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As if its something new and invented by Nvidia, as if you can only get this from Nvidia.
You are correct of course in that such features depend on the sophistication of the engine the game is built on, Cryengine is one of if not thie most sophisticated engines in existence, the only engine i can think of which gives it a run for its worth is Frostbite Engine.
Having said that there is nothing all that sophisticated about having a visible and shadow casing light volume, which would be the Sun, but added light entities can do the same thing for localised Volumetric Lighting.
The one in Cryengine 'in the form of the sun' is permanent and it is streamed dynamically, you can have it run a 24 hour cycle and it will cast shadows at the correct angle as it moves round, it will even change its size, colour and bloom, all of that is also completely adjustable.
I can and have added multiple light entities that are exactly the same thing, the Sun is just such a light entity pinned to the sky.
Now there is a cost when i add more and more of them, its a CPU cost tha amounts to about 1 or 2% per entity.
What adds to the effect in creating dark and light area's within the atmosphere is Volumetric Fog, the light from said light entities interacts with it in the same way it does with HDR surfaces creating a specular map that illuminates area's exposed to the light and shadows in those that aren't.
None of this is new, what irks me a little bit about this is firstly Nvidia using sentences like this.
As if its something new and invented by Nvidia, as if you can only get this from Nvidia.
And secondly some Developers using Nvidia's version of it and the crippling performance that comes with it when this stuff has been around for so long you have to ask "why they haven't got to grips with it themselves?".
I can't stress this enough, Nvidia are NOT inventing anything new, all they are doing by using their plug in and play libraries is making themselves dependant on Nvidia and at the expense of their end users.
The reason these things had a high performance cost back in thier early days is because they were undeveloped, bar a few they never will get developed if they depend on Nvidia to feed them this stuff
