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[FireFly]

also, I'm not saying they should use them everywhere, what I am saying is that it should be ridiculed and laughed at when a tiny and empty room with a mirror looks like what we see in Alan Wake 2.

Given that other surfaces do feature mirror-like reflections, this seems like an artistic choice.

 

[PaintTinJr]

There's a reason why developers dont use planar reflections in modern games. You need to render the same scene twice and on modern GPUs like mine that's even more expensive than RT reflections. Also planar reflections are extremely limited and can be only used for razor sharp reflections, whereas RT reflections can be used for both sharp and diffused reflections (pretty much for all materials).

No, that's not true at all, and a planar reflection mirror was even present in Quake3 running on pre-shader and pre-zbuffer hardware like a Voodoo 3DFX in the very first level's first room where you teleport into the corridor.

In shaders on a planar render pass it is easy and cheap enough to create multiple textures - renderbuffers to independently store data - for each light contributing source (ambient, specular and diffuse) so that the reflection can be constructed based on the reflective material's properties. But the main reason for not doing planar reflections is that they aren't a generalised solution outside confined areas with a single contiguous planar reflective surface like a metallic floor(and are single bounce), so are a lighting hack, and because of the accuracy with which they capture reflections can be problematic to use with other noisier reflections on curved surfaces without the lighting looking incoherent and drawing attention to the noise.

 

[Corporal.Hicks]

RT also renders parts of the scene twice.
it might be more efficient culling unused parts of the scene, but that's it.

also, I'm not saying they should use them everywhere, what I am saying is that it should be ridiculed and laughed at when a tiny and empty room with a mirror looks like what we see in Alan Wake 2.

there's no environment where adding planar reflections would be easier than in a closed off bathroom.




which are arguably the most important ones to look right.
if you look at a diffused reflection and the details don't look perfectly right, you'll not notice it nearly as easily as when you look into a bathroom mirror and are greeted with that shit we see in those Alan Wake 2 screenshots.





that's great, that doesn't change the fact that Remedy was too stupid to chose the correct material for their bathroom mirrors (same in the talkshow changing room)





yes, tiny rooms like that one in Alan Wake 2




no it wouldn't. you know what we would see if they used RT?
constant RT boiling, RT ghosting, light slowly fading in and out when the lighting changes in unnatural ways, and lower render resolutions due to GPU stress.

it would look worse.




I agree, RT reflections are the best choice if the hardware power is there.
that doesn't change the fact that in games where it's not viabe to have RT reflections everywhere (because they are on console for example), it should be expected that a bathroom mirror doesn't look 10 times worse in a game from the 2020s, than in a game from the year 2000.

Bathroom are often the simplest environments in a game, with almost nothing there aside from a few flat walls and toiled bowls.




both of these could be fixed without RT, and indeed have looked better than this in other games before. using enough light probes for example that dynamic objects are affected by can fix this

but even so, I take this over RT GI boiling artifacts any day.

RT GI is just ugly as fuck. I haven't seen a game where it doesn't have obvious issues.
all you do is trade one kind of issue with another one, all while killing performance.
so absolutely not worth it.




4 letters: HBAO

The Witcher 3 use HBAO and the lighting still look flat without RT. I also forced MXAO in Uncharted 4 and the lighting still looked flat.

I think RT GI is too expensive on consoles, but even PS4 could run SVOGI.

SVOGI doesnt look as good as RT GI, but it looks good enough.

Naughty Dog games would look a lot better if the character lighting would match the scene.

As for RT GI artefacts such as "boiling", there's some truth to that. UE5 games use software-based dynamic GI and this creates unstable lighting, especially if you start running games at lower internal resolutions. I also saw that "boiling" in PT games (mainly free mods to old games such as Half Life 1 or Quake 2).

Alan Wake 2 also had problems with "boiling" but to much lower extend, because this game supported thr very first version of ray reconstruction and even that old CNN model was really helpful. Now, however, with the updated ray reconstruction (transformer model), the lighting in Alan Wake 2 looks even more stable, and if the lighting stability is good enough for me, it should be perfect for normal gamers, because normal gamers do not have my knowledge about lighting.

There are also games like the Witcher 3, or Metro Exodus (standard edition) that use RT GI, but the lighting looks stable even without RR. The RT lighting in these games arnt as advanced as PT in cyberpunk or Alan Wake 2, but RT GI is still doing it's job (ground objects into the scene).

Even at native 4K I get well over 60fps in metro exodus, so dynamic GI can run well.

GTA5 Enhanced Edition also has very light RT GI and yet it still does make a difference without affecting the stability of the lighting.

 

[kevboard]

Given that other surfaces do feature mirror-like reflections, this seems like an artistic choice.

if it is, it's a very VERY bad one.
mirrors do not look like this, this doesn't look like the correct material whatsoever.

even if you try to give the benefit of the doubt that they wanted to make it look dirty or something, that's still not how that should look.
the material used is wavey and has clearly a super bumpy surface. it looks like bumpy uneven polished silver, and not even remotely like a modern glass mirror.

I almost think they chose this material specifically so that the SSR fallback looks "less" broken than it already does. by having a super bumpy and diffused material they might have hoped that their shitty Screen Space Reflections don't look completely out of place...

they failed either way. now it looks shit with or without RT.
and looks worse than mirrors in games made for GeForce 2 cards in the early 2000s... all while they absolutely could have just used planar reflections on it, given that it's a very undemanding environment (a tiny bathroom)

 

[kevboard]

The Witcher 3 use HBAO and the lighting still look flat without RT. I also forced MXAO in Uncharted 4 and the lighting still looked flat.

I think RT GI is too expensive on consoles, but even PS4 could run SVOGI.

SVOGI doesnt look as good as RT GI, but it looks good enough.

As for RT GI artefacts such as "boiling", there's some truth to that. UE5 games use software-based dynamic GI and this creates unstable lighting, especially if you start running games at lower internal resolutions. I also saw that "boiling" in PT games (mainly free mods to old games such as Half Life 1 or Quake 2).

Alan Wake 2 had problem with "boiling" but to much lower extend, because this game supported ray reconstruction. Now however with updated ray reconstruction (transformer model) the lighting in Alan Wake 2 looks way more stable. if lighting stability is good enough for me, it should be perfect to normal gamers, because normal gamers dont have my knowledge about light.

There are also games like the Witcher 3, or Metro Exodus (standard edition) lighting looks stable even without RR. The RT lighting in these games arnt as advanced as PT in cyberpunk or Alan Wake 2, but RT GI is still doing it's job (ground objects into the scene).

Even at native 4K I get well over 60fps in metro exodus, so dynamic GI can run well.

At the moment I'm playing GTA5 Enhanced Edition and this game also has very light RT GI and it does make a difference without ruining the stability of the lighting compared to raster.

Lumen looks awful in hardware mode too.
in fact, in some games the software mode looks more stable than the hardware mode, which is hilarious in a way.

the way UE5's rt looks (as in DOOOOGSHIT) is exactly why RTGI is simply not feasible yet on console specifically. Lumen is designed to be as low cost as possible, and it's very obvious in every game that uses it on console.
I have not seen a single console game that uses Lumen that doesn't look like someone smeared shit on the TV.

this issue extends to mid-range PCs as well, as they often have similar performance constraints.

RT GI currently only really looks good on high end PCs where the internal resolution and ray count is high enough to avoid obvious boiling and smearing.
RT Reflections are less of an issue and should be the only form of RT used on console, specifically for surfaces with low roughness values. diffuse reflections don't need RT, and in fact can look pretty awful with RT for the same reason GI often looks awful, way too much boiling, ghosting and shimmering.


my main issue is adding RT for the sake of it, or adding it as a way to cut costs (as in letting Lumen do the lighting for you instead of authoring it manually)

Insomniac uses RT perfectly for example, no complaints there. Bloober Team meanwhile uses it terribly.
Remedy is somewhere in-between. their engine is impressive in many ways, but their fallback when RT is off is just awful.

Insomniac did place some planar reflections in Spiderman 2 for example, specifically in smaller rooms with mirrors, because it looks better and can be done easily in such scenarios.
meanwhile Remedy apparently doesn't care that the dressing room that you visit multiple times during an Alan Wake 2 playthrough looks like it is broken due to their awful material choice for the gigantic mirrors in the room, and by using noisy RT reflections or even SSR on them instead of using planar reflections, which would 100% be doable in such a tiny room given how graphically complex some of the forest environments are in comparison.

 

[Negotiator]

I haven’t watched or interacted with DF since the Hogwarts Legacy incident. A game that scales from Switch to PS5/PC and everything in between and not a fucking squeak from the PC Police Officer, Alex Battaglia.

And then you have John Linneman, a man with such a huge yellow streak up his back that he didn’t want to be kicked off Resetera for breaking the boycott, so he thought he would just hide behind the children’s bullshit comment as a reason to not cover the game.

And then he posts this on BlueSky…

Not to mention the fact that Linneman has covered MANY open world games and “children’s games”. In fact, I think he covered Klonoa 2 just after this comment.

Don’t piss up my back and tell me it’s raining.

Fuck DF.

Richard Leadbetter is cool though.

This fucking nerd praises the 16-bit era and back then "kiddie games" were the norm (from Sonic to Mario).

What a douchebag...

 

[Corporal.Hicks]

Lumen looks awful in hardware mode too.
in fact, in some games the software mode looks more stable than the hardware mode, which is hilarious in a way.

the way UE5's rt looks (as in DOOOOGSHIT) is exactly why RTGI is simply not feasible yet on console specifically. Lumen is designed to be as low cost as possible, and it's very obvious in every game that uses it on console.
I have not seen a single console game that uses Lumen that doesn't look like someone smeared shit on the TV.

this issue extends to mid-range PCs as well, as they often have similar performance constraints.

RT GI currently only really looks good on high end PCs where the internal resolution and ray count is high enough to avoid obvious boiling and smearing.
RT Reflections are less of an issue and should be the only form of RT used on console, specifically for surfaces with low roughness values. diffuse reflections don't need RT, and in fact can look pretty awful with RT for the same reason GI often looks awful, way too much boiling, ghosting and shimmering.


my main issue is adding RT for the sake of it, or adding it as a way to cut costs (as in letting Lumen do the lighting for you instead of authoring it manually)

Insomniac uses RT perfectly for example, no complaints there. Bloober Team meanwhile uses it terribly.
Remedy is somewhere in-between. their engine is impressive in many ways, but their fallback when RT is off is just awful.

Insomniac did place some planar reflections in Spiderman 2 for example, specifically in smaller rooms with mirrors, because it looks better and can be done easily in such scenarios.
meanwhile Remedy apparently doesn't care that the dressing room that you visit multiple times during an Alan Wake 2 playthrough looks like it is broken due to their awful material choice for the gigantic mirrors in the room, and by using noisy RT reflections or even SSR on them instead of using planar reflections, which would 100% be doable in such a tiny room given how graphically complex some of the forest environments are in comparison.

I played SH2 remake with HW lumen and the lighting was definitely more stable compared to software lumen.... although even HW lumen was quite unstable. There was however ray reconstruction mod for this game that made the lighting reasonably stable with hardware lumen.

I have noticed that UE5 lumen "boiling" and shimmering is very sensitive to internal resolution. I'm playing Robocop Rogue City right now, and this game has a very noticeable shimmering and boiling on reflective surfaces, even with DLSS quality. With DLAA, however, this noise is greatly reduced and I can play the game without being distracted. DLSS can reconstruct detail and sharpness perfectly, but the quality of RT effects (even software based dynamic GI) is tied to internal resolution. Ray reconstruction can help, but only if hardware lumen is used.

Alan Wake 2 with the latest ray reconstruction looks amazing even when I use more agressive DLSS (performance mode) while UE5 games that use lumen needs DLAA to look reasonably stable (still not good, but acceptable).

 

[BlownUpRich]

Nothing.

 

[Windom Earle]

Alex "Cuck" Battaglia needs to be taken down a notch, good video. DF are not the church of tech, they are a questionable institution at best.

 

[PurePlatinum]

DF and likeminded thinking have only been prevalent in the console space for the last ten years or so. It’s a cancer that used to be contained with the PC nerds.

When you can’t innovate in actual game design, things as banal as resolution and framerate start being the only points of discussion. It’s so incredibly boring. I played SOTC in 2005 at like 15 FPS and loved every minute.

 

[Team Andromeda]

This fucking nerd praises the 16-bit era and back then "kiddie games" were the norm (from Sonic to Mario).

What a douchebag...

Yep, that's John.

 

[Team Andromeda]

I haven’t watched or interacted with DF since the Hogwarts Legacy incident. A game that scales from Switch to PS5/PC and everything in between and not a fucking squeak from the PC Police Officer, Alex Battaglia.

And then you have John Linneman, a man with such a huge yellow streak up his back that he didn’t want to be kicked off Resetera for breaking the boycott, so he thought he would just hide behind the children’s bullshit comment as a reason to not cover the game.

And then he posts this on BlueSky…

Not to mention the fact that Linneman has covered MANY open world games and “children’s games”. In fact, I think he covered Klonoa 2 just after this comment.

Don’t piss up my back and tell me it’s raining.

Fuck DF.

Richard Leadbetter is cool though.

Yep, John and Alex act like kids and have killed the site for being a serious grown-up site

Rich is cool and I also have time for Oliver

 

[Goalus]

The guy in the OP is a clown, I can say this much.

 

[Team Andromeda]

DF and likeminded thinking have only been prevalent in the console space for the last ten years or so. It’s a cancer that used to be contained with the PC nerds.

When you can’t innovate in actual game design, things as banal as resolution and framerate start being the only points of discussion. It’s so incredibly boring. I played SOTC in 2005 at like 15 FPS and loved every minute.

Well said

If we had DF in the old days SOCT, GoldenEye 64, Turok 2, Star Fox, Perfect Dark64, Wave Race 64, Pilotwings 64 and many more classics would all be classed as unplayable by DF

Their coverage of Cyberpunk sucked ass

 

[Ozriel]

How is this any different from DF? Seriously as someone who has more development environment than their whole crew combined, I find it hard to take them seriously? I'm not advocating for TI but people need to stop viewing DF as an "expert" on anything. They constantly make shit up all the time and make statements that are frankly ridiculous.

Since when did the Digital Foundry crew ever call themselves ‘developers’?

Ironic that you’re the one making stuff up here.

They made a 13-minute video about three or four short messages they received in correspondence from Mark Cerny. The grift is strong with them.

How people haven't grown tired of their schtick is beyond me.

You wailed about this in those threads and people pointed out the rationale behind that. Yet you’re still here, complaining.

There’s no ‘grift’. Only the rage of butthurt fanboys.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

You wailed about this in those threads and people pointed out the rationale behind that. Yet you’re still here, complaining.

There’s no ‘grift’. Only the rage of butthurt fanboys.

People pointed out the rationale behind making a 13 minute video from 4 short messages?