Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2022]

[Cyan]

Wait, you think people mistaking SSR for raytracing is indicative of the damage SSR has caused?

If anything that's indicative of how most people experience RT's inclusion due to performance budgets, but also what effect artistry has on popular perception of graphics quality. SSR isn't 'damaging' anything here, it's helping to present a highly imperfect effect at an excellent framerate on currently affordable hardware.

It's bizarre to me to actually lament a twitter thread extolling wonder about a game's presentation simply because these poor fools can't appreciate proper RT reflections. Like, what?

imo it's an issue from the very moment people see over the top SSR effects and shout "Raytracing!". It's like the tale of Peter and the Wolf.

Gotta disagree with you there, SSR has been the norm and all, no problem there, until now where you see gamers thinking "meh, they go over the board with raytracing now, I am not getting a new console in the future just for RT because it's just about reflections".

All the computational grunt needed for raytracing can go to many other effects, like accurate lighting, light fog, and many others discussed here. The images shared by @pjbliverpool show why Cyberpunk is so taxing when RT is on, as it's applied mostly everywhere.

Also this is an example from an early DF video showing the accuracy of RT. How many times did we see oddly shadowed noses in videogames?

Tbh, I've always been a RT believer when I first watched static raytraced images shown at Siggraph back then, that took months or weeks to be rendered in PCs from the late 90s, it looked like the last frontier to me, and it got me drooling over them. But also to be honest, I wasn't drooling again over RT until recently when I saw RT running in real time and used in my favourite games. Before that, it was like "I can't live without it". Now fortunately it's what makes games stand out.

 

[Cyan]

I think people forget graphics is an equilibrium between asset quality(number of polygon, texture quality), lighting quality(GI, shadows, reflections) and material shading quality(PBR). Like @JoeJ told in another thread, raytracing is a visibility algorithm to determine the path of light nothing more.

People forget that PBR and raytracing arrive at the same time in most movie in offline rendering. On Videogames PBR and RT arrive at different moment.

A Brief History of Physically Based Rendering

www.pbr-book.org

A good example is FF7 remake cutscene using PBR against FF7 Advent children with micropolygon and raytracing but very poor material shading quality.

FF7 Advent children off screen reflection in the metal ball and the eye of the character

poor shading material and off screen reflection in the glasses

FF7 remake

I think FF7 remake looks better because it have enough polygons and good normal map quality and a much better materials even if the lighting is fake and some hack. And micro polygons and RT can't save poor materials for FF7 Advent Children. For sure if you take the PS1 version and add PBR and RT it will not looks good at all.

kinda polarizing subject and that's an interesting take. Iirc, @Silent_Buddha commented some time ago that sometimes artistic lighting can be more important than accurate lighting. Can't be both combined in those cases though?

RT is one of the very few techniques that remind me of the games of old, where resources where limited and some great imagination was necessary to make games run either at a decent framerate or using the most limited amount of resources. The optimisation of RT in recent years is a feat that reminds me of the greatest achievements in the industry.

Talking of old games, this is SM 64 ith native RT support:

 

[davis.anthony]

The problem with ray tracing is the user, they simply don't play a game enough with ray tracing turned on for their eyes and brain to remember how a particular game looks.

Playing a game with ray traced reflections on for 5 minutes isn't going to do anything but play that game for 50 minutes and you'll find you will notice the difference a lot more easily.

Case in point, I play Dying Light 2 with every ray traced effect turned on and have done from the first minute I got the game, after sinking around 6-7 hours in the game I tried it without ray tracing and in less than a minute I turned ray tracing back on.

Why? Because it looked completely different game, remember I had 6-7 hours invested in to the game with ray tracing on so my brain had developed a memory of what the game should look like based on those 6-7 hours, and when ray tracing was turned off it no longer looked like what my brain was expecting it to look like and it just looked 'wrong'

If you do try ray tracing, try it for longer than 5 minutes.

It's the same when comparing a 4k monitor to a 1440p one, try the 4k monitor for 5 minutes and you'll leave with the impression that it's 'not all that' when compared to 1440p.

But use the 4k monitor for a few hours so you get used to how it looks and suddenly 1440p doesn't look 'all that'

 

[Cyan]

You should try the Quake 1 RT mod...looks even better imo.

which one? There is a previous one featured by Digital Foundry, and there is a newer one created by the author of Doom 1 RT.

https://github.com/sultim-t/vkquake-rt/releases/tag/1.20.2-rt1.0.1

His video of Doom 1 running with his RT implementation is very garish to say the least_

 

[techuse]

Come on man. Look at those first 6 screenshots and then tell me that again with a straight face. I'll grant the last 4 are more subtle but still show a significant difference in overall visual quality.

I wasn't referring to your screens in particular, just a general trend when looking at the breadth of RT games. Some of your screens show a largish difference in certain aspects but it doesn't necessarily transform the visual experience. Also many of these are cherry picked cases to illustrate the largest difference possible. If you go and watch long form videos on youtube the differences are much less flattering. Just as an example, UE5 even without HWRT offers a visual experience that is actually transformative while being less demanding than Cyberpunk with all of these RT effects. You don't need to go finding specific areas to show off the difference, it's in your face 100% of the time. You don't need to go back and compare on and off screens, the second you see it, it just floors you.

 

[PSman1700]

Seems its indeed console gamers generally who dont really notice RT, so i agree with that notion made before here.
We need a more capable RT generation for it to be more felt i think.

it just floors you.

Even more whenever higher quality rt is at play. 2077 floors people by a combination of raster and rt aswell.

 

[Nesh]

BTW just to make my self clear. I do believe that RT can make a difference. Its just that I havent experienced a game that does it full justice , because the hardware isn't just there yet.
Especially on consoles.
@Cyan Doom and Quake of course are transformative with RT and it is of course due to d) replacing multiple decades old lighting solution, and they adding material attributes to objects. b) RT is literally replacing fully the lighting and it is applied globally because it can run without tanking performance.
But yeah they are great examples.

It would have been awesome if modern games had RT applied globally too and could run at great performance. But I think we arent there yet.

 

[chris1515]

BTW just to make my self clear. I do believe that RT can make a difference. Its just that I havent experienced a game that does it full justice , because the hardware isn't just there yet.
Especially on consoles.
@Cyan Doom and Quake of course are transformative with RT and it is of course due to d) replacing multiple decades old lighting solution, and they adding material attributes to objects. b) RT is literally replacing fully the lighting and it is applied globally because it can run without tanking performance.
But yeah they are great examples.

It would have been awesome if modern games had RT applied globally too and could run at great performance. But I think we arent there yet.

You don't need raytracing to have PBR. I think modern games are a better comparison because they have PBR with or without raytracing. I am curious to see too comparison between improved RT on another data structure in the future and triangle RT. I think software tracing will improve with solution not using screen space tracing for GI at least. Maybe in the future we will see hybrid solution software tracing for GI, virtual shadow maps for shadows and triangle RT for specular reflection

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I think some response to Nesh are unfair. In side-by-side comparison RT on/off, the difference is generally subtle in a lot of cases. So there's definitely a point to saying the impact is 'limited'. Contrast screen space reflections to no reflections whatsoever - the level of difference substantial. Likewise, SSAO versus none whatsoever - the difference is night and day. As tech improves, the level of gain diminishes to a degree where until you have a massive leap, the delta is hard to distinguish.

This. I didn't get around to playing Spider-Man Miles Morales on PS5 until mid-2021, but because I had briefly loaded it back at launch in 2020, the game's graphics mode defaulted to Performance (60fps non-RT) graphics mode, and I posted my embarrassment of playing about 8 hours in that mode in this post. As said in that post:

I have not played that many games with RT used for reflections so not having it doesn't stick out.

 

[davis.anthony]

This. I didn't get around to playing Spider-Man Miles Morales on PS5 until mid-2021, but because I had briefly loaded it back at launch in 2020, the game's graphics mode defaulted to Performance (60fps non-RT) graphics mode, and I posted my embarrassment of playing about 8 hours in that mode in this post. As said in that post:

But that's what I was talking about in my last post, people aren't playing with the effect on for long enough to really see what it's like.

If you play Spiderman for a few hours with RT on and then turn RT off the crappy SSR and cube maps stick out like a sore thumb.

The night time missions to me are terrible without RT on now.

 

[Nesh]

You don't need raytracing to have PBR. I think modern games are a better comparison because they have PBR with or without raytracing. I am curious to see too comparison between improved RT on another data structure in the future and triangle RT. I think software tracing will improve with solution not using screen space tracing for GI at least. Maybe in the future we will see hybrid solution software tracing for GI, virtual shadow maps for shadows and triangle RT for specular reflection

I didnt mean that you need RT for BPR. I meant that these games didnt have any BPR at all before in general. You dont need RT to have BPR, but you need BPR materials that can interact with light properly. For example Quake didnt have any materials for metal. But in the RT version they added metal materials for metallic surfaces.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

But that's what I was talking about in my last post, people aren't playing with the effect on for long enough to really see what it's like. If you play Spiderman for a few hours with RT on and then turn RT off the crappy SSR and cube maps stick out like a sore thumb.

I did play it with RT on when I first got it and switched to 60fps. I don't see any merit debating it because this is going to vary person to person. On your point, for me if it takes hours and hours of acclimation before you can notice the removal of an effect, it's fall into a subtle bracket.

 

[troyan]

I wasn't referring to your screens in particular, just a general trend when looking at the breadth of RT games. Some of your screens show a largish difference in certain aspects but it doesn't necessarily transform the visual experience. Also many of these are cherry picked cases to illustrate the largest difference possible. If you go and watch long form videos on youtube the differences are much less flattering. Just as an example, UE5 even without HWRT offers a visual experience that is actually transformative while being less demanding than Cyberpunk with all of these RT effects. You don't need to go finding specific areas to show off the difference, it's in your face 100% of the time. You don't need to go back and compare on and off screens, the second you see it, it just floors you.

No game is designed with Raytracing in mind. But there are games which are designed as an open world with day and night cycle.
Metro Exodus for example: https://imgsli.com/MTMzOTcz
Or here in Cyberpunk at day: https://imgsli.com/MTMzOTcy

And the Matrix City demo looks really bad at night:

 

[chris1515]

I didnt mean that you need RT for BPR. I meant that these games didnt have any BPR at all before in general. You dont need RT to have BPR, but you need BPR materials that can interact with light properly. For example Quake didnt have any materials for metal. But in the RT version they added metal materials for metallic surfaces.

Yes I understand but part of the wow factor of Quake RT doesn't come only from RT. Good material shading is different than HW-RT or software RT(Lumen or other stuff like the voxel based RT of Crytek Engine or the GI surfel of Frosbite...). Basically in offline rendering they add the whole package at the same time PBR + RT and many people think RT = PBR. It is not against you but I think it explain why people are not as impressed as with the arrival of RT in movies.

 

[davis.anthony]

I did play it with RT on when I first got it and switched to 60fps. I don't see any merit debating it because this is going to vary person to person. On your point, for me if it takes hours and hours of acclimation before you can notice the removal of an effect, it's fall into a subtle bracket.

It takes hours to notice because it takes that long to un-train your brain in to thinking SSR and cube maps and all their inaccuracies are physically correct when they're not.

Some people realise this quicker than others.

 

[trinibwoy]

It takes hours to notice because it takes that long to un-train your brain in to thinking SSR and cube maps and all their inaccuracies are physically correct when they're not.

Some people realise this quicker than others.

That’s true but it also works in reverse. Whenever I go back to an older game the low quality graphics are jarring but after a few hours I get over it. This works for anything less than 10 years old. Beyond that though all bets are off.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

It takes hours to notice because it takes that long to un-train your brain in to thinking SSR and cube maps and all their inaccuracies are physically correct when they're not.

Prior to RT, lighting, reflections and shadows never looked accurate, they've only ever been a poor approximation. But so much about what is represented in 3D is a poor approximation, one more or less aspect really don't make that big of a difference. I've see natural lighting every day of my life, but I'm able to suspend believe on things like this.

 

[davis.anthony]

Prior to RT, lighting, reflections and shadows never looked accurate, they've only ever been a poor approximation. But so much about what is represented in 3D is a poor approximation, one more or less aspect really don't make that big of a difference. I've see natural lighting every day of my life, but I'm able to suspend believe on things like this.

You also know what 60fps looks like but go watch a 48/60fps movie and tell me it doesn't look weird.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

You also know what 60fps looks like but go watch a 48/60fps movie and tell me it doesn't look weird.

I don't see the correlation but I saw the third Hobbit movie in 48fps, it was fine.
It didn't make me want to watch more films in 48fps, or avoid 48fps versions of films. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Yes I understand but part of the wow factor of Quake RT doesn't come only from RT. Good material shading is different than HW-RT or software RT(Lumen or other stuff like the voxel based RT of Crytek Engine or the GI surfel of Frosbite...). Basically in offline rendering they add the whole package at the same time PBR + RT and many people think RT = PBR. It is not against you but I think it explain why people are not as impressed as with the arrival of RT in movies.

What do you mean RT in movies? AFAIK movies have always been RT, taking ages to generate each frame.