AMD FSR 2.0 Quality & Performance

[zx128k]

That is jumping to another platform again, hilariously, now hardware RT is faster eh?

RT needs multiple steps and ray intersection is just one of them. Creating the object structure to check for intersections, changing it when scene is changing, doing all other steps (denoising is one of them) comes on top. (basically ALL of that, bar the actual intersection tests, is good old shader code)

It has inherent issues of being unstable in terms of how many rays you need to get palatable results.

And, hey, wait a sec, all that ONLY ON SOME GPUs that support hardware DXR. Which means doing RT that way today is GUARANTEED to be more effort. And, look at Cyberpunk, for what? Just for fun for devs to learn something new, I guess, in case "in the future" RT of that kind will become a thing.

In raster games to avoid very dark areas(no bounce lighting) the level designer has to create extra light sources. They have to work hard and take their time to get decent looking lighting. With Ray Tracing, once you place the light source the game engine does all that time consuming work for you, it models the light and creates the bounce lighting for you. Thus it takes less time for a level designer to create the lighting effects with ray tracing.

The down side of ray tracing is it takes more processing but you get a more realistic lighting model in the game engine. Raster is faster because its very simplistic and unnatural lighting system. Raster takes alot of work to make it look natural. Ray Tracing (which imcludes path tracing) are methods to model how real world light interacts with objects. Many of the features of path tracing for example are not possible in other methods of lighting.

Example at 1:25:17

Look at the graphics in the original Metro Exodus using raster lighting. Then compare to Metro Exodus Enhance Edition which uses a full Ray Tracing method for lighting. The difference is massive, image quality is massively improved.

 

[AusWolf]

This is awesome news - and an awesome article!

If AMD can optimise their raytracing performance with RDNA 3, I'll see no reason to stay with Nvidia during my next upgrade.

 

[medi01]

In raster games to avoid very dark areas(no bounce lighting) the level designer has to create extra light sources. They have to work hard and take their time to get decent looking lighting. With Ray Tracing, once you place the light source the game engine does all that time consuming work for you, it models the light and creates the bounce lighting for you. Thus it takes less time for a level designer to create the lighting effects with ray tracing.

No, thus it takes less time for a level designer to address that CHERRY PICKED ISSUE that you decided to single out.

The down side of ray tracing is it takes more processing but

There are many and they have already been mentioned.

"it takes less time to develop" - lies (as of today)
"it looks better" - lies (as of today)
"it tanks performance" - yeah, true, it does

Raster takes alot of work to make it look natural. Ray Tracing (which imcludes path tracing) are methods to model how real world light interacts with objects.

That touches on another lie, that path tracing is enough for photorealism. No it isn't.

Rendering equation - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

uses a full Ray Tracing method

Oh boy...

If AMD can optimise their raytracing performance with RDNA 3, I'll see no reason to stay with Nvidia during my next upgrade.

It is quite likely that AMD GPUs are already on par and faster, and it's just a war of "game was optimized for which GPU".

Note how AMD GPU in both major consoles means that anything crossplatform is stupid not to optimize for AMD.

 

[zx128k]

No, thus it takes less time for a level designer to address that CHERRY PICKED ISSUE that you decided to single out.


There are many and they have already been mentioned.

"it takes less time to develop" - lies (as of today)
"it looks better" - lies (as of today)
"it tanks performance" - yeah, true, it does


That touches on another lie, that path tracing is enough for photorealism. No it isn't.

Rendering equation - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

You dont have to capture every aspect of light reflection. Movies use path tracing for their effects and most of the time the human brain cant see the different. You wont. From your source.

Applications​

Solving the rendering equation for any given scene is the primary challenge in realistic rendering. One approach to solving the equation is based on finite element methods, leading to the radiosity algorithm. Another approach using Monte Carlo methods has led to many different algorithms including path tracing, photon mapping, and Metropolis light transport, among others.

Note that solving that equation, one of the methods is path tracing.

This is an example of a real time path traced scene and is near photo realistic objectively to the human brain. This is not the same quality that a offline render which would be much higher quality.

One of the issues given in that link is subsurface scattering, a technique was pioneered for this in the The Matrix Reloaded movie called Texture space diffusion. Also real time computer games could model this effect.

Separable Subsurface Scattering is a novel technique to add real-time subsurface light transport calculations for computer games and other real-time applications.

Anyway have fun which your own strawman argument.

 

[zx128k]

I remember Gamers Nexus talking about SSS years ago.

 

[kapone32]

In raster games to avoid very dark areas(no bounce lighting) the level designer has to create extra light sources. They have to work hard and take their time to get decent looking lighting. With Ray Tracing, once you place the light source the game engine does all that time consuming work for you, it models the light and creates the bounce lighting for you. Thus it takes less time for a level designer to create the lighting effects with ray tracing.

The down side of ray tracing is it takes more processing but you get a more realistic lighting model in the game engine. Raster is faster because its very simplistic and unnatural lighting system. Raster takes alot of work to make it look natural. Ray Tracing (which imcludes path tracing) are methods to model how real world light interacts with objects. Many of the features of path tracing for example are not possible in other methods of lighting.

Example at 1:25:17

Look at the graphics in the original Metro Exodus using raster lighting. Then compare to Metro Exodus Enhance Edition which uses a full Ray Tracing method for lighting. The difference is massive, image quality is massively improved.

And I gIve a shit in a Game where I can be killed in 2 seconds from any direction when I am actually playing. Those things only matter in Games like RTS or RPG where you can actually appreciate that kind of fidelity. Having said that the Division 2 looks pretty Good too but that Game has an AMD splash screen so I guess I am bias.

Butter smooth Gameplay is the key there have been innovations since the start of this race. Look at Games like Wizard of Wor or Tempest in the arcade (certainly not Graphically inspiring). Asteroids was not successful because it looked good but because it was hard and played butter smooth. BTW you still have not explained how Spiderman looks so good on the PS4.

Wait, Wait oh oh you will now tell me that I am going to be banned.

 

[zx128k]

My opinion about benchmarks not caring about AMD's lack of DXR performance remains, if a AAA game at maximum settings has DXR thats the only thing thats tested. Maximum settings and no creating sub sections between DXR and raster. My opinion about a large enough sample size and unbiased choice of games remains.

 

[tabascosauz]

This is the FSR 2.0 showcase. Stay on topic, or don't come back to this thread. Last warning.

 

[Oberon]

If it "works" but the impact is severe enough to leave you with (nearly) unplayable frame rate, then it doesn't work. I mean, those minimum recommendations weren't thrown out just for fun.

EDIT: Talking about 1080p, is there going to be a 1080p comparison?

NVIDIA will never give you the chance to find out, and if it doesn't work, who cares? It's not a supported configuration.

 

[RedBear]

NVIDIA will never give you the chance to find out, and if it doesn't work, who cares? It's not a supported configuration.

And who cares about finding out something that doesn't work? Nvidia did "unlock" raytracing on Pascal and GTX 16** Turing, does anyone care about it?

 

[Oberon]

And who cares about finding out something that doesn't work? Nvidia did "unlock" raytracing on Pascal and GTX 16** Turing, does anyone care about it?

It's about not artificially limiting the technologies consumers have access to, as NVIDIA has a history of doing. You may not care about it because it's slow, but that's not a reason to block people from trying it.

 

[Baba Yetu VI]

Sorry, I didn't read all the above comments coz it might take hours.
So if I have missed something, let me know.

I have seen some video on youtube showing the new effects which is indeed impressive.
Now my thoughts are related to something far greater.

Given the gap between the two technologies FSR 2 and DLSS 2 is brought much closer, what implications are there for the hardware - AMD RX series or nVidia RTX series?

At the moment, despite seemingly less games are supporting FSR, but given that the integration of the technologies into existing and future games are relatively easier, the community will certainly witness the emergence of FSR 2 eventually. And as it gains more momentum, AMD cards which are seen as behind considerably in ray tracing performance, will if not outperform nVidia cards, certainly match nVidia cards' performance in ray tracing. In which case, the entire landscape of the cake divided by nVidia and AMD will change? Or it's just AMD fans' unilateral wet dreams?

 

[akaloith]

can i try somewhere a fsr 2.0 demo on my gtx 1060?

 

[W1zzard]

can i try somewhere a fsr 2.0 demo on my gtx 1060?

Gotta buy Deathloop. I also think MS Flight Simulator has FSR 2.0 now

 

[akaloith]

so no free way, demo, app to test fsr 2.0 on my gtx 1060 ?

 

[chrcoluk]

Thought I would try out FSR in RPCS3 for eternal sonata.

Resolution scaling at 200% works very nicely for the 720p game on my 1440p screen, but when I tried FSR instead it appeared to do absolutely nothing which I guess is a RPCS3 bug at the moment, ironically guides I found said resolution scaling was broken for the game so to use FSR instead.

 

[Baba Yetu VI]

Cyberpunk 1.5 patch works great with FSR 1.0. I guess with FSR 2.0, the game will perform even better.

I'm beginning to find out that AMD ray tracing is not bad at all!

 

[Shatun_Bear]

If FSR 2.0 matches DLSS 2.2, which Nvidia have been polishing for a year with their unlimited budget on top, FSR 2.2 will likely be superior. Who would have thought that would be possible 6 months ago?

 

[arni-gx]

IMO......for now, i will still choose >>> RT ultra ALL + DLSS quality = best of the best..........

 

[medi01]

If FSR 2.0 matches DLSS 2.2, which Nvidia have been polishing for a year with their unlimited budget on top, FSR 2.2 will likely be superior. Who would have thought that would be possible 6 months ago?

It is on par per TPU review, image quality wise.

It is SUPERIOR as an offering, as a whole package, as you just do it once, and it just runs on cars manufactured by any vendor, including older cards.

G-Sync vs FreeSync story again.

 

[chrcoluk]

Ok so this works in Vulkan mode on RPCS3, and since resolution scaling is broken on FF13-2 on there, I been testing the game with FSR at 70% sharpness (any higher and get too much distortions).

I dont know if its implemented poorly on RPCS3 or not and if its 1.0 or 2.0, but here is my impression.

Is definitely better than modern AA such as TAA and FXAA, however I dont think its as good as MSAA. It also struggles a lot on thin lines and with fast moving objects. So overall impression is it is good for those who lack the grunt to render at higher res, and when is no MSAA/SSAA support. But if those options are available then they are better.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

AMD's mistake is that it answers these dirty initiatives by nvidia. Tessellation, and now RT... Do you remember when nvidia paid a game developer to REMOVE the DX 10.1 implementation (Assassin's Creed DX10.1) in which the Radeons were better?

Firstly, AMD lead with tessellation not followed, second AMD Do support RT on newer cards.

Thirdly dx12 ultimate, means any new GPU needs features like RT to support it, AMD do so at least catch up on reality.

 

[InVasMani]

Ok so this works in Vulkan mode on RPCS3, and since resolution scaling is broken on FF13-2 on there, I been testing the game with FSR at 70% sharpness (any higher and get too much distortions).

I dont know if its implemented poorly on RPCS3 or not and if its 1.0 or 2.0, but here is my impression.

Is definitely better than modern AA such as TAA and FXAA, however I dont think its as good as MSAA. It also struggles a lot on thin lines and with fast moving objects. So overall impression is it is good for those who lack the grunt to render at higher res, and when is no MSAA/SSAA support. But if those options are available then they are better.

It should work identical to DSR where 2.00x resolution looks best at 50% and 4.00x looks best at 25%. Still 34%/68% are reasonable alternatives if you don't mind some distortion trade off for more blur/sharpness obviously DSR blurs while FSR sharpens, but they work entirely inverted of each other upscale/downscale dilate and erode.

 

[chrcoluk]

It should work identical to DSR where 2.00x resolution looks best at 50% and 4.00x looks best at 25%. Still 34%/68% are reasonable alternatives if you don't mind some distortion trade off for more blur/sharpness obviously DSR blurs while FSR sharpens, but they work entirely inverted of each other upscale/downscale dilate and erode.

Well there was no way to tune the resolution multiplier, its on/off for FSR and a sharpness slider.

At the default 50%, it had too many sticking out pixels on the characters bodies, hard to explain what I mean, 70% kind of normalised it and made it look closer to resolution scaling. Any higher though I had distortion at edges, especially on text.

Resolution scaler is way superior, but on FF13-2 for some reason the textures flicker with that option, so hence using FSR, resolution scaling when it does work properly is really nice on RPCS3.

I have never played a game that has DLSS before (I own FF15 but played before they added it and I know that only has DLSS 1.0.) So was interesting to see how this worked vs the hype.