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Metro Exodus Dev Says PS5 Ray Tracing ‘Is Probably The Biggest Feature We’re Excited About’

sircaw

Banned
I wasn't as involved back then tbh. Im a long time lurker, but literally I made an account on GAF just because the SONY hypocrisy reached a level that I couldn't stomach and I wanted to provide a unbiased opinion to correlate. Basically they were so bad that a console agnostic made an account because I wanted to respond to some of the hypocrisy. I have a PS4 Pro and an Xbox One X and Switch (in additikn to my gaming rig). I double dipped on Death Stranding and God of War 4 was my favorite game this generation. That said, I in no way regret my Xbox or Switch purchases either and had a great time. Honestly I think your pro SONY stance might make you a little immune to just how bad the SONY fanboy problem is. Just look at the battle toads review thread for a recent insight.

i only watched the dreamcast guys review, from it, he was pretty disappointed and scored the game extremely low, he played the original and scored it a 5.5 out of 10. he seems pretty honest to me.

Did not bother to look at the review thread here, the game is not my cup of tea really. so I just let it be.

there are fanboys all over the place, but there are definitely some extremists out there.
 

Redlight

Member
PS5 SSD won't shine (in gameplay) in multiplat games because they have to make the same game working on the much slower Xbox Series S.
Not an unreasonable point, however the Series X also has a fast SSD.

If there is a graphics benefit to SSD's then it should be available to both, but just in varying degrees. Judging by what the Metro developer said we shouldn't expect SSD's to be a major player in that area.

I'd also point out that third-party games are nearly all games. So if there's no advantage in multiplat games for the PS5, then the advantages are not going to be of much significance.
 

Redlight

Member
Sounds like you are rational and reasonable as it should be. But also but it’s pretty objectively clear for a primarily PC gamer like myself to see that SONY extremist/console warriors are a significantly larger problem than the XBox extremists.
I think we're in a similar position, though I'm a multi-console gamer rather than PC. I'm not actually strongly aligned to any platform, though my post history might suggest otherwise. I find nearly all my replies are in response to the (relatively small) group of extreme Sony fanboys that are all over this place. It's hard to ignore if you're not part of the cult, though it's thankless and tiring if you're silly enough to take the bait. :)
 

Hezekiah

Banned
Don't worry sony fans, we'll be getting those DF head to head comparison analysis in just a few months. Get those lame gifs out while you can lol
I see being banned hasn't humbled you.

If you want to see significant ray tracing you need a very high-level gaming PC. The performance hit for 'proper' implementation just isn't worth it on console.

Halo will probably launch with it and it will still look terrible, and the games' frame rate will be punished.
 

VFXVeteran

Banned
Yet another confirmation that the SSD isn't going to improve graphics to the caliber that people were thinking. Can we all just stop preaching that? It would be great to move on concentrating on what the GPU can do this generation.
 

thelastword

Banned
XSX is 2080ti x4 though :messenger_sunglasses::messenger_ok:
That monster eating power, not even the the 3090 will be 4X 2080ti, but people think Series X will be that at $400-600......And 3090 looks like it's going to be $1399-2000 easily.....It's funny too because I think Colt Eastwood said he expects the Series X to be 50% more powerful than the PS5....in resolution and framerate....

I'd easily argue that many of you on here are mouthpieces for sony. And sony has plenty of obnoxious sony fanboy youtubers as well like MBG.
MBG was never obnoxious even as an XBOX fan to me, there were much worse than him....Even now as Crapgamer is PRO Sony, I can't stand his videos, because they are just bait headlines with no solid content......"PS5 Devs slays XBOX with tech upgrades", then you have 5 minutes of him rambling about supporting his channel and nothing really relating to any valid tech upgrades. Even now I think his content is even more annoying, because I'd rather not hear about bait topics on PS5 with no valid or solid info. I do not appreciate fud and bait pieces from either side.....I'd rather discuss the real specs...and real information.
No remember devs don't want to use rt on SeX cause reasons
Hey Dawg we have 25TF of RTX goodness, but I can't show you just yet. You'll have to wait till launch to see that awesomeness.....Ohhh! Dawg, one more thing.....Our current games with no RTX and low rez last gen standards, we won't even show you on console kit, but rather on high end PC, but you just wait, because we will blow your minds when we show even more tasking games with RTX on our console......
Whelp... i guess the SSD lives don't matter anymore when it comes to PS5?
It's one dev, one statement or one dev preferring this aspect of the console does not negate the preference of many others who prefer the SSD or many others who prefer the DualSense or those who prefer the audio capabilities or those who prefer the geometry engine. Different persons can gravitate to different aspects of the console based on their inclinations, the type of game they are creating and the number of platforms they are targetting.......Metro is most probably working on a remaster of the current game for PS5/Series X, it makes sense for them to target raytracing as the main feature, afterall it was the main target and talking point in the recent release, so it makes sense to leverage that same feature where both next gen consoles could pull the feature off well enough....It makes sense for a multiplat release.

Perhaps on the next game, they will be able to utilize the PS5 SSD a bit more, bare in mind, they will not try to make the PS5 SSD outstrip the Series X SSD in any case as they would try to mimic the experience across devices, even to the lowest common denominator. The strengths of the geometry engine, the SSD, the audio chip will be mostly seen on exclusive releases, which thankfully will be quite prevalent on the PS5, both first and third party.....So you will see the PS5 strengths utilized, that's for sure....
 

CrustyBritches

Gold Member
The Metro games have generally been among the best looking titles over the past decade. Exodus already has RT+DLSS support, so I'm sure they're ready to bring RT support to the consoles.
 
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VFXVeteran

Banned
Perhaps on the next game, they will be able to utilize the PS5 SSD a bit more, bare in mind, they will not try to make the PS5 SSD outstrip the Series X SSD in any case as they would try to mimic the experience across devices, even to the lowest common denominator. The strengths of the geometry engine, the SSD, the audio chip will be mostly seen on exclusive releases, which thankfully will be quite prevalent on the PS5, both first and third party.....So you will see the PS5 strengths utilized, that's for sure....

The point is that all of you Sony fans grabbed onto the SSD when you found out that the GPU was going to be weaker than the XSX. So you latched on to the only part in the PS5 that was superior to the XSX/PC and tried to market it as a graphics milestone. This was made even more evident with the UE5 demo with the Nanite tech. Yes, the amount of geometry pushing through the pipeline is definitely a generation barrier. But it has nothing to do with light and shading - which I've said over and over again - relies on the GPU. The PS5 graphics capabilities will be inferior to the XSX/PC. That's just a fact. Will it matter much when compared to the XSX? Maybe not. We don't know yet.
 
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RGB'D

Member
I think we're in a similar position, though I'm a multi-console gamer rather than PC. I'm not actually strongly aligned to any platform, though my post history might suggest otherwise. I find nearly all my replies are in response to the (relatively small) group of extreme Sony fanboys that are all over this place. It's hard to ignore if you're not part of the cult, though it's thankless and tiring if you're silly enough to take the bait. :)
I feel the same way. I actually was more console oriented till I built a new Gaming PC and own all a Ps4 Pro Xbox One X and a Switch. That SONY cult though really detracts from what is likely the best forum for videogaming. I just dont understand the double standard with moderation. Thats said the significantly fewer xbox zealots don't help their cause either.
 

thelastword

Banned
The point is that all of you Sony fans grabbed onto the SSD when you found out that the GPU was going to be weaker than the XSX. So you latched on to the only part in the PS5 that was superior to the XSX/PC and tried to market it as a graphics milestone. This was made even more evident with the UE5 demo with the Nanite tech. Yes, the amount of geometry pushing through the pipeline is definitely a generation barrier. But it has nothing to do with light and shading - which I've said over and over again - relies on the GPU. The PS5 graphics capabilities will be inferior to the XSX/PC. That's just a fact. Will it matter much when compared to the XSX? Maybe not. We don't know yet.
A dev who speaks up RT does not negate the strengths of the SSD......His game was built on the strength of RT so they are excited to bring that to consoles.....The strengths of the PS5 SSD, the geometry engine, the audio chip and the controller persists and will bring about a tangible difference to games mainly on exclusive titles. You will see soon enough and throughout the generation.

Also, the divide between these two consoles on the multiplat scene will be minimal at best with XSX winning some and PS5 winning others. In some areas XSX will excel in some areas PS5 will excel.....
 

Shmunter

Member
I would love for you to admit that the SSD isn't going to do what you thought it would do for graphics tech. You have fought me tooth and nail over this and now you get a verification that I've been saying for awhile now. It would be nice...just saying.
Eh?
 

GiJoint

Member
I had a blast playing this on the Pro, really tempted to play it again but beefed up on my PC - seems like RT will destroy my 2080 Super though
 
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93xfan

Banned
If they get Metro Exodus running with RT GI at 4k / a stable 30fps which brings a 2080 to its knees then I’ll be very impressed.

Good to hear after other developers on Xbox were apparently more comfortable using traditional rasterisation.
Really not concerned about native 4k for everything. It’d still probably be impressive at 1440p and above
 

VFXVeteran

Banned
A dev who speaks up RT does not negate the strengths of the SSD......His game was built on the strength of RT so they are excited to bring that to consoles.....The strengths of the PS5 SSD, the geometry engine, the audio chip and the controller persists and will bring about a tangible difference to games mainly on exclusive titles. You will see soon enough and throughout the generation.

Also, the divide between these two consoles on the multiplat scene will be minimal at best with XSX winning some and PS5 winning others. In some areas XSX will excel in some areas PS5 will excel.....

This is ridiculous. It's one of my major pet peeves with you Sony guys.

He is speaking truth about the graphics pipeline. Just because he doesn't play up to the SSD like you would want doesn't mean he's unknowlegable about what they can do for graphics. The biggest complaint I have about you guys is your elitist attitude that only a Sony exclusive company has the ability to make graphics shine. That's a complete fanboy claim with no technical evidence to back it up. It's just easy to say that so it can fit your narrative.
 
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thelastword

Banned
This is ridiculous. It's one of my major pet peeves with you Sony guys.

He is speaking truth about the graphics pipeline. Just because he doesn't play up to the SSD like you would want doesn't mean he's unknowlegable about what they can do for graphics. The biggest complaint I have about you guys is your elitist attitude that only a Sony exclusive company has the ability to make graphics shine. That's a complete fanboy claim with no technical evidence to back it up. It's just easy to say that so it can fit your narrative.
It's not a fanboy narrative. PS studios and PS exclusives have been delivering the best looking games since PS2 on a wide scale.......

PS2: GT3, GT4, GOW 1, GOW 2, Ghost Hunter, Primal, Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank.....

PS3: GOW3-Ascencion, UC1-3, TLOU, Infamous, GT5-6, Warhawk, Motor Storm

PS4: Horizon Zero Dawn, The Order 1886, GTS, Driveclub, GOW, UC4/LL, TLOU2, Days Gone, Until Dawn, Detroit, Death Stranding, Tsushima
 
This is ridiculous. It's one of my major pet peeves with you Sony guys.

He is speaking truth about the graphics pipeline. Just because he doesn't play up to the SSD like you would want doesn't mean he's unknowlegable about what they can do for graphics. The biggest complaint I have about you guys is your elitist attitude that only a Sony exclusive company has the ability to make graphics shine. That's a complete fanboy claim with no technical evidence to back it up. It's just easy to say that so it can fit your narrative.

image-1.jpeg
 

VFXVeteran

Banned
It's not a fanboy narrative. PS studios and PS exclusives have been delivering the best looking games since PS2 on a wide scale.......

PS2: GT3, GT4, GOW 1, GOW 2, Ghost Hunter, Primal, Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank.....

PS3: GOW3-Ascencion, UC1-3, TLOU, Infamous, GT5-6, Warhawk, Motor Storm

PS4: Horizon Zero Dawn, The Order 1886, GTS, Driveclub, GOW, UC4/LL, TLOU2, Days Gone, Until Dawn, Detroit, Death Stranding, Tsushima

That is all in your subjective opinion. It has nothing to do with graphics tech. If you want to say Sony has the best artistic and gameplay talent, sure - they have done an incredible job. However, all of these games have to be designed around the limited console hardware. It is the 3rd party companies that push the graphics tech.

Prior generations:
Doom
Quake
Unreal
Crysis
Metro
HalfLife
Witcher 3
Battlefield

and now:

FS2020
Black Myth

Not Sony.
 
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Polygonal_Sprite

Gold Member
Really not concerned about native 4k for everything. It’d still probably be impressive at 1440p and above

Yeah same. Dynamic 4k is fine with me especially if they get RT GI running. PS5 should be capable of like 1800p on average especially for a ‘last gen’ game at that point.

1440p is a fine resolution for most people on a 4k tv from regular viewing distances. I almost wish Sony went with it or checkerboard 4k again and really pushed visuals even further for Ratchet, GT7, DS and Spider-Man MM but they seem to be intent on native 4k.
 

VFXVeteran

Banned
Yeah same. Dynamic 4k is fine with me especially if they get RT GI running. PS5 should be capable of like 1800p on average especially for a ‘last gen’ game at that point.

Why does everyone assume that because a game was released before this crop of next-gen consoles that it has "last gen" tech in it? The game was next-gen the moment they added RT on the PC. The same with Control. Game companies don't just throw away their technology and start over from scratch just because a new generation of consoles come out.
 
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VFXVeteran

Banned
lol not even close... like not even in the same galaxy as something like Control

Control had the best use of it as you say, but not night and day difference. Control just had more features turned on. Both games have very weak art direction and textures, which makes them not look beautiful.
 

Dampf

Member
PS5 SSD won't shine (in gameplay) in multiplat games because they have to make the same game working on the much slower Xbox Series S.
You mean Xbox one X.

XSS is not a problem and it won't hold back anything as resolution is easily scalable (4K is 4x more demanding than 1080p, so 12 to 4 TFLOPs scales very well) . It has DX12 Ultimate, SSD tech and a modern Zen 2 CPU. This is whats enabling the next gen experience.

Microsofts cross gen approach, which will include Xbox One, that will be what's hurting the technical quality of their games.
 
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01011001

Banned
Control had the best use of it as you say, but not night and day difference. Control just had more features turned on. Both games have very weak art direction and textures, which makes them not look beautiful.

RT has a way bigger effect in Control, which is how I measure this.

you would need to see most scenes in Metro side by side to actually notice what the RT implementation does. it's rare that you can tell, because modern engines can do ambient occlusion and artists can fake GI pretty well, so RT is a very subtle differences in Metro.

Control is full of reflective surfaces which all reflect the environment in real time when RT is turned on even on the lowest setting the difference is big imo.

to me reflections is the area in modern games that needs RT the most. AO and GI look good even when they're faked or screenspace (or voxel based as seen in Crysis remaster) no RT needed here IMO... even tho SSAO looks shit in many games, it doesn't look as shit as SSR looks 99% of the time
 

Polygonal_Sprite

Gold Member
Why does everyone assume that because a game was released before this crop of next-gen consoles that it has "last gen" tech in it? The game was next-gen the moment they added RT on the PC. The same with Control. Game companies don't just throw away their technology and start over from scratch just because a new generation of consoles come out.

You're way too sensitive my dude. I called it a 'last gen game' because come November it will have been released on last gen consoles... Pull your knickers out your arse.
 

VFXVeteran

Banned
RT has a way bigger effect in Control, which is how I measure this.

you would need to see most scenes in Metro side by side to actually notice what the RT implementation does. it's rare that you can tell, because modern engines can do ambient occlusion and artists can fake GI pretty well, so RT is a very subtle differences in Metro.

Control is full of reflective surfaces which all reflect the environment in real time when RT is turned on even on the lowest setting the difference is big imo.

to me reflections is the area in modern games that needs RT the most. AO and GI look good even when they're faked or screenspace (or voxel based as seen in Crysis remaster) no RT needed here IMO... even tho SSAO looks shit in many games, it doesn't look as shit as SSR looks 99% of the time

Disagree here. I can easily tell RT GI/AO. It's all about the shadowing on surfaces. RT AO will pick up small objects like forks, plates, and little props. Reflections look good but most games right now only cast one ray along the reflected vector instead of multiple rays to get a good blurred reflection. Also they don't use RT reflection on every single BRDF even though energy conservation requires it. In the rendering equation, I can get away with SSR but with the current screenspace techniques we see for AO and GI are too crude and not accurate enough. They also blow out the BRDF with a non-energy conserving GI probe lookup.

I agree about SSR. They are always rendering the scene at a lower resolution which causes the reflection to look bad.
 
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You mean Xbox one X.

XSS is not a problem and it won't hold back anything as resolution is easily scalable (4K is 4x more demanding than 1080p, so 12 to 4 TFLOPs scales very well) . It has DX12 Ultimate, SSD tech and a modern Zen 2 CPU. This is whats enabling the next gen experience.

Microsofts cross gen approach, which will include Xbox One, that will be what's hurting the technical quality of their games.
I am talking about the SSD here. MS haven't confirmed its speed on XSS. It could even be slower than on XSX. About the scaling, well, Halo Infinite already scales very well from XB1 to PC, right ?

But the problem with XSS, it's not the APU, it's the memory. Only 7.5 GB available for games. This is the new baseline. From 5GB to 7.5GB. Yep. This is why devs are not happy. They'll have to make their games run with only 7.5 GB of ram instead of 13GB.
 

rofif

Banned
Ray tracing is not worth it. Hi can be done cheaper ways or baked like in tlou2. I would prefer other effects and physics
 

CrysisFreak

Banned
RT has a way bigger effect in Control, which is how I measure this.

you would need to see most scenes in Metro side by side to actually notice what the RT implementation does. it's rare that you can tell, because modern engines can do ambient occlusion and artists can fake GI pretty well, so RT is a very subtle differences in Metro.

Control is full of reflective surfaces which all reflect the environment in real time when RT is turned on even on the lowest setting the difference is big imo.

to me reflections is the area in modern games that needs RT the most. AO and GI look good even when they're faked or screenspace (or voxel based as seen in Crysis remaster) no RT needed here IMO... even tho SSAO looks shit in many games, it doesn't look as shit as SSR looks 99% of the time
You got a point.
SSR need to go, they are glitching all over the place because they're inherently flawed to an insane degree. It's very noticeable when SSR collapse every 3 seconds because of cam movement.
 

Dampf

Member
I am talking about the SSD here. MS haven't confirmed its speed on XSS. It could even be slower than on XSX. About the scaling, well, Halo Infinite already scales very well from XB1 to PC, right ?

But the problem with XSS, it's not the APU, it's the memory. Only 7.5 GB available for games. This is the new baseline. From 5GB to 7.5GB. Yep. This is why devs are not happy. They'll have to make their games run with only 7.5 GB of ram instead of 13GB.
Halo Infinite is sadly a cross gen title, so that is bound to scale not great on modern hardware, regardless what Phil Spencer says. I'm talking about next gen only games here and Xbox Series S to X and modern PCs with DX12 Ultimate will scale very well.

Memory is fine because Xbox Series S uses DX12 Ultimate's Sampler Feedback tied with DirectStorage SSD streaming. Memory streaming and handling is a lot more efficient thanks to these techniques and is not comparable to last generation consoles (PS4 Pro/Xbox One X) and PC GPUs (anything before Turing and RDNA2). If you really want to compare, MS states Sampler Feedback can act as a multiplier for effective RAM by a factor of 2.5, meaning these 7.5 GB would more behave like around 18 GB compared to last generation consoles.

Compared to Xbox Series X, Series S only has to output 1080p with lower quality assets and textures, that saves a ton of memory.
 
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Halo Infinite is sadly a cross gen title, so that is bound to scale not great on modern hardware, regardless what Phil Spencer says. I'm talking about next gen only games here and Xbox Series S to X and modern PCs with DX12 Ultimate will scale very well.

Memory is fine because Xbox Series S uses DX12 Ultimate's Sampler Feedback tied with DirectStorage SSD streaming.
Memory streaming and handling is a lot more efficient thanks to these techniques and is not comparable to last generation consoles (PS4 Pro/Xbox One X) and PC GPUs (anything before Turing and RDNA2). If you really want to compare, MS states Sampler Feedback can act as a multiplier for effective RAM by a factor of 2.5, meaning these 7.5 GB would more behave like around 18 GB compared to last generation consoles.

Compared to Xbox Series X, Series S only has to output 1080p with lower quality assets and textures, that saves a ton of memory.
But both PS5 and XSX will also use the SSD to quickly get more data and also have >13GB of available GDDR6. What you say will only work if multiplat devs use SSD memory paging only on XSX (and not on PS5 / XSX) and that won't happen.
 

Dampf

Member
But both PS5 and XSX will also use the SSD to quickly get more data and also have >13GB of available GDDR6. What you say will only work if multiplat devs use SSD memory paging only on XSX (and not on PS5 / XSX) and that won't happen.
Sampler Feedback is exclusive to Microsoft and has a different purpose to SSD streaming. It allows the engine and developers to load only the mip-levels of textures that are required and visible for the player into RAM, as opposed to storing many more mip-levels of textures the player is not even able to see, like it's currently done. That is only one part of it though, the second part is more efficient shading.

If Sony wants they can deploy a similar technique in their own API as the PS5 is based on RDNA2, so the hardware required for that feedback system is there. I hope they will!
 
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