Ubisoft shows off Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora’s next-gen tech

After getting a glimpse of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora at E3, Ubisoft has revealed a little more through a tech showcase to show off what’s powering this next-gen exclusive title.

The showcase video highlights what Ubisoft has been able to achieve with the Snowdrop engine, giving some specifics at just how good Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is going to look on next-gen consoles when it launches in 2022. 

“We have created a Pandora that you can experience from the deep dense jungles on the ground to the grand vistas high up in the skies,” Sebastian Lindoff, technical art director, revealed, noting how Snowdrop has had to be pushed since it’s usually made to be building cities and not usually landscapes.

“With Snowdrop, using the micro details system we can propagate thousands of assets in one frame,” Kunal Luthra, the senior technical artist for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora continued the technical explanation. “This allows us to have a lot more highly detailed environments for Pandora.” 

Throughout Pandora, we can expect to see “significantly more objects than we ever had before” according to Oleksandr Koshlo, the senior render programmer. Along with volumetric clouds and ray tracing, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora should look sublime thanks to all its interactive shaders that also include wind simulations and “intelligent plants.”

It’s not just ray tracing that’ll be making Pandora feel alive, as the AI has been significantly enhanced through a system where “NPC’s understand the state of the world.” Weather, player progression, and time of day should all factor into these NPC behaviors that’ll hopefully amount to more than just a few voice lines depending on these conditions. 

Sadly, there’s not any new footage in the trailer for us to admire, as it merely goes over what we’ve already seen at E3. With how good the trailer looks, however, it’s hardly a bad thing to watch it again. 

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is set to release sometime in 2022 for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC, so long as it doesn’t get delayed by anything.