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[Vick]

These people are just retarded lol

Rockstar Just Released 63 New GTA 6 Screenshots - Here's What We Spotted

A real showcase for the game's ray-traced reflections.

www.digitalfoundry.net

They are on drugs, no other explanation. To claim "not even PS5 Pro" is pure retardation.
Posted this in the other Thread:

These dithered RT reflections look like trash.

The game looks amazing because of Rockstar art direction and visual attention to detail, but technically there's nothing shown here we haven't seen before on these consoles. Basic ass shadows a generation behind Cyberpunk on PS5 Pro, soft IQ, facial hair straight from TAA PS4 era. Awful PS3 textures at times. DF are on drugs. These are Quality mode screenshots, probably Photo-Mode, from base PS5/Series X.

Reminder of what runs at 60fps on PS5 Pro with full quality RT shadows and full resolution RT reflections (both way above what is shown in GTA VI, at much better IQ to boot):

Spoiler

 

[Msamy]

What if I prove to you that, technically, they may have RT reflections, RTGI and potentially RT shadows in cutscenes?

Let's leave the gameplay portion aside for a full reveal as it's too brief and motion blurry to deduce anything aside from RT reflections.

But what if I prove those 3 RT features exist in cutscenes, running in realtime? Will that change your mind on what they are technically supporting for realtime rendering? Long analysis incoming. I didn't bother doing this 16 months ago as I used to take DF's word on everything. But all the recent commentary on ND's hiring made me take a closer look. Msamy

This is a bigger post than my Laufey breakdown, so I'm compressing it in spoilers wherever it seems a bit much. Do take your time to go through it all as, again, it requires a step by step examination

Spoiler: Proof: RT Reflections, RTGI and RT shadows

Let's start with the easy one - RT reflections. Anyone that is denying even that is straight up trolling or blind from confirmation bias. Outside of the opening shot, which is most likely their souped up version of planar reflections with adjustable DoF (they may be the first to do DoF like that on planar reflections), there is RT reflections EVERYWHERE. I've not seen a single game pull it off to this extent on console. Even Cyberpunk on Pro (which is currently the best implementation of RT reflections on console imo) has limitations on what surfaces have it.

Spoiler: Examples

Inside of fingers reflecting on safety buckle (Responds to lighting change as well)

Occluded finger tips on other reflective surfaces (see above "Sony")

See her index finger below equalizer (side note: the light intensity also gradually increases on all surfaces) :

Occluded back of yoke reflecting on dashboard (see under "Stand By")

Spoiler

Even individual switch knobs reflecting her finger

Reflections of Jordan on transparent glass in door. It's detailed enough to see her ear too (see in GIF form later below)

Television screen

There are much more obvious ones of her RT reflection on the screen later that everyone would have seen, but you can see her raising her gun in the last few frames (moving reflection on agent's right shoulder).

Gameplay:

You can even tell it's pure RT with no SSR layered in at all as the red GI bounce from the blade on the robot does not show in the reflection. A likely optimization as it would require GI to be handled in reflections as well. Usually PT is the only one that solves that for RTGI.

Now here's proof that at least a single bounce from ALL light sources appears to be per pixel RTGI. Let's start by establishing that pretty much everything that looks like it's emitting light is actually emitting light. They aren't just adding bloom or post-process glow. You would think this little glowing "Ignition" text is just an emissive texture that doesn't affect its surroundings right?

Nope. Actually, pay attention to all the points of interest that I've marked above and follow them in the GIF below. See how all those points change in GIF form:

Spoiler: Proof of RTGI

Notice the light from "Ignition" getting occluded by other fingers, causing her thumb to be lit by it differently every frame. Also notice the bottom of the second pair of switches or the reflections above. They disappear in the last frame. That's specular GI from the first pair of switches originating from "Ignition" and specular reflections of the same switch at the top. Once it moves from position, the shiny metal doesn't cast specular GI to the second pair. You will notice the specular reflection of the "Ignition" disappear from the moving switch itself, because the angle has changed. The specular GI also disappears from above the console due to changing angle of specular bounce. This is INSANE detail, all happening in consecutive frames.


You will see this behavior throughout the trailer. Everything that glows, lights up the surroundings as well. Apart from path tracing, there are 3 ways to pull this off in real time at the moment that I'm aware of. A megalights like solution to make all emissive textures a light source. This would seem overkill, but is always a possibility going forward as other engines are starting to have this feature. But let's assume this is not in place as we are only trying to establish what is the bare minimum required. Also, the opening shot casts only one shadow on her that doesn't reconcile with the mirror lights in all 4 directions, which should really function like a ring light with no harsh shadowing falling on herself as a result, so that suggests this isn't an infinite shadow casting lighting solution, but more selective traditional direct lights. But on the other hand, this could also be an artistic choice where they wanted some obvious shadowing. Let's assume no megalights until there is other conclusive evidence for it. I see no conclusive evidence of something that advanced in the trailer.


The second option is RT emissives, where the emissive texture is ray traced for illumination of surroundings and objects that the light can reach. Cyberpunk does this on Pro. This would be sufficient for most things shown in the trailer and I assumed this to be the case for Intergalactic, even though DF missed it. However, there are a couple of scenes that RT emissives would not suffice

• Indirect bounce lighting/GI from emissives. RT emissives would only cast direct light
• GI color bleed

Both can be seen in the trailer.

Notice how the bounce light on the cover increases as her thumb gets in front of the light source. That's extra light rays bouncing off her thumb to the cover, causing it to brighten even more initially

and then the bounce light gradually reduces as her finger starts covering the light altogether. Incredible demonstration of SSS as well Bojji

Or here, back to the switches, where you can literally break down each frame for direct and indirect illumination. There is a 1 frame lag, which is quite common in realtime RTGI versus prerendered, where indirect bounces are expected to be near instantaneous.

Frame 1 & 2: No light:

Spoiler

Frame 3: Direct light on. No GI yet

Spoiler

Frame 4: Direct + GI

Spoiler

Frame 5: Direct light + additional GI

Spoiler

In GIF form again:

On second pair of switches. Behaves exactly the same way

Frame one: No light

Spoiler

Frame two: Direct light. No GI yet

Spoiler

Frame three: Direct + GI

Spoiler

IN GIF:

The most important part isn't what is happening to the static asset (even though it's quite dramatic). But what is happening to the dynamic object ie her hand. Can't do that shit without RTGI.


In fact, there are subtle changes to GI that I see even after 6 frames

Frame 1 vs Frame 6: Direct + GI (see right corner above last pair of switches. Hand being in the frame causes more GI bounce)

Unlike lumen, the energy transfer is much less laggy, so majority of things light up within just 1 frame ie 16.6 ms lag. And a bit more in the following frame. This is multi-bounce RTGI.

These are quite literally consecutive frames. These cannot be faked in realtime rendering as it's way too nuanced. They will have to build lightmaps for every frame and swap them out. Might as well prerender offline.

And here's an example of color bleed. Her jacket bouncing its color onto the side of the table from overhead lights. The specularity of the table's side trim picks up the color bounce quite nicely.

GIF:

I'm specifically pulling up dynamic objects as static objects have tons of GI that ND has done before with just baking. But even their baking was not to his extent. A couple of examples of potential PT levels of baking, or just a nice byproduct of RTGI, can't say for sure:

Not the shadow of sticky note taking a blue tone and marker, sticky note and jacket below:

Notice how the tube light is contained throughout the recess and spills out of the edge. Generally a baked or non-RT scene is never designed with these types of thin tube lights, as lighting for every pixel needs to be calculated using ray tracing instead of standard spherical lighting models. Alex had rightly called this out as evidence of RTGI in GTA 6 as well. But I'm not relying on it as conclusive proof as this is a curated static scene compared to dynamic day/night cycles of GTA 6. They could bake the heck out of all this with offline path tracing. But the ones I presented earlier cannot be baked. So to keep performance up, they could be having a combination of baked lighting for static/immovable assets and RTGI for dynamic assets. Or it's all driven by RTGI. Or a base layer of bake to keep IQ up and then multiple bounces staggered over time for the final touch. No way to tell from such a highly curated trailer.

Now coming to RT shadows ( Vick 's favorite topic) that I'm a little less confident about:

The sheer complexity of some shadows in the footage and how dynamic they are makes me think these are near impossible with traditional shadow maps. DF brought up the punched holes having accurate shadows as evidence:

Spoiler: Examples of RT shadows

It's a solid example, but given their insane baking qualities even on last gen, I find other dynamic shadows even more convincing. Look at the way this cloth gets tossed with self shadowing, contact hardening and a complete change in shape from start to finish. How would they even achieve that with a shadow map? Every frame is an entire different shape with it folded into itself, while also casting variable penumbra.

Or the way the straw shadow's variable penumbra expands to oblivion as it leaves her lips. PCSS can only go so far. It will still preserve the overall geometry of the shadow map. It completely changes here, exactly how RT shadows or the real world/PT behaves.

Unrelated bonus: Bojji Looks at the stunning SSS here on the plastic lid. It even reacts correctly to different parts of the screen shining through

I'm still not 100% convinced about RT shadows as they may be using novel techniques that are simply beyond what I've been exposed to. But you can certainly build a case for RT shadows with all this evidence combined.

May be they found a way to smartly reuse the same ray bounces for reflections and GI to calculate shadows as well, all in one go? I don't know. Seems too good to be possible on base console. That too at 60 fps.

So the "tech" is quite evidently there. Now we just need to see if it all extends to actual gameplay. And we may yet again see a noticeable downgrade, just like ND has been doing quite consistently on many of their past game announcements versus final gameplay. But looking at the evidence at hand, having all this on base console is actually too good to be true. But none of this indicates "last gen garbage" so far.

And again, this is base console, mind you. No Law is currently king (and that may be high end PC for all we know), but if the Intergalactic trailer holds up in gameplay, it will most certainly beat No law and trade blows with GTA 6 as well. That's assuming GTA 6 trailers and final game holds up too. We'll know more tomorrow.

The only ones that would still be ahead of Integalactic, Clutch, ILL, No law and GTA 6 will be Path Traced games. Those are simply not fair comparisons as that's a different tier altogether.

Like Gonzito rightly pointed out, this game is likely to falter in the eyes of a portion of the fanbase on its themes, character models and creative choices. Not tech.

Just amazing work viveks86 can't wait for your analysis for September laufey trailer and intergalactic gameplay, and If ND ended using all this tech I will owe them big apology,, really enjoying your depth analysis far more than current digital Foundry analysis

 

[SlimySnake]

Really interesting tweet from John Carmack apologizing to an ex-ID dev who pointed out that they all got burned out after working so hard on Quake and left.

Carmack agreed that he pushed everyone too hard, and also dropped a few other tidbits about how he had game designers work on visuals as well. some were good at both art and levels, others werent which created resentment. this is of course before the video game industry started hiring artists.

 

[viveks86]

very interesting analysis. can you spot stuff like this in cutscenes in games that have baked lighting? like spiderman 2?

Indeed. Realtime cutscenes are entirely a bag of tricks with hero lights, fake lights, unloading assets that are not in the frame, teleporting characters to different rooms and swapped assets, but if it's realtime, you will see the baked lighting in cutscenes too. Every impressive shot of TLOU 2 in a cutscene that absolutely blows your mind will be some static shot focused on the character's face. Same with Ragnarok. 90% of shots that anyone posts of that game would be static lit shots with fixed point lights where nothing much changes in consecutive frames. All you are getting is perfectly placed lights with insane performance optimizations.

Here's an example of how they could be pulling off these insane techniques in a cutscene at 60 fps on base console.

Frame 1: RT reflection of Jordan's face on TV screen that she just switched off:

Frame 2: Camera cut to focus on her face

Notice the difference? I'm not talking about her face. The RT reflection is obviously missing a lot of shading on her face. But the entire background with all the glowing lights are missing in the reflection too. You would think with all these lights in the backdrop that something would reflect on the TV screen right? I can't see the chair either! In cutscenes, ND can do whatever the fuck to squeeze every ounce of performance as they know how the camera cuts occur and what the viewer psychology is. In this case, I believe they are removing the background assets and loading them back for the next cut. Or just removing them from the BVH and adding them back. Or both. Could also be a creative decision as they didn't want all these lights distracting from the close up of the TV screen and ruining the agent's shots. But I'd place my bets on performance optimization. You can do all these tricks with cutscenes, but if it's realtime, you can only go so far.

So it's all just optimized to the max for the current camera position while maintaining visual impact. But if it's realtime, they can't be swapping out lightmaps every frame to pretend RTGI exists. That would kill performance more than RTGI itself, not to mention the sheer pain in authoring the scene or making even the slightest changes during development, as well as bloating the final game size.

 

[Msamy]

Indeed. Realtime cutscenes are entirely a bag of tricks with hero lights, fake lights, unloading assets that are not in the frame, teleporting characters to different rooms and swapped assets, but if it's realtime, you will see the baked lighting in cutscenes too. Every impressive shot of TLOU 2 in a cutscene that absolutely blows your mind will be some static shot focused on the character's face. Same with Ragnarok. 90% of shots that anyone posts of that game would be static lit shots with fixed point lights where nothing much changes in consecutive frames. All you are getting is perfectly placed lights with insane performance optimizations.

Here's an example of how they could be pulling off these insane techniques in a cutscene at 60 fps on base console.

Frame 1: RT reflection of Jordan's face on TV screen that she just switched off:

Frame 2: Camera cut to focus on her face

Notice the difference? I'm not talking about her face. The RT reflection is obviously missing a lot of shading on her face. But the entire background with all the glowing lights are missing in the reflection too. You would think with all these lights in the backdrop that something would reflect on the TV screen right? I can't see the chair either! In cutscenes, ND can do whatever the fuck to squeeze every ounce of performance as they know how the camera cuts occur and what the viewer psychology is. In this case, I believe they are removing the background assets and loading them back for the next cut. Or just removing them from the BVH and adding them back. Or both. Could also be a creative decision as they didn't want all these lights distracting from the close up of the TV screen and ruining the agent's shots. But I'd place my bets on performance optimization. You can do all these tricks with cutscenes, but if it's realtime, you can only go so far.

So it's all just optimized to the max for the current camera position while maintaining visual impact. But if it's realtime, they can't be swapping out lightmaps every frame to pretend RTGI exists. That would kill performance more than RTGI itself, not to mention the sheer pain in authoring the scene or making even the slightest changes during development, as well as bloating the final game size.

If ND keep same privilege of last gen, this game will using all the techs that ps5 hardware capable of (like full rt pipelines) , TLOU 2 uses all available ps4 tech, and Same for original last of us on ps3.

 

[Bojji]

What if I prove to you that, technically, they may have RT reflections, RTGI and potentially RT shadows in cutscenes?

Let's leave the gameplay portion aside for a full reveal as it's too brief and motion blurry to deduce anything aside from RT reflections.

But what if I prove those 3 RT features exist in cutscenes, running in realtime? Will that change your mind on what they are technically supporting for realtime rendering? Long analysis incoming. I didn't bother doing this 16 months ago as I used to take DF's word on everything. But all the recent commentary on ND's hiring made me take a closer look. Msamy

This is a bigger post than my Laufey breakdown, so I'm compressing it in spoilers wherever it seems a bit much. Do take your time to go through it all as, again, it requires a step by step examination

Spoiler: Proof: RT Reflections, RTGI and RT shadows

Let's start with the easy one - RT reflections. Anyone that is denying even that is straight up trolling or blind from confirmation bias. Outside of the opening shot, which is most likely their souped up version of planar reflections with adjustable DoF (they may be the first to do DoF like that on planar reflections), there is RT reflections EVERYWHERE. I've not seen a single game pull it off to this extent on console. Even Cyberpunk on Pro (which is currently the best implementation of RT reflections on console imo) has limitations on what surfaces have it.

Spoiler: Examples

Inside of fingers reflecting on safety buckle (Responds to lighting change as well)

Occluded finger tips on other reflective surfaces (see above "Sony")

See her index finger below equalizer (side note: the light intensity also gradually increases on all surfaces) :

Occluded back of yoke reflecting on dashboard (see under "Stand By")

Spoiler

Even individual switch knobs reflecting her finger

Reflections of Jordan on transparent glass in door. It's detailed enough to see her ear too (see in GIF form later below)

Television screen

There are much more obvious ones of her RT reflection on the screen later that everyone would have seen, but you can see her raising her gun in the last few frames (moving reflection on agent's right shoulder).

Gameplay:

You can even tell it's pure RT with no SSR layered in at all as the red GI bounce from the blade on the robot does not show in the reflection. A likely optimization as it would require GI to be handled in reflections as well. Usually PT is the only one that solves that for RTGI.

Now here's proof that at least a single bounce from ALL light sources appears to be per pixel RTGI. Let's start by establishing that pretty much everything that looks like it's emitting light is actually emitting light. They aren't just adding bloom or post-process glow. You would think this little glowing "Ignition" text is just an emissive texture that doesn't affect its surroundings right?

Nope. Actually, pay attention to all the points of interest that I've marked above and follow them in the GIF below. See how all those points change in GIF form:

Spoiler: Proof of RTGI

Notice the light from "Ignition" getting occluded by other fingers, causing her thumb to be lit by it differently every frame. Also notice the bottom of the second pair of switches or the reflections above. They disappear in the last frame. That's specular GI from the first pair of switches originating from "Ignition" and specular reflections of the same switch at the top. Once it moves from position, the shiny metal doesn't cast specular GI to the second pair. You will notice the specular reflection of the "Ignition" disappear from the moving switch itself, because the angle has changed. The specular GI also disappears from above the console due to changing angle of specular bounce. This is INSANE detail, all happening in consecutive frames.


You will see this behavior throughout the trailer. Everything that glows, lights up the surroundings as well. Apart from path tracing, there are 3 ways to pull this off in real time at the moment that I'm aware of. A megalights like solution to make all emissive textures a light source. This would seem overkill, but is always a possibility going forward as other engines are starting to have this feature. But let's assume this is not in place as we are only trying to establish what is the bare minimum required. Also, the opening shot casts only one shadow on her that doesn't reconcile with the mirror lights in all 4 directions, which should really function like a ring light with no harsh shadowing falling on herself as a result, so that suggests this isn't an infinite shadow casting lighting solution, but more selective traditional direct lights. But on the other hand, this could also be an artistic choice where they wanted some obvious shadowing. Let's assume no megalights until there is other conclusive evidence for it. I see no conclusive evidence of something that advanced in the trailer.


The second option is RT emissives, where the emissive texture is ray traced for illumination of surroundings and objects that the light can reach. Cyberpunk does this on Pro. This would be sufficient for most things shown in the trailer and I assumed this to be the case for Intergalactic, even though DF missed it. However, there are a couple of scenes that RT emissives would not suffice

• Indirect bounce lighting/GI from emissives. RT emissives would only cast direct light
• GI color bleed

Both can be seen in the trailer.

Notice how the bounce light on the cover increases as her thumb gets in front of the light source. That's extra light rays bouncing off her thumb to the cover, causing it to brighten even more initially

and then the bounce light gradually reduces as her finger starts covering the light altogether. Incredible demonstration of SSS as well Bojji

Or here, back to the switches, where you can literally break down each frame for direct and indirect illumination. There is a 1 frame lag, which is quite common in realtime RTGI versus prerendered, where indirect bounces are expected to be near instantaneous.

Frame 1 & 2: No light:

Spoiler

Frame 3: Direct light on. No GI yet

Spoiler

Frame 4: Direct + GI

Spoiler

Frame 5: Direct light + additional GI

Spoiler

In GIF form again:

On second pair of switches. Behaves exactly the same way

Frame one: No light

Spoiler

Frame two: Direct light. No GI yet

Spoiler

Frame three: Direct + GI

Spoiler

IN GIF:

The most important part isn't what is happening to the static asset (even though it's quite dramatic). But what is happening to the dynamic object ie her hand. Can't do that shit without RTGI.


In fact, there are subtle changes to GI that I see even after 6 frames

Frame 1 vs Frame 6: Direct + GI (see right corner above last pair of switches. Hand being in the frame causes more GI bounce)

Unlike lumen, the energy transfer is much less laggy, so majority of things light up within just 1 frame ie 16.6 ms lag. And a bit more in the following frame. This is multi-bounce RTGI.

These are quite literally consecutive frames. These cannot be faked in realtime rendering as it's way too nuanced. They will have to build lightmaps for every frame and swap them out. Might as well prerender offline.

And here's an example of color bleed. Her jacket bouncing its color onto the side of the table from overhead lights. The specularity of the table's side trim picks up the color bounce quite nicely.

GIF:

I'm specifically pulling up dynamic objects as static objects have tons of GI that ND has done before with just baking. But even their baking was not to his extent. A couple of examples of potential PT levels of baking, or just a nice byproduct of RTGI, can't say for sure:

Not the shadow of sticky note taking a blue tone and marker, sticky note and jacket below:

Notice how the tube light is contained throughout the recess and spills out of the edge. Generally a baked or non-RT scene is never designed with these types of thin tube lights, as lighting for every pixel needs to be calculated using ray tracing instead of standard spherical lighting models. Alex had rightly called this out as evidence of RTGI in GTA 6 as well. But I'm not relying on it as conclusive proof as this is a curated static scene compared to dynamic day/night cycles of GTA 6. They could bake the heck out of all this with offline path tracing. But the ones I presented earlier cannot be baked. So to keep performance up, they could be having a combination of baked lighting for static/immovable assets and RTGI for dynamic assets. Or it's all driven by RTGI. Or a base layer of bake to keep IQ up and then multiple bounces staggered over time for the final touch. No way to tell from such a highly curated trailer.

Now coming to RT shadows ( Vick 's favorite topic) that I'm a little less confident about:

The sheer complexity of some shadows in the footage and how dynamic they are makes me think these are near impossible with traditional shadow maps. DF brought up the punched holes having accurate shadows as evidence:

Spoiler: Examples of RT shadows

It's a solid example, but given their insane baking qualities even on last gen, I find other dynamic shadows even more convincing. Look at the way this cloth gets tossed with self shadowing, contact hardening and a complete change in shape from start to finish. How would they even achieve that with a shadow map? Every frame is an entire different shape with it folded into itself, while also casting variable penumbra.

Or the way the straw shadow's variable penumbra expands to oblivion as it leaves her lips. PCSS can only go so far. It will still preserve the overall geometry of the shadow map. It completely changes here, exactly how RT shadows or the real world/PT behaves.

Unrelated bonus: Bojji Looks at the stunning SSS here on the plastic lid. It even reacts correctly to different parts of the screen shining through

I'm still not 100% convinced about RT shadows as they may be using novel techniques that are simply beyond what I've been exposed to. But you can certainly build a case for RT shadows with all this evidence combined.

May be they found a way to smartly reuse the same ray bounces for reflections and GI to calculate shadows as well, all in one go? I don't know. Seems too good to be possible on base console. That too at 60 fps.

So the "tech" is quite evidently there. Now we just need to see if it all extends to actual gameplay. And we may yet again see a noticeable downgrade, just like ND has been doing quite consistently on many of their past game announcements versus final gameplay. But looking at the evidence at hand, having all this on base console is actually too good to be true. But none of this indicates "last gen garbage" so far.

And again, this is base console, mind you. No Law is currently king (and that may be high end PC for all we know), but if the Intergalactic trailer holds up in gameplay, it will most certainly beat No law and trade blows with GTA 6 as well. That's assuming GTA 6 trailers and final game holds up too. We'll know more tomorrow.

The only ones that would still be ahead of Integalactic, Clutch, ILL, No law and GTA 6 will be Path Traced games. Those are simply not fair comparisons as that's a different tier altogether.

Like Gonzito rightly pointed out, this game is likely to falter in the eyes of a portion of the fanbase on its themes, character models and creative choices. Not tech.

One last item that I missed. You can see indirect bounce lighting casting a secondary shadow on the stool:

Hard to see? Now watch her approach the screen. The darker slanted one is a direct shadow and the much lighter vertical one is a GI bounce shadow as illustrated by the two directional arrows from the light source above

Yeah I'm not going to bother with marketing shots. Not worth my time for a graphical analysis (though I'd certainly watch others pour over non-graphical details/hints about the game). Will definitely breakdown the trailer though, if one comes out tomorrow. All signs point to that happening.

Great stuff, keep it up if you can with new impressive game trailers.

 

[Msamy]

Thus wii be great tommorow, hopefully gta vi trailer drops too

 

[viveks86]

They are on drugs, no other explanation. To claim "not even PS5 Pro" is pure retardation.
Posted this in the other Thread:

These dithered RT reflections look like trash.

The game looks amazing because of Rockstar art direction and visual attention to detail, but technically there's nothing shown here we haven't seen before on these consoles. Basic ass shadows a generation behind Cyberpunk on PS5 Pro, soft IQ, facial hair straight from TAA PS4 era. Awful PS3 textures at times. DF are on drugs. These are Quality mode screenshots, probably Photo-Mode, from base PS5/Series X.

Reminder of what runs at 60fps on PS5 Pro with full quality RT shadows and full resolution RT reflections (both way above what is shown in GTA VI, at much better IQ to boot):

Correct. DF went full retard there. Or they are farming clicks as anything GTA will get mass attention. Nothing there that the trailers haven't shown or other games haven't done. The issue is the bullshot-iness of it all, with IQ, DoF and fake lights. Screams photomode. So I'm just going to sit tight till a trailer drops. Highly recommend others do that too. Don't waste your energy

 

[SlimySnake]

Indeed. Realtime cutscenes are entirely a bag of tricks with hero lights, fake lights, unloading assets that are not in the frame, teleporting characters to different rooms and swapped assets, but if it's realtime, you will see the baked lighting in cutscenes too. Every impressive shot of TLOU 2 in a cutscene that absolutely blows your mind will be some static shot focused on the character's face. Same with Ragnarok. 90% of shots that anyone posts of that game would be static lit shots with fixed point lights where nothing much changes in consecutive frames. All you are getting is perfectly placed lights with insane performance optimizations.

Here's an example of how they could be pulling off these insane techniques in a cutscene at 60 fps on base console.

Frame 1: RT reflection of Jordan's face on TV screen that she just switched off:

Frame 2: Camera cut to focus on her face

Notice the difference? I'm not talking about her face. The RT reflection is obviously missing a lot of shading on her face. But the entire background with all the glowing lights are missing in the reflection too. You would think with all these lights in the backdrop that something would reflect on the TV screen right? I can't see the chair either! In cutscenes, ND can do whatever the fuck to squeeze every ounce of performance as they know how the camera cuts occur and what the viewer psychology is. In this case, I believe they are removing the background assets and loading them back for the next cut. Or just removing them from the BVH and adding them back. Or both. Could also be a creative decision as they didn't want all these lights distracting from the close up of the TV screen and ruining the agent's shots. But I'd place my bets on performance optimization. You can do all these tricks with cutscenes, but if it's realtime, you can only go so far.

So it's all just optimized to the max for the current camera position while maintaining visual impact. But if it's realtime, they can't be swapping out lightmaps every frame to pretend RTGI exists. That would kill performance more than RTGI itself, not to mention the sheer pain in authoring the scene or making even the slightest changes during development, as well as bloating the final game size.

oh i have no doubt that rt reflections are in. that was obvious from the get go. i was talking mostly about rtgi which you spotted in certain scenes, but im not sure if they could just a result of hero lights. after all, death stranding 2's cutscenes look better than pretty much anything out there and then you get to gameplay and all those hero lights disappear and along with them proper bounce lighting and shadows.

 

[viveks86]

If ND keep same privilege of last gen, this game will using all the techs that ps5 hardware capable of (like full rt pipelines) , TLOU 2 uses all available ps4 tech, and Same for original last of us on ps3.

Indeed. Only time will tell. Only thing we should stay cautious about is to what extent they will deliver on all these features in gameplay. They always shoot far too high and fall short.

Next trailer may be 30 fps with shit IQ. Or single bounce instead of multi-bounce. No way to know

 

[SlimySnake]

Someone in the OT showed GTA5 screenshots released by rockstar with perfect IQ that were clearly running on PC. Im sure we will get that version in just a few months. Im not too fussed about these not being console screenshots. besides, they had next gen versions of gta5 ready within a year with way more detail than the ps360 versions so worst case scenario, we get these on the ps6 in 2027.

 

[SlimySnake]

Nuclear Crisis averted.

 

[viveks86]

oh i have no doubt that rt reflections are in. that was obvious from the get go. i was talking mostly about rtgi which you spotted in certain scenes, but im not sure if they could just a result of hero lights. after all, death stranding 2's cutscenes look better than pretty much anything out there and then you get to gameplay and all those hero lights disappear and along with them proper bounce lighting and shadows.

Yeah it's definitely not just hero lights. Like I said, they would straight up teleport characters or swap out assets to get the perfect cutscene.

I remember watching how they pulled off insane real-time cinematics for the OG TLOU remastered on PS4. They would literally create a different, dedicated room with fake environmental props just so they could pull off close up shots. Ellie was not even on the hilltop, looking over the actual town. The backdrop isn't actual trees being rendered. Everything other than her face was faked. Wish I could find the video. Must have been 10 years ago. Still looking

But what you will notice is RTGI cannot be faked at the level I pointed out. At max, they could place an extra light or rim light, or a colored light, or turn a light on and off, or unload assets that we think are still there in the scene to squeeze out more performance needed for the extra lights and sub surface scattering. Most games still do not apply SSS in-game and keep them just for cutscenes. But none of that can be changed per frame in realtime. Per frame lighting changes cannot be faked with any of that, as doing such things with lights has scene wide implications. Not just a single knob or finger.

It's why most amazing cutscenes in the past have always had fixed lighting and fixed camera. They know exactly where the character(s) are placed and where they move. They could even move the lights with them, or turn them on/off as needed, as long as the camera angle isn't catching the change.

It's why I focused on the little details as you can't cheat on those. Everything exists within the frame and any such tricks would be caught with pants down.

What we will see once RTGI becomes universal is far more dynamic cutscenes, just like gameplay. Camera moving more dynamically, lights changing on the fly, fewer tricks etc. Because everything would still be lit correctly in every frame. And once path tracing is mainstream, that's when both gameplay and cutscenes would be fully unleashed. You decide what lighting is needed, you place them accordingly and the engine does the rest. Lighting games would become like lighting movies. They would still use tricks, but only to play with lights artistically. Not to extract gold out of shit (like DS2 cutscene vs gameplay).

None of my claims are to say Intergalactic gameplay will look just as awesome as the cutscenes. I'm just claiming the "tech" is now there for realtime use in the engine. What they do with it in gameplay remains to be seen.

 

[Msamy]

Nuclear Crisis averted.

Rdr2 different Time of day someone shared this on above rweet

 

[Msamy]

Yeah it's definitely not just hero lights. Like I said, they would straight up teleport characters or swap out assets to get the perfect cutscene.

I remember watching how they pulled off insane real-time cinematics for the OG TLOU remastered on PS4. They would literally create a different, dedicated room with fake environmental props just so they could pull off close up shots. Ellie was not even on the hilltop, looking over the actual town. The backdrop isn't actual trees being rendered. Everything other than her face was faked. Wish I could find the video. Must have been 10 years ago. Still looking

But what you will notice is RTGI cannot be faked at the level I pointed out. At max, they could place an extra light or rim light, or a colored light, or turn a light on and off, or unload assets that we think are still there in the scene to squeeze out more performance needed for the extra lights and sub surface scattering. Most games still do not apply SSS in-game and keep them just for cutscenes. But none of that can be changed per frame in realtime. Per frame lighting changes cannot be faked with any of that, as doing such things with lights has scene wide implications. Not just a single knob or finger.

It's why most amazing cutscenes in the past have always had fixed lighting and fixed camera. They know exactly where the character(s) are placed and where they move. They could even move the lights with them, or turn them on/off as needed, as long as the camera angle isn't catching the change.

It's why I focused on the little details as you can't cheat on those. Everything exists within the frame and any such tricks would be caught with pants down.

What we will see once RTGI becomes universal is far more dynamic cutscenes, just like gameplay. Camera moving more dynamically, lights changing on the fly, fewer tricks etc. Because everything would still be lit correctly in every frame. And once path tracing is mainstream, that's when both gameplay and cutscenes would be fully unleashed. You decide what lighting is needed, you place them accordingly and the engine does the rest. Lighting games would become like lighting movies. They would still use tricks, but only to play with lights artistically. Not to extract gold out of shit (like DS2 cutscene vs gameplay).

None of my claims are to say Intergalactic gameplay will look just as awesome as the cutscenes. I'm just claiming the "tech" is now there for realtime use in the engine. What they do with it in gameplay remains to be seen.

If they implmented those RT tech on cuteness I am sure they 100% will be implemented on gameplay, hopefully that reveal cutscene was truly realtime not faked cgi

 

[viveks86]

If they implmented those RT tech on cuteness I am sure they 100% will be implemented on gameplay, hopefully that reveal cutscene was truly realtime not faked cgi

My waifu appreciates the compliment

 

[SlimySnake]

My waifu appreciates the compliment

 

[Wishmaster92]

what's the veredict guys? i feel like the lighting is very noticeably improved, things look brighter in most of all the new images. Maybe a proprietary implementation of megalights, the one thing i noticed that was downgraded to my eyes is texture resolution, the skin looks much smoother now even with the extreme closeup shots. Remember that the last trailer was captured running on ps5 so im gonna assume the old images are also running on ps5. I'd say the subsurface scattering got an upgrade also but it's a shame that the texture resolution on characters is so low since the lighting looks so good!

new

old

new

old

old

new

 

[Abysse]

what's the veredict guys? i feel like the lighting is very noticeably improved, things look brighter in most of all the new images. Maybe a proprietary implementation of megalights, the one thing i noticed that was downgraded to my eyes is texture resolution, the skin looks much smoother now even with the extreme closeup shots. Remember that the last trailer was captured running on ps5 so im gonna assume the old images are also running on ps5. I'd say the subsurface scattering got an upgrade also but it's a shame that the texture resolution on characters is so low since the lighting looks so good!

new

old

new

old

old

new

 

[Balducci30]

Yeah it's definitely not just hero lights. Like I said, they would straight up teleport characters or swap out assets to get the perfect cutscene.

I remember watching how they pulled off insane real-time cinematics for the OG TLOU remastered on PS4. They would literally create a different, dedicated room with fake environmental props just so they could pull off close up shots. Ellie was not even on the hilltop, looking over the actual town. The backdrop isn't actual trees being rendered. Everything other than her face was faked. Wish I could find the video. Must have been 10 years ago. Still looking

But what you will notice is RTGI cannot be faked at the level I pointed out. At max, they could place an extra light or rim light, or a colored light, or turn a light on and off, or unload assets that we think are still there in the scene to squeeze out more performance needed for the extra lights and sub surface scattering. Most games still do not apply SSS in-game and keep them just for cutscenes. But none of that can be changed per frame in realtime. Per frame lighting changes cannot be faked with any of that, as doing such things with lights has scene wide implications. Not just a single knob or finger.

It's why most amazing cutscenes in the past have always had fixed lighting and fixed camera. They know exactly where the character(s) are placed and where they move. They could even move the lights with them, or turn them on/off as needed, as long as the camera angle isn't catching the change.

It's why I focused on the little details as you can't cheat on those. Everything exists within the frame and any such tricks would be caught with pants down.

What we will see once RTGI becomes universal is far more dynamic cutscenes, just like gameplay. Camera moving more dynamically, lights changing on the fly, fewer tricks etc. Because everything would still be lit correctly in every frame. And once path tracing is mainstream, that's when both gameplay and cutscenes would be fully unleashed. You decide what lighting is needed, you place them accordingly and the engine does the rest. Lighting games would become like lighting movies. They would still use tricks, but only to play with lights artistically. Not to extract gold out of shit (like DS2 cutscene vs gameplay).

None of my claims are to say Intergalactic gameplay will look just as awesome as the cutscenes. I'm just claiming the "tech" is now there for realtime use in the engine. What they do with it in gameplay remains to be seen.

This explains the major drop in quality between realtime cutscenes and gameplay in Last of Us 2 (not that the game itself doesn't look great in its own right)

 

[CGNoire]

what's the veredict guys? i feel like the lighting is very noticeably improved, things look brighter in most of all the new images. Maybe a proprietary implementation of megalights, the one thing i noticed that was downgraded to my eyes is texture resolution, the skin looks much smoother now even with the extreme closeup shots. Remember that the last trailer was captured running on ps5 so im gonna assume the old images are also running on ps5. I'd say the subsurface scattering got an upgrade also but it's a shame that the texture resolution on characters is so low since the lighting looks so good!

new

old

new

old

old

new

Nah...that looks like depth of field issues blurring her skin. Maybe im wrong but i dont think i am.

 

[Wishmaster92]

Nah...that looks like depth of field issues blurring her skin. Maybe im wrong but i dont think i am.

I don't see this level of skin fidelity in the new screens though

 

[CGNoire]

Well i guess i'm lucky if they tone down the lights but keep the assets and characters on the same level, i know people prefer the opposite but i'm all about assets and shit, one time the DMW even got me a wrong license plate with ASSET MAN written on it

Well if you have a highend PC you should definitly always root for asset quality since most new AAA releases have better lighting on PC anyways.

 

[SlimySnake]

This explains the major drop in quality between realtime cutscenes and gameplay in Last of Us 2 (not that the game itself doesn't look great in its own right)

Joel during cutscenes:

Joel during gameplay:

 

[Balducci30]

Joel during cutscenes:

Joel during gameplay:

Holy shit lol I didn't remember it being that stark

 

[SlimySnake]

I don't see this level of skin fidelity in the new screens though

skin shaders took a massive hit. there were pics going around twitter comparing Arthur Morgan in RDR2 to Jason's close ups, and they look virtually identical because of the skin shading.

 

[Abysse]

Nah...that looks like depth of field issues blurring her skin. Maybe im wrong but i dont think i am.

These images must have been reviewed many times by several people before being sent.
I doubt it's a DoF issue.

 

[Wishmaster92]

skin shaders took a massive hit. there were pics going around twitter comparing Arthur Morgan in RDR2 to Jason's close ups, and they look virtually identical because of the skin shading.

Ps5 pro should be able to bring back these effects no? Since they were already implemented before. Assuming these screens are from the base ps5 version since some screens have noticeable artifacting.

 

[SlimySnake]

Ps5 pro should be able to bring back these effects no? Since they were already implemented before. Assuming these screens are from the base ps5 version since some screens have noticeable artifacting.

lets hope so.

skin shaders last year:

 

[CGNoire]

These images must have been reviewed many times by several people before being sent.
I doubt it's a DoF issue.

Where assuming those who reviewed it cared about the skin texture and not the cinematic nature of the shot.

 

[CGNoire]

skin shaders took a massive hit. there were pics going around twitter comparing Arthur Morgan in RDR2 to Jason's close ups, and they look virtually identical because of the skin shading.

Yeah it doesnt look like sss.

Please Rockstar dont fuck us on PC.

 

[SlimySnake]

Yeah it doesnt look like sss.

Please Rockstar dont fuck us on PC.

Now that i think about it, I think the skin shaders will be a game wide downgrade. Rdr2 never got better character models on PC despite pushing virtually every other setting.

 

[viveks86]

So isn't that saying the same thing at the end of the day? That these screenshots are basically bullshots that are not fully representative of how the game will look?

True. The difference is that I'm neutral on it. I'm neither impressed nor disappointed by staged marketing shots. No point talking about what platform can potentially run it that way or not, if it isn't representative of the actual game or cutscene on any platform. It won't look exactly like that even on a high end PC unless you fuck around with artificial lighting. So why even bother debating it? Those screens are meant to give us vibes and tease possibilities in the game. Not to be dissected for graphics.

 

[anyasok]

The downgrade is massive. Maybe it should win an Oscar for it!

 

[Gonzito]

 

[Kaiserstark]

I don't see this level of skin fidelity in the new screens though

lets hope so.

skin shaders last year:

Yes, last year's screenshots were on another level. The recent ones aren't bad, far from it, but they're more standard, like the skins shader is now closer to what was in RDR 2, for example.

Anyway, we need to see a trailer with gameplay to form a real opinion.

 

[viveks86]

SlimySnake here are some examples to tell if there is per-pixel RTGI or not in a cutscene. I randomly picked a couple of scenes of DS2 from youtube as I haven't played the game and it didn't take too long. Just need to find spots where there is enough motion, change in lighting conditions, lights that don't seem to contribute to the scene or tight crevices that direct lighting cannot reach.

First example - So much wrong in this shot

The little light in the backdrop has no light contribution despite appearing to be bright. It's just an emissive texture. When RTGI is engaged, it will pickup light from such textures and generate GI bounces around it

The tube light isn't acting like a tube light. Given it's covered on either side, it should give out intense light upwards and downwards. Instead most of the light appears self contained, with a little upwards and a lot on the right corner. This is likely just a fake prop with an invisible spherical light placed in the corner. There is no GI bounce around the tube either.

The guy's back is lit and it makes no sense. Literally nothing else is lit in that direction. Fake lighting placed behind him as he does move around in that scene.

His right shoulder is lit incorrectly with a red/orange light. Just a few frames ago, there was a holographic display in front of him with a portion that was reddish. But even when the hologram went off, the light remained for a few frames longer. These are fake lights that weren't turned off in a timely manner. Right next to the red light, they had a fake white light as well and you can see the specular highlight from that on his forehead. That was used to light up Fragile, who was sitting in front of the same hologram a few seconds ago. It's all bullshit lighting to make holograms look like they cast actual light. They don't.

You can also see emissive textures on Sam not actually emitting light. A classic sign that RTGI isn't in action. And he should also be getting yellow GI from the bright yellow holograms close to his arm. But he gets the same bluish/white lighting all over. Again, just floating textures with fake point lights. All of this would be solved with just RTGI. Don't even need megalights for such simple use cases.

Example 2:

Same issues with emissive textures. Looks super bright but doesn't light up anything. No bounce lighting either. Just brightness and bloom effect on the texture itself. Also note all the crevices where Sam gets near 0 bounce lighting even though there is sufficient direct light in the immediate vicinity.

These are the type of problems that baked lighting and probe based GI cannot solve for dynamic objects. Baked lighting can solve it for static objects, but greater the accuracy, greater the performance cost and file size. And probe GI cannot do anything at a per pixel level. They are more general average/approximations for equally spaced points in the world. They will rarely ever solve crevices or tiny objects.

I looked up spiderman 2 as well, and found an obvious GI fail within the first few seconds. Literally the opening cutscene.

There is no way light can light up his adams apple but not the inner palm. Proof that the GI solution is not per pixel.

And then fast forwarded a bit and landed on this. The lack of RTGI was so obvious it was self explanatory.

There's so much GI missing at a macro level in this shot, that we don't even need to get into the nitty gritty.

It's harder when we pick a perfectly curated, cherry picked shot from a cutscene as characters are often placed in ideal lighting conditions. But you could still pick up lack of bounce lighting once you get accustomed to the lower hanging fruit, like the examples above. Hope all these examples are useful!

 

[H . R . 2]

Now that i think about it, I think the skin shaders will be a game wide downgrade. Rdr2 never got better character models on PC despite pushing virtually every other setting.

the only plausible explanation for the seemingly downgraded skin shaders might be hidden in the plot

it's been reported that the game is divided into 2 main parts
which, my guess is, will probably tell the story of a young Jason and Lucia being batshit crazy together in the suburbs or on the outskirts of Vice City [suntanned/burned and scruffy looking] first and later their older, more reserved, more urban selves looking for a decent life,
when they get sucked into a life of crime again. it's a stretch but it is the only way I could bring myself to accept the skin shader situation. better this than the thoughts of Series S ruining a once-in-a-lifetime experience

 

[Bojji]

lets hope so.

skin shaders last year:

Some weird changes, new models look like plastic dolls in some aspects.

Technically it's true but it will look like ass lol.

 

[Gonzito]

Some weird changes, new models look like plastic dolls in some aspects.



Technically it's true but it will look like ass lol.

That was my point, the game will look like shit in that console for sure, why going so cheap and ruin the experience for yourself

 

[H . R . 2]

Yes, last year's screenshots were on another level. The recent ones aren't bad, far from it, but they're more standard, like the skins shader is now closer to what was in RDR 2, for example.

Anyway, we need to see a trailer with gameplay to form a real opinion.

one of my fondest memories of RDR2 was the memorable faces not only in their design but also their realistic portrayal that was only possible using those beautiful skin shaders
I'd argue that the new screenshots show HEAVILY downgraded skin shaders that are not even on par with RDR2
everyone now, inlcudiing both the protagonists, look like plastic dolls in comparison with RDR2. as if the "NPC skin shaders" have been applied to them

which is a terrible shame if true, because one of the things that made my jaw drop the last time they showed screenshots was how staggeringly realistic looking the NPCs were
they looked like actual real people you see out there. faces that have stories and tell you a great deal about the person's background subliminally
I don't know if this would be possible anymore if the one factor that contributed that much were now absent

I mean look at these geezers in the background
blew my mind when I first saw them

everyone looks like a main character here

BUT
I mean
WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU EVEN RELEASE THESE ABOMINATIONS IF NOT FOR TEMPERING EXPECTATIONS :

 

[dgrdsv]

The downgrade is massive. Maybe it should win an Oscar for it!

I think it looks fine. If all of this is from modern consoles then it's actually kinda amazing looking.
We don't know where the previous materials were coming from. Maybe it's cutscenes vs gameplay, maybe it's PCs vs consoles, or maybe it's cutscenes on PC vs gameplay on consoles.

 

[H . R . 2]

I think it looks fine. If all of this is from modern consoles then it's actually kinda amazing looking.
We don't know where the previous materials were coming from. Maybe it's cutscenes vs gameplay, maybe it's PCs vs consoles, or maybe it's cutscenes on PC vs gameplay on consoles.

cutscenes, I can accept, but to use PC footage and lie to everyone's face that it was running on base PS5 is completley unacceptable


BUT
BUT
I think we are probably overreacting, I know I am. the third trailer will make everything clear
(they might have delayed the trailer for all we know after the criticism we heaped on the visuals on here)

 

[PeteBull]

Its fine, bro, we dont discriminate, lets just call him mista

 

[Kikorin]

GTA VI will looks as amazing as is possible on these consoles, no doubt, but most part of these screenshots looks weird because are shooted in some sort of photo mode with 55mm f1.8 type of optics and studio lights.

Like this you can see the incredible detailed models, but of course during gameplay with the game camera you'll never have this kind of fidelity.

 

[PeteBull]

cutscenes, I can accept, but to use PC footage and lie to everyone's face that it was running on base PS5 is completley unacceptable


BUT
BUT
I think we are probably overreacting, I know I am. the third trailer will make everything clear
(they might have delayed the trailer for all we know after the criticism we heaped on the visuals on here)

I would even accept that, im just ur weak avg graphic whore, what would trully suck if those settings were not even avaiable on maxed out pc "definitive edition" or ps7 version of the game (ps6 version will be solid but for sure will be below maxed pc version, likely combo of high and ultra settings which will still look 5x better from base ps5 or godforbid xss version ).

 

[Lootlord]

GTA VI will looks as amazing as is possible on these consoles, no doubt, but most part of these screenshots looks weird because are shooted in some sort of photo mode with 55mm f1.8 type of optics and studio lights.

Like this you can see the incredible detailed models, but of course during gameplay with the game camera you'll never have this kind of fidelity.

They probably have some sort of Nanite like in their current engine.

 

[dgrdsv]

cutscenes, I can accept, but to use PC footage and lie to everyone's face that it was running on base PS5 is completley unacceptable

Were they actually saying that it's running on base PS5? IIRC the released trailers never specified which platform they were captured on.

 

[H . R . 2]

Were they actually saying that it's running on base PS5? IIRC the released trailers never specified which platform they were captured on.

"Rockstar Games confirmed that the footage for Grand Theft Auto VI's second trailer was captured entirely in-game from a standard PlayStation 5"

 

[Bojji]

"Rockstar Games confirmed that the footage for Grand Theft Auto VI's second trailer was captured entirely in-game from a standard PlayStation 5"

Trailer was 1440p with FSR (1 or 2?) so it could be true. Those screenshots are clear bullshots on the other hand.