Next gen lighting technologies - voxelised, traced, and everything else *spawn*

Feels like an article handed by Actvision/Infinityward pretty much written already, and Richard may have changed a few words here and there. It's more of a PR plug than a typical DF investigational piece.
Yeah that's the impression I got from the article, it's obviously a marketing collaboration with Activision. Note that at the end of the article, he states he had hands on with an alpha of the single player content that is presented in the trailer, so at least he's not just speaking from a trailer analysis perspective but from seeing the game itself. What it doesn't state is whether he saw anything beyond the content in the trailer (ala he got to see those cutscenes and transitions running on the PS4P) or whether he actually got to see gameplay. From the wording, it's the former.

Could be a really visually impressive single player campaign, albeit likely quite short.
 
Is it impressive? Hell yes, the realism is amazing.
In particular, the motion capture and camera work is very realistic. In a game with gamey animations for fast response, there'll be an abrupt change in feel and, even with everything looking the same with the same tech in operation, it'll not have that same verisimilitude.

Like the difference between GT's replay modes versus gameplay. Replay's could look real, while the game never was as convincing in play. GT replays are all in-engine - what you see is what you get - but you only get it during the replay and not during the racing itself.
 
I think the big deal about the new COD engine used by IW here is that it scales MUCH higher than current gen. I think the new COD will look ace - but I also think that all those foundational features added here will be much more evident on next gen machines where they can really go crazy with poly counts and CPU-related resources.

I do think there is a difference of course here regarding what COD does usually with its cutscenes and what other game's do. Usually they are direct FP scene transitions in call of duty, and all "in-game". Not baked out Alembic things or track views views that only run at 30 fps from that specific angle but would run at 22 fps from another angle.

Your character models, LODs, and assets will be persistent through gameplay player controlled camera and FP controlled camera in directed cutscenes. COD always does that I think since the second game.
 
It's certainly interesting to see such an uptake in DXR between major engines & developers (UE, Unity, Frostbite, COD-engine).
so apparently, just reading around, to expect only Ray Traced Audio for COD.
edit: negative ^^

Which is not quite great because I posted it in the wrong thread, but also great because I want to see how good the implementation is. Also, might be viable for current gen consoles maybe ?
 
Last edited:
so apparently, just reading around, to expect only Ray Traced Audio for COD.

Which is not quite great because I posted it in the wrong thread, but also great because I want to see how good the implementation is. Also, might be viable for current gen consoles maybe ?
responded in the DXR spin-off because idk where else. :p
 
so apparently, just reading around, to expect only Ray Traced Audio for COD.

Which is not quite great because I posted it in the wrong thread, but also great because I want to see how good the implementation is. Also, might be viable for current gen consoles maybe ?
Not sure where you read that and why that should be expected?
NV tweeted about it, think about :)
 
Not sure where you read that and why that should be expected?
NV tweeted about it, think about :)
I read it on resetera? Not the most trustworthy source, should have checked it up myself, just took the posters 'casualness' as confirmation.
I also agree on this 'wait and see'. I'll think we'll know more at E3 possibly. If not later on. I wouldn't expect nvidia to go full force on the marketing of RT on this one if it were just RT audio.
 
DXR support usually means ray traced graphics.
usually, but ray traced objects in DXR are generic (so not necessarily graphical in nature) in the API, so it could be used for any purpose the developers want to use it for.
but yea; i'm expecting to see RT graphics as per my original post, that was thrown off from reading off-hand unconfirmed stuff on ERA.
 
At the very least, it's probably not unreasonable to see bolted-on features ala Frostbite. The lighting/shading tech in the last few COD games has been pretty superb as is though.
 
DD2019 presentation about Unity's early implementation of DXR:
https://auzaiffe.files.wordpress.co...ay-tracing-hardware-acceleration-in-unity.pdf

Super interesting insight on clever optimizations. Also interesting takeaways (Spoiler: RT isn't a miracle solution):

- Forward materials are a real problem
- Sometimes rasterization is good enough
- Take advantage of compute shaders when possible
- Some rasterization paradigms are incompatible with ray tracing
- Temporal reprojection/accumulation is key for denoising
- For real time, ray budget is extremely tight
- It might not make your image prettier, simply more accurate

Another anecdotal bit is that there's not a single mention of Nvidia or acknowledgement of work/help from Nvidia (even thought the official PR line at the time was that this was done in partnership with Nvidia...as usual never trust PR mumbo jumbo..). Unlike UE4's DXR/RTX implementation which is partly based on code directly written by Nvidia, Unity's current DXR implementation seems to be done "in-house". Nvidia's only "contribution" is Morgan Mcguire's work on this paper from last year alongside Unity & LucasFilms (which is the stochastic shadows solution used in the Unity DXR path but can also be done in the regular HDPR raster path without DXR): https://eheitzresearch.wordpress.com/705-2/
 
Last edited:
To achieve a real-time frame rate while upholding quality, our Unity Labs researchers developed an algorithm in conjunction with Lucasfilm and NVIDIA
(see the paper they produced, Combining Analytic Direct Illumination and Stochastic Shadows). With this approach, the visibility (area shadow) can be separated from the direct lighting evaluation, while the visual result remains intact. Coupled with a denoising technique applied separately on these two components, we were able to launch very few rays (just four in the real-time demo) for large textured area lights and achieve our 30 fps target.
Real-time ray tracing is the only tool able to achieve the rendering of photorealistic headlights in real-time.
The usual workflow for game production is painful and relies on setting up Light Probes in a scene or using lightmaps. For the movie, we used a brute force one-bounce indirect diffuse approach with ray tracing – with this approach several rays are launched, allowing us to get the desired light bleeding effect. Such an approach gives artists immense freedom, without them having to set up anything.
Unity’s real-time ray tracing is a new reality. We aren’t trying to rebuild traditional production pipelines from the ground up. But we are removing some of the pain points that are typically associated with a project like this. Having the power to interactively change shots and get immediate feedback from the creative director and director of photography is invaluable. Thanks to the decision to build this film in Unity, we could potentially migrate this work to other projects with ease and create a diverse yet cohesive campaign across multiple mediums. Real-time ray tracing is affording us the ability to refine the traditional automotive advertising production pipeline to work in a more creative, collaborative and affordable way.
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2019/04/11/reality-vs-illusion/
 
Ike mentioned that. There is one aspect nVidia contributed, which was the decoupled tracing algorithm, and it's implied that their involvement was really just through the research paper*. Everything else you posted (paragraphs 3 to 5) is just the benefits of raytracing which has nothing to do with nVidia's direct involvement on the software side.

* Edit - correction. The paper covers a full collaboration between Unity, Lucasfilm, and nVidia. There's a website on the technique which is far more relevant and interesting than which companies are involved!
https://eheitzresearch.wordpress.com/705-2/

I'm not sure of the relevance of nVidia's involvement anyway. If it's simply Ike poking a dig at PR, at a claim from nVidia at the time that they are associated with Unity's creation, that has no technical value to the discussion and shouldn't be raised (no link was provided as to the claimed comment from nV). If there's a technical value to nVidia's absence (shows RT is something any engine can add without requiring nV's direct support?), @Ike Turner should spell it out for the sake of the discussion.
 
Last edited:
Ike mentioned that. There is one aspect nVidia contributed, which was the decoupled tracing algorithm, and it's implied that their involvement was really just through the research paper. Everything else you posted (paragraphs 3 to 5) is just the benefits of raytracing which has nothing to do with nVidia's direct involvement on the software side.

I'm not sure of the relevance of nVidia's involvement anyway. If it's simply Ike poking a dig at PR, at a claim from nVidia at the time that they are associated with Unity's creation, that has no technical value to the discussion and shouldn't be raised (no link was provided as to the claimed comment from nV). If there's a technical value to nVidia's absence (shows RT is something any engine can add without requiring nV's direct support?), @Ike Turner should spell it out for the sake of the discussion.
Not much value besides once again pointing out that nobody should ever trust PR statements. Be it Nvidia's claims of greatness/miracle inventions or AMD's (RDNA being a new uArch from the ground... When it's clearly not...) ..

On a more technical point. There's always a chance that an specific implementation runs at sub-par performance on other IHVs HW when it's partly coded by a competing IHV (UE4's current DXR implementation). Which brings me to Metro Exodus.. It will be really interesting to see if it ever works (or its performance) on non NV HW (when AMD & Intel finally have DXR support) given that some of the underlying RT code is AFAIK based on Nvidia's proprietary iRay.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Back
Top