Neon Giant, the developer behind the popular new cyberpunk-themed action-RPG, The Ascent, says they are currently working on a patch after gamers discovered the Game Pass version for PC lacks DLSS and ray tracing graphics.
The Ascent is Neon Giant’s debut title, and the twin-shooter has been well received by gamers. The developer’s Twitter account has been awash with comments about how beautiful and detailed the graphics are, and from those digging the grimy, cyberpunk-theme, fast-paced action, and dystopian open-world environments discoverable in the game’s home world Veles.
Neon Giant
However, soon after The Ascent’s release on July 29, Game Pass users of the PC version were nonplussed that they were unable to harness the full graphics power of the game which lacked both DLSS and ray tracing features. This did not affect the Steam version of the PC game. One Twitter user, BigGP1987 tweeted the following on Neon Giant’s Twitter account:
Dominic Bayley / IDG
Why are these missing features a big deal? DLSS stands for Deep Learning Super Sampling. It’s a complicated terminology for an AI rendering technology that increases the graphics performance of games played exclusively on Nvidia graphics cards. This technology allows Nvidia graphics cards to upscale lower resolution graphics to higher resolution graphics, thereby boosting frame rates.
Ray tracing, on the other hand, is a rendering technique that traces the path of light in an image pane. It renders things like shadows and reflections with less computational power, creating scenes that look more realistic in games.
Neon Giant
The Ascent has been designed specifically to take advantage of these graphics rendering techniques to deliver gamers the world in immersive cyberpunk aesthetics. Thankfully, the developers have acknowledged the DLSS problem and have moved quickly to address the issues. On Twitter Tor Frick, co-founder of Neon Giant tweeted that a solution for the issue was on its way:
Neon Giant
While some gamers were understandably put out by the error, most also praised the game in their tweets which is a good sign for The Ascent. Neon Giant has been responding to feedback actively advising users of the impending patch.
However, it seems they have some work to do to bring the game up to speed. Users have raised other issues about game bugs, including to The Ascent’s multiplayer. Neon Giant has encouraged gamers to provide feedback about any issues on Google forms as well as on their social media accounts.
Neon Giant
Despite the name, Swedish Neon Giant is a relatively small indie publisher. The company was founded in 2018 by four veteran developers who originally set up their office in an old church. The founders have some notoriety in the games industry having worked personally on games such as Bulletstorm, Far Cry 3, Wolfenstein and Doom.
The Ascent is available now on PC from Steam and Games Pass and is also available on Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.