RTX Graphics Comparison

Hover the mouse sideways for a side-by-side comparison between RTX-off and RTX-on. You can also use your scroll wheel to zoom in.

Raytracing in Metro Exodus is used to create realistic lighting, which adds a lot to the game's atmospheric look. Please note that in Metro, only the sky light is used for raytracing—point light sources still use non-RTX lighting methods. This ensures that stealth gameplay remains identical, whether RTX is on or off. We also suspect that it helps immensely with keeping development overhead low.

Note how the whole room is much darker now because the only light source is through the window, which would make rendering the walls as brightly as in the RTX off version incorrect.

With light coming only from the sky in the top of the image, the whole scene is too bright. Only when raytracing is enabled does it look correct. Also note how the shadow on the left side of the metal door looks much more realistic now.

Pay attention to the bottles in the scene, which all now have correctly applied lighting.

Here, we have a scene in which raytracing only makes a small difference; for example, on the bed sheets and the window frame.

Interesting changes to lighting can be seen on the clothes hanging from the top of the plane and on the chair in the right side of the scene.

With both RTX enabled and disabled, the sticker on the locker is identically bright, which seems inaccurate because of the change in brightness for the locker itself. That's possibly because the sticker isn't part of the geometry that's taken into account for RTX lighting.

RTX dramatically improves the lighting of the whole scene. Note how the shadows near the typewriter look right with the light falling through the left window and shading the bottom part of the window nicely. The calendar in the middle is also way too bright with RTX off.

Here, the whole scene comes out a bit brighter, looking slightly more realistic. Zoom in on the box under the table and the box below the window, which are lit correctly now.

With light coming only through the small gap in the roof, the whole scene is too dark, which I guess is because non-RTX thinks the entire roof above shadows the whole scene.

Here, we see completely wrong lighting on the wooden pieces in the center of the screen, which get shaded correctly when RTX is enabled.

Lighting on the instruments, especially on the left and right side, is no longer super-bright and looks more realistic now.