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PlayStation 5 Ray Tracing First Look: Gran Turismo 7, Ratchet & Clank, Pragamata + More! (DF)

iHaunter

Member
Neat little video from Digital Foundry discussing Ray Tracing on PS5 games shown in the PS5 reveal.

Here's Digital Foundry's ray tracing expert Alex Battaglia with a complete breakdown of the ray tracing effects and technologies we saw in the first reveal wave of PlayStation 5 software. Gran Turismo 7, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, Pragmata, Stray and more!

 

Fake

Member

GT7 is on another level: environment reflections are properly mapped onto bodywork, all cars and indeed the player's car are also reflected, as are elements that are off-screen. It's a significant upgrade to the materials work on the player vehicle, while materials like glass seem to receive ray traced reflections too.

The game renders at what looks like native 4K resolution, so achieving these results at 60fps requires some innovative approaches to ray tracing. First of all, reflection resolution looks to be quarter resolution, cutting down the RT workload significantly. On top of that, a curious element is that moving edges in reflections exhibit sawtooth lines, much like checkerboarding. This makes me wonder whether interlacing or checkboarding the reflections is another push by Polyphony for higher performance - we saw a similar technique in Metro Exodus's real-time ray traced global illumination on PC.
 

ethomaz

Banned
Some smart solutions there, not sure how I feel about the checker-boarding, it's fine around the edges of the screen or on further away objects, but on the hood of that car it looked quite bad.
If devs doesn't find some smart solutions you won't have 4k + RT in the new consoles.
You will have to stay on 1080p for RT that is fine to me but not for the marketing team.
 
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OutRun88

Member
Someone drop some summaries lol. At work and can't watch
summary if possible

can't watch it now
Games look good. Self reflections add a lot. Ray tracing is achieved by diminishing the quality of the reflection (checkerboarded) while the environment is true 4K, not all objects showing, and uniform reflections across various surface materials. i.e. Shit looks good and you won't notice it in motion until someone points it out (like this video).
 

Fake

Member
- GT running at native 4k, 60fps and RT.
- Looks like some sort of optmization for doing that. Maybe CB render for the RT solution, still unclear (because have some artefacts similar to CB).
- R&C running at native 4k, 30 fps and RT as well.
- Devs told R&C use RT as Alex noted, but due to the video quality still unclear what the solution used there. RT spotted in some metalic surfaces.
- Just like the GT, R&C are using a uniform level of reflectivity.
- Alex still not sure if will find bugs or if this a technique for saving on performance.
- There are some dynamic effects in place for saving perfomance.
- Not clear if Demons Souls will use RT as well.
- Third party games will get RT like the Stray by Blue Twelve and Pragmata.
- Looks like Pragmata have the best use of the RT.
 
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- Pragmata shows the most impressive use of RT
- GT uses some form of checkerboardig for RT which appear to be rendering them at 1/4 res or 1080p
- R&C uses RT in some surfaces for reflections but some objects are missing, possibly because it's a WIP

Overall it's like we've been saying for a long time, don't expect to see full scene RT on consoles, they'll use it on select areas for specific details since it's very taxing on the GPU.
 
- GT running at native 4k, 60fps and RT.
- Looks like some sort of optmization for doing that. Maybe CB render for the RT solution, still unclear.
- R&C running at native 4k, 30 fps and RT as well.
- Devs told R&C use RT as Alex noted, but due to the video quality still unclear what the solution used there. RT spotted in some metalic surfaces.
- Just like the GT, R&C are using a uniform level of reflectivity.
- Alex still not sure if will find bugs or if this a technique for saving on performance.
- There are some dynamic effects in place for saving perfomance.
- Not clear if Demons Souls will use RT as well.
- Third party games will get RT like the Stray by Blue Twelve.
Nice summary. This is a clear indication that using a mixture of techniques rather than pure RT alone can produce amazing results.
 

Gamernyc78

Banned
I feel like this is going to be the generation of "experts" needing to tell us what we're getting instead of it being apparent.

Those compare and contrast videos were quite apparent even on the car models. We need professionals to tell us because regular ppl aren't really comparing the two side by side thy are going by what thy think thy remember.
 
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Krappadizzle

Gold Member
I really hope we see Ray Traced Global Illumination. That's the Holy Grail. I doubt we'll see it much on consoles, but one can hope. Pragmata looks like it may have it. I really hope devs embrace and figure out how to get it to a standard.
 
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GymWolf

Member
But GT is 4k 60fps with RT.

It really is up to the devs what they prioritize and in most cases it seems better visuals is a lot more marketable than higher framerates.
Racing game are lighter.

You can probably do the same with beat em up like tekken.

Good luck on having 4k60+rtx with open world or just big heavy games, having 4k60 without rtx is gonna be already a fucking miracle.
 
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Yeah the difference with fake reflections is so big that without this video i didn't even notice it...

But hey, we are gonna sacrifice 4k and 60 frame for this, so yay 🕺

I am okay with partial/limited use of RT if 60fps can still be maintained. Full blown RT across the board seems like it will be pretty hard to accomplish on anything higher than 30fps
 

Aceofspades

Banned
- Pragmata shows the most impressive use of RT
- GT uses some form of checkerboardig for RT which appear to be rendering them at 1/4 res or 1080p
- R&C uses RT in some surfaces for reflections but some objects are missing, possibly because it's a WIP

Overall it's like we've been saying for a long time, don't expect to see full scene RT on consoles, they'll use it on select areas for specific details since it's very taxing on the GPU.

Im more than happy of what we got , impressive showing for launch titles (first year) with all those new features.
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
Yeah the difference with fake reflections is so big that without this video i didn't even notice it...

But hey, we are gonna sacrifice 4k and 60 frame for this, so yay 🕺
Well, less dev time, so it is worth it.
 

GymWolf

Member
I am okay with partial/limited use of RT if 60fps can still be maintained. Full blown RT across the board seems like it will be pretty hard to accomplish on anything higher than 30fps
I don't care about perfect reflections or shadows, i'm already super okay with tlou2 water reflections tbh.
And we have that lumen thing from ue5 demo who looks better than any fake light we had this gen without being a resources hog like rtx.
 
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Romulus

Member
Those compare and contrast videos were quite apparent even on the car models. We need professionals to tell us because regular ppl aren't really comparing the two side by side thy are going by what thy think thy remember.

Yeah, but they have a cheap way of doing it that I can't remember. I probably wouldn't be able to tell unless it was side by side.
 

jose4gg

Member
Minute 13:17, he says he doesn't know if the trailer is running in a PS5 because in the Capcon uploaded trailer mentioned PC and XBox... He basically didn't saw the very first scene of the presentation where they specified everything we look will be captured from a PS5...
 
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GymWolf

Member
Well, less dev time, so it is worth it.
Nah, they still have to do old style fake lights for all the people without an rtx gpu on pc (aka the majority) and maybe even for the cheap xbox if this thing even exist.
It's double the amount of work.

It would be less work when they only use rtx in games but there is no one single game in the market who does that.
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
Nah, they still have to do old style fake lights for all the people without an rtx gpu on pc (aka the majority) and maybe even for the cheap xbox if this thing even exist.
It's double the amount of work.

It would be less work when they only use rtx in games but there is no one single game in the market who does that.
It's probably minecraft, but you are most likely right. But I commented more on a Technology, what it could bring. Especially with something like DLSS.

Anyway, back to our little discussion...months back, why use Minecraft RTX as an example of RT....
 

kebaldo

Member
I feel like this is going to be the generation of "experts" needing to tell us what we're getting instead of it being apparent.

"Expert in reflections on leaves" "expert on ray tracing light on pubic hairs" "expert on cereal dynamics" This gen will be crazy lol
 

GymWolf

Member
It's probably minecraft, but you are most likely right. But I commented more on a Technology, what it could bring. Especially with something like DLSS.

Anyway, back to our little discussion...months back, why use Minecraft RTX as an example of RT....
Oh dont ask me, even with rtx, minecraft still looks like utter shit to me, probably the worst example of rtx i ever saw.
 

Bryank75

Banned
You have to experiment with new tech to see the optimal way to deploy the techniques.... it can really have a huge effect in some places and in others it really doesn't appear to be visable.

I really think people are not giving credit to some of the games we saw.... Kena, R&C, Pragmata and GT7 as well as a couple others had some incredible visuals that you have to slow down to really appreciate. Slow it down and out it beside current gen captures of gameplay...... you will see that you are giving too much credit to current gen and that your memory is playing a trick on you.

Many games are going to offer a performance or graphics mode also...
 

dr guildo

Member
My screenshots of Pragmat's RT :
50006558836_78de85bb01_k.jpg

50006013303_d22a562bbc_k.jpg

50005970418_b971d6320a_k.jpg

50005953528_abd135c107_k.jpg
 

M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
Oh dont ask me, even with rtx, minecraft still looks like utter shit to me, probably the worst example of rtx i ever saw.
Well, but you see the difference even from shitty little gif and that's point in all of this. I don't disagree you with the other stuff. But like it's still looks noticably better, than OG minecraft, which would be shit even in early 2000.
 

Dory16

Banned
- Pragmata shows the most impressive use of RT
- GT uses some form of checkerboardig for RT which appear to be rendering them at 1/4 res or 1080p
- R&C uses RT in some surfaces for reflections but some objects are missing, possibly because it's a WIP

Overall it's like we've been saying for a long time, don't expect to see full scene RT on consoles, they'll use it on select areas for specific details since it's very taxing on the GPU.
Unless the game is Minecraft, for which we saw a path traced version on XSX, albeit not at 4k.
GT looks much better in this DF vid then what I saw during the reveal and even after. Impressive game.
 
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