S24(8) Build 4167 - Beta Phase!

 

Welcome to the beta

Well, here we go! Build 4167 marks the start of the S24 beta phase. After a long stretch of early experimentation, the viewer is growing up and moving into the refine-and-polish stage.

There's a lot packed into this one, so grab a cuppa and let's dig in. And if you're running an AMD card, settle in, because you're in for a treat.

Team Red, this one's for you

Let's be honest: for the last 20 years the client has been unapologetically Nvidia-centric. The S24 beta sets out to right a few of those wrongs.

Just as Team Green has NVAPI, S24 now supports and ships with the AMD GPU Services Library (AGS). I've brought it up to at least parity with NVAPI in terms of features, including:

• Asynchronous shader compilation
• Shader caching options
• ...and a few other goodies along the way

Nvidia folks, don't worry, you haven't been left out. NVIDIA Reflex support is in this build too, so everyone gets a little something.

More toys in the box

The S24 engine controls have had a heavy revamp, and the new toys keep coming:

• AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) is now built right into the client. Upscaling, out of the box.
• DXVK can be toggled directly from Settings. No more fiddling with zip files, just flip the switch.

The big one: Unified Cubemap and Reflection System

The biggest change in this build is the culmination of about 14 weeks of slog: a brand-new cubemap system, or to coin a phrase, the Unified Cubemap and Reflection System.

Talk is cheap, so here's a legacy shiny object at mid-settings:

Its purpose is simple to say and was hard to do: replace more than 20 years of layered code with one complete solution. Legacy shine, reflection probes and materials now all live under one roof. Whether you're building a shiny boat deck or a full hall of mirrors, it's the same system, tuned by you to suit the power of your hardware.

In short, it lets even legacy shiny objects show off near mirror-like finishes without enabling either SSR or Mirrors. It's fully tunable, from performance-friendly levels all the way up to eye-watering, RTX 5090-class ultra detail.

As a bonus, the 2016-era 360 snapshot system now uses the unified cubemap too, so it can produce very high-resolution 360° JPEGs.

Over to you

Alongside all of this there's another batch of bug fixes, with still more to come. I think you'll start to see a much more cohesive, refined product rolling out of the factory doors.

As discussed previously, the plan is to carry on through beta and aim for a Release Candidate sometime towards Christmas.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy messing about with the client and experimenting along with me!

Much love,

KL

PS: Almost Spooky Time :D