. In a March 2016 update we also introduced NVIDIA Voxel Ambient Occlusion (VXAO), a new AO rendering technique that once again raises the bar. Click here to see how VXAO compares to HBAO+ and BTAO.

In this scene, HBAO+ accurately shadows the detail along the wall on the left of the screen, and further enhances the fidelity of other objects and surfaces.

Here we see how HBAO+'s accuracy enables all the folds in the tent's cloth to be seen, as well as a general improvement to the accuracy of ambient occlusion shadowing on and around other objects and surfaces.

With HBAO+ we're able to add greater depth to the cracks between the tessellated stones, and to combat halos like the one seen around the base of the bucket.

And finally, a set of images exemplifying the need for high-quality ambient occlusion techniques in today's games.

As the interactive comparisons and screenshots demonstrate, our HBAO+ Ambient Occlusion technique improves upon BTAO, which is itself rather good. With HBAO+, AO shadowing is improved, entirely new shadows are rendered, and detail has even greater depth and realism, with the smallest of details being accurately shadowed.

March 2016 NVIDIA Voxel Ambient Occlusion (VXAO) Update: Derived from our Voxel Global Illumination technology, VXAO is a new cutting-edge Ambient Occlusion technique that improves upon HBAO+ to deliver the most realistic Ambient Occlusion shadowing seen to date in games.

With VXAO, occlusion and lighting information is gathered from a ‘world space’ voxel representation of the scene, which takes into account a large area around the viewer. Included in this voxelization are objects and details currently invisible to the viewer, and those behind the viewer, too. The result is scene-wide Ambient Occlusion shadowing, instead of ‘screen space’ shadowing based on what you can currently see. This allows AO shadows to be cast into a scene from objects near to the player but just outside of their view, and from occluded objects in the distance large enough to affect the appearance of the scene.

In addition, VXAO’s precision and accuracy enables significantly improved Ambient Occlusion shadowing in detailed in-game environments. This is particularly evident in Crystal Dynamics’ Rise of the Tomb Raider, the first game to feature VXAO. As demonstrated below in our interactive comparisons, VXAO dramatically improves the quality of Ambient Occlusion shadowing in the game’s object and geometry-filled locations.

In this first set of comparisons, VXAO's precision is exemplified. Detailed objects spread across several layers are accurately and richly shadowed, light being cast and reflected in the room is accurately accounted for, and new AO shadows rendered .

Here we can observe VXAO's impact on overall image quality: with improved accuracy and a new technique for rendering AO, the intensity of the bright sunlight is increased, enhancing the look of the scene and improving the visibility of the God Rays on the upper left.

With VXAO the appearance of the shack is realistically improved, adding deep shadows where appropriate, and brightening surfaces and objects that are directly illuminated by sunlight.

VXAO excels in situations such as those shown below, greatly improving the quality of Ambient Occlusion shadowing.

In other locations VXAO subtly improves upon HBAO+. Here, it's increased precision and lack of screen-space blur allows for accurate AO shadowing around each blade of grass, and between every log on the right of the scene.

VXAO's improvements also enable us to accurately shadow scenes illuminated by several light sources of differing intensities.

VXAO improves Ambient Occlusion shadowing in Rise of the Tomb Raider's tessellated snow, and enables richer, more accurate shadows to be formed from the occlusion of light caused by Jacob and Lara's bodies. Elsewhere in the scene, VXAO highlights depth in undulating snow, and improves shadowing on and around the terrain.

VXAO isn't a spectacular particle effect or an obvious addition, but it is there in every scene, improving Ambient Occlusion shadowing to some degree.

VXAO's advancements and enhancements raise the bar for Ambient Occlusion shadowing once again, taking us one step closer to photorealism. To check it out for yourself simply select "VXAO" in the "Ambient Occlusion" setting in-game, on a system equipped with a GeForce GTX 900 Series, second generation Maxwell-architecture GPU.

Performance: The cost of Ambient Occlusion in Rise of the Tomb Raider can vary from scene to scene, especially in the early parts of the game. In the larger hub areas and later story sequences the cost of BTAO is around two frames per second, and HBAO+ a few frames per second more. The new VXAO mode, meanwhile, costs an extra 10 frames per second, though it does deliver the most realistic and accurate Ambient Occlusion shadowing seen to date in any game.