LiquidMetal14
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Hot take: fuck pathtracing, fix the god damn LOD already
- Thread starter The Cockatrice
- Start date
TintoConCasera
I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
Then how about an hybrid system like the one RDR2 uses? That game seems to use a combination or real-time global lights with baked lightmaps and it looks and runs like a dream.
Realtime GI might be the future but imo we aren't there yet by any stretch of the imagination. CD's interiors look like absolute crap unless you enable the denoiser but that's only available to the highest tier of GPUs. And even then they don't look THAT good imo to compensate for the performance loss.
Sorry man but I won't take DS2 as an argument. That game got it's lighting completely botched before release because of performance issues and I wouldn't use that game as an example of anything.
simpatico
Gold Member
Agreed. We are skipping so many fundamentals. I feel like focusing everything on path tracing now is going to fuck up our collective skill tree. We're making these shiny, sterile worlds that feel more like movie sets than lived in places. The further we go down that path traced path, the harder / more technically expensive it's going to be to make the world interactive. We want worlds where the cheese wheels and wicker baskets react to the player. Feeling like I can interact with the world gives me so much more than seeing perfect puddle reflections. A possible future for the stealth genre lives here, where we could move through worlds careful not to disturb small objects, rather than just the one giant "don't nudge me" frying pan in the middle of your path. Organic, immersive audio-based stealth.
FalconPunch
Member
Why would it take a lot of time to bake when it can done in seconds to a few minutes on an RTX 5090?
Shadowstar39
Member
Yep back then grass was just a flat super low res texture. Only unreal (the first game) and a few others had a different detail texture for up close. Shit many games back then didn't have open areas as the fps would tank. Fun times, back in the late 90s.
Bojji
Gold Member
I think RDR2 is still on the traditional side, lighting in this game is straight PS4 quality - it looks ok. All open world games in PS4 gen were not using any form of serious GI - other than KCD with SVOGI.
And we actually have good examples with more or less stable lighting (not perfect) like KCD2, CP2077 with PT, Metro EE, Dying Light 2/TB or The Witcher 3.
Crimson Desert is the outlier, it has horrible implementation of DLSS, bad shadows (apparently fixed now) and very low res RT. All those games mentioned above are great looking on PC, and PS6 will be able to deliver that quality. And of course there are linear games with RT lighting that look very good (like IJ and Doom DA).
Next gen things like Ray Reconstruction and Ray Regeneration will be a standard stuff.
But you have to make new textures with that baked in lighting, I guess that takes a lot of time. Not to mention that you have to make your game static, dynamic objects (and destruction) will brake the system.
Edit: I educated myself, those textures are lightmaps:
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memoryman3
Member
You aren't going to like the system requirements.
kevboard
Member
the PS5 is partially to blame here I bet. devs have to work around its Navi10 rooted hardware.
Sony has their own "geometry engine" (their API's variant on primitive shaders) tech but that means devs need to actually work around both, the PC/Xbox standard, and Sony's proprietary implementation.
I'm surprised how well games like Alan Wake 2 handle it tbh. but I almost bet that it is the main reason AW2 and most nanite driven UE5 games run slightly worse on PS5.
bender
What time is it?
Feel Like I'm On 42
Member
I've never been so jealous of not having a gaming PC than seeing Dark Souls 2 with Path Tracing. I imagine on PC we're almost at a point where Path Tracing will be added to games left right and center whereas even if the consoles feature PT next gen, we won't get many remasters with PT and if we do who knows how many years we'll have to wait. Seems like Nvidia GPU's are moving in that direction where they can use ai to easily add RT to games so PT will be next.
Kinda like how we're stuck playing RDR2 at 30 fps or Bloodborne at 30 with horrible IQ. DS2 looks amazing with Path Tracing and seems to even run at 60 fps. Imagine DS1, DS3, Bloodborne, and any other game from up to the ps4 generation with it ...that would be a dream come true for me. Witcher 2, Dragon Age Origins, RDR2 etc
Kinda like how we're stuck playing RDR2 at 30 fps or Bloodborne at 30 with horrible IQ. DS2 looks amazing with Path Tracing and seems to even run at 60 fps. Imagine DS1, DS3, Bloodborne, and any other game from up to the ps4 generation with it ...that would be a dream come true for me. Witcher 2, Dragon Age Origins, RDR2 etc
Shadowstar39
Member
Is it more noticeable on PC or something? I play crimson desert 1080p on a 55in with base ps5 and didn't really notice the pop in until someone on here mentioned it. Even still it's not that bad.
Maybe due to starting gaming with 4 color 2600, 8088 cga, and apple iic and seeing how graphics improved over almost 5 decades now I have a different perspective and it doesnt bother me. Hell I'd be fine with 1990s era graphics as long as the game is good.
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Bojji
Gold Member
It could be the case, yeah.
DS2 is quite great with PT:
The worst thing about consoles is that games require patches to look/run better most of the time. In most PS4/PS5 games - all that power PS5 Pro have is useless.
And another info about lightmaps vs. RT:
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Guardian Monkey
Member
Wow that looks really good. Is it real PT or simulated?It could be the case, yeah.
DS2 is quite great with PT:
The worst thing about consoles is that games require patches to look/run better most of the time. In most PS4/PS5 games - all that power PS5 Pro have is useless.
And another info about lightmaps vs. RT:
Bojji
Gold Member
I think it's real, it changes the lighting of the game completely (not some screen space shader).
Mr.Phoenix
Member
What's path tracing got to do with this? You can make a perfectly fine thread about LOD without having to bring PT into it.
Ohhhh, see what you did there, if this was only about LOD I guess people like me wouldn't have bothered coming into the thread.
Anyways, there is already a fix for LOD, virtualized geometry technologies like Unreal's Nanite are an example.
Ohhhh, see what you did there, if this was only about LOD I guess people like me wouldn't have bothered coming into the thread.
Anyways, there is already a fix for LOD, virtualized geometry technologies like Unreal's Nanite are an example.
SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
lol Nanite solves this but you all throw a collective bitch fit everytime a UE5 game comes out and is heavier than games that dont support nanite or realtime GI.
SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
nah plenty of devs have used it this gen on both ps5 and xsx. Alan Wake 2, Avatar, AC Shadows, every single UE5 game featuring nanite, FF7 Rebirth, etc.
Sonys own devs dont use it because they are lazy. Not because PS5 cant support it. At least MS devs were smart enough to switch to UE5 but even Playground games chose not to implement it for Forza Horizon 6, and ID Software pretty much phoned in Doom last year. It's been on Capcom's goto list for RE Engine upgrade for years now. they just cant get it done like Ubisoft Quebec, Remedy and Massive did for their games 3 years ago.
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Basically drive under a bridge and watch the temporal noise on everything under that bridge worst of all railings:I don't know have I? What is disco temporal noise in low light areas? I don't even know what that means.
This is with everything set to Ultra/Extreme on a 5090.
viveks86
Gold Member
viveks86
Gold Member
Yep completely real. They've changed a bunch of textures and geometry as well, but its properly path traced quite nicely. I'm not sure if they have done primary rays or transparencies though… probably not.
Maybe I'm showing my age. I didn't know what else to call it, lol.
Bojji
Gold Member
Guardian Monkey
Member
Got it thanks
Wilhelm_85
Gold Member
LOD pop-in is my most hated graphical compromise. It just totally breaks immersion and I hate that it is an accepted practice.
Variahunter
Member
Path tracing is much more advanced than anything RDR2 has done. RDR 2 still has that gamey look.
Look at RE9 path traced. Transformative. Even the areas with Leon in Racoon City are astounding with Path Tracing, whereas it falls flat with the baked lighting.
JerryinSoCal
Member
LOD has improved in a lot of ways but yeah it still needs a lot of work. I love Crimson Desert and the pop in when flying is a lot better than it is in most games but on the ground you will often see little things popping here and there and in some major cities entire groups of people can just pop in about 20 feet ahead of you, it doesn't happen often but it does happen. The better the graphics the more the flaws stand out so I do hope they are able to continue to improve how LOD is handled in games.
Dust-by-Monday
Member
How about fuck RT, GI and PT... gorgeous games were made before these technologies were used.
Bojji
Gold Member
Play on Switch.
