Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2023]

[troyan]

I like how this guy is claiming that the Overdrive mode goes against an artist vision when it has been the artist who put this Overdrive mode in the game.

Here is a simple example how wrong this guy is: https://imgsli.com/MTY4ODk4
The artist vision was not a bright corridor otherwise he wouldnt have put a pipe directly in front of the two lights.

 

[Inuhanyou]

I like how this guy is claiming that the Overdrive mode goes against an artist vision when it has been the artist who put this Overdrive mode in the game.

I think what he means is that cyberpunk from the start was not made for path traced global illumination in mind. So these assets are clearly not optimized right from the outset. In addition, it's pretty obvious that not everything in the game is path traced in this update to begin with, just more than the previous RT mode

 

[trinibwoy]

Really weird that glass isn’t path traced. The blurry glass assets seem out of place.

 

[troyan]

I think what he means is that cyberpunk from the start was not made for path traced global illumination in mind. So these assets are clearly not optimized right from the outset. In addition, it's pretty obvious that not everything in the game is path traced in this update to begin with, just more than the previous RT mode

Cyberpunk was released with Ray-Traced Diffuse Illumination for these lights:

Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City is filled with neon signs, advertisements, and other artificial light sources. With ray tracing, the light from these sources accurately illuminates surrounding detail, further enhancing image quality and immersion, and making Night City an even more vibrant locale.

Additionally, Cyberpunk 2077 utilizes diffuse illumination tech to enhance lighting from the sky dome, enabling light scattered from the atmosphere to realistically illuminate surfaces, and to be accurately occluded by buildings and objects, creating a more natural look that further improves immersion and image quality.

There has always been the vision to illuminate every light source in the game. Here is an example from PT, RT Psycho and Rasterizing:

Imgsli

imgsli.com

 

[Inuhanyou]

Cyberpunk was released with Ray-Traced Diffuse Illumination for these lights:


There has always been the vision to illuminate every light source in the game. Here is an example from PT, RT Psycho and Rasterizing:

Imgsli

imgsli.com

While true, it doesn't take away from the idea that this game was in development many years ago. Long before the artists working on the game would ever know how path tracing could be used fully for the games environmental assets.

 

[troyan]

Do you use the same argument for the TLoU remake, too? There was no PS5 10 years ago. So is the PS5 version untrue to the orginal version?

 

[Inuhanyou]

Do you use the same argument for the TLoU remake, too? There was no PS5 10 years ago. So is the PS5 version untrue to the orginal version?

Tlou isn't using RT at all

I get what your trying to say but I have some disagreement.

Tlou remake was rebuilt from scratch graphically so there is no way any of the assets could be out of place, as if they were pushing assets from the ps5 game into the old engine. This path traced global illumination system is being placed on top of a traditionally rasterized game so it's different.

I should make it clear that I am not apart of any argument about artistic vision being preserved between anyone here, I don't care about cyberpunks artistic vision. I just chimed in because I can see the argument where some areas where the visuals depending on the environment or scene may or may not be as athletically pleasing despite the clear technical upgrade to the lighting.

 

[jlippo]

Really weird that glass isn’t path traced. The blurry glass assets seem out of place.

I wonder if not pathtracing particles had something to do with it.
If you would do refraction you would lose every particle behind glass.

Fully first hit rasterization would most likely be quite nice though..

 

[Dictator]

I wonder if not pathtracing particles had something to do with it.
If you would do refraction you would lose every particle behind glass.

Fully first hit rasterization would most likely be quite nice though..

Really good question - they were adamant when I talked to them that it is currently opaque only due to the transparency being "unsolved" in their current scheme. I think they are working on it and other things in the future, hence why they kept stressing that it is a WIP preview that is releasing and not the final product (Steve mentioned this too in his video for Gamer's Nexus).

 

[dobwal]

While true, it doesn't take away from the idea that this game was in development many years ago. Long before the artists working on the game would ever know how path tracing could be used fully for the games environmental assets.

It wouldn’t stop them from using offline pathtracing to design and prep their assets for real-time pathtracing.

They wouldn’t have to know. Just a willingness to to bet on a feature in which gpu manufacturers and api providers were already heavily invested.

 

[Dictator]

It wouldn’t stop them from using offline pathtracing to design and prep their assets for real-time pathtracing.

They wouldn’t have to know. Just a willingness to to bet on a feature in which gpu manufacturers and api providers were already heavily invested.

CDPR did have an internal Reference path tracer! I believe thry showed it off on a Slide or two of the GTC presentation on the Games lighting
Edit:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/on-demand/session/gtcspring21-e32781/

Here at 34:25 or so and then they Show Images from the Reference Mode path tracer

 

[Inuhanyou]

So Alex, are you saying cyberpunk is what we should fully expect of games in the path traced future? Like with games fully optimized for a path traced development pipeline? Or should we expect more impressive things as the research and development into it increases? On the face of things it sounds like it would be the latter but I am no expert clearly

 

[Dictator]

So Alex, are you saying cyberpunk is what we should fully expect of games in the path traced future? Like with games fully optimized for a path traced development pipeline? Or should we expect more impressive things as the research and development into it increases? On the face of things it sounds like it would be the latter but I am no expert clearly

IDK honestly.

The only thing I think it currently represents is a High-end mode Nvidia will want to advertise for developers to put into their Games, for example UE5 ones. Where the UE5 NV branch has a similar "Overdrive" (all lighting is Ray traced) Set Up.

So the theoretical game ships with Lumen + Raster lights but then Ultra High end PCs can also Turn on RTX-DI and a different and Higher quality RTGI. I think that is NVs end game here with Cyberpunk being the First example.

 

[Seanspeed]

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.

Most likely such a machine will be built on a tiled package, with multiple small, dense chiplets for the compute parts, adding up to a lot of power without any extreme cost, and likely with huge amounts of cache stacked underneath. Combine that with like 5+ years of architectural advancements in terms of general capabilities and features, and yes, I think they will definitely figure out how to get >4090 performance, and it wont even be much of a question when we compare to what desktop hardware of the time will be capable of, giving us a good clue as to what a theoretical console could do.

RAM/VRAM will certainly be tricky, whatever the case. Faster SSD's will only do so much for memory efficiency, and I think we may have to deal with another relatively small jump to maybe just 32GB of RAM. Maybe they'll figure something out with like ReRAM or something by then though, I dunno.

Also, I expect new gen console pricing to jump to ~$600. Not necessarily because of the hardware extremes, but just general pricing increases over time.

 

[SmooTh]

 

[Henry swagger]

And this may or may not have to do anything with pixel fillarte. Please stop with that! There is no point arguing with math

PS5 Pixel Rate 142.9 GPixel/s
XSX Pixel Rate 116.8 GPixel/s

AMD Playstation 5 GPU Specs | TechPowerUp GPU Database
AMD Xbox Series X GPU Specs | TechPowerUp GPU Database

So the initial claim "PS5 is able to push more pixels" is valid and math checks.

Ps5 is weaker than the series x .thats facts and math

 

[trinibwoy]

I don’t remember a case where the next generation x70 doesn’t convincingly beat the previous x80 card. Pricing aside it looks like the 4070 falls short of that trend.

 

[davis.anthony]

So with the RTX4070 being around the performance level of a 10GB RTX3080 it would put the 4060ti at the same level as a 3070ti at best.

What a poor uplift in the mid-range segment.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I don’t remember a case where the next generation x70 doesn’t convincingly beat the previous x80 card. Pricing aside it looks like the 4070 falls short of that trend.

Yeah, it's about 10% faster than a 3070 (3% faster than the Ti), about the same as the 6800 that I just got and the 3080 is about 18% faster than it according to TPU. Rather disappointing. I was somewhat wondering if I would be disappointed in the 6800 that I got, but considering I got it for under 500 USD new and it has 4 GB more memory, I'm actually even happier with the purchase now that the 4070 is out.

Oh and it has a 20% higher MSRP than the 3070. So 10% faster for 20% more cost. That is absolutely hugely disappointing, IMO. Of course, it does have 12 vs 8 GB of memory so that will help with newer games, but still...

Regards,
SB

 

[davis.anthony]

Yeah, it's about 10% faster than a 3070 (3% faster than the Ti), about the same as the 6800 that I just got and the 3080 is about 18% faster than it according to TPU. Rather disappointing. I was somewhat wondering if I would be disappointed in the 6800 that I got, but considering I got it for under 500 USD new and it has 4 GB more memory, I'm actually even happier with the purchase now that the 4070 is out.

Oh and it has a 20% higher MSRP than the 3070. So 10% faster for 20% more cost. That is absolutely hugely disappointing, IMO. Of course, it does have 12 vs 8 GB of memory so that will help with newer games, but still...

Regards,
SB

I've read the TPU review and on the 'relative performance' section no where does it conclude the 3080 is anywhere close to being 18% faster.

They're as tied as two GPU's can be.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Founders Edition Review

NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4070 launches today. In this review we're taking a look at the Founders Edition, which sells at the baseline MSRP of $600. NVIDIA's new FE is a beauty, and its dual-slot design is compact enough to fit into all cases. In terms of performance, the card can match RTX 3080...

www.techpowerup.com

Averaged over the 25 games in our test suite, at 1440p resolution, the new RTX 4070 is able to beat last generation's RTX 3080 by a wafer-thin margin. This puts the card 26% ahead of the GeForce RTX 3070

Compared to AMD's offerings, the RTX 4070 matches the Radeon RX 6800 XT almost exactly, and is 6% behind the RX 6900 XT.