As some of you may or may not know, Gaijin is working on a new engine, which will have better graphics/rendering capabilities (and hopefully better physics, god those "invisible rocks" are annoying). They are calling in it Dagon Engine 4.0. Supposedly, it should be implemented in the 1.53 patch.



Two main things with this new engine are Physically Based Rendering and integration of NVIDIA GameWorks. Well, what do they mean?

Physically Based Rendering:
"The Physically Based Rendering (PBR) technology is based on the same principles and laws of physics by which light moves around in our world." -Gaijin

What PBR does is, basically, changing the in-game lighting system and upgrading it to a new level. According to Gaijin, in-game lighting is more close to being like real now. The wooden box on your tank should look different from the metal surface of the tank. Metal parts will be more shiny and you will feel that the wooden box is more opaque, because in real life that is how it is.

There is a DevBlog topic on this if you want to read more, which has a lot of scientific stuff and some comparison pictures.
Physically based rendering – Dagor Engine 4.0 in War Thunder – DevBlog

NVIDIA GameWorks:
NVIDIA's part on this has to do with the new destructible walls and water physics. There aren't a lot of information about the destructible walls but everyone's know that Gaijin is doing something, looks like they will implement it with the NVIDIA GameWorks. As they say: wall fragments, ruins, large structures and entire buildings will react to gun fire, planes, etc. so you can destroy the building your enemy is using as cover. This leads to some gameplay changes, players will not be able to use one building as cover and sit there for the entire match for example.

Will be all buildings destructible, will they totally demolish, will they leave debris on the ground? Well, with the capabilities of the engine I don't think they will but we shall see when the patch arrives.

Here is a cool video about destructible enviroment from an old DevBlog post.



The other thing is water physics. With the NVIDIA GameWorks' WaveWorks all the seas in War Thunder will look more realistic. There will be a lot of foam, waves will feel more dynamic and real, moving in water will look like you are actually in water rather than some blue-ish looking thing that slows you down as you go.


They screwed the matchmaking system but at least we got an graphical update, so yay, maybe...