Path tracing/ Ray reconstruction improvement

[Chris]

There was mention of the 2.1 update and new Nvidia drivers improving ghosting/smearing when using Ray reconstruction on, particularly on the car wheels moving side to side, vehicle tail lights etc.
I've since uninstalled the game after 100% Phantom Liberty.
Can anyone that had issues with it before confirm if it's improved now?

[Proxy]

Its better with DLSS on, but I was running with DLAA+FG at 1440p and it looked SO BAD. It was a grainy, smeary mess. Changing it back to DLSS looked quite good though. Still getting those weird "super bloom" events when you come out of the map and the whole world looks like someone just dropped a nuke and then it slowly comes down to normal lighting after a minute.

[catch22atplay]

zero there are fixes to the bloom and lighting. Just need to modify an ini file. Can disable bloom can also lower max light intensity.

I think it's improved but it still has issues. I've disabled it as i can't stand how it looked previously and can't stand it now.

[Chris]

Shame to hear 😔
Got a 4090 recently and this was the first game I tried using it.
Thought the full path tracing + RR mode would be amazing but it just resulted in a soft image with weird ghosting on character faces and hair.
Reverted to regular RT and it looked so much better.
Hoped they'd sorted this.

[Papertroll]

My FPS has absolutely tanked with the new update .

[astraldooley]

Ray reconstruction still isn't perfect and the washed out, oily faces are still very noticeable no matter what DLSS settings you have on. Ghosting has been reduced, but is still present.

It still needs some work imo.

[PeaceDuke]

2.1 runs game with awful “grain effect” when turning PT with or without DLSS on. The only playable mode is just RT for my 4070. Thanks CDPR for the last big update!

[Blur]

Running PT + GITS 2.8 mod and it looks perfect, highly recommend.
Only remaining problem is what has been mentioned above, that bloom or blackout when you close menu or map. It has been in game since forever.

[Obsessive Power]

Originally posted by Papertroll:

My FPS has absolutely tanked with the new update .

Did you turn DLSS back on? After the update I noticed part of my settings had been reset. No performance problems now.

[13xforever]

Originally posted by Zeropointfive:

Its better with DLSS on, but I was running with DLAA+FG at 1440p and it looked SO BAD.

ray reconstruction is only intended for upscaling with dlss, and not for native resolution; it's a bug with settings and it actually breaks the denoiser or crashes the game, depending on end configuration

[ΜΣ†ΛĿ]

To me it looks like it has improved a lot. I remember running path tracing back in 1.6 and it had so many issues, then RR came with 2.0 and it improved noise a lot but also introduced (face smear effect under certain lighting conditions) and a bunch of ghosting on moving objects such as newspapers blowing in the wind, or clutter you knock down, etc. Some of it was fixed by updating the nvngx_dlss files that were available at the time, further improvements to ghosting a few weeks ago by updating all (3) nvngx_dlss to use alan wake 2 files. With patch 2.1 we got brand new nvngx_dlss files tweaked for CP2077 and new nvidia drivers. As of patch 2.1 I don't have many complaints about PT+RR+DLSS. In fact I could see a big improvement right away after launching 2.1 and setting up the graphics to what they should be since the reset. Noise has been cleaned up, most noticeable to me was characters (oil painting smear) is gone in these certain lighting conditions. Most of the ghosting issues are gone or greatly reduced such as on newspapers blowing in the wind. It's hard to tell the difference between native 4K and 1080p (4K + DLSS performance) in fact the image you're getting with DLSS+PR is sharper than native resolution. There is still some minor ghosting on certain things but things have definitely improved since 2.0 RR debut.
Just like any game that uses DLSS image quality suffers once the render resolution drops, even going from 1440p dlss quality (960p) to 1080p shows a big image quality/sharpness improvement. and with PR/RR introduces noise in addition to slight blur.
I would not recommend running the game with anything less than 1080p internal render, to me this is the point where most of the DLSS image quality issues disappear.

Tip for 1440p users: use DSR 2.25x to get 4K resolution than set DLSS to performance to get 1080p internal render resolution (big image quality boost for smallish FPS hit)
Other than that make sure effects such as motion blur, film grain, chromatic abberation are turned off. and if preferred force disable bloom (this eliminates the white screen blinding effect) and further cleans up the image around light sources.

Below are some comparison shots between native 4K+PT vs 4K+DLSS performance PT+RR (1080p) you can tell by FPS which is which. also notice that with DLSS+RR GPU draw 100w less on average.

TLDR: huge improvements since PT/RR introduction.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3109530652
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3109531281
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3109531508
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3109531632
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3109532228
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3109532356
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3109533235
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3109533813
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3109533901
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3109533975

[Dephase]

Also, I noticed some weapon parts glitch/appear worse with RR on. Eg. Rasetsu has a small screen on the left side of the barrel. WIth RR on, it flashes repeatedly and it's annoying.

[Chris]

Originally posted by ΜΣ†ΛĿ:

To me it looks like it has improved a lot. I remember running path tracing back in 1.6 and it had so many issues, then RR came with 2.0 and it improved noise a lot but also introduced (face smear effect under certain lighting conditions) and a bunch of ghosting on moving objects such as newspapers blowing in the wind, or clutter you knock down, etc. Some of it was fixed by updating the nvngx_dlss files that were available at the time, further improvements to ghosting a few weeks ago by updating all (3) nvngx_dlss to use alan wake 2 files. With patch 2.1 we got brand new nvngx_dlss files tweaked for CP2077 and new nvidia drivers. As of patch 2.1 I don't have many complaints about PT+RR+DLSS. In fact I could see a big improvement right away after launching 2.1 and setting up the graphics to what they should be since the reset. Noise has been cleaned up, most noticeable to me was characters (oil painting smear) is gone in these certain lighting conditions. Most of the ghosting issues are gone or greatly reduced such as on newspapers blowing in the wind. It's hard to tell the difference between native 4K and 1080p (4K + DLSS performance) in fact the image you're getting with DLSS+PR is sharper than native resolution. There is still some minor ghosting on certain things but things have definitely improved since 2.0 RR debut.
Just like any game that uses DLSS image quality suffers once the render resolution drops, even going from 1440p dlss quality (960p) to 1080p shows a big image quality/sharpness improvement. and with PR/RR introduces noise in addition to slight blur.
I would not recommend running the game with anything less than 1080p internal render, to me this is the point where most of the DLSS image quality issues disappear.

Tip for 1440p users: use DSR 2.25x to get 4K resolution than set DLSS to performance to get 1080p internal render resolution (big image quality boost for smallish FPS hit)
Other than that make sure effects such as motion blur, film grain, chromatic abberation are turned off. and if preferred force disable bloom (this eliminates the white screen blinding effect) and further cleans up the image around light sources.

Below are some comparison shots between native 4K+PT vs 4K+DLSS performance PT+RR (1080p) you can tell by FPS which is which. also notice that with DLSS+RR GPU draw 100w less on average.

TLDR: huge improvements since PT/RR introduction.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3109530652
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3109531281
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3109531508
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3109531632
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3109532228
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3109532356
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3109533235
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3109533813
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3109533901
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3109533975

Thanks for the detailed response,
Much appreciated 👍🏻
I'll let the game dl in the background and give it a try for myself again soon.
Also I'm playing on an Alienware AW3423dwf at 3440x1440 so the tip to increase resolution is helpful too