DavidGraham
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Path Tracing overrides Psycho RT, so it won't make a difference.
Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2023]
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Subtlesnake
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Is the GPU at 100% utilization at 1080p? If not, you're probably CPU limited.
davis.anthony
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Given all the talk about CP2077 I feel this video is best suited for in here as it can add to the discussion.
But yea, brutal performance.
But yea, brutal performance.
Yeah, I figured this much.
To the surprise of absolutely no one. This makes me excited for the future. If we can get such good performance for Cyberpunk, path tracing will be viable sooner than I thought. The 4090 is a monster.
Inuhanyou
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Consoles and PCs have yet to show their true power this generation! It's all a matter of engines and software being tailored to more traditional rendering methods. Work smarter not harder right?
Frame generation and smart resolution upscaling are two good solutions to help current hw push beyond it's limitations. And another example of this is UE5, using Nanite to allow hardware to push geometric detail far beyond what should be possible due to smart culling, on top of Lumen, a simulated form of path tracing.
It's clear to me that rather than PCs being held back by console , both console and PC are being held back by slow adoption of modern methods of rendering by developers. In part due to cross gen
Microsoft and Sony need to stop worry about hardware leaks and just get prototypes of their new consoles into the hands of as many people as possible and as early as possible so they can get the software ball rolling. Next gen it'll probably be even worse and you don't have software that fully leverages the new hardware until year five lol.
Sony had devkits out very soon before the release, like 2 years before I think. And we have seen a couple cases of devs properly using the hardware when doing an exclusive game.
I agree with @Inuhanyou here about cross-gen (PC or/and PS4) development being the main reason about not properly using newest hardware. But those are economic reasons and not for the fun of liking to use outdated hardware.
Inuhanyou
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It's also the case that many engines are just not tailor made for future facing technologies yet as far as we know like how UE5 is leading the pack. I don't know if this is something they are working on or not but things like metahuman, virtual texturing and Nanite and lumen goes a long way.
We know certain engines have one or two components of the future rendering toolset(metro engine has RT GI, decimal has metahuman support etc) but as far as know none have an all compassing suite of technology that will be key to taking advantage of future hw and optimizing development work flows.
Games can still look good with traditional rendering. Frostbite still looks good with dead space remake. Re4 remake looks good with the engine. Tlou part 1 still looks great on the tlou2 engine.
But it's not forward facing. Future facing. By the time devs are using these engines commonly they are already outdated by new tech now. It's really strange situation
Does anyone agree?
We know certain engines have one or two components of the future rendering toolset(metro engine has RT GI, decimal has metahuman support etc) but as far as know none have an all compassing suite of technology that will be key to taking advantage of future hw and optimizing development work flows.
Games can still look good with traditional rendering. Frostbite still looks good with dead space remake. Re4 remake looks good with the engine. Tlou part 1 still looks great on the tlou2 engine.
But it's not forward facing. Future facing. By the time devs are using these engines commonly they are already outdated by new tech now. It's really strange situation
Does anyone agree?
I'd still like to see what these scenes look like with full path-tracing as a reference to get an idea of what's either missing or being under-sampled. Hard to get an idea from videos like these as they seem intentionally staged for delivering beauty shots rather than to critique it.
A lot of engines haven't played their next gen cards yet. 4A, Decima, Snowdrop, Anvil, Frostbite, Dunia, IdTech. There's still hope.
Inuhanyou
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Do you think so?
It will remain to be seen just how future facing path-tracing actually can be. I see no reason to be confident that a future PS6 will eclipse the 4090, for example. If consoles of the future still end up in the no man's land where RT/PT is expensive enough to make raster/RT hybrid solutions attractive then I'm not sure how future facing PT actually is. Also consider the amount of temporal artifacts shown in the "path-traced" games may make these algorithms not very appropriate for any game that has a lot of fast moving objects. You don't have time to see shadow samples accumulate and denoise in a game like Forza or Gran Turismo where the shadow is there and gone in a handful of frames.
You dont think consoles released in like 2028 will beat a GPU released in 2022?
It's like being surprised that the PS5 and especially XSX were able to beat a 980Ti....
Either way, path tracing is always going to be super expensive. The problem it will always have is that you can save likely 10+ ms of your framebudget by not doing so, and using a 'still very nice looking' alternative RTGI option, and just compromising a bit on other factors like shadows and reflections and whatnot as well.
I see no reason to be confident, no. The rules of the past no longer apply. How many process nodes beyond the 4090's 4nm do you think a PS6 will have? Then think in terms of transistor count, die area, VRAM (or effective VRAM), etc for a $400-500 PS6.
Compute power whether brute or via various efficiency is generally exponential.
By 2028 there will be up to 8XXX. For sure by that time the middle performance hardware will behave at a performance level equivalent to 4090 or greater.
I’m expecting good things from 4A and IdTech. The others are hit or miss.
Inuhanyou
Veteran
I am not really talking just about path tracing. But good enough software global illumination techniques like lumen other devs may come up with for their engines. As you say path tracing is very hard on the hw. There will have to be optimization towards how raytracing is used to actually make it viable
A $400 PS6 is out of the question. It'll be $500-600.
Heh Steve actually leans heavily into the exact same take as Rurouni did here earlier: Path tracing is not necessarily always better, because there's an existing artist vision and more realistic lighting can have unintentional effects.
Which is both true and also not at all what is interesting about seeing path tracing in action in real games, as experimental as that is still. I feel that is just stating the obvious.
Also, I laughed out loud when Steve said people expect them to write "glowing and flowery adjectives and praise and talking about how beautiful it is or something - it's not really our style". I mean, who out there has seen a Gamers Nexus video before and expects anything other than a heap of sarcasm about how stupid and miserable everyone and everything is, while Steve smirks smugly and pushes merch?
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