Current Generation Games Analysis Technical Discussion [2023] [XBSX|S, PS5, PC]

[Seanspeed]

Cherrypicking would have been Portal RTX...
And it doesnt make sense to use outdated rasterizing games in which the API and the engine is limiting a 4090. Pathtracing is a much better indicator for performance progression.

There is nothing outdated about rasterized games. What I'd argue are still the three best looking games on the market today - Plague Tale Requiem(at launch), Horizon Forbidden West and Forza Horizon 5 - all achieve their amazing visuals without ray tracing.

As for pathtracing - the fact that a game as old and simple as Portal 1 takes such extreme hardware to run with pathtracing suggests that it's never going to be viable for actual modern games. At least not for a very long time. The visual benefit you get from it is so small compared to the other things you could push with that same performance overhead. Portal RTX has its flair, but isn't remotely comparable to the graphics of Horizon Forbidden West, for instance. One is miles more impressive overall, without using any ray tracing of any kind.

We'll need to reach a heavy roadblock in terms of what developers can do with extra power before path tracing becomes any kind of rational choice for modern AAA titles.

 

[davis.anthony]

We'll be stuck with raster + RT hybrid rendering for a very, very, very long time yet.

And I'm perfectly OK with that.

 

[troyan]

There is nothing outdated about rasterized games.

Let me quote CD Project:

We all are well too familiar with the limitations of the current real-time direct and indirect lighting algorithms. Things like non-shadow casting lights with non-physically based range, low-resolution indirect light multiplied by screen-space ambient occlusion, or screen-space reflections are still widely used. While delivering satisfying performance on lower-end hardware, they limit maximum image quality and reduce content creator flexibility.

https://schedule.gdconf.com/session/cyberpunk-rt-overdrive-bringing-path-tracing-into-the-night-city-presented-by-nvidia/894332

One is miles more impressive overall, without using any ray tracing of any kind.

The Metroid Prime Remake is impressive, too. 900p/60fps on a 0,3 TFLOPs console. Looks really good. Just doesnt make it more advanced and better looking than Portal RTX.

We'll need to reach a heavy roadblock in terms of what developers can do with extra power before path tracing becomes any kind of rational choice for modern AAA titles.

You mean these great reflections in the Dead Space Remake? Oh... There arent any. Here is an example of 25 years old assets thrown into a one man made Pathtracer:

Half-Life mit Pathtracing getestet: Eine unglaubliche Verwandlung des 1998er-Meilensteins

Half-Life, ein Meilenstein des Shooter-Genres aus dem Jahr 1998, lässt sich mithilfe einer Raytracing-Mod aufwerten - PCGH hat's ausprobiert.

www.pcgameshardware.de

 

[Seanspeed]

You can quote CDPR all you like, it doesn't make their comment gospel. They are of course promoting their own product in this PR piece, so let's not pretend that their comments are somehow purely objective.

And no, the Metroid Prime remake isn't impressive by the standards that we're talking about. It's decent looking for a Switch game, but it is otherwise still very dated looking. What a bizarre example to bring up.

That Half Life image is also further proving my point. Good lighting and some half-ok shaders certainly helps an old game look much nicer, but it still doesn't remotely compare to what the best modern AAA games look like, even without ray tracing. And when these Portal and Half Life RTX examples run just as heavy or even moreso than these modern AAA games, you've got yourself a completely losing argument for the usage of path tracing. It's simply not worth it if your goal is to push the most technically impressive game you reasonably can. It's a massively inefficient use of hardware resources that literally only makes sense for older, simpler games.

 

[techuse]

A blast from the past, and a reminder of what PC gaming used to be.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1630538314406043648

PC games looked much better back then though. PC games today are some RT on top of graphics targeting consoles released 10 years ago.

 

[trinibwoy]

We'll be stuck with raster + RT hybrid rendering for a very, very, very long time yet.

And I'm perfectly OK with that.

Definitely. I don’t think we’re far away from intrepid developers doing indie fully raytraced games though. My bet is there will be a few games like that during the RTX 6xxx generation.

 

[Inuhanyou]

People forget that lumen is a form of raytracing. When they say "we don't need RT" they are wrong.

It's fair to complain about the challenges inherent to path tracing and more traditional ray sketching methods, but ray tracing will only grow more prominent even on the consoles as more devs switch to ue5 with lumen.

 

[Dampf]

People forget that lumen is a form of raytracing. When they say "we don't need RT" they are wrong.

It's fair to complain about the challenges inherent to path tracing and more traditional ray sketching methods, but ray tracing will only grow more prominent even on the consoles as more devs switch to ue5 with lumen.

Maybe what they want to say is "we don't need Hardware-Raytracing"

Software-Lumen is really, really good and performs a little bit better than HW-Raytracing too.

 

[troyan]

Software-Lumen is barely better than the RTGI in Metro Exodus and Cyberpunk. It is outdated even before any real game has published with UE5.

And no, the Metroid Prime remake isn't impressive by the standards that we're talking about. It's decent looking for a Switch game, but it is otherwise still very dated looking. What a bizarre example to bring up.

How is the Metroid Prime Remake "dated looking" when it runs at 900p/60 FPS on a 0,3 TFLOPs console while looking as good as it does? The Dead Space Remake runs only at 972p/60 FPS on a Series X and this console has 40x more compute performance while dont have any kind of raytracing? What do we call that?

 

[trinibwoy]

Maybe what they want to say is "we don't need Hardware-Raytracing"

Software-Lumen is really, really good and performs a little bit better than HW-Raytracing too.

What they’re actually saying is that baked lighting in current games looks great (e.g. Forbidden West) and they don’t mind the occasional SSR artifact. I don’t think there are any games out yet using Lumen aside from Fortnite.

High environment density and asset detail + baked lighting looks very very good.

 

[pjbliverpool]

High environment density and asset detail + baked lighting looks very very good.

I may be wrong here but isn't baked lighting done via offline Raytracing? If so would it be fair to consider baked lighting and "non-dynamic Raytracing"? i.e. the visual result is the same as RT, except nothing moves/changes.

 

[davis.anthony]

How is the Metroid Prime Remake "dated looking" when it runs at 900p/60 FPS on a 0,3 TFLOPs console while looking as good as it does?

Because it looks dated compared to what else is available in 2023.

Does it look good considering the hardware it's running on? Yes.

Does look modern to compared to current games on other platform? No.

What do we call that?

Diminishing returns.

 

[trinibwoy]

I may be wrong here but isn't baked lighting done via offline Raytracing? If so would it be fair to consider baked lighting and "non-dynamic Raytracing"? i.e. the visual result is the same as RT, except nothing moves/changes.

Yeah baking is usually done using offline RT. It works best for outdoor naturally lit scenes. Dynamic GI is a lot more important for indoor scenes with lots of dynamic artificial lighting.

 

[Globalisateur]

What they’re actually saying is that baked lighting in current games looks great (e.g. Forbidden West) and they don’t mind the occasional SSR artifact. I don’t think there are any games out yet using Lumen aside from Fortnite.

High environment density and asset detail + baked lighting looks very very good.

I really do mind them now even on Forbidden West. They are really awful to look at compared to the stuff done on Fortnite.

 

[Inuhanyou]

Software-Lumen is barely better than the RTGI in Metro Exodus and Cyberpunk. It is outdated even before any real game has published with UE5.

So in other words, it's extremely impressive and devs should keep using it? I agree

 

[Jupiter]

Software-Lumen is barely better than the RTGI in Metro Exodus and Cyberpunk. It is outdated even before any real game has published with UE5.

How is the Metroid Prime Remake "dated looking" when it runs at 900p/60 FPS on a 0,3 TFLOPs console while looking as good as it does? The Dead Space Remake runs only at 972p/60 FPS on a Series X and this console has 40x more compute performance while dont have any kind of raytracing? What do we call that?

Software Lumen is lower quality and more like Voxel GI. Dynamic objects in Fortnite do not cast shadows when lit indirectly.

 

[Seanspeed]

People forget that lumen is a form of raytracing. When they say "we don't need RT" they are wrong.

It's fair to complain about the challenges inherent to path tracing and more traditional ray sketching methods, but ray tracing will only grow more prominent even on the consoles as more devs switch to ue5 with lumen.

Nobody was saying 'we dont need ray tracing'. More that it's not inherently a requirement for a game to look extremely good. Lumen itself is also quite costly and there's a lot that developers can do in other areas of the graphics to utilize that same overhead if they wanted to.

Personally, I'm more impressed by Nanite than I am Lumen, purely because it offers a significant increase in visual quality without any large increase in demands that will require major tradeoffs for developers in other areas.

In the long run, I totally expect ray tracing, particularly as a lighting component, to become more normalized, but path tracing is a whole different ballgame. The costs are downright extreme and will never be worth it for a AAA game until we've just got so much spare hardware power and without much room to push graphics in other areas.

 

[davis.anthony]

Path tracing will never be a thing in computer games.

Half Life goes from running over 1000fps on my 4070ti (And still being CPU limited) to barely over 60fps path traced.

That's an insane drop in performance and one that'll never be worth it for games that have PS2 level geometry and textures.

What I would love to see is a version of Half Life that's a raster + RT hybrid with RTGI, reflections, shadows and AO and to see how that compares to the game path traced.

If the hybrid solution can get very close in quality than path tracing has no real future.

 

[Inuhanyou]

Nobody was saying 'we dont need ray tracing'. More that it's not inherently a requirement for a game to look extremely good. Lumen itself is also quite costly and there's a lot that developers can do in other areas of the graphics to utilize that same overhead if they wanted to.

Personally, I'm more impressed by Nanite than I am Lumen, purely because it offers a significant increase in visual quality without any large increase in demands that will require major tradeoffs for developers in other areas.

In the long run, I totally expect ray tracing, particularly as a lighting component, to become more normalized, but path tracing is a whole different ballgame. The costs are downright extreme and will never be worth it for a AAA game until we've just got so much spare hardware power and without much room to push graphics in other areas.

Nanite and lumen go hand in hand. real time lighting makes the assets actually pop. Baked lighting can't show all the detail in the environment

 

[Jupiter]

Nobody was saying 'we dont need ray tracing'. More that it's not inherently a requirement for a game to look extremely good. Lumen itself is also quite costly and there's a lot that developers can do in other areas of the graphics to utilize that same overhead if they wanted to.

Personally, I'm more impressed by Nanite than I am Lumen, purely because it offers a significant increase in visual quality without any large increase in demands that will require major tradeoffs for developers in other areas.

In the long run, I totally expect ray tracing, particularly as a lighting component, to become more normalized, but path tracing is a whole different ballgame. The costs are downright extreme and will never be worth it for a AAA game until we've just got so much spare hardware power and without much room to push graphics in other areas.

Without raytracing game lighting has a old-fashioned look if you know Cyberpunk 2077 and other titles.

When I look at games with heavy ray tracing it's a new generation in terms of lighting than the above-mentioned titles Plague Tale Requiem (at launch), Horizon Forbidden West and Forza Horizon 5.

Path tracing will never be a thing in computer games.

Half Life goes from running over 1000fps on my 4070ti (And still being CPU limited) to barely over 60fps path traced.

That's an insane drop in performance and one that'll never be worth it for games that have PS2 level geometry and textures.

What I would love to see is a version of Half Life that's a raster + RT hybrid with RTGI, reflections, shadows and AO and to see how that compares to the game path traced.

If the hybrid solution can get very close in quality than path tracing has no real future.

Never is a bold word.

It has to be said that lighting is also a big part of the visuals. It is obvious that it has a big influence on the frame rate especially when it was very primitive before.