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Minecraft RTX Deep Dive - Digital Foundry
- Thread starter Dennis8K
- Start date
It really is a Wow moment, when you see the transformation. Their first video with the pinhole camera effect was just magnificent as well.
Your work is fantastic. The in depth detail and the knowledge behind the concepts makes it a joy to watch.
I love Paula from Nvidia talking about how Minecraft is great to work on because they can build and test stuff within the game without needing artists and stuff to actually create things. I guess it's something I hadn't considered before. The advantages of something like Minecraft as a good thing for testing all of this out. You (or, indeed, Nvidia) have the ability to really easily try anything in any scenario just by building it with the simple in-game tools. You don't need to go to certain parts of certain levels or have an engineer or an artist create you something.
Interesting!
Interesting!
definitely runs better than any shader implementation i've seen on MC
Wow, the denoising stuff (18:39) was interetsing. I had no idea it was actually more costly than the Ray Tracing itself. Nvidia makes pretty explanatory videos for this stuff, I guess I just haven't seen em all.
Slightly off-topic, thanks a bunch DigitalFoundry for the great videos! I really liked Alex's new showcase house, and I'm sure we'll see even more as Minecraft RTX progresses.
I agree that a lot of it is simply beautiful. It looks natural, and it's a new level of experimentation with light that hasn't been this real-time before in almost any way. I'm excited to finally get an RTX card so tha I can mess around and make my own stuff.
Slightly off-topic, thanks a bunch DigitalFoundry for the great videos! I really liked Alex's new showcase house, and I'm sure we'll see even more as Minecraft RTX progresses.
I agree that a lot of it is simply beautiful. It looks natural, and it's a new level of experimentation with light that hasn't been this real-time before in almost any way. I'm excited to finally get an RTX card so tha I can mess around and make my own stuff.
For full ray tracing solutions yes, but a hybrid implementation is still feasible (say the way Control does it) for more graphically intense games.
It will become more and more common on each passing day, and one of the next gen consoles has demonstrated capability to run ray-traced Minecraft.
Df thanks for insights I could never normally have.
Dennis I appreciate the acknowledgement to gpu acceleration so many these days have no idea what it was like before nvidia came around.
great video and it takes off from the first question glad you had engineers explaining that path tracing difference or nuance.
Dennis I appreciate the acknowledgement to gpu acceleration so many these days have no idea what it was like before nvidia came around.
great video and it takes off from the first question glad you had engineers explaining that path tracing difference or nuance.
Hybrid solution I see dominating for at least the next decade. I won't say we won't see full ray just the cost for doing it at times may not be worth it for some devs and games in some genres.
I spent a few hours with it tonight (on a 2070 Super; 1440p was the highest I could go and maintain 60fps).
So much fun! Really great way to get back into minecraft. Figuring out how to find and install one of the RTX resource packs was way too obscure, but overall it was a really cool experience.
So much fun! Really great way to get back into minecraft. Figuring out how to find and install one of the RTX resource packs was way too obscure, but overall it was a really cool experience.
You were asking the right questions too! I personally was hoping you were asking about DXR 1.1 and AI-Denoising and you delivered! You are doing such a good job at the coverage and especially with RT related stuff, I can't stress it enough!
But of course the whole DF team does an incredible job, I'm always excited when a new DF video pops up in my notifications.
Just wanted to tell you this. ^^
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AA was mega niche and had far worse performance draining on tech of time. RT at best knocked us back down 1080p on best tech but we kept frames and effects. AA limited tech to 768p or even 480p on 4:3 screens and we couldn't max shit out the fps performance was way worse.
One thing I've wondered about - not sure if talked about in this video - I haven't seen any RT bouncing specular highlights from one bounce into the lighting data for a primary bounce.
ie I have two shiny non-mirrored surfaces, the lighting on the surface I'm directly viewing doesn't account for the speciality of surfaces that are lighting the surface I'm viewing.
is this just a practical processing choice - ie, diffuse data only is read for secondary+ bounces?
tldr: why don't I see the shiny highlights of surfaces reflected in the shiny surfaces I'm directly viewing?
ie I have two shiny non-mirrored surfaces, the lighting on the surface I'm directly viewing doesn't account for the speciality of surfaces that are lighting the surface I'm viewing.
is this just a practical processing choice - ie, diffuse data only is read for secondary+ bounces?
tldr: why don't I see the shiny highlights of surfaces reflected in the shiny surfaces I'm directly viewing?
After watching I just want to see a path-traced light-based horror game and a spiritual successor to splinter cell chaos theory.
Was also wondering this. and also how much of a performance cost each light bounce is when multiplying from a single bounce.
it's something I've seen noticed in other games with RT reflections, particularly, Deliver Us the Moon. rougher surfaces incur more of a penalty when using RT reflections than mirror and mirror-like surfaces, so the performance cost is probably too high
Seems like the SEUS PTGI looks more realistic, except in really low light situations.
There is going to be no scenario where Seus is more realistic, it does not path trace nearly as much.
In spite of that, i think it is an excellent mod that I have spent dozens of hours in.
That said, I think it would be great if the consoles reach current Turing-levels regarding RT performance, but it wouldnt surprise me if its a lot less than that.
When looking @2:31 in the video I quoted the RTX version looks washed out compared to the Seus version.
I think this will highlight the biggest hurdle for ray tracing: people assuming something is more realistic when they just prefer one method for aesthetic reasons
MC RTX has volumetric lighting (fog/air condensation), so air itself is being lit by the sun. So if it is on the screen, it will blend over backgrounds, making them tinged sun coloured.
That is infact, more realistic than SEUS which does not have volumetrics.
Technically you could blow up the tone mapping in post processing for the RTX to destroy the image quality and indirectly destroy the realism. I think that might be the cause of some of the "realism" complaint.
That and the materials and the backend / data bedrock supplies to the renderer of course.
One is emulating how light might behave, while the other is calculating it. Realistic isn't the word you want to use.
I've been showing the Minecraft RTX demo to my friends that don't even know what Raytracing is and they are constantly in awe at how much the game changes. Raytracing is gonna do wonders next gen.
i think the outdoor midday shots look better (and more natural) in SEUS as the RTX version really overdoes it with the volumetric effects and saturation.
I always felt that the hard shadows in minecraft RTX were too sparse compared to what I thought they should look like. But someone pointed out that the sun in minecraft is really big and that's a big factor in why outdoor scenes have softer lighting or are "too lit" with a lack of shadows making them seem less accurate to life. When I learned that, it all made sense. It's not because RTX is inaccurate but rather because it adheres completely to how realistic lighting would look using minecraft assets as a base. I realize I might be completely wrong but it makes sense to me. Thoughts?
That is indeed how it works - pretty neat!
Massive penumbra on minecraft shadows since the Sun is so huge.
As an old fart, I can remember when one frame of that would take hours, possibly days, to render. Now it's doing it at 60 frames per second!
Great work as always, DF!
Great work as always, DF!
This happened with my friend who is practically anti-graphics and Quake 2 RTX. I was just playing it while chatting and he kept saying "damn that looks good". And this is a guy who plays text based MUDS and is staunchly anti-graphics whore.
Minecraft RT might be interesting showcase/metric for measuring their performance as it's available on every platform. Can it run
Can non rtx cards run this? Mind you Im not saying "run this well". Can I boot it and try it at low fps with a gtx1080?
Yeah, the RTX version is clearly more physically accurate but I still prefer the look of the PTGI mod.
The RTX volumetrics in particular are far too pronounced for a clear midday sky.
I'm also interested in seeing comparisons in other weather conditions, like rain and snow, thunderstorms, underwater scenes, mobs, the Nether and End, effects like explosions and fire, lights cast from held objects, etc.
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