Sony PlayStation 5 Pro

[Charlietus]

Remedy dropped a big post on their site, showing off Alan Wake 2's PS5 Pro enhancements and going into detail on how they implemented RT. Check it out, it's more in-depth than I would have expected.

Alan Wake 2 on PlayStation 5 Pro – Behind The Scenes

Take a deep dive into how Remedy’s Northlight engine team updated the technology behind Alan Wake 2 to support the new features of PlayStation 5 Pro.

www.remedygames.com

Comparison video:

Good choice on the ray traced reflections. They were the weakest part of the rendering without ray tracing, very noisy and artifacty.

 

[iroboto]

Remedy dropped a big post on their site, showing off Alan Wake 2's PS5 Pro enhancements and going into detail on how they implemented RT. Check it out, it's more in-depth than I would have expected.

Alan Wake 2 on PlayStation 5 Pro – Behind The Scenes

Take a deep dive into how Remedy’s Northlight engine team updated the technology behind Alan Wake 2 to support the new features of PlayStation 5 Pro.

www.remedygames.com

Comparison video:

If I were Remedy, I would go all in on 5Pro as well. I think binding themselves to UE store may have hurt sales here for them on PC, getting it back in the form of 5Pro sales would be ideal if they are the best 5Pro showcase. Then again the title could not have been made without Epic, so, its a dumb point to make; this is the best case scenario for them.

Its a smart move, and useful for their next title anyway.

They are still trying to make a profit here from Alan Wake 2, hopefully this is sufficient to get them to cross the line.

Alan Wake 2 hasn't made a profit, Remedy unsure if it will ever be on Steam

Alan Wake 2 has yet to turn a profit and generate royalties for Remedy Entertainment, likely in part due to the game skipping Steam and physical launches.

www.tweaktown.com

 

[ErneX]

I had no idea the base model did not have RT on any of its modes, so it’s great it’s coming now albeit only at 30fps.

I’d like to see a comparison between the base model performance mode vs this new performance mode, they mention they noticed more gains by raising graphic settings than internal resolution, so they went that way. They say those are closer to the base model quality mode now.

 

[Remij]

If I were Remedy, I would go all in on 5Pro as well. I think binding themselves to UE store may have hurt sales here for them on PC, getting it back in the form of 5Pro sales would be ideal if they are the best 5Pro showcase. Then again the title could not have been made without Epic, so, its a dumb point to make; this is the best case scenario for them.

Its a smart move, and useful for their next title anyway.

They are still trying to make a profit here from Alan Wake 2, hopefully this is sufficient to get them to cross the line.

Alan Wake 2 hasn't made a profit, Remedy unsure if it will ever be on Steam

Alan Wake 2 has yet to turn a profit and generate royalties for Remedy Entertainment, likely in part due to the game skipping Steam and physical launches.

www.tweaktown.com

Yeah, the definitely kneecapped themselves with releasing only on the EGS. Even if I was Epic I would have done a 3 month (or even less) exclusivity period and timed the Steam release with a major patch/addition for the game.

 

[Blade Brown]

Find it very interesting that they could have just raised the internal resolution but their testing showed the differences were so marginal they reverted back. Maybe it’s just something with how their northlight engine works?

 

[raytracingfan]

Remedy dropped a big post on their site, showing off Alan Wake 2's PS5 Pro enhancements and going into detail on how they implemented RT. Check it out, it's more in-depth than I would have expected.

Alan Wake 2 on PlayStation 5 Pro – Behind The Scenes

Take a deep dive into how Remedy’s Northlight engine team updated the technology behind Alan Wake 2 to support the new features of PlayStation 5 Pro.

www.remedygames.com

Comparison video:

While main camera view shading can effectively cull most of the unnecessary work, uncompromised ray tracing must build an acceleration structure using a large portion of the scene’s objects since ray tracing reaches beyond the limits of the screen-space information. The Pro’s improved hardware made it possible to build the acceleration structure for the most densely populated scenes, which was the major limitation before.

This is certainly interesting - that the main limitation on ray tracing was BVH construction, not traversal or ray-triangle intersections. It's mentioned later in the article that BVH construction is done on the GPU. Is this just the GPU's extra raw compute power getting the job done, or does BVH8 also reduce construction cost?

 

[snc]

From gaf

 

[iroboto]

This is certainly interesting - that the main limitation on ray tracing was BVH construction, not traversal or ray-triangle intersections. It's mentioned later in the article that BVH construction is done on the GPU. Is this just the GPU's extra raw compute power getting the job done, or does BVH8 also reduce construction cost?

IIRC, BVH updating is done typically during async compute. Having more raw compute would reduce the size of window required to update the BVH.

 

[Dictator]

This is certainly interesting - that the main limitation on ray tracing was BVH construction, not traversal or ray-triangle intersections. It's mentioned later in the article that BVH construction is done on the GPU. Is this just the GPU's extra raw compute power getting the job done, or does BVH8 also reduce construction cost?

Exactly as @iroboto says. Both bvh rebuild and BVH refit are done by GPU in consoles and PC APIs. But draws for that BVH are all done on CPU. There is only one game does which does custom BVH rebuild on CPU on consoles, and it is Avatar: Trontiers of Pandora (potentially Star Wars Outlaws as well).

 

[davis.anthony]

I don't care what they're testing shows, 864p is not good enough for an acceptable 4k output in my eyes.

1080p is the absolute minimum for a 4k output with an ML based upscaler.

 

[Remij]

I don't care what they're testing shows, 864p is not good enough for an acceptable 4k output in my eyes.

1080p is the absolute minimum for a 4k output with an ML based upscaler.

Some games are just so heavily post processed that it really doesn't make a huge difference past a point. Or at least one that's worth the performance cost. On consoles, sitting 6-7 feet away from a TV.. it's very likely in their case.

 

[ErneX]

I don't care what they're testing shows, 864p is not good enough for an acceptable 4k output in my eyes.

1080p is the absolute minimum for a 4k output with an ML based upscaler.

Even so, I appreciate their article explaining their decisions. It’s the most comprehensive report coming from a developer on what they did on the Pro that we have so far.

Looking forward to DF comparing it to the base model modes.

 

[Blade Brown]

At the end of the day, I’ll take their word over anyone on a forum, especially when they explained it in detail.

 

[rntongo]

Remedy dropped a big post on their site, showing off Alan Wake 2's PS5 Pro enhancements and going into detail on how they implemented RT. Check it out, it's more in-depth than I would have expected.

Alan Wake 2 on PlayStation 5 Pro – Behind The Scenes

Take a deep dive into how Remedy’s Northlight engine team updated the technology behind Alan Wake 2 to support the new features of PlayStation 5 Pro.

www.remedygames.com

Comparison video:

For an early version WIP, this is impressive. Its only going to get better moving forward. I'm honestly sold on the Pro

 

[Globalisateur]

At the end of the day, I’ll take their word over anyone on a forum, especially when they explained it in detail.

Exactly. They are talking about building asynchronously the BVH on the GPU, not updating, re-building or re-fitting. They are rather specific and blunt in their explanation.

The Pro’s improved hardware... Right after the scene has undergone an update and skinning is complete, the acceleration structure, i.e., the bounding volume hierarchy (bvh), is built asynchronously on the GPU.

 

[babybumb]

I wonder what the cost difference is FSR2 to 1440 vs PSSR to 4k from sub 1080.. too bad the full quality post processing is so qostly it will be still pretty aliased.

 

[Dictator]

Exactly. They are talking about building asynchronously the BVH on the GPU, not updating, re-building or re-fitting. They are rather specific and blunt in their explanation.

Once again, I think that phrasology is just a phrase. You can use any verb you want, top and bottom level accelleration structure in all APIs per default is "built", "generated", "made" on the GPU. It can also be done asynchronously in all the APIs as it is pure compute. One of the most common optimisations in DXR is to do BVH build during shadow map generation for example.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

I don't care what they're testing shows, 864p is not good enough for an acceptable 4k output in my eyes.

1080p is the absolute minimum for a 4k output with an ML based upscaler.

You must be writing for Netflix documentaries

I've recently been playing Metro Exodus and Shadow of the Tomb Raider on my lowly 2070 super and while DLSS performance 4k might look a bit sharper than 1440p quality I doubt 90% of the players will notice. Certainly not a tv sitting at normal distances. If you switch back and forth I can kind of notice, but even than its hard to say on is obviously better.

 

[London Geezer]

Nice one! AW2 is one of those games I still haven't finished, after getting distracted by life and a million other games.

 

[Blade Brown]

Empire of the Ants Tech Q&A - Pushing Visuals with UE5 in an RTS Game

We interviewed Tower Five CEO and Game Director Renaud Charpentier with a focus on tech features in Empire of the Ants, an upcoming UE5 RTS.

wccftech.com

Interview with devs making empire of ants. Unreal 5.4.2 game that’s 30fps on PS5 and series consoles that will be 60fps on the ps5 pro.