Ray Reconstruction is poorer quality, not better!

[Galbi3000]

The Ray Reconstruction technology is supposed to make the visuals look better, more realistic. However I have found it does the opposite, textures are more blurred, at least with this build of CP2077.

Here is a screenshot of a scene with Path Tracing enabled but Ray Reconstruction turned off:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3039166726

And here is the same scene with Ray Reconstruction turned on:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3039166911

Notice how you can see the floor texture further with it off. The colours are better with it on but that's about it.

Also, I only gain about 2-5 FPS turning it on. That scene renders at 63-65 FPS with it off and 65-68 with it on. All other settings remained the same between both screenshots.

I'm using an RTX 4070 in case you are wondering.

A shame this is not meeting the hype. Let's hope it can get better.

[Nez'lakor]

The first link is not available

[Galbi3000]

Originally posted by Nez'lakor:

The first link is not available

Try now. I've been having connection issues I think, it did not take the change to unlisted from private like the other one did lol

[spice_]

yeah I also noticed, with all new settings turned on game becomes Borderlands or something with some kind of grain tint with poor visibility.

[SarmatII]

It removes fine details since it thinks its noise.

Lots of these little bugs, like smears or dirt on glass that isn't supposed to be reflective, gets removed and becomes reflective. Or dirt or water on on any reflective surface, even leather chairs.

It's nice when it works, but its quite buggy atm.

[Seizure Storm]

I thought ray reconstruction was supposed to be faster so less accurate than the full path trace

[Galbi3000]

Originally posted by Seizure Storm:

I thought ray reconstruction was supposed to be faster so less accurate than the full path trace

No, it's meant to improve the visuals to prevent blurring from denoising the ray tracing. They never said it was to increase performance.

[egg fu]

i haven't seen bad reflections like those but i am noticing the denoising filter, something about it isn't right at times, almost like its oversharpened or something.

the performance boost is quite nice though, 1.63 i used to get 90 fps avg w/ FG, dlss auto, overdrive on 1440p. 2.0 i get 99 fps avg with the only difference being that RR is enabled. 10% fps increase.

[Roti]

The ghosting is absolutely terrible with ray reconstructing on. It was the first thing I noticed immediately when I turned the setting on.

[maul]

Ray reconstruction looks like dogwater, and creates a smudgy oily ♥♥♥♥ image. Why is Nvidia (and Digital Foundry by proxy) pushing this dreck so hard? The game literally forces it back on if you restart.

[mutantspicy]

I agree and disagree simultaneously. And if you are honest in your critique, you should be able understand this point. It really depends on the scene. Ray Reconstruction + DLSS, looks great when it looks great and the game looks like a visual masterclass. But then other times there is so much ghosting and artifacts, the world starts to lose its sharpness and become over saturated looking cartoony. The only remedy I find is playing the game at 4k with no AA or upscaling of anykind. 4k native, no dlss, no dlaa, The game looks way more raw and realistic this way. However, it loses the brightness and liveliness especially at night that you get from ray reconstruction. And so yueah I spoil myself and have a fairly high end PC with a 4090 so I play at 4k with PT on with Framegen almost exclusively. Sometimes though, I find that turning DLSS off completely gets rid of all of the ghosting and artifacts its just the worlds looks a little less vibrant that way. Its a matter of taste and in some case certain scenes and areas are more strongly affected. Cut Scenes are where I have noticed the most folly with ray recon.

[maul]

Originally posted by mutantspicy:

I agree and disagree simultaneously. And if you are honest in your critique, you should be able understand this point. It really depends on the scene. Ray Reconstruction + DLSS, looks great when it looks great and the game looks like a visual masterclass. But then other times there is so much ghosting and artifacts, the world starts to lose its sharpness and become over saturated looking cartoony. The only remedy I find is playing the game at 4k with no AA or upscaling of anykind. 4k native, no dlss, no dlaa, The game looks way more raw and realistic this way. However, it loses the brightness and liveliness especially at night that you get from ray reconstruction. And so yueah I spoil myself and have a fairly high end PC with a 4090 so I play at 4k with PT on with Framegen almost exclusively. Sometimes though, I find that turning DLSS off completely gets rid of all of the ghosting and artifacts its just the worlds looks a little less vibrant that way. Its a matter of taste and in some case certain scenes and areas are more strongly affected. Cut Scenes are where I have noticed the most folly with ray recon.

It's not just ghosting/artifacts, it's that it seems to smear things together in order to get rid of the issues of the regular denoiser, and adds a bizarrely oversharpened yet smudgy oil painting look. Most of these issues are not remedied with running native 4k, and running native 4k is not exactly practical with path tracing if you want decent fps regardless.

Yes, it removes visible light bounces and improves the lighting update speed, but what's the point when it ends up looking like this (right is RR): https://i.imgur.com/zSvOHUm.png

It actually makes the lighting worse when it comes to faces in particular, and sorry about this low quality example, but here in Alan Wake 2 you can see it removes shadow detail/specular highlights similar to the above Cyberpunk example: https://i.imgur.com/NObqwjo.png

In other instances it removes important detail of the environment, like in OP's example and this example with Alan Wake 2's water: https://i.imgur.com/Hcd3bOU.png

Turns streams into smudgy fog. And it's not just that the stream is moving, it removes detail of static water bodies as well, though I don't have an example to post right now.

RR has its advantages, but I have done so many comparisons with RR looking worse. The fact that Digital Foundry in particular is acting like this is the next holy grail (they're basically a marketing arm of Nvidia at this point), and effectively sweeping these issues under the rug, is very annoying.

People should know the downsides of this. I'm hoping for future updates and improvements, but we're not going to get that if we ignore the problems.

[mutantspicy]

For the record when I say 4k native, I mean 4k native, no upscaling aka no dlss, no RR. Tjat said, your examples are great. And illiterate my point even more. Even within those picture there is divisiveness. Its not so clear one image is better than the other, it appears more and more like RR is a 20/20 paint job meaning it looks great from 20 ft at 20 mph, but when you examine it up close its wonky and wrong. At a distance and quick glance it appears brighter and more vibrant, but when you examine it further it does weird things with shadowing. IMO, I turn off RR lately because face LOD's are terrible with it on. The background and lighting is brighter and more vibrant but the faces at mid distance are too blurry for me.

[mutantspicy]

One thing I've noticed lately though, If I run with DLSS on and RR off, whenever I turn the game on it defaults to RR on, and the games looks really desaturated and awful, just opening the graphics setting will fix the issue, But some reason RR keeps defaulting to on.

[NetshadeX]

I've actually resorted back to playing native res-non RT. Like others have said, there are instances where the combination of Path Tracing/DLSS/RR/FG/HDR looks amazing. Most often in dimly lit areas.

However most of the time you get too much noise, whether it's ghosting or over saturation, or just an overall grainy look. It reminds me of laying a filter on top of a filter on top of a filter in a photoshop app on your phone.

For that reason I'm now playing the game at 4K native/ high settings with the fps locked at 60 through afterburner, SSR and volumetric fog set to medium. volumetric clouds set to off. DLAA as my AA solution and even HDR disabled. (HDR is another thing that doesn't agree well with this game imo).

It provides the cleanest, most stable, image in all situations.

I'm saving the RT features for future generations of GPUs that will be able to handle them at 4K native

[lynchie72]

Originally posted by Roti:

The ghosting is absolutely terrible with ray reconstructing on. It was the first thing I noticed immediately when I turned the setting on.

Agreed.