About raytracing in next-gen consoles

[Muntaner]

So, seems like from the graphical point of view one of the greatest gift that we'll get in the next generation of consoles is ray-tracing.

I got to understand what the technology means and how it can practically improve the looks of a game scene... but I'm still seriously struggling in understanding what we are REALLY going to get on our screens when the consoles are out.

As far as I understood, this feature is included in AMD RDNA 2.0 CUs and is optionally available to devs when developing a nextgen game, but it comes with a huge cost. If I got it correctly an heavy use of the feature can kill the performances, and even some friends of mine and on other forums have said things like "yes, the feature is coming with the new console but don't expect anything special, there still isn't enough power on those hardwares to use huge amounts of ray-tracing".

I've seen those demos, mainly coming from the Xbox side:






I hope not to get any Xbox fan angry (I think the results will be similar/nearly the same on PS5) but what I see here... isn't impressing me. I mean, I see an improvement in the lights quality, but I still struggle to understand HOW this can be a game changer from the graphical point of view. Looks like it isn't COMPLETELY revamping what we are used to see.

I'm not a plastic-box warrior, I don't care about console wars, I just wanted to understand what to expect specifically from this feature and if my expectations are too high.

PS: I'm not technically expert, sorry if there is any BS in my OP: I opened this thread hoping to understand more, to set my expectations from this feature, and I'd be glad if any developer can step in and help me in clearing my doubts.

 

[elenarie]

The demos above are a little bit weak in representing this whole thing. Check this out instead.

 

[Yerffej]

I think in a few years, it'll be interesting to see what devs can accomplish when they, and the consoles, are in full stride. I'm imagining the new Witcher using this stuff and...my god.

 

[ILikeFeet]

for a developer, shit's gonna make things way easier. instead of placing multiple lights in a scene, many in impossible places, they can just place fewer lights and have greater effect. I'm not worried about performance, since it's not like they'll try to get everything (4K/60fps/RT) all at once

also, Gears 5 isn't using RT

 

[Dest]

This is going to be incredibly reliant on how performant the Vulkan/AMD implementation of raytracing will be. It seems like it might be better off than the current NVIDIA implementations we have with RTX cards, but it's still incredibly performance heavy. If you're expecting full 4k and RT, I think expectations need to be cut back a little bit, but it'll be really dependent on how developers decide to implement it i.e: will they try and mix RT global illumination and reflections, or just one or the other. Will the game visually benefit from those things thanks to art-style, etc?

I'm sure that as time goes on, the software end of things may help alleviate the burden, but I really don't think the true RT everything dreams of the future will be realized until the next next gen systems, but I'd really like to be proven wrong.

 

[ussjtrunks]

How are consoles able to run it at playable FPS when high end gpus have a hard time?

 

[Golden]

It is here that I expect to be able to see the biggest difference between the consoles. I imagine xbox beefier gpu is going to be significantly better equipped for this.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

for a developer, shit's gonna make things way easier. instead of placing multiple lights in a scene, many in impossible places, they can just place fewer lights and have greater effect. I'm not worried about performance, since it's not like they'll try to get everything (4K/60fps/RT) all at once

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It will make things easier when... they don't actually have to do pre-baked lighting also.

But I'm guessing pre-baked lighting will used in almost all games next-gen.

 

[Ukumio]

The build of Gears 5 shown in that video doesn't have raytracing last time I checked.

 

[SublimeAnarky]

The demos above are a little bit weak in representing this whole thing. Check this out instead.

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Whoa.. I hadn't seen this. Is this truly representative of what we can expect in the console space with RT? Not just a tech demo on high end PCs?

 

[big_z]

How are consoles able to run it at playable FPS when high end gpus have a hard time?

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You won't see it heavily used early on. Games won't be bathing in it.

However much like how shaders improved greatly through the 360/PS3 cycle as devs came up with new tricks and optimizations expect the same with ray tracing.

 

[Muntaner]

The demos above are a little bit weak in representing this whole thing. Check this out instead.

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This looks way better, but the technology that we are seeing in this video won't be shipped with the nextgen consoles, right? I'm a bit confused on this topic.

I'm not worried about performance, since it's not like they'll try to get everything (4K/60fps/RT) all at once

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If you're expecting full 4k and RT, I think expectations need to be cut back a little bit

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Well, it may look like a basic thing to know but I was ignoring the fact that 4K+60+RT is a complete NO. Thank you guys for clarifying this.

 

[Monster Zero]

Raytraced Lighting. See the difference?

 

[gofreak]

How are consoles able to run it at playable FPS when high end gpus have a hard time?

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Reduced resolution, reduced resolution offscreen buffers.

The latter will be less of an issue for lower frequency effects (e.g. indirect lighting). Higher frequency stuff will be trickier to tune down resolution on without a perceived quality hit, shadows & reflections.

 

[pksu]

There is no real spec or interesting data about RDNA 2 RT so quite difficult to say

 

[Komo]

It's still soo early to say

 

[Yogi]

I think it's a little misleading looking at Quake II and Minecraft and expecting that quality of raytracing in modern games.

Those games are super simple and super old. To get it looking like that, the performance drops from 950 frames to just 50 frames in Quake II.

Personally, I'm excited for raytracing in around 10-15 years, not so much this coming gen.

When you tone it down so performance is "better"...it starts to become like OP described...not that special. Might as well be using current lighting techniques and getting much higher performance and pushing the games visuals in other ways until then.

And PC is going to struggle to keep up higher framerates as is with next-gen console cpus being decent.

 

[elenarie]

Whoa.. I hadn't seen this. Is this truly representative of what we can expect in the console space with RT? Not just a tech demo on high end PCs?

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This looks way better, but the technology that we are seeing in this video won't be shipped with the nextgen consoles, right? I'm a bit confused on this topic.

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The best answer that I can give you on this is that we will have to wait for the consoles to be released to do performance testing. :)
It will highly depend on what parts of a game are being done using raytracing, if it is only shadows or only lighting or only ambient occlusion or only whatever, or everything, or nothing. Very hard to tell until we have playable experiences released publicly.

 

[ILikeFeet]

It will make things easier when... they don't actually have to do pre-baked lighting also.

But I'm guessing pre-baked lighting will used in almost all games next-gen.

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pre-baked lighting is never going away. why spend the resources when you don't have to.

but RT will also help with that as well. UE4 is getting DXR Lightmass baking, and I expect Unity to have a similar baking function

 

[Deleted member 4247]

It is here that I expect to be able to see the biggest difference between the consoles. I imagine xbox beefier gpu is going to be significantly better equipped for this.

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It's done on the CUs and scales with clock speed in the same way that compute power does, so it should be the same 17% difference or so.

 

[JahIthBer]

I don't think we will see RT GI like in Metro/Control much since 36CU's really isn't going to be good for RT & i don't think Sony planned for it, Microsoft were probably more closely watching Nvidia because they had to work together on DXR & decided to add 16 more CU's instead of just higher clocks, if Lockhart isn't a thing i could see Microsoft exclusives going a bit more crazy with RT.

It seems Epic adding their screen space GI RT in UE4 is what we will see more.

 

[Deleted member 8752]

The demos above are a little bit weak in representing this whole thing. Check this out instead.

Click to shrink...

It's fascinating how you can take something as unrealistic and purposefully pixel-like as Minecraft and can change it into such an insane looker by introducing ray tracing and some other effects.

I certainly think both looks have their merit and both are timeless, but as a pure tech demo, I'm pretty floored by what they achieved here. I can't imagine what a developer like Square Enix, for example, will be able to do with it when they make a big budget FF game.

How hard is it to work with Raytracing? Do you think the techniques are going to be optimized to be more efficient and less hardware taxing as the implementation matures?

 

[Muntaner]

Raytraced Lighting. See the difference?

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Yes, here I see an important difference. But isn't this the NVIDIA RTX technology? Isn't it different from what we'll get on the nextgen consoles?
And... this is a static image. In a dynamic and moving videogame where FPS are crucial, can this level of quality be reached?

 

[ILikeFeet]

Yes, here I see an important difference. But isn't this the NVIDIA RTX technology? Isn't it different from what we'll get on the nextgen consoles?
And... this is a static image. In a dynamic and moving videogame where FPS are crucial, can this level of quality be reached?

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no, this is DirectX Ray Tracing. same thing that's in the Xbox. RTX is just marketing name

and yes, it can. the Xbox is around the 2080, which can run Metro with RT quite well (note this is with DLSS on, but MS has their own variant with DirectML)



edit, here's a better video

 

[Premium]

It is here that I expect to be able to see the biggest difference between the consoles. I imagine xbox beefier gpu is going to be significantly better equipped for this.

Click to shrink...

Can Sony not just pre-load the lighting into the SSD and just render it automatically without the use of a GPU?

 

[Kerotan]

Personally I don't think it will be fully realised on consoles until the inevitable pro models. So we'll get it but it won't be until we're on the ps5 Pro that devs can push it hard. And even at that they might not because they'll build the games primarily for the base consoles.

So Realistically full console RT with 4k/60fps is probably 8 years away on the ps6.

 

[empyrean2k]

Am I right in thinking we may end up seeing lighting done via raytracing but general rending done via rasterization? its unlikely next generation consoles will be able to do everything via raytracing at a decent level?

 

[Muppet of a Man]

It's done on the CUs and scales with clock speed in the same way that compute power does, so it should be the same 17% difference or so.

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This right here. Not sure why people think there is any difference between how RT will scale with frequency increases versus the rest of the CU's operations.

 

[WellbornWarrior]

I don't think we will see the full potential of raytracing for a long time since the old consoles and older PCs still have to get crossgen games for a while.

 

[elenarie]

Yes, here I see an important difference. But isn't this the NVIDIA RTX technology? Isn't it different from what we'll get on the nextgen consoles?
And... this is a static image. In a dynamic and moving videogame where FPS are crucial, can this level of quality be reached?

Click to shrink...

While not exactly a correct definition, think of nVidia's RTX technology as a "hardware-accelerated DirectX Raytracing using nVidia's GPU architectures". Not a correct thing, but sort of a simple way to understand what RTX sort of refers to.

Someone else can probably explain this better, can't think of the words now. :p

 

[Monster Zero]

Yes, here I see an important difference. But isn't this the NVIDIA RTX technology? Isn't it different from what we'll get on the nextgen consoles?
And... this is a static image. In a dynamic and moving videogame where FPS are crucial, can this level of quality be reached?

Click to shrink...

No its not Nvidia tech. Its raytraced lighting that's it. This is the difference from faking lighting and a game having raytraced lights that behave just like light does in real life. Raytracing brings realism to games. You will hear people try to tell you "Aww they can fake it to look just like that". Yeah and how much time do they think developers have to do that for every damn area and scene in the game. With raytracing "it just works".

 

[Prine]

Wasn't the Minecraft demo running on XSX in DF video?

 

[konoka]

It's fascinating how you can take something as unrealistic and purposefully pixel-like as Minecraft and can change it into such an insane looker by introducing ray tracing and some other effects.

I certainly think both looks have their merit and both are timeless, but as a pure tech demo, I'm pretty floored by what they achieved here. I can't imagine what a developer like Square Enix, for example, will be able to do with it when they make a big budget FF game.

How hard is it to work with Raytracing? Do you think the techniques are going to be optimized to be more efficient and less hardware taxing as the implementation matures?

Click to shrink...

Big budget games are already using precalculated Raytracing.
Minecraft demo is fantastic because base Minecraft doesn't use any sort of RT.

 

[orava]

RT as a graphical feature is very impressive. What i'm worried about is console rt performance.

 

[eso76]

This looks way better, but the technology that we are seeing in this video won't be shipped with the nextgen consoles, right? I'm a bit confused on this topic.

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Uh ? fully path traced Minecraft was just demoed running on Series X a few days ago ?

 

[Frank]

Devs have become really good at faking lighting.

 

[Brinbe]

very excited to see what they do with it on the xsx. seeing it up and running on minecraft was pretty amazing.

 

[gundamkyoukai]

The best answer that I can give you on this is that we will have to wait for the consoles to be released to do performance testing. :)
It will highly depend on what parts of a game are being done using raytracing, if it is only shadows or only lighting or only ambient occlusion or only whatever, or everything, or nothing. Very hard to tell until we have playable experiences released publicly.

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What i think going to be interesting is seeing all the tricks and different way devs going to come up for RT and certain aspect of it.
We still in the early stages so it sort like wild wild west in a way .

 

[luoapp]

Do we know for sure if next gen consoles will have "dedicated" RTX silicon?

 

[SublimeAnarky]

The best answer that I can give you on this is that we will have to wait for the consoles to be released to do performance testing. :)
It will highly depend on what parts of a game are being done using raytracing, if it is only shadows or only lighting or only ambient occlusion or only whatever, or everything, or nothing. Very hard to tell until we have playable experiences released publicly.

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Thank you. Let's wait and see how it pans out, but that looked gorgeous.

 

[pksu]

and yes, it can. the Xbox is around the 2080, which can run Metro with RT quite well (note this is with DLSS on, but MS has their own variant with DirectML)

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Around 2080 based on some metrics, the RT HW itself is probably drastically different though

 

[Deleted member 8752]

The best answer that I can give you on this is that we will have to wait for the consoles to be released to do performance testing. :)
It will highly depend on what parts of a game are being done using raytracing, if it is only shadows or only lighting or only ambient occlusion or only whatever, or everything, or nothing. Very hard to tell until we have playable experiences released publicly.

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Makes sense. Honestly, the current gen lighting we are seeing on consoles right now is so fantastic that any boost to those capabilities are still looking to look other-worldly. Even if you can't do 100% full raytraced scenes with perfect physics accuracy, the vast majority of players are not going to care and are still going to be left impressed.

 

[Anarion07]

for a developer, shit's gonna make things way easier. instead of placing multiple lights in a scene, many in impossible places, they can just place fewer lights and have greater effect. I'm not worried about performance, since it's not like they'll try to get everything (4K/60fps/RT) all at once

also, Gears 5 isn't using RT

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Oh some people think they will. I had someone bookmark my comment "for later ;)" in a next gen thread because i said full feature ray tracing at 4k 60 fps or even 120 fps won't happen. that's what he claimed xbsx will do

 

[Deleted member 4783]

Wasn't the Minecraft demo running on XSX in DF video?

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Yes, a path traced one at that.

 

[Orayn]

I imagine there will be vastly more ray traced games/modes running at 30 FPS than 60 or higher.

 

[kostacurtas]

To be honest I am not expecting too much from the ray tracing performance of RDNA 2 GPUs. I mean at least in comparison to what Nvidia RTX GPUs can achieve now or even better later in the year (Ampere).

Its the first step from AMD and it is really, really nice that next gen consoles will have it. Shadows, reflections or ambient occlusion, anything that will achieve on next gen consoles will be great.

Having said that AMD's ray tracing tech demo is really bad.

This is how you demo the technology:




That was two years ago and anyone can run it as a benchmark on PC with a good RTX card.

 

[Bluforce]

Devs have become really good at faking lighting.

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That's for sure:

 

[dreamcaster2077]

On the DF video on Gears 5 they talk about how they aren't using ray tracing because the art style wasn't designed with RT in mind. So what you're seeing is mostly more realistic shadows, not RT.

 

[ILikeFeet]

Around 2080 based on some metrics, the RT HW itself is probably drastically different though

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well, at least devs are putting different levels of RT in games. but I'll be immensely disappointed if AMD can't match a gpu from 2 years ago, and they were given DXR specs 5 years ago

 

[degauss]

I hope not to get any Xbox fan angry (I think the results will be similar/nearly the same on PS5) but what I see here... isn't impressing me.

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These things aren't usually hugely noticeable, and even when they are quite noticeable, the aren't always always positively received overall. But ultimately it's just another one of those things that add up to make games simply look better.