Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2024]

[iroboto]

VRS is one of those performance enhancing features that's gained no traction which is crazy.

Yea. I mean. If you are going full compute shader route with geometry and everything, compute based VRS will make sense. If you go 3D pipeline for everything you want mesh shaders, then VRS will make sense (or you roll your MSAA based solution).

To fix these legacy engines will take a long time to retool for all the newest features released. It’s not something I expect to happen soon, it’s unfortunate that PS5 is missing some of these features that could streamlined adoption. But I suspect we will see more adoption by the end of the generation

 

[techuse]

Are the swarms in Space Marine 2 just for background visual detail? I have not seen footage where hundreds of enemies are in the player space like in World War Z.

 

[Liandry]

Even back in those days raw FLOPS was a meaningless number.

Yes, but still if you compare PS4 Xbox One to top PCs in 2013 difference was very big. Some 2-3 times.

Neither was the Xbox 360? At least not with the full DX11 (or DX10) feature sets. Xenos did go further towards the full DX10 spec than the X1900XTX (including unified shaders) but that was it's single advantage over the PC GPU IMO. And in the real world it didn't budge the needle as to which was the more effective GPU.

I mean those old GPUs couldn't run DX11 games, consoles could. I remember developer from Crytek told in one interview what Crysis 3 will run only on DX11 GPUs but also will run on PS3 and Xbox 360. And consoles will render some of DX11 effects in Crysis 3.

I think the first DX10 only game didn't release until over 5 years after the 360 and XTX launched and you're only talking a very small hand full of games in that category (including DX11) during the 360's entire lifespan. How does that compare to the many thousands of games that the XTX would have played better over the same period?

Of course top GPUs of 2006-2007 were better, I try to tell what PS3 and Xbox 360 was also very good, and run almost all effects, (some later in their lifecycle, like bokeh DOF, parallax mapping), and were in a lot better position in terms of performance that PS4 and Xbox One. Games on PS4 and Xbox One looked closer to PC settings because game development become very expensive, and developers just don't use all PC power for a long time. I think 10+ TF GPU fur sure can render a lot more polygons and a lot more complex effects that PS4 and Xbox One GPUs. Instead they render games at higher fps (30 on PS4 and Xbox One vs 120-200 on PC) and higher resolution (1080p on PS4 and Xbox One and up to 8k on PC). Game assets to use full potential of PC with 10+ TF is to expensive, and this is one of the reasons why we are now in 4th years of 9th gen and still there is not tons of 9th gen games with super duper graphics like it was on PS2, PS3 and even almost same on PS4. IMO of course.

 

[tuna]

DF claimed that Astro Bot isn't using any Ray-tracing, so how do they make the reflections on the back of Astro Bot?

 

[Charlietus]

DF claimed that Astro Bot isn't using any Ray-tracing, so how do they make the reflections on the back of Astro Bot?

Maybe realtime cube maps that update based on position? I'm still waiting for the game to arrive, I can't wait to see it for myself

 

[Globalisateur]

DF claimed that Astro Bot isn't using any Ray-tracing, so how do they make the reflections on the back of Astro Bot?

Mario 64 displayed immaculate reflections of mario on all mirrors... I think devs could still find ways to do reflections without RT nowadays.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Mirrors have always been easy!

 

[Liandry]

Mario 64 displayed immaculate reflections of mario on all mirrors... I think devs could still find ways to do reflections without RT nowadays.

This is one of the reasons I like PS2. In many games there are lot of reflections on floor, in windows, in mirrors and in water, and sometimes water is with 3D waves. Onimusha 3 is one of great examples. Better when there are reflections in game, even pixelated in some games, than no reflections at all, especially in games where all other stuff in on top level. Looks weird.

 

[Globalisateur]

This is one of the reasons I like PS2. In many games there are lot of reflections on floor, in windows, in mirrors and in water, and sometimes water is with 3D waves. Onimusha 3 is one of great examples. Better when there are reflections in game, even pixelated in some games, than no reflections at all, especially in games where all other stuff in on top level. Looks weird.

This is exactly my main problem in those UE5 games using software RT on consoles. For instance Fortnite has decent reflections of environments on water but completely lack any kind of reflections of the main character on mirrors-like surfaces! Even UE4 display some kind of crude reflections of the main character on those surfaces on PS4!

And apparently mirrors are easy? Certainly not for UE5 and the discrepancy in those games is striking to me. Also the use of those reflections that completely disappear once you move the camera down... Ugh. Please just don't use those! It's terrible.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That's in interesting note, and how horrifically imperfect current RTRT is because it's not fast enough. Rasterising a player model in a mirror is nothing to modern hardware, but tracing a mirror-like reflections requires loads of rays from a limited budget. Whereas tracing GI and low fidelity environment reflections, you can get away with fewer rays and denoise. So to have the best looking games, you need another layer of effect rendering. Has anything actually been made easier for artists?

 

[davis.anthony]

I wonder if something like Mesh Shader or Nanite can help with mirrors.

Like being used actually rendering the scene behind the 'mirror' like games used to do but using their extreme culling abilities to reduce performance cost while keeping a good level of quality.

I wonder what the frame time cost is actually rendering reflections the old school way vs using ray tracing.

Didn't the Hitman games on PS4/Xbone have some crazy planar reflections on glass?

 

[Globalisateur]

That's in interesting note, and how horrifically imperfect current RTRT is because it's not fast enough. Rasterising a player model in a mirror is nothing to modern hardware, but tracing a mirror-like reflections requires loads of rays from a limited budget. Whereas tracing GI and low fidelity environment reflections, you can get away with fewer rays and denoise. So to have the best looking games, you need another layer of effect rendering. Has anything actually been made easier for artists?

I do understand that. But lately I see glaring basic regressions in those UE5 games on consoles (those bad reflections and the use of FSR2 performance instead of the better TAAU which can be used in a higher quality mode comparatively).

UE4 is still a more balanced engine on console and should stil be the main engine used. I am sure UE5 will be great for PS6 though. Once they use proper Hardware RT and AI upscaling (PSSR ported to UE5 Maybe?).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I do understand that. But lately I see glaring basic regressions in those UE5 games on consoles (those bad reflections and the use of FSR2 performance instead of the better TAAU which can be used in a higher quality mode comparatively).

I don't think they should be called regressions. They are different compromises. UE5 looking its best in those photorealistic cases is a huge improvement over previous generations.

Putting it another way, you could claim PS3 and PS4 were a huge regression on PS2 because they lacked its particle drawing power. They sacrificed effects for other rendering strengths.

 

[davis.anthony]

It will be interesting if PSSR will get adapted to ultimately do what Ray Reconstruction does on RTX GPU's s that should be a win.

And if the implementation is roughly the same as Nvidia's it might boost PC integration of it as so far it's adoption rate is poor, is it in like 4 games?

PSSR for upscaling plus ray reconstruction would be a huge win.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Are there any hints that PSSR can be used on parts of the pipeline, not just the final resolve?

 

[davis.anthony]

Are there any hints that PSSR can be used on parts of the pipeline, not just the final resolve?

There isn't but, ray reconstruction even works on the RTX 2000 series so I don't think there's any special requirements from a hardware point of view (Unless Nvidia thought 5 years a head)

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It depends where in the pipeline your reconstruction hardware sits. If you can send it any buffer and have it upscale, it might be useable that way. If it's pretty custom and sat at the end of the end of the pipeline, it'll just take a framebuffer and stretch it to fit. DLSS uses generic tensor cores. Does PSSR use something in the GPU bits being mostly software on some 'NPU' hardware, or is it something more like the hardware upscalers at the end of the the PS360 pipelines?

A key point to doubt the logic is fairly generic is because it's presented as in-built upscaling, not just ML hardware and a software stack that could be repurposed. However, we're operating on rumours here and can't be sure.

The realist in me says 'no'. Generally hardware potential never hits the highs we hope for. I was just thinking yesterday, "where's raytraced audio?" For all the potential uses of RTRT hardware, it's just creating shadows and reflections...

 

[Charlietus]

I'm wondering if they have a PSSR version for the base PS5, without the AI component. Developers would just implement PSSR on playstation without having to get FSR 2 in there too.

 

[DavidGraham]

is it in like 4 games?

More, about 6 or 7 currently. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, Call of Duty Warzone, Cyberpunk 2077, Alan Wake 2, Portal RTX, The First Descendant and Star Wars Outlaws.

Soon there will be: Indana Jones, Half Life 2 RTX, Black Myth: Wukong and Naraka: Bladepoint.

where's raytraced audio?

It's getting there, but slowly. So far, we have Star Wars Outlaws, Avatar Frontiers of Pandora, Forza Horizon 5 and Returnal.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It's getting there, but slowly. So far, we have Star Wars Outlaws, Avatar Frontiers of Pandora, Forza Horizon 5 and Returnal.

On console?