Next gen lighting technologies - voxelised, traced, and everything else *spawn*

The problem is it's not really that evident between ON and OFF - forget about High vs Ultra! Also the point is, if you can't really see it then what's the point of the performance hit??

 

Atomic Heart is supposed to be a true showcase. Later on, Justice and Control.

 

You can't expect that to happen in every scene, light cheats abd static GI is very well made in the game You also don't focus on the scenes that don't work and ignore those that show a huge difference . Most outdoor areas show a significant improvement, that alone is enough to showcase the tech.

 

I've watched the video. Literally paused and slow-mo all these moments. In my eyes/brain, the difference just is not 'significant' as you say. Sorry *shurg*

If pause+slowmo is required to see these differences (and still have a hard time recognising them), then that kind of defeats the point of it all, no?

 

Are lightprobes completely off when RTX is ON? As far as I understand, their RT only does 1 bounce. Proper GI requires multiple. So even if they have RT first bounce in there, it would still be important to include probes for 2 bounce and onwards.
If they did not do that, their RT GI is not realy more accurate than the traditional image based one. It just has a different set of inaccuracies.

 

No. Because graphics suffer from the phenomenon of diminishing returns, difference between PS1 and PS2 games is large, but it's smaller between PS2 and PS3, and even smaller between PS3 and PS4, PS4 to PS5 will be even smaller than that. The closer you get to photorealism the harder you would need to look. However, once you go back to an older generation, you will miss all those little details you shrugged over. Your brain registers everything, if you played the game with RTX on, and then went back to playing it with RTX off, your brain will immediately tell the difference in out door and several indoor scenes and recognize you are running a lower quality version of the game.

 

I totally agree with that. My point, and my OPINION, is that this specific example (Metro) is nowhere near a huge jump to photorealism, compared to the non-DXR version. Hence why you can't see it.

DXR has made things look a lot better than this game.

 

RTX

RTX OFF:


Hallf Life 2 has some competition... The lighting in this game with RTX Off is ridiculous (by today's standard...).

 

GI is bad and very basic in most games.

RTX

Off


On

I can spot the differences in Metro quite easily. It appears more movie like with enebaled RTX.

 

I respect your opinion, but the game is simply astonishing to look at in motion with RTX on, and those deep blacks help immerse the player more in the world. We should get more visual showcases for the game once it launches.

 

Because the non RTX lighting looks like utter trash compared to today's games.
"Movie Like"? "It just Works!"

 

Yes, that is quite a nice upgrade. But you're comparing a VERY BAD non-RTX presentation, to their RTX one. No AAA game would have such a rubbish 'standard' lighting implementation, and at the same time I'd argue that the result in the better looking image could be done with non-RTX solutions.

 

BUT we have seen games that had much better lighting long before RTX. So the question here is, why did the devs not implement a proper fallback for RTX off: lack of time, lack of ability, wish to make RTX look better. Nobody knows. But we know it can be done better.

 

Your guess is as good as mines. Would love to see direct comparison (same exact scenes) with console versions just "in case" (I mean it's not like NVidia already did stuff like paying for the exclusivity of god rays in Far Cry 4 PC while they where perfectly fine & present on PS4/Xbox versions.)

 

I think as well, some of us are thinking of raytracing as being photorealistic, or at least finally having correct lighting so video games move beyond the gamey look that we've had since 2005. We've all seen 'next gen lighting' and it looks clearly next-gen. RTX isn't achieving that at the moment. For those for whom mild, iterative improvements are noteworthy, they possibly see Metro as 'better', but for us, there improvement are far from what's needed to class as next-gen. Coupled with the considerable cost of entry for these mild improvements, we're unimpressed.

 

Your order of effects is interesting. I would reverse it if we begin with the most important. Also i think we do not need RTX for GI so let's ignore this for now.

For sharp reflections RTX is very good. I still see BFV as the RTX killer app.

Translucency - what do you expect here? Better skin or vegetation?

And refractions - is it about better water? Or better Glasses on a table?


Atomic Heart shows most of these effects. They are local: A soft shadow here, a reflection there, cool water and lenses, etc.
There is no dynamic GI and no unified lighting solution to make it consistent. But does this game otherwise satisfy your expections the most? What do you still miss?
(Control is no good example because it is a too clever mix of static and dynamic stuff. Will look good On and Off.)

I'm trying to figure what people want. And i tend to ignore the transparency problem - maybe too much.

 

CIG graphics programmer about Raytracing:
 

https://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/50259/thread/rtx/1915059

I am not ure about their standard GI solution yet but it does not look good. Witcher III had no GI at all.

 

To iterate my response to LB above, next-gen lighting isn't a case of diminishing returns. When RT 'gets real', games will lose their incohesive lighting and gamey look. Things like no contact shadows on sleeves and faces that aren't lit properly and whatnot that still plague these RTX games. We've seen examples of next-gen lighting in various demos over the past years and are well aware of what to expect. nVidia has also promised that in their RTX promotional materials:

Ray tracing has been used for years to pre-render lifelike worlds in movies. But until now, it has been too computationally demanding to be practical for real-time, interactive gaming, which requires fast frame rates and low latency. NVIDIA RTX overcomes those limitations.

With these capabilities, developers can create realistic, high-quality reflections that capture the scene around it and achieve physically accurate lighting and shadows. Making these capabilities available on an industry-standard platform like Microsoft DXR means every PC game developer will have access to levels of realism never before possible.​

...so after raising everyone's expectations, it shouldn't be unexpected when responses to real-world gains are muted. Metro is not physically accurate lighting and shadows or particularly lifelike. Maybe an RTX game will achieve life-like lighting? That'll be the game that impresses those of us looking for next-gen lighting. These marginal improvements currently on show aren't at all exciting.

 

Great comparison, but the RTX off shot is terrible by modern game standards. Far better is possible, making the gains from RTX versus other games muted.

Also, RTX isn't solving a whole host of issues, as raytracing is supposed to. The chair's floating 6 inches off the ground according to its shadow, while the glass/plastic/alien material bottles look like holes in the scenery. This isn't the raytracing we've been shown in the Star Wars demo or Pica Pica; not even close.

 

The Metro games have never been technical pioneers for me but it's RTX GI is better than the GI of any other videogame. Other video games also have many floating objects. There is also a lot of adjustment thing. For example, the VXAO was too strong in Rise of the Tomb Raider.