NVIDIA Ansel In-Game Screenshot Technology Explained

On May 6, NVIDIA revealed the first gaming GPU based on their new Pascal architecture – the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080. The GeForce GTX 1080 not only boasts the latest Pascal architecture, it is also fabricated on the new 16 nm FinFET process technology and uses the new GDDR5X memory.

Although we were not in Austin, Texas for the official launch, NVIDIA invited us to an exclusive tech briefing in Bangkok on May 20th. While these hardware specifications are well-known by now, this was a technical briefing that would give us greater insights into the other new technologies that are being introduced with the GeForce GTX 1080.

NVIDIA brought in the big guns for the tech briefing and demonstration – Nick Stam (NVIDIA Senior Technical Marketing Director), Jeff Yen (NVIDIA Senior Technical Marketing Manager) and John Gillooly (NVIDIA Technical Marketing Manager). We will be posting a series of videos of their presentations, divided into topic-specific chunks. Today, we are going to look at the new NVIDIA Ansel in-game screenshot technology.

 

NVIDIA Ansel Explained

NVIDIA Ansel not just an in-game screenshot utility. It actually detaches you, the player, from the in-game limitations so you can capture your in-game shots in ways not possible before. You can also adjust the screenshots with a variety of post-process filters, or capture HDR images in super high resolution. You can even create 360-degree screenshots to display on your VR headset!

Here is a summary of NVIDIA Ansel’s key features :

 

Free Camera – Activating NVIDIA Ansel pauses the game and enables the Free Camera capability. This allows you to escape the first- or third-person perspective and compose your scene in any position, alignment or range, before taking unlimited high-resolution screenshots.

Super Resolution – Selecting the High Resolution option allows you to capture screenshots that are tens of thousands of pixels in size. This allows you to downsample the screenshot later, or zoom in to capture detail cannot be seen with the naked eye.

Post-Process Filters – NVIDIA Ansel comes with brightness, vignette, sketch, colour enhancer and special FX filters for added creativity. Users can even create and share their own special FX filters.

OpenEXR Capture – You can export Ansel screenshots in Industrial Light & Magic’s OpenEXR format so you can adjust the exposure, colour and levels in post-processing without creating artifacts.

360 Capture – This option allows you to create and share 360 degree screenshots for VR headsets.

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