State of the Art Lighting Tech: 2021 edition.

Shifty Geezer

Shifty Geezer

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This thread inspired by the lighting in DokeV:


Some of the nice environment-sphere lighting is a known quantity, but the lighting detail in the characters can get very realistic with self shadowing (and what's typically termed AO) and there's some strong GI secondary lighting in effect. I was assuming Unreal Engine, but the YT video states "Pearl Abyss’ proprietary next-generation engine." Big, open world game too. Sadly compression makes it hard to stop and examine in detail.

What exactly is state of the art lighting these days? Is RTRT having much impact, and if so, how is it being used? Or have the hacks just been refined? If storage size isn't an issue, streamed light-probes could get pretty detailed.

Particularly interested in examples with links to techniques, which sadly is missing for the moment for DokeV.
 
The global light source looks quite real, I wonder if they're using HDRI similar to FH5.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Some of the nice environment-sphere lighting is a known quantity, but the lighting detail in the characters can get very realistic with self shadowing (and what's typically termed AO) and there's some strong GI secondary lighting in effect. I was assuming Unreal Engine, but the YT video states "Pearl Abyss’ proprietary next-generation engine." Big, open world game too. Sadly compression makes it hard to stop and examine in detail.

What exactly is state of the art lighting these days? Is RTRT having much impact, and if so, how is it being used? Or have the hacks just been refined? If storage size isn't an issue, streamed light-probes could get pretty detailed.
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I was also going to say Unreal at first thought.
hmm. The GI seems to follow FH5, it's not quite realtime, and it feels like it's cycling through baked GI streamed though different time periods. I was looking specifically for moments in which lighting effects would bounce onto other things etc during combat but I didn't see that unfortunately.

While I can't be sure if it's probe based, voxel based, or something else, I feel like this isn't RTGI just judging by how it's acting, and it's not RT shadows either judging by the lack of additional shadows casted during effects.

Cutscenes are certainly amped up compared to gameplay however, but once again, not seeing bounce GI in there for dynamic light sources.

Environments support what looks like ultra high density of small triangle drawing. There was a field of cat-tails that was fairly incredibly dense.

Particle effects are also extremely dense.
 
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Shifty Geezer said:
Some of the nice environment-sphere lighting is a known quantity, but the lighting detail in the characters can get very realistic with self shadowing (and what's typically termed AO) and there's some strong GI secondary lighting in effect. I was assuming Unreal Engine, but the YT video states "Pearl Abyss’ proprietary next-generation engine." Big, open world game too. Sadly compression makes it hard to stop and examine in detail.
Click to expand...
Pearl Abyss is the developer+publisher of Black Desert Online, a MMORPG that reached 40 million players last year, making it perhaps the most successful MMORPG as of today.

(non-technical political commentary removed)



I read somewhere that Project Eve's developer Shift UP is made up of Pearl Abyss developers, but I can't find any source for that atm, so take it with salt.




Karamazov said:
New Don't know what's more impressive, the video or a new post by Shifty.
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The latter.
 
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I agree, it looks quite impressive (even though it looks a bit too high-contrast in some scenes, IMO).
 
Last time I tried BDO I couldn't stand the shimmering on textures and vegetation. It was too distracting.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
This thread inspired by the lighting in DokeV:


Some of the nice environment-sphere lighting is a known quantity, but the lighting detail in the characters can get very realistic with self shadowing (and what's typically termed AO) and there's some strong GI secondary lighting in effect. I was assuming Unreal Engine, but the YT video states "Pearl Abyss’ proprietary next-generation engine." Big, open world game too. Sadly compression makes it hard to stop and examine in detail.

What exactly is state of the art lighting these days? Is RTRT having much impact, and if so, how is it being used? Or have the hacks just been refined? If storage size isn't an issue, streamed light-probes could get pretty detailed.

Particularly interested in examples with links to techniques, which sadly is missing for the moment for DokeV.
Click to expand...
I have a line to their team... I should drop one to them to ask if RTRT is being used. But I have been so busy I have yet to!
 
iroboto said:
I was also going to say Unreal at first thought.
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Presumably there's a bunch of common strategies and every solution at the moment is a collection of different solvers.

hmm. The GI seems to follow FH5, it's not quite realtime, and it feels like it's cycling through baked GI streamed though different time periods. I was looking specifically for moments in which lighting effects would bounce onto other things etc during combat but I didn't see that unfortunately.
Click to expand...
I honestly couldn't make out any details within the compression! Very clear GI in places like the orange bounce with the boy fishing, but we dunno what's realtime and prebaked cutscene. As ever, have to wait for gameplay. Kena Bridge of Spirits had similar amazing lighting in some scenes that isn't uniform in gameplay.

While I can't be sure if it's probe based, voxel based, or something else, I feel like this isn't RTGI just judging by how it's acting, and it's not RT shadows either judging by the lack of additional shadows casted during effects.
Click to expand...
I can't say I've heard of any RT lighting yet, that RT all seems to be used for reflections.

Cutscenes are certainly amped up compared to gameplay however, but once again, not seeing bounce GI in there for dynamic light sources.
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Yeah, I can't see enough dynamic changes to really pin the solution on realtime versus baked. It's very well executed where present though. https://mmos.com/preview/dokev

dokev-skateboard.jpg

Here we've got great bounce lighting inside the hoodie of the skateboarder, the strong orange bounces on the orange puffer jacket at the back, and inside the folds of the paper shopping bags. It's all round very solid, though some scenes it looks like it's baked in armpits and leg-pits. Hard to tell lighting from clothing design.

The other area the really impresses, which might be cutscene of course, is the carried equipment;

dokev-team.jpg

The AO on the backpack and all its items is remarkably solid. I'm wondering what developments there have been in that field? AO on the past generation has been quite riddled with artefacting.

This one's nice for primary shadow artefacts. Something weird going on!

dokev-coop-play.jpg
White fox's shadow doesn't match geometry.
 
Something along the lines of Minecraft RTX or Metro Exodus enhanced edition uses RT only lighting.

They are both temporal solutions RTGI solutions though, so you can see the GI change as you move, as though there is latency in the lighting model.
 
very impressive, maybe takes the graphics crown. Parts of it looked like GI, but the trailer was pretty low quality though and with so mcuh flying quickly around its hard to tell
 
The trailer being available in 4K definitely implies Playstation 5 and the equivalent Xbox though.

It looks awesome.
 
Pressure said:
The trailer being available in 4K definitely implies Playstation 5 and the equivalent Xbox though.

It looks awesome.
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Well, they are primarily a PC developer. But they have have been dipping their toes into mobile gaming starting in 2018 and console gaming starting in 2019. Makes sense since they are a S. Korean developer.

So, being in 4k doesn't really mean much. That said, when it comes to console (either at launch or sometime later after launch), I'm sure it'll be on PS5 and XBS consoles. Not that BDO will necessarily represent what will happen, but the PC release was in 2015 while the console release was in 2019.

Not sure how accurate the Wiki entry still is, but DokeV is still denoted as having a planned PS4 and XBO release. And that's with the reveal of the game coming after the launch of the current gen consoles. So it's possible it will launch on PS4/XBO first with a PS5/XBS launch later.

Since they have always been PC first and have targetted PC hardware aggressively (think Crytek with Crysis), the PC version will likely be far more advanced than the PS5/XBS versions. Basically they are targetting the highest performing hardware they predict will exist when the game comes out and then scaling down from there for the console versions.

This makes DokeV pretty interesting in terms of technology. If we look back at Black Desert Online, that started development during the PS3/X360 generation (2010). The PS4/XBO couldn't run the PC version that released in 2015 (BETA versions began in 2013 before the PS4/XBO came out) and had to be pared down.

Basically they are one of the few developers that don't necessarily feel constrained by currently available hardware and are always looking at the highest performing hardware they believe will exist when their game launches. Which doesn't mean they don't make some concessions. In BDO, they sacrificed long range detail in favor of close to the camera detail. So it had aggressive pop-in, LOD, and fog. But its close to the camera detail was unmatched in any other open world game and even most linear corridor games. And their character detail, IMO, was unmatched in any other game (especially in 2013-2015), especially when you considered how much the player could customize their characters.

It's cool to see that in DokeV, they've gone for a more balanced approach with equal attention to distance rendering in addition to close to the camera distances.

Regards,
SB
 
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Shifty Geezer said:
White fox's shadow doesn't match geometry.
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The two human characters in the front are casting shadows to their backs, as well as the white fox, whereas the red knight with a green umbrella and the boxer panda are casting their shadows to their front.

Shadows are probably not raytraced.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
View attachment 5952

The AO on the backpack and all its items is remarkably solid. I'm wondering what developments there have been in that field? AO on the past generation has been quite riddled with artefacting.

This one's nice for primary shadow artefacts. Something weird going on!

View attachment 5950
White fox's shadow doesn't match geometry.
Click to expand...

Yeah that's an interesting looking glitch that's happening there. In the screenshot above it, the dog/fox has a fairly representative shadow. I wonder if the glitch is related to something to do with what the dog/fox is doing in the glitched screenshot? He's in the process of casting something so maybe the glitch is related to the animations for whatever action the dog/fox is doing.

Something similar may be happening with the character on the right, as the candycane umbrella (?) looks like it's in the middle of some kind of animation (the sparklies seem to imply it's doing something other than an idle animation).

Regards,
SB
 
iroboto said:
Something along the lines of Minecraft RTX or Metro Exodus enhanced edition uses RT only lighting.

They are both temporal solutions RTGI solutions though, so you can see the GI change as you move, as though there is latency in the lighting model.
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Does Minecraft 'RTX' run on XSX? IIRC correctly all realistic looking solutions thus far are using temporal accumulation with this sort of lighting lag. Seems like a significant wall in processing power will hamper realtime GI for quite a while yet.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Does Minecraft 'RTX' run on XSX? IIRC correctly all realistic looking solutions thus far are using temporal accumulation with this sort of lighting lag. Seems like a significant wall in processing power will hamper realtime GI for quite a while yet.
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There was a demo that did that Media outlets had an opportunity to witness before the launch of Series X. But that version of Minecraft may never release, at least Mojang has not yet acknowledged it for official release.

During our visit to the Redmond campus, Microsoft used a very first tech demo of the Minecraft DXR Xbox Series X based on the Minecraft RTX code we saw at gamescom last year to demonstrate the Console’s RT capabilities – they looked very similar, even though they were running on a completely different GPU. Which is somewhat ironic: the base Nvidia code has been tweaked and works on AMD X-series ray tracing hardware. What’s impressive is that there is full path tracing. Other than the skybox and the moon in the demo we saw, there are no raster elements. The entire presentation supports ray tracing. This shows that the Xbox Series X can deliver the most ambitious and impressive implementation of ray tracing, in real time, despite the limitations of delivering RT in a console with limited power and silicon budgets.
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https://samagame.com/en/xbox-series-x-the-ray-tracing-difference-and-efficient-design/
 
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