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[FMX]

I was wondering because I have played several games with excellent lighting that didn't use ray tracing. A prime example would be the Moscow multiplayer level on COD: Cold War. There is no ray tracing in multiplayer because I play at 120fps in 1080p. But that particular map has some of the best lighting I have ever seen especially when you are outside on the street. So I am asking is there another way to get similar results but does ray tracing make it easier to do at the expense of system resources.

 

[lh032]

i doubt it but PS5 demon souls dont have ray tracing I believe, and it looks amazing.

Maybe in the future i guess, sorta like DLSS to native resolution.

 

[Reizo Ryuu]

If the lighting isn't dynamic, you can get extremely close just by baking all the lighting.

 

[Rickyiez]

SSR as in Screen Space Reflection?

 

[Razvedka]

Video game tech has been nothing but tricks and hacks to mimic reality from the get go. So to answer your question 'yes absolutely' because it's been what everyone has done since the beginning effectively.

 

[Haggard]

I was wondering because I have played several games with excellent lighting that didn't use ray tracing. A prime example would be the Moscow multiplayer level on COD: Cold War. There is no ray tracing in multiplayer because I play at 120fps in 1080p. But that particular map has some of the best lighting I have ever seen especially when you are outside on the street. So I am asking is there another way to get similar results but does ray tracing make it easier to do at the expense of system resources.

If the lighting is dynamic, then nothing gets close to RT and it`s only a question of how much performance you can spare for the highest possible accuracy.
If the lighting is static then the fakery we`ve had so far can get pretty close.

 

[Ironman_Bad]

I've played games on Series X, PC and PS5 that didn't have Ray Tracing and look amazing with amazing reflections it's more of a gimmick for me right now with huge performance costs

 

[Amiga]

There are different levels of RT.

fortunately global illumination, where lighting changes with the source is the lowest cost. games already apply them on last gen PS4.
shadows and reflections can be squeezed in by lowering their resolution. full ray tracing that uses multiple bounces of light that combines the colors of the surfaces it bounces of from is the most expensive.

Full ray tracing is more of a technical holy grail than a necessary thing. mainly for realistic life imitation games to increase immersion. it's great for games like Battlefield, but like you said the lighting can be imitated with a combination of baked in/global illumination.

games like Spider-Man, R&K Rift Apart don't use full ray tracing but the effects mimic that to good effect.

also, full RT isn't the best solution all the time for games that lean on art for graphics design. Movies don't use realistic lighting. the light is artificial in the studio and touched up again in post production. Ghost Of Tsushima wouldn't look half as good if it used realistic colors and RT.

 

[Haggard]

fortunately global illumination, where lighting changes with the source is the lowest cost.

Ah no? Quite the opposite.
Full RT GI is the most costly RT you can implement, simply because it affects pretty much everything on screen all the time.

 

[RaySoft]

I was wondering because I have played several games with excellent lighting that didn't use ray tracing. A prime example would be the Moscow multiplayer level on COD: Cold War. There is no ray tracing in multiplayer because I play at 120fps in 1080p. But that particular map has some of the best lighting I have ever seen especially when you are outside on the street. So I am asking is there another way to get similar results but does ray tracing make it easier to do at the expense of system resources.

It's baked lighting, meaning that all the light sources are placed manually around the map. This can still look good ofc, but requires more work (time is money) to make it as good as it can be.
RayTracing (or Path Tracing rather) simulate how real photons bounce around, so you end up with much more realistic lighting. The quality depends on how many probes you fire and also how many bounces each probe should do. The more the merrier, but requres more calculation.
Not only will the result be better than the pre-baking of the past, but it's also fully dynamic. i.e you don't have to do anything to make it look good. It will always behave correct according to where objects are placed or moved. With the old way you had to recalculate all the lighting, but with RT it's all done in "real-time" without requiring any additional input/data.

 

[DonJuanSchlong]

Ah no? Quite the opposite.
Full RT GI is the most costly RT you can implement, simply because it affects pretty much everything on screen all the time.

Exactly. Whenever I see that slide I cringe on the inside. I don't know who did the layout, but they should be fired.

 

[GustavoLT]

60 fps with better resolution and effects! that should be console focus this gen! Leave RT for Photomode.

 

[makaveli60]

And what is so special about RT reflections? I get it’s a new method but why do we treat it like reflections didn’t exist before? Just replayed The Darkness from 2007 that has real time reflections.

 

[Denton]

The only alternative is baking, which means static world, no time of day changes, no dynamic weather or dynamically changing environment.

 

[Black_Stride]

And what is so special about RT reflections? I get it’s a new method but why do we treat it like reflections didn’t exist before? Just replayed The Darkness from 2007 that has real time reflections.

Render to texture and planar reflections can do the job, but are expensive.
And RT isnt only used for reflections.

Im still shocked more devs arent using an Image based Screen space RT GI solution if full on RTGI is too expensive.

 

[makaveli60]

Render to texture and planar reflections can do the job, but are expensive.
And RT isnt only used for reflections.

Im still shocked more devs arent using an Image based Screen space RT GI solution if full on RTGI is too expensive.

Sure, I get it, it just that it’s baffling to me that RT reflections are treated like some holy grail while requiring a lot of performance. I think from 10 people 9 could not tell that the RT reflections in a modern game are different than the ”fake” reflections in The Darkness

 

[01011001]

for reflections, Planar Reflections can look comparable and Render to Texture can look comparable.

the issue with both is that they can't be used in some scenarios.

planar reflections can only be used on 1 relatively flat surface at once.
render to texture has issues as soon as you want to have curved reflections

 

[makaveli60]

for reflections, Planar Reflections can look comparable and Render to Texture can look comparable.

the issue with both is that they can't be used in some scenarios.

planar reflections can only be used on 1 relatively flat surface at once.
render to texture has issues as soon as you want to have curved reflections

Yeah, this is what I was missing. If this is the case then yeah, I can understand the hype somewhat, but somehow I have never heard this explanation before even though I’m reading this forum a lot and watching DF

 

[TonyK]

I have a question: could RT reflections limit the benefits of SSD assets streaming? Let me explain. In some videos you can see developers explaining that one of the benefits of new fast assets streaming is to render only what player is seeing in front of him. But, for example, a proper RT reflection in a mirror in front of the player will need the geometry behind the player.

Imagine Spiderman. Without reflections, in theory, you could use that trick of render only what it's in front of you, but with RT reflective windows, all buildings behind the player must be rendered to appear in the reflection.

Or maybe I'm wrong and it doesn't work in that way?

 

[Black_Stride]

Sure, I get it, it just that it’s baffling to me that RT reflections are treated like some holy grail while requiring a lot of performance. I think from 10 people 9 could not tell that the RT reflections in a modern game are different than the ”fake” reflections in The Darkness

Planar and Render to texture are "real" enough reflections devs just dont really use them because thye are expensive and SSR gets the job done for most scenarios....until RT came along.

But if you look back at the darkness and even Max Payne from way earlier, those reflections only work on basically flat surfaces.

You could never really do something like the reflections on Clank.
Or even do a large scale reflection like a building or a large interior floor, because that would likely end up being more expensive than RT and would likely be wonky.


Anyway, as i was aluding to, Reflections are like the worst and unless for reasons unknown you decide to do refally diffuse reflections cheapest least worthwhile use of RT.

Lighting is the real nextlevel shit when it comes to RT.
We have alot of techniques that can mimic RT reflections especially right now while people arent "used" to things being reflective you can just use SSR mixed with Planar.

But in a dynamic scene its very hard to get lighting that good without quite abit of "cheating" if you have the render time just use RT.

 

[Black_Stride]

I have a question: could RT reflections limit the benefits of SSD assets streaming? Let me explain. In some videos you can see developers explaining that one of the benefits of new fast assets streaming is to render only what player is seeing in front of him. But, for example, a proper RT reflection in a mirror in front of the player will need the geometry behind the player.

Imagine Spiderman. Without reflections, in theory, you could use that trick of render only what it's in front of you, but with RT reflective windows, all buildings behind the player must be rendered to appear in the reflection.

Or maybe I'm wrong and it doesn't work in that way?

Your thinking is correct....but realistically nobody culls geometry that quickly in an open world game.
So those assets in the reflection are still actually in RAM.

Hell even in a linear game you would atleast have a say 10m section around the player thats always in RAM.

But with super fast SSDs that 10m radius could be filled with a shit ton of assets because you know you can load in another 10 meters in no time.

Most reflections arent limitless and the geometry that might be behind the player or in reflections could be a much lower LOD just like the buildings far away from Spiderman are a lower LOD.
But we benefit from SSD speeds because we can fast travel to a low LOD building in the foreground and by the time we get there that building is high LOD already.

 

[Raonak]

There are always tricks you can use to get things to look as good.

But proper RT is the real deal. It's the brute force method of making light bounce as it does in real life.

 

[Amiga]

Ah no? Quite the opposite.
Full RT GI is the most costly RT you can implement, simply because it affects pretty much everything on screen all the time.

yes Full RT is at the max end of the picture I linked (from the PS5 announcement). I'm talking about basic GI with limited bounces.

 

[Amiga]

Exactly. Whenever I see that slide I cringe on the inside. I don't know who did the layout, but they should be fired.

Mark Cerny. I think he knows what he is talking about.

basic GI is not the same as full RT.

 

[Amiga]

The only alternative is baking, which means static world, no time of day changes, no dynamic weather or dynamically changing environment.

lighting is not zero sum. you can use a mix a bit of everything. there are several settings for these in PC games.

 

[mansoor1980]

alien isolation had planar reflections if i am not wrong and they looked good

below is a screen from enhanced planar reflections in pc version of AI

 

[makaveli60]

Planar and Render to texture are "real" enough reflections devs just dont really use them because thye are expensive and SSR gets the job done for most scenarios....until RT came along.

But if you look back at the darkness and even Max Payne from way earlier, those reflections only work on basically flat surfaces.

You could never really do something like the reflections on Clank.
Or even do a large scale reflection like a building or a large interior floor, because that would likely end up being more expensive than RT and would likely be wonky.


Anyway, as i was aluding to, Reflections are like the worst and unless for reasons unknown you decide to do refally diffuse reflections cheapest least worthwhile use of RT.

Lighting is the real nextlevel shit when it comes to RT.
We have alot of techniques that can mimic RT reflections especially right now while people arent "used" to things being reflective you can just use SSR mixed with Planar.

But in a dynamic scene its very hard to get lighting that good without quite abit of "cheating" if you have the render time just use RT.

Thanks for the explanation, it is clear now. For some reason the explanation always escaped me and I was just here thinking “yeah, it’s nice that realtime raytracing is possible now but why sacrifice so much performance for reflections when they could fake it well enough in the past”

 

[Amiga]

Imagine Spiderman. Without relections, in theory, you could use that trick of render only what it's in front of you, but with RT reflective windows, all buildings behind the player must be rendered to appear in the reflection.

Or maybe I'm wrong and it doesn't work in that way?

AFAIK the biggest cost of RT is in calculation, not rendering.

also (AFAIK) RT is mainly applied using half precision floating-point operation(fp16). a main reason Nvidia GPUs are better in RT is because they utilize fp16 better.

 

[baphomet]

For now sure. At a certain point ray-tracing will be such a huge leap graphically that the other stuff used currently just won't do.

The few fully ray-traced games we have now are leaps and bounds better light-wise than even current AAA games.

 

[RoadHazard]

alien isolation had planar reflections if i am not wrong and they looked good

below is a screen from enhanced planar reflections in pc version of AI

This looks good, but really only works for a single flat surface. Planar reflections work by basically rendering the entire scene again from the reflective angle. If you want reflections on the walls as well, etc, you need to render the scene for each angle. Very expensive. Also not possible to do for curved surfaces AFAIK. RT doesn't have the same limitations. In this specific case RT would probably be more expensive, but in more complex situations it's more efficient.

 

[Marlenus]

Real Life?

 

[DonJuanSchlong]

Mark Cerny. I think he knows what he is talking about.

basic GI is not the same as full RT.

It should say the very minimum of GI to say the very least. He's the only one to ever say this, and I would trust every single developer, Nvidia, and AMD, as they are the ones who directly work on them, whether it be programming or creating the hardware.

TLDR: Cerny is the only person in the world to say this, when everyone else says otherwise.

 

[Elbow Identity Shallow]

In some ways do feel that ray tracing is often believed to be a way of just creating reflections in games but ray tracing isn't the end reult but the method used to get to the end result. There are actually very few games out there that are purely raytraced and the vast majority still use older rasterized methods for at least some of the rendering and we'll likely be like that for quite some time.
There are many alternatives to calculating the path of rays in realtime out there, as they're what we've been using all along and they all have own their advantages and disadvantages. Looking at the new consoles as example, the older methods that people will mention in here can be better simply because they're far more capable machines to get a perfect image using the older methods in a modern technically accomplished looking game would just take far too much work to get that perfect as you're manuall having to calculate something that is calculated by tracing paths.
That doesn't mean that those methods are bad or even that raytracing is necceserily betterat the moment, all studios will have to make compronises in how they do things in that they all have limitations on teh technology their game is running on so if they choose to use more processing power to do one thing then they'll have less processing power to use elsewhere, obviously.
The more accomplished studios will stand out though because they'll know where to use what method and the method they choose could well be unnoticable to the majority of people who play their games. Clearly, if you're looking to find the methods that they've used you're probably going to be able to work it out.
At some point in the future fully raytraced games will likely be the standard which will allow the artists to use their creativity to control how a game looks.

 

[Denton]

lighting is not zero sum. you can use a mix a bit of everything. there are several settings for these in PC games.

Baking and dynamic ToD and nonstatic world are mutually exclusive.

Why does Uncharted 4 look amazing, but is completely static? Baked.

 

[Haggard]

yes Full RT is at the max end of the picture I linked (from the PS5 announcement). I'm talking about basic GI with limited bounces.

And you're still dead wrong.... You're mixing up partial implementations and accuracy.....

 

[Amiga]

And you're still dead wrong.... You're mixing up partial implementations and accuracy.....

the only thing we are disagreeing about here are the terms used. lighting has many methods and terminologies that get mixed in together. when I say basic GI I just mean dynamic lighting. something as simple as day/night cycle, indoors lights off/on. this isn't baked ligting and it isn't full RT.

Baking and dynamic ToD and nonstatic world are mutually exclusive.

Why does Uncharted 4 look amazing, but is completely static? Baked.

U4 looks amazing because of the art team. Ghost of Tsushima looks better and lighting isn't baked.
Baked lighting is also a design choice. if your game isn't open world and has set levels in set times of day then there is no reason to use dynamic lighting.

 

[01011001]

alien isolation had planar reflections if i am not wrong and they looked good

below is a screen from enhanced planar reflections in pc version of AI

they are missing a lot of detail tho. seems like dynamic objects aren't reflected at all... which is kinda surprising on PC using max settings, should not be that much of an issue for any modern PC even back when it released.
I get reducing detail in an open space tho.
Sea of Thieves uses Planar Reflections (thank god they weren't dumb enough to use SSR) for the ocean reflections. and they are surprisingly detailed for an open map like that. sure the ship detail isn't dynamic (as in sails will always appear to be up) but most of the details on islands are reflected and it looks very convincing most of the time





the best planar reflections hands down to have to be the ones in Half Life 2. which in max settings reflect almost everything even small dynamic objects and particles!


almost no modern game has planar reflections of that level... most likely because the graphics are too complex in modern titles and you simply have to reduce the detail in order for them to run performant

 

[Flabagast]

Similar results ? Definitely no.

approaching ones with much lower performance cost ? Sure, but RT is the one and only future for rendering tech

 

[mansoor1980]

they are missing a lot of detail tho. seems like dynamic objects aren't reflected at all... which is kinda surprising on PC using max settings, should not be that much of an issue for any modern PC even back when it released.
I get reducing detail in an open space tho.
Sea of Thieves uses Planar Reflections (thank god they weren't dumb enough to use SSR) for the ocean reflections. and they are surprisingly detailed for an open map like that. sure the ship detail isn't dynamic (as in sails will always appear to be up) but most of the details on islands are reflected and it looks very convincing most of the time

the best planar reflections hands down to have to be the ones in Half Life 2. which in max settings reflect almost everything even small dynamic objects and particles!

still pretty good alternate

 

[Velius]

If you'd asked me last year I'd have told you that RT doesn't really matter.

After Cyberpunk, I just can't say that anymore. The ray tracing in that game is fucking amazing.

 

[ripeavocado]

I was wondering because I have played several games with excellent lighting that didn't use ray tracing. A prime example would be the Moscow multiplayer level on COD: Cold War. There is no ray tracing in multiplayer because I play at 120fps in 1080p. But that particular map has some of the best lighting I have ever seen especially when you are outside on the street. So I am asking is there another way to get similar results but does ray tracing make it easier to do at the expense of system resources.

only lumen in Unreal engine 5 and full raytracing is still much better

 

[Zeeed]

.

 

[Guilty_AI]

Techinically speaking, any illumination technique could be considered an alternative to ray tracing. In the end its highly case by case.
If you have a game with complete static scenarios and static lightining conditions, just normal baked light can still look very good, to the point some people might not even be able to tell the difference if its well done.

Aside from that, there are other techniques that work somewhat differently from ray tracing (though still fall under the same umbrella), like Path Tracing or Voxel Ray tracing.

 

[Buggy Loop]

If you'd asked me last year I'd have told you that RT doesn't really matter.

After Cyberpunk, I just can't say that anymore. The ray tracing in that game is fucking amazing.

Owning an RTX card since only recently, Cyberpunk & Metro exodus EE are blowing my mind with the lighting. Control was very pretty sometimes too.

It’s definitely the future

 

[Velius]

Owning an RTX card since only recently, Cyberpunk & Metro exodus EE are blowing my mind with the lighting. Control was very pretty sometimes too.

It’s definitely the future

Is there any way to run Cyberpunk at max settings with RT and 60+FPS?

 

[Clear]

It'll be a great technique once the need to have lower processing cost solutions also, recedes sufficiently to the point where it can be the sole illumination method used.
Basically right now it doesn't always produce results that are as visually pleasing as the old techniques do, not because its incapable of it, but because its not had the same amount of time spent upon it.

 

[Buggy Loop]

Is there any way to run Cyberpunk at max settings with RT and 60+FPS?

My 3080 Ti running at 21:9 1440p and DLSS quality handles it.

Not a « typical » or easy to get card though. 4K i think no, not possible.

But again, one has to recall how hard Witcher 2 Was to run back in the days and even nowadays to some degree with the ubersampling setting. PC ultra doesn’t make sense on a visual/performance point of view for many settings.

 

[Velius]

My 3080 Ti running at 21:9 1440p and DLSS quality handles it.

Not a « typical » or easy to get card though. 4K i think no, not possible.

But again, one has to recall how hard Witcher 2 Was to run back in the days and even nowadays to some degree with the ubersampling setting. PC ultra doesn’t make sense on a visual/performance point of view for many settings.

Sweet. What processor are you using?
I don't really need 4k, 1440p with DLSS would be fine by me.

Thank you for the info brother

 

[Buggy Loop]

Sweet. What processor are you using?
I don't really need 4k, 1440p with DLSS would be fine by me.

Thank you for the info brother

The 5600X

 

[01011001]

The Lego Builder's Journey Game has pretty interesting graphics settings.

Here is What I mean:
-Shadows: Off, Low, Medium, High
-Then it gives you an option to turn Ray Tracing On for Shadows
-Reflections: Off, Low, Medium, High
-Then it gives you an option to turn Ray Tracing On for Reflections
-Ambient Occlusion: Off, Low, Medium, High
-Then it gives you an option to turn Ray Tracing On for Ambient Occlusion
-Global illumination: Off, Low, Medium, High
-Then it gives you an option to turn Ray Tracing On for Global Illumination

It shows changes in real-time when you change the settings so you get to see the differences.

So for example. I can have Global illumination on HIGH but have the Ray Tracing for Global Illumination turned OFF.

So as you can see, you can fudge the above things (shadows, reflections, Ambient Occlusion, Global Illumination). Or you can use Ray tracing to do it with more "enhanced" calculations.

every game needs settings like that tbh.