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[fatmarco]

There's a reason no one makes these arguments using screenshots of the NPCs though. For all the Ray Tracing Cyberpunk added, the biggest visual problem for me was the way characters were lit outside of designed cutscenes. For me that's always been the most irritating part (maybe outside of the NPC animation but thats a different issue sort of).

The effect of self shadowing, whether through direct light or ambient light, makes a big difference, and the problem is the Ray Tracing isn't fine detailed enough to cover the NPCs correctly in fine, micro detail shadows, which is why they should have come up with another solution for that specific purpose.

 

[Turk1993]

There's a reason no one makes these arguments using screenshots of the NPCs though. For all the Ray Tracing Cyberpunk added, the biggest visual problem for me was the way characters were lit outside of designed cutscenes. For me that's always been the most irritating part (maybe outside of the NPC animation but thats a different issue sort of).

The effect of self shadowing, whether through direct light or ambient light, makes a big difference, and the problem is the Ray Tracing isn't fine detailed enough to cover the NPCs correctly in fine, micro detail shadows, which is why they should have come up with another solution for that specific purpose.

No cutscenes, random NPCS in free roam

 

[ZehDon]

RDR2 was on the same level as launch Cyberpunk 2077, but now with Path Tracing? It's not even close anymore - easily the best visuals of any game I've played by a wide margin.

 

[Mr.Phoenix]

I can understand that, the new next gen titles are far more demanding to run at 1080p than our last gen stuff. That being said, 1080p medium is rarely needed unless you're running a portable PC. I've been able to play plenty of 2023 titles at 1440/1080p high settings on my 6650xt.

Low end is getting to the point where you actively have to think about the graphics settings during play, that's what i consider low end IMO. stuff like the 1070, 1650, 1660, 580, etc.

Our definitions wildly vary here

I guess so. I consider my 3080 mid-range.

Good enough to be really good in the middle, so 1440p, mid to high settings, 50- 70fps...etc. Not good enough to handle the best of the best at 4K. So you will usually get 4K@30-40fps with a mid-range GPU.

To me, high end, is minimal compromise gaming. A high-end GPUwoudet you max out evrything in most games and maintain well over 60fps in them.

Of course, you can start throwing things like reconstruction into the mix which skews things, but hey, its tech and allows for the hardware to push above its weight class.

 

[fatmarco]

No cutscenes, random NPCS in free roam

The first image to me is sort of what I'm talking about. You can see he's got shadows on him but not every piece of geometry is casting a shadow. I sort of want it to get to the point where his pockets etc. cast shadows onto the jacket, even if its subtle and soft.

I think though potentially the issue with the npcs has more to do with how their skin renders, the use of (or lack of) sub surface scattering etc. I never feel is dialed in quite right. Also maybe its an issue with the amount of Ray bounces, but the second image the shadows are too harsh/dark for broad daylight.

By the way I'm not arguing against it being the best looking game, I sort of thought it was even prior to the Ray Tracing patches, I'm just pointing out something that irritates me.

 

[Turk1993]

The first image to me is sort of what I'm talking about. You can see he's got shadows on him but not every piece of geometry is casting a shadow. I sort of want it to get to the point where his pockets etc. cast shadows onto the jacket, even if its subtle and soft.

If you look close enough you will actually see that everything does cast shadows, its just super soft because its diffused indoor lighting coming from a led water tube. I will see if i can capture a better image of that guy later on from a different angle and more zoomed in.

I think though potentially the issue with the npcs has mreo to do with how their skin renders, the use of (or lack of) sub surface scattering etc. I never feel is dialed in quite right. Also maybe its an issue with the amount of Ray bounces, but the second image the shadows are too harsh/dark for broad daylight.

Your right on SSS , they could improve it and it would really look alot better. But the shadows in the second image are perfect actually

By the way I'm not arguing against it being the best looking game, I sort of thought it was even prior to the Ray Tracing patches, I'm just pointing out something that irritates me.

No worries man, discussions like this is why we post on this forum. You have your opinion and i have mine, i respect it.

 

[genesisblock]

Not gonna lie. When I saw the update I was someone skeptical but I have a 4090 so I tested it out anyway. I just started the game so I was in my apartment when this update was installed, I saw some difference in the shower lighting but that's about it. Then I opened the window shade....

My jaw dropped to the floor. The way the light bleeds in your dark room causing transformed a dull space into almost a physical object like, a sort of presence. Something reserved only for VR experiences and yet, I just looked around just absolutely stunned. Then I went outside, no matter the condition day or night, it looks absolutely incredible. Even with DLSS 3.0 the frame-rate is dropping to 40s to show how intensive this tech is. So much to the point I had to lower the resolution for more "stability". Unfortunately, this had the effect of making this too washed out on top of the "performance" mode. So, the first time, I'm putting up with less than 60 for a PC experience for now just because it looks too damn good.

 

[FIREKNIGHT2029]

It depends. Sometimes I think it is but then I play Horizon Forbidden West on my PS5 and then I change my mind. I’ll just say that CP2077 with path-tracing and HFW are two of the best looking games out right now. You can pick either one as the best looking game and you would be right at this point. Both are graphical powerhouses.

 

[alucard0712_rus]

Don't be fooled by almost professional-level screenshots. While the game does look good, it won't look as good as those screenshots moment-to-moment.

Mostly because IQ is shit in motion with DLSS. DLAA looks much better.

 

[sertopico]

Try this mod out. Then it's crazy how good it looks: https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/5363?tab=description

It overhauls the lighting and it fixes lots of visual glitches the Path Tracing had.

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

Nah

 

[mckmas8808]

Because Horizon dumps all its compute power into assets/geometry, Cyberpunk's assets are decidedly middling last gen quality. Horizon definitely has a more obvious and immediate wow factor thanks to that, compounded by the fact devs and modern techniques are very good at faking lighting.

I'm starting to wonder if companies should rethink making every game with real-time lighting. Maybe pre-baked lighting should still be used then.

 

[ToTTenTranz]

The RTX4060's launch is bombing?

Quick, talk about cyberpunk again!

 

[Mister Wolf]

I'm starting to wonder if companies should rethink making every game with real-time lighting. Maybe pre-baked lighting should still be used then.

Baking the lighting for non open world games is fine. What they need to pair with the baked lighting is high quality shadow and ambient occlusion tech. That's the route FF16 went.

 

[TxKnight7]

This scene was fine before. Now they added a nuclear bomb blast outside the room.

This kind of extreme exposure makes games look worse for me, not better.

I think it looks more realistic you can see something like this in real life, the lighting and shadows are more accurate with PT.

 

[nkarafo]

I think it looks more realistic you can see something like this in real life, the lighting and shadows are more accurate with PT.

Daylight doesn't look like a burned white glow in real life. There's no such thing, unless you stare directly at the sun or reflect it on a mirror or something. In real life, you can see everything clearly outside the window if it's a sunny day, even if indoors it's darker. The outside world doesn't look like a white, blinding flash.

I don't know how this crappy camera effect got the reputation of being "realistic". It's only realistic if you look at the world through the lens of a phone camera. It's an exposure limitation of various cameras. But if you just use your eyes, this is not how our world looks. You can easily test it yourself. Just look outside your window.

 

[CGNoire]

Daylight doesn't look like a burned white glow in real life. There's no such thing, unless you stare directly at the sun or reflect it on a mirror or something. In real life, you can see everything clearly outside the window if it's a sunny day, even if indoors it's darker. The outside world doesn't look like a white, blinding flash.

I don't know how this crappy camera effect got the reputation of being "realistic". It's only realistic if you look at the world through the lens of a phone camera. It's an exposure limitation of various cameras. But if you just use your eyes, this is not how our world looks. You can easily test it yourself. Just look outside your window.

Yes the game still needs Automatic Exposure Control for sure.

 

[crackajack]

RT PT whatever looks often nice, if it is not overemphasized like new effects usually are.
But I never quite know if it is really worth the cost. I wonder how efficient a "pure" 4090GTX could be, or at least as entry level cards 4060/4070GTX without the RT cores alltogether, where any RT anyway is probably not top priority. Just regular CUDA and DLSS cores.
Or as a different 4090GTX with the same die size but everything beefed up, just without RT.
Would such a card produce more impressive fake lighting and reflections? Is RT efficient at all in the current tech, or just an expensive feature? Where each additional level of depth in coming gens will make 4090 also soon obsolete?

 

[Schmendrick]

RT PT whatever looks often nice, if it is not overemphasized like new effects usually are.
But I never quite know if it is really worth the cost. I wonder how efficient a "pure" 4090GTX could be, or at least as entry level cards 4060/4070GTX without the RT cores alltogether, where any RT anyway is probably not top priority. Just regular CUDA and DLSS cores.
Or as a different 4090GTX with the same die size but everything beefed up, just without RT.
Would such a card produce more impressive fake lighting and reflections? Is RT efficient at all in the current tech, or just an expensive feature? Where each additional level of depth in coming gens will make 4090 also soon obsolete?

Easy to answer.
Do you want a static or a dynamic world?
Static => Faked can look near indistinguishable from RT/PT.
Dynamic => Faked visibly breaks down.

RT/PT is not some "effect", it`s a light simulation/approximation.

 

[crackajack]

Easy to answer.
Do you want a static or a dynamic world?
Static => Faked can look near indistinguishable from RT/PT.
Dynamic => Faked visibly breaks down.

RT/PT is not some "effect", it`s a light simulation/approximation.

Would surprise me very much if RT leads to more dynamic worlds. But if the price for that immense (?) HW investment enables that, than that would actually be stuff that feels worth it, more than the light simulation in itself. No idea if beside moving cars anything dynamic was shown and not always just rather static stuff. Physics barely made a step forward since PhysX and Havoc and HL2 were hot topics.

RT is hardly new tech, but doing it real time is certainly rather new, so it might evolve this gen already, but still I have to wonder if a RT-free HW would not have been better to get this gen's RDR2 or TLoU2, at least consoles might have been better skipping RT and on PC GTX and RTX should have stayed longer as two product lines. RTX just for the enthusiasts, and GTX the overall more affordable kinda outdated kinda conservative anti progress option.

 

[kurashu]

I've been playing around with RT/PT and it's just amazing.
I recorded the first (on-rail) cutscene, when you meet Jackie and have your montage, on both Ray and Path tracing.
Unfortunately my machine is not able to have a stable FPS so the videos don't match 1:1. (I do play on 1900x1200...)
But it's close enough to do a on/off (or even screen wipe) to compare. Might try to manually "sync" the videos and post it with comparison wipes.

One thing I feel is that the lighting in the game in general wasn't done for Path Tracing but Ray tracing in mind. (Lighting in a creative sense, not technical).
Some scenes seem like they look better lit when playing with RT on instead of PT, even though technically PT has much more shadow details (well, shadow period) than RT.
It makes sense as it seems like there was a need to forcefully light the game in a way that looks good without having the power of PT.

This is not a bad thing but makes me hope that next games, with PT "lighting" in mind, will look even more amazing!

PT:

RT:

Other images (so I don't spam the post with images

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screenshgnevw.png

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screenshjvfrl.png

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screenshtoc4d.png

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screensh3if4v.png

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screenshz6ihg.png

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screenshz1inj.png

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screensha4ikq.png

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screensh34dll.png

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screensh7ei19.png

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screenshm5e0z.png

 

[kurashu]

I've been playing around with RT/PT and it's just amazing.
I recorded the first (on-rail) cutscene, when you meet Jackie and have your montage, on both Ray and Path tracing.
Unfortunately my machine is not able to have a stable FPS so the videos don't match 1:1. (I do play on 1900x1200...)
But it's close enough to do a on/off (or even screen wipe) to compare. Might try to manually "sync" the videos and post it with comparison wipes.

One thing I feel is that the lighting in the game in general wasn't done for Path Tracing but Ray tracing in mind. (Lighting in a creative sense, not technical).
Some scenes seem like they look better lit when playing with RT on instead of PT, even though technically PT has much more shadow details (well, shadow period) than RT.
It makes sense as it seems like there was a need to forcefully light the game in a way that looks good without having the power of PT.

This is not a bad thing but makes me hope that next games, with PT "lighting" in mind, will look even more amazing!

PT:

RT:

Other images (so I don't spam the post with images

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screenshgnevw.png

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screenshjvfrl.png

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screenshtoc4d.png

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screensh3if4v.png

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screenshz6ihg.png

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screenshz1inj.png

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screensha4ikq.png

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screensh34dll.png

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screensh7ei19.png

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screenshm5e0z.png

Took me too long to edit and add better description!

Apartment:
PT:

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screenshgnevw.png

RT:

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screenshjvfrl.png

Office:
PT:

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screenshtoc4d.png

RT:

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screensh3if4v.png

Judy:
PT:

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screenshz6ihg.png

RT:

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screenshz1inj.png

Cyberdoc:
PT:

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screensha4ikq.png

RT:

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screensh34dll.png

Monks at park: (i don't remember which is which
RT?:

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screensh7ei19.png

PT?:

https://abload.de/img/cyberpunk2077screenshm5e0z.png

 

[M1987]

Try this mod out. Then it's crazy how good it looks: https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/5363?tab=description

It overhauls the lighting and it fixes lots of visual glitches the Path Tracing had.

Which mod is it? I downloaded the raster and PT plus the immersive on and it's made everything too dark

 

[sertopico]

Which mod is it? I downloaded the raster and PT plus the immersive on and it's made everything too dark

That's what I wrote. It overhauls the whole lighting system, introduces new weathers and greatly improves the path tracing visuals by reducing artifacts and making the lighting more accurate and realistic. You got to use one version at a time. The fact that is darker is intentional, since it is inspired by Ghost in the Shell (must watch if you didn't). There are no sunny weathers in this mod. As indicated in the mod description, try setting the gamma between 0.98 and 0.92. Currently there is a bug that has been apparently introduced by CDP that doesn't allow weather types to cycle properly after a call with Takemura, so the weather is always sunny in the vanilla version and always overcast in this mod.

 

[HeWhoWalks]

It's impressive but useless for anyone without a RTX 4090.

Eh, my 3090 Ti begs to differ.
Regarding the question — no, but it's within. Forbidden West and Callisto Protocol easily rival it for me.

 

[GC_DALBEN]

One of the best, i still prefer RDR2.

 

[M1987]

Eh, my 3090 Ti begs to differ.
Regarding the question — no, but it's within. Forbidden West and Callisto Protocol easily rival it for me.

Even my 3080 Ti hits around 60fps 1440p DLSS balanced,RT Physco PT,so it's not as taxing as people make out

 

[KuraiShidosha]

One of the best, i still prefer RDR2.

I used to think RDR2 was so hyper realistic and the pinnacle, but honestly when you really look at things, the quality of geometry and textures are not great. This is especially true with trees. They look very low quality compared to even something like Crysis from 11 years prior. And then there's the fact that it lacks ray tracing effects altogether which can really hurt it at times. Things like reflections with the dynamic cubemaps just stick out like a sore thumb and hold the game back. I'd love to see a next gen (as in PS6) remaster of RDR2 with tons of RT effects in play. It would help a lot with cleaning up the little issues with rendering it has because of the limitations of rasterized graphics tech.