Even before he was getting sponsored by Nvidia, he went really in-depth into analyzing this kind of stuff, so I know he is genuinely passionate about it too.
This video is a labour of love, you've included every single thing I could think of that makes a video a complete one: interaction with the viewer, comedy, a full dissection of the subject being presented and much more big and tiny little details that I can't name :). Great work on this one, if that's what you were talking about when you said that you're going to shake things up then for my opinion it's a great step towards the right direction!
I love when you do deep dives like this. There are plenty of other RUclips channels that do these, but you have a real knack for it. Your speaking cadence also lends itself nicely to narration. I can't wait to pick this game up, I played over 100 hours of the first one. I am a bit let down that firearms are no longer a part of the franchise, but that still leaves the recurve bow.... And boy is that thing ever fun :) I hope you're well Philip!! Edit: Also, yes that soundtrack is poppin!! Makes me nostalgic for the first Dying Light, such a great game. The fear of going out at night is like nothing else I've experienced in a video game. Edit #2: I am SO GLAD that studios are finally starting to use ray traced global illumination and ambient occlusion. Those are the two most important aspects of ray tracing making assets look more realistic. Yes, it hits systems hard, but with DLSS it's a non issue unless you're using an ultra potato.
Honestly I absolutely love raytraced global illumination, raytraced shadows and raytraced ambient occlusion. (which is all kind of the same but you know) It just looks so good. You do make the point that people have become used to the shadows as they are in game with their crispness etc. but I could never bring myself to like it. Now with raytracing games just look much prettier and more realistic. Love that this is a thing we have now
Especially Ray Traced GI. Especially in a game like this, nothing makes a bigger difference since there are so many scenes that don't have a lot of light sources and indirect light can be very hard to fake accurately. It was such a game changer in Metro Exodus as it is in this game. I'd love Last of Us to get RTGI as well.
Personally, the raytracing needing to catch up isn't a big deal. For me it feels more like exposure adjustment. Like when you turn a flash light off in a very dark room you'll get a momentary after image.
One thing that doesn't get talked about enough with raytracing in video games that it can ease development -- most helpful for smaller studios who want to go for more realistic graphics. The designers can save time tweaking lighting for the levels, especially when it also requires re-rendering shadow and other maps with each change.
In a future when most of the games are ray traced only, then yes, it would ease development, but right now, you need to implement both old lightning methods and RT. It would be interesting to see if RT can be optimized or tweaked to be less demanding or get good enough results with less power needed.
Smaller studios going for photorealism would probably only work for games going for exclusive licenses for sizzle reels and stuff. The pursuit of photorealism is a worthless endeavor anyway.
@@zaidlacksalastname4905 It's not just about photorealism. It's about good looking lightning systems, which even heavily stylized games benefit from immensely.
@@LetrixAR Indeed. We do have some ray traced only games like Quake 2 RTX and Metro Exodus enhanced edition for example, but of course it will take a while for more games to only run that way. Consoles are a great place to experiment the limits of RT optimization, so we should expect a lot of half arse or only use one aspect of RayTracing/Path Tracing, to impressive results like in Metro Exodus enhance edition.
Big thing you mentioned with the flashlight is lack of shadows, and that brings up the fact that many many games turn off shadows for lights completely. Any light that isn't the sun or moon often cast no shadow in the vast majority of games, even brand new ones. When you see a game that has them turned on, it's crazy how much better it looks, and how it enhances the scene. Another thing with flashlights is that games always use these really hard set textures for the light. As if it's coming out of an old cheap bulky flashlight, and I think it always degrades the quality greatly. One of the only games I've seen with a proper flashlight is ready or not.
its funny that in left 4 dead 2 a game released like 15 years ago, the flashlight in it cast shadows hell even the weapon muzzle casts it, it's nowhere near as realistic but even with today's standards and the huge leap in technology it still holds up just because it adds to the atmosphere of the game, because it's a horror game and long big shadows adds to the horror and dark effects, I'm scared that developpers will go the "more realistic and correct" way of presenting things only to be limited hardware wise and forget that games should make you feel something, look at movies, some of them tend to have unrealistic lighting and shadows compared to what the human eyes see so that they convey feelings or atmosphere.
i was really hoping you'd touch on dying light 2's raytracing and dlss. to me it's the pinnacle of implementation for both so far, and i am excited to see games match up to its level
@@Xyos212 I agree - DL2’s RT implementation is nice, but Metro Exodus Remastered/RT and Cyberpunk remain the best games to showcase the new technology to my eye. What they did in Metro Exodus is transformative.
I don't know of a channel that treats these subjects better than you do, I like how it felt very in-depth and rich in information but managed to stay entertaining
the 'glowing potatoes' are because the flashlight is rendered from close to your eyes, which means you can't see shadows so it looks like full bright, so it's a limitation of the game and not raytracing
metro exodus enhanced edition is still probably the only impressive ray traced game that's actually playable at high fps and at a resolution that keeps the visuals sharp.
There is this bug which makes nighttime as bright as day outside which really takes me out of the game. I hope they fix it some day so I can continue playing
yeah, i don't think until crysis 4 or a ps5 exclusive focused on photorealism comes out, any game can beat exodus enhanced edition natural lighting both indoors and outdoor..
Watching this video after purchasing a 4080 Super on release day, Dying light 2 was the first game I loaded up with the new card, and playing around with the settings I didn't notice much outside of the performance hit with raytracing. This video really have me a new appreciate for what raytracing does, and with DLSS and Frame gen, I can get 150+ fps max settings. Very cool to see
It's too bad that the game, much more Ray Tracing can't even give us Cast shadows given by a flashlight. A game like this needs it soooo bad especially in dark spots.
Sure, devs might have removed that because of performance issues, but at least gives us the OPTION to turn it on for the ones that have the GPUs to support it.
They're there, probably. It's just that the flashlight is literally directly parallel with the direction your eyes look, so you won't see any shadows. If they had moved the flashlight emit position down by like 50cm, you'd see very obvious cast shadows.
@@BebxOfficial actually, no. The flashlight shadows are disabled in the files, when you enable them there's a little performance loss and an issue where the flashlight is casting your own shadow infront of you. And also you can see how dying light 1 did flashlight shadows, it's not really hard moving it to the shoulder for shadows to be seen properly
Very cool! Let me just say that I really enjoy this content, even if I had to watch his one on mute because always stating which image we were looking at became very grating!
The part of the orange underground lighting made me loose it, i've laugh out loud. Nvdia you should hire Mr 2kliksphilip always, becouse he's awesome, cheers !
I don't have an rtx GPU, I don't want to play dying light 2, yet I still clicked this video because Philip has this strange ability to make anything fun and interesting.
One suggestion: in your “FPS counter” bits, put the hardware you’re using on-screen. It’s hard to get the context for what you’re saying otherwise! Good video tho! I enjoyed it.
@@Dankuzmeemusmaximus I know, but having it on-screen (even briefly) is more useful for people watching the video on mobile, or full-screen, etc. Not everyone is going to want to (or be able to) pause and scroll down while it's on.
i'm watching this at 2 in the morning so i zoned out for a bit and came back to you talking about 4k raytracing performance. i was then amazed at how powerful systems are these days and then depressed at how i'm still on a 1060 6gb
Nvidia really did make a feature before knowing if people wanted it or not, and now they have to convince people the feature is actually good and useful
[Nvidia]: We will pay you to talk about how cool raytracing is with our cards. [Philip]: "It looks too glorious with rasterization. Raytracing allows it to be worse and more depressing!"
Love the depth raytracing adds, it's such a small, but noticeable change. Graphics are getting so good these days, my 1050 doesn't approve, but thankfully I know not to listen to it.
DLSS is still a game changer imo, and definitely superior to FSR. Once I upgraded from my old 1080 to a 3070 a few months ago, I noticed a huge difference in performance and image quality in DLSS-supported titles as compared to my old 1080. Much higher performance and better image quality even at the same graphics settings. Dying Light 2 runs great for me at 1440p DLSS Balanced using the Digital Foundry-optimized settings with Ray tracing fully enabled.
Well FSR is a cheap spacial effect, better than nothing, but not really that good once you drop the resolution below a certain point. Thankfully, they announced FSR 2.0, which is a temporal solution more like DLSS without the AI part, so older cards can actually have a decent alternative.
I wish we could see more games that use ray-tracing in a way that’s not just visual, like making a games that aren’t possible with traditional rasterization. Something like CodeParade’s Marble Marcher comes to mind, being able to render a perfect sphere and dynamic fractal geometry without the need for triangles is incredibly unique, and that was possible with just ray-marching. A lot of people pass off ray-tracing as an unnecessary expensive gimmick that’s used to justify paying for an overpriced GPU or console, but I believe that ray-tracing could be redeemed in the hands of the right developers. Early 3D rasterized games had to prove their worth with games that could only work in 3D like Super Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot; if ray-tracing wants to be taken seriously, it needs developers that are willing to take creative risks to bring experiences that rasterization isn’t already capable of.
I could see it playing well in Mil-Sims of all things. Ray tracing could realistically model raydar systems and the likes, which could provide a lot of use in simulating targeting and detection systems. Cant think of many actual gameplay uses for it outside of this kind of thing though
Such experimental games probably belong to indie scene, but since most indie developers either use simple 2D engines or third party engines like Unreal or Unity I dont see it coming soon. There are only few experienced indie graphics programmers who commit to such experiments and make final game out of it. (Teardown)
And teardown didnt even use rtx, it used some custom system. From my understanding the opportunity cost for most devs is really high too. Sure, understanding ray teacing is important but now you need 4k textures or else it would look bad, but thats not enough. You need a normal map and a specular map and a diffuse map and so on, which are likely also 4k. It ends up creating several times the work to make the time investment worth it. Its a shame AA games are a dying breed, or else we may see more midtier games coming out like ghostrunner which had their own raytracing system (once again not using rtx)
i hope ray tracing is the norm soon, there are so many interesting things that could be done with global illumination and real time reflections if every somewhat modern system could use them.
Suggestion: maybe you could do the text in different colors, I have problems knowing which example is currently on screen, so: "Native" = green, "4K DLSS Performance" = red and so on...
RT really is impressive in games with terrible (or subpar)raster lighting, like Dying Light 2. I think showcase the point of it better than some of the more "impressive" RT showcase games, it reveals the true advantage of the tech: It can't really be bad implemented as easily as raster lighting can. what do I mean by that? well, instead of having to master every trick in the lighting book it does things like GI and reflections, things which with rasterization are done with a combination of 3 or more different techniques("tricks") each, all of which have possible artifacts and can go wrong in so many ways, it does it in one pass by simply simulating more closely what light does irl(but not perfectly, it's still a trick in many ways). You can do breathtaking and often almost indiscernable from RT raster lighting(and sometimes even more asthetically pleasing! I still prefer top notch raster than RT in many cases, for performance reasons and appreciation for the tricks and how well they can do the job) but it takes good developers and tech people who are good at doing it, while RT only takes getting it working and it "does the rest" so to speak. While during exclusively rasterization age (where we were not long ago and still are in a lot of ways) lighting quality varied wildly between games and while some looked (and still look) stunning, some had really annoying lighting glitches and jank or looked flat, in a hypothetical future where every (or most) games are RT'd all games willl look more uniformely well/realistically lit, with none of the (raster) jank (but maybe some RT jank like noise and increasing ray count effect).
He's not wrong. The water looked great because they used planar reflections, but what about everything else? Simple cubemaps. They did their job fine and it looked good for 2004 standards, but they're severely lacking for 2022 standards.
flashlights usually don't emit any shadows in games, because the light is casted directly from the center of your screen and all shadows it casts would be obstructed anyway and so they save performance by just not doing it.
When game devs get new tech they tend to excessively overuse it (like the bloom in Oblivion) but with raytracing it's not necessarily the case. You can't 'overuse' it unless you make every surface reflective or colourful
Atristic choices will always be better looking than simply using raytracing, I'm sure a few simple changes to the color pallete and shadow opacity can achieve an image that's more visually pleasing than halving your framerate for realistic dark corners.
This video explains why they went with the saturated colors. it's all about the RT. Unfortunately it was still released on consoles and had to target a bunch of different set ups, so not everyone will use it to target the 60 fps
Rasterised AO can definitely look good (3DAO in Destiny 2 for example or HBAO+ from Nvidia). It's of course still incorrect at its core, but as is seen with the global illumination DL2 uses, visually pleasing & correct are separate things.
I find if you know what youre looking for its really easy to tell rtx and conventional apart. Firstly like you mentioned the sharpness of object, but seems to me like the rtx shadows are a lot more calm than the normal ones. Id argue that has a bigger impact then the rtx shadows themselves because the "fake" shadows already look pretty good, ngl. Especially in close ups.
@@woldemunster9244 I didn't know Minecraft RTX did refraction. Though I don't believe caustics are possible. Lots of render engines still struggle with progressive/bucket RT caustics, real-time accurate caustics would be an insane undertaking.
@@BIDP- can confirm, last time I tried turning on caustc in an actual rendering engine ( vray ) I fully crashed. Can confirm I didn't try to turn it on again.
@@bttfsof haha yeah... I recommend using the progressive mode for rendering caustics in Vray and just letting it run all night. You can just use the caustics render element for the progressive render (with a bit of denoise) and combine it in PS with a standard no caustic bucket render.
As someone who did 15 years of working in 3d visualisation and rendering, Raytracing is more realistic than any pseudo methods that have been previously developed to simulate it and ultimately it is they way forward, reflections really are the proof, It is true though that artistically we have grown use to artificial and exotic lighting effects that though unrealistic to real light, may look artistically more interesting if a bit exaggerated, raytracing will ultimately have to allow a little bit over-layed artistic licence, on top of that realism sometimes to achieve certain artistic visual effects / treatments. This will come with time. beyond raytracing will come more detailed light modelling.
considering how dark raytracing gets sometimes games surely will have to adapt to the fact that the human eye adapts to lower light situations. something that doesnt really happen through the screen so games probably have to artificially compensate for that too in order to get an even more realistic (and much more pleasant as we can see stuff in darkness again!!!) experience.
My problem is that developers prefer not using more than 1 bounce, making scenes to dark when they really shouldn't be. Metro Exodus EE was great with their unlimited(?) bounces
this is, even though sponsored, one of the most precise and understandable videos about raytracing, props man
Even before he was getting sponsored by Nvidia, he went really in-depth into analyzing this kind of stuff, so I know he is genuinely passionate about it too.
he will get kank er, at least, I put ALL my hopes in it. Thats all I f want.
@@CodeF53 he loves that shit, but he can also explain it well
His deep dives always deliver.
Idk what you mean with "even though", that would never have anything to do with the content of the video
It's absolutely crazy just how far we've come the past ~5 years or so. DLSS is like pure magic
This video is a labour of love, you've included every single thing I could think of that makes a video a complete one: interaction with the viewer, comedy, a full dissection of the subject being presented and much more big and tiny little details that I can't name :). Great work on this one, if that's what you were talking about when you said that you're going to shake things up then for my opinion it's a great step towards the right direction!
I love when you do deep dives like this.
There are plenty of other RUclips channels that do these, but you have a real knack for it.
Your speaking cadence also lends itself nicely to narration.
I can't wait to pick this game up, I played over 100 hours of the first one.
I am a bit let down that firearms are no longer a part of the franchise, but that still leaves the recurve bow....
And boy is that thing ever fun :)
I hope you're well Philip!!
Edit: Also, yes that soundtrack is poppin!!
Makes me nostalgic for the first Dying Light, such a great game.
The fear of going out at night is like nothing else I've experienced in a video game.
Edit #2: I am SO GLAD that studios are finally starting to use ray traced global illumination and ambient occlusion. Those are the two most important aspects of ray tracing making assets look more realistic. Yes, it hits systems hard, but with DLSS it's a non issue unless you're using an ultra potato.
Honestly I absolutely love raytraced global illumination, raytraced shadows and raytraced ambient occlusion. (which is all kind of the same but you know)
It just looks so good. You do make the point that people have become used to the shadows as they are in game with their crispness etc. but I could never bring myself to like it. Now with raytracing games just look much prettier and more realistic. Love that this is a thing we have now
Raytraced shadows looks awesone just like in real life!!
Especially Ray Traced GI. Especially in a game like this, nothing makes a bigger difference since there are so many scenes that don't have a lot of light sources and indirect light can be very hard to fake accurately. It was such a game changer in Metro Exodus as it is in this game. I'd love Last of Us to get RTGI as well.
Personally, the raytracing needing to catch up isn't a big deal. For me it feels more like exposure adjustment. Like when you turn a flash light off in a very dark room you'll get a momentary after image.
@@2kliksphilip For sure, i'm just saying I don't think it deters the advantages.
Loved the slightly unhinged rants about shadows shimmering and warm coloured under lighting!
One thing that doesn't get talked about enough with raytracing in video games that it can ease development -- most helpful for smaller studios who want to go for more realistic graphics. The designers can save time tweaking lighting for the levels, especially when it also requires re-rendering shadow and other maps with each change.
In a future when most of the games are ray traced only, then yes, it would ease development, but right now, you need to implement both old lightning methods and RT.
It would be interesting to see if RT can be optimized or tweaked to be less demanding or get good enough results with less power needed.
Smaller studios going for photorealism would probably only work for games going for exclusive licenses for sizzle reels and stuff. The pursuit of photorealism is a worthless endeavor anyway.
@@zaidlacksalastname4905 It's not just about photorealism. It's about good looking lightning systems, which even heavily stylized games benefit from immensely.
@@LetrixAR Indeed. We do have some ray traced only games like Quake 2 RTX and Metro Exodus enhanced edition for example, but of course it will take a while for more games to only run that way. Consoles are a great place to experiment the limits of RT optimization, so we should expect a lot of half arse or only use one aspect of RayTracing/Path Tracing, to impressive results like in Metro Exodus enhance edition.
I’d honestly love to see this series across many more RTX games. Please, NVIDIA, make it happen! Pay this man!
Scary games are scary but they are no way as scary as empty source maps where you are all alone...
not really
@@SandwichINCereal you havent felt true horror then
@@SandwichINCereal go to the white room in construct alone
@@wibs0n68 i have, I had recorded a scene in one of my videos for about an hour there
@@hoesmad8626 WARNING: SCARIEST GAME IN YEARS | Five Nights at Freddy's - Part 1
Big thing you mentioned with the flashlight is lack of shadows, and that brings up the fact that many many games turn off shadows for lights completely. Any light that isn't the sun or moon often cast no shadow in the vast majority of games, even brand new ones. When you see a game that has them turned on, it's crazy how much better it looks, and how it enhances the scene. Another thing with flashlights is that games always use these really hard set textures for the light. As if it's coming out of an old cheap bulky flashlight, and I think it always degrades the quality greatly. One of the only games I've seen with a proper flashlight is ready or not.
its funny that in left 4 dead 2 a game released like 15 years ago, the flashlight in it cast shadows hell even the weapon muzzle casts it, it's nowhere near as realistic but even with today's standards and the huge leap in technology it still holds up just because it adds to the atmosphere of the game, because it's a horror game and long big shadows adds to the horror and dark effects, I'm scared that developpers will go the "more realistic and correct" way of presenting things only to be limited hardware wise and forget that games should make you feel something, look at movies, some of them tend to have unrealistic lighting and shadows compared to what the human eyes see so that they convey feelings or atmosphere.
i was really hoping you'd touch on dying light 2's raytracing and dlss. to me it's the pinnacle of implementation for both so far, and i am excited to see games match up to its level
I mean without it most won't hit 60 due to denuvo being rammed in
@@saunshilu And FSR being botched on purpose apparantly, cause the game is sponsored by Nvidia.
@@steinkoloss7320 that sounds like it's getting close to something illegal
Metro Exodus does it better
@@Xyos212 I agree - DL2’s RT implementation is nice, but Metro Exodus Remastered/RT and Cyberpunk remain the best games to showcase the new technology to my eye. What they did in Metro Exodus is transformative.
For once, a video that really shows the difference. I hope your life is and will be perfect because people like you deserve happiness.
I don't know of a channel that treats these subjects better than you do, I like how it felt very in-depth and rich in information but managed to stay entertaining
Speaking of flashlight shadows, I was really impressed with the shadows in Black Mesa
the 'glowing potatoes' are because the flashlight is rendered from close to your eyes, which means you can't see shadows so it looks like full bright, so it's a limitation of the game and not raytracing
It is how it look like if we wear headlights. Maybe it is headlight and not flashlight.
metro exodus enhanced edition is still probably the only impressive ray traced game that's actually playable at high fps and at a resolution that keeps the visuals sharp.
There is this bug which makes nighttime as bright as day outside which really takes me out of the game. I hope they fix it some day so I can continue playing
@@janusprime5693 It's not really a bug. Though I understand what you're saying. I'm not a fan of it either.
yeah, i don't think until crysis 4 or a ps5 exclusive focused on photorealism comes out, any game can beat exodus enhanced edition natural lighting both indoors and outdoor..
This is an absolutely fantastic video for everyone who doesn't know much about the topic! Well done, philip!
"Ah, much worse. Just the way I like it." Brilliant way to describe RTGI sometimes.
Watching this video after purchasing a 4080 Super on release day, Dying light 2 was the first game I loaded up with the new card, and playing around with the settings I didn't notice much outside of the performance hit with raytracing. This video really have me a new appreciate for what raytracing does, and with DLSS and Frame gen, I can get 150+ fps max settings. Very cool to see
It's too bad that the game, much more Ray Tracing can't even give us Cast shadows given by a flashlight. A game like this needs it soooo bad especially in dark spots.
Sure, devs might have removed that because of performance issues, but at least gives us the OPTION to turn it on for the ones that have the GPUs to support it.
They're there, probably. It's just that the flashlight is literally directly parallel with the direction your eyes look, so you won't see any shadows.
If they had moved the flashlight emit position down by like 50cm, you'd see very obvious cast shadows.
@@BebxOfficial actually, no. The flashlight shadows are disabled in the files, when you enable them there's a little performance loss and an issue where the flashlight is casting your own shadow infront of you.
And also you can see how dying light 1 did flashlight shadows, it's not really hard moving it to the shoulder for shadows to be seen properly
Just wait a few years, and the new tech will give us what we already had few years ago.
someone will mod it on PC
I'm excited for how raytracing can be become more integral to the core gameplay in the future, it's another degree of freedom finally unlocking.
Love the soft/sharp shadows raytracing is capable of. Don't particularly like how some scenes look otherwise though, very dark and washed out.
Really enjoyed this! Didn’t enjoy the RUclips algorithm not showing this in my feed.
Just the video I was waiting for
Very cool! Let me just say that I really enjoy this content, even if I had to watch his one on mute because always stating which image we were looking at became very grating!
Loved the energy you gave to this video!
i feel like raytracing needs a fear level of a game to show off the lighting
thanks a lot for this one, havent used raytracing yet, but might once ive finished the main story
This video is in the tier of videos that *deserve* millions of views. Very well done, even compared to your usual quality level.
The part of the orange underground lighting made me loose it, i've laugh out loud. Nvdia you should hire Mr 2kliksphilip always, becouse he's awesome, cheers !
I don't have an rtx GPU, I don't want to play dying light 2, yet I still clicked this video because Philip has this strange ability to make anything fun and interesting.
I am the only one who can clearly tell when DLSS is being used. I mean performance mode is terrible. But this man seems to think otherwise.
High quality browns on the bottom, is what I came here for.
One suggestion: in your “FPS counter” bits, put the hardware you’re using on-screen. It’s hard to get the context for what you’re saying otherwise!
Good video tho! I enjoyed it.
Its in the desc
@@Dankuzmeemusmaximus I know, but having it on-screen (even briefly) is more useful for people watching the video on mobile, or full-screen, etc. Not everyone is going to want to (or be able to) pause and scroll down while it's on.
Great presentation, man. Good job.
10:20 What a beautiful simile
Really great video, so many comparisons!
i'm watching this at 2 in the morning so i zoned out for a bit and came back to you talking about 4k raytracing performance. i was then amazed at how powerful systems are these days and then depressed at how i'm still on a 1060 6gb
I lloved this video, it quite literally maade my day
Nvidia really did make a feature before knowing if people wanted it or not, and now they have to convince people the feature is actually good and useful
It's always been useful, we just never had it in real-time because it'd take too long to render.
they didn't make it, it's been used in animated movies for decade, Nvidia helped introduce it into real time gaming
I think with some color correction, the game with raytracing could look more colorful like the non-raytracing graphics
[Nvidia]: We will pay you to talk about how cool raytracing is with our cards.
[Philip]: "It looks too glorious with rasterization. Raytracing allows it to be worse and more depressing!"
I'm really happy to finally see raytracing evolve so much. It's the first time I can notice the difference without using binoculars .
You do make a lot of very good videos, but this one was excellent!
Wow, we're really breaking through a barrier graphics wise, slowly but surely
Love the depth raytracing adds, it's such a small, but noticeable change. Graphics are getting so good these days, my 1050 doesn't approve, but thankfully I know not to listen to it.
DLSS is still a game changer imo, and definitely superior to FSR. Once I upgraded from my old 1080 to a 3070 a few months ago, I noticed a huge difference in performance and image quality in DLSS-supported titles as compared to my old 1080. Much higher performance and better image quality even at the same graphics settings.
Dying Light 2 runs great for me at 1440p DLSS Balanced using the Digital Foundry-optimized settings with Ray tracing fully enabled.
HoW dArE yOu LiKe NvIdIa DiCtAtOrShIp AMD BETTER BECAUSE THEY OPEN SOURCED LANCZOS!!!!
Well FSR is a cheap spacial effect, better than nothing, but not really that good once you drop the resolution below a certain point. Thankfully, they announced FSR 2.0, which is a temporal solution more like DLSS without the AI part, so older cards can actually have a decent alternative.
@@H3LLGHA5T everything is better than nothing
i really enjoyed sitting through and watching it
yeah im buying dying light 2 now to play with my 3070ti, thanks philip, this video helped me with my decision
I don't know why I got so excited after I got all of the "is there ray tracing?" Questions. Got them all right though :)
I wish we could see more games that use ray-tracing in a way that’s not just visual, like making a games that aren’t possible with traditional rasterization. Something like CodeParade’s Marble Marcher comes to mind, being able to render a perfect sphere and dynamic fractal geometry without the need for triangles is incredibly unique, and that was possible with just ray-marching.
A lot of people pass off ray-tracing as an unnecessary expensive gimmick that’s used to justify paying for an overpriced GPU or console, but I believe that ray-tracing could be redeemed in the hands of the right developers. Early 3D rasterized games had to prove their worth with games that could only work in 3D like Super Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot; if ray-tracing wants to be taken seriously, it needs developers that are willing to take creative risks to bring experiences that rasterization isn’t already capable of.
I could see it playing well in Mil-Sims of all things. Ray tracing could realistically model raydar systems and the likes, which could provide a lot of use in simulating targeting and detection systems. Cant think of many actual gameplay uses for it outside of this kind of thing though
Such experimental games probably belong to indie scene, but since most indie developers either use simple 2D engines or third party engines like Unreal or Unity I dont see it coming soon. There are only few experienced indie graphics programmers who commit to such experiments and make final game out of it. (Teardown)
And teardown didnt even use rtx, it used some custom system.
From my understanding the opportunity cost for most devs is really high too. Sure, understanding ray teacing is important but now you need 4k textures or else it would look bad, but thats not enough. You need a normal map and a specular map and a diffuse map and so on, which are likely also 4k. It ends up creating several times the work to make the time investment worth it. Its a shame AA games are a dying breed, or else we may see more midtier games coming out like ghostrunner which had their own raytracing system (once again not using rtx)
i hope ray tracing is the norm soon, there are so many interesting things that could be done with global illumination and real time reflections if every somewhat modern system could use them.
10:27 i actually started to have a cold sweat seeing you try to crawl into that dishonored rat way
Wow, dying light is a such a quiet and relaxing game :o
Jokes aside, thanks for the video, it was awesome. I learnt a lot and it was FUN!
I’ve never seen such a substantial difference with ray tracing. It’s amazing.
13:20 tell me you at least FOUGHT yourself from making the Agent Smith reference come ON
2kliksphillip doing what digital foundry does best, but with a considerable layer of dankness
Hey phillips , if you ever make a video about dynamic music , this game is the best example out there now
Suggestion: maybe you could do the text in different colors,
I have problems knowing which example is currently on screen, so:
"Native" = green, "4K DLSS Performance" = red and so on...
DLSSPIRFMRNC
@@2kliksphilip Huh, interesting idea. I think that would work, maybe you should do that!
RT really is impressive in games with terrible (or subpar)raster lighting, like Dying Light 2.
I think showcase the point of it better than some of the more "impressive" RT showcase games, it reveals the true advantage of the tech: It can't really be bad implemented as easily as raster lighting can.
what do I mean by that? well, instead of having to master every trick in the lighting book it does things like GI and reflections, things which with rasterization are done with a combination of 3 or more different techniques("tricks") each, all of which have possible artifacts and can go wrong in so many ways, it does it in one pass by simply simulating more closely what light does irl(but not perfectly, it's still a trick in many ways). You can do breathtaking and often almost indiscernable from RT raster lighting(and sometimes even more asthetically pleasing! I still prefer top notch raster than RT in many cases, for performance reasons and appreciation for the tricks and how well they can do the job) but it takes good developers and tech people who are good at doing it, while RT only takes getting it working and it "does the rest" so to speak.
While during exclusively rasterization age (where we were not long ago and still are in a lot of ways) lighting quality varied wildly between games and while some looked (and still look) stunning, some had really annoying lighting glitches and jank or looked flat, in a hypothetical future where every (or most) games are RT'd all games willl look more uniformely well/realistically lit, with none of the (raster) jank (but maybe some RT jank like noise and increasing ray count effect).
"reflections are something I don't ever feel we ever found an acceptable way of faking using older methods"
half-life 2 in 2004: 🗿
He's not wrong. The water looked great because they used planar reflections, but what about everything else? Simple cubemaps. They did their job fine and it looked good for 2004 standards, but they're severely lacking for 2022 standards.
Reflection captures stop being an "acceptable" way of faking it the moment you introduce dynamic lighting.
Meanwhile me, watching at 480p: Ah yes, pixels, we have those! Moving grass, yes, I knew that's what was onscreen!
this video is absolutely beautiful
flashlights usually don't emit any shadows in games, because the light is casted directly from the center of your screen and all shadows it casts would be obstructed anyway and so they save performance by just not doing it.
But I see shadows from my flashlight in real life.
I like the raytracing in the game, though it makes everything darker so some scenes were partially just black screen
The real life reflections where fun, felt like the UK.
Brown crumbling and slightly dirty, ah my home land.
@@2kliksphilip Ah I was going to mention it was overcast, you made me smile!
Cant wait till the next video.
When game devs get new tech they tend to excessively overuse it (like the bloom in Oblivion) but with raytracing it's not necessarily the case. You can't 'overuse' it unless you make every surface reflective or colourful
not upscaled... dlss performance...
not upscaled... dlss performance...
not upscaled... dlss performance...
it sounds like a chant.
Atristic choices will always be better looking than simply using raytracing, I'm sure a few simple changes to the color pallete and shadow opacity can achieve an image that's more visually pleasing than halving your framerate for realistic dark corners.
This video explains why they went with the saturated colors. it's all about the RT. Unfortunately it was still released on consoles and had to target a bunch of different set ups, so not everyone will use it to target the 60 fps
aww I was hoping this video was about Resident Evil 7 and RE2 being given raytracing recently
Regarding the old ambient occlusion methods, HLA has crazy good ambient occlusion despite not being raytraced.
@@2kliksphilip Ah, that explains why it looks so good.
Rasterised AO can definitely look good (3DAO in Destiny 2 for example or HBAO+ from Nvidia).
It's of course still incorrect at its core, but as is seen with the global illumination DL2 uses, visually pleasing & correct are separate things.
no words but. banger video
I love the way you pronounced Call of Juarez lol
Not upscaled --- dlss performance ..
Not upscaled --- dlss performance ..
I will like and subscribe ....
I haven't enjoyed a 2kliksphilip video that much in a while. Well done.
I find if you know what youre looking for its really easy to tell rtx and conventional apart. Firstly like you mentioned the sharpness of object, but seems to me like the rtx shadows are a lot more calm than the normal ones. Id argue that has a bigger impact then the rtx shadows themselves because the "fake" shadows already look pretty good, ngl. Especially in close ups.
Looking forward to when Nvidia tackle real-time refraction and caustics in games.
Like in RT Minecraft
@@woldemunster9244 I didn't know Minecraft RTX did refraction. Though I don't believe caustics are possible. Lots of render engines still struggle with progressive/bucket RT caustics, real-time accurate caustics would be an insane undertaking.
@@BIDP- can confirm, last time I tried turning on caustc in an actual rendering engine ( vray ) I fully crashed. Can confirm I didn't try to turn it on again.
@@bttfsof haha yeah... I recommend using the progressive mode for rendering caustics in Vray and just letting it run all night. You can just use the caustics render element for the progressive render (with a bit of denoise) and combine it in PS with a standard no caustic bucket render.
@@BIDP- I might thy this, thanks for the tip !
Sharp shadows are highly overrated, and I find the aliasing they come with very distracting. Soft shadows look far better IMO
Damn this is better than Digital Foundry. I would love more of these.
As someone who did 15 years of working in 3d visualisation and rendering, Raytracing is more realistic than any pseudo methods that have been previously developed to simulate it and ultimately it is they way forward, reflections really are the proof, It is true though that artistically we have grown use to artificial and exotic lighting effects that though unrealistic to real light, may look artistically more interesting if a bit exaggerated, raytracing will ultimately have to allow a little bit over-layed artistic licence, on top of that realism sometimes to achieve certain artistic visual effects / treatments. This will come with time. beyond raytracing will come more detailed light modelling.
3 out of 3 babyyy
Although i just looked at the shadows
Too bad the 2million health bars and waypoints ruin the immersion. :c
Out of interest, what GPU did you use for this testing?
considering how dark raytracing gets sometimes games surely will have to adapt to the fact that the human eye adapts to lower light situations. something that doesnt really happen through the screen so games probably have to artificially compensate for that too in order to get an even more realistic (and much more pleasant as we can see stuff in darkness again!!!) experience.
Great content !
12:59 I love how he has to specify that this is real life footage 😂
My problem is that developers prefer not using more than 1 bounce, making scenes to dark when they really shouldn't be. Metro Exodus EE was great with their unlimited(?) bounces
my man 2kilks really loves pixels
Wow i switched away and came back to 2:40
it looks like a real life video, oh my
13:00 Best part of the video
This is one of the first games that I can clearly see a difference while using RayTracing
Would love to here you analyze game graphics together with the guys from DigitalFoundry
Ray tracing is in real life? Then how come my live frame rate is so high?
I wanted to give the video a like but it already has a like ... I feel like Neo when he saw a black cat ... and a black cat again ...
Not upscaled, DLSS Performance. Not upscaled ... **smiles** DLSS PERFORMANCE!
Very fun video
I wish you could combine the realistic gi and the artists intent
Great video, reminds me of when i played teardown because of your reviews on the alpha. Btw is there any Radeon Super Resolution in the game?
@@2kliksphilip great, thanks