Real-Time VFX Isn’t a Feature Anymore. It’s the New Baseline for Game Development.

The gaming world has evolved at breakneck speed in the past couple of decades. Once upon a time, you had to wait for a year or more to get the new iteration of a game. (Think the old Total War release cycles, where the British and Australian branches of the company alternated on bi-yearly schedules.)

Now, game development is fast and focused on near-instant gratification. A live-service shooter drops new content on a continuous cycle. This is fed by playtests and feedback, sparking endless iterative cycles of development.

One item that developers simply can’t afford to allow to hold up this process? VFX.

That’s why, in recent years, game development has quietly crossed a threshold. Real-time visual effects are no longer “nice to have,” but an expectation. We’re not talking about real-time game play. Those effects are obviously instantaneous. But developing those events beforehand? That process has become equally grounded in the moment.

The Gaming Workflow Bottleneck

It’s no secret that the hardware behind gaming has improved by orders of magnitude. Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) are a great example. They aren’t just better. They’re astronomically so. For instance, Technical City lists NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 980 (from 2014) at roughly 4.981 TFLOPS of floating-point throughput.

In other words, it is the number of trillions of math calculations the chip can perform each second. Not bad, right? This is what powers things like the special effects, graphics, and overall physics of a game.

Here’s the thing. NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 4090 from 2022 operates at 82.58 TFLOPS. That’s 16 times faster in eight years. The chip developer is already making noise about potential AI computing power that is 1000X in another eight years from now, too. This exponential increase has paved the way for real-time development, even in areas as complex and demanding as VFX.

GPU-First Tools Are Changing Developer Expectations

The impact of increased GPU power is changing the baseline for developers in the gaming world. In the past, the feedback loop led to hours of waiting for offline sims to turn into real-time iterations.

In the present, that is wasted time. Devs can (and should) be able to tinker with everything right in the moment. Open-world dynamic weather, emergent combat systems, smoke bursts, magic trails, and any other VFX elements should be visible in real time.

Companies like JangaFX are making this a reality for both gaming and cinema creators. The real-time VFX software company has been building GPU-first simulation tools for professional creators for years. Its EmberGen is a great example of generating real-time fire, smoke, and explosions. LiquiGen tackles the even more intimidating challenge of water VFX — again, in real time.

The proof is in the pudding when it comes to the impact of this kind of VFX computing power. For instance, JangaFX’s client, CCP Games (which developed the space-based MMORPG EVE Online), pointed out that “Previous approaches to cloud rendering were cumbersome, time-consuming, and had for a long time dissuaded us from embarking on [introducing new volumetric clouds into gameplay] as we ship releases and expansions in short timespans. Embergen emerged as the perfect tool to meet the challenge, with its ability to simulate high-quality clouds at insanely fast (real-time) speeds.”

This incredible iterative power isn’t just a perk that saves time, either. It facilitates the creative process. When an artist needs to wait hours between building a creative thought in a program and then reviewing it, it can be hard to maintain creative precision. The ability to think of a crashing wave at sea and then see what it would look like moments later allows developers to craft more complete, fluid games. This has the potential to lead to better experiences, fewer points of feedback, and a more efficient overall gaming experience for both gaming companies and their clientele.

Building the Future of Gaming Now

The future of game creation and iteration no longer requires developers to sit on their hands waiting between versions and ideas. They can now create in real time, burning through ideas quickly until they find the version they’re looking for.

It’s the dawn of a new era, one that will doubtless take the gaming experience to unbelievable levels that were hardly thought possible mere decades ago. Strap on your headsets and buckle in. We’re about to hit warp speed with this thing.