@ Devs - Please enable hardware Lumen

[Migz - DH]

Thank you for letting us use Lumen as an option. It provides another way to view the beautiful sandbox world you've created. The version currently enabled is only software Lumen though and does not utilize RT-hardware that modern GPUs come with. That has to be enabled by the game's developers and can't be added via an .ini file.

UE5 lets developers enable hardware ray tracing via Project Settings under Rendering*. Go down to Lumen and check the "Use Hardware Ray Tracing when available" box. Then, under Hardware Ray Tracing, check the "Support Hardware Ray Tracing" box.

You have already told us that Lumen is largely unsupported, and that's fine. Just put a warning that hardware Lumen will be more demanding than software Lumen while looking better in some ways and perhaps not as good as in others. Then, let us decide to activate it or not.

Thanks, and happy game building!

Definitions by Epic:

Lumen

Use Hardware Ray Tracing when available Uses Hardware Ray Tracing for Lumen features when supported by the video card, RHI, and operating system. Lumen will fall back to Software Ray Tracing otherwise. Hardware Ray Tracing has significant scene update costs for scenes with more than 100,000 instances. See Ray Tracing Performance Guide for information.

Hardware Ray Tracing

Support Hardware Ray Tracing Enables ray tracing from supported operating systems, RHI, and video cards for higher quality results.

* https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en-US/lumen-global-illumination-and-reflections-in-unreal-engine/

[Lord Enclave]

Huh, i guess that's why lumen looks horrible. It's software-mode. It's grainy and shimmering all the time, not to mention high setting eats 40 FPS.

[X33STORM]

Software doesn't make sense, why..

Something to build on before implementing it properly? Kinda worrying tho.

[Migz - DH]

Originally posted by X33STORM:

Software doesn't make sense, why..

Something to build on before implementing it properly? Kinda worrying tho.

Maybe they didn't know that they had to hit two extra options in the UE5 editor?

[Vault Traveler]

Would be cool. But usually hardware integration has more bugs and they do not offiicaly support lumen so its a easy way out for them.

Originally posted by X33STORM:

Kinda worrying tho.

Its not worrying, its just a basic feature they added because its a basic feature, the hardware integration is always extra work. (work in make it work without crashing on different hardware because software is unified)

[Elijah1]

Is this the reason why my plants are completely dark with lumen on?
I used lumen back when it first came out on experimental and it worked fine aside from performance

[Doc✪Hollywood]

Could the softwar lumen be a reason why shadows are now harder/darker and without fog even very hard/dark - resp. would that change with hardware Ray Tracing lumen?

[Zak]

Originally posted by Gordon✪Gekko:

Could the softwar lumen be a reason why shadows are now harder/darker and without fog even very hard/dark - resp. would that change with RT lumen?

Hard to tell, it could be just this particular implementation. The devs said Lumen is not even officially supported so I wonder if they even have any plans on improving it by adding proper hardware support. It would be a shame if they don't.

[X33STORM]

Originally posted by Vault Traveler:

Would be cool. But usually hardware integration has more bugs and they do not offiicaly support lumen so its a easy way out for them.

Originally posted by X33STORM:

Kinda worrying tho.

Its not worrying, its just a basic feature they added because its a basic feature, the hardware integration is always extra work. (work in make it work without crashing on different hardware because software is unified)

Software rendering is not viable in any sense. That's why we have the hardware.

[Vault Traveler]

Originally posted by X33STORM:

Originally posted by Vault Traveler:

Would be cool. But usually hardware integration has more bugs and they do not offiicaly support lumen so its a easy way out for them.



Its not worrying, its just a basic feature they added because its a basic feature, the hardware integration is always extra work. (work in make it work without crashing on different hardware because software is unified)

Software rendering is not viable in any sense. That's why we have the hardware.

Its not official supported, stop with that argument.

[Doc✪Hollywood]

Originally posted by Zak:

Hard to tell, it could be just this particular implementation. The devs said Lumen is not even officially supported so I wonder if they even have any plans on improving it by adding proper hardware support. It would be a shame if they don't.

My feelings tells me they want to do it (since it's abvious not yet perfect) but it is something sophisticated that needs time and a lot of trying. Especially when I see which huge impact fog has on the illumination I get conviced they added this "too much" fog because elsewise shadows are too dark. And then when you look at the many commands for fog (and lighting and shadows) it gets clear, how complex and non trivial this is.

When I compare the explanatory video of UE 5.2 and UE 5.3 then the soft / diffuse lighting got again improved with 5.3.

As Satisfactory is at the moment I believe that the normal world is not reflecting the light (or just a litte bit) and that it is mostly the fog.

I would really wonder how things are when all the environment in Satisfactory is made of nanites. I can well imagine that this could improve a lot the lighting situation.

[Migz - DH]

CSS doesn't have to officially support just to flip the switches. :-)

[Doc✪Hollywood]

Originally posted by Migz - DH:

CSS doesn't have to officially support just to flip the switches. :-)

I am sure they will do.

I am really curious how it looks.