Is the New Old Already? Far Cry 6 Raytracing Exclusive to PC Version, PS5 and Xbox Series Left Out

[Raevenlord]

Stephanie Brenham, Team Lead Programmer for Ubisoft's upcoming AAA Far Cry 6, recently spoke to WCCFTech on the upcoming Far Cry installment. Stephanie went into some detail regarding the graphics and performance options, and an interesting fact that surfaced was that neither Sony's PS5 nor Microsoft's Xbox Series consoles will feature ray tracing enabled on their respective versions of the game. Apparently, ray tracing will be a PC-exclusive feature, as console versions of the game are targeting higher render resolution and more fluid framerates over expensive graphics options such as ray tracing. And even on PC, it'll be a hybrid form of it, and not a full implementation: ray tracing is supported for both shadows and reflections, but Ubisoft opted for a hybrid approach here, marrying traditional rendering with ray tracing so as to improve performance in mainstream PC hardware.

"Ray tracing is a PC-only feature," Stephanie Brenham said. "On console, our objective has been to take advantage of new hardware capabilities, optimizing performance targeting 4K and achieving 60 FPS." This does somewhat fall in the face of performance expectations set by both Sony and Microsoft; both companies made (and still make) extensive use of ray tracing support on the marketing campaigns for their consoles. However, as we've seen in the past, enabling ray tracing comes with severe performance penalties in even the latest and greatest PC hardware (sometimes not to best effect, even), which still outclasses even the latest consoles' powerful innards (compared to their predecessors, of course).





Like ray tracing, but somewhat more puzzlingly, support for AMD's Fidelity FX Super Resolution (FSR) tech is limited to the PC version of Far Cry 6, despite games supporting the technology having already been announced for both the Xbox Series and PS5 consoles. It seems like a trend is starting to form here: a trend where ray tracing is just too expensive to be fully utilized in the current crop of consoles. Perhaps we'll get there after a midlife console hardware refresh, if history repeats itself.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[The Quim Reaper]

Translation:

'Hey, AMD...Ray tracing is great but your Ray tracing hardware solution kinda sucks'

 

[Solid State Soul ( SSS )]

Most console Ray Traced implementations are below avrage anyway, and dont apply noticeable difference to justify playing at half the frame rate.
Current gen consoles players favor 60fps over raytracing, so i dont think this is much of a loss.

 

[randompeep]

Full ray traced version won't be released now, so they could make a remaster some day...duh

 

[P4-630]

"Sh!t, I just bought a console to play FarCry 6 with all eye candy expected because a new GPU was too expensive............"

 

[neatfeatguy]

Nvidia Boss: Guys, we have ray tracing coming out but it just annihilates the fps....we need to find a way to fix it. Those tensor cores look pathetic and a waste of space. We need to find a way to correct this blunder!
<some months later>
Nvidia peons: Boss! We figured it out! Down sample the image and rescale to the native resolution.
Nvidia Boss: That sounds like something we already do.....
Nvidia peons: Nope, that's something different. We'll design some algorithms that makes things better and with ray tracing active, it'll help restore most of the lost fps!
Nvidia Boss: That still sounds like something we already do, but if you say we don't, then do it!
<some more time passes>
Nvidia peons: We got it done! We call it Deep Learning Super Sampling or DLSS. It's easy to incorporate into games for the developers and anyone can use it!
Nvidia Boss: Perfect! Make it a proprietary piece of software for us and let us corner the market on this gimmick...err...evolution of gaming! Long live ray tracing!

I don't see how folks can feel that ray tracing is a good thing to promote with this current level of hardware. Sure, it can be done, but not without sacrificing performance or requiring the use of other software tricks to keep the frame rates in a desirable range. At least they're not trying to push ray tracing on the consoles, which would really have a performance hit.

 

[Steevo]

Translation:

'Hey, AMD...Ray tracing is great but your Ray tracing hardware solution kinda sucks'

This game only uses ray tracing for some things due to the huge performance hit on any GPU, it’s going to be 3-5 years before it’s the industry standard. Just like tessellated concrete barriers.

 

[The Quim Reaper]

This game only uses ray tracing for some things due to the huge performance hit on any GPU, it’s going to be 3-5 years before it’s the industry standard. Just like tessellated concrete barriers.

More to do with Ubisoft's outdated suck ass Gfx engines, than the capability of the GPU's.

 

[KarymidoN]

AMD, Microsoft and Sony Probab undersestimated the horsepower needed to raytracing on consoles, probab we'll see more titles with RT on the Refresed versions of the PS5 and SeriesX.

 

[nguyen]

Nvidia Boss: Guys, we have ray tracing coming out but it just annihilates the fps....we need to find a way to fix it. Those tensor cores look pathetic and a waste of space. We need to find a way to correct this blunder!
<some months later>
Nvidia peons: Boss! We figured it out! Down sample the image and rescale to the native resolution.
Nvidia Boss: That sounds like something we already do.....
Nvidia peons: Nope, that's something different. We'll design some algorithms that makes things better and with ray tracing active, it'll help restore most of the lost fps!
Nvidia Boss: That still sounds like something we already do, but if you say we don't, then do it!
<some more time passes>
Nvidia peons: We got it done! We call it Deep Learning Super Sampling or DLSS. It's easy to incorporate into games for the developers and anyone can use it!
Nvidia Boss: Perfect! Make it a proprietary piece of software for us and let us corner the market on this gimmick...err...evolution of gaming! Long live ray tracing!

I don't see how folks can feel that ray tracing is a good thing to promote with this current level of hardware. Sure, it can be done, but not without sacrificing performance or requiring the use of other software tricks to keep the frame rates in a desirable range. At least they're not trying to push ray tracing on the consoles, which would really have a performance hit.

You are trying too hard dude, new title can push the rasterization powerhouse like 6900XT below 60FPS just fine, litterally everything that make game look better cost FPS, might as well play DOTA or CSGO if you want high FPS

What next? 4K kill FPS, so might as well play at 1440p right

 

[newtekie1]

"Sh!t, I just bought a console to play FarCry 6 with all eye candy expected because a new GPU was too expensive............"

If you bought a console to play games with all the eye candy, you are doing it wrong. Consoles never have all the eye candy and never looks as good as PC. Most games on consoles run at the equivalent of medium or lower settings.

 

[spnidel]

More to do with Ubisoft's outdated suck ass Gfx engines, than the capability of the GPU's.

dlss is not native resolution rendering, so no, it has to do with the RT hardware being premature for it's intended use still

 

[P4-630]

If you bought a console to play games with all the eye candy, you are doing it wrong. Consoles never have all the eye candy and never looks as good as PC. Most games on consoles run at the equivalent of medium or lower settings.

I was joking... Never mind...

 

[awesomesauce]

Maybe they will optimize the game and will release an update for console

Also ubisoft engine is not the best and they are pretty conservative with new tech

 

[Vayra86]

Translation:

'Hey, AMD...Ray tracing is great but your Ray tracing hardware solution kinda sucks'

Or how about this one?

"Hey Nvidia, thanks for the usual bags of Gameworks money, so we can parrot your PC exclusive, overly expensive money trap on our least favorite platform. I mean, we are the game company of '30 FPS is the best gamur framerate' and 'We hate PC piracy' and 'We love double DRM'. We also pushed your TAA blurfest earlier, so why not? Please add DLSS 2.0 so we can achieve the 30 FPS now, ok? We'll ensure it stutters anyway everytjme you load a world block".

/thread

Nvidia Boss: Guys, we have ray tracing coming out but it just annihilates the fps....we need to find a way to fix it. Those tensor cores look pathetic and a waste of space. We need to find a way to correct this blunder!
<some months later>
Nvidia peons: Boss! We figured it out! Down sample the image and rescale to the native resolution.
Nvidia Boss: That sounds like something we already do.....
Nvidia peons: Nope, that's something different. We'll design some algorithms that makes things better and with ray tracing active, it'll help restore most of the lost fps!
Nvidia Boss: That still sounds like something we already do, but if you say we don't, then do it!
<some more time passes>
Nvidia peons: We got it done! We call it Deep Learning Super Sampling or DLSS. It's easy to incorporate into games for the developers and anyone can use it!
Nvidia Boss: Perfect! Make it a proprietary piece of software for us and let us corner the market on this gimmick...err...evolution of gaming! Long live ray tracing!

I don't see how folks can feel that ray tracing is a good thing to promote with this current level of hardware. Sure, it can be done, but not without sacrificing performance or requiring the use of other software tricks to keep the frame rates in a desirable range. At least they're not trying to push ray tracing on the consoles, which would really have a performance hit.

This. Ubisoft is explicitly telling the console market RT wont happen without major perf impact that detracts from the experience. The PC platform wins here for still being the early adopter of new tech. AMD wins in market control, and Nvidia spends money to defend its sacred yet lonely garden.

What next? 4K kill FPS, so might as well play at 1440p right

Actually, you are spot on there.

More to do with Ubisoft's outdated suck ass Gfx engines, than the capability of the GPU's.

....because of ALL those games that did show us how much of a performance hit it did "not" inflict on them?

The gist is, without DLSS you're looking at halved frames. Consoles haven't got that headroom, contrary to 1200 dollar GPUs. And even for that all you get is close range shadows and hopefully something in lighting, that is often hard to distinguish from raster. You also get cars looking like mirrors.

I remember Hairworks in TW3. It had a similar performance effect and Geralt looked like he was doing an instagram shoot instead of having normal hair. I'll pass for now, thx.

 

[ioannis]

Kinda expected as RT perf of consoles is pretty low. More a marketing trick to justify the "next-gen" and the increase in console game prices as even games that run with RT on consoles now do it in 30fps and with much lower quality than on PC.
RT aside, the thing is what will happen with future next-gen-only titles even in rasterized graphics. Not even now with cross-gen graphics games run on true 4K on the new consoles, but rather 1800p at best. I hope this 4K/60 does not become adaptive 1440p/60 as the new consoles seem like a nice alternative if the gpu shortages continue into 2022. Let's see what gains we can expect when image reconstruction based on DirectML comes out.

 

[R0H1T]

Geralt looked like he was doing an instagram shoot

What's wrong with an occasional Insta shoot

 

[Bomby569]

AMD raytracing performance sucks, that's it, it's the story

 

[Vayra86]

What's wrong with an occasional Insta shoot

It halves your performance.

 

[R0H1T]

AMD raytracing performance sucks, that's it, it's the story

Sounds about right

It halves your performance.

I think "Insta shoots" need stills

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

"Ray tracing is a PC-only feature," Stephanie Brenham said. "On console, our objective has been to take advantage of new hardware capabilities, optimizing performance targeting 4K and achieving 60 FPS."


Error, mission failed then Stephanie, mission f&£#@& failed.

 

[ZoneDymo]

this is just sad and I dont get it, where is the passion?
if I knew enough about this stuff and was working at that company I would LOVE to see what I could do to make it work as good as possible, its just a challenge, it would be fun.

they have RT in Watch Dogs Legion as an early attempt/go at it and that worked well enough....and now a later game with more experience and its a nope.avi? just weak and weird.

also lets not forget Spiderman, RT reflections and 60 fps.....

 

[Vayra86]

this is just sad and I dont get it, where is the passion?
if I knew enough about this stuff and was working at that company I would LOVE to see what I could do to make it work as good as possible, its just a challenge, it would be fun.

they have RT in Watch Dogs Legion as an early attempt/go at it and that worked well enough....and now a later game with more experience and its a nope.avi? just weak and weird.

also lets not forget Spiderman, RT reflections and 60 fps.....

Ubisoft is lazy as fuck. Check my post above - they've literally said all of these things, or acted in kind. The Nvidia Gameworks perpetual embrace is another sign of being lazy. Let Nvidia fly in a few dudes to build some code on top of their age old engine to make it look new again. Not saying its all bad, but it is what it is. And Ubisoft also has a spree of pretty shitty launches alongside of it, and some periods of really crappy support on the PC. Things did change. But this is the old culture back in all of its glory right here. I fully expect launch issues with this one, plus a game driver plus perhaps a hotfix

That, and shareholder's deadlines. These installments are yearly or bi yearly for good reasons not in our interest.

 

[RedBear]

dlss is not native resolution rendering, so no, it has to do with the RT hardware being premature for it's intended use still

Actually I'm not sure if it was not reported in the original article, but the issue here isn't limited just to Ray Tracing, Ubisoft isn't using FSR (AMD's poorman DLSS ersatz) as well for the console version, limiting both RT and FSR to the PC version. The editor says that the missing FSR is even more puzzling, but in my opinion the two issues are obviously related, they're not implementing RT because they've not implemented FSR either. I'd agree with the people who are saying that this is just Ubisoft being lazy.

 

[Chrispy_]

I see another raytracing article, I look at the screenshot, I see an image that is easily achievable without raytracing and at vastly better framerates.

I either still have (or have replaced) an RTX 2060, RTX 2060S, RTX 2070S, Quadro RTX 6000, Quadro RTX 8000, RTX 3060, and RTX 3060Ti, and am yet to be impressed by a single raytracing game or demo. The only thing a pair of 3090s in SLI would prove is that $6000 of raytracing hardware is just about fast enough to hide the performance penalty raytracing imposes.

The whole experience is bullshit and I buy RTX cards in spite of raytracing not because of it.