Skip to main content

Nvidia Ansel introduces VR photography to games

Despite all the jazz surrounding virtual reality and gaming, there’s been little word on how the medium might bridge the gap between virtual reality experiences and regular games. But Nvidia knows what’s up. This week, the GPU manufacturer introduced its new screen capturing toolset Ansel, enabling in-depth screenshots on for both regular displays and virtual reality.

Related: See here fore more Nvidia products and accessories

There are a few reasons Nvidia may have developed this tool, aside from attracting more consumers. Finding the right timing for a beautiful screenshot while you’re getting eaten by a massive blob often carries deadly consequences. Nvidia draws a picture of how consumers are limited in their passion for screenshots, while professional game photographers are not. Many internet roamers have stood in awe at the work of photographers like Duncan Harris or Leonardo Sang. But they have access to developer specific tools that give them more room to find the shots they’re after. “That changes now however,” says Nvidia, “with the introduction of NVIDIA Ansel, a revolutionary, accessible game capture tool built in cooperation with leading game developers.” It’s aptly named after one of the world’s most recognized photographers: Ansel Adams.

A major feature coming along with Ansel is 360-degree photography. Take a photo in 360 degrees and then either transfer it to your phone or using Virtual Desktop to view the photos in a device like the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive. If we know the gaming community, the internet will see an influx in gaming VR photography soon.

Ansel also comes with a free camera mode. By activating Ansel, the game will pause and a freecam will be enabled. There’s no limit to how many screenshots you can take and the freecam will likely be well used by screenshot enthusiasts. A set of effect sliders activate upon roaming around with freecam, including Brightness, Vignette, Sketch, Color Enhancer, Field of View, Roll, and Capture type. Once you’ve set everything to your liking, you simply click “Snap” to save.

The company is especially keen to point out its ability to capture Super Resolution screenshots. Utilizing the CUDA Cores on the company’s GeForce GTX GPUs, you can render and save screenshots that are “tens of thousands of pixels in size.”

nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-nvidia-ansel-super-resolution-640px
Image used with permission by copyright holder

It also seems like Nvidia has put some thought into post-processing. Those who like filters can use them to tweak the atmosphere in the screenshots. There’s also an option to export images in OpenEXR format, which enables you to view HDR Super Resolution screenshots. According to the company, it results in almost no anti-aliasing and great amounts of detail. The company posted the image below to give an example of exactly how ridiculous a screenshot of that quality might look.

If you’re interested in making use of Ansel you need to fulfill certain requirements. First off, and expected from Nvidia, is that you must own one of their GeForce GPUs. As long as you’re sitting on something between GeForce GTX 650 and a GTX 1080 (which hasn’t been released yet), you’ll do fine.

Nvidia has yet to announce a release date but says that it’s coming soon. Games that will support the technology on launch include Tom Clancy’s The Division, The Witness, Law Breakers, The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, Paragon, No Man’s Sky, and Unreal Tournament.

Editors' Recommendations

Dan Isacsson
Being a gamer since the age of three, Dan took an interest in mobile gaming back in 2009. Since then he's been digging ever…
Don’t buy the Meta Quest Pro for gaming. It’s a metaverse headset first
Meta Quest Pro enables 3D modeling in mixed reality.

Last week’s Meta Connect started off promising on the gaming front. Viewers got release dates for Iron Man VR, an upcoming Quest game that was previously a PS VR exclusive, as well as Among Us VR. Meta, which owns Facebook, also announced that it was acquiring three major VR game studios -- Armature Studio, Camouflaj Team, and Twisted Pixel -- although we don’t know what they’re working on just yet.

Unfortunately, that’s where the Meta Connect's gaming section mostly ended. Besides tiny glimpses and a look into fitness, video games were not the show's focus. Instead, CEO Mark Zuckerberg wanted to focus on what seemed to be his company’s real vision of VR's future, which involves a lot of legs and a lot of work with the Quest Pro, a mixed reality headset that'll cost a whopping $1,500.

Read more
The best games to show off Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4090
The RTX 4090 graphics card sitting on a table with a dark green background.

Nvidia's monstrous RTX 4090 is finally here, and it's powerful (just read our RTX 4090 review). It's so powerful, in fact, that there aren't a lot of games that truly showcase the GPU's power. The RTX 4090 is the best graphics card you can buy, but you'll want to install a few key games to show off what the GPU is capable of.

There are a few games that still push the RTX 4090, though many of our recommendations come on the back of Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS). DLSS 3 includes a frame generation setting that's only available on RTX 40-series GPUs, which helps a lot of games that are traditionally limited by your processor hit a high frame rate.

Read more
We finally might know what Apple will call its AR/VR headset
Apple VR Headset Concept by Antonio De Rosa

We have been patiently waiting for Apple to drop its much-anticipated virtual reality headset, and now it seems we're closer than ever. Apple filed some trademark names for its upcoming AR/VR headset, indicating it's one step closer to launch.

The trademarks were filed simultaneously in the U.S., U.K., Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Costa Rica, and Uruguay. The trademarks protect the names "Reality One," "Reality Pro," and "Reality Processor." Apple used the same law firms it has used in the past in these countries to file the trademarks.

Read more