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Crimson Desert - Digital Foundry - High-End PC's Biggest Visual Upgrade - Ray Reconstruction/Ray Regeneration

This scene... the character was in an enclosed space, without enemies, and still standing still...

On a 5080 in DLSS PERFORMACE , the game runs at 50 fps.

Lowering the quality to ultra or high... let's say in the best case... the game goes to 80 fps in this scene.

80 fps in this scene... now imagine an open space, several enemies and a lot of things happening... 80 fps will definitely drop below 60 fps.

Remember, 5080 (machines of this level are 3% to 4% of Steam's production).

In short, the vast majority of PC gamers won't play with Ray Reconstruction in this game... then there will be a lot of PC gamers saying it's better than the console... even though the vast majority don't have that level of machine.


So, the correct question isn't "the PC gamer is better"... but "which PC gamer is better?"
Dude just get a PC instead of going through this copium routiine.

I'm 100% ceretain i will be able to use ultra settings and Ray reconstuction on my 4070ti, and i'll post screen grabs to show it (The DF vid is using the future proof cinematic settings).

And you're missing the point, if you have a good PC you CAN use this tech. On console no one can.
 
This scene... the character was in an enclosed space, without enemies, and still standing still...

On a 5080 in DLSS PERFORMACE , the game runs at 50 fps.

Lowering the quality to ultra or high... let's say in the best case... the game goes to 80 fps in this scene.

80 fps in this scene... now imagine an open space, several enemies and a lot of things happening... 80 fps will definitely drop below 60 fps.

Remember, 5080 (machines of this level are 3% to 4% of Steam's production).

In short, the vast majority of PC gamers won't play with Ray Reconstruction in this game... then there will be a lot of PC gamers saying it's better than the console... even though the vast majority don't have that level of machine.


So, the correct question isn't "the PC gamer is better"... but "which PC gamer is better?"
High end PCs always look better than consoles.
This ain't new.

CAN IT RUN CRIMSON DESERT will be the new meme.
 
Surprised how no one is talking about how bad the shadow flickering is even with ray reconstruction. How rain is COMPLETELY absent with ray reconstruction on, and how poor the pop-in is even close to you on the ground.

And this was with the cinematic preset. We dont have issues with shadow flickering like this in UE5, Anvil and Snowdrop engine games. At least not on max settings. The pop-in is also really bad. Really weird to see this kind of stuff in the highest preset. Even higher than ultra. They just want gamers to think they are playing on High or Ultra when its probably medium settings in other games. Kinda shady.
 
Math says 43.5FPS. So base for frame gen is there.

Of course dropping some settings will fix this very quickly.

What kind of PC gamer are you? Time to throw that potato away and buy a new PC.

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Surprised how no one is talking about how bad the shadow flickering is even with ray reconstruction. How rain is COMPLETELY absent with ray reconstruction on, and how poor the pop-in is even close to you on the ground.

And this was with the cinematic preset. We dont have issues with shadow flickering like this in UE5, Anvil and Snowdrop engine games. At least not on max settings. The pop-in is also really bad. Really weird to see this kind of stuff in the highest preset. Even higher than ultra. They just want gamers to think they are playing on High or Ultra when its probably medium settings in other games. Kinda shady.
Which is a fair observation, but this isnt the final release, some of ths stuff could be improved or fixed completely with the launch version. Especially as Alex said the devs know about some of these problems already.
 
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Absolutely true nobody actually would need to go beyond Ultra Settings here

But I would be curious to know what makes the Cinematic preset so much more demanding than the Ultra Preset

I saw the previous video and it run basically 4K 60 at Ultra on a 7900 XTX, that is not better than the current 9070 XT, maybe a little better in raster but not by much

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Surprised how no one is talking about how bad the shadow flickering is even with ray reconstruction. How rain is COMPLETELY absent with ray reconstruction on, and how poor the pop-in is even close to you on the ground.

And this was with the cinematic preset. We dont have issues with shadow flickering like this in UE5, Anvil and Snowdrop engine games. At least not on max settings. The pop-in is also really bad. Really weird to see this kind of stuff in the highest preset. Even higher than ultra. They just want gamers to think they are playing on High or Ultra when its probably medium settings in other games. Kinda shady.
All correct even though I think the rain thing is just a bug.
The rest you can fix in most engines via mods or even simple parameters though.

Considering how heavy this is already with such poor draw distance for so many objects ,though, i'd bet that a draw distance mod would fuck everything but the 4090-5090 class cards.
 
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That's exactly why these AI denoisers are called reconstruction or regeneration. It takes whatever sparse noisy data and infers it to completion, while a non-AI denoiser removes it completely as it doesn't know how to reconstruct with such low sampling. 1/16 rays per pixel is crazy low.

Fantastic stuff really. And a decent showing for AMD RR too, given this is their first game ever where RTGI is used.
I had never seen it to such an extreme. That's a first for sure and I don't think this was the correct approach.
 
Surprised how no one is talking about how bad the shadow flickering is even with ray reconstruction. How rain is COMPLETELY absent with ray reconstruction on, and how poor the pop-in is even close to you on the ground.

And this was with the cinematic preset. We dont have issues with shadow flickering like this in UE5, Anvil and Snowdrop engine games. At least not on max settings. The pop-in is also really bad. Really weird to see this kind of stuff in the highest preset. Even higher than ultra. They just want gamers to think they are playing on High or Ultra when its probably medium settings in other games. Kinda shady.

Probably my biggest graphics pet peeve.
 
Useless video. No detailed info on all the other settings, no perfornnce, no optimized settings, no talks about anything other than RR. Fucking retarded.
They are milking it for sure. They saw the insane pre order numbers and correctly predicted they would get a lot of views. Their last one did like 450k views in a day.

But this isnt the final review code. makes no sense to offer optimized setting for what is a delayed preview code. the game's embargo is ending in a few days and thats when you will get the details you are looking for.

Also what happened with AO? Now all of a sudden we need raytracing and RR to cast it?
its just silly. you dont need ray tracing let alone RR for good AO. Alan Wake 2 had great AO and i didnt even have to turn on path tracing. completely baked game.

they are just using a very low crude form of RTGI and thats contributing to the improper shading of darkened areas.
 
The pop-in is also really bad. Really weird to see this kind of stuff in the highest preset. Even higher than ultra. They just want gamers to think they are playing on High or Ultra when its probably medium settings in other games
I am glad someone is brave enough to say this, definitely agree.
 
PC? Which PC?

A 5080 with ray reconstruction, the game ran at 50 fps, even with DLSS on performance.

And the character was standing still in a scene with no enemies... hahaImagine in a scene with several enemies... haha


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yeah but that's in cinematic, ill probably put it in Ultra settings and there's going to be some gains in fps
 
All correct even though I think the rain thing is just a bug.
The rest you can fix in most engines via mods or even simple parameters though.

Considering how heavy this is already with such poor draw distance for so many objects ,though, i'd bet that that a draw distance mod would fuck everything but the 4090-5090 class cards.
Definitely a bug but would it be fixed this close to release? i mean the game literally comes out in 5 days.

the detail on the ground is probably not even related to draw distance. i think its just an engine limitation. their draw distance is phenomenal at rendering distant details complete with proper shadows. The pop-in issues he mentions are on the ground which are probably related to them going with a last gen technique for bricks and other objects on the city streets. its something we discussed just a couple of days ago in the graphics fidelity thread. I dont see that kind of grass pop-in when hes traversing the fields. it seems to be exclusive to the city streets.
 
Either the standard denoiser is extremely shitty or there is something wrong going on there.

Since when denoisers have the ability to erase AO out of existence? It looks like it's completely missing, weird.
I'm hoping that modders can dig into the engine and restore the AO. This game has some serious issues with shadows beside what ray reconstruction provides.
 
Surprised how no one is talking about how bad the shadow flickering is even with ray reconstruction. How rain is COMPLETELY absent with ray reconstruction on, and how poor the pop-in is even close to you on the ground.

And this was with the cinematic preset. We dont have issues with shadow flickering like this in UE5, Anvil and Snowdrop engine games. At least not on max settings. The pop-in is also really bad. Really weird to see this kind of stuff in the highest preset. Even higher than ultra. They just want gamers to think they are playing on High or Ultra when its probably medium settings in other games. Kinda shady.

I think game has raster shadows only, that's why they suck ass.

They are milking it for sure. They saw the insane pre order numbers and correctly predicted they would get a lot of views. Their last one did like 450k views in a day.

But this isnt the final review code. makes no sense to offer optimized setting for what is a delayed preview code. the game's embargo is ending in a few days and thats when you will get the details you are looking for.


its just silly. you dont need ray tracing let alone RR for good AO. Alan Wake 2 had great AO and i didnt even have to turn on path tracing. completely baked game.

they are just using a very low crude form of RTGI and thats contributing to the improper shading of darkened areas.

AW2 has static time of day. For example TW3 even with HBAO+ looks way worse than RTGI+RTAO combo when it comes to proper shadowing of foliage.
 
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Also, is it just me or I find "moving" graphical issues for more distracting than just low-end ones? For instance, a bad texture is a bad texture. Yeah it's ugly, but if the game is visually consistent, you sort of forget it as it blends in with the rest of the scenery. Flickering shadows or noisy effects, however, just can't be turned off by your brain. It's like they're constantly calling for your attention.

This is my issue with some of the visuals in this game. The grass/shadow pop-ins and the noise galore on consoles/non-RR PCs. At this point, I'd rather have less accurate lighting than flickering or grainy light sources/bounces.
 
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I think game has raster shadows only, that's why they suck ass.

Confused Liam Neeson GIF

AW2 has static time of day. For example TW3 even with HBAO+ looks way worse than RTGI+RTAO combo when it comes to proper shadowing of foliage.
ah ok. wasnt there a ground truth AO solution Nixxes was trying to push in some PC ports? Surely, we dont NEED RTAO for proper darkening.

I also didnt see this issue in AC shadows. I think the console versions dont have RT shadows. I think Avatar did, but AC only has it on PC iirc.
 
Considering how heavy this is already with such poor draw distance for so many objects ,though, i'd bet that a draw distance mod would fuck everything but the 4090-5090 class cards.
Drawing additional things actually results in a rather minor performance hits in most games since thats just a few more things in the grand scheme of things.
I usually triple LoD scale in most UE games (foliage+meshes) and the hits tend to be really small for really major differences.
 
These modern game engines just gimp features that were standard with traditional rasterization methods and put it back in with more expensive methods like RR that tank performance.

Lazy devs taking shortcuts and slapping on RT and calling it a day. lolol

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If this can't get fixed on PS5 Pro at least that would be shit.
 
Definitely a bug but would it be fixed this close to release? i mean the game literally comes out in 5 days.
How many games, especially in the AAA realm have we seen that looked and played like they`d have needed another 6+ months in the oven?
the detail on the ground is probably not even related to draw distance. i think its just an engine limitation. their draw distance is phenomenal at rendering distant details complete with proper shadows. The pop-in issues he mentions are on the ground which are probably related to them going with a last gen technique for bricks and other objects on the city streets. its something we discussed just a couple of days ago in the graphics fidelity thread. I dont see that kind of grass pop-in when hes traversing the fields. it seems to be exclusive to the city streets.
Phew no clue. Maybe that`s an issue due to their heavy use of what looks like parallax mapping....we`ll see.

Drawing additional things actually results in a rather minor performance hits in most games since thats just a few more things in the grand scheme of things.
I usually triple LoD scale in most UE games (foliage+meshes) and the hits tend to be really small for really major differences.
That depends on the number and complexity of what you`re drawing additionally. I`ve had games where the draw distance setting did basically nothing performance wise, and I´ve had some where it literally kicked my GPU in the balls. In which category this will fall, we`ll find out soon.
 
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Yup. That's why they flicker.

When they already have RTAO and RTGI, and probably RT reflections as well, why didn't they give RT shadows as an option at least?

Confused Liam Neeson GIF


ah ok. wasnt there a ground truth AO solution Nixxes was trying to push in some PC ports? Surely, we dont NEED RTAO for proper darkening.

I also didnt see this issue in AC shadows. I think the console versions dont have RT shadows. I think Avatar did, but AC only has it on PC iirc.

Even TW3 remaster has full suite of RT effects. Raster shadows look like shit in this game, Dragon's Dogma 2 had the same problem.

If you are already building BVH for multiple RT effects, why not add one more? Or just drop in Path Tracing for fuck's sake (and futureproof)...
 
Even TW3 remaster has full suite of RT effects. Raster shadows look like shit in this game, Dragon's Dogma 2 had the same problem.

If you are already building BVH for multiple RT effects, why not add one more? Or just drop in Path Tracing for fuck's sake (and futureproof)...
tbh ac shadows had the same problem too. rt gi and rt reflections are great but then you have these raster shadows...

slimy on a roll today but he is 100% justified lashing out at this game
 
For people that think raster AO is so good (HBAO+ in this case):

Raster vs. RT:

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And this game wasn't downgraded on purpose (conspiracy), it launched without any RT and didn't have it for years.
 
These modern game engines just gimp features that were standard with traditional rasterization methods and put it back in with more expensive methods like RR that tank performance.
Wait till next gen when all raster techniques are lazily slapped on or ignored entirely. The delta is going to widen so much during cross gen. Much more than ps4 vs ps5.
 
Surprised how no one is talking about how bad the shadow flickering is even with ray reconstruction. How rain is COMPLETELY absent with ray reconstruction on, and how poor the pop-in is even close to you on the ground.
Imagine if PSSR remove the rain, we would have 2 full months of Bojji posting every day pictures how bad is it.
 
Imagine if PSSR remove the rain, we would have 2 full months of Bojji posting every day pictures how bad is it.

Once PS5 Pro or PS6 get Ray Regeneration you will not complain about removed rain or anything like that.

DLSS already removed tiny rain droplets in Death Stranding on Sam backpack. You are also ignoring how aliased image looks when rain drops and there is no RR.
 
Once PS5 Pro or PS6 get Ray Regeneration you will not complain about removed rain or anything like that.

DLSS already removed tiny rain droplets in Death Stranding on Sam backpack. You are also ignoring how aliased image looks when rain drops and there is no RR.
I don't think Sony would port Ray Regeneration current iteration if those are the results. The 24% lower framerate and low quality upscaling …. I don't know…
 
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I don't think Sony would port Ray Regeneration current iteration if those are the results. The 24% lower framerate and low quality upscaling …. I don't know…

RR (AMD) has the biggest problem with upscaling but other than that it's much better than denoiser this game uses (on Pro or PC).
 
Maybe it's the denoiser, or maybe they are using more rays when you enable RR

That wouldn't be the first case when settings are changing when RR is active. Spiderman 2 and SW Outlaws are doing this (but in both games you can use those v. high settings with standard denoisers).
 
That wouldn't be the first case when settings are changing when RR is active. Spiderman 2 and SW Outlaws are doing this (but in both games you can use those v. high settings with standard denoisers).
24% sounds too much high compared to the 3% fps you lose on COD at higher fps than this video. I'm pretty sure they are using more rays because the standard number is not enough for those models
 
So after Cyberpunk, Crimson Desert is now going to be the next Benchmark/State of the Art game for PC and consoles?

I really did not wanted to add another game to my backlog, but it looks like Crimson Desert deserves it.

My PC is ready
 
Okay, so I did a bit of digging to find comparison numbers.

97883_04_dragons-dogma-2-has-hidden-path-tracing-mode-on-pc-and-it-looks-incredible_full.jpg


The standard mode of Dragon's Dogma 2 GI uses 1/4th sample per pixel. Not exactly the same as one ray, but within this context, it's close enough (correct me if I'm wrong on this). There's no specularity (reflections) in the standard mode either. There's no mention of the number of rays per pixel for specular specifically.

In Cyberpunk, the default in RT Overdrive is 2 rays per pixel, but I'm not sure of the breakdown. NVIDIA's documentation mentions the following for reflective surfaces in the non-PT mode.

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It's 1/16th for GI in Crimson Desert and 1/4th for reflections. There's no mention of the number of bounces, but given the result, it's probably 0. Cyberpunk Ultra uses 32x the number of rays for reflective surfaces on Ultra and 88x on Psycho compared to Crimson Desert. This explains the bad reflections in Crimson Desert. Dragon's Dogma's diffuse lighting uses 4x the number of rays per pixel compared to Crimson Desert.

So, I guess we know why a 2080 is the recommended GPU for Ultra and why it has RT on (all?) consoles. The quality is just extremely low. Perhaps the lowest of any AAA game, but in their defense, they seem to have built their art around it, so it's not a scenario where we get shitty RT just so they can check a box. The RT has tons of limitations as can be seen in the video. I'm also hoping there are ways to add more rays on PC, especially when it comes to reflections or even lighting. When the count is that low, going from 1/16th to even 1/8th could be a huge difference.

Also been lurking Beyond3D and Andrew Lauritzen, a former Epic engineer I believe, says the following:

There's clearly something more going on than that in many of these scenes. The non-RR results are just entirely missing a bunch of objects/occlusion... it's not like that occlusion is just "blurred out"... you'd still see a general darkening in that area if so. Unclear if bugs or the RT structure is different or something else but there's no way these results are exclusively from enabling RR with everything else the same. There's pretty clearly a bug or settings/content difference as well.

I agree that some part of the difference here is because the stock "RTGI" thing is so low frequency that it almost looks like flat ambient in a lot of the console shots. But I'm still not really sure that explains several of the shots in the comparison here where extra occlusion is present, not just "blurred out". Or I guess to put it another way, the RR path is effectively just a different algorithm/content, and has little to do with the IHV RR implementation itself.

So yeah, more to this than just the denoiser bringing back lost details/lights/shadows.
 
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This makes John's PS5 Pro preview look even more comical. Against the PC version it's more obvious what was off about it, but damn.
Someone in this very thread said the Pro is better at some things in this game then PC, he didnt allaborate though lol.:messenger_tears_of_joy:

In fact i'll give it 1 week before multiple people on here start saying the RT looks better on console because it looks less realistic and more fantasy like or some shit like that.
 
So after Cyberpunk, Crimson Desert is now going to be the next Benchmark/State of the Art game for PC and consoles?
Nope. They would need to improve their RT pipeline for that. It's way behind Cyberpunk and Alan Wake 2 in their standard RT mode. Never mind PT.
 
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Lazy devs taking shortcuts and slapping on RT and calling it a day. lolol

010zdLIXQaKtgyu5.jpg


If this can't get fixed on PS5 Pro at least that would be shit.
"Lazy devs" lol

The game on consoles shits all over 95% of the games out there. It's probably the most advanced tech wise open world game ever created. No shit it doesn't look like the PC version. PC version seems to be the best looking game created thus far when it releases.

Appreciate what you get on your console that isnt nowhere near as powerful as what PC can offer
 
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