NVIDIA has updated its GeForce Experience software to include Shadowplay Highlights for automatic gameplay captures and opened the Ansel SDK to all games and engines. These features aim to improve in-game photography and video sharing for gamers. The announcement was made on March 1, 2017.
GeForce Experience, NVIDIA's popular software for gamers, has long included Ansel and Shadowplay features. Ansel serves as an in-game photography tool, enabling 'freecam' screenshots, super high-resolution images, and 360-degree panorama photos. Shadowplay, meanwhile, facilitates easy gameplay capture, one-click sharing of videos and screenshots, and livestreaming to platforms like Facebook Live, Twitch, and YouTube Live.
Previously, Ansel was limited to select titles such as For Honor, Paragon, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, The Witness, Watch_Dogs 2, and the then-upcoming Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands. To expand its reach, NVIDIA has released plug-ins for game engines including Unreal Engine 4 and Unity. Additionally, Ansel is set to integrate with Amazon Lumberyard, and the company has made the full Ansel SDK available to developers through developer.nvidia.com, allowing compatibility with any game or engine.
Complementing this, Shadowplay now features Highlights, an enhancement tailored for multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) and first-person shooter (FPS) games. A prime example is LawBreakers, an upcoming free-to-play shooter developed by Boss Key Productions. Using an Unreal Engine 4 plug-in, the game employs the SDK to automatically record video clips when players achieve notable in-match feats. At the end of a match, a carousel of these snippets appears in a GeForce Experience overlay, letting users trim and compile them into montages for upload to Facebook, YouTube, or Google+. Users can also share screenshots up to 4K resolution in PNG format directly to Imgur.
These updates, announced by NVIDIA on March 1, 2017, broaden creative and sharing options for GeForce users without interrupting gameplay.