Will Corsair RGB lighting integration make playing Far Cry 5 more immersive on PC?
A few years ago, there was a new product called Philips Ambilight. I tried it out once at an event, and it seemed like a neat idea.
The premise was simple: a light-changing strip was affixed to the edges of your display, and emitted colours to match the adjacent on-screen pixels. Some Philips TVs even had the effect built in. The idea was that this extension of lighting and colour from the screen would be more immersive.
The reality was that, unless your panel was sitting flat on a plain white wall and you were watching in something approaching complete darkness, it didn’t work that well. More often than not, you ended up bathing your wall in an underwater green hue if you were watching sports, and a confusing strobe of colours if you were watching TV and movies; worse with games.
But RBG lighting is a common feature among PC hardware – the keyboard of the very laptop I’m using to type this glows in signature Thumbsticks Orange – so Corsair, partnering with Ubisoft, have decided to give the lighting-as-extension-of-the-environment thing another go with Far Cry 5.
The idea is simple enough: if you’ve got a compatible Corsair peripheral, like an RGB keyboard and mouse, or RGB fans in your chassis, you’ll be able to configure an integration with Far Cry 5, which will “dynamically adjust to more than 35 in-game lighting interactions”, apparently.
Whether that makes Far Cry 5 more immersive remains to be seen, but Corsair seems pretty happy about the partnership:
“We’re delighted to partner with Ubisoft to offer Corsair customers this new level of immersion, with one of the year’s most anticipated new games. Working with a AAA publisher such as Ubisoft is a key milestone for Corsair, as we work to offer more benefits for our dedicated customers.” – Andy Paul, founder and CEO, Corsair
And so does Ubisoft:
“Corsair has become a major player in the PC components and peripheral market and will enhance the PC experience for Far Cry 5. PC has always been a key part of the series’ DNA and we’re happy to take in-game immersion to another level with Corsair’s new software integration.” – Chris Early, VP of partnerships and revenue, Ubisoft
It may surprise you to learn that, for the guy who normally complains about the need for RGB lighting on everything, I don’t totally hate this. Yes, it’s still unnecessary and I wouldn’t advocate going out and buying a bunch of new RGB hardware just for this feature, but if your Corsair devices already support RGB lighting, then why not give it a go?
Far Cry 5 releases globally on March 27th, 2018.
Corsair will also be bundling copies of Far Cry 5 with select Corsair RGB product purchases from their online store (of more than $150) between March 23rd and April 30th.
