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

llien

Member
The noisy pictures you show are from a talk about denoisers
No, the noisy pictures I show are from NVidia's RT presentation.

And it's baffling that someone so excited about RT is not familiar with it.
Pretty much any tech talk about RT has these noisy examples as that is what RT rendering really produces at this point (and for years to come).


I would really like to know how this hack would work, in order to get reflections of off-screen objects on a large moving object, like the cars in the GT trailer. Just a rough outline is enough.
Exactly the same way reflections work in driver's mirror.

No, at the end of the day we have a promising technology that can already be used for effects that would not be possible otherwise.
An example of "would not be possible otherwise" effect is desperately needed. Oh, and you are talking to a person who played GoW in the last few evenings, so be careful, when picking them.
 
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Jon Neu

Banned
I think the robot dinosaurs defeat any attempt at serious realism far more than saturated colors. :pie_roffles:
Comparing role playing fantasy to a driving game? Really?

Are you implying you can’t make a sci-fi game without realistic graphics?

I just founded amusing that the cartoony look and saturated colors is somehow used to attack a VIDEOGAME.
 
Are you implying you can’t make a sci-fi game without realistic graphics?

I just founded amusing that the cartoony look and saturated colors is somehow used to attack a VIDEOGAME.
Dude, the subtitle of GT is literally "driving simulator". It should simulate real world.
 

raul3d

Member
No, the noisy pictures I show are from NVidia's RT presentation.

And it's baffling that someone so excited about RT is not familiar with it.
Pretty much any tech talk about RT has these noisy examples as that is what RT rendering really produces at this point (and for years to come).
My point is that the example from the NVIDIA presentation is to show the work of the denoiser. The goal was not to push the SPPs as high as possible in realtime.

Exactly the same way reflections work in driver's mirror.
That would not work. The rear mirror in driving games is basically a second 180-degree turned camera rendered into the flat mirror surface. This does not work for complex objects like the car bodies.

An example of "would not be possible otherwise" effect is desperately needed. Oh, and you are talking to a person who played GoW in the last few evenings, so be careful, when picking them.
You can take the same effects I gave you before as an example: The reflections in the interiour and exteriour of the cars in GT7 or shadows of dynamic point lights.

Exteriour reflections
Interiour reflections
Dynamic point light shadows
 
I’m going to have to see the benefits first hand, because so far RT is quintessential diminishing returns from where I’m sitting. I appreciate RT is most definitely the future, but in a real-time setting where trade offs are constantly in tension, fakery can often be used for better overall effect, e.g like achieving 60fps. Eventually no doubt, but for now - I need more proof.

Right where I’m at, just doesn’t seem worth it to me looking at how all these people are calling it super expensive or whatever - I mean maybe if you’re analyzing each frame it adds something - but the fakery worked fine for me. I don’t need completely accurate reflections or shadows. To my eye it doesn’t add that much.
 

INC

Member
So basically RT uses checkerboard to upscale

That's a good thing, not like you need native 4k/2k reflections or shadows, so saves some horse power

Good solution, I'd still rather have an option to just turn it off completely for better frames
 

sinseers

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.
Edit: That has been my suspicion for a while now. I've been telling my buddies that Raytracing may go over the general public's head. Mainly due to how convincing reflection map trickery has been for games in this current generation. I feel like we may be truly entering the age of diminishing returns if the casual gamer has to be told what to look for graphically instead of blatantly noticing the technical advancement themselves.
 
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-Arcadia-

Banned
It's heartening to hear that there's methods in place to make Ray Tracing play well with consoles.

Stuff like sub-HD reconstruction to higher resolutions, or mixing traditional reflections in, or culling some objects is a really smart way to make this more than the almost unusable gimmick feature I feared it'd be.

I feel like I actually have hope to see this stuff outside of games like Minecraft, in tech-pushing games at expected resolutions.
 

UnNamed

Banned
RT is not only for reflection, is also for shadows and GI. It's potential come from having a single algorithm for all.

I'm a bit worried they didn't mention any use of RT GI in this video, only for PRAGMATA but not for GT7 and other titles.
I think GT7 hints at RTGI in some parts of the video, I'm not sure of course, but some lights and shadows seems too accurate for me.

RT can't be considered a next gen effect, a paradigm change, without its full potential, so GI+shadows+reflections+scattering.
 

ZywyPL

Banned
I think the robot dinosaurs defeat any attempt at serious realism far more than saturated colors. :pie_roffles:
Comparing role playing fantasy to a driving game? Really?

Well you have to say, DS looks arguably more appealing thanks to its toned down colors. Hell, we are getting both on PC actually, so we will actually get to see what ReShade will do with those two titles, how will they change compared to PS4 originals.
 

JeloSWE

Member
Exactly the same way reflections work in driver's mirror.
This only works well for perfectly flat surfaces, like a wall mirror or floor. It could work well for a perfect sphere but other than that the reflection will produce incorrect results and quickly fall apart under minor scrutiny. SSR is not an option if you wan't to reflect things off of Irregular surfaces outside the screen.

I should add that doing the driver mirror thing is quite expensive and you can only do that for one or two mirrors, it' wont work over the entire surfaces like the car body.
 
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geordiemp

Member
GAF really needs facepalm emoticon.

My point is Consoles started with CB,moved to more temporal solutions, and recently in UE5 demo nobody could tell it was 1440p upscaled.

Nvidia DLSS is good, but thinking its the b all and end all is the usual superior viewpoint PC players often take.

And you point is ?

Nohing I thought so, usual one line drive by.
 
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OutRun88

Member
I'd say there's 2 things that will stick out to the layman, the screenspace reflections that are mixed in, the artifact of screenspace reflections are pretty extreme.
The aliasing on the reflections are also pretty bad sometimes. hopefully they can find a way to filter it.
Consider me sub-layman then.
 

Ragnarok

Member
Sure glad we have to freeze gameplay and scale up puddles to see the improvements this generation.

Diminishing returns indeed.
 

Barnabot

Member
i'd sacrifice RayTracing just to make room to 60fps being the baseline for all games. but fps are not eyecandy so...
 

Stuart360

Member
i'd sacrifice RayTracing just to make room to 60fps being the baseline for all games. but fps are not eyecandy so...
I still think they should of saved ray tracing for the gen after, or at least for any potential Pro consoles next gen. In fact it would be a nice little hook for the Pro consoles. This gen we had Pro consoles targeting 4k/higher resolutions, but i dont think that can happen with any Pro consoles next gen as even those would not be poweful enough for 8k imo, so Ray Tracing would of been a nice hook for potential Pro consoles.
 

-Arcadia-

Banned
Btw, I have to say, the GT cars may be one of my favorite applications of ray tracing.

Like Alex was saying, something about the accurate reflections really brings the cars to life, and makes them pop, in a way we just haven’t seen before. The exterior and interior models were already stunning in GT Sport, but this seems to be that perfect final touch.
 
Here's what I'm noticing from 1st party games for playstation 5.
Lower resolution games equal 60 fps and 4k for 30fps games.
The only 4k @ 60fps was GT7. God fall that was 4k 60fps has slow down. Is this the Smart switch at work?
Veritable clock rate?
We will see.
 

ethomaz

Banned
Btw, I have to say, the GT cars may be one of my favorite applications of ray tracing.

Like Alex was saying, something about the accurate reflections really brings the cars to life, and makes them pop, in a way we just haven’t seen before. The exterior and interior models were already stunning in GT Sport, but this seems to be that perfect final touch.
That was pretty evident at the reveal trailer... it looks so much better than GTS cars.
 
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Daymos

Member
It seems to me alot of people are like - 'I can't tell the difference! Just tell me the numbers so I know if I'm mad!!'
 

INC

Member
It seems to me alot of people are like - 'I can't tell the difference! Just tell me the numbers so I know if I'm mad!!'


welcome to RT in general

the only game ive really seen it working and making a visual difference so far, is the GT7 demo, with the mirrors around that car being displayed.
other than that, my experience with RT on pc, is seeing my frame rate cut in half for some slightly better look puddles

just not needed atm, but its a buzz word i guess this gen
 

GamesAreFun

Banned
Perhaps I can't see the benefit, but I wish Ray Tracing didn't exist on the PS5.

We have a console which matches a powerful PC, and they introduce a technology which massively drains performance in any game which uses it, ensuring performance only hits 30fps. And lots of AAA games seem determined to use Ray Tracing.
 

llien

Member
This only works well for perfectly flat surfaces, like a wall mirror or floor. It could work well for a perfect sphere but other than that the reflection will produce incorrect results and quickly fall apart under minor scrutiny.

I think you are missing where the quirk in "this" was, namely, something "normally invisible".
As for "works only with flat surfaces", that "issue" doesn't apply exclusively to "things that are not normally visible".
 

alucard0712_rus

Gold 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.

In GT7 ray-tracing showed only in menus (30fps), and NOT in-game!

Edit: First half of the trailer is cinematic and uses ray-traced reflections and shadows.
Second "game-play" half of the trailer has no sign of RT reflections or shadows.
 
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JeloSWE

Member
I think you are missing where the quirk in "this" was, namely, something "normally invisible".
As for "works only with flat surfaces", that "issue" doesn't apply exclusively to "things that are not normally visible".
I work with graphics for games daily, 3D and 2D and I'm not sure what you are getting at. The only reliable way to get something to reflect off, lets say a cars body in a accurate form is either SSR or raytracing, where SSR doesn't capture things that's not in direkt line of sight for the camera. Using the method you talked about earlier, doing additional rendering from the back mirrors POV or generating a cube map for the cars reflection of the environment only works in those very specific optimized cases, even in the case of having reflection probes spread over the entire level still wont update often enough to reflect moving object. RT will reflect anything in any surface anywhere all the time. The only trick to achieve that is to actually do it.
 

l2ounD

Member
I work with graphics for games daily, 3D and 2D and I'm not sure what you are getting at. The only reliable way to get something to reflect off, lets say a cars body in a accurate form is either SSR or raytracing, where SSR doesn't capture things that's not in direkt line of sight for the camera. Using the method you talked about earlier, doing additional rendering from the back mirrors POV or generating a cube map for the cars reflection of the environment only works in those very specific optimized cases, even in the case of having reflection probes spread over the entire level still wont update often enough to reflect moving object. RT will reflect anything in any surface anywhere all the time. The only trick to achieve that is to actually do it.


For that garage scene though there might be other types of raytraced lighting going on, the ceiling looks nice, but for the floor... Maybe Planar reflections. Something they used with less detail in GTS since they didnt use SSR. That could count for the lower lods in the reflections as in GTS. Plus the scenes in where there were obvious raytraced reflections, there was visible noise vs the garage floor where the reflection takes up most of the screen space and were smooth.
 

Mister Wolf

Member
metro-exodus-rtx-off-1024x576.jpg
nvidia-pokazala-10-gryaduschih-igr-s-trassirovkoj-luchej-neveroyatno-zrelischno-1.jpg
image_cyberpunk_2077-40550-2618_0002.jpg

We dont want reflections we want raytraced lighting GI and emissives.
 

Mister Wolf

Member
I'm not

Ray traced reflections are great.

Nope. Its a big nothing burger in Battlefield and will be in most of these games as well. Videogame light behaving like actual real world light does way more for a game then realistic shadows or reflections ever will.
 
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Fbh

Member
So basically it's mostly reflections. I hope the performance impact of those is minimal, otherwise I'd honestly prefer if they used that horse power on pretty much anything else.
RT global illumination/lighting is cool, I hope we see more of that.
 

JeloSWE

Member
For that garage scene though there might be other types of raytraced lighting going on, the ceiling looks nice, but for the floor... Maybe Planar reflections. Something they used with less detail in GTS since they didnt use SSR. That could count for the lower lods in the reflections as in GTS. Plus the scenes in where there were obvious raytraced reflections, there was visible noise vs the garage floor where the reflection takes up most of the screen space and were smooth.
The floor is raytraced. I don't understand why people in this thread are making such effort trying to explain the reflections as being done in some other way. It's not to good to be true, they really are doing it.
 

l2ounD

Member
The floor is raytraced. I don't understand why people in this thread are making such effort trying to explain the reflections as being done in some other way. It's not to good to be true, they really are doing it.

Ok. I dont know about the others but for me, I'm more curious about the different techniques they use. They've used similar planar reflections before in GTS so I'd figure they would expand on that in some cases. But you do graphics for games right? If they have no issues rendering half the screen with raytraced reflections, then sweet!
I was only suspect from the lod being reflected in the 917 and the quality of the reflections that are close to what ive seen from other planar reflections.
vdZOzUL.png


I would have expected raytracing to look a bit different but with there being reflections all over the place, it probably is. And the overall image looks cool albeit a little over shiny.
 
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LixhulHot

Banned
Might be getting old now but I personally can't really see much difference with this Ray Tracing. Just looks the same as baked shadows as we've seen for many years now. I hope all this new power isn't used just for this.
 
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llien

Member
I work with graphics for games daily, 3D and 2D and I'm not sure what you are getting at. The only reliable way to get something to reflect off, lets say a cars body in a accurate form is either SSR or raytracing, where SSR doesn't capture things that's not in direkt line of sight for the camera. Using the method you talked about earlier, doing additional rendering from the back mirrors POV or generating a cube map for the cars reflection of the environment only works in those very specific optimized cases, even in the case of having reflection probes spread over the entire level still wont update often enough to reflect moving object. RT will reflect anything in any surface anywhere all the time. The only trick to achieve that is to actually do it.
You were commenting on an exchange about raster approach somehow having major issues with rendering stuff that is behind the camera.

My point is that the example from the NVIDIA presentation is to show the work of the denoiser. The goal was not to push the SPPs as high as possible in realtime.
So, this noisy scene is done with 1 spp. It's noisy as hell. Now tell me what "real" rendering looks like, in numbers please.
I.e. "in actual games, we get not one, but X spp", I want to know what X is, from your perspective.

 
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JeloSWE

Member
Ok. I dont know about the others but for me, I'm more curious about the different techniques they use. They've used similar planar reflections before in GTS so I'd figure they would expand on that in some cases. But you do graphics for games right? If they have no issues rendering half the screen with raytraced reflections, then sweet!
I was only suspect from the lod being reflected in the 917 and the quality of the reflections that are close to what ive seen from other planar reflections.
vdZOzUL.png


I would have expected raytracing to look a bit different but with there being reflections all over the place, it probably is. And the overall image looks cool albeit a little over shiny.
The floor is that shiny because those shops usually are like that in real life. Also it's an excellent place for GT to show of their PS5 RT capabilities, it's about selling how awesome PS5 is and that you should buy it :) Logically it doesn't make sense to try and do one type of specialized reflection when you already have a great real time RT reflections working. Secondly RnC uses RT reflections in a couple of scenes why wouldn't GT7 do it.
Another scene you can check out is when the truck trailer sides swing upwards in with the delivered car. That trying to solve that by classic planar reflection cheats are just to much work and it's not SSR either. You can of course use both SSR and fill in missing details with RT but so far I haven't managed to see any signs of it, just RT.
 

raul3d

Member
You were commenting on an exchange about raster approach somehow having major issues with rendering stuff that is behind the camera.


So, this noisy scene is done with 1 spp. It's noisy as hell. Now tell me what "real" rendering looks like, in numbers please.
I.e. "in actual games, we get not one, but X spp", I want to know what X is, from your perspective.


I am not sure what we are arguing about; but I have the impression that we are talking about different things.

Most effects in the rasterized rendering pipeline have severe limitations. Not everyone might notice these, some people might also be used to looking at these wrong effects so that it does not bother them, and that is totally fine. But when you know the limitations and know what to look for, the flaws in the result are obvious. Raytracing resolves all these limitations. That is why from a technical point of view the reflections in the cars body are very impressive and are something that were not possible in previous console generations. It is nice that we are already able to use raytracing in realtime applications on consoles, even if the scope is still limited.

It is debatable if these raytraced effects are necessary or if the render budget would be better spent elsewhere, e.g. in a higher framerate. However, I think as resolution and the general rendering quality improves, the flaws and limitations of the existing effects will become more obvious and distracting. Raytracing is a nice addition to resolve these. In addition, my understanding is that raytracing (or the ray intersection) in its current form is a separate hardware resource and is not competing with the traditional rendering pipeline for rendering resources.
 

JeloSWE

Member
You were commenting on an exchange about raster approach somehow having major issues with rendering stuff that is behind the camera.
SSR is the most accurate approach to doing reflections that are not RT but still reasonably fast. The way it's done is that you store the previous rendered frame in a frame buffer as well as a Z/depth buffer (just a black and white image looking like white fog, representing each pixels distance from the camera). Then when you are rendering the new frame and you want draw a reflective surface you shot a ray (kind of like RT) bouncing of that surface and then the ray is tested against, not the actual 3D scene but the depth-buffer from the previous frame to see what surface the ray is hitting/intersecting, once identified you just look up the corresponding pixel value in the previous rendered frame to put into the reflection.
This technique is awesome and fast but have drawbacks, if the object or surface area is not directly visible in the previous frame, either that it's out of camera or it's say the underside of a car, then there is no information what is to be reflected and you have to fudge that empty region by either fading them out at the screen edges smearing the closest working reflections to fill out the empty space.
So, this noisy scene is done with 1 spp. It's noisy as hell. Now tell me what "real" rendering looks like, in numbers please.
I.e. "in actual games, we get not one, but X spp", I want to know what X is, from your perspective.


Real time RT can't at the moment shot that many rays as they are expensive, so one of the most important advances in offline as well as real time rendering is denoising. This is what in part has contributed to the sudden appearance of RT. Before we had to shoot an exponential amount of rays to double the image quality and that quickly becomes unfeasible. Even Disney used denoising in Moana (if om not mistaken) to lower render time. So when games do reflections or shadows they try and only shoot one ray per pixel, if it's an area light or rough surface you will get noisy results like in your image but a good denoiser can greatly reduce the noise. Games likely use a couple of SPP, the exact amount is difficult for me to say, the more diffuse the shadow is the more you need for a smooth result but try to keep it as low as possible and the talk referred to here is about how denoising can greatly smooth out the noisy mess. For blurry reflections a good approximation, albeit not quite accurate, is to first render the surface as sharp a mirror and then apply 2D post blur to simulate the softer reflection then you only need to shoot one ray per pixel and gett so good results that you really need to know what to look for in certain situations for it to break.

More on low SPP and noise, it's not only about applying denoising, most current and next gen games accumulate the sparse samples over multiple frames, so even if the game only shoots 1 SPP per frame it suddenly has shot 8 after you guessed it 8 frames. You can then continuously accumulate and combine them for a smoother result.
 

llien

Member
Most effects in the rasterized rendering pipeline have severe limitations. Not everyone might notice these, some people might also be used to looking at these wrong effects so that it does not bother them, and that is totally fine. But when you know the limitations and know what to look for, the flaws in the result are obvious. Raytracing resolves all these limitations.

Raytracing comes with it's own list of problems. Today's performance levels make them even worse.
The noise in that picture is what the "ray traced" stuff that we get in games actually is, before "denoising".

More on low SPP and noise, it's not only about applying denoising, most current and next gen games accumulate the sparse samples over multiple frames, so even if the game only shoots 1 SPP per frame it suddenly has shot 8 after you guessed it 8 frames. You can then continuously accumulate and combine them for a smoother result.
Which, I assume, only works if stuff is static.
And "stuff" in this case is not simply the, say, objects that reflect (trees in that noisy example above), but also the camera.
 

JeloSWE

Member
Which, I assume, only works if stuff is static.
And "stuff" in this case is not simply the, say, objects that reflect (trees in that noisy example above), but also the camera.
Actually not, Temporal Antialias, Checker Board Rendering and Sample Accumulation all work on moving things as well. This is through reuse of the previous frames pixels by re-projecting them in the right spot in the new frame. That is done with the help of a Motion Vector frame buffer, it's an image that contain the direction and speed for each pixel, this is key to the for this to work. It works pretty well when properly implemented but in some poorer ones you can see trailing/ghosting of moving things.
 
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l2ounD

Member
The floor is that shiny because those shops usually are like that in real life. Also it's an excellent place for GT to show of their PS5 RT capabilities, it's about selling how awesome PS5 is and that you should buy it :)

Come on, In real life the floors are glossy and reflective but have roughness and falloff. What pit garages have mirror finishes that you can see the ceiling detail? PD already showcased a techdemo awhile back that was more realistic.


Another scene you can check out is when the truck trailer sides swing upwards in with the delivered car. That trying to solve that by classic planar reflection cheats are just to much work and it's not SSR either. You can of course use both SSR and fill in missing details with RT but so far I haven't managed to see any signs of it, just RT.
Planar vs SSR Which the latter GTS never used.


I mean, I guess that can be more work than using low quality raytraced reflections depending on the cost.
 

JeloSWE

Member
Come on, In real life the floors are glossy and reflective but have roughness and falloff. What pit garages have mirror finishes that you can see the ceiling detail? PD already showcased a techdemo awhile back that was more realistic.
I think the pit was extra reflective on purpose, to really drive home the point that they can do RT really well. Something a lot of peeps in this tread fail to pickup on unfortunatelly.

Planar vs SSR Which the latter GTS never used.


I mean, I guess that can be more work than using low quality raytraced reflections depending on the cost.


Using planar reflections are pointless when you have access to RT. Why go through the trouble of making only some parts using planar reflections and then use RT one all the other surfaces. Doesn't make sense. If you already have RT working this well, then just use it for all reflective surfaces.
If you want to explain away the reflections using something else then be my guest.
 
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