NVidia recently announced its (re-)commitment to shipping with Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, noting that the game will now be included for free with purchases of GeForce GTX 660 or higher SKU video cards.

In a recent blog post by nVidia's Tony Tamasi and video blog by Assassin's Creed 4 Associate Producer Sylvain Trottier, we've been given deeper technical insight into AC4's driving technologies. From a hardware enthusiast perspective, such videos help us understand and visualize the many acronyms that plague PC graphics, "putting a face to the names," as it were.

In this detailed post, we'll explore the actual real-world meaning of Volumetric FX (fog, smoke), horizon-based ambient occlusion (HBAO), Percentage-Closer Soft Shadows (PCSS), new dynamic lighting FX, and graphics tech in AC4. First, let's start with the new AC4 video that showcases these technologies in action: