Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2022]

[Dictator]

Maybe Techland will do a gdc about their implementation here or some article down the line. I started playing the game an hour ago, i reached a few of the areas you have in the video. I just cant escape the feeling that it just doesnt look as it should. Similar scenes that we can find in Metro look completely different and even what your real life experience would tell you something should look, is too dark in here. It does look good with RT, as a game, but im sure they had to make a lot of concessions with it. I think this is the first game thats heavier a bit to run than Cyberpunk at Psycho RT

The issue as I see it is purely post-processing. Dying Light 2 as a game does not have eye adaptation really if you noticed - it is keeping the same level of darkness regardless of how long you are immersed in that dark area. That would heavily effect the appearance of indirect lighting, subjectively.

For example in this scene I just posted - in Metro Exodus the sky and area outside here would blowout into white like you see here:

 

[pjbliverpool]

The issue as I see it is purely post-processing. Dying Light 2 as a game does not have eye adaptation really if you noticed - it is keeping the same level of darkness regardless of how long you are immersed in that dark area. That would heavily effect the appearance of indirect lighting, subjectively.

For example in this scene I just posted - in Metro Exodus the sky and area outside here would blowout into white like you see here:

That's what I was thinking in terms of this image:

Yes it looks wrong that it's so dark on a sunny day but this is because you can't simulate (at least not very well) where the eyes are focused in a scene like this.

If in fact your eyes were focused on the bright sky then the wall likely would appear very dark in your peripheral vision.

VR should be able to handle this kind of thing much better, especially with eye tracking.

 

[Scott_Arm]

True is defenitly better now but still off, imo something more here than just gammma settings edit: maybe as Scott_Arm suggested its hdr proboem with rt, option to see this scene in sdr ?

It's not "HDR" in the sense of tonemapping to HDR. The problem is probably taking a physically based rendered game world and then trying to display it on the limited colour gamut of an SDR screen. Especially when you don't have infinite light bounces that would probably add more light to those regions. But the basic problem is making sure the dark regions have visibility without clipping any areas of the screen that are bright, and preventing clipping in the bright areas without crushing the areas that are dark. Ultimately I'd agree that the ray tracing looks much better than the screen-space effects. The areas are probably too dark, but they're still more consistent with reality than having them overly bright and lacking in shadow.

 

[snc]

ps5 high settings 1800p 30
xox/ps4pro medium settings 1080p 30 (xox no fps drops in tested sequences)
ps4/xone low settings 864p 30

 

[DavidGraham]

The issue as I see it is purely post-processing.

Multi bounce GI is easily present in the game, looking at flash light GI is an evidence enough of that.

Regarding the omission of Flash Light shadows, I remember this comparison shot posted by NVIDIA showing clearly GI and shadows working in tandem, so what happened?
https://images.nvidia.com/geforce-c...ing-interactive-comparison-001-on-vs-off.html

 

[Riddlewire]

I think that's the lowest resolution of any game on Xbox One X.
Aside from games released before it launched that never got a patch.
I agree with Oliver. Considering the modest visuals, the One X seems very underutilized.

 

[eastmen]

last gen consoles are super low res , even the one x is only 1920x1080p and it maintains a solid 30fps which the ps4 pro can't claim apparently. Load time is also really high about double next gen loads.

I really wonder how the series s compares to these guys.

 

[trinibwoy]

Multi bounce GI is easily present in the game, looking at flash light GI is an evidence enough of that.

Regarding the omission of Flash Light shadows, I remember this comparison shot posted by NVIDIA showing clearly GI and shadows working in tandem, so what happened?
https://images.nvidia.com/geforce-c...ing-interactive-comparison-001-on-vs-off.html

No shadows for the flashlight is ridiculous.

 

[London Geezer]

No shadows for the flashlight is ridiculous.

That’s a weird one. Pretty sure they’ll patch it in.

 

[zed]

Multi bounce GI is easily present in the game, looking at flash light GI is an evidence enough of that.

Regarding the omission of Flash Light shadows, I remember this comparison shot posted by NVIDIA showing clearly GI and shadows working in tandem, so what happened?
https://images.nvidia.com/geforce-c...ing-interactive-comparison-001-on-vs-off.html

that doesnt even make sense
wheres the flashlight coming from, to the left of the camera guy?
when they add GI from the light some of the shadows get darker (checked in photoshop to see it wasnt an optical illusion)

I think I know how you can save on your energy bills, forget about investing in more lights, just shine your existing light onto a red motor, it will light your room up a treat. OK this is CGI and is not meant to be realistic, everythings turned up to 1, but hey as long as it looks good, then thats all that matters, in fact often realism looks bad

 

[cwjs]

when they add GI from the light some of the shadows get darker (checked in photoshop to see it wasnt an optical illusion)

It's not an optical illusion, but I'd make a solid guess it is an illusion -- the actual luminance value in the scene is probably the same or higher, but due to the changes to the rest of the image the tonemapper/eye adjustment/whatever other factors control color balance on the screen are throwing the shadows darker. Not unexpected or necessarily bad, but will deviate from the non-RT version.

It's frustrating (to me) that for years we're going to see games with heavy rt lighting options and also traditional lighting to run on consoles. There's no way that a game lit with both in mind (or, worse, two lighting setups with half the time spent on each) will ever look as good as a game where artists were able to focus on making one thing great.

 

[PSman1700]

Atleast theres an excuse for a mid-gen premium console.

 

[Seanspeed]

It's not an optical illusion, but I'd make a solid guess it is an illusion -- the actual luminance value in the scene is probably the same or higher, but due to the changes to the rest of the image the tonemapper/eye adjustment/whatever other factors control color balance on the screen are throwing the shadows darker. Not unexpected or necessarily bad, but will deviate from the non-RT version.

It's frustrating (to me) that for years we're going to see games with heavy rt lighting options and also traditional lighting to run on consoles. There's no way that a game lit with both in mind (or, worse, two lighting setups with half the time spent on each) will ever look as good as a game where artists were able to focus on making one thing great.

We'll get games with just ray tracing for lighting, I'm pretty sure.

Developers will give up necessitating that everything run at 60fps eventually. The sooner the better, in my opinion. Let consoles push graphics as much as possible, while letting PC users run all this same stuff at higher framerates.

There's still probably decent room for improvement in terms of using ray tracing more effectively and efficiently on the consoles, too. And combined with more effective reconstruction methods, I think we could totally see games running at 1600p+ reconstructed at 30fps with ray tracing as default on PS5/XSX, looking pretty spectacular. Series S is a problem, but you can just make it look terrible with many reduced settings, at like 1080p reconstructed with a 30fps target(hitting it is another question). Anybody buying a Series S expecting great technical experience over the course of the generation really didn't understand what they were buying.

 

[zed]

the actual luminance value in the scene is probably the same or higher, but due to the changes to the rest of the image the tonemapper/eye adjustment/whatever other factors control color balance on the screen are throwing the shadows darker.

Yeah you would think so, cause how can you add light to a scene and parts become darker, light adds (though not in all engine renderers)
Though dictator said in a few posts before there is no brightness adjustments, eye adjustments.

 

[Nesh]

Yeah you would think so, cause how can you add light to a scene and parts become darker, light adds (though not in all engine renderers)
Though dictator said in a few posts before there is no brightness adjustments, eye adjustments.

I dont think that should be an "excuse".
Our eyes dims or brightens areas. It doesnt mean its how things really look.
If you get out at a very bright day in the summer and then enter your house, for a few seconds everything will look too dark. But it doesnt mean your house was THAT dark. Your eyes adjust. Then you go then outside and everything is extremely bright. Doesnt mean it is THAT bright.
The dark areas shouldnt have been almost picth black in the game. You sould have been able to see clearer whats there.

 

[trinibwoy]

It's frustrating (to me) that for years we're going to see games with heavy rt lighting options and also traditional lighting to run on consoles. There's no way that a game lit with both in mind (or, worse, two lighting setups with half the time spent on each) will ever look as good as a game where artists were able to focus on making one thing great.

In this case it doesn’t appear the devs invested much into the non-RT lighting path. You get the standard SSAO and cube maps and SSR which shouldn’t be expensive to implement at this point. No sign of baked GI. DF mentioned voxel GI but I don’t see it. The lighting looks extremely flat like it’s applying a fixed ambient term.

It’s really weird that the ambient light color in outdoor scenes with RT on is bluish while with RT off there’s a yellow hue. Why is that? You would think both GI solutions are querying the same assets, skybox etc.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Next dying light 2 pc patch includes dlss improvements, and subsequent patch will unlock more video settings.

 

[OlegSH]

It’s really weird that the ambient light color in outdoor scenes with RT on is bluish while with RT off there’s a yellow hue. Why is that? You would think both GI solutions are querying the same assets, skybox etc.

It seems there is a screen space GI in the game. It samples the onscreen stuff which is mostly ground and buildings that have brown colors, hence the yellow tint (which is also view dependend due to the screen space).
Regarding RT GI, most of rays will fly from ground towards the blue skybox I can imagine hence the blue hue. The blue hue looks way more correct in open areas under the sky btw.
The hue with RT changes depending on environment. it becomes warm and brown in forest because of the sky being blocked by trees.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

 

[snc]

Agree that dl2 would benefit from using medium setting and higher ress(ideally dynamic) vs 1080p high setting