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Entirely raytraced Quake 2 proof of concept

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I KILL PXLS

I KILL PXLS

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Oct 25, 2017
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Saw this on Rock Paper Shotgun and thought it was pretty crazy and didn't see a thread on it. You can check out the project page and download it yourself here (you'll need a supported card though of course). Shit looks kind of like one of those pre-rendered target videos that's obviously using effects that will be too much for the actual game.
Q2VKPT is the first playable game that is entirely raytraced and efficiently simulates fully dynamic lighting in real-time, with the same modern techniques as used in the movie industry (see Disney's practical guide to path tracing). The recent release of GPUs with raytracing capabilities has opened up entirely new possibilities for the future of game graphics, yet making good use of raytracing is non-trivial. While some games have started to explore improvements in shadow and reflection rendering, Q2VKPT is the first project to implement an efficient unified solution for all types of light transport: direct, scattered, and reflected light (see media). This kind of unification has led to a dramatic increase in both flexibility and productivity in the movie industry. The chance to have the same development in games promises a similar increase in visual fidelity and realism for game graphics in the coming years.
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This project is meant to serve as a proof-of-concept for computer graphics research and the game industry alike, and to give enthusiasts a glimpse into the potential future of game graphics. Besides the use of hardware-accelerated raytracing, Q2VKPT mainly gains its efficiency from an adaptive image filtering technique that intelligently tracks changes in the scene illumination to re-use as much information as possible from previous computations.
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VoltySquirrel

VoltySquirrel

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Oct 25, 2017
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So, there was a path traced version of Quake 2 many years ago, but without specific hardware designed for real-time raytracing/path tracing, it leaned entirely on raw processing power. Now that RTX cards are here, video with a quality such as that shown here is possible. It's really impressive stuff. I imagine this version is based in part on the work done with the original Q2PT.

Btw if anyone wants to try that older version it can be gotten here https://amietia.com/q2pt.html
 

Deleted member 2620

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Just ran through the first stage, this looks pretty wild at 1440p. There are some odds and ends that aren't implemented, but it's extremely impressive as it stands.
 
SMD

SMD

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Oct 28, 2017
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That's amazing, it's almost unrecognisable from when I played it at launch.
 
spool

spool

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Oct 27, 2017
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I'm not seeing the big difference. Maybe I'm just used to raytracing being used for very overdone shadows and reflections. Shadows are very subtle here.
 
b00_thegh0st

b00_thegh0st

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Nov 6, 2017
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I had no idea I wanted a new 600€ video card to play Quake 2. This looks way more cool than it should.
 
spool

spool

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Oct 27, 2017
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SMD said:
You really can't see a difference between them?

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I've played tons of Quake 2, I know what it looks like. I mean that I was expecting more from raytracing, but I rewatched the first video and I'm gonna have to walk back my comment a bit. I do see pronounced shadows in the start area especially, it just gets strangely uniformly lit and flat in others, and I'm not sure what's happening in the underground area.
 

LCGeek

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Oct 28, 2017
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spool said:
I'm not seeing the big difference. Maybe I'm just used to raytracing being used for very overdone shadows and reflections. Shadows are very subtle here.
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explosions are a lot more dynamic than any version I've played to date. The lighting in dark areas is a lot more accurate and nuanced. Just look at older videos and compare the first stage alone when you go in to the shortcut areas. Shame there isn't a side by side.

it's not big changes as much as making lighting working like it should which in darker situations or anything complex leads to better result.
 
SMD

SMD

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Oct 28, 2017
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spool said:
I've played tons of Quake 2, I know what it looks like. I mean that I was expecting more from raytracing, but I rewatched the first video I'm gonna have to walk back my comment a bit. I do see pronounced shadows in the start area especially, it just gets strangely uniformly lit and flat in others, and I'm not sure what's happening in the underground area.
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I'm assuming it had something to do with where the light sources are, I felt like the subtlety of the light across the surfaces and in the environment made the game look far more advanced. I'm assuming there aren't any other major upgrades.
 
Net_Wrecker

Net_Wrecker

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Oct 25, 2017
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It's incredible what detailed lighting does for visuals, even without modern ultra detailed texturing. I really can't wait until raytracing is commonplace "plug and play" tech. Baffling that people think visuals have plateaued.
 
Mbolibombo

Mbolibombo

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Oct 29, 2017
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I dont know what I am looking at, what is the raytracing effect? It looks a lot more shiny.. is that it or is it something else?

I'm not ignorant just not having any idea what raytracing actually does for a game :P
 
Tokyo_Funk

Tokyo_Funk

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That is great. The accuracy of the shadows and light reflections are amazing. So much better than baked shadows.
 
Vulcano's Assistant

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Oct 29, 2017
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The bounces appear a little low (I'm guessing by the very dark shadowy corners) , but that is probably a performance hog. Not that Ray tracing with very few bounces would not still look more realistic than the alternative in many cases.
 
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OP
I KILL PXLS

I KILL PXLS

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Oct 25, 2017
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Mbolibombo said:
I dont know what I am looking at, what is the raytracing effect? It looks a lot more shiny.. is that it or is it something else?

I'm not ignorant just not having any idea what raytracing actually does for a game :P
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Someone else can probably explain it better than me, but it's basically the lighting. All of the lighting in the scene is physically accurate and bouncing around the scene without having to fake it with tricks games normally have to resort to. This creates more accurate versions of everything from the reflections on the ground, to the way the pistol shots and explosions light up a room (and reflect on the floor), to the shadows accurately diffusing, and having lighting sources of different colors more accurately combining.
 

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I KILL PXLS said:
Someone else can probably explain it better than me, but it's basically the lighting. All of the lighting in the scene is physically accurate and bouncing around the scene without having to fake it with tricks games normally have to resort to. This creates more accurate versions of everything from the reflections on the ground, to the way the pistol shots and explosions light up a room (and reflect on the floor), to the shadows accurately diffusing, and having lighting sources of different colors more accurately combining.
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Yeah.

It's hard to express how much of a time sink it was for Quake 2's developers, in the 90s, to bake lightmaps to fake all of the environmental lighting in the game and to iterate on a map's lighting until it looked good. This proof of concept is rough. It doesn't calculate the map's lighting exactly like the old 90s tools. It doesn't have stuff a dedicated game would, like varying amounts of reflectiveness on surfaces or lighting that gets emitted from level geometry rather than Quake's point lights. But in spite of that roughness, and in spite of Quake 2's entire rendering pipeline being kinda throw out the window (I assume), we get these kinds of results. That rules.
 
Mbolibombo

Mbolibombo

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Oct 29, 2017
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I KILL PXLS said:
Someone else can probably explain it better than me, but it's basically the lighting. All of the lighting in the scene is physically accurate and bouncing around the scene without having to fake it with tricks games normally have to resort to. This creates more accurate versions of everything from the reflections on the ground, to the way the pistol shots and explosions light up a room (and reflect on the floor), to the shadows accurately diffusing, and having lighting sources of different colors more accurately combining.
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Thank you, so basically the raytrace engine takes care of shadows and lightnings without coders having to do it them selves?
 
jediyoshi

jediyoshi

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Oct 25, 2017
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Mbolibombo said:
I dont know what I am looking at, what is the raytracing effect? It looks a lot more shiny.. is that it or is it something else?

I'm not ignorant just not having any idea what raytracing actually does for a game :P
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Raytracing in this example purely affects lighting since the textures don't have any real surface properties to them.

Gamers Nexus did a good breakdown on the signifiance of ray tracing

 
Revolsin

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Need a proper side-by-side comparison to really see the subtler differences here. As it stands, I"m kind of guessing more than anything "Yeah I assume this looks better"
 
jediyoshi

jediyoshi

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Mbolibombo said:
Thank you, so basically the raytrace engine takes care of shadows and lightnings without coders having to do it them selves?
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All visuals are affected, that's why there was such a large focus on reflections in the RTX reveal.

Traditionally a lot of reflections are based on things like the image being drawn on your screen getting skewed in different kinds of ways. By being able to basically simulate light the way actual light hits your eye to create an image, they can do things like accurate reflections reflecting things outside your immediate view. In this Quake example, the game's surfaces obviously weren't authored with any of those kinds of properties in mind, so all we're getting is lighting/shadows.
 
pksu

pksu

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Oct 27, 2017
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Also good example how great decision it was to open source older id Software engines. Quite elegant and well known codebase with simple formats yet still having everything a real game needs to implement, great for POCs unlike some modern engines.
 
ASaiyan

ASaiyan

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Oct 25, 2017
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Raytracing is indeed incredible. Now we just need devs to start pushing the implementation.
 
ray_caster

ray_caster

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Nov 7, 2017
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Impressive technically, although I think Quake 2 does not really do this justice. Where ray tracing will really shine is with higher quality models, textures, and realistically modeled materials.

Moose the Mooche said:
This is me....
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Without getting too technical, ray tracing tries to emulate how light works in real life. The end result should be visuals that looks more realistic than what current techniques can achieve.
 
Laser Man

Laser Man

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Oct 26, 2017
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spool said:
I've played tons of Quake 2, I know what it looks like. I mean that I was expecting more from raytracing, but I rewatched the first video and I'm gonna have to walk back my comment a bit. I do see pronounced shadows in the start area especially, it just gets strangely uniformly lit and flat in others, and I'm not sure what's happening in the underground area.
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I'm not sure about the raytracing used here but maybe it is more correct to say that you expected more of the geometry of Quake than the lighting used here? (because light can look unnatural even irl when it lits up unnatural architecture)...just a thought tho!
 
Yas

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The shadows look quite good.
 
jett

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Somehow I was more impressed with the older demo that was all dithery.
 
Clessidor

Clessidor

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Oct 30, 2017
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Interesting video. Makes me wonder, if it's possible to do some kind of Low-Poly game which is completely designed around raytracing with current RTX cards. And how it would look like, because like somebody already said in this thread. Shadows and lightning looks good, while the art style seems to suffeer a little bit under it.
 
Laser Man

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BeImonkey said:
How much access to code or whatnot would you need to be able to go back to an old game and mod raytracing in?
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It's probably not just that but also the artistic look of the game that you'd have to preserve, depending on the game that would be easier said than done because of the tricks that were used in old games to make the games look the way they did. You'd have to become a lighting artist ... without having an editor = nightmare! (I'd still be interested in some basic results myself, they probably wont differ much from game assets in a 3d editor and turning on raytracing tho)
 
GMM

GMM

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bangai-o said:
Does efficiency mean smaller file size?
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If all light calculations was done through ray-tracing it would remove the need to have gigabytes of prebaked lighting information included, but in practice this is not feasible for a long time since you at that point need to rely on everyone having hardware capable of doing these operations.

It's also a bad idea to remove the prebaked data since combining real-time ray-tracing and prebaked data can make the game run a lot faster while maintaining nearly all visible benefits of ray-tracing, Battlefield V is a really good example of this.

What Battlefield V does as far as I know is to evaluate every frame and determine what surfaces needs a ray tracing calculation based off its reflectivity values, if the object is very matte it would be more efficient to fall back to the prebaked data with minimal loss in visual fidelity.
 
lvl 99 Pixel

lvl 99 Pixel

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Oct 25, 2017
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Just tried it. Its definitely impressive to see the explosions lighting up the shadows with grenades in a game from 97
 
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