Game Discussions Okay i think im sold on ray tracing.

CMDR Karrde Sun

CMDR Karrde Sun
Just been experiencing my first game that uses more extensive tracing features. I think im definitely sold. Always been a fan of ambient occlusion, and ray tracing definitely increases the effect a few steps more. I also thought realtime reflections were not that interesting, but they're interesting enough to be a valid novelty.

Yeah its surprising its been around for so long and hardly implemented. I guess hogwarts legacy is the first really mainstream title with all the effects (cyberpunk only has shadows on console). Sadly to get my pc running these, ill have to upgrade everything except the psu and case, including to a nice monitor which i like, so maybe later.

Hogwarts Legacy_20230219162237.jpg
Hogwarts Legacy_20230219190025.jpg
Hogwarts Legacy_20230219190727.jpg
 

Mole HD

Mole HD
CMDR Karrde Sun said:
Just been experiencing my first game that uses more extensive tracing features. I think im definitely sold. Always been a fan of ambient occlusion, and ray tracing definitely increases the effect a few steps more. I also thought realtime reflections were not that interesting, but they're interesting enough to be a valid novelty.

Yeah its surprising its been around for so long and hardly implemented. I guess hogwarts legacy is the first really mainstream title with all the effects (cyberpunk only has shadows on console). Sadly to get my pc running these, ill have to upgrade everything except the psu and case, including to a nice monitor which i like, so maybe later.

View attachment 346002View attachment 346003View attachment 346004
Click to expand...
Hogwarts seriously needs a patch to sort the frame rates out though...runs like a pig on my fairly decent rig with rtx enabled, had to turn it off in the end. There's a few unofficial fixes available on the Nexus until Portkey games release a patch, tried a few, some of them improve the game slightly but not enough that I'd want to be running the game with rtx enabled as default. Some areas of the game it runs fine with rtx enabled...others it's down to single figure frame rates so there's something definitely amiss.

Metro Exodus enhanced is about the only game that truly shows off rtx to it's full capacity...and is optimised to boot.
 

Old Duck

Old Duck
CMDR Karrde Sun said:
Just been experiencing my first game that uses more extensive tracing features. I think im definitely sold.
Click to expand...
My experience with raytracing is via still-shot renderers. Back when I was doing more with this, it could take a common PC days to render a scene using raytracing (using photon pathing with multiple bounces), but man-oh-man was the end result gorgeous!

One of the things that makes raytracing so amazing, but also so expensive, is it has to work with the entire model, not just what's on the screen. So for example, imagine raytracing in a game like Elite. If you were facing the sun, you should be able to see your CMDR's reflection (along with the entire cockpit behind him) in the canopy, assuming the angle is right. Lighting is also impacted by this, as you'll have bright spots not only from where the sun is hitting directly, but also from reflections off shiny objects. I remember one scene I did where sun was coming through a window and shining on a stainless steel refrigerator. You not only saw the illumination from the sun itself, but also the reflections off the fridge! Those reflections struck a light-colored wall, which in turn reflected diffusely off the shiny floor. It was amazing, almost lifelike, and it's something that can only be done with raytracing AFAIK.

I'm not familiar enough with video game real-time raytracing to know if it's the same thing or some sort of watered down version thereof. Screenshots I've seen from video games don't look anywhere near as realistic as the renders I used to do, so I'm assuming it's a simplified version of raytracing, which doesn't surprise me considering how incredibly intensive proper raytracing is.
 

Morbad

Morbad
gazelle said:
My friend and I did a 20 second animation in Sculpt4D, it took over a week
Click to expand...

So about 20 minutes per frame?

Old Duck said:
I'm not familiar enough with video game real-time raytracing to know if it's the same thing or some sort of watered down version thereof. Screenshots I've seen from video games don't look anywhere near as realistic as the renders I used to do, so I'm assuming it's a simplified version of raytracing, which doesn't surprise me considering how incredibly intensive proper raytracing is.
Click to expand...

Real-time ray tracing in gaming has a limited number of bounces and is typically done at low resolution/sample counts then denoised. It's also only used where conventional rasterization can't achieve an equivalent effect (unless the goal is just to burn performance). The more accessible games tend to use hardware accelerated ray tracing very conservatively, because there are few GPUs out there that can handle the more complete effects at playable frame rates.
 

Hank

H
The company I worked for at the time was on the bleeding edge of implementing 3D piping design in the earliest days. Seems iirc we'd use a 386 or something similar with iirc Cadpipe~ running on AutoCAD and it would take all night to do a
hidden line removal ... for a print with the best 'puter could buy at the time
Start it before you go home and hope its finished the next morning. Mwhahahahaa Wow !
I cant imagine doing the things you commanders are talking about. So much fun I'm sure it was

Have a nice day
 

CMDR Karrde Sun

CMDR Karrde Sun
Old Duck said:
My experience with raytracing is via still-shot renderers. Back when I was doing more with this, it could take a common PC days to render a scene using raytracing (using photon pathing with multiple bounces), but man-oh-man was the end result gorgeous!
Click to expand...

Yeah me too. I only got 2 high distinctions at university.. one of them was the advanced computer graphics elective where they walked us through coding a ray tracer from scratch. Such a great time. Part of the reason why im still interested in games is advancements in graphics. Sure there's been decades of nothing but detail increase, but its definitely nice to see this step. Im genuinely enjoying the graphics.

From watching the digital foundry youtube analysis, there might be more parts that are prebaked lighting that i imagined, but overall, what's offered is basically witcher 3 levels of detail plus some, and much fancier lighting. I appreciate it very much. Also if it counts, i know clearly why i didn't like harry potter.. harry potter. Its not a bad fantasy world without being sick of the main characters, really convincing.

Old Duck said:
I'm not familiar enough with video game real-time raytracing to know if it's the same thing or some sort of watered down version thereof. Screenshots I've seen from video games don't look anywhere near as realistic as the renders I used to do, so I'm assuming it's a simplified version of raytracing, which doesn't surprise me considering how incredibly intensive proper raytracing is.
Click to expand...

Yeah im guessing so. There's some dedicated hardware to enable it, so the accelleration could be another stage of the rendering pass / pipeline? No idea. Maybe its just an extension of the existing functions (like ao, reflections etc) that involve new ability. Kids these days implement rasterisers from scratch at uni so its for the last few generations and current.
 

Star Wanderer

Star Wanderer
CMDR Karrde Sun said:
Just been experiencing my first game that uses more extensive tracing features. I think im definitely sold. Always been a fan of ambient occlusion, and ray tracing definitely increases the effect a few steps more. I also thought realtime reflections were not that interesting, but they're interesting enough to be a valid novelty.

Yeah its surprising its been around for so long and hardly implemented. I guess hogwarts legacy is the first really mainstream title with all the effects (cyberpunk only has shadows on console). Sadly to get my pc running these, ill have to upgrade everything except the psu and case, including to a nice monitor which i like, so maybe later.

View attachment 346002View attachment 346003View attachment 346004
Click to expand...
To me it looks like the light is done wrong in 2 first pcitures.
1. Tree Glass Arc - it disperses light for some reason instead of letting it go through it.
2. Even through there is a window in front with a light source, only light from the left window is shown. So stares are in the shadow of the left window light source.
 

Markov Chaney

M
In the first shot, there's pretty much no variation across that stone floor, even though the light is provided by a complex light source through that window (and another very diffuse source behind Harry) and then hits a very complex centrepiece sculpture. If you were trying to take a real photo from there you'd have all sorts of weird lighting to deal with on that floor.

Can someone point me to a feature in one of these photos that actually looks better than it would with dynamic SSAO and/or SSR, and dynamic shadows?

For reflections in particular are you sure RT for reflections is actually enabled? It doesn't look like it from here...
 

Markov Chaney

M
OK there's no way everything is enabled in OP's example. Digital Trends has a decent article on HP - linky and the photos in there ARE impressive!

Click the link below for a link to the hi-res shot and check out the window light on the stone floor. In OP's shot this aspect of the image will be less prominent because there is only one large high window, but even so...

1677149220759.png

Thumbnail Linky
 

Northpin

Northpin
Star Wanderer said:
To me it looks like the light is done wrong in 2 first pcitures.
1. Tree Glass Arc - it disperses light for some reason instead of letting it go through it.
2. Even through there is a window in front with a light source, only light from the left window is shown. So stares are in the shadow of the left window light source.
Click to expand...

Markov Chaney said:
In the first shot, there's pretty much no variation across that stone floor, even though the light is provided by a complex light source through that window (and another very diffuse source behind Harry) and then hits a very complex centrepiece sculpture. If you were trying to take a real photo from there you'd have all sorts of weird lighting to deal with on that floor.

Can someone point me to a feature in one of these photos that actually looks better than it would with dynamic SSAO and/or SSR, and dynamic shadows?

For reflections in particular are you sure RT for reflections is actually enabled? It doesn't look like it from here...
Click to expand...

based on context, the OP screenshots are from a Console.
And they're known to have the capabilities of a RTX 2070 (at best)... so not exactly beefy raytracing power...
 

Star Wanderer

Star Wanderer
Looks like Atomic Heart pulled out of Ray Tracing deal for launch in favore of good reviews. Which turn out to be a succesful strategy. Lots of positive performance reviews.
I wonder if in light of this success this will become a new trend among upcoming game.
 

Mole HD

Mole HD
Star Wanderer said:
Looks like Atomic Heart pulled out of Ray Tracing deal for launch in favore of good reviews. Which turn out to be a succesful strategy. Lots of positive performance reviews.
I wonder if in light of this success this will become a new trend among upcoming game.
Click to expand...
If RTX is done right...and well optimised...like with Metro Exodus enhanced which was a full RTX only release, it's a good thing. As for other games...whilst RTX looks pretty, the performance pay-off isn't and it seems like a lot of studios are struggling to come to terms with implementing RTX or getting it working as an advantage rather than an obstacle. As long as they leave RTX as an on/off option in those cases, I'm good with it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom