Cyberpunk 2077 PC: What Does Ray Tracing Deliver... And Is It Worth It?
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- čas přidán 18. 12. 2020
- Hardware accelerated ray tracing can prove transformative to the PC version of Cyberpunk 2077 in many scenarios, but equally, its effects can be more subtle elsewhere. In this deep dive analysis, Alex Battaglia tests every ray tracing effect in the game and shows you exactly what they do. This work is worth factoring in when considering optimal settings, something Alex describes in depth here: • Cyberpunk 2077 PC Best...
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I did some 3D studio work 13 - 15 years ago and I remember that adding raytracing and global illumination added easily tens of minutes to rendering time... It's unbelievable that graphic cards can calculate this in realtime now...
I remember lighting up a box room with a teapot with simple bare minimum lighting and it taking almost an entire day... that was a bad computer lol. But games cheat a bit compared to 3D studio renderers.
When I was in college, 02-04, it took my home PC almost 3 days to render 2 1/2 minutes lmao. It was a pentium 4 @ 1.6 Ghz, don't remember the GPU tho
it isnt real ray tracing, but heavy approximation of it
@@RaskaTheFurry Is this a F E M B O Y ? 😏
@@RaskaTheFurry it is raytracing. Raytracing is shooting a bunch of rays everywhere to determine the light. It does use low samples and a lot of averaging to light up the scene but it still shoots them rays
Ironically, I’ve been playing games so long that the “Before” images don’t look wrong to me until it’s pointed out.
It seems that materials in the game do not reflect light like their real-world counterparts. Even though light direction is correct, reflections and diffusion look unnatural. For example at 6:33.
@@nenadvicentic Screen space reflections have a roughness cut off before they fall back to cube maps/reflection probes.
How long have you played doesn't matter, you make it sound like it's your special thing. You are just not great at observing.
To lend some credit to you, however, Cyberpunk with RT off is pretty darn good.
when you need somebody to EXPLAIN IT TO YOU, and tell you " hey, stop look closely and pay attention, here," YOU KNOW IS BULLSHIT. great game btw
I love the kid at 6:15 just casually walking around with a handgun and Terminator eyes.
Lol😂
Now I've noticed he isn't even holding the gun. Immersion ruined lol
Whoever bullies that kid, they are dead lol
@@ZenataUSA lmao fr
I was looking for this exact comment and was gonna do the same lol
The city design in this game is amazing - I’m always noticing more too, like the benches at 8:20 with the rivets to prevent homeless people from sleeping on them. The benches at 8:45 are in a nicer part of the city, so they have a more pleasing look to them while still preventing homeless from sleeping on them due to the bar in the middle.
Making the bit at 8:20 all the more painful to watch! (Or do folks in NC get a rubberized butt-mod for that? Or is this an activity that NPC hapenns to, em ... enjoy?)
@@rather-reverend im sure they enjoy it.
They simulated late stage capitalism perfectly. Fuck you for not having a place to live. Free housing, food, water, which are y'know human rights? Bhaha, not under this economic system.
@@rather-reverend if you used your eyes you would see they don't sit on the rivets. =D
What's stupid about 8:45 is the benches are designed to prevent homeless from sleeping on them, but there is a larger, flat concrete surface elevated directly behind it that could be used
"Ray traced lighting does this automatically."
Your GPU, killing itself to calculate all these rays: "WHAT DO YOU MEAN, AUTOMATICALLY???!!!"
It's only killing RT cores tho xd
@@kajmak64bit76 Radeon cards: "You guys are getting RT cores???"
Usually without RT you have to “put” in the lighting 💡, but here with RT lighting is a physics simulation which lights the scene automatically.
@@kajmak64bit76 RT cores only calculate acceleration structure intersection. Shaders cores then utilize that data to do shading according to shaders devs wrote. If these shaders are complicated, your GPU shading domain will get a harder hit than RT cores will.
@@kajmak64bit76 If it was only the RT cores taking the hit, we would barely see an FPS difference. As that is never the case, RT cores are not the only components being taxed.
This RT stuff makes me think of the Harry Plinket saying “You didn’t notice, but your brain did”
That's what next-gen will be. There will be a sense of wonder at what you are doing, but you won't know why. I hope.
RLM , love em
Or, you didn't notice, but Digital Foundry did.
I honestly think in cyberpunk rtx is a big deal like its quite noticable
@@skootdiggity1301 lol ... when you zoom into the image 300%.... you can CLEARLY see the image on the left is better.
Okay, raytracing is revolutionary, this video shows it super well. I can't wait for the day when raytraced shadows, lightning and reflections is the standard and budget cards can achieve stable high framerates with all these features on. Or the day when high end cards can achieve stable high framerates...
Probably in another 100 years.
@@Flaconomore28 maybe more like 10-20
20 years or so an then it may be possible for budget cards...
The power of the cloud will make it unecessary. EA will buy up all graphics card companies and force us all to play our games through a streaming service and charge us $100 an hour to play all your games with ray tracing turned on. CDPR will be owned by the chinese and only communist gamers who swear loyalty to the CCP will be permitted to log into the game (no more offline games exist anymore) and if you dont walk into certain directions or choose certain dialogue in game, then you lose points on your social credit score. Communism doesnt permit plsyers to "do anything" in open world sandbox environments. You either stick to the main quest only or you get booted from the server. Bethesda will not make open world titles anymore because modders made all future sequels to Elder Scrolls for them using an AI to program the game engines which never got updated with decent animations because the animator has blackmail footage of zenimax employees on epstein island and that is why animations never got updates. The antichrist will run all the tech companies to ensure innovation is held back and that SJWs get all the jobs instead of normies.
Definitely can't wait for that ray-traced lightning!!
Honestly, particle effects of Cyberpunk is the most underrated feature in the REDengine. Particles are truly making everything alive and they don't tax at all. 3D models are beyond any game has ever done also, the geometry of everything in the scene is mind blowing. 3D artists done fantastic job on models, even generic items in the world look and feel genuine.
im so dissapointed they dropped the redengine in my oppinion it looks better than unreal5
@@teodorcaraba979 Technical aspect of it.
@@teodorcaraba979 really? We haven’t seen a good comparison with lots of reflections in a city scape. Maybe there’s one with the matrix demo. I’ll have to go check it again. But UE5 has to be better in almost every way for them to adopt it. I’m sure their genius devs will work magic with it. I think it’s just about getting there without spending a million dev hours on a proprietary engine. And just think about the mod community. They’ll be that much better with UE5 being the English of the game world. I’m really excited about it. Just wish it was 10x faster instead of 2x.. would love to have 2077 Orion next year instead of an expansion that’ll add a few hours of gameplay.
@@damonm3 i watched wu kong trailers and harry potter and they looked kinda bad ngl
@@teodorcaraba979 That's not tied to the engine, The art direction of Cyberpunk is one thing that doesn't exist in many of the games in UE5 that are looking to exploit the "high graphics" market.
Ray Tracing Off
My Brain: "This looks good"
Ray Tracing On
My Brain: "This looks good"
yeah fr lol
More preferences is good
Same! I'm a simple man.
Not worth the fps hit in my opinion 🤷🏻♂️
Careful, nvidia will send you an email banning you from life or something
''Or maybe the game deletes NPCs when you turn around anyway?''
Yes, this is most probably exactly what happens there.
Next-gen
Next gen premium experience
Cyberpunk 2077 is made for auto-aimers with 30 PREMIUM FPS doing macro-transactions for cut content giving out their personal data and that data is being exploited by publishers to inflate their scam and keep people in the loop. Welcome to the brave naive world. Developers of said naive world can't face the facts so they suppress, censor people. Outsource their dirty work to influencers which get high when they receive free merch.
Free merch > free speech.
Is your mind blown how people fall for same thing every time? It shouldn't be. Because divided, singled out individuals has no chance against organized criminal entity; corporation.
Corporation is an approved scam & spy business. Their approval was obtained through manufactured consent. Corporation is not the industry of manufacturing products. Corporation is in the industry of manufacturing consent.
As well Corporations [through governments] are harvesting our biometric data on global scale. So they can get to know us far better than we know ourselves,
and they not just predict our feelings but also manipulate our feelings and sell us anything they want- Be it a product as a service or politician.
CDPR is a corporation.
Hardcore corporate defenders please check out "The Corporation", "Surveillance Capitalism", "The century of the self", "Stockholm syndrome", "Milgram Experiment" and "The Secrets of Silicon Valley: What Big Tech Doesn't Want You to Know")
even cars get repainted/respawned
So... Is this a problem?
For an area as gritty and dynamic as night city, the added contrast between lights and added glow from light sources really helps give it that bladerunner feeling.
16:12 The glass effects to RT on looks Amazing and in the next seen 16:19 of the Shop window i am very impressed of the wrap around glass reflection and contrasts.
This video made me really appreciate screen space reflections. They've served us well.
No they really haven't SSR has been complete trash and I'll be glad to see the tail-end of it. Always low resolution, always cutting off at the edges of the screen, only works from certain angles, bleh. It works well in very few titles and even there the limitations are frustrating.
I want to say they're better than nothing, but in many cases they're not, like Resident Evil 2, where the image quality of the game is degraded unless you turn them off.
SSR is awful and grainy
@@Xbob42 you sound like a little kid bragging about it. Ofc they depend on how well devs implement them. Some are better & others are worse but that should be obvious 🤣
I've always hated it, tbh. It stuck out like a sore thumb and has broken my immersion so many times.
@@serialkillerx4746 A kid bragging about what? Your reply makes no sense at all. They don't "depend on how well devs implement them," they range from bad to barely passable. They're fucking terrible.
Appreciate that you used very non-descript locations and not any scenes from the story.
I've played with both on and when I turn ray tracing off I forget it exists. The standard light is just that good.
Its one of those things where you get so used to something you don't see its missing. Like taking a crap, smelling it...then forgetting it even smells just minutes later.
If one plays slow like walking speed still one doesn't see the difference?
It's clear anyway that at night there are more outcomes that can be grabbed while during day usually it's hard to find places that do give something more.. at least it seems. in DL2 also day RT on gives goosebumps but it's a different game design.
It isn't, just some accept a lower bar for their standards.
I definitely notice it's off when I'm around mirrors and windows
One thing is certain, CDPR made the game look gorgeous with or without ray tracing. It's pretty incredible how close it matches up.
You mean... Not at all?
@@epmcgee yeah RTX looks WAY ahead, not sure what OP was smoking. Esp with the reflections on water, sheesh. Not even close.
fucking reddit users using "op" in sentences
Not worth the preformance dip imo, it does make a difference all in all, especially in a game with a world like cyberpunk's. But the difference isnt worth the preformance:fideltiy ratio.
I've started playing it yesterday (on PC) and - to my big surprise after all the negative news - it's actually a fantastic game. The bugs are there, and gameplay wise the police system is the major annoyance, but at its core it's an absolutely brilliant game which most people will love once (if) the obvious shortcomings are fixed.
Most of the bad news is only for consoles and doesent affect PC. The game is actually very stable on PC if you have the hardware for it.
I'm in the same stance as you. I have a 3090 so I'm sure my opinion doesn't really matter but in all honesty. I'm happy I was a beta tester. Can't wait to replay once it's fixed.
Yup. A large majority of people are happy enough with the game, but the negative voices always seem louder than the positive. It's only a certain group of people who bought into the hype and believed CD Projekt's ambitious claims that were severely disappointed. The rest of us who weren't expecting the game to actually change our lives, drive us to work, make us breakfast and kiss us goodnight found it to be pretty enjoyable.
Comparing with what was promised games is a 3/10, taking the game just as it is its a 7/10.
There's an annoying hate train that surrounds this game launch. Mostly from people who expected a sandbox with GTA level of details. Which doesn't mean that the police and the AI, is acceptable, but it can be overlooked while waiting for patches
21:32 It's good to see Mark Henry getting some work.
@@MM80666 lmao
😂
@@MM80666 bravo
Welcome to the hall of pain.
but just like real life he fails to reach to the top and dies early :(
Finally got a EVGA Rtx 3080 from a base 1080 and that RTX made me re experience the game all over again, this game is such eye candy to just sit and take in the views especially on an IPS panel.
65''+ OLED panel in glorious HDR gsynced 60fps psycho RT is what this game needs and deserves looks wise, namely LG CX
@Mohammedno need to dial down with 10900k+3090=4k psycho RT everything maxed out, performance DLSS 60+ frames. does need insane ram and OC everywhere, but perfectly doable.
@@maxsteeep Jesus man, how much did your setup cost?
I seriously just get distracted mid mission and drive around the city on a motor cycle. It's so surreal.
I shit my pants playing on a 3090 oled my ips is a glowstick now.
I just want to say that they really did a good job on rasterized graphics and it don't make too much difference with ray tracing sometimes
came to say the same - credit where it's due, the developers clearly spent a lot of time making SSR, SSAO, cubes, volumetrics bring the city to life without true RT. It's impressive, and I'd argue that the infamous Limo Ride is not representative of that work generally - a little less global/diffuse lighting in that car and the difference would not be so extreme, many other scenes involving that character look much better.
Glad to see ray tracing making such a noticeable difference, but I'm not unhappy in my rasterized night city either.
I agree 100%. The non ray-traced versions look great until they are side by side with the RTX scenes, then suddenly it looks flat. But the devs did a remarkable job here, you only miss Raytracing when you’re looking at it held against the traditional renderer
Same with MW
Agreed. Of course RT looks amazing and while I can run it with RT on the performance hit is massive and I found the increase in FPS with it off makes for a nicer experience.
I can't really notice the difference in general game play either
Until you have played the game with RT and go back there's a noticeable difference but this topic is very subjective.
I could watch a 2 hour movie from DF about Cyberpunk's graphics lol
Yeah me too! They're super watchable!
Those comparisons that they show are so cool to see
By this point, they've made a 2 hour video on Cyberpunks graphics lol
same lol
😄
Every new video from Alex with a new tech analysis, especially about ray tracing is like a small Christmas for me. I love this stuff. Keep it up, guys, great job!👍
I’m using a 3090 and I’m 100% sure this is the most beautiful game I’ve ever seen. It’s a damn shame it wasn’t advertised as a next-gen only game, because that’s exactly what it is, nothing less
updates will be next gen only soon so well see how far they can push this engine before they switch to UE5
Thing is, for my standards CP 1.7 on ps4 with well tuned HDR settings it feels like playing a next gen game on current gen, especially at night with heavy rain
@@azerikashew8573 They said so 1 year ago lol
Graphics may be next gen. Everything else isn't. For example, shopping experience. Classic boring menus in Cyberpunk, literal intractive shops with animations for any product you scour in Red Dead Redemption 2. I'd argue RDR2 is an actual next gen game.
@@crylune The alternative of that is Star Citizen, flashy everything zero gameplay
DF sure won't be getting emails from nvidia asking to "change their editorial direction"
My thoughts exactly.
So? DF was always about cutting edge tech. And RT is exactly that.
That's one of the very bad consequences of this Nvidia mail stuff : from now any tech reviewer that says good thing about any of Nvidia's tech will seem suspicious for some.
@@Tezorus These guys were primary shilling offenders with their first look at the 3080 with no fps claiming double 2080 perf, BS. It was a Paid fucking infomercial... Paragons of integrity.
@@stephanhart9941
BS. They said very clear what is was and that you should look at other independent benchmarks.
The also never claimed double performance across the board.
7:03 Gotta love the NPC sitting on that defensive architecture lol
Dude has ass enhancements.
free buttplug
Isn't that called hostile architecture?
@@david.godlewski Yes, it's designed as a fuck you to homeless people. Indicative of fucked up societies that penalize the poor instead of helping them.
anti-skater, pro-anus consumable
"NVIDIA approuves this editorial direction "
AMD should join the movement to pathtracing as well. I mean lightning should be 100% done from the light sources and the materials of the objects rendered.
@@redguard128 yeah I totally agree with you I was just taking an easy jab at Nvidia for being assholes, still love their tech tho
Kiss the ring babe.
Came here for this
Noice
Man, your best video ever on the subject of RT. Simply Sublime explanations over perfectly selected footage. Congratulations.
i love how when you are in a dark ally and its even darker behind things like dumpsters. rt makes things so much more immersive.
Yeah.. basically one playing at night should put RT on, when playing during the day off... So at night play slow and netrunning aduring day do stuff like shooting etc.
Damn that Dex difference. Literally two different games.
@@mvp4lithuania Dexter DeShawn
@@mvp4lithuania The guy at 22:05. Dexter DeShawn. He is a fixer in the game.
@@mvp4lithuania Dextromethorphan of course. It's instrumental to experiencing a generational leap in visuals.
/s
@@swosho robotripping in Night City is a common thing to be doing in the year 2077
That's because they freeze the frame when RT off is at its brightest and looking the worst it does in that sequence. Earlier on with RT off it looks darker and better most of the time.
Maybe RT on never looks that bad but it overall isn't a good representation of just RT off and RT on.
Alex must be an absolute god at those "find the picture that's different" challenges.
Come on. The examples he used were pretty strikingly different. If you have a hard time telling the difference between them then I suggest a trip to the optometrist.
@@kristoferstoll587 agreed. But hey good for them, they can use outdated gpus for a long time lol
@@kristoferstoll587 I wouldn't call that "strikingly different", but yes, looking side by side you can see the difference, sometimes more, sometimes less. But in the game, when you are busy driving\shooting
unning and stuff, honestly I am not sure it is much noticeable. After about 20 hours of gameplay I turned rtx off and immediately realised that those extra frames (from 60 to 80-100) are doing much better job at making gameplay enjoyable for me. And the lighting quality - well, after switching rtx off it kinda felt different for some 10 seconds or so lol, and then I just got used to it.
@@kristoferstoll587 But you have to find examples first. You have to know what to look for before you see it. It's not like you're playing with two views side by side.
5:40 meanwhile that pink light is also clipping into the structure overhead.
You guys are doing a phenomenal job. As an artist, this is some real light study like I had in an art school. Great job
I was fortunate enough to get a 3080 and the raytracing really is mesmerizing. It's hard to pinpoint exactly where all the differences are when you turn it on but it's like your brain knows this is what it's supposed to look like in real life subconsciously.
The same. I cannot pinpoint where RT is in effect (except reflections + glass material) when I play.
But when I try to switch it off for fps comparison...omg...different game.
@Leia Saku I f you choose not to or cannot afford to play with RT, I respect that.
That's why options on PC games are a godsend.
But there are some that say "It's the same, I cannot see a difference".
The game will be on sale (hopefully :D ) for many years. In 3-4years the RT cards will be capable and cheap. So, there is nothing stopping you from revisiting the game (if you like it of course) and replay with rt ;)
As an art student studying light and how it affects and behaves on different materials it really makes a huge difference, RTX is such a treat
@@Zanbatoss RTX is just Nvidia's branding. Saying RT is enough if you are referring to the lighting technique rather than the Nvidia GPUs.
@Leia Saku A 3080 is not just for cyberpunk you know.
This has been my argument to all the folks slating RT, they have been expecting a monumental leap in... Something and so can't see it. RT adds in another subtle layer of believability to the game world. This ain't the 90's no more with mind blowing advances in graphics, we are approaching the 'light barrier' every miniscule extra level of fidelity is requiring more and more power.
I miss the 90s
We might never experience those amazing leaps again but man it's all exciting :D
@@leonxjaws182 is an action adventure game, not an rpg.
The issue with Ray tracing is how much processing power is required to enable it. The hit on fps is major in comparison to the subtle increase in visuals. At this moment Ray tracing requires too much processing power to be worth it. I'd rather a steady 60fps (would most prefer 90 or above) without Ray tracing than 30 fps with it
@@guidorussoheck2100 no man it's a rpg you role play as a created character
18:55 ray tracing looks nice, as the NPC clips through the wall.
Bonk
It’s like that scene from top gear where they are talking about push rod suspension;
“It makes it better”
“It makes what better?”
“Everything”
This game is so fucking beautiful to look at. Even with rtx off. Can't wait for the patches tho, then it'll really shine
Jes without raytacing in real-time, it will be future but in future as Blender free for everyone is using RTX for almost 10 years and you still need a web of computers rendering scene. This is a compromise with fake colors still in 2020, they could do that for sure and A.I. could be actually smart but it's not even on level with funny game Gravity Rush 2 with almost live NPC's RTX is still a future and good way fo improvement in games and it is ad to something else, question is what is new and ground breaking new technology
Still it's looks fake, colors are fake I sow better on PS4 this colors are cartoon level
@@igorbeuk6298 Alt+z to open nvidia control panel. You can add color filters on the fly and make it look exactly how you want.
It's really a good game. Just released early.
@Tronam You should see the video where they compare the AI to GTA 5.
A game from two generations ago has a better designed and developed open world.
I can't think of many other channels that put out such consistently great content as you guys. It's much appreciated. Hope everyone at DF has a good Christmas. 🎄
Maybe NX Gamer but he's a one person team so can't put out as much as he wants. Still pretty consistent though.
@Congisto Marxista They are pushing Nvidia's narrative hence why they didn't focus on the politics.
They are Nvidias lapdog.
Cyberpunk 2077 is made for auto-aimers with 30 PREMIUM FPS doing macro-transactions for cut content giving out their personal data and that data is being exploited by publishers to inflate their scam and keep people in the loop. Welcome to the brave naive world. Developers of said naive world can't face the facts so they suppress, censor people. Outsource their dirty work to influencers which get high when they receive free merch.
Free merch > free speech.
Is your mind blown how people fall for same thing every time? It shouldn't be. Because divided, singled out individuals has no chance against organized criminal entity; corporation.
Corporation is an approved scam & spy business. Their approval was obtained through manufactured consent. Corporation is not the industry of manufacturing products. Corporation is in the industry of manufacturing consent.
As well Corporations [through governments] are harvesting our biometric data on global scale. So they can get to know us far better than we know ourselves,
and they not just predict our feelings but also manipulate our feelings and sell us anything they want- Be it a product as a service or politician.
CDPR is a corporation.
Hardcore corporate defenders please check out "The Corporation", "Surveillance Capitalism", "The century of the self", "Stockholm syndrome", "Milgram Experiment" and "The Secrets of Silicon Valley: What Big Tech Doesn't Want You to Know")
@Congisto Marxista Or they are the only ones not jumping on the hate train to produce 2 Clickbait videos a day but instead give us professional videos about the tec used in a game.
Awesome comparative video mate!
Appreciate your work!! +100 kudos!
There is a major RT lighting issue you forgot to cover. Inside vehicles, in 1st person, the lighting on other passengers or drivers looks incredibly bad when RT lighting is set to medium or ultra, and only looks good sometimes on psycho. And even during a bright morning, the inside of the car looks really dark and has bad lighting on the other character in the car. Their faces are too dark and their eyeballs are shining white. And on medium or ultra, it literally looks like they’re blackfaced.
19:43 they stop rendering them, if you look at a puddle reflecting an NPC in front of you, by the time the NPC is not in your field of view, they vanish from the ray traced reflection, and as soon as it reenters your FOV, it is re-rendered
Yes, spiderman rt reflection looks much better
@@WTFWHATara Spiderman only has RT reflections. Everything is optimized around that. This game is optimized around RT lighting, RT shadows, and RT reflections. If you do too much with RT it'll be pointless cause even modern graphics cards can't handle that.
Edit: Not saying anything bad about SM:MM but can't really compare the two until PS5 has a game that is using as many RT effects at once like this.
just like cars getting replacd by other models when you look away , same happens with npcs and it is very noticeble
@@manuelmunguia616 i think it is kinda game breaking in a way
As always, excellent coverage and explanations. Thanks!
I wish you could have shown the parade sequence. Probably the most visually stunning setpiece ever in a game. It would have been nice to see how much of an effect ray tracing had.
Agreed, even on medium settings with no RT I was blown away. Incredibly immersive visuals, and light plays a big part in that.
Does anyone else press "N" at least once every 30min while playing to take screenshots? This is the first game that's ever compelled me to become a damn amateur photographer.
I press n at least once every 30 minutes, but it's usually when I'm trying to look at the map.
I've only taken one photo with it so far, and that was when my bike followed me up an elevator shaft and arrived into the room in flames..
I literally want to become a streamer because of this game
nah i could give 2 shits less about a screenshot
I think it has more to do with the art direction. The design of the city is simply breathtaking.
‘N’ is for screenshots ?
Just supported you guys on Patreon. Your work is outstanding and you deserve some dollars for it. Thanks for all of your awesome videos!
The RT lighting and shadows are really impressive but the reflections I've found are kind of situational (at least to me). In some places I think they look amazing while in others I think they actually look worse or even _too_ reflective lol. In the end though it's something I look forward to seeing improve over the coming years.
Right now the main appeal of RT reflections in Cyberpunk is that they're not grainy like SSR.
I feel like RT Lighting and Reflections are better for open world games like these. Cause you don't spend much time looking at characters so it doesn't really matter if they have proper shadows or not. But in games where you spend a lot of time up close and personal with characters benefit from RT shadows. Meanwhile I think RT reflections are great for open world games like these. The reflections look nice off of your car, river/ocean, puddles, and building windows imo. If you could turn RT shadows only on for cutscene moments and RT shadows off for the open world automatically that'll be cool. It'll be cool if they can modify RT effects that freely.
Yessir, I agree. Sometimes things can look over reflective , like looking at mercury
I think that's more a function of the developer. I think they went a little overboard on the reflective surfaces in CP2077, but then again, that's sort of the aesthetic they went for I guess.
@@nicobenji0248 How can you not spend a lot of time up close with characters in CP2077, when there are literally tens of hours of plot/quest dialogue?
Amazing comparision! thank u for this illustrative video.
I really think ray tracying reflections add to the cyberpunk feel but you dont need it for to enjoy the game
Without graphics it has nothing to offer
@@user-ye7lp9lg1c stfu i finished the game with an 1050 ti on the launch week. Even with bugs and stuff it was beautiful
@@danielmoraes743 my sincere condolences for your suffering
@@user-ye7lp9lg1chow are you still salty
@@danielmoraes743 720p? i tried to play on 1050ti - but decided to buy at least rx580 for 1080.
07:23 Even probe lighting has directional info if stored in SH. It depends on density of the probes to cast proper occlusion of the concrete slab on the ground.
yeah, but the density and SH level needed to properly reflect this is beyond any systems capabilities for quite a while ;)
@@51Daedalus is it wrong that I'm picturing both of you with neckbeards and sounding like comic book guy from Simpsons?
@@Beast-mf7br Yeah. Nothing wrong with two people discussing a topic they're familiar with. The people that like to put people on blast like this are usually insecure and don't have real friends, just saying.
@@sinnohen are you actually trying to white night a perfectly harmless joke? man you must be the life of the party eh? should I apologize to the neckbearded community now Mr. snowflake? smh
@@Beast-mf7br Nah. It was just weird seeing a comment like that on a DF video. It would be like going to Comic-Con and calling everyone there "nerds" to be a dick.
It looks different, but not necessarily more realistic. The Dex scene has completely different lightning, but having that car interior being so dark in the middle of the day makes no sense. Similarly, the water reflection scene shows way too crisp reflections with RT on. Does it look better with raytracing? Perhaps. At the end of the day, I'd say in no way those changes justify a 50% performance hit. If I have to compare RT with half resolution or half framerate or DLSS over non-RT without any of those, I'd choose non-RT any day of the week, even if I'll be missing one area shadow under a bench.
It’s not perfect, but if you come from a photography background and movie lighting background, this is finally a step in the right direction. I agree on the water reflections point. It’s their settings there. There should be subsurface diffusion and scattering on those water effects that interacts with the reflections. But that scene in the car with Dex is lit properly on RT. If they developed the entire game around RT, they would’ve added some extra fill lighting inside the car for that scene, using some more interior practical car lights or some more bouncy bright materials to bounce extra window light back onto dex for fill lighting.
4:14 - dope transition! Good timing!
Incredible Video, incredible comparison very easy explained for everyone to understand :)
Cyberpunk has the best rasterized lighting ive ever seen
Man I play It inna GTX 1080 and its hands down the best lighting Ive seen inna game.
Waop. That’s you banned by nVidia.
Metro
It's actually one of the worst. What are you smoking ?
@@gabrielst527 If you playing in base PS4 maybe, If not go search for help, something is wrong, either with your game or with you.
Whenever I drive a car in first person, im blinded by godrays
Go to a church you heathen god is calling lol
ifkr lmao
Bulldozzzr lmaooo
same here... cinematic, but annoying and accident friendly
Lens flare !
I just upgraded to a 3080ti and have been running RT lighting. After playing with it on for quite awhile then turning it off you can absolutely tell that there's a difference in how the world feels. RT just makes the world feel so much more alive and I'm constantly blown away by how good it looks. You wouldn't think that being able to see an accurate reflection on a glass surface would make a big difference but it absolutely does. Every moment feels more cinematic with RT.
It absolutely doesn't for the moment to moment gameplay. You arent scrutinizing the shadows on a bench when exploring an environment. The gameplay keeps your focus if it's a good game. As opposed to an art piece where detail really matters.
@@campbell412 It does. The feel of the game also covers the feel of the world/environment so playing with RT does boost ur impressiveness in the game a lot.
@@campbell412 Grafix dont matter if the gameplay is gud!!!
The de-noising looks weird, even with ray reconstruction. Even though I can run RT I prefer the look of raster for this reason alone.
At 10:46 you show a Raytracing comparison but don't update the text at the bottom to indicate that you're transitioning from Raytracing off.
Good video. Thanks for the detailed comparison.
I feel like I'm the only one who really likes the ray traced reflections, probably Miles Morales helped me notice them more often, but its a shame that it breaks down the FPS on my RTX 2070S.
How far does your gpu go on this game with rtx? Like how much fps you get?
@@saifulmulk5492 Desert area hangs around 80, general city is around 50-60, and some parts of city drop to 40. Sometimes after a long play session or after a mission, the frame rate just tanks and sticks around 20-30, and i need to restart the game. At 1080p with DLSS quality.
@@Alcatraz760 I've heard about this issue that sucks
@Spectrea do you think RT is good trade off
@@Alcatraz760 game isn't very optimized on PC either
1:57 lil kid packing that heat by some kind of telekinesis
if i saw him i would boot him into next week
The kid at 6:15 with the Terminator eyes walking around with a handgun too - at least he’s got a grip on it like he’s trying to preserve finger prints from a crime scene rather than finger on the trigger, but it’s still pretty funny to see.
@@broncosbroncos5489 Bro wtf 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
6:00 I like how the pink sign is just casually clipping through the environment at the top.
well summarized, great examples, and comparison!
This is where I see the real need of raytracing now.
I guess, one could say, you’re finally seeing the light.
Minecraft
9:57 and 10:45 it says Raytracing off when it was actually on
Editing mistake
Yup
Quite telling that even the guys who are making the video can't tell with certainty if it was on or off..
@@mkreku no it’s not telling of anything other someone accidentally swapped on for off... you can see a massive difference throughout this entire video, what exactly do you have against RT
Editing mistakes happen, I’ve made graphical mods for games and accidentally messed up the editing, it doesn’t mean I didn’t think my work had any impact it means I made a mistake editing, like shut up dude
@@juliet4093 I have nothing against the technology per se, but I do think Digital Foundry spends way too much time on it seeing as how it affects 26 games so far. And when I say affects, it's nuances at most, yet Digital Foundry calls it "game changing". That irks me. I have personally never played a game that even had ray tracing available, that's how common it is (so far). In a few years, I'm sure it'll be more interesting, but as of right now I think they could concentrate on more interesting things.
Also, it's not like games haven't had reflections, shadows and light sources before ray tracing. The argument seems to be that it's more realistic with ray tracing, but is that really better? I wouldn't bet on realistic being better than a light artists take on a scene in a game. Therefore most of raytracing just makes things different, not inherently better. Is that really worth 50% of your fps? In my case, no.
Would have been better if CDPR actually included your own character reflection.
game wouldn't be released then or would have even more bugs
So the nvidia raytracing extension has a very detailed build system for world geometry, called an acceleration structure. It looks like they trace against the previous frame's acceleration structure, so it can be built completely asynchronously to the rest of the rasterized rendering, otherwise some of the rendering may stall, slowing fps. I noticed this from a few graphics artifacts: reflection tearing noticeable in elevators, and refractive, uhh, smearing, of the car antennae when driving fast. There's probably another effect they're using that contributes to these, but I'm not certain. Anyways, if they always included your spazzy characters in reflections, it would be a bit weird(er).
The RT elevates the visuals onto a completely new level. I prefer RT lighting + reflections over a higher resolution.
Here is the catch 22 with RT: the higher the resolution the better RT components look
@@sev2300 Isn't really a catch. I run it on 1440p with DLSS and obviously no mortal computer can run it on native 4K with Raytracing. Fact is I don't even see the difference between the resolutions as I'm sitting 2 meters from my LG OLED TV, so yeah, the game looks breathtaking and Raytracing is decisive for that.
@Bullock im talking bout internal resolution for RT lighting and reflections
L
@@drchtct u really cannot see the difference? U kidding..this game looks pretty blurry at low res and by low i mean 1440p and 1080p
A comparison video with Cloud Gaming services like Stadia and GeForce now would be very interesting
Stadis is running the PC version, so if your Internet is top-notch, it will be very good.
@@neilwilson5785 I am running it on Stadia doesn't have Ray tracing features. That's why I'm waiting for the PS5 upgrade since I got the PS4 version for $25
@@neilwilson5785 Actually, on Stadia you won't have the RTX effects, but on GeForce NOW you'll have them. So in this case I would recommend GeForce NOW over Stadia.
Regardless of all the bugs/issues, this is easily the best looking game I've ever played. Obviously if you walk up to certain objects, it may not be impressive individually. But as a whole, with everything added up, this is simply one of the most graphically impressive games I've ever seen with my own 2 eyes. Fantastic coverage as always Alex!
Yeah just going around the city is sometimes breathtaking. I boot up the game after not playing for a day and I am quickly reminded how grand the city looks with RT on... truly next gen... Even RDR2 doesn't do graphics so well!
@@SnakeHelah rdr 2 is open field. Lod is nowhere near of cyberpunk
@@SnakeHelah also the grass sucks.. Its looks like oubg mobile grass blacked out below screen to hide those grass lll
Character models (for main characters anyway) and the city are amazing to look at. But I feel like the visuals in the story missions don't fully cohere - a mix of cutting edge and stuff that looks decidedly older. Feels like playing two different games sometimes.
Maybe with Raytracing its gorgeous but without it looks pretty disappointing.
Great work on the video!
This is an incredible video that really helped me understand and appreciate what a graphical feat this game is. It's going to be a benchmark for the coming years.
Thanks man!
At 9:57, the closed caption is wrong. It should be "RAY TRACING ON", not OFF
nice
Give this guy all the awards. Damn.
(Hi, annoying nitpicker here. That is not a closed caption. It's simply a title. Captions are transcriptions of dialogue and audio effects, intended for deaf people. Captions can be either open or closed - closed captions can be turned on or off by the viewer, open captions are part of the video and always visible, but in either case, the previous definition of what captions are applies. They're different from subtitles, which are meant for people with no hearing impairment to make it easier for them to understand what's being said, and from titles, which provide some additional information to all viewers. Sorry for being an annoying nitpicker, I just thought it might be of some interest.)
@@Case_ damn give this guy the rewards instead.
i was looking for someone who've noticed too :)
Okay, so when I started playing Cyberpunk I didn't realise how good the raytracing was... However I'm quite a few hours in now and for me this is actually game changing (excuse the pun)! I could go into detail, but I think raytracing actually takes a little while to settle into your brain.... Almost like my expectations of game graphics are hard baked into my brain so the environment is purely what I'm looking at... Now the reflections in the puddles and other surfaces suddenly make me feel like I'm in an environment that's bigger than my field of view. It's really interesting and took a while to adjust too!
Yes, I noticed the exact same thing . At first, enabling rt provided me a subtle difference in the environment, but a major difference in the reflection in puddles, on road during rain. But now, that my brain has accepted the rt settings, if I try to switch it off, the world just seems lifeless and artificial. Ray Tracing is expensive, but it is totally worth it.
@@techtunnel402 Exactly... completely lifeless... the difference between simulation and real world stuff!
@@kennethdavidson6508 In terms of reflections, it is very apparent. In terms of shadows? Not so much. I honestly can't tell the difference between DLSS Quality/Off on my 1080p Laptop Display. However, going any further down definitely becomes obvious. I play on a RTX 2060 with DLSS at Quality and fps hovers around 50, with RT Medium and other settings at High. I like the way it looks and feels. But, if you don't like DLSS, there's a lot of struggle for you man to get stable fps, this game's so heavy.
What graphics card are you using ?
@@Bossix84 2080ti dude
Amazing explanation for a newbie!
Thank you very much :).
5:50 ya gotta love the building clipping into the neon sign.
Dex RT on vs Off is basically the you vs the guy she tells you not to worry about.
The cost of making AAA games can substantially drop, if RT lighting becomes more performant and a mainstream approach for lighting in video games.
I dont think we need to worry too much about the cost. More like treating employees better when game company CEOs are buying their 7th, 8th, and 9th private yachts...
The trouble is that they have to do both just now to cater to a range of hardware, even if they only release on PC. Maybe in the next next gen...
development costs will drop, but retail price will certainly not.
That's a good question actually. On one side you could think that it will remove the need of creating specific point or area lighting, placing and tweaking reflection probs, removing the need for lightmap calculation and tweaking, ect... But on another side the fact that colors bleeds accurately for example means that you need to be more careful with the overall color placing in you environment. Same goes with emissive and reflective materials to avoid a laser/reflection circus. At the end i think it will balanced but some actual technics will disappears for sure beeing replaced by new one. I would have more question about the implementation of AI in the correction/fixing steps of the dev tbh.
IMO there will always be that 'extra premium super' thing you can achieve by throwing an uncomprehensive amount of raw manpower and talent. There will always be a gap and always be an AAA title. It might be bigger world, more detailed storytelling, more content or better graphics, or everything at once. But it will always be there.
Superb analysis. Thanks for this
Excellent video. Subscribed!
Hopefully my brand new Voodoo card can run this with RT on xD
with dlss? anything is possible ;)
My new Sound Blaster card will allow me to hear people actually talking. If I can allocate enough RAM to make it work.
It can, and will.
@@blitzwing1 12Mb vram? Calm down, let's just enjoy our 4Mb 3dfx ok?
You know that the SNES can do RT (assisted) right? And I'm not jocking, it's real and there is a demo here on YT.
Closest to photo-realism we will see for quite some time with a game of this magnitude.
@Mohammed dunno this game is allready massive on the best GPUs available, sure theres room for optimization, but I doubt it get much better in the next 2 years
GTA 6
Red Dead blows this away lol. R u kidding? The faces in this game don't even compare.
@@pwd1134 The lighting, reflections, character models are leagues better than RDR2 shut up kid haha
@Mohammed I say quite some time because the only ones to actually take the crown back is Rockstar in GTA VI. But don't expect GTA VI anytime soon: 2023-2024.
Thanks for showing the difference. I could not see it, was turning RTX off and on again, just saw different lights but both look great!
Wow bro u r increadble smart, u r toooooo good in explaining about the difference and that too like a developer, bro keep up your good work with this video my support is with you 😊
10:30 i wish you'd do a video on how Star Citizen does bounced colored indirect light with its flashlight, even without that engine having any raytracing.
Lumberyard is based on Cryengine, could it be SVOGI?
I don't think Digital Foundry cover con schemes
@@guiiimkt they are Nvidia shills so why not?
@@guiiimkt They've covered Star Citizen before.
0:34 is that a floating bottle on the right?
Phenomenal work, Alex!
I was deciding between higher image quality with more FPS vs RTX and I prefer first. I can play on 1440p/60fps (DLSS quality) with ultra settings (SSR Ultra) and the game just looks incredibly gorgeous, especially at night with wet ground. Turning RTX on automatically makes game 40fps experience with no obvious change. These details mentioned on video are fine, but they are harder to notice vs noticing decreased game performance to 65%. I can lower resolution to native 1080p without dlss and with rtx on medium and I hit 60fps.. but 1440p dlss quality just looks much better vs rtx on imo. Playing on RTX 3060Ti
Yes, it's not worth sacrificing the fps especially when you dip way below 60 fps.
damn from the look of the thumbnail , it does.
@cesar leon nah i prefer RT. If want to play GTA i'd open GTA
@cesar leon rt is less work than hundreds of area and point lights. An artist placing lighting in a scene is a different thing to programming ai. Doubt artist budget for rt had any impact on the programmers ai.
@yugi yugi except that watch dogs (all 3 of them) are garbage games.
@cesar leon Or why not both? Because it's AI and other criticized issues are more likely gonna be fixed with future patches anyway or if not then Mods should be able to do the job.
@yugi yugi I genuinely think that the AI in GTA are not good as well and feels very generic that it isn't even worth praising for, just like Cyberpunk 2077, in fact i think that most open world games today has terrible NPC AIs in general and i haven't seen one that has an actual good one and the game you mentioned isn't one of them, another mediocre game that has lifeless world design around it. Cyberpunk 2077 is so much better in many aspects.
Thanks for putting this together, I've got a friend getting a 3070 and not sold on RT though, and he loves Cyberpunk on his current 1060.
I wasn't either ... till i upgraded from my 1080ti to a 3070 and re-fired up cyberpunk . The second i turned on RT I was in love... It is hard to describe but it just FEELS so much better. Its little things but they make a huge difference. I was running around looking at stuff for like an hour lol
@@trevorduncan9580 Nice upgrade. If not already you'll soon understand that DLSS is also amazing to have. Metro Exodus and Shadow of the Tomb Raider are other excellent RT implementations worth having a look at (also both great games)
Not all games pull off DLSS though, Tomb Raider doesn't look too great with it.
Great video dude, thx for that :)
Very professionally explained the details. feel like an actual college lecture. Well made video!!!
Ok shit, this was incredibly informative! Thanks a bunch, guys! :)
Basically, raytracing brings prebaked level quality lighting into a dynamic open world with changing time of day. It is a must for games that don't have static time.
The prebaked interpolation in BOTW is pretty great. It does it on a toaster, no less. I would say artistic direction is more important than raytracing unless you’re going for photorealism.
@@willis936 what is prebaked in botw?
I'm making a VR game and due to vast landscape and dynamic day/night cycle I can't use baked lightning. I can cram landscape, cascaded shadowmap dynamic lightning and atmosphere in 5-7ms on RTX 2060. But if I enable ray-tracing it eats my entire budget of 11ms. I can add it to my game no problem, but I think only people with future RTX 4080 Ti would be able to play in VR with it. Or I'll have to dramatically simplify all visual aspects of my game to make space for ray-tracing.
Basically this stuff is great and definitely the future, but VR is also the future (and far more important!) and ray-tracing is still too expensive for VR.
Raytracing will really shine once the artifacts of standard rasterization are done away with. But achieving that kind of a level of performance at playable framrates will require future generations of hardware. I'm excited to be living in this age of PC gaming.
Wouldn't say it's a must cause most people don't have devices that can handle this yet.
finally a showcase of what ray tracing does and the differences. I was a never sold on the feature and thought it was just another unnecessary gimmick, cause games look good enough, but the dex car scene proved it for me. It really gives a next gen vibe and now I just need to wait for it to be playable in about half a decade :)
As I play with Path Tracing on my 4070 and look away from my monitor and checking the shadows-lights on the walls of my room its kinda creepy how similiar it feels. As we get even more realistic computer graphics, at the same time reality becomes looking a bit artifical too as the gap shortens between the two. Its eerie. 😧😅😄
Your editorial direction has been approved.
26 games support raytracing, yet Digital Foundry spends 50%+ of time and videos on it.. and calls it gamechanging. It's becoming annoying
@@mkreku So you don’t think that ray tracing adds a layer of realism to the game?
@@Chopper153 not until AMD does it, then it is the greatest thing in the world, until then it is a gimmick and not needed and only rasterization matters with native graphics only, that is only until AMD does it.
@@Mosamania What has AMD to do with this? 6000 series already support ray tracing, infact AMD is working hard to catch up with Nvidia in rt and dlss. Ray tracing is superior to ssr, doesn't matter what AMD or Nvida wants.
@@Chopper153 I was just taking a jab at AMD fanboys. A malignant bunch.
Imagine when ray tracing becomes so standard that games start coming with only it, the developers won't need to bake in lights and with that time they could add more detail, make the maps bigger, etc, that's one the benefits of ray tracing that I don't often hear people talking about, even if it's probably about a console generation away
when rtx becomes standard games will be easier to make, games will get better with the time
Or, because games are getting more expensive to make and increasingly riddled with MTC, publishers will just lay off half of a studio's lighting team.
@@2drealms196 if that happened, most of those funds would go to developers or 3D artists, the studios would not lose the opportunity to make their games better at no extra cost, at most they would use some of it to increase profit margins a bit, but I would at least expect good studios like arkane, from software, I'd software, cdpr, santa monica and others to just reinvest that money on making better games
also, EA studios are probably fucked
last generation I remember when people said PBR, volumetrics, tessellation and ambient occlusion would never be mainstream because they use too much power. they also said the same thing about how volumetrics "don't look that good and use too much performance!" yet nowadays every single game has some kind of implementation of each. raytracing will go through the same process and nobody will remember the stupid fights pc gamers go into because of it in a couple of years.
I remember when people said strand based hair like hairworks was stupid and expensive yet nowadays we are seeing it implemented in games and so optimized it's actually pretty cheap to use. people who reject raytracing is blind
I noticed while being out in the badlands / desert area, that during a sandstorm, some of the bushes and plants were swaying in the wind and some just weren't; they were just completely still. It took away from the atmosphere and ruined it a little bit. Had all the plants and bushes been swaying hard, it would have felt immersive and powerful.
Do you list your "Optimized" settings anywhere? I've got that RTX 2060 and didn't think I'd be able to pull of RT until I saw this vid
2:51 welcome to the future, teleportation
When you compare two images, the before comes on the left and after on the right.
really looking forward to playing the new max raytracing mode in the future when I make my next upgrade some day
I'm glad to see some folks recognizing how much cool ambiance RT adds to CP. Unfortunately even with a 3080 I turn RT shadows off to get 60+ fps average. And that's with DLSS on performance. The DF optimized settings are amazing BTW. Top credit.
There is something wrong with how DLSS and/or ray tracing is implemented in cyberpunk. I have a 3070 and regardless of settings, when all ray tracing options are on, it will always dip below 60: ultra with DLSS balanced gives me the the same framerates as high/medium with dlss on performance.