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David Cage: Many Devs Will Prefer Ray Tracing @1080p Rather Than Limited Lighting @4K; We’ll Have a New Engine

Lunatic_Gamer

Gold Member
“I believe that the next battle will be about lighting more than polycount or even resolution. In the past, the polycount was considered as the most important thing to increase visual fidelity, then resolution was the next big thing, but today, most developers know that lighting is what matters the most. Many will prefer to have ray tracing in Full HD rather than limited lighting in 4K. Ray tracing, realistic lighting and reflections, advanced shaders, optical effects and advanced image treatment are the features our R&D is currently implementing in our Next Gen engine.

There are, of course, many other features made possible by the power of the new generation of consoles, like advanced AI and physics, dynamic destruction and new animation features. Rendering is just one of the many technical challenges that developers have to face. The fact that we have our own proprietary tech is a challenge but also a significant advantage, as it allows us to develop whatever features our titles require and to tailor them to our needs.

Developing our own technology and engines has been a major part of the studio’s culture
for 23 years. We always used proprietary technologies for all our titles, initially because
there was no off-the-shelf middleware available. Today, we continue to create our own
tech because we feel it contributes to making our games visually unique. We also have
specific needs regarding cinematography and pipelines, and we want to keep control of
the most advanced features. The team really likes this control over the tech: we can have an idea about a new feature and decide to implement it without needing anyone else’s support. So yes, all our next titles will feature our tailor-made and completely new engine.”

 
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ruvikx

Banned
There's too little said about TV's & monitor's in this sort of debate, i.e. someone's experience at 1080p is going to be drastically different based upon the type of TV they have & (yes) how much it cost. Modern budget (hilariously called "budget when they're 500 euros) 4k tv's aren't a good idea for 1080p video games. They make older games look blurry as hell.
 

kikkis

Member
disagree on polycount being solved problem. Realisticly each triangle needs to cover 8 pixels to get good performance which is large area considering how small details they are trying to represent. As such its also problem for lods. Unreal 5 shows good way forward in this regard.
 

Dibils2k

Member
i do not wanna see 1080p games on XSX/PS5...

its looks VISIBLY blurry/soft on a big 4k TV. Have yet to see Raytracing add anything to a game, SSR works well enough for majority of cases. RT Global illumination is one that makes biggest difference to me but i think thats by far the most expensive?
 

Tickrate

Member
No thanks, I don't care about ray-tracing in this first-gen implementation.
It's a long way off from its full potential and some puddle/floor reflections are not worth the resolution sacrifice.

This is what happens when you market something technical to the masses, now anything without ray-tracing is "not next gen" smh
 
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regawdless

Banned
I think games will at least target a native resolution of 1440p and then add as many effects as possible.
1080p seems very low. Imagine the outrage of people when their highly anticipated next gen games runs at 1080p...
 

Ixiah

Banned
Ah yes, David "Gameplay is a failure of the Gamedesigner" Cage.
I cant wait for the next Shower/Rape Scene in his next "Game" to be extra shiny with RT.
 
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TonyK

Member
Glad to hear that. I like native 4k, in PC looks stunning, but at the same time doesn't make a game to look more advanced. Recently I replayed The Order in Ps4 and it looked to me more visually advanced than a lot of games at 4K I played in my PC.

So, I agree, lighting is the technical aspect that adds more to achieve that next gen feeling some of us are waiting for.

In my personal opinion, we haven't seen yet any next gen game equivalent to what The Order supposed for last gen: a true step forward in graphic fidelity not achievable in previous gen.
 

Kdad

Member
You know what i want, that i've been promised FOREVER. Worlds that are persistent and full of life...its 2020 and i'm still walking though huge swaths of nothingness on many games and dealing with AI that is dumb as fuck. Tone down a pixel or two and make the games smarter.
 

CAB_Life

Member
1080p is a rubbish resolution for next gen, period. Unless you’re talking about a low-end system like the XSS, in which case you probably have no choice if you enable RT. For flagship consoles that’s pathetic and no amount of lighting will make up for it. What a load of nonsense.
 

-Arcadia-

Banned
It depends. Will it be a stunning transformation like the Minecraft demo? Or will it be yet more ‘I’m not sure this is on...’?

One of those is worth 1080p. The other is not.

Otherwise, I’m open to developers deploying the power of next-gen in creative ways. 1080p is a fine resolution. I’d much prefer 4K or reconstruct, though.

Do it, then reconstruct to 4k

Can you do this well from a 1080p source, outside of DLSS? I’m not sure either way.
 
As someone who upgraded to a PS4 Pro. 4K is just another industry buzzword bingo con. No way is it worth the sacrifice. Imagine the future Halo on the big X. I'd rather be fighting thousands of the Flood at 1080p then a few hundred in 4K.
 

Aidah

Member
Amazing seeing Sony fans accept 1080p for next gen when they were dissing the Series S lol. But Ray-tracing is taxing so I can see why it wouldn't be in 4k.
Actually this is even more of a reason to criticize Series S. That "designed to run next gen games at 1440p/60fps" has always sounded like marketing nonsense considering the garbage tier GPU, but now here we've got a dev talking about dropping to as low as 1080p on the big boys in order to achieve the visuals they're after.
 
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WakeTheWolf

Member
Actually this is even more of a reason to criticize Series S. That "designed to run next gen games at 1440p/60fps" has always sounded like marketing nonsense, but now here we've got a dev talking about dropping to 1080p on the big boys in order to achieve the visuals they're after.

Dropping to 1080p is going to look like trash on a 4k Tv without any checkerboard rendering. 1440p should be the minimum standard for next gen.
 

VFXVeteran

Banned
“I believe that the next battle will be about lighting more than polycount or even resolution. In the past, the polycount was considered as the most important thing to increase visual fidelity, then resolution was the next big thing, but today, most developers know that lighting is what matters the most. Many will prefer to have ray tracing in Full HD rather than limited lighting in 4K. Ray tracing, realistic lighting and reflections, advanced shaders, optical effects and advanced image treatment are the features our R&D is currently implementing in our Next Gen engine.

There are, of course, many other features made possible by the power of the new generation of consoles, like advanced AI and physics, dynamic destruction and new animation features. Rendering is just one of the many technical challenges that developers have to face. The fact that we have our own proprietary tech is a challenge but also a significant advantage, as it allows us to develop whatever features our titles require and to tailor them to our needs.

Developing our own technology and engines has been a major part of the studio’s culture
for 23 years. We always used proprietary technologies for all our titles, initially because
there was no off-the-shelf middleware available. Today, we continue to create our own
tech because we feel it contributes to making our games visually unique. We also have
specific needs regarding cinematography and pipelines, and we want to keep control of
the most advanced features. The team really likes this control over the tech: we can have an idea about a new feature and decide to implement it without needing anyone else’s support. So yes, all our next titles will feature our tailor-made and completely new engine.”


I've said this over and over and over and over again. It feels so good to have validation from other developers. That's why it's important to have faster bandwidth and more memory going forward. Software optimizations isn't going to make this happen without paying for the hardware advancements. If the hardware is bottlenecked, it's going to be a rough generation.
 
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VFXVeteran

Banned
I think 1440p the lowest. Can't imagine 1080p on a 4k TV looking very clean.

Agreed. And that's because there are too few rays cast anyway. The small number of rays being fired is so minut, it literally requires some kind of ML to approximate what that image should look like. That's why DLSS is so important going forward.
 
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Aidah

Member
Dropping to 1080p is going to look like trash on a 4k Tv without any checkerboard rendering. 1440p should be the minimum standard for next gen.
While I agree that 1440p is where I start getting satisfied with game clarity on my 4K OLED, I disagree that there should be a standard/minimum. If a dev thinks they can impress me more at 1080p with the overall image, then please go ahead and show me.

In reality though there is definitely going to be a lot of dynamic res, reconstruction, dynamic settings might get wider use...etc.
 

Maxwell Jacob Friedman

leads to fear. Fear leads to xbox.
What about 1440p with raytracing? A happy medium where even pc gamers themselves say you cant notice much of a difference between 4k and 1440
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
I just want shit to look good and perform well.

I think 1440p is the sweet spot for resolution.

Whether a dev uses RT or some other method for lighting and reflections doesn't really matter to me.. other than I want it to perform well and we don't know the effect of RT on next-gen console performance.

I really don't know the direction RT will go; we actually might see it LESS as the gen wears on not more.. just depends on the performance tradeoffs.
 
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