Unreal Engine 5, [UE5 Developer Availability 2022-04-05]

[Deleted member 2197]

It's just the ongoing blurring of the lines between NVIDIA posting marketing that might just be equivalent to a game running on any other platform, vs cases where they have actually been involved and done more specific work and so on. To be even more stark, imagine a hypothetical case where AMD did a raytracing implementation in a game... do you not agree it would be misleading for NVIDIA to then post that on their site as RTX On/Off? The implication is that there's something special you get when running on an RTX GPU, when in reality there may be nothing.

We folks here have effectively come to the conclusion that the marketing doesn't really mean anything at this point but judging from discussions with friends I don't think that's at all the case for the general public, and I think that's very intentional.

Using the AMD raytracing example I don't see anything wrong with Nvidia coming out with RTX On/Off videos where they were not partnering with the studio. They are simply making a statement that a subset of RTX features will work from a fidelity and performance standpoint in this particular game and there is no reason to think twice about the purchase. Advertising a RTX On/Off video in this case would endorse the RTX brand as being a capable performer even though they had no studio involvement in implementing ray tracing. I think it is intentional and a pretty good marketing strategy.

 

[Frenetic Pony]

Using the AMD raytracing example I don't see anything wrong with Nvidia coming out with RTX On/Off videos where they were not partnering with the studio. They are simply making a statement that a subset of RTX features will work from a fidelity and performance standpoint in this particular game and there is no reason to think twice about the purchase. Advertising a RTX On/Off video in this case would endorse the RTX brand as being a capable performer even though they had no studio involvement in implementing ray tracing. I think it is intentional and a pretty good marketing strategy.

RTX as a brand is just Nvidia claiming raytracing as a feature synonymous with and plausibly exclusive to them. I know it doesn't seem like it, but it's implied so successfully that numerous consumers believe it.

That these videos have become so hard to discern any difference at all at times feels like we've abandoned marketing towards any feature a reasonable consumer might care or even notice for exclusively tribal chest thumping.

Then again that's my working hypothesis. That dedicated gaming PCs are going to exclusively towards tribal chest thumping, the Ford Mustang crowd of computer nerds. It's already largely happened I feel, witness an entire sub industry crowing over how "bad" Zen 5 is because it won't run a game no one plays at 500fps, a refresh rate no one uses. The link between utility and sales has been severed for gaming PC sales, and Nvidia is simultaneously partly responsible for but also excellent at utilizing this for their own profit.

 

[techuse]

RTX as a brand is just Nvidia claiming raytracing as a feature synonymous with and plausibly exclusive to them. I know it doesn't seem like it, but it's implied so successfully that numerous consumers believe it.

That these videos have become so hard to discern any difference at all at times feels like we've abandoned marketing towards any feature a reasonable consumer might care or even notice for exclusively tribal chest thumping.

Then again that's my working hypothesis. That dedicated gaming PCs are going to exclusively towards tribal chest thumping, the Ford Mustang crowd of computer nerds. It's already largely happened I feel, witness an entire sub industry crowing over how "bad" Zen 5 is because it won't run a game no one plays at 500fps, a refresh rate no one uses. The link between utility and sales has been severed for gaming PC sales, and Nvidia is simultaneously partly responsible for but also excellent at utilizing this for their own profit.

I think the disappointment with Zen 5 is counter to your utility and sales argument, which in the case of Nvidia, I tend to agree with when looking at RT specifically. People rightly panned Zen 5 because it offers no utility. It's AMD charging more for the same experience. It's effectively the same as if they suddenly price hiked the equivalent Zen 4 CPUs.

 

[DavidGraham]

That these videos have become so hard to discern any difference at all at times feels like we've abandoned marketing towards any feature a reasonable consumer might care or even notice for exclusively tribal chest thumping.

Forget the early promotional videos, they show scenes that are still under development and with incomplete tech, but when the games come out the differences become clear as night and day.

This shot here from Black Myth Wukong (timestamped) demonstrates the massive difference between RT off vs RT on, with RT on it's like the lights are on in the scene, with global illumination bouncing off the ground onto the trees and mountains, extending far into the distance vs no proper bounce or distance illumination whatsoever in the RT off shot, that's a next gen difference right there.

Or this gameplay clip from Black State, without RT reflections the scene would be full of screen space artifacts and hacky looking reflections (with improper shading and geometry details).

but I was speaking specifically to the Black State trailer

Well, it's too early for Black State, the RTX integration is fresh, who knows what will it develop into in the future, Black Myth offered nothing more than DLSS and some limited RT on UE4 upon it's announcement, then it developed into full fledged path tracing. Black State could be heading into a similar direction.

Sure, I'm just noting that I think the bit that gets a bit silly is when they use it to advertise a feature that is just... in the game/engine and has nothing specifically to do with them

In the early days of ray tracing, when NVIDIA had complete monopoly over it, NVIDIA marketed lots and lots of UE4 ray traced games, that used UE4 stock ray tracing options, NVIDIA engineers were on the ground helping devs implement the tech. I guess that gave them the right to market it with their brand.

In the case of Black State, we don't know If the developer is using the NVRTX branch of UE5, if they were then I guess NVIDIA has the right to market it.

For example, the developers of Retrieval are using RTXDI for their UE5 horror game, which comes only with the NVRTX branch, apparently several developers are using it right now to make games, the use of the NVRTX branch in the wild is bigger than some have previously thought.

 

[Frenetic Pony]

I think the disappointment with Zen 5 is counter to your utility and sales argument, which in the case of Nvidia, I tend to agree with when looking at RT specifically. People rightly panned Zen 5 because it offers no utility. It's AMD charging more for the same experience. It's effectively the same as if they suddenly price hiked the equivalent Zen 4 CPUs.

CPU doesn't matter. You're not CPU bound with a decent modern one, no one is. No one plays a game at 1080p just to max their CPU, you're not a pro gamer running, whatever it is that even stresses a CPU these days on a 480hz monitor, no one runs that.

How good Zen 5 is or isn't for gamers literally doesn't matter utility wise, go buy a 7800x3d, it's cheaper anyway. What's being sold is the illusion that you're a better person because you theoretically could "be faster" than others, in a game you don't play on a monitor you don't own. What's being sold is expectations that you're a better person because your tool is bigger than someone else's, nevermind you don't use those tools for anything.

There's no utility, as in anything people would actually use or care about, to any of this as an end result. "RTX" is the brand for that. Look at the difference we artificially made in this game by turning off a feature UE5 supports anyway then turning it back on. If you squint maybe you can care about it. Or rather, you can pretend to care about to make yourself feel good.

It's why I support, and would rather expect, a concentration on things like getting UE5 and dynamic GI to run on the Switch 2. Sure, as a hobbyist graphics programmer I'd love to see unlimited area restir traced shadows or something. As someone familiar with gaming as a business, I expect 99% of the potential audience can't run that, but a heck of a lot of people will buy a Switch 2. So the smart business decision for UE5 is to support the Switch 2, and the smart one for Nvidia is to sell a thing no one can use, but if you imagine you could, and you imagine you cared about it, you might give Nvidia a ton of money to fulfill that expectation you didn't have before seeing some "RTX On" trailer.

 

[Andrew Lauritzen]

This shot here from Black Myth Wukong (timestamped) demonstrates the massive difference between RT off vs RT on, with RT on it's like the lights are on in the scene, with global illumination bouncing off the ground onto the trees and mountains, extending far into the distance vs no proper bounce or distance illumination whatsoever in the RT off shot, that's a next gen difference right there.

Did you link the wrong timestamp? On the desert shot the biggest differences I see are just that some objects are not being drawn in the non-RT path at all. There's no good reason for that, especially with Nanite, but probably some content legacy there. There's a little more ambient lighting in the cliff shadows but in that shot it might as well be a constant ambient term as there's not really any depth to it.

The GI shot later (~13:30) is a better example though for sure.

Well, it's too early for Black State, the RTX integration is fresh, who knows what will it develop into in the future, Black Myth offered nothing more than DLSS and some limited RT on UE4 upon it's announcement, then it developed into full fledged path tracing.

Well first, I'm on record saying the use of the term "path tracing" in this kind of context is misleading at best - perhaps why they call it "full ray tracing" here. Clearly there's some additional things going on there, but it's also unclear what exactly. The reflections in particular not noticeably different from what you can get with just stock Lumen, nor the shadows from what you can get with the built in RT shadows. The caustics do appear to be some new thing, which is neat. Maybe there's more going on under the hood and the content just doesn't really make use of it... at some level physically-based RT stuff is going to look similar so I'm willing to extend the benefit of the doubt. But even for Black Myth it doesn't seem like NVIDIA is too interested in spelling out exactly what was done that diverges the the stock implementations. Maybe we'll get some conference talks in the future though.

For example, the developers of Retrieval are using RTXDI for their UE5 horror game, which comes only with the NVRTX branch, apparently several developers are using it right now to make games, the use of the NVRTX branch in the wild is bigger than some have previously thought.

Sure, but see the document I linked earlier. That branch doesn't necessarily diverge as much as NVIDIA would seem to want to imply to consumers. From the docs I'd say the ReSTIR sampling for direct lighting is probably the biggest part, whereas it seems like the GI and reflections are basically stock Lumen at this point.

Anyways don't get me wrong, I'm not panning the integration and use of custom tech. Quite the opposite - I'm frequently on record saying an engine is a toolbox and folks should modify, replace and develop new parts according to their needs (even better if you can get paid to do it too ). My only comment here is related to how cagey NVIDIA specifically is about exactly what is happening.

The continued discussion is over-stating my feelings on this though. I'll leave it at that.

 

[DavidGraham]

CPU doesn't matter. You're not CPU bound with a decent modern one, no one is. No one plays a game at 1080p just to max their CPU, you're not a pro gamer running, whatever it is that even stresses a CPU these days on a 480hz monitor, no one runs that.

That couldn't be further from the truth, we have dozens and dozens of games (old and new) that are CPU limited at 4K resolution and max settings, that's why Frame Generation is so sought after these days, it gives you the ability to bypass CPU bottlenecks and get higher fps.

Just recently we have Dragon's Dogma 2, Baldur's Gate 3, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Starfield and many many more that I care to remember! Hell, I can't get ARMA 3 to give me 60fps on max settings no matter what CPU or GPU I use, there is no CPU in existence that can give you that even at 720p!

 

[arandomguy]

I have this general issue in that I don't think framing CPU performance relevancy with respect to resolution is the really the right perspective.

Edge cases aside it's more that 60 fps gaming, and certainly 30 fps gaming, is really solved by modern CPUs/memory subsystems. What challanging them still is high refresh gaming especially if we talking about trying to push above 120 fps.

It's also why frame generation is much more relevant to high refresh gaming than just 60 fps gaming.

 

[DavidGraham]

Did you link the wrong timestamp? On the desert shot the biggest differences I see are just that some objects are not being drawn in the non-RT path at all. There's no good reason for that, especially with Nanite, but probably some content legacy there. There's a little more ambient lighting in the cliff shadows but in that shot it might as well be a constant ambient term as there's not really any depth to it.

No, with RT on, close tree/rock formations are receiving bounce light, distant cliff and rocks are receiving light, with RT off no bounce on close trees/rocks and no distant lights (mountain appears dark/foggy).



There are more comparisons here as well.

The reflections in particular not noticeably different from what you can get with just stock Lumen

NVIDIA disclosed they are doing a new rendering technique for ray traced particles inside reflections.

Black Myth: Wukong uses a new technique to render order-independent transparencies for large sprite sets using two-level ray tracing, which efficiently renders the game's particle system in real-time reflections

nor the shadows from what you can get with the built in RT shadows

RTXDI allows for shadows from every light source at a fixed performance cost.

That branch doesn't necessarily diverge as much as NVIDIA would seem to want to imply to consumers. From the docs I'd say the ReSTIR sampling for direct lighting is probably the biggest part, whereas it seems like the GI and reflections are basically stock Lumen at this point.

Well, I could mention 4 things: ReSTIR, RTXDI, Caustics and the new ray traced particles inside reflections.

 

[DegustatoR]

No, with RT on, close tree/rock formations are receiving bounce light, distant cliff and rocks are receiving light, with RT off no bounce on close trees/rocks and no distant lights (mountain appears dark/foggy).

There is bounce lighting, it's just considerably less precise due to the way Lumen works. BMW shows quite well why Lumen GI isn't really on the same level as a path traced GI. You could argue that it's "good enough" of course but this is a weird road to take as 2D sprite graphics is also "good enough" for some gamers and applications.

 

[Andrew Lauritzen]

No, with RT on, close tree/rock formations are receiving bounce light, distant cliff and rocks are receiving light, with RT off no bounce on close trees/rocks and no distant lights (mountain appears dark/foggy).

... I can obviously tell the differences. Not to reiterate exactly what I posted, but it's just not very impressive/different in this particular shot because it's basically just slightly brighter, which is what I mean by a constant ambient term (to be clear, it's not arriving at the result in that manner, but visually it doesn't have much depth in the indirectly lit regions so it might as well be in that shot). The shot later in the video is more impressive as it actually demonstrates some local effects and directionality from the indirect lighting. Presumably this is why NVIDIA uses that location in their web page.

There is bounce lighting, it's just considerably less precise due to the way Lumen works. BMW shows quite well why Lumen GI isn't really on the same level as a path traced GI. You could argue that it's "good enough" of course but this is a weird road to take as 2D sprite graphics is also "good enough" for some gamers and applications.

True path tracing is obviously the best, but do we have a comparison between black myth's current "full RT" mode and Lumen hardware RT? That's really what I'm curious about because other than the ReSTIR sampling (which is irrelevant with a single directional light outdoors) the NVIDIA RTX branch documents don't really describe how it differs, or if Lumen HWRT is basically being labeled as part of the "full RT" mode...? As DavidGraham noted, I guess the caustics and particle reflections, but those are mostly on the acceleration structure side. I guess I'm curious if they would label Lumen HWRT with hit lighting as "full RT" or if there's any fundamental difference in what they are doing here.

I guess if this is mostly the NVIDIA Unreal branch I can just go poke at the code and see. But their document doesn't reference "full RT" or "path tracing" at all, so there's still some murkiness as to whether there's some other thing, or whether those are just their consumer marketing labels for turning on various RT features. Might be possible to play with the various options in black myth via engine cvars, although if RT acceleration structures are entirely disabled in the standard mode it might not.

 

[GhostofWar]

or if Lumen HWRT is basically being labeled as part of the "full RT" mode...?

Would one be able to determine if it's hw lumen or not by using an AMD card to maybe see the performance differential in another game and see if the they are similar? If it's doing any nvidia stuff one might expect the AMD card to take a bigger hit than the difference between sw and hw? Obviously only worth looking into if that unlocker can't provide the info like you mentioned before.

This is just me thinking out loud hopefully I havn't embarrassed myself

 

[Andrew Lauritzen]

Would one be able to determine if it's hw lumen or not by using an AMD card to maybe see the performance differential in another game and see if the they are similar? If it's doing any nvidia stuff one might expect the AMD card to take a bigger hit than the difference between sw and hw? Obviously only worth looking into if that unlocker can't provide the info like you mentioned before.

Unfortunately current AMD hardware performance with RT is pretty low, to the point where I'm not sure you can glean anything particularly interesting from profiling it.

I took a brief 10 minute look at the RTX branch. Short summary is it does seem like ReSTIR is the main thing it adds on the RT side (I guess the caustics and particle stuff is not yet in there), which can affect the light sampling in various passes (Lumen surface cache, reflections, direct lighting, etc). This light sampling side isn't going to make much difference in the single directional case. The NVIDIA 5.4 UE5 docs do mention that it can replace the screen probe gather of Lumen as well though. That code isn't in the public 5.3 RTX branch, but it's certainly possible that black myth is actually using a newer-ish engine version and/or a custom branch that has a similar feature implemented.

Anyways tldr it's definitely pretty integrated with the various Lumen passes (which makes sense), but there are enough different options that it's going to be hard to guess which ones specifically are being used here. As I mentioned the sampled lighting seems pretty irrelevant to black myth's content, but I suspect something like the alternative final gather is perhaps being used, together with Lumen reflections with hit lighting.

 

[DegustatoR]

do we have a comparison between black myth's current "full RT" mode and Lumen hardware RT?

There are some but nothing dedicated to this task specifically I think.

I guess if this is mostly the NVIDIA Unreal branch I can just go poke at the code and see. But their document doesn't reference "full RT" or "path tracing" at all, so there's still some murkiness as to whether there's some other thing, or whether those are just their consumer marketing labels for turning on various RT features. Might be possible to play with the various options in black myth via engine cvars, although if RT acceleration structures are entirely disabled in the standard mode it might not.

Isn't their RTX branch open to Epic so that Epic could incorporate anything they want back into the main branch?

 

[OlegSH]

True path tracing is obviously the best, but do we have a comparison between black myth's current "full RT" mode and Lumen hardware RT?

Recent games featuring the "Full Ray Tracing" label have all included multiple bounce per-pixel Restir GI, with up to 3 bounces in Alan Wake 2 (plus a cache lookup at the final bounce). This includes proper lighting calculations in the hit shaders, accounting for all light sources in the scene and producing the soft indirect shadows. This also ensures that objects with complex shapes are free from missing GI issues, which occur with the default UE's shading cache cards, as mentioned in the documentation. To minimize the Lumen GI issues, adjustments are needed either to the complexly shaped geometry so that the cards work correctly or to the number of cards.

All these games have implemented high quality recurrent blur denoiser or DLSS 3.5 neural denoiser for GI, both of which can resolve high frequency GI details and remain stable for small emissive surfaces and low lighting conditions. Screen-space probes gathering in the HW Lumen GI fails to provide stable lighting without content and parameters adjustments, nor can it deliver detailed GI with the 1/16 resolution probe placement. Based on my personal experience and Epic's guidelines, Lumen requires the removal of small emissive surfaces and other content tweaks to avoid the mentioned issues.

"Full RT" games also featured multi bounce reflections (up to 3 bounces IIRC) with proper hit shading, which eliminates wonky cache artifacts. Reflection resolution is also boosted to per pixel levels and RT reflections are applied across the full range of roughness (from 0 to 1) and with high quality denoisers, which helps eliminate many of the nasty artifacts seen in the default HW Lumen. In the default UE5, these artifacts are typically addressed by tweaking the roughness cutoff to minimal levels so that reflections only work on smooth surfaces, meaning there is no proper Glossy GI and specular occlusion on most of the surfaces in UE5 games.

I don't want to list all the changes, as it’s tiresome, but there should be quite a few image quality and optimization changes (OMMs, SER, etc.) in NVIDIA's games with path-tracing. These might not seem as impressive on paper, as the RTX branch and its documentation are not necessarily meant for "full RT" games only. It has a broader scope of games with HW RT in mind and contains general recommendations applicable to all UE5 projects (such as tweaking the cards). While the "full RT" implementations are typically developed with NVIDIA and can include features absent in the public branches, the listed above quality changes in the RTX branch enable many new use cases in RT mode. For example, emissive sources can be handled with sufficient for production quality via RTXDI and ReSTIR GI, allowing for proper lighting from magic spells, effects, surfaces, etc in such game as Wukong. Not sure if this is utilized in the Wukong as I have not played the game yet, but I have tested available RTXDI demo projects and know that such setups are possible for use and would not work with the default HW Lumen.

 

[Andrew Lauritzen]

Recent games featuring the "Full Ray Tracing" label have all included multiple bounce per-pixel Restir GI, with up to 3 bounces in Alan Wake 2 (plus a cache lookup at the final bounce).
...
Not sure if this is utilized in the Wukong as I have not played the game yet, but I have tested available RTXDI demo projects and know that such setups are possible for use and would not work with the default HW Lumen.

Ok guys... I don't need the 101 on what ReSTIR is. I think you probably all know I'm quite aware of how these techniques work. Certainly there's some nice stuff for pushing the quality further; I'm not saying it is "unimpressive" in terms of general technology.

In these posts I have specifically been talking about certain games - in this case Black Myth (and before that the reflections in the demo video). For black myth I thought I was clear that my questions and curiosity stem from the fact that there's not really much if anything for ReSTIR to do in that workload, as basically all the lighting is coming from a single directional light with no significant use of emissives that I've seen (though admittedly I've only tested early portions of the game as it just came out).

Apologies if I was unclear here - I will try and requote the relevant threads of discussion that I am referencing in replies.

I played a bit more today with RT enabled and the disocclusion denoising issues that were obvious in a few places in the benchmark don't seem to happen much in the final game. Not sure if they changed it or if it's just more content-dependent, but quality-wise it's pretty good. I'll probably swap back to non-RT to continue because performance is just a bit too low, but always nice to have options for future high end GPUs.

 

[OlegSH]

In these posts I have specifically been talking about certain games - in this case Black Myth (and before that the reflections in the demo video). For black myth I thought I was clear that my questions and curiosity stem from the fact that there's not really much if anything for ReSTIR to do in that workload, as basically all the lighting is coming from a single directional light with no significant use of emissives that I've seen (though admittedly I've only tested early portions of the game as it just came out).

I understand. I was referring to RTXDI and ReSTIR GI, as these are technologies that NVIDIA is promoting under the Full RT umbrella. So certain improvements are expected if you’ve played other games with Full RT and know what to look for. I’ve posted screenshots from CP2077 here before, showcasing improvements from PT GI, which I expect should be featured in this game as well. There might be cuts in some settings, as I don’t see why one would need multi-bounce reflections in a game like Wukong, but I expect the core tech to remain the same as in other Full RT games. As further evidence, NVIDIA could have labeled Outlaws as a Full RT game since it features RTXDI, RT reflections, etc., but they didn’t, possibly because Massive’s RT GI didn’t meet the feature set or quality bar set by NVIDIA for its Full RT games.

 

[Andrew Lauritzen]

I understand. I was referring to RTXDI and ReSTIR GI, as these are technologies that NVIDIA is promoting under the Full RT umbrella. So certain improvements are expected if you’ve played other games with Full RT and know what to look for. I’ve posted screenshots from CP2077 here before, showcasing improvements from PT GI, which I expect should be featured in this game as well. There might be cuts in some settings, as I don’t see why one would need multi-bounce reflections in a game like Wukong, but I expect the core tech to remain the same as in other Full RT games. As further evidence, NVIDIA could have labeled Outlaws as a Full RT game since it features RTXDI, RT reflections, etc., but they didn’t, possibly because Massive’s RT GI didn’t meet the feature set or quality bar set by NVIDIA for its Full RT games.

Makes sense. And yes I think CP is a more obvious use of the various marketing labels. My confusion has mostly been about these recent examples, but ultimately it doesn't really matter.

 

[Frenetic Pony]

I understand. I was referring to RTXDI and ReSTIR GI, as these are technologies that NVIDIA is promoting under the Full RT umbrella. So certain improvements are expected if you’ve played other games with Full RT and know what to look for. I’ve posted screenshots from CP2077 here before, showcasing improvements from PT GI, which I expect should be featured in this game as well. There might be cuts in some settings, as I don’t see why one would need multi-bounce reflections in a game like Wukong, but I expect the core tech to remain the same as in other Full RT games. As further evidence, NVIDIA could have labeled Outlaws as a Full RT game since it features RTXDI, RT reflections, etc., but they didn’t, possibly because Massive’s RT GI didn’t meet the feature set or quality bar set by NVIDIA for its Full RT games.

I really don't know that such improvements are "to be expected" by either devs or players. They've got a ton of software and versions to distribute over a ton of engines.

The "Full RT" and "Pathtracing" appear to be PR monikers rather than how things are organized behind the scenes. Restir GI is not what Cyberpunk uses, it just brute forces GI bounces and their talk on doing the Cyberpunk "pathtracing" mentions such specifically. Half the time I don't even know what they're talking about with their videos anymore. EG, what's changed here? It looks better, but did they literally just turn Lumen settings up? I've no idea but it's "RTX On" so:

 

[Jupiter]

The "Full RT" and "Pathtracing" appear to be PR monikers rather than how things are organized behind the scenes. Restir GI is not what Cyberpunk uses, it just brute forces GI bounces and their talk on doing the Cyberpunk "pathtracing" mentions such specifically. Half the time I don't even know what they're talking about with their videos anymore.

It says here that Cyberpunk 2077 2.1 does ReSTIRGI+RTXDI:

PC-specific

• Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode - exits preview status and includes several image quality improvements.
• Introduced ReSTIR GI – Further improves path-traced lighting quality in RT: Overdrive mode, especially darker areas with no impact on performance, minimizes ghosting.

Update 2.1 Patch Notes

www.cyberpunk.net

If you'll remember, PT21 is ReSTIRGI + RTXDI... ReSTIR samples a few path traced pixels on the screen to see what's important (importance sampling, or IS), and then does this again (resampled importance sampling, or RIS), then sends more rays there.

You could liken this to "screenspace" path tracing — in that the smaller something is on screen, the less path tracing will be applied to it, because it's considered less important. Objects in the distance – especially faces, foliage, shadows, etc. – can end up with not much detail. RTXDI is similar, it tries to work out which shadows and lights are important and only focuses on those.

ReGIR is different: It divides the world space into a 3D grid. It then sends some rays to each grid sector to determine what's important in each 3D sector. It then sends more rays to those sectors. It is still doing IS and RIS — only in 3D. In this way it's an advancement of ReSTIR.

The major advantage here is it's more detailed and accurate, especially with objects farther away from the camera, but it's also a performance improvement, so has similar performance to PT21, possibly even better.

What is PTNext and what should I choose - PT20 PT21 or PTNext

A very nice person by the name of ɅƲṨƘɅ in the Cyberpunk 2077 Modding Discord asked me: 'Give a definitive answer on what to use — PT20 or PT21' My answer was: [b]Use PT20 or PTNe

www.nexusmods.com

enables an entirely new type of path tracing called PTNext in the mod. This is using ReGIRDI+ReGIRGI, which is an advancement over ReSTIRGI+RTXDI (it's in the game engine but not normally able to be enabled)

Comparing the tech, the four options in Ultra+ are (I'll add RT+PT so you can see where it fits in, and why it's still important):

• RT+PT == Ray traced direct lighting + path traced naive indirect --> ReLAX --> ( RR or NRD )
• PT20 == IS --> RIS --> RTXDI + naive indirect --> ReLAX --> ( RR or NRD )
• PT21 == IS --> RIS --> RTXDI + ReSTIRGI --> ReLAX --> ( RR or NRD )
• PTNext == ReGIR --> IS --> RIS --> ReSTIRDI + ReSTIRGI --> ReLAX --> ( RR or NRD ) (...note: no RTXDI)

Cyberpunk Ultra Plus Engine Control Panel and Hotfixes

Advanced engine control panel with 58% faster path tracing, improved visuals, and many vanilla bugfixes. For AMD and Nvidia. 100% of donations go to Wildlife Society for all my mods.

www.nexusmods.com

With the mod below you should even get ReGIRDI+ReGIRGI.