[VFX_Veteran]

Finally we have a game fully realizing what a true path tracer can give. The game looks phenomenal now with correct lighting. I remember a lot of people complaining that RT was just a fad. Now you see the difference in what a game's lighting should look like. Also we finally have a game that utilizes the highest end GPU hardware - 4090. No other hardware can run this mode so it's literally the new Crysis.



P.S. I don't want to hear people declaring their favorite current game looking better than this. If the lighting is using anything other than path tracing, it's outright wrong and loses many points.

 

[Vyse]

The added bloom lighting ruins it. There's always some post-processing effect that takes the graphical leap one step back, like they know it's going to affect the framerate, so they don't let you view the outside clearly. You're wrong if you think any lighting that gets in the way of seeing all of the image clearly is somehow better.

I'm happy to see more accurate self-shadowing but they still go overboard with the lighting.

 

[Franky Family]

The instances where they're out in the open is kind of overbearing. The light is blinding, abnormally bright. If that's what raytracing does then it still has a long way to go, but the technology looks very promising. I like the raytracing version better, just not the unnatural bright light. It doesn't look like natural sunlight shining down is ultimately what I'm trying to say

 

[Optimus]

The instances where they're out in the open is kind of overbearing. The light is blinding, abnormally bright. If that's what raytracing does then it still has a long way to go, but the technology looks very promising. I like the raytracing version better, just not the unnatural bright light. It doesn't look like natural sunlight shining down is ultimately what I'm trying to say

I feel like they're embellishing on the light intensity to cast more well defined shadows...

Perfect path traced lighting should go completely unnoticed by the viewer. What you see should just make sense. But this is video games where the great new feature needs to stand out and be showcased... like front and center stage. But what makes perfect raytracing so critical is its ability to bridge an uncanny valley effect in video game lighting and reflections in realistic games, especially where photo-realism is the scenario.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

The added bloom lighting ruins it. There's always some post-processing effect that takes the graphical leap one step back, like they know it's going to affect the framerate, so they don't let you view the outside clearly. You're wrong if you think any lighting that gets in the way of seeing all of the image clearly is somehow better.

I'm happy to see more accurate self-shadowing but they still go overboard with the lighting.

Subjective opinion. Most tone mappers in games use the simple algorithm (log average). It can be toned down though. Not sure how unless it's a render variable that can be passed to the game engine from an .ini file.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

The instances where they're out in the open is kind of overbearing. The light is blinding, abnormally bright. If that's what raytracing does then it still has a long way to go, but the technology looks very promising. I like the raytracing version better, just not the unnatural bright light. It doesn't look like natural sunlight shining down is ultimately what I'm trying to say

RT solution is so wrong it's not even funny. You can't even tell where the light is supposed to come from because they are hiding all the discrepencies with ambient occlusion and flat lighting like on the skin. Every single game doesn't shade skin properly because they push a GI light probe on it when it's in shadow. It's literally the ugliest thing in a game today. Add to that light leaks through the eyes because they don't test for occlusion so light glows under the eyelids. I can't see how anyone can't notice how cringe that looks.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

I feel like they're embellishing on the light intensity to cast more well defined shadows...

Perfect path traced lighting should go completely unnoticed by the viewer. What you see should just make sense. But this is video games where the great new feature needs to stand out and be showcased... like front and center stage. But what makes perfect raytracing so critical is its ability to bridge an uncanny valley effect in video game lighting and reflections in realistic games, especially where photo-realism is the scenario.

Exactly.

Most games throw a tone mapper on to help with HDR lighting. In film they never use tone maps + glow shaders because they can make the light intensity be whatever value they want and can normalize it in the shaders. One day..

 

[Chozofication]

It's technically interesting but isn't going to look as good VS. controlled lighting a lot of times.

Not only is artist controlled lighting still viable, it's necessary depending on the art style/intended scene impact.

 

[Zefah]

It's technically interesting but isn't going to look as good VS. controlled lighting a lot of times.

Not only is artist controlled lighting still viable, it's necessary depending on the art style/intended scene impact.

Artists can still work within a fully path traced system to control what players see.

 

[Snes nes]

The added bloom lighting ruins it. There's always some post-processing effect that takes the graphical leap one step back, like they know it's going to affect the framerate, so they don't let you view the outside clearly. You're wrong if you think any lighting that gets in the way of seeing all of the image clearly is somehow better.

I'm happy to see more accurate self-shadowing but they still go overboard with the lighting.

Mario 3 looks better

 

[VFX_Veteran]

It's technically interesting but isn't going to look as good VS. controlled lighting a lot of times.

Controlled lighting is going to mimic reality unless you are looking for something not realistic. If a developer is gunning for non-photoreal look, they can revert to whatever they want. But taking a game like TLOUP1, for example, that would love to relieve the artists from painting light maps (as well as reducing large memory footprint) that will come for free with natural realistic bounced light, then it's a godsend. I don't know about you but I like being able to fire a gun at a prop in the scene and having it move from a bullet as opposed to static objects that aren't moveable.

 

[regawdless]

I posted that vid in the Cyberpunk OT.

I'm really impressed. Looks so much more coherent and believable. I'll skip this 40xx.gen, will jump back in with a 50xx card to play it in its full glory.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

I posted that vid in the Cyberpunk OT.

I'm really impressed. Looks so much more coherent and believable. I'll skip this 40xx.gen, will jump back in with a 50xx card to play it in its full glory.

Yea, I thought it deserved it's own thread since I'd like to talk technicals on it.

 

[Gold Loot]

Looks very nice.( if a bit overdone) I would have to wonder if this game was utilizing UE5.2 would it be easier to run.

 

[regawdless]

Yea, I thought it deserved it's own thread since I'd like to talk technicals on it.

I don't understand how this actually works tbh. So it's Nvidia Overdrive, I'd think it's a mode that can be used on games to inject crazy RT. But apparently it's a lot of work to implement, even in a game that already has RT.

I guess it's just another Nvidia marketing term to hype shit up. Still, very cool way to show us the future of gaming. Give me the RT overdose.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

Looks very nice.( if a bit overdone) I would have to wonder if this game was utilizing UE5.2 would it be easier to run.

Nah. UE5 has a lot of overhead too just like any 3rd party game engine. It's actually way more earlier than I expected to have a complete ray-tracing pipeline done with todays' videocards. Of course DLSS will always be needed until cards get more powerful in the next few generations.

 

[Chozofication]

Controlled lighting is going to mimic reality unless you are looking for something not realistic. If a developer is gunning for non-photoreal look, they can revert to whatever they want.

that's what im saying, but for realistic look this will be superior of course except for scenes which might need more impact/lit up where it normally wouldn't etc.

Artists can still work within a fully path traced system to control what players see.

Yeah i just mean letting the RT do its thing automatically isn't going to look best

 

[VFX_Veteran]

I don't understand how this actually works tbh. So it's Nvidia Overdrive, I'd think it's a mode that can be used on games to inject crazy RT. But apparently it's a lot of work to implement, even in a game that already has RT.

Nvidia is involved because I don't think CDPR would be able to implement it without their help. Their new tech with out of order shader execution is a big one since true monte-carlo ray sampling has no fixed set of rays that are shot from the eye. Also have to compensate for all the light bouncing around off of other objects and carrying color with them.

I guess it's just another Nvidia marketing term to hype shit up. Still, very cool way to show us the future of gaming. Give me the RT overdose.

It's not hype though.

TLOU: Part 1 uses 3 layers of ambient occlusion to solve the self-occlusion problem. 1) Voxel-cone tracing (2D), 2) Directional occlusion, and 3) Capsule occlusion. All of those have to be computed in order to make a reasonable good looking scene where all objects are casting some form of a shadow whether it be in broad daylight using regular shadow maps and in shadow using all those AO forms. You can now solve this occlusion issue with 1 solution.

One of the big cringeworthy things I see in games is their gross constant lighting on skin for characters when they are in shadow. They only pick up the GI light probe light and don't shadow it properly. Every single game messes this up. This is the ONLY game that does it correctly. And unfortunately, you can't bake your shadow into the skin shader because the characters are dynamically moving.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

Yeah i just mean letting the RT do its thing automatically isn't going to look best

It will look best if you are comparing it to 95% of all games out there. Pretty much every game has some form of dynamic animation in it and that completely get's destroyed if you bake your lighting in your game. If you implement the RT correctly, it will match an artists view on paper.

 

[skeem]

Looks amazing.

It must be a nightmare to implement as far as scene setting is concerned. Some scenes look unbelievable and others look like they lose a little something as far as the visual direction is concerned.

But it still does look amazing.

 

[Kadayi]

I posted that vid in the Cyberpunk OT.

I'm really impressed. Looks so much more coherent and believable. I'll skip this 40xx.gen, will jump back in with a 50xx card to play it in its full glory.

You only need one kidney after all


Does this tech have any chance of running on 3000 series cards at a reduced resolution or is it purely 4000 cards-only territory?

 

[VFX_Veteran]

You only need one kidney after all


Does this tech have any chance of running on 3000 series cards at a reduced resolution or is it purely 4000 cards-only territory?

That's a good question. We'll see tomorrow.

 

[Dacon]

Finally we have a game fully realizing what a true path tracer can give. The game looks phenomenal now with correct lighting. I remember a lot of people complaining that RT was just a fad. Now you see the difference in what a game's lighting should look like. Also we finally have a game that utilizes the highest end GPU hardware - 4090. No other hardware can run this mode so it's literally the new Crysis.

It looks great undoubtedly, but what's the point when it has 0 utility for 85 of the community? I don't think a suite of visual features that requires specific, very expensive hardware does much to prove something isn't a fad.

P.S. I don't want to hear people declaring their favorite current game looking better than this. If the lighting is using anything other than path tracing, it's outright wrong and loses many points.

Silly statement. Prefacing a thread with " I don't wanna hear *insert statement* bc my opinion is on this is irreproachable" is ridiculous. Don't be so gd fragile. Different things are going to look better to different people, doesn't matter how technically "right" it is.

If you don't wanna hear opinions from people you don't like, probably shouldnt participate in any public engagement ever.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

It looks great undoubtedly, but what's the point when it has 0 utility for 85 of the community? I don't think a suite of visual features that requires specific, very expensive hardware does much to prove something isn't a fad.

Someone's gotta be the first to do it. That's the way technology is. You don't think every gaming company around will suddenly develop everyone of their games with all possible hardware configurations to do this all at the same time in order to be value added do you?

Silly statement. Prefacing a thread with " I don't wanna hear *insert statement* bc my opinion is on this is irreproachable" is ridiculous. Don't be so gd fragile. Different things are going to look better to different people, doesn't matter how technically "right" it is.

If you don't wanna hear opinions from people you don't like, probably shouldnt participate in any public engagement ever.

And you read right past the smiley face I had (i.e. as in I was joking)...FAIL.

 

[Dacon]

Someone's gotta be the first to do it. That's the way technology is. You don't think every gaming company around will suddenly develop everyone of their games with all possible hardware configurations to do this all at the same time in order to be value added do you?

I didn't say no one should do it, I'm saying ultimately it isn't going to prove to be all that significant until it's something that's a standard, or at least feasible for most to utilize. It's pretty much the same with VR.

And you read right past the smiley face I had (i.e. as in I was joking)...FAIL.

Yeah, bc anyone can infer your exact meaning from a smiley face put at the end of a sentence, which could just as easily imply you laughing at the prospect of being challenged on this.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

I didn't say no one should do it, I'm saying ultimately it isn't going to prove to be all that significant until it's something that's a standard, or at least feasible for most to utilize. It's pretty much the same with VR.

Now that's a ridiculous comment right there.

Just because it only runs on a subset of hardware doesn't mean it's not significant. It's a proof-of-concept (i.e. a full path-traced pipeline in realtime gets you these kinds of results). It should be a known thing that the realtime world strives to look as good as film. We will eventually get there. It will be awhile before hardware is cheap and powerful enough that the average middle class person can afford it.

Yeah, bc anyone can infer your exact meaning from a smiley face put at the end of a sentence, which could just as easily imply you laughing at the prospect of being challenged on this.

I would love for someone to be foolish enough to claim accurate lighting based on tracing rays won't look as good as rasterized screenspace tricks. If you want to consider it a "dare" then go for it.

 

[Dacon]

It will be awhile before hardware is cheap and powerful enough that the average middle class person can afford it.

Which is why it's not significant to most people, which is my whole point. Just cause you see it as a milestone means fuck all to the average person.

Whether or not shit like this:

It should be a known thing that the realtime world strives to look as good as film

is even an achievement worth pursuit is debatable to begin with. I personally am not interested in photoreal games, or the pursuit of "cinematic" gaming. I like my games to look like games, and be entertaining. Emulation of the real doesn't interest me, and I'm not alone in that mindset. An extra bit of shadowing here or more realistic dark spots in a room adds little to the experience beyond a momentary appreciation occasionally.

Game graphics have gotten to the point where they're generally good enough that I'm far more interested in art and gameplay design than I am graphical technology.

I would love for someone to be foolish enough to claim accurate lighting based on tracing rays won't look as good as rasterized screenspace tricks. If you want to consider it a "dare" then go for it.

All people care about is what looks better to their eyes. Your little quibbles about what's accurate or w/e is irrelevant to anyone who isn't into the technicality of it.

 

[Gold Loot]

It looks great undoubtedly, but what's the point when it has 0 utility for 85 of the community? I don't think a suite of visual features that requires specific, very expensive hardware does much to prove something isn't a fad.

This doesn't bother me since the game is completely playable with or without it.

The game still look's plenty nice even without all the raytracing effects. The game is scalable.

It's not like the old Crysis days of "it's gonna work, or it's not. "

 

[Dacon]

This doesn't bother me since the game is completely playable with or without it.

Idk, even the 4090 was struggling with Overdrive.

The game still look's plenty nice even without all the raytracing effects. The game is scalable.

You're right, Cyberpunk is a fantastic game.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

Which is why it's not significant to most people, which is my whole point. Just cause you see it as a milestone means fuck all to the average person.

Whether or not shit like this:



is even an achievement worth pursuit is debatable to begin with. I personally am not interested in photoreal games, or the pursuit of "cinematic" gaming. I like my games to look like games, and be entertaining. Emulation of the real doesn't interest me, and I'm not alone in that mindset. An extra bit of shadowing here or more realistic dark spots in a room adds little to the experience beyond a momentary appreciation occasionally.

Game graphics have gotten to the point where they're generally good enough that I'm far more interested in art and gameplay design than I am graphical technology.


All people care about is what looks better to their eyes. Your little quibbles about what's accurate or w/e is irrelevant to anyone who isn't into the technicality of it.

All I can say is buy a Switch and be happy. The rest of us want excellent visuals using technology that continues to push visuals to a higher bar.

And since your opinion is now known, I guess you don't really need to shit up the thread any further since it's for talking about the merits/costs of this tech.

 

[Dacon]

All I can say is buy a Switch and be happy.

What an amazing leap.


Since we're going to make wildly off the mark interpretations of what people say, I'll go with this:

All I can say is watch a movie and be happy if photorealism is the most important thing to you.

The rest of us want excellent visuals using technology that continues to push visuals to a higher bar.

Yes, because what I said somehow translates to being AGAINST new technology moving forward. Obviously technology will advance as time moves forward, but at the moment it's hard to get excited about something that only maybe the 10% of gaming enthusiasts will be able to enjoy. While I'm not terribly invested in photorealism in gaming, it doesn't mean I'm incapable of appreciating when a game can approach those levels.

Control is one of my favorite games of recent years, and while I enjoyed what I could of the raytracing implementation. I found myself turning it off for more frames, and still being very impressed by the art and design of the Oldest house.

I'd definitely love to see what next gen tech can do coupled with an artistic design that isn't interested in replicating the real.

And since your opinion is now known, I guess you don't really need to shit up the thread any further since it's for talking about the merits/costs of this tech.

God damn are you a crybaby. Don't like what I have to say? Just ignore me, you're not going to browbeat people into not expressing themselves.

Don't get me wrong, what's on display here is impressive. Dynamic shadows generated by gunshots? Very cool.

 

[Gold Loot]

Idk, even the 4090 was struggling with Overdrive.



You're right, Cyberpunk is a fantastic game.

I understand, but try to think of it more like a tech demo. I don't know the performance specifics during actual gameplay, but I doubt anyone's going to seriously play this with today's hardware.

This is likely more of a publicity campaign and a way to future proof the game.

 

[Dacon]

I understand, but try to think of it more like a tech demo. I don't know the performance specifics during actual gameplay, but I doubt anyone's going to seriously play this with today's hardware.

Good point.

This is likely more of a publicity campaign and a way to future proof the game.

I suppose you're right.

 

[Kadayi]

I understand, but try to think of it more like a tech demo. I don't know the performance specifics during actual gameplay, but I doubt anyone's going to seriously play this with today's hardware.

This is likely more of a publicity campaign and a way to future proof the game.

I can see this position. It doesn't do CDP any Harm for CP2077 to be seen as one of the Graphical Benchmark Games.

 

[DonDonDonPata]

looks excellent, and I'm happy to see a more "complete" application of ray tracing. The whole point is to properly blend and shade the scene but these halfway applications of ray tracing always suffer from some realism-breaking omissions. For instance when I was playing Miles Morales on PS5, even the so-called ray traced parts didn't impress because they were side-by-side against poorly-shaded, lower-res objects in the environment.

now I wanna see ray tracing used for proper AI pathing, proper collision and meshes, proper physics, etc. The visual improvements are very nice but I want the physics to continue advancing, too.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

Just loaded it up this morning just to take a sneek peek before working and here's some thoughts:

1) Lighting looks amazing (of course) -- BUT -- their artists aren't very good. I would tone down the light scattering propagation with a normalizing factor. I'm not sure if this is from the actual scattering or their tone map shader is tuned too high. This could be a small change with an console variable that controls the engine somewhat like UE does. They might address this in a patch.

2) Path tracing WITHOUT DLSS 3 is hovering in the high 20s low 30s on a RTX 4090. DLSS 3 is producing over 100% of the dropped frames!! Wow!!

Basically, realtime games right now will absolutely REQUIRE some sort of frame generation to get these kinds of visuals otherwise we are probably 2 generations away from implementing path-tracing at native 4k/60FPS (i.e. 6x00 series cards). A PS6 with no frame generation will absolutely be dead in the water on release.

 

[Gold Loot]

Runs like ass on my 3080. If I set my DLSS on to balanced, my frames hover in the 20s.

The basic raytracing looks good enough for me.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

7900X runs at 9FPS with FR2. AMD is way way way behind... and that doesn't bode well for consoles.

 

[VFX_Veteran]

Runs like ass on my 3080. If I set my DLSS on to balanced, my frames hover in the 20s.

The basic raytracing looks good enough for me.

Plenty of guys are super excited about their FPS on 3x00 series boards. Check out this thread on GAF.

 

[Kuranghi]

Just loaded it up this morning just to take a sneek peek before working and here's some thoughts:

1) Lighting looks amazing (of course) -- BUT -- their artists aren't very good. I would tone down the light scattering propagation with a normalizing factor. I'm not sure if this is from the actual scattering or their tone map shader is tuned too high. This could be a small change with an console variable that controls the engine somewhat like UE does. They might address this in a patch.

2) Path tracing WITHOUT DLSS 3 is hovering in the high 20s low 30s on a RTX 4090. DLSS 3 is producing over 100% of the dropped frames!! Wow!!

Basically, realtime games right now will absolutely REQUIRE some sort of frame generation to get these kinds of visuals otherwise we are probably 2 generations away from implementing path-tracing at native 4k/60FPS (i.e. 6x00 series cards). A PS6 with no frame generation will absolutely be dead in the water on release.

My issue with all this prediction/reconstruction is I can put up with upscaling artifacts now that its matured a bit but this motion prediction (I'm aware its much more complex than usual real-time MEMC found in TVs) needs to be better for me to get on board with it, I spend all day looking at TVs with motion smoothing turned up too high and its completely horrible, what I've seen of DLSS3 in Spiderman for example isn't ready for me personally, the artifacts are too visible without me looking for them. I hope with later version of FG it can be hooked into more aspects of the engine so it can deal with the current problem areas as well.

Recently in Tchia the amount of trailing artifacts from whatever they are using to clean up the image (or how that interfacts with their lighting/reflection methods maybe) is pretty distracting but still I prefer it to uneven motion artifacts caused by FG.

Input lag reduction is also more of the reason I would want to play at >30fps than motion clarity, its a very close second ofc but I get used to a fixed framerate as long as its 30 or above, Horizon 2 for example I would never play in the performance mode because the IQ hit is too much for me, it robs it of what makes it look so fantastic as an overall package to me, the fact that input lag is still quite low in the 30fps mode just cements my choice. I'm presuming there isn't going to be a way to have these fake frames actually contribute to a reduction in lag due to how it works so for me its just a bandaid like VRR is - VRR's near black flashing is a no-go for me, that makes my display's ability to display (effectively) true blacks pointless and ruins IQ for me - I wouldn't be bothered about using it to go from 80-90 real frames up to FG'd 120 fps if it introduces the artifacts it does, I'd prefer to use it to hit 60fps when I'm not locked to it in rare cases, like in RE4R's resolution mode on PS5. In the case of a game running at 80-90 I'd still rather lock it to 60fps and use the extra frames as overhead.

That way its rarely active and only during extreme cases of stress on the GPU, I'm not sure it works that way though, can you set a cap and have it not be doing the FG if the cap is met?

I don't want to just be chasing ever higher framerates, I'd much prefer to focus on world interactibility and image quality and keep it locked to 60fps, most 60fps modes in console games have disappointing IQ to and every single 120fps mode without fail is far too soft. Everyone raved about Uncharted 4 finally being in 60fps on PS5 and while input lag and smoothness of animation is obviously fantastic playing it again at 1440p like I did on my PS4 Pro in the first place is not exciting for me and maybe even worse the cutscenes look awful at 60fps, they were clearly made with 30fps in mind so it looks really soap opera-y and robs it of, dare I say, its cinematic quality. Everyone looked like horrifically puppeted meat mannequins at 60fps in cutscenes.

This is definitely in no small part to do with me using a slow response time panel'd LCD so 24 and 30 fps is way more acceptable when combined with a good MB implementation. If I was on a monitor then I'd chasing framerate more but then I'd lose the insane image quality difference between almost all monitors and my ZD9 TV, the contrast difference and depth of the image is insane compared to fast panel monitors, with the exception of those QD-OLED monitors but then you lose the large area brightness due to OLED's ABL limitations, its not even just fullscreen white brightness, its crazy how less impactful moderately bright scenes in games look on an OLED vs. an LCD like mine. Standing in the desert in Horizon 2 is so amazing looking that I don't miss the increase in depth my OLED TV brings for the LCD challenging parts of the image.