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

1/16 in crimson desert is just way too low and barely even comparable to software ray tracing. Unless that 1/16 figure is something else.
Not sure if these are the equivalent things to what lumen would do, but if the 1/16 figure is a downsample factor for lightning (probe-px size) then thats good and i am sure we have all played plenty of UE5 games with the exact same and worse (at max settings ofc). Their denoiser seems extremely poor given theres simultaneously flicker and its also seemingly overly aggressive thus erasing low res details, it should be one or the other if it was decent.
 
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Every image I've seen has some image quality issues, lots of high frequency noise and chromatic aberration. I don't quite get if it's the lower rendering resolution of DLSS, quirk of the engine or just some post processing effect. Game has beautiful assets but it's too bad if you cannot run it full resolution.
 
me who dont have 5080 or even 9070xt reading this thread :

boy crying interview GIF
 
Cyberpunk has Ray Reconstruction. The difference is with it off, Cyberpunk doesn't look bad like it lost its ambient occlusion like in Crimson Desert.

HhRmqY6.jpeg



NM28i1P.jpeg
So?

Arent we comparing both at max graphics? Dont see the point of comparing Cyberpunk + RR On with CD with RR off. Thats like comparing CD with RR with Cyberpunk without Ray Tracing.

CD has RTGI on consoles while Cyberpunk doesnt, for example.
 
This might be the craziest shot showing the difference to me. Wtf.


oTTTJAyjvQC6N4bZ.jpg

Yeah, that is crazy.

Another huge leap for high end pcs.

This is why I pay the money to invest in hardware that pushes the envelope. I'm too old to risk waiting on this stuff and keeling over, haha.

I'll pay a couple of grand to have games look next gen now.
 
This scene... the character was in an enclosed space, without enemies, and still standing still...

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

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

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

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

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


So, the correct question isn't "the PC gamer is better"... but "which PC gamer is better?"
The game locks at 60fps on a 7900XTX when using Ultra settings at native 4k. 9070 XT will probably perform better than the 7900 XTX in this game considering the better RT performance. RR has a ~24% drop in performance on AMD hardware. Setting FSR 4 to Quality or Balanced will claw all that performance back and then some.

Considering that Nvidia still beats AMD in RT performance, and RR on Nvidia is only a hit of 12% basically any 4070ti Super and higher, or 5070ti and higher will manage this at 4k, RR, Ultra settings, and some form of DLSS/FSR. Especially if you are fine with the game occasionally dropping into the 50fps range, which happens with all the console versions.

That's just 4k, majority still play at 1440p or 1080p. A 4070 will do 1440p just fine. Heck, considering the low VRAM usage of this a game, a lowly 4060 can probably do RR at 1080p.

What's the fascination with how many PC gamers can play with these settings anyways? Probably well over 90% of console players will never have the PS5 Pro either, but who gives a shit? Those who own the PS5 Pro will enjoy it.
 
This denioser technique has ben around for few years .why no games added it into consoles.its only 10 percent hit usually.at 30fps easily can be ran
 
This is interesting. AC shadows does half resolution if im reading this correctly, In their ray tracing presentation, they found that half resolution is way better than quarter resolution. 1/16 in crimson desert is just way too low and barely even comparable to software ray tracing. Unless that 1/16 figure is something else.

SlYme6O.png


itedLgx.png
Some clarifications:
  1. The 1/2 resolution for ac shadows is for ray traced specular as RTGI has 2 components - Diffuse and Specular. Slide 1 is for diffuse at quarter resolution I.e 1/4 rays per pixel and slide 2 is for specular at half resolution or 1/2 rays per pixel. The simplified role of diffuse is to cover GI for light scattering on rough surfaces, which results in indirect lighting, color bounce etc. and specular does that for shiny surfaces where light scatters less and is more mirror like.
  2. Due to the nature of rough vs shiny surfaces, you can get away with fewer rays per pixel for diffuse. Specular needs to as close to 1:1 as feasible because noise from specular is far more noticeable due to its brightness.
  3. So for ac shadows, they went with 1/4 diffuse and 1/2 specular as they saw big gains in choosing 1/2 over 1/4 for the specular portion of RTGI. The diffuse stayed at 1/4. Not 1/2, which is the error I see in your interpretation.
  4. For comparison, crimson desert does 1/16 for diffuse and 1/4 for specular. So the apples to apples comparison would be - 1/16 vs 1/4 for diffuse and 1/4 vs 1/2 for specular
  5. Another point of reference is GoY. They use a dynamic range where they scale rays per pixel to the dynamic resolution based on load. In the worst case scenario, they use 1/10 rays per pixel and scale all the way up to 1/4 rays per pixel for diffuse. I think they don't use RT for specular and rely on baked lighting for that.
And RTGI in GoY is already pretty subtle with 1/10 as the rock bottom worst case. At 1/16 all the time, you have very, very little to work with and using a non-AI denoiser is just going to wipe out most details as the sampling is too low. You would still get the big details, like overall lighting of a room, but none of those details around objects. So your conclusion is still right. Just wanted to clear up what the numbers meant.

Without AI denoising, it's closer to probe based RTGI like Indiana jones on console than AC shadows, which is doing 4x more rays for diffuse and 2x more for specular.

This denioser technique has ben around for few years .why no games added it into consoles.its only 10 percent hit usually.at 30fps easily can be ran

It's AI/ML based, so it's not a feasible solution on base consoles. And it hasn't been ported to the Pro. Not yet at least. This is literally the second game out with AMD's RR and it has been around just a few months
 
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Someone in this very thread said the Pro is better at some things in this game then PC, he didnt allaborate though lol.:messenger_tears_of_joy:

In fact i'll give it 1 week before multiple people on here start saying the RT looks better on console because it looks less realistic and more fantasy like or some shit like that.
kind of ruins the look of the game, the extensive beautiful iconic color palate of crimson desert is gone with RR, everything is shaded and brown and grey.


lord-of-the-rings.gif
 
The game locks at 60fps on a 7900XTX when using Ultra settings at native 4k. 9070 XT will probably perform better than the 7900 XTX in this game considering the better RT performance. RR has a ~24% drop in performance on AMD hardware. Setting FSR 4 to Quality or Balanced will claw all that performance back and then some.

Considering that Nvidia still beats AMD in RT performance, and RR on Nvidia is only a hit of 12% basically any 4070ti Super and higher, or 5070ti and higher will manage this at 4k, RR, Ultra settings, and some form of DLSS/FSR. Especially if you are fine with the game occasionally dropping into the 50fps range, which happens with all the console versions.

That's just 4k, majority still play at 1440p or 1080p. A 4070 will do 1440p just fine. Heck, considering the low VRAM usage of this a game, a lowly 4060 can probably do RR at 1080p.

What's the fascination with how many PC gamers can play with these settings anyways? Probably well over 90% of console players will never have the PS5 Pro either, but who gives a shit? Those who own the PS5 Pro will enjoy it.
I'm convinced that developers should ship games without Ultra/Cinematic settings, get praised for optimization, then update the game to add those settings later. Avoid all the idiots whining about not be able to max out the game on their GPU.
 
Any chance this gets added with pssr2 update for the pro in quality mode?

This would be the perfect showcase title for rdna4 rt pipeline in the pro, and in quality mode at 30fps I don't really see a reason to not implement such a drastic upgrade even if res needs to be dropped. I really cant see a better opportunity to strut the ps5pros rt tech than this. Since its not pathtracing and the rt tech is there to utilize ray regeneration I truly hope the devs put this in even if the res needs to be dropped a bit.
 
Yeah I thought the same while reading adam's summary (thanks @adamsapple!). Glad to know that RT looks super cool but I'd love to know more about what the settings do and specially, their performance cost. That way I'll be able to tune those settings perfectly without much of a hassle.


Not something I see often but some games like KCD included a "cinematic" preset with a warning message of "dude be careful this shit requires way more resources than the other settings!". Could be the same here, and iirc the PC requirements included RT as ON so I'd assume we should get a nice perf boost when going from cinematic to ultra (or that's what I hope at least lol)


2026 and people are still unable to connect the PC to the TV?
Baffling truly baffling.

I only got into PC like 4 years ago or something and it's one of the first things I did.
 
Yes, I read the description. Plus I don't like to over stress my PC. The heat it throws off is insane.

Edit: I'm just messing for the record. We can all clearly see the Pro has an advantage in some areas and PC in others.
Undervolt my guy, takes 20 seconds to set up and you'll probably get better performance.

Lowers power draw and heat with better frames. Magic.
 
This is interesting. AC shadows does half resolution if im reading this correctly, In their ray tracing presentation, they found that half resolution is way better than quarter resolution. 1/16 in crimson desert is just way too low and barely even comparable to software ray tracing. Unless that 1/16 figure is something else.

SlYme6O.png


itedLgx.png
Honestly, that just makes me give more kudos to the Crimson Desert devs, even if they are using 1/16th or 1/8th. The fact is, they optimized the engine to deliver outstanding results with smart optimization. This isn't a case where the lighting suffers terribly for the optimization, it looks very impressive and maintains great performance ontop and it scales across all modes. The game is just a technical tour de force with amazing scale and ambition, with smart engineering showing through instead of the typical turn settings on and off from pc buiild and done, and I'm happy to give credit to the devs.
 
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Baffling truly baffling.

I only got into PC like 4 years ago or something and it's one of the first things I did.

I'm always confused by people who say they have the latest 90-series card but talk about choosing between couch or desk. One generally has a decent spare PC or the money to run the cabling from a PC to a living room if they're in the high-end component demo. It's so easy to do these days with big picture mode.
 
I really need to play Cyberpunk on PC...
If u got highend rig it looks at least gen above ps5/xbox series version, not to mention if u played ps4/xbone version at launch, then after all those updates, reworks and expack it feels more like a sequel to ps4/xbone version than same game.
 
4080 or PS5 Pro, I really don't know which one to pick honestly.

RR looks amazing but how well can a 4080 run that at decent fps.
 
Funny, but the fact that Cerny's $700 mid gen console cant do ray regeneration is pretty shitty. Ive been saying this for a while but this guy shouldve resigned a long time ago. PS5 is ageing like milk, pssr took year and a half to fix, and his AI and ray traced focus pro console ended up being disappointing to say the least. Remember, he was telling devs that they could see up to 4x performance in ray tracing in the leaked specs.

Had he just leveraged the latest and greatest from AMD, we wouldve had a RDNA4 chip in the pro that would support ray regeneration. But no. He had to be cute, just like he was with RDNA2 picking and choosing what he liked the most. It worked for him back at launch especially with MS dropping the ball, but 5 years later? Eh. Capcom didnt even bother shipping RT on the base PS5. And hes doing it again with the PS6, picking some RDNA5 features, and leaving out others. Good luck.
What do you expect Cerny to do when Sony gives him a 500 dollar budget to work with?

There's a reason why PC gamers are spending big money on Nvidia GPUs.
 
If u got highend rig it looks at least gen above ps5/xbox series version, not to mention if u played ps4/xbone version at launch, then after all those updates, reworks and expack it feels more like a sequel to ps4/xbone version than same game.

I have a pretty decent rig
(5090+9800X3D)
I only played a few hours on xbox, but never wanted to continue the game, because I always wanted the mouse / keyboard experience.
Only issue I have, my current gaming setup only allows me for couch gaming... on my TV...

So no way to really utilize mouse and keyboard while gaming..
 
I have a pretty decent rig
(5090+9800X3D)
I only played a few hours on xbox, but never wanted to continue the game, because I always wanted the mouse / keyboard experience.
Only issue I have, my current gaming setup only allows me for couch gaming... on my TV...

So no way to really utilize mouse and keyboard while gaming..
There are few quests that are easier doable with mouse controlls, and its not small difference, think trying 20x on pad, failing miserably then 1st time on kb&mouse and u did it.
 
4080 or PS5 Pro, I really don't know which one to pick honestly.

RR looks amazing but how well can a 4080 run that at decent fps.
You know, you don't have to run it at cinematic settings right?
There will most likely be some settings that cost like 30% of your FPS but give very little to none visual improvements.
Like for example, cinematic settings in UE5 are usually not worth it at all, like volumetrics etc.
I got a 4090 (1440P display) and cinematic settings even in a game like Arc Raiders that does not use nanite, lumen or VSMs just kills my FPS.
 
4080 or PS5 Pro, I really don't know which one to pick honestly.

RR looks amazing but how well can a 4080 run that at decent fps.

Of course you will be able to use RR and have great performance on 4080. PC games are usually scalable.

And this talk about PC =/= couch gaming always amuses me, I use 55' OLED tv as my monitor for the last four years (BT mouse+keybard and Xbox pad/Dual Sense).
 
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4080 or PS5 Pro, I really don't know which one to pick honestly.

RR looks amazing but how well can a 4080 run that at decent fps.


I have the same gpu:

use RR so you are forced to dlss 4.0 profile K, so you can try perf mode but balance should be the right spot for perf\iq

turn down to high or medium unimportant stuff like fog, shadows, post-processing etc. keep everything else on cinematic or ultra or very high depend if there is a noticeable difference or not

turn on framegen with reflex

et voila, 4kinda60+ with much better settings than a pro, if you think the pro version has everything on cinematic\ultra or native 4k i have a bridge to sell.

This shit never failed me for all the "shitty optimized" ue5 games that run pretty much as """good""" as crimson if you do some math...

And if nvidia move its ass and release a RR version compatible with dlss 4.5 then we can use perf mode and we are absolutely golden.

I would worry more about your cpu, mine is the exact recommended one for 4k60 ultra so i should be ok.
 
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Where is the gotcha in the game? is too good to be true.
The gotcha is the RT looks subpar because it uses an extremely low ray count per pixel, lower than anything we've seen so far. Those are the count for the diffuse (lighting) in some games.

Cyberpunk 2077 Path Tracing: 2 rays, 1 bounce per pixel
Dragon's Dogma 2: 1/4 rays per pixel
Assassin's Creed Shadows: 1/4 rays per pixel
Crimson Desert: 1/16 rays per pixel

Fro specular (reflections)

Cyberpunk RT Ultra: 8 rays per pixel
Cyberpunk RT Psycho: 10 rays per pixel
Cyberpunk RT Overdrive: 22 rays per pixel

Assassin's Creed Shadows: 1/2 rays per pixel
Crimson Desert: 1/4 rays per pixel

So there's your catch. By far the lowest quality RT we know of so far. It explains all the noise and flickering without RR.
 
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The gotcha is the RT looks subpar because it uses an extremely low ray count per pixel, lower than anything we've seen so far. Those are the count for the diffuse (lighting) in some games.

Cyberpunk 2077 Path Tracing: 2 rays, 1 bounce per pixel
Dragon's Dogma 2: 1/4 rays per pixel
Assassin's Creed Shadows: 1/4 rays per pixel
Crimson Desert: 1/16 rays per pixel

Fro specular (reflections)

Cyberpunk RT Ultra: 8 rays per pixel
Cyberpunk RT Psycho: 10 rays per pixel
Cyberpunk RT Overdrive: 22 rays per pixel
Assassin's Creed Shadows: 1/2 rays per pixel
Crimson Desert: 1/4 rays per pixel

So there's your catch. By far the lowest quality RT we know of so far. It explains all the noise and flickering without RR.

This totally explains why CP performed like garbage on AMD GPUs even with standard RT (before RDNA4).
 
Yeah, that is crazy.

Another huge leap for high end pcs.

This is why I pay the money to invest in hardware that pushes the envelope. I'm too old to risk waiting on this stuff and keeling over, haha.

I'll pay a couple of grand to have games look next gen now.
This, especially! Although Resi9 is looking about as good as thought games would look this gen, it's crazy to be able to look like this in the first place and only on PC can you do it!

17612gYmUDc74ER9.jpg


Anyone old enough knows that's the type of stuff we once dreamt about! When you marry stuff like path tracing, SBH, 4096x4096 maps, and DLSS, this is what you can end up with!
 
This, especially! Although Resi9 is looking about as good as thought games would look this gen, it's crazy to be able to look like this in the first place and only on PC can you do it!

17612gYmUDc74ER9.jpg


Anyone old enough knows that's the type of stuff we once dreamt about! When you marry stuff like path tracing, SBH, 4096x4096 maps, and DLSS, this is what you can end up with!
What amazes me about the games with really well done RT/PT is how grounded and realistic everything looks. Things look a lot less "gamey" than in games that use more traditional rendering techniques.
 
What amazes me about the games with really well done RT/PT is how grounded and realistic everything looks. Things look a lot less "gamey" than in games that use more traditional rendering techniques.
Exactly, and part of the reason is because we're finally getting cutscene level lighting in realtime!
 
I'm convinced this is some of you in here


Accurate video. That console peasant obviously needed correcting.

Can you even call yourself a gamer if you can't see the difference between 120 and 400 fps?

The only reason I personally own a Pro is to buy a game on it, scoff at how bad the games look, and then go play indie games on my expensive PC, as God intended.
 
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Baffling truly baffling.

I only got into PC like 4 years ago or something and it's one of the first things I did.
2011 for me lol Played far cry 3, Splinter Cell and several other mid to late gen games at a full 1080p 60 fps on a giant 55 inch screen. It was glorious.

I think what most gamers miss out on is that they need their own rooms after getting married. Difficult when you are living in an apartment yes, but if you have a house, fucking make sure you have a sanctuary where kids and wife cant bug you. I tried the whole living room comfy couch gaming for a couple of years and after a couple of years, it simply became untenable. the kids bug you all the time, and the wife just hates seeing you happy.

TVs are the only electronic that hasnt exploded in price. Get the kids and the wife a cheap TCL or Hisense tv for the living room, and keep the higher quality one in your room. Buy a $100 gaming recliner, and you have your comfy couch experience.
 
Some clarifications:
  1. The 1/2 resolution for ac shadows is for ray traced specular as RTGI has 2 components - Diffuse and Specular. Slide 1 is for diffuse at quarter resolution I.e 1/4 rays per pixel and slide 2 is for specular at half resolution or 1/2 rays per pixel. The simplified role of diffuse is to cover GI for light scattering on rough surfaces, which results in indirect lighting, color bounce etc. and specular does that for shiny surfaces where light scatters less and is more mirror like.
  2. Due to the nature of rough vs shiny surfaces, you can get away with fewer rays per pixel for diffuse. Specular needs to as close to 1:1 as feasible because noise from specular is far more noticeable due to its brightness.
  3. So for ac shadows, they went with 1/4 diffuse and 1/2 specular as they saw big gains in choosing 1/2 over 1/4 for the specular portion of RTGI. The diffuse stayed at 1/4. Not 1/2, which is the error I see in your interpretation.
  4. For comparison, crimson desert does 1/16 for diffuse and 1/4 for specular. So the apples to apples comparison would be - 1/16 vs 1/4 for diffuse and 1/4 vs 1/2 for specular
  5. Another point of reference is GoY. They use a dynamic range where they scale rays per pixel to the dynamic resolution based on load. In the worst case scenario, they use 1/10 rays per pixel and scale all the way up to 1/4 rays per pixel for diffuse. I think they don't use RT for specular and rely on baked lighting for that.
And RTGI in GoY is already pretty subtle with 1/10 as the rock bottom worst case. At 1/16 all the time, you have very, very little to work with and using a non-AI denoiser is just going to wipe out most details as the sampling is too low. You would still get the big details, like overall lighting of a room, but none of those details around objects. So your conclusion is still right. Just wanted to clear up what the numbers meant.

Without AI denoising, it's closer to probe based RTGI like Indiana jones on console than AC shadows, which is doing 4x more rays for diffuse and 2x more for specular.



It's AI/ML based, so it's not a feasible solution on base consoles. And it hasn't been ported to the Pro. Not yet at least. This is literally the second game out with AMD's RR and it has been around just a few months
very interesting stuff. I wonder what the Avatar devs use. Been playing DLC and i really like the way areas are properly darkened especially when it stops raining while the skies are still dark so you get these nice specular highlights while the areas around them remain properly darkened. its very pleasing to the eye.
 
4080 or PS5 Pro, I really don't know which one to pick honestly.

RR looks amazing but how well can a 4080 run that at decent fps.

I mean a 4080 is a damn good GPU....

I would wait for the Day 1 patch anyway, before deciding.

No reason to rush
 
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Why would that be trolling? I'm expecting PSSR 2 to be an improvement over PSSR 1 as well.
Because the context is what the PC game looks on a 4080 like vs what the console game looks like. Do you think PSSR2 will make a meaningful difference vs a 4080 to the point that it's worth waiting? Unless they plan on adding RR or something equivalent, PSSR or PSSR2 makes no difference.

The guy also called RR vs standard denoiser a "minor" improvement. How is this not tantamount to trolling?

The IQ is already fine on standard PSSR.
 
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Because the context is what the PC game looks on a 4080 like vs what the console game looks like. Do you think PSSR2 will make a meaningful difference vs a 4080 to the point that it's worth waiting?

The IQ is already fine.

I took his response as saying one should wait until we see the final Pro version if they are on the fence. I'm sure the PC version will look better, but how much better is the question. Enough that I buy the Steam version over a physical PS5 disc that I can resell when done? Just have to wait and see, but visuals are not the only consideration.
 
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I took his response as saying one should wait until we see the final Pro version if they are on the fence. I'm sure the PC version will look better, but how much better is the question. Enough that I buy the Steam version over a physical PS5 disc that I can resell when done? Just have to wait and see, but visuals are not the only consideration.
That poster said RR vs standard denoiser is a "minor" difference. Does that not sound like trolling to you?
 
PSSR2 for sure will improve a lot of instability seen in PS5 Pro version (in John video) because how badly PSSR1 interacts with RTGI in many games.

But it won't fix how bad in game denoiser is.
 
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