4A Games' Metro Exodus to be First AAA Game to Feature NVIDIA's RTX Technology

[iO]

Ah that actually goes to my point, that is a very complex environment, so the compute overhead will be big if setting the parameters of the tracing to a high degree of resolution and accuracy. If they loosen up those parameters to be less intensive and less accurate then the effect will still be and look good without bogging down the render engine. Perhaps Nvidia found a shortcut in hardware?

I guess the solution is to not use "real" ray tracing like that Star Wars example but instead good old rasterizing with just a pinch of ray traced stuff like SSAO or only small amounts of shiny surfaces.

 

[dyonoctis]

yes it is. I prefer high refresh, high rez gaming. to this day I still have to turn off Physx in all games, including Witcher 3 to avoid that 20+ FPS hit when too many enemies come on screen, etc. I am skeptical of anything that will lower my frames.

Phys X in the witcher 3 is cpu based, it's not diferent from havok. Ray tracing is one of the few things that will push graphics quality further. It wouldn't be the first time that a new feature bringing enhanced graphic would be punishing at first before getting smoothed out. That's what you call progress.

Focusing only on high rez and high refresh would basicaly mean to put an halt on graphics quality.

 

[Steevo]

I guess the solution is to not use "real" ray tracing like that Star Wars example but instead good old rasterizing with just a pinch of ray traced stuff like SSAO or only small amounts of shiny surfaces.

Exactly, real time, full accuracy ray tracing hardware isn't even out yet, but they apparently have to bring it up now as some sort of golden egg they have discovered. Meanwhile everyone else already has an idea that doesn't require a new undisclosed expensive piece of hardware, but leave it to Nvidia to come up with more gameworks BS.

 

[Kaotik]

How many engines on this kind of cutting edge even exist that use OpenGL or Vulkan? idTech6 is there.
Unreal Engine 4? CryEngine 5? I think Frostbite is only doing DX12 now, same for Dawn Engine.

Vulkan should have inherited the extensions system from OpenGL so at least the possibility is there but this will likely be vendor-specific which makes it even less likely to be used for now.

Funny you should say that - AMD Radeon ProRender and Radeon Rays support Vulkan and OpenCL 1.2 and will run on any hardware supporting said APIs.

 

[spectatorx]

Funny you should say that - AMD Radeon ProRender and Radeon Rays support Vulkan and OpenCL 1.2 and will run on any hardware supporting said APIs.

The only thing that should be added to this for complementary: radeon rays is open source and available since 2016.

 

[Kaotik]

The only thing that should be added to this for complementary: radeon rays is open source and available since 2016.

They're actually both open source nowadays

 

[natr0n]

Now you know why ray tracing's popularity suddenly exploded.

 

[jabbadap]

Funny you should say that - AMD Radeon ProRender and Radeon Rays support Vulkan and OpenCL 1.2 and will run on any hardware supporting said APIs.

Aren't you Kaotik from beyond3d forums? Could you ask sebbbi which ray tracing method he uses on Claybook, if he even answers while being in GDC? (He is invited by AMD there)

 

[Vya Domus]

Something that strikes me as completely stupid is the fact that this RTX technology is supposed to only work with Volta based GPUs because of the tensor thing.

I don't think it was ever confirmed that RTX is really using Tensor cores.

 

[Kaotik]

Aren't you Kaotik from beyond3d forums? Could you ask sebbbi which ray tracing method he uses on Claybook, if he even answers while being in GDC? (He is invited by AMD there)

From b3d, io-tech etc etc etc. I'm pretty sure most of the relevant presentations will be made available sometime after GDC

 

[jabbadap]

From b3d, io-tech etc etc etc. I'm pretty sure most of the relevant presentations will be made available sometime after GDC

No pers.. krhm Well of course and they will be here some time after gdc:
https://www.gdcvault.com/

 

[Xzibit]

Because even a "simple" scene like this needs 4 GV100...

For those interested in the Demo setup

Epic Games worked closely with Nvidia to support the Nvidia RTX technology available through the DXR API. It ran on an Nvidia DGX Station.

The above video, called Reflections, was created using an $122,000 (£86,000) DGX Station mini server box, packed with four discrete Tesla V100 graphics cards, to render the entire demo in real time. It’s running at 1080p and at a cinematic 24fps, and is barely distinguishable from a live action scene.

 

[megamanxtreme]

For those interested in the Demo setup

It used all 4 graphics cards? Then it might be up to 5 years to get Single mainstream card to handle that, maybe longer.

 

[lexluthermiester]

It used all 4 graphics cards? Then it might be up to 5 years to get Single mainstream card to handle that, maybe longer.

The TeslaV100 cards are not video cards as they have no display output connectors. They are GPGPU's and are dedicated in function and purpose to compute tasks.

 

[evernessince]

Phys X in the witcher 3 is cpu based, it's not diferent from havok. Ray tracing is one of the few things that will push graphics quality further. It wouldn't be the first time that a new feature bringing enhanced graphic would be punishing at first before getting smoothed out. That's what you call progress.

Focusing only on high rez and high refresh would basicaly mean to put an halt on graphics quality.

PhysX in the witcher 3 is GPU based if you have an Nvidia GPU. When you run it on the CPU, like you do with anything but an Nvidia card, it massively bogs down FPS. Havok on the otherhand runs on the CPU regardless of the GPU and doesn't destroy your FPS. PhysX is just a classic case of Nvidia crippling competition like it so often does. There are examples like Havok that CPU Physics can be far more efficient than their implementation but I'm sure that's their plan.

Nvidia only cares about progress so long as AMD is competing with them. We are a small step away from the GPU market turning into what happened in the CPU market. Zero progress thanks to shitty business practices.

 

[londiste]

PhysX in the witcher 3 is GPU based if you have an Nvidia GPU.

Witcher 3 does not do PhysX on GPU. This has been complained about rather widely (by people with Nvidia GPUs or GPU dedicated to PhysX obviously).

 

[Kaotik]

The TeslaV100 cards are not video cards as they have no display output connectors. They are GPGPU's and are dedicated in function and purpose to compute tasks.

The only difference is the display output connectors though, everything in Epic's demos were rendered on those 4xTesla V100's to get even that 24 FPS in the Star Wars demo etc

 

[Vayra86]

Has it yet occurred to anyone that the whole reason we now suddenly see not only Nvidia, but also AMD - AND - several developers speak about Raytracing...

... serves to enforce a reset of the marketplace and create a great divide between optimal mining cards and those not so optimal (the new upcoming).
These cards are likely to employ some sort of additional subsystem to push raytracing performance, and such a thing will have a power draw.

Another thing I'm seeing is the ridiculous inefficiency of any rendering of reflected surfaces on our current GPUs. Raytracing realistically may just not be that far off from it.

Bottom line, I can only applaud this move forward and the traction it seems to have in the industry. Its about damn time we made a new visual jump.

 

[Kaotik]

Has it yet occurred to anyone that the whole reason we now suddenly see not only Nvidia, but also AMD - AND - several developers speak about Raytracing...

... serves to enforce a reset of the marketplace and create a great divide between optimal mining cards and those not so optimal (the new upcoming).
These cards are likely to employ some sort of additional subsystem to push raytracing performance, and such a thing will have a power draw.

Another thing I'm seeing is the ridiculous inefficiency of any rendering of reflected surfaces on our current GPUs. Raytracing realistically may just not be that far off from it.

Bottom line, I can only applaud this move forward and the traction it seems to have in the industry. Its about damn time we made a new visual jump.

Actually both AMD and NVIDIA have touted real-time raytracing for couple years now and also have had tools available for it for couple years, the only thing that really changed was MS jumping aboard which brought devs in

edit: and for what it's worth, Imagination has had raytracing accelerators available since 2014'ish

 

[BiggieShady]

Ray tracing in Metro is ridiculously subtle compared to nvidia, epic and 3dmark videos and accompanying materials of scientific papers for the tech:

 

[Vayra86]

Ray tracing in Metro is ridiculously subtle compared to nvidia, epic and 3dmark videos and accompanying materials of scientific papers for the tech:

Having a really, really hard time seeing the ray traced content here. Shadows from the sunlight are definitely not - they are lacking any sort of definition, just a blur that adjusts at very low FPS like we're used to from a rigid day/night cycle. Reflections in water and on shiny surfaces, like the metal rings on the barrel or the refrigerator? Didn't really see them..

Nah, if anything, this looks like a layer of polish across the already decent engine 4A used before.

 

[BiggieShady]

Reflections in water and on shiny surfaces, like the metal rings on the barrel or the refrigerator?

Yup, those and glass surfaces on pictures on the wall ... some indirect lighting bouncing in interior scene ... very subtle, and seems like it's not the whole feature list from the rtx package, probably not to tank performance too much (and maybe to keep dx11 renderer looking similar enough).