Rasterize vs Path Tracing

[sintri]

Path tracing really should be the standard these days, albeit the performance hit is still pretty sizable. Some of these screens are probably almost a year old at this point, but here's a few selections

overall lighting, specially on decals and corpses
https://imgsli.com/Mjg2MDgy
https://imgsli.com/Mjg2MTUy
https://imgsli.com/Mjg2NDEw

car interiors
https://imgsli.com/Mjg2MTM3
https://imgsli.com/Mjg2MTQw
https://imgsli.com/Mjg2MTQx

neon lighting
https://imgsli.com/Mjg2MTM4
https://imgsli.com/Mjg2MTQ1/0/1
https://imgsli.com/Mjg2MTU3

character lighting
https://imgsli.com/Mjg2MTQy
https://imgsli.com/Mjg2MTQ5
https://imgsli.com/Mjg2MTU0

proper shadows
https://imgsli.com/Mjg2MTQz
https://imgsli.com/Mjg2MTQ3
https://imgsli.com/Mjg2MTUw

and lastly, not completely path tracing but just RT in general
https://imgsli.com/Mjg2MTUz
https://imgsli.com/Mjg2MTU1
https://imgsli.com/Mjg2MTU2

[2D神]

Until mid-range gpu can comfortably run PT then no it should not be the standard.

[GodfatherPlunger]

the standard ? how ? It can the the goal for the future, but for it to be the standard, it would actually have to be playable for most people with decent hardware, which it isn't. Its not even close

[Zero McDol]

Too much of a performance hit. At least ray tracing is do able in most applications. Essentially, ray / path tracing is only going to matter to those who have the hardware for it, in which most of the PCs on the market can't use it.

Until that problem gets fixed, ray / path tracing will be no more than a luxury feature.

[sintri]

Fair enough, it's really only playable high end with the help of DLSS atm. Guess I am also looking mainly at the fact that characters often never look right in the day while in the shade across numerous games. Also sure things generally look fine looking in raster by itself. Being able to compare side by side with path tracing sort of makes you appreciate how much is actually missing from the scene.

[Defective Dopamine Pez Dispenser]

Me and my 2070 wish, and cry. 😂

But it is undeniably gorgeous.

Here's a question: In motion, does it achieve the holy grail of getting rid of reflection occlusion edge artifacts that SSR always seems to come with?

[sintri]

Doesn't look like it, at the very least looks like both rt and rt + path tracing does minimize it but it's still technically there. You can switch modes in the drop down.
https://imgsli.com/Mjg2MzY3/0/2

One interesting thing is path tracing really does clean up the reflections. Little bit surprising how much of a difference between rt and with path tracing. Though that may also be dlss reconstruction since they both toggle at the same time.
https://imgsli.com/Mjg2MzY4

Also last round of mod updates is crashing my game, so need to track that down.

[Defective Dopamine Pez Dispenser]

Originally posted by sintri:

Doesn't look like it, at the very least looks like both rt and rt + path tracing does minimize it but it's still technically there. You can switch modes in the drop down.
https://imgsli.com/Mjg2MzY3/0/2

One interesting thing is path tracing really does clean up the reflections. Little bit surprising how much of a difference between rt and with path tracing. Though that may also be dlss reconstruction since they both toggle at the same time.
https://imgsli.com/Mjg2MzY4

Wow, it's very notably reduced though at least. It's there but much "thinner." And yeah, the reflections do look a lot less "hazy" and more finely resolved.

[Nar!]

Thank you for sharing this man. Love this method of comparison. Path tracing is such an amazing and still developing tech that I'm sure will be enjoyed in larger percentile in the future, as it becomes more refined and optimized (and stronger GPUs price drops).

I was actually looking to buy new hardware, including the 4090 early last month, but I was advised to hold on until Fall this year for the 5000 series GPUs. So I'm waiting patiently now with my 1080TI lol. Hope I can get my hands on a 5090. I really would love to experience this game at it's max without needing to use any scalers. But we'll see how their performance pans out.

[PanPan]

What you don't say is that it has blur and ghosting issue, without talking about the performance impact...
RT has missing shadows vs PT.
PT is very dark.
You want mods for RR and fix RT issues...

There is a setting to only enable PT in photo.
Some people prefer high resolution and stable 60 fps : i play in 1800p up 4k no RT (raster novalut mod) and it's still gorgeous (more detailed and less aliased because of high res).
Fyi DLSS perf of 4k is 1080p at source.

[sintri]

I would wait for the 5090, though pricing might be up in the air with the possible reintroduction of the Titan. It also probable the 5080 will be able to do path tracing fine. 4090 is playable with path tracing and dlss but it is under 60 fps at ~4k without frame gen.

Path tracing does still have some ghosting and edge blurring, nowhere near as bad as when it first came out however. Path tracing also requires a couple secs to "calibrate" and thus can sometimes result in sudden shifts in lighting on sepcific sections especially when the game loads LODs. Still overall I'd rather play with it on than off.

[Vepar]

It'll be standard when a low tier GPU can do it without even advertising it as a feature, and it becomes so easy to do that most developers don't even bother to give you an option to turn it off.

[SK-HYJINX]

Cyberpunk 2077 ULTRA PLUS PT MOD on Nexusmods use the FAST preset it's MUCH MUCH MUCH FASTER on ALL GPU's. Still looks great/better than the Vanilla PT the game has.
I went from 55fps to 75-80FPS using the Fast PT preset.

[sintri]

So finally got around to more thoroughly testing Ultra+. Important to notes:
-August 13 build seemed like settings actually worked, the build before that had severe issues with changing settings.
-Don't touch the debug menu, there's no way to reset it other than reinstalling the mod. Messing certain settings can mess up the whole thing.
-PTNext is a fps loss, a possible increase in PT accuracy and quality but does come with it's own bugs and issues including also loss of quality.
-PT21 is close enough to current vanilla, and does come with an FPS boost.

[herbstwerk]

While this has more merit then the "VR or no buy" BS, this will happen all by itself when the tech matures (remember, we're basically on the first gen of hardware that can barely manage it) and get's cheaper and/or widely accessible. Not everyone can or wants to buy a 4090.

Just like full 3D models replaced sprites in the FPS around 1996, following the release of Quake, and as dedicated 3D acceleration add-on cards got their feature set included in standalone GPUs, RT/PT will be nothing special in a couple of hardware generations.

[Toonen1988]

I agree, Path tracing is phenomenal but I don't agree that it should be a new standard. Simply because the fact that our hardware is not yet ready for this new technology. Our current hardware isn't strong enough but how come that Cyberpunk 2077 is playable with Path tracing? Well, softwarematic solutions, like DLSS, Frame Generation, Ray reconstruction.

None hardware is able to run games in native resolution with path tracing enabled without any softwarematic solutions. So yes, we can run games like Cyberpunk 2077 with path tracing, but only when we use upscaling AI and other software solutions which can decrease sharpness and can create "ghosting" effects between images.

There is also a new technology named ReSTIR (Spatiotemporal Reservoir Resampling) which can generate images way faster then older techniques like Talbot.

https://research.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/pubs/2020-07_Spatiotemporal-reservoir-resampling/ReSTIR.pdf

For being Path Tracing a standard, it would take a few more years. Without these softwarematic solutions, it wasn't even possible for the next few years.

For more information, check this video from Digital Foundry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vigxRma2EPA