Horizon: Zero Dawn PS4 PlayStation 4

Forget about games like Crackdown 3 – this right here is the real power of the cloud. As part of a presentation at SIGGRAPH 2015, Dutch developer Guerrilla Games briefly touched upon the volumetric clouds that it'll be including in forthcoming PlayStation 4 exclusive Horizon: Zero Dawn. And while it all gets really technical and a bit boring, we can confirm that they look freakin' amazing.

Perhaps the more interesting anecdote is not how the technology works, but why the studio's decided to build it in the first place. "In the past, Guerrilla has been known for the Killzone series of games, which are first-person shooters," explained effects bigwig Andrew Schneider. "FPS usually restrict the player to a predefined track, which means that we could hand place elements like clouds using billboards and highly detailed sky domes to create a heavily art directed sky."

It can't do this in its upcoming role-playing game, of course, because it's open world. As you can see in the video, the setting is also governed by a very realistic day and night cycle, and there'll be weather effects in the final product as well. These are brand new challenges for the studio, then, but we have faith in its ability to deliver. Indeed, if there's one thing that we can guarantee, it's that this game will look extraordinary.

[source guerrilla-games.com, via gearnuke.com]