The RT Related Games, Benchmarks, Software, Etc Thread.

[Dicehunter]

Island from Disney's Moana Ray Traced on Single AMD GPU

AMD presented an update to its ray tracing library.

80.lv

Introducing HIP RT v2.2

With the release of v2.2, HIP RT now support multi-level instancing. Multi-level instancing can help to reduce memory requirements, allowing you to render large scenes with limited memory.

gpuopen.com

Pretty cool, The more RT techniques advance, Especially efficiently rather than just brute force, The better for everyone in the game space

 

[Nexus18]

 

[srekal34]

I dont like watching those videos, it destroys memories

 

[Nexus18]

NVIDIA Big Interview - Ray Tracing, DLSS, RTX Remix & More

A few weeks ago, we had the pleasure of interviewing Luke Spring, NVIDIA's EMEA GeForce Communications Lead.

www.dsogaming.com

DSOG: Right now, most games use a rasterized/Ray Tracing hybrid solution for their rendering. We’ve also seen a few games using Path Tracing. How far away do you think we are until full ray tracing rendering solutions become the norm?


LS: In the past five years we’ve already seen a huge movement away from fully rasterized games to the rasterized / Ray Tracing hybrid solution you describe. Nearly every title now features some form of ray tracing, from console all the way through to PC, it’s become a crucial tool for developers to create beautiful worlds. At the end of last year, we saw both Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty and Alan Wake 2 showcase how stunning full ray tracing can look. Ray tracing is a standard feature in hundreds of titles today and many developers are excited about the future.


Even modders are creating amazing experiences that feature full ray tracing, thanks to RTX Remix. Portal With RTX and Half Life 2: An RTX Remix Project show how good classic game remasters can look when given the full ray tracing and RTX make over. Currently, there are over 11,000 members of the RTX Remix Discord working on path-traced remasters of classic games.


The technology is here and we feel confident that we will see more and more titles in the not too distant future from modders and developers.


DSOG: What’s your favorite Ray Tracing effect/feature and why?


LS: We had a lot of success with Tomb Raider, Battlefield V and Metro Exodus in the early days of ray tracing. I will never forget the first time I saw real-time ray traced reflections in Battlefield V. At that point real time ray tracing was considered a pipe dream. I still find myself watching that trailer and appreciating what we, and DICE, achieved back then – At the time I don’t think many people realized the impact RT and DLSS would have on the industry, now we have over 500 games and apps supporting RTX technologies.


But Metro Exodus was super impactful for helping people ‘get it’ as far as the impact ray tracing would have on the gaming experience. It had ray traced global illumination. Most of the talk until then centered around the increase in image quality.

The Metro Exodus segment NVIDIA demoed at PAX Australia started with ray tracing off. In the demo the player awakens by the sea and follows a path to a shack on the shore. As you walk up to the shack, you see a skeleton before you enter. Everything in the shack is covered with a gray hue, so you know it’s supposed to be dark inside. But the lighting is just not realistic, so the spookiness is lost. Your brain is telling you ‘it’s supposed to be dark in there, there is a skeleton, this is supposed to be spooky’. But, because you can see everything, there’s no mystery.


Then we restart the demo with ray tracing on. Again, standing outside the shack, but this time the shack is dark. Not a gray hue, but dark. You see something, but can’t make it out. As you approach you can make out more elements. At the door, you can barely make out the skeleton as you approach the interior of shack. Its interior is nearly pitch black. It’s more an unsettling hint than stark reality. Once inside, you’re jolted by the skeleton hanging on the wall. Then you break out your lighter and you can see more stuff. And the light from the fire looks like it was made by a real candle. It was crazy.


The result of turning ray tracing on in Metro Exodus changed the gameplay experience from ‘this is supposed to be scary’ to actually being scary. It was very impactful.


Then there’s Alan Wake 2, which of course features full ray tracing. The tech completely transforms each scene – Remedy did an amazing job. Their work on Control was highlighted by the community as one of the best RT implementations out there, and they took it to another level with Alan Wake 2.

DSOG: We’ve seen some developers implementing in their games software-based Ray Tracing solutions that run on all GPUs. Crysis Remastered and Avatar are two of them. Then we have UE5’s software-based Lumen. What’s your opinion on these RT solutions?


LS: It’s great to see RT being adopted by more systems and platforms, we’ve been a firm believer in the technology for a long time. Ultimately, we at NVIDIA are always pushing for the very best visuals possible, and we look to achieve that via a combination of hardware advances and AI solutions.


Our RT cores allow games to run incredibly intensive RT visuals, while DLSS Super Resolution and Frame Generation utilize AI to improve performance. On top of that you have DLSS Ray Reconstruction running an AI denoiser to improve image quality and RT effects even further. We feel this solution will continue to raise the bar when it comes to lifelike PC visuals.


DSOG: In the 20s, NVIDIA shared a lot of tech demos for its GPUs. From the Medusa to The Isle and the Chameleon, all of them gave PC gamers a glimpse at the future of PC graphics. Nowadays though, you haven’t released your Ray Tracing Tech Demos to the public. These tech demos could make more PC gamers understand the benefits of Ray Tracing/Path Tracing, so why aren’t they available for download?


LS: Ultimately our focus is on bringing these technologies to the games that people are playing.


We are no longer waiting years for new technologies to find their feet, we saw RT and DLSS implemented in games very shortly after their initial announcements and the cadence has only increased. The same can be said for DLSS 3.5 where we demonstrated the technology in both Alan Wake 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty on the same day we announced the feature. Gamers then got their chance to experience the new tech a few weeks later when the game’s released. I think this is a testament to how we work with developers and provide them with the tools to implement our technologies early-on.


As for being able to try out these features for free, our RTX technologies are included in some of the biggest AAA free to play titles out there including Fortnite (RT/DLSS/Reflex), CS2 (Reflex) and Apex Legends (Reflex). On top of that, RTX Remix gives modders a chance to integrate our newest RTX technologies in their mods, and give gamers an avenue to try free upgrades of classic games that show off the graphical cutting edge. For example, Portal with RTX (PT/DLSS/Reflex) was the first fully ray traced game with DLSS 3, and was a free upgrade for those that already own Portal, and surely Portal is in everyone’s Steam library?!

DSOG: Let’s talk a bit about RTX Remix. You released its Runtime in April 2023 but the Creator Tool is still not available. When can we expect the RTX Remix Creator Tool to come out?


LS: We are excited to say that the RTX Remix Open Beta is available to download now! Built on NVIDIA Omniverse, NVIDIA RTX Remix allows modders to create stunning RTX remasters of classic games with full ray tracing, NVIDIA DLSS, NVIDIA Reflex, modern assets with physically-based rendering, and generative AI texture tools.


We are already seeing some fantastic work-in-progress remasters from the community that people can check out on ModDB.

DSOG: Quake 2 RTX was one of the biggest surprises of 2019. We also know that Half-Life 2 RTX is in development. Are there any plans for RTX remasters of older games? Doom 3, Unreal, Deus Ex, Duke Nukem 3D and other classic FPS games would greatly benefit from Path Tracing.


LS: Other than Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project, which is being made by the Half-Life 2 modding community, we have no other titles to announce. But we are always keeping an eye out for suggestions! Additionally, with the launch of the RTX Remix Open Beta, many more of these types of ‘remasters’ are being developed by the community.


We really encourage anyone interested in RTX Remix mods to join the Discord group where a community of 11,000 modders are utilizing RTX Remix to turn RTX On in over 80 games. It will take time for many of these projects to be completed but the future of path-traced RTX modding is bright. We can’t wait to play them!

 

[Nexus18]

Looks to run quite well on the 3080 this.

 

[JediFragger]

Looks to run quite well on the 3080 this.

Been in development so long the 3080 is probably top tech for this game

 

[Nexus18]

 

[Grim5]

Rt version has better lighting, remastered version has more post processing effects and higher quality textures

 

[Nexus18]

Nightingale's system requirements reveal it offers an upscaler for every GPU but it'll gobble up 70GB of storage space

It seems like it might be demanding, this new survival game, but luckily the graphics look pretty stunning with it.

www.pcgamer.com

Nightingale will offer XeSS, DLSS, and FSR support, with the latter two including the option for frame generation which should give a significant performance boost to GPUs that support it, although the devs do warn that as it's a new feature to the game it may cause reduced stability or increased artifacts in some scenarios.

Still, that's a plethora of choices that should make a lot of users happy, and that's before we get to TSR, UE5's platform-agnostic temporal upscaler. Those of you who have mucked around in UE5 games like Fortnite may have already made use of the feature, but taking a look at the estimated performance settings it may well be a requirement in this game for many gamers, as every recommendation from minimum to ultra suggests you keep TSR on "Balanced".

This suggests that Nightingale is likely going to be a pretty demanding game, and there's a lot more in the post to suggest that it'll test many people's systems fairly hard. For those struggling with performance, suggestions are made to lower global illumination (in this case, Lumen), lowering shadow settings, and leaning on different upscalers to keep things running smoothly.

The developers go on to explain that Unreal Engine 5 and its new technologies like Lumen and Nanite are still at the cutting edge of graphics as things stand, and as a result, optimisations are still forthcoming from Epic, graphics card manufacturers, and the developers themselves.

 

[Nexus18]

Been a long time since I watched a lvlcap video but decent look at rtx remix and rt in general.

 

[Nexus18]

@Tinek

You'll love helldivers 2

 

[Calin Banc]

Oh, come on... this has been done before, as in using light for gameplay purposes... Splinter Cell, Thief, Amnesia, Stalker, pretty much EVERY SINGLE STEALTH mechanic in games is based on this - outside of stupid action RPG mechanics where you have stats - Fallout series, TES, etc. Seeing how the try to find uses for something that has been already done is funny, to say the least!

Ray tracing just adds more realism, more shadows (PT with its unlimited shadow casting lights opposed to the usual hugely fake "light" the place, but cast no shadow lights) and should speed up the game making process.

 

[Tinek]

One of the examples where just adding RT doesn't fix problems in the engine - you can't see your car, lights vanish when off screen etc. It's another example where one can see rtx remix to just add rt isn't enough, these old games need many more fixes, starting with textures, then light positioning and even geometry changes so the artistic vision is preserved from the original with realistic lighting etc. So far I haven't seen even one remix mod that I would play over original - but they are all at the very low versions currently and a lot could change with time. Just, it's a hard work and people tend to give up before things get good, when working for free. The one game that always made biggest impression on me with RT is Minecraft - it looks very good, especially with proper materials and textures etc.

 

[Calin Banc]

One of the examples where just adding RT doesn't fix problems in the engine - you can't see your car, lights vanish when off screen etc. It's another example where one can see rtx remix to just add rt isn't enough, these old games need many more fixes, starting with textures, then light positioning and even geometry changes so the artistic vision is preserved from the original with realistic lighting etc. So far I haven't seen even one remix mod that I would play over original - but they are all at the very low versions currently and a lot could change with time. Just, it's a hard work and people tend to give up before things get good, when working for free. The one game that always made biggest impression on me with RT is Minecraft - it looks very good, especially with proper materials and textures etc.

I think Metro is the best as its gameplay is tailored around light / shadow mechanics, so you can actually turn off / destroy light sources around the level. CB77 is as static as those old games, with the exception of a few lights, everything stays on, taking HUGELY from the experience. One of its biggest problems.

 

[Nexus18]

 

[Calin Banc]

Performance doesn't look good.

 

[Nexus18]

Performance doesn't look good.

Yup remix seems to hit the perf way harder than engine integrated path tracing like cp 2077 and aw 2, probably down to lack of optimisation too.

 

[mrk]

It's not optimised There's no optimisation with RT Remix out of the box. Once the mod is done, the game then needs optimising, which none of them have done so far which is why we are seeing all these "RTX 4080 can only manager <60fps with RTX Remix" clickbait headlines etc setting an unrealistic expectation to viewers etc.

 

[tommybhoy]

It's not optimised There's no optimisation with RT Remix out of the box. Once the mod is done, the game then needs optimising, which none of them have done so far which is why we are seeing all these "RTX 4080 can only manager <60fps with RTX Remix" clickbait headlines etc setting an unrealistic expectation to viewers etc.

Soooooooooo when done, it then requires performance optimising?

Who's the onus on to optimise it run>60fps, Nv or the author?

If it's the author then it looks like Nv have went a bit AMDish to me

 

[mrk]

Why would NV need to optimise the game code with the mod? NV provide all the tools to implement the mod, the dev/author then needs to optimise what they've done.

That's like saying all Unreal Engine games need to be optimised by Epic, when it's the devs that must be doing that part of the work, not Epic.