Metro Exodus: GeForce RTX Real-Time Ray Traced Global Illumination Demo

cageymaru

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Here is an demo of real-time ray traced global illumination within the Metro Exodus game environment. Anyone else get a Far Cry Primal vibe from the video?

4A Games are bringing real-time Ray Tracing to Metro Exodus! At NVIDIA's Gaming Celebration event in Cologne, it was revealed how 4A Games would use NVIDIA RTX to deliver true Global Illumination -- in this extended tech demo, Ben Archard from 4A Games explains how it all works.
 
Honestly I think a lot of these scenes look better with RTX off. I'm not sure I could justify the cost of these cards by this demo I just watched, especially if there is a large performance hit. Like others have said, I think it would be best to wait until they can refine it more in the next generation.
 
Ok I seriously thought the majority of the better images were from RTX Off, but quite honestly it's not very effective to see the differences just watching a video like this. Hands on would be much easier to tell.

That said, I do think it highlights that I'm not a target market for this, I didn't mind either rendering all that much.

EDIT:

Guess I'm not the only one.
 
We need a Stalker game using that engine.

... just don't make it like modern open world games where you have all these activities to do. The original STALKER was pretty organic in how it took you around the world. No sign posts to pick up dozens of side quests, repeating activities or fetch quests. Just give us a story mission that takes us to an area crafted for that particular mission, and have side quests be found by deciding to venture into that creepy looking abandoned structure.
 
yeah... not feeling it. Only reason I'd buy the 2080Ti is to play with the tensor cores.

Wonder if the Titan V will drop in price any time soon?
 
I also prefer the images with RTX off :shy:. Although I believe in the future implementing ray tracing could save a lot of development time for the devs instead of having to come up with fancy fake GI and AO solutions.
 
Their GI is not GI.


From what I recall playing in 3d rendering 20 years ago, GI took 1000x the compute than simple raytracing.
 
More questions than answers with that video, but it's inevitably the way the tech is going to go. Just give it another 3 or 4 generations so that it's practical at more than 1080, and without moving in slow motion.
 
what the hell is going on with the light switch effect? How could they think that is a good thing to leave in?
 
I think people that bought these high refresh & resolution monitors are going to be pissed once they get their RTX cards & realize that their not getting the refresh rates & FPS they want because Ray Tracing is hindering their performance.


Also, RTX on doesn't look more "realistic" at all, there is waaaay to much bloom.
 
It seems increasingly apparent that, after several decades of learning how to convincing fake shadows and reflections in 3D rendering, it may be some time before doing them for real is worth the performance investment. I get that ray-tracing is the holy grail of real-time 3D rendering, but if you if faking it gets you 80% of the quality for 20% of the performance cost...

Or maybe we just need a killer app that makes them an integral part of game-play (of course, the problem there is that the game would require an RTX card).
 
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I bet you could achieve the same effect with a sweetfx or an ENB present at a fraction of the performance cost.
 
Can objects move about in the scene because I did not see any of that, just an abnormally fast moving sun which I assume will never be utilized in any realistic game...
 
Just remember, you don't have to turn RTX features on. As long as the options can be toggled, I don't mind having the option there.

I have a feeling RTX cards are still going to be very fast GPUs at traditional rendering, just overpriced. Note I have no data of my own yet, just guessing.
 
Their GI is not GI.


From what I recall playing in 3d rendering 20 years ago, GI took 1000x the compute than simple raytracing.

It's not pure Global Illumination like you'd find in an art render package. GI encompasses many many algorithms. Some of which are used in modern game engines along side the "faked" methods (pre-rendered lighting, etc.).

RTX just allows them to not-fake a few more things.
 
not real enough, it only uses 3 ray trace light source, based on the video. the developer got to choose which lightsource will be used.

in real life there is way more than just 3 light source at a time
 
Most people that played that at PAX (i think was PAX) were blown away. I mean it's just like when i see people telling me that HDR is useless. 99% of those people never saw an actual game in HDR in real life (albeit HDR cost about only 10% of performance on Nvidia). I think we are so minded about seeing games using fake technique that once dev get the hang of this and performance become better people won't want to play without it.

Just check Tesselation, was lanuch 10 years ago, yet games are just starting to use it in the last 2-3 years (for real now) because at first it was a slide show!
 
Their GI is not GI.
To be fair it's a nice step forward. I just think a better demonstration would be destructible environments, because a slow moving sunlight-based ambient light map could be calculated less often than every frame and nobody would notice in normal gameplay. Show us a dark room that you can shoot through a wall and let the light spill in from, or a white table you can flip around and see the light mirror off of it... that's the kinda stuff I wanna see anyways...
 
RTX off looked better to me. Looks like with RTX on they just turned off some shadow effects which just made the image brighter or more washed out. I’m not impressed with the RTX technology at all. Also appeared to cause the frame rate to dip.
 
Ray tracing is cool tech that is not ready for prime time.
Best to buy your GPU based on target resolution and fps needed.
(Buy a USED 10 series for best price/performance)
 
Just remember, you don't have to turn RTX features on. As long as the options can be toggled, I don't mind having the option there.

I have a feeling RTX cards are still going to be very fast GPUs at traditional rendering, just overpriced. Note I have no data of my own yet, just guessing.

I agree on all counts, however, the truth is Nvidia... or more specifically Jen-Hsun is arbitrarily price gouging this generations GPU in order to to please the stock holders but also increase the stock value of the company. The data is crystal clear, so you don't have to guess anymore the price is inflated. Here is something you should familiarize yourself with, there's a thing called stock buyback where CEO's such as Jen have their entire salary tied to the stock price of the company, so naturally the CEO has every intention to raise the price of their products so that come tax time next year that corporate tax break corporations just received (thanks to the House and Senate) the windfall profits the CEO will be is receiving is going back not into his employees coffers but into buying back his own stock which artificially raises the value of the stock. This is sick and greedy and is bad for everyone except the CEO and stock holders, and this is how inequality is created mi amigo. It is no different than hedge fund managers raising the price of their insulin drugs 353% (and even higher) so they can keep up their coke addiction and $10 million Manhattan mansion. And sadly, the kids and fanboys have no idea how greed and capitalism works, so they're willing to getting fucked in the ass by Nvidia's big green veiny dildo. What's worse, there's even individuals who don't care about their fellow citizen as much just so they can say, "I got mine so everyone else can fuck themselves". Hell don't take my word for it just read the comments who are going to respond eventually.

Just marinate on this thought for a moment, the default price is now $1200 for a flagship GPU, imagine what that is going to be in two years. Nvidia's behavior the last year with their NDA's, the Geforce program on the vendors, and now the price gouging, this is just the beginning. Every corporation is doing this in America, this is not just an isolated thing in the tech sector and unless the younger generation understands this reality, Nvidia will continue to monopolize and cannibalize the market till nobody has any money left to buy bread and milk.

But I digress, I can't wait for that ray tracing boys, it looks mad sick.
 
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So what I don't get is what is this game doing that GI isn't doing in Kingdom Come or most Ubisoft games the past few years?

I get that the GI here is ray traced vs. voxel but why can't non-RTX users still get less accurate but fast voxel GI so we don't just miss out on the effect completely?

I guess it's just one of those "dumb to not have it at all" sort of things. It looks so damn good in other non-ray traced games..
 
it is more accurate in terms of resolution (per pixel instead of per voxel however big that is) and also hopefully cuts down on development time and complexity... but honestly it's hard to know for sure without being a developer and I bet they aren't even sure the full benefits... well actually they basically admit as much in that second video ("potentially time saving")
 
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