Nvidia released a betaversion of its new driver package GeForce 197.13. In addition to performance increases and SLI-Profiles for several games, this time it contains something special for Need for Speed Shift as well: With this driver version Nvidia introduces support for Ambient Occlusion.
Ambient Occlusion is a new technology, which adds realism to scenes by reducing the intensity of ambient lights on surfaces blocked by surrounding objects. It enhances depth perception by providing a soft shadow effect for objects based on their placement in the scene.
You can find more information about Ambient Occlusion, as well as some examples on this website of Nvidia:
http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_am...sion_home.html