News Cyberpunk 2077 RT Overdrive Path Tracing: Full Path Tracing, Fully Unnecessary

[zx128k]

I'm still waiting to see what AMD has planned for the AI Block in RDNA 3 which seems to be unused currently.

I would guess frame generation and FSR upgrades. AMD need to do something or nVidia will milk the market forever.

 

[russell_john]

CD Projekt Red released up 1.62 for Cyberpunk 2077, adding a "technology preview" of path tracing as a quality option. We tested performance at native as well as with DLSS 2 and FSR2 upscaling, plus DLSS 3 Frame Generation on the 40-series cards.

Cyberpunk 2077 RT Overdrive Path Tracing: Full Path Tracing, Fully Unnecessary : Read more

Full Path Ray Tracing Fully Unnecessary

Then again the same can be said about Gaming in general ....... It's a hobby not a necessity

 

[dalauder]

This feels like a mumbo-jumbo of misinformation put together by manipulation of data and data selection to guide the reader towards the conclusion the author wants to put out all the while completely missing the point of WHY this mode is even available in an already pretty demanding game. Guess anything that is not pure raster is not to exist for some people.

It wasn't any misinformation. RT Overdrive is a fun tech demo, he made it sound like that. But it's not practical for gaming. He was also right that cards that are ray tracing capable need to come down to mainstream prices before it's feasible to sell ray-tracing only products. Most people will NEVER buy a $800+ graphics card and developers make games for most people to be able to buy.

Now we might see a change if the PS6/Future X-Box use full ray tracing. Then there will be a whole ray tracing ecosystem. But since they're likely to continue using AMD hardware, that seems unlikely...unless AMD's got some big ray tracing hardware changes and new coding in the works. At some point, AMD's gonna have to stop ignoring ray tracing performance.

 

[elforeign]

Multiple people here are missing the point. I'm primarily focused on performance here, and I discussed that at length. You're all getting hung up on the "RT Overdrive doesn't radically alter the way the game looks." Yes, it absolutely changes the lighting, it's more complex, etc. But it doesn't make the game feel completely different, other than the fact that it can bring most GPUs to their knees.

Digital Foundry spent way more effort on hyping up the image quality enhancements. Kudos to them. But for every part where they show RT Ultra or even RT Psycho (which generally doesn't look that different from RT Ultra) versus RT Overdrive, there are ten comparisons between Max Rasterization and RT Overdrive. That's because those differences are far more noticeable.

There will be rooms lit up by a light source that look far more "correct" with Overdrive than with RT Ultra or rasterization. It's still the same game underneath, however, so we're putting a bit of lipstick on a pig. Unless you love Cyberpunk, in which case maybe it's a fox. Whatever. If I hadn't already finished the game, sure, I'd turn on Overdrive and play it with DLSS upscaling and frame generation on a 4090. But I don't have a compelling need to go back and replay the game.

The guns still feel the same. The randomly generated people and cars that go nowhere are all the same. The quests are the same. But the lighting and shadows are different! Assuming you have a GPU capable of playing the game.

What's your point here though?

It is advertised as a tech demo for full path tracing, a purely graphical update and not as some new game altering mechanic or improvement to anything that you say it fails to do? Also, the update is free? The price of progress (outside of the very steep price for a capable graphics card) is simply that not everyone will be able to enjoy.

But why fault them when this isn't the mess that was the full release, and they have been explicit in saying the hardware requirements from the get-go?

 

[dalauder]

...There is no point in complaining about differences when most of them are so minor and inconsequential to gameplay that most people probably wouldn't be able to tell which is which without knowing what to look for and where beforehand unless they stopped playing to do pixel-peeping. (And with "lipstick on a pig" implementations, many people prefer the raster hacks over RT anyway.)

That puts RT comfortably over the diminishing return cliff for me. If I had a GPU with RT, I'd be in the "I turn it on for pixel peeping every now and then, off the rest of the time" crowd.

The diminishing returns thing is what this article is really about for me.

I thought the Witcher 3 had tangible benefits in ray tracing--especially in scenes with water. But if a game doesn't have reflections, or already had good looking lighting, then the benefits are pretty minimal. Whether I play on my refurbished $247 RTX 2080 Ti or a $1600 RTX 4090, most games look almost identical.

What really matters more is the quality of physics and animations.

 

[dalauder]

Then how else can 4090 owner lord himself over lowly console gamer? Because console gamer is already reaching dangerously close (120 FPS)! Can you imagine the DREAD of having to be on par with other human beings?!
High FPS is the right of only a few and it belongs to them alone.

I really am confused as to how NVidia has a whole generation of graphics cards that cost $1000+. I guess the $599 4070 is alright if you're a serious gamer.

 

[Phaaze88]

Full Path Ray Tracing Fully Unnecessary

Then again the same can be said about Gaming in general ....... It's a hobby not a necessity

There's sarcasm in that, right?
Games are a form of entertainment - in some cases, therapy. They can be enjoyed whether full path ray tracing is present or not.

 

[mhmarefat]

I prefer the title "Eternal Supreme Overlord". And the laws of economics still apply, whether or not you choose to recognize them. You consume products and services; that makes you a consumer. Your abject desire to replace the term with a euphism brings to mind a quote of Lincoln's:

" “How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?…. Four; calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.”.

Do you know what else also applies? The calls of nature always apply. So is it ok with you if I define you as answerer to the call of nature?! Maybe some corporate overlord of wastewater industry would view us as such but is it OK or is it "disrespectful" because you are a being of high dignity?
This low view you have of mankind is heavily influenced by money-worshipping state that is 'consuming' the world at this time and age unfortunately. Sad times really.

To stay on-topic, I'm asking you to abandon this 1-dimensional 144p view of the world that "only money is real and we must insatiably pursue it based on values that corporations have taught us" and instead fully trace this path of multi-dimensional 4k view of love, beauty, compassion, ..etc that also do exist.

 

[Findecanor]

Why should I care?
Does it improve gameplay in any way?

All I see is that the raytraced images are either over-exposed or under-exposed, or sometimes both.
And I find it weird that I would need a hugely expensive graphics card just to be able to see a simulation of poverty and despair in more detail, when there is real poverty and despair available in real life for me to see for much less. If I'm going to spend money on a high-end graphics card, I'd want it for experiencing something spectacular.

Sure, I've been doing graphics programming in my youth, wanting to become a game developer. And back then I and my peers actually dreamed about doing raytracing in real-time. I know full well the excitement for pushing technology to its limits.
But as you mature as a software developer, you also learn to prioritise to avoid diminishing returns.

 

[hotaru.hino]

The funny thing I see in "what's the point of ray tracing blah blah blah" I feel could be taken to its logical extreme: what's the point of gaming in 3D anyway?

Take for example Super Mario 64 vs Super Mario World. Was there anything adding the third dimension to Mario really did to make the game play that much more better than its 2D counterpart? One could argue some aspects of it detracted from the fun.

Or even if you wanted to add the merits of 3D, what was the point of going past say something beyond Unreal Engine 1 or Id Tech 3? I have as much fun in UT99 or the original Call of Duty as I do in its more modern incarnations.

 

[magnum29]

The only thing that's "fully unnecessary" is this article with it's utterly backwards viewpoint.

Technology doesn't improve unless there's a desire to make things better. And path tracing is objectively better than rasterization (if you disagree, go read a book on computer graphics). The notion that path tracing can be done at all today in real time (particularly in a game with high fidelity content) should be incredibly exciting to anyone with any interest in graphics rendering.

And if that's not something you care about, then you should be happy to know that, given the shift in allocating computing power to casting rays, you'll likely continue to be able to turn your graphics settings to low and still get a decent framerate out of your 1060.

 

[SyCoREAPER]

In the article, why is it showing over 170fps in a few grabs?

 

[pclaughton]

The problem with Ray Tracing is that it keeps being pushed as a killer feature instead of a nice add-on. If there were ever a game where I never dropped below 4k/120 at max settings (which I have yet to encounter), I'd love to turn it on. Otherwise, I'd prefer to dial up the raster-based settings and leave RT off.

To each their own, but for me, high res and framerates improves gameplay a lot more than incremental lighting upgrades I need side-by-side screenshots to see.

 

[edzieba]

Multiple people here are missing the point. I'm primarily focused on performance here, and I discussed that at length. You're all getting hung up on the "RT Overdrive doesn't radically alter the way the game looks." Yes, it absolutely changes the lighting, it's more complex, etc. But it doesn't make the game feel completely different, other than the fact that it can bring most GPUs to their knees.

Digital Foundry spent way more effort on hyping up the image quality enhancements. Kudos to them. But for every part where they show RT Ultra or even RT Psycho (which generally doesn't look that different from RT Ultra) versus RT Overdrive, there are ten comparisons between Max Rasterization and RT Overdrive. That's because those differences are far more noticeable.

There will be rooms lit up by a light source that look far more "correct" with Overdrive than with RT Ultra or rasterization. It's still the same game underneath, however, so we're putting a bit of lipstick on a pig. Unless you love Cyberpunk, in which case maybe it's a fox. Whatever. If I hadn't already finished the game, sure, I'd turn on Overdrive and play it with DLSS upscaling and frame generation on a 4090. But I don't have a compelling need to go back and replay the game.

The guns still feel the same. The randomly generated people and cars that go nowhere are all the same. The quests are the same. But the lighting and shadows are different! Assuming you have a GPU capable of playing the game.

By the same "graphical changes don't matter, the underlying game is the same" logic, we can simply play games on lowest settings and ignore high-end GPUs. No need for raster GI, or screen-space reflections, or normal mapping, or volumetric fog, none of those affect gameplay after all! Pack in hardware T&L boys, Phong and Gouraud are for the bourgeois, it's flat shading only for you!

Now, back in the real world where GPU performance has continued to increase year-on-year to meet demand for increasing fidelity and graphics complexity (not always synonymous), people actually do want increases in visual quality when available. Drawing an arbitrary line in the sand that "graphics today are fine, all future improvement is pointless and not worth it" is as laughable as it has been every time it has occurred for the last couple of decades of real-time graphics rendering.

 

[Elusive Ruse]

Let me get this straight, Nvidia came up with a $1600 monster of a gaming GPU which now they are using to push a feature that this flagship cannot handle without the use of other Nvidia technology!

 

[zx128k]

By the same "graphical changes don't matter, the underlying game is the same" logic, we can simply play games on lowest settings and ignore high-end GPUs. No need for raster GI, or screen-space reflections, or normal mapping, or volumetric fog, none of those affect gameplay after all! Pack in hardware T&L boys, Phong and Gouraud are for the bourgeois, it's flat shading only for you!

Now, back in the real world where GPU performance has continued to increase year-on-year to meet demand for increasing fidelity and graphics complexity (not always synonymous), people actually do want increases in visual quality when available. Drawing an arbitrary line in the sand that "graphics today are fine, all future improvement is pointless and not worth it" is as laughable as it has been every time it has occurred for the last couple of decades of real-time graphics rendering.

There is even a guy arguing 4k/120 at max settings or path tracing/RT is useless. Its pure trolling.

 

[Endymio]

The only thing that's "fully unnecessary" is this article with it's utterly backwards viewpoint...path tracing is objectively better than rasterization... The notion that path tracing can be done at all today in real time [should] be incredibly exciting to anyone with any interest in graphics rendering.

Stop; you're making too much sense. People here are missing the point entirely. The "nearly-as-good" images without full path tracing are accomplished only by extraordinary precomputation efforts on the parts of the developers -- expensive and inflexible. When path tracing becomes the standard, it doesn't just mean better graphics: it means more total content, more dynamic content, at lower cost.

This low view you have of mankind is heavily influenced by money-worshipping state that is 'consuming' the world at this time and age unfortunately. ..I'm asking you to abandon this 1-dimensional 144p view of the world that "only money is real and we must insatiably pursue it based on values that corporations have taught us" and instead fully trace this path of multi-dimensional 4k view of love, beauty, compassion

An understanding of basic economic fact is not a "low view" of mankind. It's a realistic, indeed essential view. When people start believing in fairy-tale fantasies, the result is socialistic dystopias like Cuba, the DPRK and the former USSR.

But I promise -- as soon as you donate all your worldly possessions to charity, and tell your employer that you'd rather be paid in "love, beauty, and compassion" rather than cold hard cash, I'll agree to no longer label you a consumer.

 

[sam buddy]

Many commenters did not even bother reading the article, obviously.
But that did not deter them from jumping to conclusions, implying and then arguing against points never made and things never said, interpreting clearly written views in a totally different way, cutting and quoting pieces of text in a way that makes it read differently (but fits their narrative), generalizing to an absurd degree, even totally dismissing the article as an anti-RT rant.

Give the man a break. Respect the time he spent writing it and running those benchmarks by, at least, going through it properly. Some comments seem like they were meant to be posted in some other thread.

If the article is TL;DR, that's fine, just be fair.

 

[scottsoapbox]

Despite Jarred's subtle anti-capitalist slam, the fact remains that consumers ultimately bear the costs of game development, not corporations. I also question the logic of saying ray-tracing isn't necessary, because of its impact on "muh framez". The average Hollywood CGI film is vastly more realistic than any game, despite that it runs at a mere 30fps. Why? Better physics; better ray tracing. If you're capable of generating more than 60-75 fps already, the additional horsepower is better used for improved rendering, not more frames (I exclude the potential, but unlikely case of an advantage for professional eSports gamers).

That's not an anti-capitalist slam. That's how capitalism works: self interest.

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages." - Adam Smith

And the consumer only indirectly "bears the cost" of game development and only if the corporation can convince them that the value of the game is worth more to the consumer than the asking price. No one cares how much a product costs, they only care about what benefit the the product brings compared to the price.

The corporation bears extra costs they can't pass on in less profits, possible losses, and potentially even the bankruptcy (at which point investors "bear the cost" of poor management). They don't get to magically increase prices just because expenses went up.

 

[brandonjclark]

Despite Jarred's subtle anti-capitalist slam, the fact remains that consumers ultimately bear the costs of game development, not corporations. I also question the logic of saying ray-tracing isn't necessary, because of its impact on "muh framez". The average Hollywood CGI film is vastly more realistic than any game, despite that it runs at a mere 30fps. Why? Better physics; better ray tracing. If you're capable of generating more than 60-75 fps already, the additional horsepower is better used for improved rendering, not more frames (I exclude the potential, but unlikely case of an advantage for professional eSports gamers).

That's not a fair comparison between PRE-RENDERED scenes and on the fly rendering.

 

[Phaaze88]

When path tracing becomes the standard, it doesn't just mean better graphics: it means more total content, more dynamic content, at lower cost.

So until that day comes, the RTX cards that have released so far and later are like a Kickstarter or Early Access, and folks are paying the associated fees through buying these cards?
Crunch culture will die down? Folks get more feature complete Assassin's Creed/FIFA/CoD/Fallout/etc?

 

[zx128k]

AI ingame npc's.

 

[dalauder]

Why should I care?
Does it improve gameplay in any way?

All I see is that the raytraced images are either over-exposed or under-exposed, or sometimes both.
...
But as you mature as a software developer, you also learn to prioritise to avoid diminishing returns.

Exactly. While ray tracing could help, better animations, physics, and object interactions is actually MUCH more important than most gripes about lighting. That said, it would matter if there was a new jet ski racing game, or something like that.

 

[dalauder]

AI ingame npc's.

That would also matter A LOT more than ray-tracing. Being able to hold a conversation with an NPC would be amazing.

 

[dalauder]

The only thing that's "fully unnecessary" is this article with it's utterly backwards viewpoint.

Technology doesn't improve unless there's a desire to make things better. And path tracing is objectively better than rasterization (if you disagree, go read a book on computer graphics). The notion that path tracing can be done at all today in real time (particularly in a game with high fidelity content) should be incredibly exciting to anyone with any interest in graphics rendering.

And if that's not something you care about, then you should be happy to know that, given the shift in allocating computing power to casting rays, you'll likely continue to be able to turn your graphics settings to low and still get a decent framerate out of your 1060.

I think you're missing the point and just harping on the title, which was a fun pun.

I think the author clearly says that it's a nice tech demo during the article. But for gaming, it's totally unnecessary and detrimental. It is really cool to see that things can go in that direction and I think CD Projekt Red will be an industry leader in ray tracing when it really becomes mainstream next generation.

Their Witcher 3 ray tracing was useful. This is not, from a gaming standpoint. But why should the developer do the same thing twice, I think that they pushed the envelope and that's noteworthy--it's like the new Crysis.

However, there is a valid point that everything may end up AI rendered anyways, making ray tracing tech a moot point.