Digital Foundry looked at BlackSpace lighting and physics

Digital Foundry posted a technical look at the BlackSpace Engine behind Crimson Desert. Pearl Abyss did not move to Unreal Engine 5. The engine is built for an open world, physics and character animation.

The video covers dynamic global illumination, volumetric clouds and fog, a day cycle and weather, ray-traced reflections, and lighting on oceans, rivers and streams, plus environmental destruction. Objects break under physics, grass and cloth react to wind and the character, and hits use inverse kinematics. Detail holds at long range without obvious pop-in, and sparks, blood, dust and magic act as lights.

At ultra settings in 4K on a Radeon RX 7900 XTX and a Ryzen 9 7900X3D, the analysts describe a stable frame rate. For consoles and mid-range PCs, Pearl Abyss is adding FSR and frame generation.