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

Technically, though, this kind of parametric continuous LOD JoeJ describes (and which I used to think was the unavoidable direction we'd eventually go but am still waiting) is only actually proper for primary visibility, but for other day tracing effects, rays often diverge in ways that require more or less detail in different areas that.
That's an argument, especially the shadow example you gave. However, the shadow would change continuously at least, and it would not look less low poly than rocks in actual open world games do. Even real life sun shadows are not so hard to expose the tricks in a distracting manner i hope.
The main problem is the effort which goes much beyond what current engines can do. The parametric stuff i propose can only handle geometry of limited complexity. It can make the surface very detailed, but it can not help with something like a tree and its branches at multiple scales.
For this i see only two options to improve over billboards: point splatting or volume rendering. Only the latter is compatible with RT, but the former would be much faster and easy. As long as we are in hybrid era it's very interesting.
Another question: Is it acceptable to exclude diffuse stuff from RT completely? I'm fine with BFV removing some foliage.

But complexity is insane in any case. Think of an example of fine grained vegetation ranking along a tree. Close up: All triangles (+ displaced detail?). Medium distance: Put the vegetation into the texture of the tree trunk. Far: Trunk still triangles, but branches as points. Very far: Points only.
Notice how the ranks change between point an triangle representations forth and back. Alone the preprocessing tools make my head hurt. Difficult to think of a practical compromise and hard to make transitions smooth.
 
Metro test with comparison screenshots and benchmark:
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Metro...hnik-Test-Raytracing-DLSS-DirectX-12-1275286/

Text quite positive. Interesting:

"Raytracing in Metro Exodus affects the sun and sky. Local light sources are not ray traced due to the stealth gameplay mechanics. This allows the player to have a better idea of when and where they can or cannot be spotted. Toggling ray tracing does not change stealth gameplay."

Further they say some objects like foliage are exlcuded from RT, but there is no explantation about the difference from settings.
DLSS does no wonders for IQ but helps with perf.
 
Metro test with comparison screenshots and benchmark:
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Metro...hnik-Test-Raytracing-DLSS-DirectX-12-1275286/

Text quite positive. Interesting:

"Raytracing in Metro Exodus affects the sun and sky. Local light sources are not ray traced due to the stealth gameplay mechanics. This allows the player to have a better idea of when and where they can or cannot be spotted. Toggling ray tracing does not change stealth gameplay."

Further they say some objects like foliage are exlcuded from RT, but there is no explantation about the difference from settings.
DLSS does no wonders for IQ but helps with perf.
Very interesting.
And yes, this is quite nutty when I think about it. Game design decisions will matter a lot here for stealth gameplay.
 
Metro test with comparison screenshots and benchmark:
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Metro...hnik-Test-Raytracing-DLSS-DirectX-12-1275286/

Text quite positive. Interesting:

"Raytracing in Metro Exodus affects the sun and sky. Local light sources are not ray traced due to the stealth gameplay mechanics. This allows the player to have a better idea of when and where they can or cannot be spotted. Toggling ray tracing does not change stealth gameplay."

Further they say some objects like foliage are exlcuded from RT, but there is no explantation about the difference from settings.
DLSS does no wonders for IQ but helps with perf.


But let's purposely have the light-probes not affect the dynamic meshes (and tweak AO) when RTX is OFF to make it look worst than it should?

RTX On:
rQCHqOm.jpg


RTX OFF:
PZMMjjN.jpg


RTX OFF screenshots look ridiculous https://www.dsogaming.com/first-imp...rformance-impressions-comparison-screenshots/
 
Last edited:
Impressive to say the least, Metro isnt my type of game (or zombie style games). Curious to see atomic heart, is that game using RT for GI, shadows, reflections?
 
We're a long way from modelling that in games! Internal reflection is affected by volume of the material and IOR and can't be solved by a simple ray direction. You could fake it by using a texture map of refraction direction which is probably the only sane way, and that should be nicely mappable to the existing raytrace shader code, just using a normal map.
With homogenous materials it shouldn't be that bad, basically ior math each time ray hits something and tint results according distance within material.)

Should be decently simple to mark polygons which would have some other material or object next to it. (Air, glass, whiskey.)
 
Nice shot. There was confusion at PCGH why RTX still makes a difference in scenes although there is no sky.
I guess it's just the AO we see in this shot, which adds good depth and finally resolves missing occlusion for reflection probes?
Looks very good to me.

Edit: Indirect lighting could be still on as well, even if there is no direct lighting considered? I have not really a clue what they do.

DSOG also has DLSS comparison, and as expected i like the blurry image much more. I hate this artificial sharpness of computer graphics. Always wished for a blur option in drivers, but now magic AI finally delivers this, haha :)

According to the article it's DLSS that messes up the brightness.
Working as graphics artist i noticed: Blur makes darker, sharpening makes brighter. Affects high frequency stuff only. Never cared for the reason, but could be surely fixed if people keep complaining.
 
Last edited:
So there's no RT indoors...The lighting with RTX OFF doesn't make any sense whatsoever.. What is actual light source anyway?

RTX OFF
13044354762l.jpg


RTX On:
13044354630l.jpg


RTX Off + 2 secs tweak in Win10 Photos app
bDStt0z.jpg
 
So there's no RT indoors...The lighting with RTX OFF doesn't make any sense whatsoever.. What is actual light source anyway?
RTX AO is on all the time and does not need a light source. (AO only subtracts light, while GI only adds it.)
So it could be traditional lighting with point lights and probes, and RTX only drakens it by occlusion.

Interesting: The small objets on the table cause no occlusion, but they are darker too. I do not understand this yet.
 
RTX AO is on all the time and does not need a light source. (AO only subtracts light, while GI only adds it.)
So it could be traditional lighting with point lights and probes, and RTX only drakens it by occlusion.

Interesting: The small objets on the table cause no occlusion, but they are darker too. I do not understand this yet.
They are not doing Ray Traced AO AFAIK.
 
Metro run fine at 1080p60 with High RTX on a 2060, same for a 2080 at 1440p60 and that's without DLSS


https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Performance_Analysis/Metro_Exodus/6.html
Techpowerup doesn't mention if DLSS was enabled ot not in their DXR benchmarks and clearly it was ON in some cases because their results don't align at all with https://gamegpu.com/action-/-fps-/-tps/metro-exodus-test-gpu-cpu (they have tested all resolution with DLSS on & off when applicable)

QW0FwKL.jpg

RZ49ooR.jpg

1xa1nwf.jpg

cFvyX8y.jpg
 
Last edited:
Back
Top