Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2023]
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Rurouni
Veteran
After a long time not posting in this forum, I feel that I need to post again because I'm really annoyed by Alex keep saying or implying that the image quality in overdrive mode is better. No, it is not better in every situation. There are a lot of example in that video where Alex show a comparison between raster vs overdrive or raster vs psycho vs overdrive that if you say that the overdrive picture to my client and insist it look better because RAYTRACING, that client would either scold me or simply stop continuing using my service.
It is one thing to be excited with RT, but it is another thing to say RT is good because of RT. Realism is not the same as good. A good game with a full RT would mean that you need a lighting artist that understand when the scene probably need fake lighting or probably need to tone map it better, etc, and from what I've seen on the video, it can be a mixed bag where on some scene it can be really amazing and another scene is simply bad.
Basically what I'm trying to say is that realistic is not automatically equates to good. If you don't believe me, just present all those comparison shot in the video to the people and ask them which one looks the best and I'm sure not all overdrive pic will be picked. So please stop saying it looks good, it looks better, when in reality, it just looks more realistic. Sometimes it can ended up being awesome, sometimes it can ended up looking bad.
It is one thing to be excited with RT, but it is another thing to say RT is good because of RT. Realism is not the same as good. A good game with a full RT would mean that you need a lighting artist that understand when the scene probably need fake lighting or probably need to tone map it better, etc, and from what I've seen on the video, it can be a mixed bag where on some scene it can be really amazing and another scene is simply bad.
Basically what I'm trying to say is that realistic is not automatically equates to good. If you don't believe me, just present all those comparison shot in the video to the people and ask them which one looks the best and I'm sure not all overdrive pic will be picked. So please stop saying it looks good, it looks better, when in reality, it just looks more realistic. Sometimes it can ended up being awesome, sometimes it can ended up looking bad.
GhostofWar
Regular
It's amazing how you get to have your opinion... but Alex can't have his.
@Rurouni Lol. It looks massively better in 99% of the cases shown, even though I don't even particularly like how the game looks. There may be some edge cases where the lighting was designed without path tracing in mind, but so what. It's an open world game. Redoing the entire games art design can't be cheap.
Rurouni
Veteran
No, Alex can have his opinion, but he does have influence thus I held him to a higher standard. I hope he can have a more balanced opinion instead of something that is basically RT = AWESOME!It's amazing how you get to have your opinion... but Alex can't have his.
Technically better or realistic doesn't automatically translate to better visual.
Like for me, I would say that with the current overdrive implementation in CP, there is an obvious downside which is the actual lighting in the game is not designed for full RT/path tracing. There are places that obviously could benefited having more lighting/better positioned lighting, probably better tone mapping, etc.
Have you played it? From watching videos I agree the art design isn’t great but maybe I would like it more when actually playing. If I only saw videos of saints row 3/4 I wouldn’t like it either but actually playing those games it was a different story.
Realistic is always good. As long as the rules of lighting is adhered to, a lighting artist who needs to fake lighting using RT will create a scene that looks better than the same lighting artist who needs to fake a scene using rasterization.
There’s no stopping someone from using the same techniques. We fake lighting all the time in movies and shows, but they all still adhere to physics.
What you are taking note of is what happens when a game traditionally built with rasterized lighting is suddenly switched over to RT lighting and now the lighting artists need to go back and put in proper lighting again to create the effects they wanted. Unfortunately they lit the entire game with rasterized lighting, and it will take far too long to redo everything.
Your client wants unrealistic lighting?
Rurouni
Veteran
No it isn't. You can easily find an example of an artist using RT producing image not as good as those in game rasterized image. Basically the actual result is not determined by RT or raster but the actual end result. What RT facilitates is making something realistic much more achievable. And like I said before, realistic is not the same as good. Sometimes I need to break this realistic thing to achieve pleasing image. Like the easiest example would be to boost the shadow part using a filter during compositing or pushing the highlight down to reveal more detail which will be hard to do if you just rely on raw rendering.
Probably when they light the game using raster, they intentionally go for that look, maybe they don't let some part going to dark.
Yes. While obviously I use RT/path tracing, there are plenty of fakes that I do to please the client. Although in general realistic is preferable, but within that realism, often times client ask to tweak something that if you understand physics, it is obvious that it doesn't behave like that in real life. The easiest example is light/dark part like I mentioned before. Other thing would be like having the light bright enough to illuminate a room but doesn't want to over exposure object that are too close to the light. A lot of tricks being used to get to the final image that can satisfy the client (either in post or in the model/lighting setup). Ideally of course I should let physics do its thing and say to the client that "It's physics!", but unfortunately something that is art doesn't really care about how accurate you're trying to simulate reality.
I'm not sure how your examples would apply here to a video game where you can interact with everything, change the camera angle on demand, add your own light sources etc.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Man, it's unfortunate that only the PS5 is capable of this.
Don't get your panties in a bunch, it's a joke.
Regards,
SB
I don't get the indignation. Does Alex have it to state that it's his opinion when it's obviously the case? You're free to watch the video and disagree with him which you seem to have done.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
And this is a surprise, how? The vast majority of movies have unrealistic lighting. The same goes for things such as studio photographs, advertisements, TV shows, etc.
Something that looks real isn't the same as something that looks good or interesting in many cases.
That's different than light behaving realistically. RT allows light to behave realistically, which is good. What isn't good yet is the artists using the lighting artistically as has been done in games up until they started using RT.
It's almost like the lighting artists suddenly forgot that realistic lighting is generally dull and uninteresting when attempting to tell a story or set a mood or showcase people having a dialog.
He isn't saying that RT and more believable light behavior is bad. He's saying that how RT lighting is being used is bad. It's the same thing some of us have been saying for a while now. You can even look back at my posts on Metro Exodus: EE where I praise the improved lighting while at the same time saying it looks worse than the non-EE lighting purely due to it not having the same artistic touches applied to it.
Regards,
SB
When I played Portal RTX I was still skeptical about path tracing because the game is very tiny and the performance a bit too slow. That's over now. After experiencing this I will have trouble returning to non-path tracing games. In the Phantom Liberty expansion pathtracing will look brilliant as well.
In interactive scenes we've never been closer to modern pre-rendered game trailers than we are now. What a big leap towards that direction in just a few years.
In interactive scenes we've never been closer to modern pre-rendered game trailers than we are now. What a big leap towards that direction in just a few years.
This is more related to how the light sources are placed. The film is not interactive and therefore you can do more unrealistic things that still look good. Light up the character more with reflectors or place the moon always behind characters etc. In an interactive game this would look weird. Still I find that in movies that have a lot of CGI and use realistic lighting like Dune look better than Lord of the Rings etc.
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Rurouni
Veteran
In this CP case, the biggest cause of my annoyance from that video is the fact that it says RT is better and then showed a comparison image where the RT image is too dark. The artist intention is probably closer to the raster or psycho and not RT, thus I don't think you can say that the RT is better looking when it is probably not the intention. So at the very least probably they can do better tone mapping (assuming they don't want to add/remove their lighting objects). In general, better tone mapping probably can go a long way before trying to do fake stuff.
And of course, I don't expect a game that is basically retrofitted with RT can suddenly took account of all the possible lighting situation in the game and I never ask for that. What I'm asking is not simply saying RT looking good because it is RT because again, even in the video, there are instances that overdrive RT looked the worst even though it is realistic. For parts that look better, yes, you can say that it is better. But for parts that actually look worse, even if it is realistic, it still look worse. I hope DF that obviously have a lot of influence in this gaming space can actually spot this kind of thing where realistic is not the same as good thus we can actually have RT that looks good in every/the majority of situation. But right now, DF stance feels like RT = GOOD!
I'm not saying RT is bad. RT is just a tool to achieve the result that the artist want, and of course with RT you can achieve the realism previously very difficult using other tech. But the result itself doesn't automatically becomes good just because it is using RT.
In the video path tracing looked better everywhere. The developers didn't just copy it in but made other adjustments as well. They announced that they will make even more refinements.
Path tracing also does a better job of showing where developers make mistakes when placing light sources.
Path tracing also does a better job of showing where developers make mistakes when placing light sources.
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for sure, I think artistic design and lighting needs a pass now that it's switched over to RT.
I don't necessarily agree that things being too dark means it looks bad however. The biggest difference between RT and Not RT will come down to one being static and one being dynamic.
Yes in screenshots, or stills, nothing is changing, nothing is dynamic, so we can appreciate artist vision on lighting. I think when thing become dynamic, then we can appreciate artist detail, and we can appreciate lighting direction.
For the areas that are too dark, yes, it's hard to see, but perjhaps when you get close, they light a cigarette lighting up the surrounding pillars they are around. Stuff like that, that makes it good.
Having that contrast is something different, and as these new technologies come into play, artist will be able to play with light in more ways than just setting the mood. Now they can literally have us have gun fights in complete darkness where the gun flares are giving us vision of where things are. Blowing holes through walls of a dark room for light to peek in and light the room dynamically.
When you can't change dark to bright and bright to dark, not setting these conditions could seem bad. But if you can let players or dynamically alter these conditions while players are playing, it goes from bad, to awesome. And I think that aspect is lost, if you don't consider the dynamic nature of light as an interactive tool in our interactive medium.
So while I fully agree with your point of view, I'm still going to agree with DF here and say RT = Good!
We don’t know that. In a recent video with CP devs they mentioned how difficult it is to get a desired result when using a mish mash of different raster lighting methods that don’t share data. Based on that alone you can assume the RT result is closer to the artist’s vision.
Which scene looked worse to you?
I remember the ME:EE discussion. FWIW I completely disagreed with your opinion there. To me the RT version looked better aesthetically. (And of course it was strictly better from a physical correctness point of view as well.) But that's a subjective thing, and your opinion is just as valid as mine.
I think we all agree that changing the lighting model *ideally* needs an artist do-over. And from the Cyberpunk video it does appear that they did some "light-touch" nips and tucks. But a complete do-over is probably too expensive. Still, from the videos at least, it looks like this specific game looks GREAT most of the time even without such a do-over. I am sure there will be exceptions where it looks worse. Overall, based on the video and @Dictator's commentary it seems to be an overwhelming win. So I don't understand all the outrage at the enthusiasm being expressed.
Whatever the lighting model is, artists will always need to add nips and tucks to get the lighting to match a creative vision. The question is, what's a better baseline to start from? A broken-ass system of hackery that makes everything glow-in-the-dark, or a physically correct RT baseline? And that's my problem with arguments that say "RT lighting needs artist work". Yes, it's true. But it's implicitly drawing a false equivalence (perhaps unintentionally) between a broken rasterized baseline and a ridiculously superior RT baseline.
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