GymWolf
Member
But the problem is not really that big unless you are a graphic whore that stop playing to move the camera all around to look at the reflection details every 5 min.
The average player is never gonna notice the difference unless they are trying to prove a point for internet comparisons.
Like if you stop swinging and fighting at high pace to check if the reflection of spiderman is perfect on the side of a building, you have bigger problems than inaccurate reflections imo
GymWolf
Member
Can i kiss you?
Guilty_AI
Member
Thats the thing though. The time spent implementing ray traced lighting is far less than the one spent on making sure traditional lightining looks good. And that time increases exponentially the bigger the game is.
Devs aren't pushing ray tracing because it "looks cool", they're pushing it because its easier to work with and less time consuming.
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GymWolf
Member
That's the thing tho, for now console and pc are not nearly powerfull enough to have only rtx lights, so devs have to do both classic method and rtx so double the work.
The times were devs can only do rtx are still far away, so for now rtx are literally more busy work, and devs can push all the fuck they want, they are not gonna transform a 10 tf machine into a 50 tf machine...
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I think there are a lot of misconceptions being thrown around in this thread. For one, most of the games that support Ray-Tracing in any capacity today are were firstly made to work with traditional rendering techniques which diminishes the impact of RT to begin with. Secondly RT has just as much of an impact on making game development faster and easier than it has on the actual visuals. Baked lighting is a pain in the ass to work with from a development point of view as it makes iteration really cumbersome when you have to re-bake lighting and mess with it every time you make any change in a level. RT means that developers can see the changes in rea-time in the editor without having to wait for hours for a new lighting bake to be crunched by a computer farm. Getting that TLoU II baked high quality lighting pass is a very expensive, time consuming and painful process that RT will cut out once it becomes standard.
oldergamer
Member
You mean unreal engine baked lighting looks nicer the RT?
Imagine an industry that has plateaued and it's run mainly by the people that sell you the good to make it happen, they create technology that is expensive performance wise an monetarily too. They sell said tech after brainwashing people of its value.
I honestly don't care about RTX either, it's a fad and a silly one that is out of reach performancewise(intentionally) for most people. It's a ploy to get people to want the next fastest gpu.
Amiga
Member
Raytraced lighting can be baked and doesn't have to be real-time. this is what they did in Returnal, they recorded the light setting but also touched them up. the cost is shifted to the bandwidth in light files that were 300mb in size.
Baked lighting has been a pain in the ass of developers since Quake 1 and current real-time solutions suffer from a lot of issues to the point where getting good and accurate real-time lighting with current solutions can be as expensive as using RT but still slower on the development side. RT is not some conspiracy to sell you GPUs but rather the steady progress of technology. But no, fuck RT while you're complaining why games are taking longer and longer to develop, lol.
Guilty_AI
Member
We're on a transitional phase. Many games already started development before RT became a thing, devs still have to learn how to properly work with RT, and as you said, an userbase with RT capable machines has to become more commonplace. Its not like one day suddenly everyone would switch from traditional lightining to ray tracing, its a gradual proccess.
We'll probably only see some games this gen that make use of ray tracing exclusively, like the next game from Metro Developers where they already stated they'll work with RT only.
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GymWolf
Member
Can't you only do that if the game is a pc exclusive? like how do you make work a game with ONLY rtx on console?
And even on pc, how many people can play a game like that? i'm sure as hell i can't with a 2070 super...unless i play at 900p with low details at 30 fps...
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Thanks for the reply.
I don't really know what to make of it then. To me the effect of the RT in eg Quake 2 and Metro is absolutely spectacular. Practically a generational advance by itself. But if *in theory* that can just be baked in (for static conditions) then surely it's worth spending that time doing that??
As for the reflections and shadows I've seen in games so far (PS5) - I just think they're ludicrously costly compared to the effect. I think people like the DF crew are just obsessed with the technology and delude themselves that the visual impact is just as impressive. I remember that idiot Battaglia waxing lyrical about the RT in Ratchet and how he wouldn't ever consider playing it without because it's such a huge element of the graphics. That's just crazy to me. Most of the reflections are so incidental and diffuse that you wouldn't notice the difference. And in practically the only place they're obvious - on the ship - they're rather pixellated and ugly anyway. Not to mention - the ship was obviously designed with a big curved glass cockpit *specifically* to show off the RT!! Talk about putting the cart before the horse!
I always thought good graphics programming was about getting the best effect for the least cost. The push for RT seems determined to achieve the reverse.
Guilty_AI
Member
Should be possible. Aren't consoles able to run Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition? You can also still mix in some older techniques that are easier to work with like SSR to improve visuals for less cost.
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Guilty_AI
Member
Thats the thing. It isn't. Sometimes its straight up physically impossible due to the time and manpower that would cost.
But the problem is not really that big unless you are a graphic whore that stop playing to move the camera all around to look at the reflection details every 5 min.
The average player is never gonna notice the difference unless they are trying to prove a point for internet comparisons.
Like if you stop swinging and fighting at high pace to check if the reflection of spiderman is perfect on the side of a building, you have bigger problems than inaccurate reflections imo
EXACTLY. Nobody seems to question whether that kind of physical accuracy is even a good priority! Because it obviously isn't.
GymWolf
Member
It still sound extremely heavy for something with an underpowered amd gpu, so not even the best brand gpu for rtx...
I'm pretty sure that metro exodus had to cut many corners to run on console compared to the pc version...
And new games are gonna be way better looking so even heavier to run even without rtx...
Time will tell.
Amiga
Member
This and 200fps. specs that add little to the gaming experience while ignoring bottlenecks like bandwidth from storage. those 40 TFLOPS GPUs will be like truck motors on a bicycle.
You'll have to forgive my ignorance - I assumed they just used offline renderers similar to how they make CG films? It's not manually determined, is it?
Guilty_AI
Member
Thats why i said some games. We're still not at a phase where everything can be replaced for RT. I think Sony and MS games will still use a mix of old tech and RT for the rest of this gen.
SF Kosmo
Banned
Very few games put the work in to optimize their games for ray-traced global illumination. It's not as simple as just turning on a setting, the scenes need to be lit differently. Traditional lighting models force devs to "correct" for them by adding lights that aren't actually from an in-scene source and these "fake" lights are still there if you turn on RT, and sometimes they're worse because they don't behave how the artist designed. It requires a more ground up approach.
Metro Exodus is one of the very few that does it right, and there's a reason that the RT and non-RT versions are entirely separate downloads, because they had to redo all the lighting in the game.
This is why a lot of games just focus on RT reflections or shadows, things that offer an easy to see benefit/effect but that don't require the art to be made from the ground up with that in mind.
Metro Exodus is one of the very few that does it right, and there's a reason that the RT and non-RT versions are entirely separate downloads, because they had to redo all the lighting in the game.
This is why a lot of games just focus on RT reflections or shadows, things that offer an easy to see benefit/effect but that don't require the art to be made from the ground up with that in mind.
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Guilty_AI
Member
I'm not fully knowledgeable either.
From what i understand, they use offline renderers to determine how the lightining in a place would look, then manually adjust the lightining to match what the rendered scene looks like, either with point lights or straight up modifying the textures. Its a time consuming process, and every change in that scene mean the lightining would need to be adjusted or even redone from scratch, meaning even more work.
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poppabk
Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
Ray tracing is decades old tech. The power to do it in real-time is what is new. And it will eventually remove a lot of the restrictions on games that baked lighting imposes.
MALpractice311
Member
But the problem is not really that big unless you are a graphic whore that stop playing to move the camera all around to look at the reflection details every 5 min.
The average player is never gonna notice the difference unless they are trying to prove a point for internet comparisons.
Like if you stop swinging and fighting at high pace to check if the reflection of spiderman is perfect on the side of a building, you have bigger problems than inaccurate reflections imo
Exactly this. Does RT make reflections look good? Sure, of course. That can't be argued. But you have to stop playing a game to actually take in those reflections, which is something most gamers are probably not ever going to do beyond maybe once or twice.
As to RT lighting, looking at all these comparison videos and pictures from like Cyberpunk or Dying Light, the changes in lighting mostly just look like differences in artistic choice to me. And if the artistic choice to use RT means a drop from 60+ FPS to 30 or 40 FPS, it's not worth it to me.
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TheRedRiders
Member
This.
SF Kosmo
Banned
In terms of realism, nothing beats robust RT with physically based light sources. But simply "switching on" RT in a game that wasn't made that way won't give you that result.
The obvious one would be because the game doesn't use the same areas at multiple times of day, like TLOU2
If you mean what advantage does RT have over that, well... a lot. Because it isn't just about this one big light source in the sky moving, every object and every light source that moves affects the lighting in the scene.
metareferential
Member
Stray is a great game, but no. It isn't even one of the best baked lighting implementation out there.
And no: nothing beats true ray-traced illumination, period.
But hey, you're going to easily cater to the "ray tracing is useless and too expensive" crowd (who by the way doesn't understand shit about technology - and sometimes even art direction).
Every game has its goal, and there are different way to achieve them.
And no: nothing beats true ray-traced illumination, period.
But hey, you're going to easily cater to the "ray tracing is useless and too expensive" crowd (who by the way doesn't understand shit about technology - and sometimes even art direction).
Every game has its goal, and there are different way to achieve them.
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rodrigolfp
Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
Maybe because RT in games right now is very "basic". If they used full patch tracing like in movies it would be truly incredible but run at 0,00000000000000000000001 fps.
Wildebeest
Member
I think raytracing looks better, mostly, but I don't think it is a good performance trade off for real time graphics yet.
It is the purist's goal. One where the creator no longer has to spend time baking lighting to make things look right or have a static environment. It's a goal of having completely dynamic lighting that's as real as it can be. It's a good goal but whether or not it is worth the computational cost to have dynamic lighting and reflections is dependent on what you are trying to achieve in your game.
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SmokedMeat
Gamer™
DLSS
Cost, time, money. It takes 100 fucking people on top of their game for the entire development time to properly fake lighting n shadow interactions plus create assets(materials, cubemaps, lightmaps, shaders, shadowmaps n ext) n systems needed for it.
Non of it needed with RTGI. Just a small team playing with light placement n that bout it.(it is a bit more complex then this, but you get the point)
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Magic Carpet
Gold Member
I would like to see a game where Raytracing and moving lights is a major part of the gameplay, perhaps a puzzle game like The Witness where in that game you had to mix and combine colors to complete puzzles.
I finished Stray this week and really enjoyed it. Short but pleasant game with some nice cat specific platforming. It was also cute. Very nice game.
I finished Stray this week and really enjoyed it. Short but pleasant game with some nice cat specific platforming. It was also cute. Very nice game.
TIGERCOOL
Member
haven't played DL2, but as someone with the hardware to run max settings with rtx in cyberpunk2077, the difference between RTGI and their prebaked lighting is still hard to notice in most cases. I really tried to concince myself it was worth the fps hit but it just isn't. The only game that has truly convinced me of its potential is Minecraft (with full pathtracing or whatever its called.) I still feel like the focus on RT this generation is going to be looked back at as a mistake. When hardware is SO advanced that RT isn't making a huge impact - 10 years from now? - maybe it'll be worth the hype. I think upscaling tech is a lot more important and impressive right now.
Hugare
Member
You dont notice it often because the game looks good enough with the prebaked sollution and you cant notice what you are missing
But as soon as you turn on the RT features ... It's striking, man. Go to the Afterlife entrance and turn it on and off. It's night and day, imo.
And in DL 2 it's much more noticeable. It's the most impreeive RT implementation so far, I think. Up there with Metro Exodus.
In Metro and Dying Light 2 it's a generational leap, imo.
To me it's so noticeable, that I bought Dying Light 2 more than once, on PS5 and then PC, because I couldnt experience the game without it
PS: RT on Medium in Cyberpunk is enough to get RT GI. Don't go for High and Psycho, you'll waste resources for nothing.
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GymWolf
Member
Dlss doesn't do miracles, at least not with a 2070 super, and i tried basically any game with both rtx and dlss, unless you use that ultra performance mode that looks like shit (and isn't enough).
Dlss is only worth a penny in quality\balanced mode in most games, performance already take a good hit on iq.
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GymWolf
Member
GymWolf
Member
Same experience with most rtx games, it looks great in some cherry picked pics for forum comparisons but during normal gameplay the trade off is not worth at all.
SF Kosmo
Banned
No, you can't do what those games do with baked lighting. Games like Minecraft and Quake II are fully path-traced, which is the ultimate dream for RTX rendering, but isn't really viable yet for games with modern graphics. Metro Exodus is a good example of "How to do things right with current technology," a robust RT implementation with RT Global Illumination, AND they did the hard work of going through all the art and re-doing it to use only physically based light sources, which is what ray tracing does so well.
I think a big part of the problem is that current gen consoles are not very powerful at RT, so robust RT is still not something you can fully design your game around if you expect to reach a mass market. So we're in a weird transitional period with it right now. By the time next gen consoles come out, you'll see games made for RT and maybe even full path tracing from the ground up, and that's going to blow away anything pre-baked.
Depends. I mean in games like Spider-Man, where there are a lot of reflective vertical surfaces, it's a huge game-changing effect. But if you're doing reflections in puddles and lakes that already looked alright with SSR it might be a waste of performance budget.
kuncol02
Banned
I'm pretty sure it was LITERALLY raytaced and then baked into textures.
Wildebeest
Member
Yeah, Rage used their megatexture tech that allowed them to burn a lot of detail into map textures. I think they dropped it afterwards due to problems such as detail popping in when turning due to lack of i/o bandwidth and the pure complexity of their solution.
TIGERCOOL
Member
in fairness DL2 and Metro are the two games I haven't tried it with that are usually touted as being best in class. I'll give them a shot soon but both have had pretty middling reception outside of how good they look so it'll have to be a steep discount.
I've tried basically every RT setting in cyberpunk and usually feel like I'm impressed by it until I turn it off and realize its basically the same experience with a bit of lost depth (depending on where I am and what time of day it is). If I have to go to 1 location to really notice it is that worth it? Game has really nice atmosphere with their vanilla lighting and shadows. Unfortunately we're talking about a difference of 30-50 fps here which is far more noticeable to me.
I'd be interested to see if either of those open world games you mentioned have better lighting than RDR2 which tops everything I've seen despite being 4 years old with no RT.
Guilty_AI
Member
Interesting,
EDIT: as a matter of fact, seems i'm not the only one speculating on a possible comeback for this.
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TIGERCOOL
Member
I was playing the cycle frontier yesterday and getting 30-40 fps more using dlss ultra quality and it looked as good as native res to my eye. I have a 5800x3d though so I think that cpu really boosts fps when rendering at a lower res. What I really appreciate dlss for is when its used as an AA solution for games that have terrible AA. Lots of games at 1440p only look clean with TAA which blurs the image and DLSS is the best alternative when done well. It has so much utility when you start to factor in DLDSR to achieve great image quality with less of an fps impact. Some games do have a shit implementation with ghosting or oversharpening but devs are slowly figuring that out.
kuncol02
Banned
It was dropped in Id Tech 7. Only Doom Eternal don't use megatexture. It's not even bandwidth problem but game size one. With megatexture you literally can't use texture in more than one place and that limits how big they actually can be before games is so big that it cant't be fitted into hard drives of players. It also is in opposition to PBR and raytacing so with that technologies being pushed forward it stops being asset and starts to be liability.
GymWolf
Member
30-40 fps gained on quality mode? With what game?? And on what resolution?
Sometimes you don't get even close to gain 40 fps on performance mode ffs
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kuncol02
Banned
It's almost as old as use of textures in 3d graphics.