Counter-Strike: Global Offensive engine branch/Features

This page lists the following features introduced in CS:GO engine branch.

Features

New since the Portal 2 engine branch is:

FXAA anti-aliasing

Simple post-processing effect aimed to remove jaggies on geometry and other objects at the cost of image quality, but are much faster than other anti-aliasing method, such as MSAA.

FXAA can be also used with MSAA (such as 2X) at the same time. This benefits most lower-end PC that struggles to run MSAA 4X or higher, it also benefits models, transparent textures (especially those without alpha to coverage), and other objects that MSAA was unable to remove jaggies or staircase effect on them.

Real-time dynamic shadows from skybox (Cascaded Shadow Maps)

env_cascade_light provides dynamic, high-resolution cascade shadow mapping for the outdoor light of light_environment.

Lightmapped Ambient Occlusion

VRAD can now bake ambient occlusion into the lightmaps for a map, leading to enhanced realism.

Bump mapped decals

LightmappedGeneric decals now support bump maps.

Scaleform (officially called Scaleform GFx)

A vector graphics rendering engine used to display Adobe Flash-based UI and HUD for games. CS:GO uses Scaleform for the in-game HUDs and the main menu (until 2018).

VPK version 2

New version of VPK file format. Later backported to all Source 2013 games.

Newer Features

Features introduced with later updates to the branch.

Phong reflections on Lightmapped materials

LightmappedGeneric and WorldVertexTransition now support diffuse Phong reflections.

Texture streaming

Reduce system RAM and graphics card VRAM by streaming textures.

Vertex lighting for bumpmapped static props

Static props with bump maps can now receive vertex lighting, better blending them into the environment. All static props also now receive better lighting.

Anisotropic reflection emulation

Brush shaders can now emulate anisotropic specular reflections using new parameters.

Bump map blending for LightmappedGeneric

Two bump maps can now be blended together for high-frequency and low-frequency bumpmap variation on the LightmappedGeneric shader.

Lightmapped_4WayBlend

A displacement shader that can blend four different materials together by luminance.

Prop combination

VBSP now supports combining selected static props during map compilation, increasing performance and lowering draw calls.

Increased engine and compiler limits

The engine now supports more entities, more models and more displacements.

Note:Document all of the increased limits.

New first-person weapon lighting.

First-person weapon view now support more detailed lighting.

Static prop scaling

Panorama UI

Introduced in 2018, replacing Scaleform, Valve's new Custom GUI interface that resembles modern web design and authoring (HTML5/CSS/JS). Using .XML and JavaScript files, developers can create dynamic and clean HUDs and menus and even high-quality in-game intractable panels.

Direct3D 9Ex / Windows Aero DirectX Extensions (also in , )

Introduced in April 2019 update, D3D9Ex improves performance depending on GPU hardware and drivers.

Other improvements

Todo: Document these, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Todo: Celisej: soon add more.