Is Ray Tracing Good?
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Video Index
00:00 - Welcome Back to Hardware Unboxed
04:03 - Dead Space
04:39 - Resident Evil 4
05:29 - Resident Evil Village
06:45 - A Plague Tale Requiem
07:28 - F1 24
08:55 - Fortnite
10:18 - Dragon's Dogma II
11:33 - Star Wars Jedi Survivor
13:06 - Atomic Heart
14:18 - Hogwarts Legacy
15:56 - Hitman 3
17:53 - Guardians of the Galaxy
18:51 - Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart
20:10 - The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt
22:12 - Spider-Man
23:03 - Metro Exodus
24:55 - Alan Wake II
26:52 - Cyberpunk 2077
29:34 - 37 Game Breakdown
34:14 - Hierarchy of Ray Tracing Effects
36:51 - Other Important Stuff
38:44 - Final Thoughts
Is Ray Tracing Good?
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Outro music by David Vonk/DaJaVo00:00 - Welcome to Hardware Unboxed
I said "ray tracing" or "ray traced" over 400 times in the full version of this video
IT'S (NOT) OVER 9000
It is very much appreciated. This was something I was really looking for, cause Nvidia advertised this as something amazing and feels underwhelming at best (for me at least).
Jensen Huang loved that.
Please insert Timestamps for this..
I bet the kids in class in Hogwarts are pissed at RT for making their chalkboard so reflective, must be hard to see what's written on it.
You mean they're pissed at the devs for not understanding how to properly implement RTX tech.
@@Veritas.0 That game is such a mess its insane. Hogsmeade still runs like garbage on a 7800X3D + 4090 and I can't complete the game because one of the butterflies never appears.
I saw that too. Chalk boards are among the least reflective surfaces in a classroom. They simply got it wrong.
@@Veritas.0 cyberpunk is the same, did you ever see a filthy shiny metal ground that reflects almost like a mirror? Tell me where you did saw that black magic happening?
All other ground surfaces that act like a mirror are the same. The is no reflection, only if they are wet. There are almost zero RT games that get that right.
Post-soviet russian kids enjoy reflective chalkboards even without fancy RT
Good? Yes. Worth losing that much fps? No.
Yes
Whether you want to or not, that is where it is going.
Forgget visuals or wow factor or muh fps. What effectively happens is no more baking lighting at all so developers are shifting work from their cpu to your gpu, potential image quality is the bonus.
That much FPS doesn't matter when it comes to single player games. If it vastly increases quality and the FPS is still perfectly playable then its worth.
So just no then?
This should be the title of the video.
The coolest thing about Path Tracing in Cyberpunk is that it enhances the artstyle
fr, i keep that on because its so beautiful
Just enhances the experience overall path tracing is such an amazing tech feature that it can overhaul any game no matter how old
I love having high FPS while playing FPS games but gosh once you tried path tracing it is impossible to go back it is so worth it even with the huge it on the FPS.
Yeah path tracing in CP2077 reminds us how bullshit hype all the initial ray tracing features were lmao
Path tracing is the literal end goal for real-time lighting. Of course it looks way better
Without raytracing: dry floor.
With raytracing: wet floor.
yes, i dont like the reflecting floor, its distracting and not realistic
wow, when you don't have RT in the first place developers have to make glossy surfaces less glossy because otherwise it would look like shit most of the times. wow, tell me you have never worked on 3d graphics without telling me and then complain. not to mention adding RT/PT to a scene created in mind to look good with rasterization is not the same as initially creating the scene with RT/PT in mind, have luck creating a fully metallic scene low roughness scene and making it look not like shit with Raster. jesus, people like you hold the industry backwards.
@@oxxylix504 i love that alot of games used to look really good with no rt but now that rt is a thing if u turn it off the games didn't bother to use even the old raster way of reflections looking good like in cyberpunk so when its on vs off didn't need to be such a big difference
@@carrionette It depends. Process-wise, it *is* far more realistic. It's just some devs overdo it or use the wrong materials, leading to incorrect simulation of light rays.
Tell me you have no other ways to communicate on the Internet without telling me you have no other way to communicate on the Internet. You just copy and paste an insult @@oxxylix504
The thing with ray tracing is that it NEEDS to be significantly better than hand-crafted lighting due to the performance penalty. If not, than stick with normal settings and you’re better off.
U can also use rt low/medium which still provides a decent chunk of improvement (diminishing returns) but saves u a lot of fps compared to high/ultra rt. It's not as simple as rt on vs off
@@kerkertrandov459 you can also use RT off - that has a performance improvement, whilst not really affecting the image much.
@@kerkertrandov459 that's not what is shown in some games
I agree 100%
It's never so good that it's worth the performance penalty so I just leave it off.
Games need to be designed with RT in mind if they want to make better use of the tech. The only examples I can think of are the RTX remixes, and Metro: Exodus RTX.
The less you buy......the more you save!
powered by the perfect practice
Edging.
But..but Jensen wants new leather jackets 😢
The less Nvidia cards you buy..
Don't tell everyone!
The more i pirate... the more i save!
Just to note something I feel like you misunderstood, especially during the Hitman comparisons.
Reflections aren't always sharp like in a mirror. They can be blurry if the material isn't perfectly smooth. What's more, is that blurry reflections are harder to simulate, as you need way more samples all the different angles the light could be reflecting.
So a reflection being blurry isn't necessarily a sign of low quality; it could simply be a better simulation of a less smooth surface.
Well explained dude!
But who even cares at this point.
Why exactly are blurry reflections more demanding? If they're blurry that's a great occasion to lower their resolution
@@Nate_M_PCMR to blur something is to to mix many samples. the process of getting those samples is what's expensive (in the case of reflections, it's a raycast or a raymarch).
@lanata64 ohh... Thanks 👍
6 years of Jensen trying to convince you to buy $2000 graphics cards
Be less poor.
$2k isn’t that much money
@@spewp Right.
"If you're homeless, just buy a house." 🙄 Obvious, isn't it?
@@qsd8063 it's not about how much money it is, it is about "do I get a product worth the price?" and lately when it comes to nvidia (and yes, sometimes amd) gpus, the answer ist very often a hard "No!".
@@qsd8063exactly, like a top of Line GPU cost a joke, compared to basically every outdoor activity gear in top range I can think.
The Hogwarts segment has a glaring example of why ray tracing has a long way to go. Crank it to quality and everything (even a chalkboard, who tf has ever seen a glassy chalkboard) is just reflective. When everything, even rough surfaces like chalkboards and concrete, is a mirror…it’s just dumb and jarring, and until raytracing is artfully applied, it’ll never look as good as carefully baked lighting and reflections
Exactly. It's way overdone. And in real life, even things that should be reflective, like glass windows and mirrors, usually have a bit of dirt or dust on them. But in games, all floors are wet and all windows have just been polished.
No that's an example of poor ray tracing implementation.
"it’ll never look as good as carefully baked lighting and reflections" I'm sorry but this is just flat out wrong. Cyberpunk is a great example of a game that looks way better with ray tracing. Ray tracing isn't just reflections my guy, that's probably the least impressive part of raytracing. Ray traced lighting and shadows. when implemented correctly, makes a scene look way more true to life than baked in lighting.
It’s definitely poor material assigning, which makes everything look freshly mopped, it will iron out when games are designed around ray tracing from the ground up, plus Hogwarts legacy is made on UE4 which isn’t as good at handling ray tracing as UE5
"Carefully" is exactly what your example lacked. The game Devs didn't need to make the chalkboard reflect light from the windows, they chose to do that. It's not like there's a "RT ALL THE THINGS" button when designing games that automatically applies a gloss to everything. Developers are still in control of how RT compliments or detracts from the gaming environment.
Ray tracing isn't just reflections people. When I see statements like this, one can only assume you actually don't know what the tech is or what it does.
I'm assuming, not saying. But you have me that impression
In the hitman section, I feel like a lot of the "more undefined" reflections in RT scenes are more accurate, looking at whats actually reflecting it. Concrete floor does not give you sharp well defined reflections. Actually, this goes for a lot of the games. Hogwarts is like "REFLECT ALL THE THINGS", even on worn cobble and wood, which is objectively wrong.
Foealz that Overdrive swamp scene was cluttered.
I was thinking the same. Utilizing RT does not necessarily mean turning every surface into a mirror. And those more realistic reflections definitely seem more immersive, IMO.
Hub is a bad channel for RT advice. They are not fans of the technology and don’t have much more grasp about it than the average foe.
Go to digital foundry for solid RT advice.
Look at DF videos on F1 and how much they praise how transformative RT is on those games
And this guys said that it’s one of the examples of not worth it.
Its not an issue with ray tracing...its how the devs texture mapped the floor. You can see the hitman devs did it right and made the concrete rough so the reflections are rough...in Hogwarts all the textures are flat so when the light reflects it makes everything shiny
That's why i think RT isn't really that useful depending on the average scene of a game. If there's no water or polished surfaces i don't think you would miss it if shadows aren't shit.
Remember guys, comparison is the thief of joy. If you can't run RT, you're not missing out on a fun experience unless you obsess about it.
99.99999999%+ of games are designed to be played WITHOUT RT/PT
Or you learn and buy Nvidia next time, or replace your AMD card like I did.
RT is completely pointless when you lose that many fps. If it was a 5fps difference it'd be worth
@@Walamonga1313 in some rare cases yes - usually not even worth 5 FPS loss
If you still hit 120+FPS, who cares? 1440p with DLSS and Frame Gen allows you to max out a screen and all the eye candy.
That thumbnail killed me 😂
Best thumbnail eva 🤣
Haha it's epic
Really good yeah
Almost spilled my drink!
Same bro, gow good and comic it is i had to comment too
Cyberpunk has been carrying raytracing on it's back since 2020. Huge respect! For not only changing the way how people perceive raytracing but also doing it better than everybody else.
And yet most of Cyberpunk looks much the same without RT. There was no real difference in many of those examples with and without RT.
@@jimb12312Someone doesn't have the GPU power to actually witness the huge difference, so he has to downplay it to make himself feel better about his setup.
@@DBTHEPLUG I owned a 4070 last year, currently have a 7800 XT. I watched videos of maximum RT level of the 4090 running Cyberpunk. It looks good but not THAT much better. Most of the time I just don't see much difference. You forget how good Cyberpunk looks without RT.
Dude I am middle aged, no kids, have enough cash in my bank account to buy a massive pile of 4090s. I just don't care. It's not that compelling YET.
@@DBTHEPLUG I just realized what video we are replying to. Dude watch this video that you are replying to. I don't even see a difference in most of these scenes. It's a mostly a gimmick at this point. Destroys FPS for almost zero image quality improvement. I traded in my RTX card for a 7800XT because I never used RT on it.
@@jimb12312 I was talking about Cyberpunk 2077 specifically.
I often find surfaces are TOO reflective of with RT, making everything look less realistic.
Kind of like how some rasterization lighting is poorly implemented.
Because the artist isn't very good, don't blame the paint.
@@Veritas.0 and ? You buy a game and expect it looks good or realistic because the say its RT and blabla. And then you find out that almost all games are just bad with it.
Tell me the last time you saw a mirror like reflection from a dry stone surface or metal surface, especial if people did walk with dirty shoes on that surface for a long time.
What game on this list that had complete ray tracing didn't do this massive error?
Now who is to blame here? The Tech or all the studios that could not handle it? Is it useless because all people that work with it dont know how the real world looks? If ray tracing would work but everyone can not handle it, that makes it pretty much useless.
this. It almost never looks better reliably.
Laminated 3d world😂 RT On = FPS = OF 😢
Thank you for your hard work with the detailed and in depth analysis ❤
Greatly informed my new PC build decisions.
Most games didn't seem too different to me. Cyberpunk really shines though and it is nearly four years old.
That's because Nvidia dumped a lot of money into it, it's their poster child. That further shows how far we really are from widespread useable RT, games don't get the resources that CP2077 did
They put all the effort into the raytracing instead of bug fixes and the story lol
@@montyvr6772 Path tracing was added to CP2077 years after its launch, and the game has has been mostly polished, optimized, with very few bugs I've experienced, as well as overhauling skill tree systems, cars, and improvements to gameplay all over. The game compared to its release is way better, and the release wasn't sabotaged by a feature that wasn't fully realized until years after its launch (path tracing).
@@montyvr6772nah. Cyberpunk runs pretty dang good, and I haven't experienced many bugs. I'm sure there are tons, being its a huge game, but nothing major. It was atrocious at release though. Despicable. Id say Metro Exodus Enhanced and Cyberpunk really are the only games it truly transforms. Its still a good thing for the future. Would definitely not be worth it without upscaling though. And upscaling has noticeably decreased average game optimization. They can cut half of optimization time and just insert DLSS
RayTracing Looks INTERESTING... but the FPS drop that happens immediately makes it MEh
Or your GPU cranked full 400W power and your room becomes sauna 😅
The fact that we're even within sniffing distance of real time ray tracing is crazy. Like there was a time where you needed GPU farms to come close.
But it's still just way too early for it to be accessible. And the video shows a ton of scenes that look worse (which I think is because games are being mainly designed for raster).
Maybe one day.
@@kaylee42900 If you buy a new GPU today, preparing for ray tracing capable is probably a wise idea, same with buying a GPU with large VRAM. In a few years more games will feature useable RT and look significantly better. Realism is going to be completely transformed once games are designed from the ground up with ray tracing.
@@kaylee42900 rt overdrive mode in cyberpunk and alan wake do this
@@cocobos Saves me money in winter. Close the doors to my den, crank up graphics, turn the heat off... saves money, keeps me warm.
Six years after introduction and we are playing guesing game: "What is rasterized!" What a technology! 😆
By the time Ray tracing actually becomes good enough, we might not even need it. AI noise to image generation might end up being the default way game visuals are generated.
Only in AMD sponsored titles. They deliberately reduce RT quality, since their GPUs are lagging behind competition.
Why do they even ask devs to implement RT, if thry do not like it, is s big question.
I've lived through the whole 3D rendering revolution and this is exactly how major shifts in rendering technology work, including the vocal "why am I paying for something that is useless". It can't be fully utilised until everyone has hardware powerful enough to do so.
The fact that there are any games where it makes a night/day difference right now is impressive, it takes a lot of work for developers to do this, especially if they need a fallback to rasterisation.
@@stangamer1151 Nvidia has confirmed that Dragon’s Dogma 2 will be “enhanced with RTX” revealing that the game will support ray traced reflections and ray traced lighting on PC.
@@stangamer1151 Its a buzzword, like AI. Even if a game only have low-quality rt shadows, they will say it has rt and people will buy it.
i feel like, path tracing is way more important than raytracing because its the first time i see a large difference between the two
The difference of RT is so much less than the difference between VA and OLED panel can make.
Yet a lot of new games still feature terrible HDR support. Ray tracing is a great tech but game developers need to make their games with RT in mind, not retrofit the tech into their already made games. People keep saying RT looks unimpressive and yet there are games where RT looks stunningly good (like Doom Eternal which also runs great). Bad games featuring bad RT should not be tainting RT's name.
Disagree with this, as an owner of OLED, previously VA, and mini LED. There are so many other great technologies other than OLED. I'd say the Ray tracing difference is larger. You should have just said between a great HDR and SDR, then I'd have agreed with you
my VA monitor is the worst piece of tech i ever bought, it's so smeary, i hate it.
@@simpson6700 Fair enough. My philips monitor was pretty good, but I don't think VA and FALD is quite as good on monitors as it is TV's?
@@Brandywine92no that's just not true. VA vs. OLED is a much bigger difference than HDR vs. non-HDR.
Idea: Compare the Rasterization performance of the 1080 Ti to the RT performance of the 4090, see if GPUS have gotten powerful enough to match rasterization performance while raytracing, basically
that comparison is interesting: see if GPUS have gotten powerful enough to match rasterization performance while raytracing.
@@AliTweel ... are you a bot? literally said exactly what the OP said
@@AliTweel Beep boop
@@xymaryai8283 probably not, the account is 14 years old. it is a weird reply though
News flash for you who are still not aware. Major game Devs are all chasing live service games these days. Implementing RT means adding extra investment to the development time so most of the RT games look mediocre. Game Devs pretty much have to beg Nvidia for sponsorship (money/manpower). Look at how long it took CDPR to add the overdrive mode. Also, making RT a big part for a live service is like chasing customers off the game. Thus, Raytracing or Pathtracing or whatever, is the game for the gamers with big bucks my friends.
In my opinion, since the introduction of RayTracing, visual quality in games have trended down alot. this is mainly because of the insane amount of compute power required to run RT resulting in overreliance in AI upscaling and TAA. back in 2014-2017 games used to look crisp and detailed. now its all a blurry mess but at least the rainpuddles are detailed!
Especially on consoles. Like jesus, games like Jedi Survivor have terrible image quality. A blurry mess because it's trying to upscale 720p to 4k just so some barely noticeable RT can be enabled.
That's not RTX's fault. It's lazy development. Frame gen tech is a crutch for lazy graphics development. It happens in modern non-RTX games as well.
@@Veritas.0 RTX games are what started this trend though.
Games being blurry is fault of developers because it literally takes few minutes to properly configure TAA in UE4+ (and add sharpening slider since it is built into the engine already, just like 6 upscaling algorithms for resolution scale), which for example, always provides higher image quality than FSR, which uses more advanced and higher cost TAA (like TSR/DLSS/XeSS).
Sadly, if developers don't care about how their game looks, there is nothing we can do about it as long as both hardware and game reviewers are happy with visual degradation...
@@heatnup Heh, there's been lazy game developers since the 1980s. This isn't new to RTX.
In 90% of the games, rasterization is so good, that using ray tracing is only worth if you have a lot, I mean, a LOT of fps.
On episode 261 of the Broken Silicon podcast, I remember the Infuse Studio devs talked about how developing for various tech creates two whole sets of QA where you have to verify that each version holds up to the Art director’s intention.
Yeah, my question is whether (and how much) building a raytraced-only game would save development man-hours.
@@crash.overrideI hardly care, there is no benefit for me in them having easier jobs, especially when it's at the expense of MY wallet.
I don't think any company does that... RT/PT is added as an afterthought in basically all cases
RT is not gonna become a standard until mid range GPUs will be able to handle it at native 1440p and 60 FPS which will be at least 4-5 more years. Until then it'll remain as a bonus feature for those who have a top class GPU.
1440p? Nah all it need is to be good at 1080p. Majority of gamer still stick to 1080p. And 1080p will be the mainstream resolution for another decade or even more.
@@arenzricodexd4409 That is changing lately. More and more people are getting 1440p monitors because 1080p ones cost the same already
Like other past graphics features
People said the exact same thing when the 20 series launched in 2018. Now it's 6 years later and fuck all has changed... I'd say 10-15 years is a more realistic estimate tbh.
It is already the standard, most games use UE5 these days (unfortunately) and have Lumen Global Illumination, which is Software Ray Tracing. Nvidia hijacking the term and now using it for Path Tracing instead (Black Myth Wukong) is just muddying the waters
I like Tim's new hair style in the thumbnail 😭😂
It's shockingly funny
Gotta say Tim's lookin' good.
And boobs too! 🤣
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Tim? he is V now.
I turn ray tracing off right before motion blur. I didn't spend all that money to have my games run like a blurry slideshow.
The only game I've played that truly felt like a different experience with raytracing was Minecraft. Illuminating mineshafts and caves with realistic lighting changes the whole feel of the game.
personally ive played minecraft with non ray traced shaders and it honestly looks better than minecraft RTX
"Minecraft RT" is a thing of beauty, but also that version is fully path traced and not a hybrid implementation like RT most in games.
You have to try Control (1st gen RT -20 series), Metro Exodus (2nd gen RT -30 series) and cp2077 for current gen
@@luminance69 It's really depends on your personal definition of "better".
@@adriankoch964 Which is really the only way RT makes sense. Sure you can integrate it into an otherwise rasterized scene, but as long as it isn't providing the bulk of the detail it's just a gimmick. With RT shadows and reflections, you get 1 or maybe 2 bounces. But to get proper global illumination you often need 8 or more, which obviously greatly increases the performance hit.
Hogwarts Legacy looks more realistic without Raytracing, it looks exaggerated how the floor reflects
I think the challenge is how they set the surface‘s properties, how the ray should react when hitting it.
Hogwarts Legacy has the worst RT implementation I've ever seen. That's just a Hogwarts Legacy thing.
But make it too muted and it's no reason to do RT considering the performance penalty.
@@SweBeach2023 To me I felt like the performance penalty wasn't high enough. Like it was just a one bounce RT pass that wasn't really doing as much as it should. The real benefit comes once objects bounce light and color around them and the scene gets tied together.
@@albert2006xp But the horsepower required for that means, for most people's budget, that they have to so aggressive upscaling, on an already low base resolution, that the whole point goes out the window.
@@andersjjensen That's fine. You turn the render resolution down, you accept lower fps, you get a new card but at least it would be worth turning on and it would make the game look better in the best case scenario which is what matters. If a game is good people are going to be playing it 10 years from now, it's not going to age well if you don't stress the current hardware to tears.
The only thing that is cleary noticeable in the footage is how blurry modern games are due to TAA. :)
It's TERRIBLE.
And in games like Battlefield 2042 you can't even turn it off lol, at least without tweaking the settings file. In new sh2 you can't turn off chromatic aberration. This is ridiculous.
@@vitalyjoepeachpeedarok most modern games don't allow you to turn off TAA. It's a disaster.
@@semmmo91 I feel like UE5 games are the worst at this
on PC you can fix/reduce the blur with Reshade using clarity and a sharpen effect like luma sharpen, adaptive sharpen, etc.
if anyone is interested, i have new version of Immerse Ultimate for Reshade from Marty mods. it has effects like Ray Tracing Global Illumination(it's like ray tracing minus the reflections), Regrade for in-depth color grade, etc. if you want just ask. watch this video for a demonstration: "Marty's Mods | Ghost of Tsushima". this is a bigger game changer than ray tracing.
the problem with the (mostly) still images in this video is that you cannot spot the screenspace artifacts, thats a big part of "image enhancement" with raytracing enabled imo
I would like to point out sometimes blurry reflection is a product of the material of the reflective surface, clearer is not always realistic. Which looks better is entirely subjective.
The intent of the designer is everything, really, and can only be guessed at. Even photographers post-process their stuff so photorealism is a mixed bag of subjectivity.
And here in lies one of the major issues, is that a lot of the time, its a matter of taste if the differences are truly better.
F1 24, can you see the RT? Yes, when you play at 65 fps instead of 120 you will clearly notice the low frame rate... not the reflection or the shadows, but the low frame rate is really noticeable.
I dont notice the difference between 60 fps vs 144 or rt on vs off lol resolution and hdr are the biggest jumps in visual quality for me
@@Dempig while playing a fast placed racing game or while watching a cutscene? because a film/animation at 24fps feels extremely fluid, while a basic platformer will look completly different at 60fps. a fast placed fix game, like racing/flying game will benefit grealy from 144fps. And extremely fast paced shotter can see improvement up to 480fps.
Your eyes are extremely good at picking details they need, saying "I don't see the difference betwen x and y Hz" doesn't mean anything if you don't have a visual media as reference.
It’s definitely good but two thirds of gamers have no access unless you like playing in fuzzy mud resolutions
Like 40% don't even have a GPU with hardware based Raytracing.
More like 90%
i have a 7900xtx, no intention of using RT, just not worth it
But this analysis isn't about who has access or not. It's just about a comparison and review of how far the tech has come and how it's being implemented.
But it has to start somewhere, the feature needs to be standard in all GPUs so that eventually everyone CAN use it. Its been the same every time a major new GPU rendering feature has been added, its just so long since this last happened that many people weren't even born when it last did.
0:15 it has not.
Well I'm glad you're not the one making the video
You are saying this just cause you can't afford to play with RT :)
The problem with raytracing versus rasterization, at lest in some games, is not that RT improved graphics beyond what rasterization could provide, is that the developers, because they implemented RT, pushed back rasterization effects, because they would take more time and this makes rasterization look way worse than it really can be.
For example reflections, some games now, only have good mirror reflections, using RT and on rasterization they just enable screen space reflections that look like total trash on surfaces meant to represent perfect mirrors, with this you may think, is impossible to represent mirrors on rasterization but that is not true at all, you play decades old games and they have perfect mirrors on rasterization as well.
Then there's also lighting, now some games only use bounced lighting on RT (specially those sponsored by Nvidia...) because is easier than to create a more involved rasterization/shader based system, specially if is a game with totally real-time lighting, and so you may think, only RT can do bounced lighting in real time but then you have some old games using say Enlighten (ex Mafia 2) or SVOGI (sparse voxel octree global illumination) some Cryengine games or voxel cone tracing (ex Rise of Tomb Raider) various rasterization based GI systems, that IMO do good enough bounced lighting and compared to RT are way faster.
But by shear marketing push by you know who, RT is replacing all of these, while at the same time pushing GPU demands way up and GPU prices way up.
I would appreciate it if rasterization can provide reflections that don't disappear when what is being reflected leaves screen space.
@@colemin2 Check Hitman 3's mirrors in bathrooms with RT off. Planar reflections are cheaper than RT and when implemented well can look basically flawless. Just it requires developer time and money so the management doesn't usually like to add it, cheaper to just slap RT on it and shove the game out the door a few months early
@@colemin2 That is not the problem of rasterization that is a technique problem, screen space reflections are trash for mirrors that is all, but there's many ways to make mirrors on rasterization (including double rendering or rendering to texture) that can make perfect mirrors.
You just stated why we can hardly noticed generational changes in games between last gen and present gen without realizing it...
@@RicochetForce Have you read what I said well? I gave some examples there, I don't know what "evidence" you expect from me, perhaps play more older games and look for yourself?
If all you do is play modern games (not saying you do) than you have no point of reference to what I'm talking about.
For example, the mirrors I've talked about, there's 20 years old games (or older) with perfect mirrors on them that don't break apart, hell Unreal 1 has a entire room in there where the floor is a perfect mirror that reflects everything including "the player", today they would shove SSR at it and call it a day, you would only see a blurry mess for the player (if it is even reflected at all) and a "mirror" where many stuff goes away has you move your head around.
Is that a conspiracy? No, just not caring to do anything else, because one, it takes more work and time aka more money or two and worse, they don't even know how to do it any other way.
Many modern game developers, know less about game tech, than older game developers, why, because they never went deep into the engine tech or did a game engine on their lives, only used already made ones with nice tidy tools with a bunch of hand holding features.
Again I'm not talking about conspiracies here, at most I'm talking about incompetence and or ignorance, that looking at it in some aspects, feels like a worse thing than malice, because with malice, at lest they would know to do better, if they wanted.
Kind of surprised Control was not included since it was one of the original examples of Raytracing in games.
In retrospect, the reflections were very noisy, but I wouldn't play Control without RT. That game got me into RT.
@@sodapopinksi667 The "HDR" Mod that actually does more than just HDR made by a developer at Remedy that has access to the source code actually also features various improvements to the RT resolution and upgrades DLSS to support DLAA in the game.
It really improves the quality of the RT if your GPU can handle it.
@@eziothedeadpoet mod is great. It actually got me to revisit the game and do the DLC. It should be official. It borderline is official.
@@eziothedeadpoetexactly, improves the used dlss version too. It looks really good
Remedy is promising an update for control next year that adds HDR, they might make the mod actually official
Here is a simple thing: if ray-tracing removes some reflections from "further away" that means the reflections set without ray-tracing were more creatively inspired than realistic. Same as with SWJS and the lights above the workbench. In ray-trace off the lights cast lights on surfaces that the light doesn't shine on. But creative license can look nice and cool. In the end, I think the main question will be if ray-tracing will allow developers to spend less time on getting lighting and illumination right. Computing more stuff on the fly saves on resources-required for things that are hand-fed to the engine. Can also lead to less bugs. For me, ray-tracing as in Cyberpunk 2077 is well worth it... but the effect is not captured in stills. It's moving out of tunnels and being greeted by the light.
I generally don't use ray tracing with my 4090 and prefer the extra frame rates. I didn’t even care much for the ray tracing in Cyberpunk 2077, but path tracing in Cyberpunk completely changed my mind! It was absolutely mind-blowing. Comparing images side by side doesn’t do it justice; as soon as it’s turned on, it just feels like everything has improved significantly. I couldn’t turn it off because I kept getting FOMO from the "missed visuals" of not having it enabled during my replay of the game.
dame dinero
Path tracing is ray tracing, but yes. IMO it’s the only implementation of ray tracing that is good.
Why buy a 4090 if u don t use r?t...stupid reach boy
I haven’t seen much path tracing, but it seems more expensive to use compared to standard ray tracing. Maybe if I ever play cyberpunk I could try it, but I definitely need to pick out a PC to build first 😂
Spotting game features ON/OFF should be a sport of sorts.
Bet you I would do a better job at that than the native fanatics spotting 4k DLSS Quality vs 4k DLAA.
@@albert2006xp Good luck! Can easily tell when my 4k isnt true 4k on virtually every case I had to.
@@aravindpallippara1577 And I can tell what rendering techniques are employed in a scene by looking at it. So I guess me and you pixel peeping 2 cm away from a 4k screen are tied.
@@albert2006xp Yep very sensitive to resolution in general - that said, I do put my monitor at arm and a bit extra length. Work reasons and text.
@@albert2006xp quite silly to say, because it's hard to compare DLSS/DLAA/MSAA x4 in a standing still shot. But the moment you get into action, in say a fps, you instantly spot the artifacts, the greasyness, the smur, the ghosting, ect.
Notice how nvidia never show fast paced gameplay when showing of their technologies.
and VR is the top notch to spotting those, when the screen are supposed to be your eyes, every single detail/artifact will get spotted by your brain. It's no wonder why VR games rarely add support for those upscaler/frame-gen, despite VR being one of the category that would need fast fps.
its way more fun to do downhill tray racing, then raytracing ☺
It seems that screen-space reflections in Hitman do not take the surface's roughness into account and always calculate well defined, perfect mirror reflections, which is physically inaccurate. This is not how physically correct reflections should appear on rough surfaces in reality
Happens when half-assed RT is added to games that weren't built with it.
@@albert2006xp I was referring to screen-space reflections, not ray tracing ones. Also, there’s no such thing as games built specifically for RT - games can be tuned to highlight RT benefits, but fully-featured RT implementations don't require that. All game materials are PBR, reflections apply to all surfaces, and you can switch between reflection methods with RT affecting any object if it covers the full range of roughness. RT issues usually aren't about the content but result from developers cuts for consoles and AMD graphics in general, like low resolution RT effects, roughness cut-offs that limit the range of surfaces where RT is applied, low BVH/rays draw distance, low quality denoisers, and limited to no shading for reflections. Fully-featured RT, as in CP2077, AW2, and Wukong, is demanding but delivers the best visual results by avoiding all the mentioned cuts
SSR by nature is a really cheap way to get some kind of reflections going on. And it's cheap if you throw a single screen space ray (yes SSR is a form of ray tracing).
Unfortunately, a single ray is only valid for 0 roughness surfaces. If you want to simulate rougher surfaces you'll need to cast a cone of rays to blur the result which costs significantly more.
@@Mordy. He wasn't referring to RT in the context of screen-space RT, obviously. And there's no need to cast a cone of rays for diffuse reflections. With Monte Carlo sampling, you cast a ray in a random direction within the cone and accumulate rays from previous frames over time. This converges to accurate diffuse reflections, which would still appear blurred on rough surfaces, even without the temporal accumulation of samples, due to spatial denoising
@@revolverocelot2769 Because not all RT is full PT, there's a lot of balancing between what's left rasterized in the image and what is added with RT. When RT is added after the fact it can look strange, especially if it's limited RT like only shadows or only reflections. Yeah it is those low ray count, low bounce half-assed RT implementations that end up just not doing a whole lot but eating 10 fps.
For witcher 3 I don’t understand how you don’t see how much RTAO and RTGI are improving visuals drastically!
17:15 At a guess, this is happening because the floor is meant to be a rough surface that really shouldn't have perfectly defined reflections.
For majority of gamers it's not a simple consideration whether RT is better on or off. It's consideration if it's worth halving the framerate for some (often minimal) increase in visual quality and most of the time it isn't worth it. For example: which is more enjoyable to play, Cyberpunk with RT on at unstable 35ish FPS or with RT off at locked 60FPS (or more)? I'd argue even in best RT implementations it's not worth severe hit to performance, unless you have a 4090 or upcoming 5090.
The only games that made feel like "Yes this looks better, I wish I had a better PC for this" were Alan Wake 2 and Cyberpunk... so idk... maybe another 5 years?
Dying Light 2 also, especially since its performance cost for results is one of most generous from all games that have RTX options.
Usually my 6700 XT plummets to 20-40fps at 1080p (about 70% fps drop) with RTX settings on whilst Dying Light 2 never dips below 60fps. Granted that game is very optimized as you start with 120fps or more without RTX.
Even in cyberpunk, sometimes the reflections look worse than raster in motion. I hate the blurred and laggy look of some of the effects.
Make it 10
@@TheIndulgers You're mixing them up, raster is what looks worse in motion because it's not real rendering the reflection shouldn't move or flicker based on viewing angle.
I also wonder: both of those games had collaboration and budget thrown behind ray tracing from Nvidia in order to make a sales pitch for Nvidia's newest cards.
What if they had the same money and extra engineering effort poured into making their rasterized graphics even better?
I am sure ray tracing would probably still have the edge somewhat...but by how much?
These games might speak more to Nvidia engineers being really really good at making a game's graphics look awesome than to the inherent power of ray tracing itself.
I think that many comparaison are unfair , you need to move the camera to show SSR limitations when object are out of screen , SSR reflection are good but only when object reflected are on screen, also SSR create a halo artefact surrounding the character when moving
Raw raster, vram and price to raw performance are still the main things I look for.
Oh, it's good for realism I'm sure, the problem is that, if the game is really good, I usually already bask in the universe and don't really care about the realism given by ray tracing ...
Styled and well designed universe >>>>> realism. really. The only exception imo is reflection on window etc... which can be used for nice cutscenes, but even then, game could mimick that in cutscenes with ok effect for a long time already.
Stylised games (any indie title, Dishonored, etc) also continue to look good basically forever without any extra work.
For realism, I find that it's how things move in the game world that really make the difference. The animations and the physics of objects.
Oh the realism part is not so real if you look at most examples we saw here. Think about it, surfaces that are covered with filth because people walk on it with their dirt shoes. How long can they act like a mirror? The answer should be zero. Even if they are new, most surfaces will not behave like a mirror. The real part would be how the light will reach all spots it should. But even this seems like not all games could do with RT
The first time I hopped into one of the marbled rooms in Indiana Jones in the Vatican was probably my first “Holy Shit” Ray Tracing moment. Maybe second, after Cyberpunk.
Oh, maybe I'm blind, but I don't see any difference at all. This RTX thing is just a marketing ploy. The average person won't notice the difference at all. Especially when there is no way to compare two videos side by side. So why lose your money and FPS which will be 2-3 times less?
UPD: Cyberpunk is the only game where I've noticed a difference. But it's only noticeable in Overdrive mode.
I think the differences for the RT reflections would have been much clearer if the camera was adjusted so that there was no screen space information available for the SSR. The difference between RT reflections and cube maps/no reflection is night and day
Yeah, should've included some slow vertical camera pans in the comparisons, would've made which is RT and which isn't (in scenes involving reflections) very obvious.
For a lesson in completely useless. Please reference Diablo IV ray tracing options. Massive dip in FPS for almost indistinguishable image. That's not even accounting for the fact so much stuff will be moving on the screen to even notice.
Also yeah Cyberpunk maxed is still the prettiest game I've played.
In practice it has been implemented in around 100 games in six years, of which perhaps in 10 it is worth activating it as long as you have at least a 4080 so as not to feel the drop in performance too much... I think the percentage is so low as to border on the ridiculous. if nvidia didn't pay for the implementation many studios wouldn't even consider it.
I dunno if that's true. Console makers were also pushing it as one of the big reasons to buy a console in 2020 and one of the PS5 pro's big selling points is better RT. It was going to happen either way. Nvidia was just the first one out of the gate to push it into the mainstream. I think it was coming either way and this was decided in some shadowy marketing/C-suite room somewhere 6 or 7 years ago
Of course its low, you need the hardware support before developers can use it, and then you need the performance improvements gen to gen to finally make it possible to use it properly. This is always how new 3D rendering techniques work, except RT is so intensive and pushing faster hardware is a lot harder, so its going to take longer than it did in the early days.
Man I want to take the time to appreciate how well you discuss at the beginning of the video the contents and what to expect, I haven’t even been through the first 5 minutes and I’m already subscribed, I appreciate how informative your approach is, it’s very important because many people are thinking about upgrading to a more ray tracing capable gpu and it’s not a cheap investment.
I really miss the analysis of moving images where the reflecting object pop in and out of screen space. Without RT this can really distract because reflections will break all the time.
One of the major benefits of RT reflections is the non reliance on screen space. During gameplay this is a big difference.
And that goes for shadows and AO as well.
Imho you can't analyse RT while ignoring this.
😴
Df show that in every game that screen space reflections..
Another thing is when a high resolution cube map loses alignment so it looks wrong, I find that far more distracting than even a low resolution RT reflection that aligns correctly. As my brain isn't paying that much attention to if the reflection is entirely accurately clear but will notice if its not aligned right. Its also why I kinda hate games which blend RT and screen space reflections, as seeing the screen space fade in and out is more distracting to me than the reflection just remaining lower quality all the time.
Also miss measuring the actual performance hit.
If you're doing RT on a 4090 at 4K and still hitting your refresh rate, what is the downside? Alternately, if you can hit the native refresh and resolution on your card with upscaling or not hit it natively, what is the better picture?
This was a very naive comparison, honestly.
Very few games have the kind of rampant large reflections where this will be routinely noticeable in moment to moment gameplay, though. So I would disagree this makes a 'big difference', at least for vast majority of games.
One thing I noticed was that some of the RT games looked like they had dropped the texture quality when RT was on. Looking at the foliage the RT versions look very fuzzy whereas the non-RT had crisp leaves and stems of the plants.
Have to do with noise generated from RT implementation - All RT requires a denoiser since we don't actually send enough light rays to mimic real life lighting.
Path tracing is the only thing we need
Ray tracing was just a test before the real thing
Assuming you can get people to agree on what path tracing means. Or even ray tracing for that matter.
It's the same thing. Path tracing is just CDPR's buzzword. A "path" is the route a "ray" of light takes. Same math, same tech, same effect... name's different for marketing.
@@Veritas.0 It's funny how confident you are with your misinformation. Path tracing is a form of ray tracing, same technology but different math/implementation. Path tracing isn't a buzzword used by CDPR, it only resurged because current hardware with the help of AI can now implement that technology without tanking the fps to the point of unplayability. If it has the same effect how come it looks entirely different when compared with "ray tracing". I think you should watch the video in full before commenting your bullshit.
Exactly, Even resident evil series and dragons dogma 2 benefit from path tracing. It makes everything more grounded.
@@irvinclemente2368 So your reason for thinking path tracing is vastly different from ray tracing and a totally new tech, is because... "it's got AI"?
Brawndo! ...err, I mean... AI! It's got what graphics crave!
The difference in Path tracing and Ray tracing is what it uses as the source of the rays. The math is still the same, the theory is still the same.
Path Tracing in Cyberpunk was the first time I could definitely say it enhances realism and looks a lot. However, with my RX7800XT I cannot use it above 30 FPS, so there we go.
A nice summary of what every player could see with their own eyes. 2 years ago I made a good decision when choosing 7900XTX(Nitro+). It's a pity that AMD gave up on the next generation hi end.😢
Yes, most gamers are just spec watchers.
About AMD not competing on the high-end, was this an official statement or just journalists and TH-cam techfluencers assuming and spewing it as fact? I remember like 4 or 5 years ago TH-camr RGT85 was quoting a post on a random forum, from a random person about a Switch Pro imminent release, as if it was official Nintendo news. After that every other TH-camr and games media outlet parroted it as official corroborated news.
Imo the bigger issue with AMD GPUs isn't RT performance but upscaling quality. FSR is very bad compared to DLSS, and upscaling is extremely relevant these days - it's even the only proper way to play at 2160p.
@@faultier1158 4k Quality mode works very well in most games. Even with RTX GPU, I wouldn't use other modes, so for me it's not an argument. At least today, what will happen after the launch of the new generation of GPUs, we will see.
@@Aki_LesbrincoGoogle for "AMD deprioritizing flagship gaming GPUs: Jack Huynh talks new strategy against Nvidia in gaming market”
In my experience the only game that I've found is worth turning RT on is cyberpunk, but even then the negatives of FG and FSR really blunt the effect.
there isnt a single game which doesnt benefit from rt
@@ttghhgg1918 If set up properly rom the beginning, correct. But itr really differs whether or not the game benefits greatly.
In my opinion, games that thrive on lighting and shadows would do the best. So games that lack raytracing or could be fully made that way 0 raster are: GTFO, FAR (both titles), Little Nightmares (both titles, a newer edit had it but lackluster because just an afterthought though visibly a little better), Inside, Limbo, Stray. Especially GTFO could have used it well. On the other hand, scopes and scope glint and better distant visuals for a game like Red Orchestra 2 would be most most welcome in a remaster.
Cyberpunk being the obvious standou that did it just right.
I disagree with the assessment that Ressident Evil did not benefit, it did.
Other titles I think do not need it really are games like the new Streets Of Rage, the art style does not call for it.
Cyberpunk doesn't do great SSR/GI/AO to begin with. That's why RT on that game is transformative.
For the vast majority of the games that already do the said effects well; RT just feels like going from high to ultra; an improvement, but not a transformation.
@@Koffiato no way do u think ray traced gi isn’t transformative ????see Witcher or metro literally changes the game
@@ttghhgg1918the witcher isn't transformative at all, that's one just pushes more the pixel peeping narrative.
Metro does look different, but it looks more like medium vs ultra presets, it's different but not jaw dropping
The "issue" with ray tracing is that traditional rasterization methods have become quite good at realistic lighting and we also became used to the look of faked lighting. Most games done by talented developers look great without ray tracing so the benefits for the gamers are not so apparent or in the worst case scenario, just provide a worse gameplay experience due to the loss of performance. I think where ray tracing might become a real game changer is for the developers. The rasterization workarounds to create very realistic lighting costs a lot of development time, since they need to manually place some lights to fake real GI, have extra work to make sure cube mapping and screen-space reflections look ok, shadow LOD and AO fine tuning, etc. With real ray tracing (or path tracing) they place only the real lights that fit the scenario they want to create and the ray tracing solution does pretty much everything else, from GI to shadows, AO and reflections. They can then focus on geometry and materials and spend less development effort on lighting. Sorry if this sounds a bit simplistic, I know that good ray tracing also needs development effort, but I think that goes mostly directly into the engine development, that then benefits all games done with that engine and less time for each individual game.
Quick edit: ray tracing also makes it easier for dynamic lights/shadow casting, if I am not mistaken. Those are more difficult with traditional rasterization and limit the amount of dynamic lights that can cast shadows.
Horizon Forbidden West is the best example
I think you’re on the money with your analysis. Games like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Last of Us 2 look incredible despite using 0 ray tracing methods. Their engines and designers behind the tools have created a rendering pipeline that is very sophisticated and convincing despite being made up entirely of cube maps, baked lighting, screen spaced and post fx tricks to get the visuals looking like they do. But even in those games there are certain lighting situations, typically low light and occluded environments, where you can see the lighting engine failing. In the case of RDR2, interiors are often heavily occluded (sort of the fault of HBAO) which looks not great. For Last of Us 2, dynamic objects are not well grounded and you can tell what objects can be interacted with since they tend to “glow.” Either way, both games show the strengths of rasterization. You can have incredible lighting and great performance. The way those games are rendered, especially Last of Us 2, has a great deal of finesse and technical skill that you can’t really expect from every developer and studio. Naught Dog develops games for one platform which gives them an edge for making their games run well and look great. Just look at their PC ports and you can see how difficult it can be to get the same results on entirely different hardware, while also make it scalable for the various kinds of PC builds out there. A far cry from the simplicity of developing for one platform. There’s a new challenger at the helm tho with GSC and UE5. Stalker 2 does ALL of its lighting through Lumen. All shadows, lighting and reflections are done with software raytracing and the results are often striking. Everything down to the smallest asset is ray traced. Your gun scope even reflects the environment behind you and your character self occludes and even something as small as your anomalous detector can cast emissive lights from the screen. There’s a device in the game that has a screen with a green line that refreshes the screen, and that green line actually illuminates the detector and you can see the reflection of that green line in the metals of the detector. It is quite impressive and it honestly gives that detector a bit of character. The future is path traced.
tldr: Same games, same (or 10%) graphics quality, same price, but you need to pay 1000$ to play them at 1080 30fps, or you could use upscaling and frame-gen, but you loose some graphics quality, introduce artifacts and ghosting.
What a deal!
IMO all of this come from the obsession with making every game an open-world, because compared to classic "hallway" game design, the devs can't optimize properly because they can't predict much about the environment (As a proof of that look at how optimized Doom eternal is, and compare the fps to quality) Maybe game will become so expansive to make that we will retro-pedal at some point?
That's an oustanding work ethic there putting such a video, I usually criticize your overlasting Monitors Reviews but this one's length is completely useful
Why would you expect reflections to be "clear" and high quality? Reflections by their very nature tend to cause blurriness and distortion to the surface of whatever is reflected. That seems rather natural IMO. For instance the hitman floor you are talking about at 17:40. I hear this argument from you and others as well that the "off" version "looks better" because you see a "higher quality" clearer reflection. But that's not how that surface would ever look. The floor material, lighting, and reflection would not be that clear. It's not a mirror.
No?
2:55 There's path tracing which we don't have enough horsepower for yet, then theres "ray tracing" which is a tiktok filter on rasterised games. having owned a rtx3060, rx6600xt, rtx3090 and 6900XT's (air and water) I couldn't care less about "ray tracing", when 25% of AAA game releases have a fully path traced option and you can buy a $500 card capable of doing it native... then it'll matter.
It's the same thing. A "path" is just the route a "ray" of light takes. Path tracing is just a CDPR buzzword for ray tracing... Same math, same tech, same theory.
@@Veritas.0 Yeah that is what we did in computer graphics class in 2002 , implementing the path a ray travels with reflections and lighting and whatever... we just called it ray tracing. Then there were the functions for shadows etc... don't remember all the details though, vectors and things like that. At that time there wasn't the power for it in a game.
@@Veritas.0 Oh I know it's just a low sample and heavily denoised (and often upscaled) image for the sake of rasterisation+sprinkles, I was just trying to draw a line of distinction between full RT and the crap we refer to as RT which blows gamers little minds like they've just discovered trainers with flashing lights in the heels.
SOOOO many people don't understand what RT is and Rasterization lighting is .. and they just get this wrong. so reposting this here from another one of my replies to explain PLEASE EVERY ONE COMMENTING READ this!
even with RT you still place lights BY HAND . RT just handles how the shadows , lights and reflections are rendered by the gpu . in rasterization shadows are baked to a texture that tells the gpu how the lights and shadows should be rendered according to a light's location to an object. in this way the shadows in ras , are "fake". Reflections again are also a pre baked texture.
with RT, instead of a pre baked texture, the camera actually cast rays into the scene whose paths are then traced to see how light in a given scene interacts with things.
in FULL RT (AKA path tracing) the rays are cast from the light objects themselves (more realistically than basic RT).
but devs still have to place and tune all lights in a level regardless of what method you use. all RT cuts out is the bake time required to "bake" a light/shadow map at the end of level creation when using traditional ras lighting. but the lights are still hand crafted in the level editor.
When i went to school for my bachelor's in game art design Real time ray tracing in games was still not a thing . but we used RT in 3ds max (it's been a part of 3d max since it's first version) . going between Rasterization lighting and RT lighting was no different. we still had to set up every light in scene by hand and tune all their adjustments. the only diference was 3ds max rendered way faster when using Ras lighting ... and it took all damn day to render a scene with RT enabled , though the results were vastly superior to Rasterization.
now that i've dicked around with some modern game editors as well , it's the same case. you still place lights and set them up individually by hand. just with RT you don't have to bake a light map and shadow map texture at the end of level editing.
i really wish people would get this right , and stop thinking that the only reason RT exist is so devs can save development time. it really doesn't save that much time and still requires all the leg work in a level editor.
Good points.
Id also like to add that I’ve never heard of a big studio aiming for a “photorealistic” game. Seems weird to take that approach just to lighting when every game was designed with some artistic vision in mind. Most lighting in games doesn’t conform to real world physics because we are aren’t bound by it like in the real world. We can make shadows darker to create a sense of mystery and tension, which actually makes the game more immersive, because of the underlying emotion in a scene. Rasterization lets us better express unique imaginative worlds, and often times RT is a ton of work to implement because it eliminates a lot of the intentional artistic design.
@@SettlingAbyss96 well that's the thing RT doesn't really "eleminate the intentional artistic design" even when workign with RT , you set up things like , light color , light fallout, shadow thickness all that is still part of level editing regardless of how the light and shadow is rendered.
RT does take out the need for a "Fake Bounce" light set up in the level. but no, it doesn't really destroy intentional arrtistic lighting design.
"in rasterization shadows are baked to a texture"
Uhm? You can perfectly do dynamic shadows with rasterisation, Have you played a game in the last 3 decades?
@@sophieedel6324 ok .. tell me you know nothing about creating games with out telling me you know nothing about creating games.
in rasterization dynamic lights use what's called a shadow/light map
it is a texture but it is not like a diffuse , specular or even normal map texture.
this texture , is a special map that defines where the shadows and lights from, ALL objects should fall dependant on where a light is placed (moved) in persepctive to said object. dynamic light does not mean "real time" light. it just means that the light can move and be moved in the scene and it's shadows can move and be moved.
the shadow /light map is how this is done to reduce overhead because real time lighting (such as what is used in ray tracing ) could not be rendered in real time through most of gaming history.
the shadow light maps bassically records all possible shadow and light cordinates in a level for the entire level and every object in it that cast light /shadows. it's just read as texture data which is faster for a gpu to process than real time lighting like RT or Photometric lighting that is in 3ds max. this is also how you can change shadow resolution on shadows ,you are litterally changing the level's shadow /light map resolution .
PS i do hope you read all of the above so you learned somthing instead just being smugly ignorant.
@@DenverStarkey Open worlds are one of the reason we see so much RT imo. When you can control when, from where, how, at what time of the day, the player will go to x place, you can use a lot of trickery to get nice visuals without having to simulating them in real time, but will open world you don't have this controls, so you might get too much combinations of shadows, light reflection and others, at this point slapping some RT on it to offload this to the GPU at runtime is easier.
Interesting video! I've been considering a cyberpunk playthrough again so now I'll know what I'm missing out on with the overdrive visuals lol
Only conclusion I disagree with was Hitman, the rasterized version has overly reflective floors making it look unrealistic. In the raytraced image you can clearly see the roughness of the floor and a rough, even if reflective surface, should not be producing an accurate reflected image.
2:55 enabling Lumen / Global Illumination in Satisfactory is insanely good and looks better than 90% of raytracing I've seen so far.
Ray tracing is about simulating real lighting. That has nothing to do with how 'good' a game looks.
@@keppycs He never said that though, so why are you bringing that up? He's claiming that Satisfactory looks better with ray tracing, , so if you want to argue against that, argue why you think the ray tracing actually doesn't look that good in Satisfactory rather than arguing an unrelated point.
Interestingly, this is an example of Lumen, which looks great in software mode and tends to run just as well on AMD hardware as well as Nvidia hardware, and a very small number of single player games can get a good enough frame-rate using Lumen even with the venerable 1080 ti. I wonder if Satisfactory is one of them?
The noisiness and temporal effects of lumen just kill it for me
@@syncmonismit runs fast enough, but doesn't look great on my system
if you're just staring at the landscape while exploring it can look *amazing*, especially around sunrise/sunset
but while building, there's all kinds of annoying effects, lights and reflections of buildings don't work well, and often it's super grainy/noisy.
You get fun stuff like an afterglow of a building you removed from the lighting system catching up slowly, off screen lights not working properly, and again, every light being kinda grainy/noisy/shimmery
@@syncmonism oh I misread, my apologies everyone
I love how you Tim and Steve complement each others work with these amazing videos, him going all in hardware performance and being technical with numbers while you tackle the aesthetics and techniques for the visuals and compare in a sense the "end result" from what the hardware produces and its purpose in the end (rendering quality images).
With that said, about this video, I fully agree on every aspect of what you have presented, the varying usefulness, art direction changes e.t.c. however I would like to add 2 things.
1) The scenes are heavily designed and mastered for raster setups (many hand placed lights) and the raytrace features are more like "tacked on" and hybrid RT and raster as an after thought. The scenes get more treatment and care for the raster while RT has evidently flaws and inaccuracies like a shadows on a shiny water surface as if it was a solid surface with high roughness! (25:18 the shadow being cast from the first pole you see to the right onto the puddle in the middle) Just unrealistic and uncanny.
About uncanny, the use of non RT friendly assets! Raster can make lower quality assets "blur in" to the scene more smoothly while RT will make poor assets look even worse and highlight their flaws more clearly, specially with foliages.
2) The material systems are generally not RT native, they are raster based with RT as a second thought.
It is like taking a regular SD video content and "automagically" make it into an HDR video content and hope for the best, you NEED to master it more carefully and use better tone-mapping, in a similar way just "RT'ifying" a material that is mastered for raster will not work.
With RT specially with path tracing algorithms you need to fix the materials or perhaps even worse use another underlying material system that can account for the PT specific effects, so that they for example don't shine up like semi self illuminated object (for example a couple of scenes you showed where the boat at 21:10 and box under table at 12:10) and that can bring out the effects of light and light phenomena being simulated correctly.
Hopefully with more RT enabled hardware on the consumer side, the developers can now focus more on RT and treat it as a first class citizen while getting more experience using it (and skills) to match the skill level they generally have with raster today.
With UE5's Lumen and its new Substrate Material framework (experimental) it enables developer to now "only" need to focus of the content instead of balancing with performance issues and render tech.
For me it seems like almost every game look better without ray tracing, on the comparisons where we have to guess I got it wrong almost every time
Metro Exodus EE at 23:34 looks totally washed out with extreme levels of glare...and even in indoor areas the overblown lights completely negates the grim dark atmosphere of the original.
Not to mention the absolute tanking of frame rate.
On a 3060ti the benchmark run on the original gave me 130 fps average at 1080p/high, while on the EE the average fps was around 80.
Even though the fps in EE is way above 60, the massive drop in the head room vs the original...for just "different" visuals......not better....just different made no sense.
Some people prefer the glare from multiple light sources.......for me the original baked lighting was just superior(even though "fake".... according to the RT fans)
@@main_stream_media_is_a_joke Honestly it's just looks a like a blue hue filter, and more fog. I'm surprised he didn't over the details, eg: 20:05,
with the EE Ultra you
loose details in grid above your head, a lot of sharpness of the grass blades,
a lot of sharpness on the mountain geometry,
the iron rods in front of the grain appears like a blob with EE Ultra.
You don't get shadows on the floor, yet this is completely achievable with rasterization, you also get some different reflection in the window.
lastly the wood on the bridge looks like yellow block from minecraft with EE Ultra, tho they don't look great either with RT off.
About the lighting and shadows the comparison is unfair, I mean, they clearly reworked some effect with the EE edition, like the fog, the lights and shadows, yet non of this can't be achieved with rasterization.
Thanks!
Games I played were I found RT valuable so far : Control, Cyberpunk, Black Myth Wukong
And for both Cyberpunk and BMW, it was path tracing actually. And in control you simply did not have any reflexions without RT.....cant even see yourself in a mirror.
Do you think ultra ray tracing is worth on cyberpunk
Try metro Exodus, the rtgi is insane, probably the best ever
@@anodyneliniment2326 got the game in my steam account, its on my to do list.
PT in Cyberpunk has a few issues, though. It looks good, but once you notice the issues it has, that takes a lot away from it. RT works better, whereas with PT I think you can tell that it needed more work in Cyberpunk that they didn't have the time for.
problem with reflections is they have yet to keep up with gameplay. In Hitman WOA for example, enemies cannot see reflections lol
IMO raytracing is just a gimmick to push GPU prices up.
Saw all those cool videos with path tracing in cyberpunk 2077, but when I got new GPU and enabled it myself i noticed that some scenes, especially story cutscenes, got completely broken.
For example there is scenes where character face looks super real and well lit in rasterization, but with path tracing it's face is very dark and shadows look llike low res
thats cause people dont realise it are textures making games look good and not fancy reflections you dont see half the time cause you are in mid combat. yeah it can be nice but its not worth the dipps. In cp 2077 you mainly see improvement with reflections shadows come broken, sun shadows are as you said nice or bugged. Just install higher Textures and som filters and its good to go. But here comes the thing with the biggest market being nvidia so the only games that do this are the RE games, and there you see the diff between 8 gb crippled vram and 16GB. It gets even funnier when some people realise that half the time those cards cant RT cause of this exact vram limitation, unless they use copius amopunts of upscaling , where the image is so blurred thats native looks already better. XD but o welp.,
Thanks for this video. Will now expect a ray tracing test and categorization onto the chart here for every new game!
I wish you had included the first excellent implementation of ray tracing, Control. It was the first game where I felt that Ray tracing had a significant and noticeable impact to the game visual quality.
It's in the list at 30:06, maybe its only in the full video he told about at the beginning.
no it didnt
It had a noticeable impact for sure, but I didn't miss it when I turned it off. THAT is how you know RT is a joke.
@@AvroBellow for me the game wasn't worth playing without RT, things like the flying mobs reflecting off the floor (puddles) made the atmosphere so much better.
Yeah, Control was the first game where turning raytracing on actually felt justified (even at the cost of resolution)
I got a HDR monitor, and to be honest, I don't see a good implementation of HDR in games too. Only Forza Horizon, this one is awesome with HDR.
Baldurs Gate 3 uses the HDR well and looks beautiful
HDR is a mess. I purchased a reasonable priced 27" 1440p 240hz HDR OLED monitor recently and went thru the HDR nightmare gauntlet.
I have not only had so many issues with HDR implementations in even recent titles... but also Win 11 HDR handling was such a mess (including constant dimming issues in windows itself) and other issues I troubleshooted and could not fix....
I eventually gave up after two weeks of racking my brain and getting runarounds to features Microsoft stripped from Win 11 that fixed the issues, that I just gave up and turned off HDR all together in Windows 11 (and therefore in game) and enabled auto HDR on the actual monitor.
It's been a fairly good experience so far on my particular monitor, and surprisingly accurate. But it's ashame I had to do that. But between bad implementations in games (some WAY worse than SDR) and Microsoft's ineptitude - HDR is more of a minefield on PC than it is a selling point.
HDR is a real mess on PC, it works a lot better on consoles, even the same games usually look worse on PC or don't have HDR at all.
I think it is just the minority of games now where HDR is mediocre or bad, like Plague tale Requiem.
@@lukilladog I have been playing fewer games recently, Frostpunk 2 (bad HDR), Diablo 4 (bad HDR) and CS2.. and only during the weekends.
Playing Cyberpunk with path tracing enabled is one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had.
Because it enhances the artstyle, same can't be said for other games.
@@RicochetForce Crysis remastered doesn't have Path tracing and looks better than many ray traced games because of SVOGI. Just like how Unreal Engine 5's lumen makes ray tracing pointless, or Source 2's lighting.
@@RicochetForce Crysis Remastered runs over twice the fps vs the original. The original also looks flat, the lighting lacks depth.
@@RicochetForce It doesn't run worse, it's significantly easier to run than Cyberpunk 2077 path traced mode. Clearly you never played the original and the remaster versions.
Even the Switch version looks better for the most part and can run it, meanwhile what Unreal Engine 5 game runs on the Switch???
Pedro, what GPU do you own?
The real story should be how great fake lightning tricks has gotten.
Path tracing allows for massively dynamic games. No more baked light maps. This enabled new gaming experiences. We have yet to see this be fully utilized beyond maybe Minecraft?
it's worth noticing the top shelf is dominated by games 5 year old or even older
Cause it’s a trade off: investing $$$ to make game looks gorgeous with RT but only 0.1% people can enjoy is playable will hit bad in financials. Unless RT hardware becomes more affordable, there is no way companies flock to it.
@@Momo.momo789 The mid-tier GPUs must be capable of RT to this mature more and become something like rasterization. If they match a new GPU + IA Accelerator, could be a thing as the weight of all this math is very heavy.
9:46
Horrible ghosting with hardware RT and it's denoiser.
In fact, a lot of RT games suffer from horrible denoising induced ghosting. The tech probably has a lot more years to even look artifact free while performing decently on mid range hardware. I was really excited about RT in the beginning. But throughout the last 5 years I've come to hate it because the ghosting and smearing in motion looks ugly compared to just RT disabled.
In fact, I hate all these effects introduced in the last decade that introduces artifacts. Screen space reflections, ambient occlusion, they all look so glitchy in motion.
oh dont forget temporal solutions like TAA, DLAA and FSR. Absolutely abysmal in motion.
@RiasatSalminSami it's still inconceivable to me that most games today look worse at 1440p today than ps3 era games look at 720p. So much less detail and horribly unstable. And NO ONE talks about it. Digital foundry pretends it's a good thing
@@sengan2475 I've lost interest on DF foundry after they failed to remain neutral and bring political correctness to their videos [particularly Alex].
And these people are blind it seems. Or they probably just stare at static screen instead of playing the games where all these motion artifacts become distracting.
@@RiasatSalminSami yes I've noticed that none of these people actually play games. Gaming has become a side hobby for me at this point because we get so few good games. The majority of major franchises are dead, or walking corpses. Even indies have significantly fewer hits over time I've noticed. It's a cultural degradation issue, not just a corporate one
@@sengan2475 yeah. I've moved on to other hobbies and rarely play any new games these days because there's nothing worth playing other than select few.
Same with movies.
Imo, many ray-tracing implementations seem to make some surfaces _overly_ reflective when RT is enabled.
E.g. 15:45 In Hogwarts Legacy - there's no way the floor is meant to look _that_ reflective: to the point of looking oily. It looks like P.Diddy has been in there!
And if the Great Hall really looked like 14:25, the students would have to slip-n-slide their way to the banquet tables! 😂
That's what puts me off using RT a lot of the time (for the games where my GPU can manage it without totally tanking the frame rate).
It's not RT's fault, it's a side effect of the shaders chosen for non-RT rasterization not coping with the different lighting treatment. If the game was developed with RT from the ground up, you wouldn't see this issue.
Illumination in photography is really important and the artisanal work of illuminating a scene on games is really a masterwork when done properly. RayTracing help developers illuminate better, needing less light bulbs, but in my opinion most of the time you don't see better illumination in most of the games, only a few use this feature to create better scenarios. This video is great to see that most of the time the fps drop is not worth it.
When developers are forced to use tricks like removing reflections in mirrors that were already in games from the 2000s to show the difference between ray tracing on and off, you know that all this technology is worth a big sh*t.
Bingo!!!
I dunno guys, I"m only 9 minutes in but that whole F1 section seems like you presupposed the conclusion and then tried to pick a scene that supports it. Play a daylight race and you'll see the ray-tracing make an ENORMOUS difference.
I agree, it's probably the only game I would keep RT on. The RT shadows, lighting and AO make a huge difference and give the game that realism that was missing from the previous non RT F1 titles.
Do a shot every time you hear "ray tracing"
I’d like to make it to work later today so I won’t. Maybe Friday hahha
For me it's been 6 years since RT appeared, it usually takes 5-10 years to produce a AAA game these days, so realistically we are only going to get games that have been made with RT from the start now and moving forward, and up till now it has been added to games so optimization is possibly not as good as if the game started with RT.
Just like Linus said in his ray tracing comparison video, I think Ray Tracing is not just supposed to make the game "better" (its supposed to make it look more "realistic", but that might not look "better" in every case). The primary goal of Ray Tracing is to reduce Game Devs' time optimizing for every little edge case of lighting with rasterization, the problem is that ray tracing comes at a huge cost to performance so devs can't just abandon rasterization right now as most people have GPUs that can't do ray tracing very well, so we are in this in-between period where ray tracing is coming at a big performance loss but also its not accelerating development time either because devs still have to implement rasterization solutions (although that is slowly changing with software-based ray tracing options now so there are games coming out now that actually require ray tracing to run).
In my opinion, you totally missed the point of Ray traced reflections... They don't disappear when I move my camera around.
Yeah, it seams like the testing in this video really isn't designed to show the advantages of Ray Tracing, but tries more to sell us the idea that it's not worth it. I know you can do the opposite by only showing details / scenes that totally transform the experience, but showing static scenes without camera movement in a Ray Tracing test and then calling the result "no difference at all" is just bad journalism.
The Ultra RT in hogwart makes the floor look weirdly clean - its a castle and it reflect everything like a cleanest new fresh marble. Where it does shine imo is with lumos spell but thats it.
That's exactly my issue with CP77. It's just an RTX demo in this regard.
Its a magical castle, why wouldn't it be clean?
It's great to see how games are slowly moving towards better ray tracing implementation and/or path tracing.
Yeah. As it becomes standard it will only get better
Tim: Crank this one up to TH-cam's 4K quality and enjoy
Me: *Laughs in 768p monitor*
AMD fanboys need an excuse to save money & settle for 2nd best, they know that's what their doing so just all be honest about it instead of complaining about Nvidia
likewise, nvidia fanboys need a way to justify blowing most of their paycheck on a toy
Some drive Ford Pintos, others drive sports cars.
@@PCrealitys some buy a prius, few buy a maserati
On average, a 10% to 15% up charge will get on par Nvidia performance with all the bells and whistles A Maserati will run you 100% to 300% more
@@shade221 As said by the other, if you race they prius and the maserati, the prius get left in the dust. Meanwhile AMD is 10% behind nvidia. This is more of a average toyota sedan vs average ford sedan.
Ray Tracing is the new Hairworks
A lot of the ones that are being called out look better and more realistic in my opinion. Raytracing doesn't just mean everything is shiny and ultra reflective. It means surfaces will actually have accurate reflective properties which means a slightly diffused smooth surface won't be just a mirror just cuz it's smooth.
Simply put, raytracing is overrated.
6 years of excuses for AMD fanboys.
I don’t understand why developers don’t just use ray tracing as a guide for baked in lighting and reflections. That way you get the superior performance of rasterization with the accuracy of ray tracing.
They have been for >20 years
Literally this is what baked lights and cubemaps are. But it has some limits, example it will not react to dynamic lighting.
"rasterization" could be described by "a set of technique to guess what light should do without simulating every rays"
Observer system Redux and Indiana Jones and the great circle goes on Transforms Visuals Significantly