[Digital Foundry] Exclusive: Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition Analysis - The First Triple-A Ray Tracing Game

Yes, it's more accurate but from a game Dev pov it takes a fraction of the time! Look at the example in the video, toggling RT GI took pretty much a 1 second click and a 2 second transfer on their tools, compared to manually adding and adjusting hundreds of point lights to fake the effect, which in the example took around 28 MINUTES. That's a massive time saver and the results are more accurate.
But it's only a time saver if you only produce a RT version of your game. And for now, and for coming years, that's not possible. So, almost all games will still need the old fashion prop lighting version. Then, RT version adds time to development, not saves time. It will save time when games will be full and only RT.
 
It is one of these examples the new RT version feels off... there is no way, no matter how much sun you have, you can't see what is outside... plus the inside won't be that bright.

The previous RT looks better IMO.
They need to tone down the new RT lighting... they forced too much to make it different.
True. This can be redeemed if hdr is good
 
We already knew this at launch. I think it was GT7 trailer in which the RT was running low res. Also WDL RT settings from the ini file. 1080P for PS5 SX and 720P on the SS. 4A devs said RTX 2070 and f 6800XT will be able to do 1080P 60fps? That seems pretty bad for 6800XT. So I do not think much should be expected from the consoles.
6800XT is doing 1440p 60fps with RT High + RT reflections, with all the other settings at ultra.

The 6800XT is around 50% faster than the GPUs in either console, but then again the consoles will not be doing RT reflections, RT will be dropped back to normal, and other settings will likely not be at ultra either.
 
But it's only a time saver if you only produce a RT version of your game. And for now, and for coming years, that's not possible. So, almost all games will still need the old fashion prop lighting version. Then, RT version adds time to development, not saves time. It will save time when games will be full and only RT.
I swear it's like people are being obtuse on purpose. Yes, that's the whole point of the video, 4A are showing what can be done by switching to full ray tracing. Going FORWARD.
 
amazing , how the application , of real world lighting effect, of light rays , makes the graphics , sooooooo much more visceral.

;)
 
Last edited:
No, they don't train it on ideal (i.e. ground truth 16K-64K) images, that was DLSS 1.0. Again, more misinformation from people so hyped to praise it but such low interest to understand what it really is.
"During the training process, the output image is compared to an offline rendered, ultra-high quality 16K reference image, and the difference is communicated back into the network so that it can continue to learn and improve its results. This process is repeated tens of thousands of times on the supercomputer until the network reliably outputs high quality, high resolution images."


It might not be specific to the game in question, but the training process still uses "ground truth" images as a reference point.
 
"During the training process, the output image is compared to an offline rendered, ultra-high quality 16K reference image, and the difference is communicated back into the network so that it can continue to learn and improve its results. This process is repeated tens of thousands of times on the supercomputer until the network reliably outputs high quality, high resolution images."


It might not be specific to the game in question, but the training process still uses "ground truth" images as a reference point.
Right, I meant it's not like in DLSS 1.0 which had specific game training in that way. Obviously the network still has to be trained on something, but it's a generalised and agnostic model.
 
Gotta dream bigger than that, bro. Here's what I'd consider that advanced step and not just incremental:

That's because it's for VR:

What makes this possible is the inherent knowledge of the depth of each object in the scene- it would not be anywhere near as effective with flat images.

They are rendering in 3D; so they have more data to use in their upscaling.. but at the expense of... rendering in 3D.

Really cool tech that doesn't apply to non-VR.
 
Right, I meant it's not like in DLSS 1.0 which had specific game training in that way. Obviously the network still has to be trained on something, but it's a generalised and agnostic model.
Nobody said or implied this though.. you appear to not know what "ground truth" means.

Ground truth is an image where the data scientists have labeled all of the things they are attempting to recognize in ANOTHER IMAGE.

So you take a picture of my cat, and my dog.. and you label that image with "cat" and "dog." You then use this "ground truth" image as a data point for the algorithms to identify OTHER cats and dogs... the same with AI upscaling for digital cameras.. they still utilize "ground truth" images, that are not the actual things being upscaled.. they don't have a picture of your Mom's fat ass, in order to upscale it when I take a picture of your Mom's fat ass.. they have pictures of other "Ground truth" fat asssses.

That's even true for DLSS 1.0.. because in a game where the player controls the character, and dynamic AIs are reacting to the dynamic actions of the player...your model doesn't contain every single frame possible... in fact, your model likely only contains a small fraction of something close to any of the "frames" you see, that are upscaled w/ DLSS 1.0. It's just similar imagery, of similar frames, containing the same characters/enemies/objects.

I like how you cried "misinformation" without having a clue what "ground truth" implies. Maybe chill out a bit friendo.
 
Last edited:
Really cool tech that doesn't apply to non-VR.
Analogies aren't mean to be taken literal, that's what they're analogies.
Nobody said or implied this though.. you appear to not know what "ground truth" means.
I know what ground truth is, keep the projection to yourself, I have no interest. I should've explained further what I was thinking about specifically and that's my fault for not being clearer.
 
6800XT is doing 1440p 60fps with RT High + RT reflections, with all the other settings at ultra.

The 6800XT is around 50% faster than the GPUs in either console, but then again the consoles will not be doing RT reflections, RT will be dropped back to normal, and other settings will likely not be at ultra either.

1440P is respectful. So that would mean console would be running at 1080P.
 
1440P is respectful. So that would mean console would be running at 1080P.
Devs already confirmed 4k, likely a dynamic 4k picture, but I doubt it would drop to 1080p. It's amazing how much performance is gained by dropping settings down to medium-high from ultra.
 
Now the emissive lighting from the furnace looks right, casting this erry red lighting across the smoke and room.
But this is small potatoes. Most currently, here completely ignore that an ML Pipeline is in the works for both pieces of hardware as the AMD solution support ML natively, they simply haven't labored
towards implementing ML - YET.

Once games are built from the ground up to be fully RTX Efficient - watch out.

But once games are built to this standard - and AMD Finally gets the ML in gear - Expect a new visual paradigm on consoles.

And a completely new dimension on PC once games are built with the same efficiency specifically for PC, from the ground up - unfortunately - also expect PC's to take longer to get in gear with
technical showpieces built specifically

- from - the - ground - up -


to take advantage of PC hardware due to the fact that crossplatform utility between consoles and PC is now so similar.

It may take half a decade for a Mass Appeal game, built for PC specific - from the ground up - and only for PC - to come into existence.

Until then - I guess PC Gamers have Starcitizen that's now locked into and built specifically for gpu's utilizing hardware without Raytracing or Superior ML features
 
We have been contacted by Deep Silver/4A Games representative with the following statement:

4A Games has not evaluated the AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution feature for Metro Exodus at this time. In our FAQ, we were referring to the AMD FidelityFX open source image quality toolkit which targets traditional rendering techniques that our new RT only render does not use, and noting that we have our own Temporal Reconstruction tech implemented natively which provides great quality benefits for all hardware, so do not currently plan to utilize any other toolkits.
4A Games is always motivated to innovate, evaluate, and use the newest technologies that will benefit our fans across all platforms and hardware.

 
they don't have a picture of your Mom's fat ass, in order to upscale it when I take a picture of your Mom's fat ass.. they have pictures of other "Ground truth" fat asssses.
Made me laugh so hard, you better not have a picture of my mums fat ass. If you do I don't know who I'm more disappointed with, her or you.
 
Spoken someone who isn't VFXVeteran VFXVeteran : This is the best real-time lighting on the market, hands off.

Exodus 2019 already went one step further in lighting with its single bounce real time lighting, and now they have taken it one step further with most of the umbrage carrying over to consoles. Despite being a PS4/XBO at heart, the Enhanced Edition is what you show off to people no matter what platform to highlight how next-gen can look.

Between this and the software RT from Crysis Remastered for PS4 Pro/Xbox One X and the GI tech in Nintendo Switch version from the same game, we see two of the biggest studio's push tech in interesting ways: Crytek for the last-gen hardware, and 4A for current-gen.

THIS is IT!!!

No other game compares. Now we are in the offline rendering realm.
At points it really does look like offline rendering, so it would be nice to see a comparison with the same scene recreated in V-Ray or Arnold versus realtime 4A Engine.

There are also instances where it does not look like offline rendering, but that is either a mixture of materials or specific art design. The more subtle differences are readily apparent and the ones that don't, don't stand out for a reason because its a natural occurence (Subtle light reflecting on the gun, for instance).

Multi-bounce RT is more about making things less apparent than accentuating then. You aren't surprised when you enter a room and the light conditions change. In Enhanced, the same phenonemon occurs.

There are still improvements to be made though. One of the coolest things is the realtime light changes as raytracing is performed. Seeing how subtle wall's light change is something that is geniunely new in games as it now takes into account the accurate color of what it is reflecting of. The improvements here could be faster iteration time: It now takes multiple (visible) frames to update and that transition isn't that smoothed out. Same for some noising artifacts.

And last but not least: Its last-gen assets. So who knows what the new Metro game will look like.
And so the revolution truly begins.

Raytracing isn't inherently better or better looking, but it's a perfect tool for what is sadly what many many game devs aim for these days.
I'd much rather have more Guilty Gear Strives and ratchet and Clanks, but if a game is aiming for full-on realism RT is key.
Having seen your posts in this thread, ill say this based on this one: You confuse artstyle with artistry. You feel Ratchet is better looking, but that's solely artstyle. It isn't gunning for realism, and neither is Guilty Gear Strive.

Both games look equally amazing:
Ratchet looks like a proper CGI movie.
Exodus Enhanced looks like Offline rendering when rendering realistic materials.

I'd say for the artstyles they are aiming for, they are quite even in total looks. As Ratchet does not aim for offline rendering equality, but rather, looking like something from Pixar, rendering conditions are also different. This is inherently apparent on the artstyle chosen. If Ratchet was aiming for life-like rendering, it wouldn't look like Ratchet. It would look like a CGI model of how a human looks, and our eyes can tell that difference due to uncanny valley.
Too bad the game sucks.
I really can feel your frustration through your words that you felt compelled enough to write this down in a thread that is about pushing new graphical standards.

''Too bad the game sucks.''. Its like saying to a game with superb gameplay: ''Too bad the game looks like shit.''

Its empty and hollow rhetoric at best, or someone who has not paid enough attention in troll class, at worst.
Nah, often inaccurate shaders and lighting look better than perfectly accurate things, even in realistic games. Sometimes the falloff of a light not being physically correct makes the scene more interesting, Sometimes a shader breaking conversation of energy and picking up global illumination from outside despite inside enhancing the look. Sometimes shadows not appearing on some objects gives the game a nice look.
So basically, its all about artstyle and your preference to that! Who knew!
It shows just how inaccurate and straight up POOR the RT lighting was in the original. Apparently it only had one bounce RT lighting so the sunlight didnt illuminate the rest of the room correctly.
That means it isnt poor, it means it used a single bounce raytrace to light the scene, accompanied by things like SSR. Even that looked a generation apart from how lighting usually was done (Software GI, approximations).

No wonder Alex was in awe back in 2019 - That kind of lighting gave a glimpse of the kind offline rendered lighting works. Because it was single bounce, that offline look only became apparent in very select instances under specific lighting conditions and views. But it was a major leap over most lighting. Just as how this Enhanced Edition makes 2019 look a generation apart.

This is funny because Alex spent that entire year raving about how realistic that lighting was giving it his graphics GOTY, and droning about it on and on for two years, all the while completely missing the fact that it was entirely inaccurate all along.
Your way of proving Alex is wrong is by posting offscreen screengrabs of RT GI on and off and then pass it off as if you were actually serious with your argument.
Movie use "fake lighting" all the time . Realistic lighting could look pretty bland sometime .
Cinematic lighting is often dramatized for the scene, especially in back lighting. When an action hero waits for an explosion or makes an entrance, the back lighting is often completely over the top to accentuate that this hero is full of amaze.
This looks really cool. Can't wait to get ray-tracing on a Nintendo console by the year 2053 or so.
How i would ache for these kinds of posts get a proper burial. I get it, you were bored.

The Switch has a game with a form of GI working on it.
Would this type of global illumination be possible on next gen consoles?
Yes. The Enhanced Edition on XSX/S/PS5 gets the majority of these improvements - sans the reflections. But the multi-bounce lighting is definitely in.

At what PC equivalent however remains to be seen.
 
Having seen your posts in this thread, ill say this based on this one: You confuse artstyle with artistry. You feel Ratchet is better looking, but that's solely artstyle. It isn't gunning for realism, and neither is Guilty Gear Strive.

I have no idea what would give you the impressions I'm confused about that. I literally said that for a game aiming for realism that Raytracing is key. and in the post you mentioned I said I "PREFER" more games like guilty gear rather than those realistic games, I never said that Raytracing can't also enhance stylized games either. I talk about both artstyle and artist and I talk about them separately. If anything it's the people in here that are confusing discussion about artstyle with a discussion about artistry.

I've never said anything Metro Exodus wasn't an amazing accomplishment. My first post is literally me saying that this game is the start of a revolution. All I was saying is that while Raytracing being an option is ALWAYS better, sometimes games will look nicer and more unique if you stick to the cheats we developed due to not being able to do RT until now and that RT isn't the solution to every art issue.

Both games look equally amazing:
Ratchet looks like a proper CGI movie.
Exodus Enhanced looks like Offline rendering when rendering realistic materials.

I'd say for the artstyles they are aiming for, they are quite even in total looks. As Ratchet does not aim for offline rendering equality, but rather, looking like something from Pixar, rendering conditions are also different. This is inherently apparent on the artstyle chosen. If Ratchet was aiming for life-like rendering, it wouldn't look like Ratchet. It would look like a CGI model of how a human looks, and our eyes can tell that difference due to uncanny valley.

I never made any claims about which game is better, just that in general. I don't see why you're telling me all this.

So basically, its all about artstyle and your preference to that! Who knew!

I don't see the point you are trying to make here. Even on a movie set you sometimes choose to make things not look like reality. So no, it's not objectively true that using RT will make things better in every case which is what was stated. If you want to say it's subjective then fine, that's exactly what I was arguing.
 
Last edited:
I have no idea what would give you the impressions I'm confused about that.
Your very first post on it where you state that RTGI does not automatically make things better. By default, its a better way of rendering. But how it is implemented depends on how it goes.I never made any claims about which game is better, just that in general. I don't see why you're telling me all this.
I never made any claims about which game is better, just that in general. I don't see why you're telling me all this.
I am stating this in general.

If you want to say it's subjective then fine, that's exactly what I was arguing.
Thanks for that.
 
I have no idea what would give you the impressions I'm confused about that. I literally said that for a game aiming for realism that Raytracing is key. and in the post you mentioned I said I "PREFER" more games like guilty gear rather than those realistic games, I never said that Raytracing can't also enhance stylized games either. I talk about both artstyle and artist and I talk about them separately. If anything it's the people in here that are confusing discussion about artstyle with a discussion about artistry.

I've never said anything Metro Exodus wasn't an amazing accomplishment. My first post is literally me saying that this game is the start of a revolution. All I was saying is that while Raytracing being an option is ALWAYS better, games will look nicer and more unique if you stick to the cheats we developed due to not being able to do RT until now and that RT isn't the solution to every art issue.



I never made any claims about which game is better, just that in general. I don't see why you're telling me all this.



I don't see the point you are trying to make here. Even on a movie set you sometimes choose to make things not look like reality. So no, it's not objectively true that using RT will make things better in every case which is what was stated. If you want to say it's subjective then fine, that's exactly what I was arguing.
Light still behaves like light on a movie set tho? They're still using real light. I am confused
 
I've never said anything Metro Exodus wasn't an amazing accomplishment. My first post is literally me saying that this game is the start of a revolution. All I was saying is that while Raytracing being an option is ALWAYS better, games will look nicer and more unique if you stick to the cheats we developed due to not being able to do RT until now and that RT isn't the solution to every art issue.

I think you're saying this wrong? Games will look nicer and more unique if the art designers have control of the tools they're given to get the crafted look they want. RT will require different tools. When you're on a movie set (even an outdoor scene,) the DP still must take control of the light in order to get the image in their head onto the film. (And that's much harder of course since the light is actually there and the sources must be hidden; game lights can exist and project light and have no physical "bulb".)

It's not that you can't control RT light because it's 'realistic', it's that you need to think differently of light sources when they have behaviors more authentic to real light on physical surfaces. Maybe sometimes the solutions could include some of the old "tricks" (same as film still uses some vaudeville techniques even in the digital era,) but the problem is once we finally get used to seeing things with RT lighting, those tricks may start to stand out as tricks and spoil the look unless they're very carefully and organically implemented.

You're right that RT isn't the solution to every art issue (I can't really say how RT would factor into something like Guilty Gear Strive, but that's essentially a hand-animated cartoon using polygons instead of drawings... I'm not really sure how the invention of The Volume will help Disney cartoonists either,) but replacing a full-of-tricks scene with a RT scene will alter the approach. So even if you need to cheat some elements (you always cheat,) you're starting your scene construction from a better sense of reality. (Interestingly, that 'reality' will include some of the frustrations of reality like bounces you didn't want or tones that don't look good on certain characters... luckily, digital vaseline or virtual blackwrap is a lot easier to control than the real thing.)

RT doesn't necessarily mean games will look more real. It means they will have more reality embedded in the look.

How the designers manipulate that to get all the different kinds of games they can imagine, from games that look like real life to games that look wholly imagined or otherworldly, that's the art in action.
 
Last edited:
it doesn't actually look like offline rendering if you take into account that the assets are of extremely low detail, I mean some of the shader work harkens back to the Doom 3 Era with large smudgy bumpmap techniques in use.

And that is not indicative of an offline render, unless that render is conceptual - no artist creates a render and want's it to look bump mapped. If you extract the lighting/shadowing/reflections specifically away from the low quality low poly low detail assets - then those portions in fact look rendered through a low resolution path tracing mechanism.

Within 10 years, real time path tracing will be the way - as ML should have adequately solved real time "Off-line" path traced rendering that currently still takes minutes and hours in some cases to render a frame.
 
Uncharted 4 still looks better but it's fully static.
This is for sure the best dynamic lighting aside from quake 2
 
I think you're saying this wrong? Games will look nicer and more unique if the art designers have control of the tools they're given to get the crafted look they want. RT will require different tools. When you're on a movie set (even an outdoor scene,) the DP still must take control of the light in order to get the image in their head onto the film. (And that's much harder of course since the light is actually there and the sources must be hidden; game lights can exist and project light and have no physical "bulb".)

It's not that you can't control RT light because it's 'realistic', it's that you need to think differently of light sources when they have behaviors more authentic to real light on physical surfaces. Maybe sometimes the solutions could include some of the old "tricks" (same as film still uses some vaudeville techniques even in the digital era,) but the problem is once we finally get used to seeing things with RT lighting, those tricks may start to stand out as tricks and spoil the look unless they're very carefully and organically implemented.

You're right that RT isn't the solution to every art issue (I can't really say how RT would factor into something like Guilty Gear Strive, but that's essentially a hand-animated cartoon using polygons instead of drawings... I'm not really sure how the invention of The Volume will help Disney cartoonists either,) but replacing a full-of-tricks scene with a RT scene will alter the approach. So even if you need to cheat some elements (you always cheat,) you're starting your scene construction from a better sense of reality. (Interestingly, that 'reality' will include some of the frustrations of reality like bounces you didn't want or tones that don't look good on certain characters... luckily, digital vaseline or virtual blackwrap is a lot easier to control than the real thing.)

RT doesn't necessarily mean games will look more real. It means they will have more reality embedded in the look.

How the designers manipulate that to get all the different kinds of games they can imagine, from games that look like real life to games that look wholly imagined or otherworldly, that's the art in action.

I did say it wrong, I left out a single word and that fucked it up.

I meant to say "games will SOMETIMES look nicer and more unique if you stick to the cheats we developed". "Cheats" being not just an invisible light to fake GI here and there but the entire old pipeline that was incredibly "wrong" but had a distinct and appealing look. The appealingness is subjective ofcourse, which is why I just say that RTGI isn't inherently "better".

You're repeating a lot of what I've been saying this whole thread so I'll just add that. some games having "reality" embedded into the look won't be a positive and using an RT pipeline would just lead to them spending a bunch of time customizing it to get the look they would have gotten more easily if they just stuck to the old pipeline.
 
Last edited:
Light still behaves like light on a movie set tho? They're still using real light. I am confused

They use real lights along with post-processing to give the appearance of physically implausible and unrealistic lighting. The point here simply being that the artists aren't always aiming for realism and it's about their artstyle and what they think will make the game look the best.
 
They use real lights along with post-processing to give the appearance of physically implausible and unrealistic lighting. The point here simply being that the artists aren't always aiming for realism and it's about their artstyle and what they think will make the game look the best.
I mean yeah - I come primarily from the film world I was just confused at the comparison - like most light in photo shoots and film is staged in a certain way/placed strategically - it's just the light they use does still behave like light is what I mean. Could be different in animation
 
Is there a preload going up for this? Heard its a completely separate game around 70+GB. Can't find anything yet..
 
Path-tracing is just one of Ray-tracing algorithms.
This is the original quote I replied.



It is still a rasterized game with RT.
They didn't changed to full ray-tracing.
It uses RT for GI.

None of the lighting is rasterized.
All the lighting is Raytraced.
 
Ok seems to just let you start at whatever level you were on in the old version - maybe based on achievements or something.

Only had a really quick go as I'm technically at work but seems to be better performance than I was getting with DLSS 1.0 but obviously doesn't look like crap now.
 
The store page doesn't have images or anything yet but it let's you download now as a new game on Steam.

H1m0tC9.png
 
Not really related to Metro, but did you guys see Linus' video yesterday about "cAn YOu sEE tHR diFFRenCe with RT on AND off?"

Their picks? Tomb Raider, Minecraft and Wolfenstein Youngblood.

Then they picked an average user that would probably not tell the difference between 4K and 1080p

Linus, home of arguments in bad faith
 
Top Bottom