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Graphical Fidelity I Expect This Gen

CamHostage

Member
That has nothing to do with the PS5 or XSX specs. Every game is held back by last gen versions... Matrix, Avatar and other UE5 engine demos show what you can accomplish by targeting PS5 and XSX specs.

I mean, kind of? But not really?

Matrix shows what you can accomplish by throwing 30GB of pure asset data (without much gameplay or rich media,) at a relatively modest section of playable area with a heavy reliance on repeatable objects, rendered using a bleeding-edge engine featuring technology that is as of now is not yet approved as ready for consumer production releases.

R7laQhz.png


Eventually, Nanite will be formalized and we can talk about a clear dividing line established between past-gen and next-gen. (That is, assuming Nanite won't be able reach down below PS5/XS levels; UE5 projects can be run on machines in the vicinity of PS4/One, albeit at unplayable framerates, but actually supporting lesser platforms probably just will never be worth the complications for Epic for practical purposes.) UE5 Early Access does some amazing stuff (even in the hands of kitbashing amateurs,) and it'll surely be a leader in demonstrating new levels of power from these new consoles and emerging PC standards or even future mobile devices, but that's still out in the future.

For now, though, it's not much about what you're targeting that's getting games "held up". This is a common narrative, as if developers are lazy or publishers are greedy for not going "full-next-gen". The reality is, if Spider-Man Miles Morales had targeted only PS5 instead of cross-gen, it still would not have looked like Matrix Awakens. (Its next-gen-exclusive sibling R&C Rift Apart is staggeringly next-gen with its instant-loading levels only possible on a console like PS5, but otherwise a lot of core Insomniac technology was shared between the two projects, one next-gen and one cross-gen.) The tech to enable a greater leap still is being worked out. UE5 and a number of other technologies that will take "full advantage" of the next-generation were not ready for prime-time, at launch or even today. And so, with just what developers are familiar with working with currently, there's only so much you can accomplish by targeting PS5 and XSX specs that can't also be scaled down to PS4 and XO specs.
 
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KXVXII9X

Member
Consider that Steam in 2021 had 132 million monthly active players.
Then consider that 1/3 has an RTX card. Then there are those with cards with GTX 1080-1080Ti, RX 5700XT, RX 6600XT and better. These are cards with performance close to current gen consoles.
And we are getting close to having 40-50% of Steam users with decent GPUs. That's more than 50 million users with good GPUs. The PS5 and Series X combined, probably won't reach this value in 2022.
Also consider that the GTX 1060 only accounts for 7.95% of users. Also remember that the GTX 1060 6Gb is more powerful than the Series S.

So this idea that PCs are slowing down game development on this new generation, is complete nonsense.
Truth be told, it's the opposite, because consoles have much weaker RT and AI capabilities.

And mind you, this is at a time when it's near impossible to get a GPU at MSRP.
If it wasn't for this, the average GPU would be even better.
At some point devs are going to have to make games for higher end PC's and consoles. Someone has to start. The same with AAA devs developing for VR. Studios have been playing it safe for too long now. This is getting silly.
 

winjer

Gold Member
At some point devs are going to have to make games for higher end PC's and consoles. Someone has to start. The same with AAA devs developing for VR. Studios have been playing it safe for too long now. This is getting silly.

The issue is the last gen. And the newer gens have limited production because of the chip shortage.
With 120 million PS4, it's not like any studio can afford to ignore it. Add the Xbox Ones and it gets close to 200 million devices.
 

Xdrive05

Member
It'll be two or three more years before there's enough install base for SeriesPS5 + RTX-class PC GPUs to justify targeting current gen as the baseline.

Series S as the baseline, let's be honest. But that's still way better than the jaguar trash holding us back until then.
 

Xdrive05

Member
More PS5s were sold than PS4 at launch. Plenty of people have them.


T51NLAf.png

"Plenty" is a relative term when you juxtapose the nearly 170 million PS4s and Xbox Ones out in the wild. The publisher community is largely not going to fund projects that exclusively service the tiny fraction of users in the current gen.

It's great that sales are stronger relative to the same point in the previous gen, but you still need a lot more to get the money pumping in the right direction to cut the tether to last gen.
 
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"Plenty" is a relative term when you juxtapose the nearly 170 million PS4s and Xbox Ones out in the wild. The publisher community is largely not going to fund projects that exclusively service the tiny fraction of users in the current gen.

It's great that sales are stronger relative to the same point in the previous gen, but you still need a lot more to get the money pumping in the right direction to cut the tether to last gen.
When PS4 came out, do you remember AAA cross gen games continuing to come 2 years after launch?

Back in 2015, everything had transitioned to PS4 and Xbox One only with no PS3 version.
 

01011001

Banned
More PS5s were sold than PS4 at launch. Plenty of people have them.


T51NLAf.png

"Plenty" is a relative term when you juxtapose the nearly 170 million PS4s and Xbox Ones out in the wild. The publisher community is largely not going to fund projects that exclusively service the tiny fraction of users in the current gen.

It's great that sales are stronger relative to the same point in the previous gen, but you still need a lot more to get the money pumping in the right direction to cut the tether to last gen.

When PS4 came out, do you remember AAA cross gen games continuing to come 2 years after launch?

Back in 2015, everything had transitioned to PS4 and Xbox One only with no PS3 version.

here are the ACTUAL reasons we have cross gen titles this far into the gen.

1: THERE IS NO REAL JUMP IN GRAPHICAL QUALITY OR CAPABILITIES FROM LAST GEN TO CURRENT GEN, IT IS SIMPLY AN INCREMENTAL UPGRADE

2: MODERN ENGINES SCALE SUPER EASILY AND HAVE BEEN OPTIMISED FOR REALLY SHITTY CPUs THANKS TO HOW BAD LAST GEN CONSOLES WERE

3: GAME DEVELOPMENT GETS MORE EXPENSIVE AND PUBLISHERS MORE GREEDY BY THE YEAR

there you have it. these consoles selling faster than their predecessors doesn't change a thing, and it's not about how many consoles are in peoples homes, if that was the case, every PS3 game would have released on PS2 for like 3 years at least with how terrible the PS3 sold and was at launch... but that didn't happen because the spec jump, render tech jump and dev costs weren't comparable to today.

there is no real "next gen", what we got here is an incremental upgrade. just think about it... the GPUs of the PS5 and Series X are only about 2x as powerful as the most powerful last gen system. The Series S' GPU is LESS POWERFUL than the best last gen system's GPU.
This generation's jump is not in graphics, not in complexity, but it is a jump in framerate and I/O, neither of which necessitate to last gen consoles to be abandoned. in fact, they could most likely keep the PS4 Pro and One X alive right up until the end of this generation if they wanted to cut off support for base consoles.
only a handful of games would not be able to run on those I bet, those would be the few that actually push raytracing or extremely CPU heavy scenes.
 
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VFXVeteran

Banned
here are the ACTUAL reasons we have cross gen titles this far into the gen.

1: THERE IS NO REAL JUMP IN GRAPHICAL QUALITY OR CAPABILITIES FROM LAST GEN TO CURRENT GEN, IT IS SIMPLY AN INCREMENTAL UPGRADE

2: MODERN ENGINES SCALE SUPER EASILY AND HAVE BEEN OPTIMISED FOR REALLY SHITTY CPUs THANKS TO HOW BAD LAST GEN CONSOLES WERE

3: GAME DEVELOPMENT GETS MORE EXPENSIVE AND PUBLISHERS MORE GREEDY BY THE YEAR

there you have it. these consoles selling faster than their predecessors doesn't change a thing, and it's not about how many consoles are in peoples homes, if that was the case, every PS3 game would have released on PS2 for like 3 years at least with how terrible the PS3 sold and was at launch... but that didn't happen because the spec jump, render tech jump and dev costs weren't comparable to today.

there is no real "next gen", what we got here is an incremental upgrade. just think about it... the GPUs of the PS5 and Series X are only about 2x as powerful as the most powerful last gen system. The Series S' GPU is LESS POWERFUL than the best last gen system's GPU.
This generation's jump is not in graphics, not in complexity, but it is a jump in framerate and I/O, neither of which necessitate to last gen consoles to be abandoned. in fact, they could most likely keep the PS4 Pro and One X alive right up until the end of this generation if they wanted to cut off support for base consoles.
only a handful of games would not be able to run on those I bet, those would be the few that actually push raytracing or extremely CPU heavy scenes.
These comments are going to deaths' ears. I said this already and got ridiculed for it. You might as well just stay quiet until the end of the generation when their big leap in graphical fidelity game comes out.
 
here are the ACTUAL reasons we have cross gen titles this far into the gen.

1: THERE IS NO REAL JUMP IN GRAPHICAL QUALITY OR CAPABILITIES FROM LAST GEN TO CURRENT GEN, IT IS SIMPLY AN INCREMENTAL UPGRADE

2: MODERN ENGINES SCALE SUPER EASILY AND HAVE BEEN OPTIMISED FOR REALLY SHITTY CPUs THANKS TO HOW BAD LAST GEN CONSOLES WERE

3: GAME DEVELOPMENT GETS MORE EXPENSIVE AND PUBLISHERS MORE GREEDY BY THE YEAR

there you have it. these consoles selling faster than their predecessors doesn't change a thing, and it's not about how many consoles are in peoples homes, if that was the case, every PS3 game would have released on PS2 for like 3 years at least with how terrible the PS3 sold and was at launch... but that didn't happen because the spec jump, render tech jump and dev costs weren't comparable to today.

there is no real "next gen", what we got here is an incremental upgrade. just think about it... the GPUs of the PS5 and Series X are only about 2x as powerful as the most powerful last gen system. The Series S' GPU is LESS POWERFUL than the best last gen system's GPU.
This generation's jump is not in graphics, not in complexity, but it is a jump in framerate and I/O, neither of which necessitate to last gen consoles to be abandoned. in fact, they could most likely keep the PS4 Pro and One X alive right up until the end of this generation if they wanted to cut off support for base consoles.
only a handful of games would not be able to run on those I bet, those would be the few that actually push raytracing or extremely CPU heavy scenes.

Why even move to next gen if all games can easily run on last gen? What ever happened to finally being able to get rid of scripted walking/squeezing sequences to accommodate load times? Why are we still gearing development toward old outdated hardware? I thought devs wanted to be free of the restraints of last gen with their slow-ass hard drives and slow-ass CPUs? Everything is much more balanced on next gen. Lots of memory, super fast storage, decent GPU.

Unreal Engine 5 is the only thing I've seen so far that actually takes things to the next level.

I want next level graphics as well as physics and destruction with realistic lighting that has natural light bounces. All of that is coming.
 

VFXVeteran

Banned
Why even move to next gen if all games can easily run on last gen? What ever happened to finally being able to get rid of scripted walking/squeezing sequences to accommodate load times? Why are we still gearing development toward old outdated hardware? I thought devs wanted to be free of the restraints of last gen with their slow-ass hard drives and slow-ass CPUs? Everything is much more balanced on next gen. Lots of memory, super fast storage, decent GPU.

Unreal Engine 5 is the only thing I've seen so far that actually takes things to the next level.

I want next level graphics as well as physics and destruction with realistic lighting that has natural light bounces. All of that is coming.
No. All of that isn't possible on next-gen hardware. The technology just isn't there to run those kinds of things you want at any reasonable clip. A sure fire way of being able to tell what the hardware can do is how fast it can run last-gen games. And right now, consoles have to literally use reconstruction techniques with old 2D texture space techniques at 4k with questionable FPS (mostly 30FPS at native 4k). That should tell you how constrained the hardware is on these new consoles.
 
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Arioco

Member
No. All of that isn't possible on next-gen hardware. The technology just isn't there to run those kinds of things you want at any reasonable clip. A sure fire way of being able to tell what the hardware can do is how fast it can run last-gen games. And right now, consoles have to literally use reconstruction techniques with old 2D texture space techniques at 4k with questionable FPS (mostly 30FPS at native 4k). That should tell you how constrained the hardware is on these new consoles.

Remember when he said he was done with the thread? Well, it turned out it wasn't entirely true. Surprise! 🤷‍♂️

giphy.gif
 
No. All of that isn't possible on next-gen hardware. The technology just isn't there to run those kinds of things you want at any reasonable clip. A sure fire way of being able to tell what the hardware can do is how fast it can run last-gen games. And right now, consoles have to literally use reconstruction techniques with old 2D texture space techniques at 4k with questionable FPS (mostly 30FPS at native 4k). That should tell you how constrained the hardware is on these new consoles.
What do you mean that isn't coming? The Matrix demo has all that and more. I said nothing about 4K.
 

VFXVeteran

Banned
What do you mean that isn't coming? The Matrix demo has all that and more. I said nothing about 4K.
The Matrix demo isn't using path tracing. That is the only way to get good natural lighting. Typical RT isn't the same as Path tracing.

Also, the Matrix demo is just a demo. It doesn't mean at all that you'll see a game using all of those elements anytime soon. Especially from studios that will be using their own graphics engine. (which isn't as far ahead as Epic Games is).
 
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The Matrix demo isn't using path tracing. That is the only way to get good natural lighting. Typical RT isn't the same as Path tracing.

Also, the Matrix demo is just a demo. It doesn't mean at all that you'll see a game using all of those elements anytime soon. Especially from studios that will be using their own graphics engine. (which isn't as far ahead as Epic Games is).

I don't need path tracing. Nanite and Lumen do enough to make a convincing looking image. The Matrix is so far ahead of everything else, and they even said they left a lot of headroom for gameplay elements too, so they weren't maxing out the hardware with just a basic open world city.

Tell me what other game has come along that is even close to the Matrix Demo?

RT GI
RT Reflections
RT Shadows
RT Ambient Occlusion
Virtually Unlimited Draw Distance
Virtually Unlimited LOD

It's all happening at once. All games that have released on this gen have had some sort of missing features. You can have RT shadows, but not reflections, you can have RT reflections, but not shadows, you can have 60fps but, no RT. You can have RT GI, but the rest of the game looks out dated/fake.
 

VFXVeteran

Banned
I don't need path tracing.
You won't say that when path tracing becomes a norm many years from now.

Nanite and Lumen do enough to make a convincing looking image.
Nanite has nothing to do with lighting/shading. And no, lumen is inaccurate enough that path tracing would be superior - especially in indoor scenes.

The Matrix is so far ahead of everything else,
The Matrix isn't "so far ahead of everything else". It still looks like a game and it's literally a demo.

Tell me what other game has come along that is even close to the Matrix Demo?

RT GI
RT Reflections
RT Shadows
RT Ambient Occlusion
Virtually Unlimited Draw Distance
Virtually Unlimited LOD
Since when did we start comparing demos to games? I missed that memo. If we go by that, there are several demos that are far ahead of games. The Marbles Demo by Nvidia is better looking than anything out so far - including the Matrix Demo. Btw, RT Gi, Reflections, Shadows and AO is done in Metro and Cyberpunk.

It's all happening at once. All games that have released on this gen have had some sort of missing features. You can have RT shadows, but not reflections, you can have RT reflections, but not shadows, you can have 60fps but, no RT. You can have RT GI, but the rest of the game looks out dated/fake.
That's consoles - not the PC.
 
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You won't say that when path tracing becomes a norm many years from now.


Nanite has nothing to do with lighting/shading. And no, lumen is inaccurate enough that path tracing would be superior - especially in indoor scenes.


The Matrix isn't "so far ahead of everything else". It still looks like a game and it's literally a demo.


Since when did we start comparing demos to games? I missed that memo. If we go by that, there are several demos that are far ahead of games. The Marbles Demo by Nvidia is better looking than anything out so far - including the Matrix Demo. Btw, RT Gi, Reflections, Shadows and AO is done in Metro and Cyberpunk.


That's consoles - not the PC.
1. Path tracing is out of the question right now. We're not there yet.

2. I didn't mean to imply that nanite was part of the lighting. Also, lumen gets us close enough to realistic lighting for me (for now).

3. The Matrix Demos is in fact far ahead of anything else we've had on console. The sheer draw distance, the unlimited detail, virtually no LOD is all stuff I've only dreamed about

4. The Matrix is literally running on a console, and the devs said they left enough room for gameplay and AI for it to be a full game. It was also made by a small team in just about 1 year.
 
The Matrix demo isn't using path tracing. That is the only way to get good natural lighting. Typical RT isn't the same as Path tracing.

Also, the Matrix demo is just a demo. It doesn't mean at all that you'll see a game using all of those elements anytime soon. Especially from studios that will be using their own graphics engine. (which isn't as far ahead as Epic Games is).
You seem to forget, prebaked lighting can easily use pathtracing to make most of the shadows and lights if the lighting is fixed. Only the character shadows and enemy shadows would fall outside this.
 

VFXVeteran

Banned
1. Path tracing is out of the question right now. We're not there yet.
Right. So my point that an alternative to lighting is "not good enough" is correct.
3. The Matrix Demos is in fact far ahead of anything else we've had on console.
I still would argue that point. All of the PBR shaders are the exact same as they are last gen. If you are saying that Nanite alone is what's making it look better then that's debatable in the context of that demo.

The sheer draw distance, the unlimited detail, virtually no LOD is all stuff I've only dreamed about
Again, Nanite is the only thing special here.

4. The Matrix is literally running on a console, and the devs said they left enough room for gameplay and AI for it to be a full game. It was also made by a small team in just about 1 year.
We can bet that you won't see a Nanite centric exclusive graphics engine on any other proprietary engine this generation and I am willing to bet that a 1080p FPS target is going to make the render look grainy as hell. We simply need faster and more powerful GPUs. I would wait for PS6 for that. Right now, these consoles are underpowered.
 
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I don't need path tracing. Nanite and Lumen do enough to make a convincing looking image. The Matrix is so far ahead of everything else, and they even said they left a lot of headroom for gameplay elements too, so they weren't maxing out the hardware with just a basic open world city.

Tell me what other game has come along that is even close to the Matrix Demo?

RT GI
RT Reflections
RT Shadows
RT Ambient Occlusion
Virtually Unlimited Draw Distance
Virtually Unlimited LOD

It's all happening at once. All games that have released on this gen have had some sort of missing features. You can have RT shadows, but not reflections, you can have RT reflections, but not shadows, you can have 60fps but, no RT. You can have RT GI, but the rest of the game looks out dated/fake.
Agreed, a robust dynamic lighting solution like Lumen is more than sufficient if we're judging by the Matrix Demo or Lumen In The Land of Nanite. For me personally, the biggest standout was the intense close up fidelity of the geometry, it look gorgeous and very realistic. The realistic shadows and shading Lumen was able to pull off on that many triangles was still very impressive.

I think given more optimisations, developers should be able to acheive ray traced ambient occlusiona and global iluumination in the second and third wave of games this generation, the visual results are pleasent. RT reflections only make sense when we consider the context of the scene, like urban environments, windows and such like we saw in Spiderman and Cyberpunk 2077.

If we're constantly going to obsess over things like path-tracing in gaming we're going to miss the bigger picture of what's already being achieved with lighting in games. Not just lighting, but geometry as well with micro-polygon rendering systems like Nanite, similar solutions can be achieved by use of Primitive and Mesh Shaders however we won't be seeing this leveraged until the second and third wave of games because the require learning by the programmers and a complete rewriting of the graphics pipeline. Jon Peddie one of the leading researchers in modern graphics hardware has already stated that Mesh/Primitive Shaders along with similar solutions like Nanite are already competing with ray-tracing when it comes to achieving photo-realisim and he's 100% right.
 
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The Matrix demo isn't using path tracing. That is the only way to get good natural lighting. Typical RT isn't the same as Path tracing.

Also, the Matrix demo is just a demo. It doesn't mean at all that you'll see a game using all of those elements anytime soon. Especially from studios that will be using their own graphics engine. (which isn't as far ahead as Epic Games is).
Lol, nobody is really expecting full pathtracing on AAA visually taxing games…We won’t see that until PS7 IMO…
 
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I still would argue that point. All of the PBR shaders are the exact same as they are last gen. If you are saying that Nanite alone is what's making it look better then that's debatable in the context of that demo.
Nothing else looks more realistic or that close to CGI rendered visuals. So I agree. Stop picking out single aspects of the demo and look at what it accomplished…
 
Budget and talent matter a lot more than any specific spec or technology, that's why TLoU2 (an many other games) looks so damn good even when running on ancient PS4 hardware.

For any sensible person the gap between what you can achieve in real time and pre-rendering is becoming negligible, talented devs will be able to work around any limitation to things like reflections or lack of RT.

When I watch a Pixar movie these days what impresses me is not the technology anymore is the animation itself.
 
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here are the ACTUAL reasons we have cross gen titles this far into the gen.

1: THERE IS NO REAL JUMP IN GRAPHICAL QUALITY OR CAPABILITIES FROM LAST GEN TO CURRENT GEN, IT IS SIMPLY AN INCREMENTAL UPGRADE

2: MODERN ENGINES SCALE SUPER EASILY AND HAVE BEEN OPTIMISED FOR REALLY SHITTY CPUs THANKS TO HOW BAD LAST GEN CONSOLES WERE

3: GAME DEVELOPMENT GETS MORE EXPENSIVE AND PUBLISHERS MORE GREEDY BY THE YEAR

there you have it. these consoles selling faster than their predecessors doesn't change a thing, and it's not about how many consoles are in peoples homes, if that was the case, every PS3 game would have released on PS2 for like 3 years at least with how terrible the PS3 sold and was at launch... but that didn't happen because the spec jump, render tech jump and dev costs weren't comparable to today.

there is no real "next gen", what we got here is an incremental upgrade. just think about it... the GPUs of the PS5 and Series X are only about 2x as powerful as the most powerful last gen system. The Series S' GPU is LESS POWERFUL than the best last gen system's GPU.
This generation's jump is not in graphics, not in complexity, but it is a jump in framerate and I/O, neither of which necessitate to last gen consoles to be abandoned. in fact, they could most likely keep the PS4 Pro and One X alive right up until the end of this generation if they wanted to cut off support for base consoles.
only a handful of games would not be able to run on those I bet, those would be the few that actually push raytracing or extremely CPU heavy scenes.
Lol wut? None of this is true…current gen systems are waaaaaay more powerful than last gen systems.
 

PUNKem733

Member
Lol, nobody is really expecting full pathtracing on AAA visually taxing games…We won’t see that until PS7 IMO…
I was discussing (a civilized one at that on youtube comments) how I think it might be 7-10 years for full path tracing in AAA games, on PC and I was told by several people that it will be on PC within 2-4 years with DLSS 3.0 and a 5000 series GPU. I don't think that's happening and if it did, I'd bet a PS6 capable of that if it's coming out closer to 2030.
 

VFXVeteran

Banned
I was discussing (a civilized one at that on youtube comments) how I think it might be 7-10 years for full path tracing in AAA games, on PC and I was told by several people that it will be on PC within 2-4 years with DLSS 3.0 and a 5000 series GPU. I don't think that's happening and if it did, I'd bet a PS6 capable of that if it's coming out closer to 2030.
So a PS6 will do realtime path tracing when the ps5 can't even do regular ray tracing well. Gotcha! AMD must be going to pull out a rabbit from their hats. And all for a lowly price of $500.
 
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Lethal01

Member
So a PS6 will do realtime path tracing when the ps5 can't even do regular ray tracing well. Gotcha! AMD must be going to pull out a rabbit from their hats. And all for a lowly price of $500.

He's right, if PC is doing full path tracing in the next 3 years PS6 will absolutely be doing it by 2030.
6 years is more than enough time to surpass a pc at that price point.

I don't know how you managed to get your head lodged so deep up your ass but hopefully, by then you can pull it out.
 
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He's right, if PC is doing full path tracing in the next 3 years PS6 will absolutely be doing it by 2030.
6 years is more than enough time to surpass a pc at that price point.

I don't know how you managed to get your head lodged so deep up your ass but hopefully, by then you can pull it out.
Hasn't it already been leaked by several people now that RDNA 3's Navi 33 (7700 XT) is targeting faster performance than the 6900 XT, likewise Nvidia's next 4070 (Lovelace) is targeting faster performance than the 3090.

This is going to be one of the biggest leaps ever in discrete GPU's, there's a LOT of potential for next-gen consoles (PS6 or the next Xbox) five years from now.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
He's right, if PC is doing full path tracing in the next 3 years PS6 will absolutely be doing it by 2030.
6 years is more than enough time to surpass a pc at that price point.

I don't know how you managed to get your head lodged so deep up your ass but hopefully, by then you can pull it out.
PCs got ray tracing in 2018. By 2020, consoles had it.

Whats hilarious to me is that consoles have basically become PCs. they use repurposed PC CPUs and GPUs. The PS4 pro even used Polaris GPUs literally the year they came out. AMD GPUs didnt get ray tracing until a month after both the PS5 and XSX launch. So if AMD has a GPU powerful enough to do full path ray tracing in 2025, its entirely possible consoles will get that GPU in 2027. Though I suspect this generation will last until 2029 anyway.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Budget and talent matter a lot more than any specific spec or technology, that's why TLoU2 (an many other games) looks so damn good even when running on ancient PS4 hardware.

For any sensible person the gap between what you can achieve in real time and pre-rendering is becoming negligible, talented devs will be able to work around any limitation to things like reflections or lack of RT.

When I watch a Pixar movie these days what impresses me is not the technology anymore is the animation itself.
Eh. TLOU2 looks that good because its linear. Most games this gen have been open world which limits the kind of detail they can cram in one scene. TLOU2 has larger environments then the first but 95% of the time you are in linear closed off areas even when you are outdoors. The open world level when Ellie and Dina first get to Seattle looks far worse than other areas because of the fact that they had to render this massive area you could explore on horseback. Talent and budget couldnt help them hide the limitations of an open world.

The rest I agree with. With the Matrix, we can see just how close to realism we have gotten in cutscenes. Yes, they had to reduce the framerate to 24 fps and add black bars but The Order 1866 did that last gen and 24 fps movies arent really an eyesore so it doesnt matter.

Id rather they focus on pushing physics, destruction and other simulations going forward.
 
Eh. TLOU2 looks that good because its linear. Most games this gen have been open world which limits the kind of detail they can cram in one scene. TLOU2 has larger environments then the first but 95% of the time you are in linear closed off areas even when you are outdoors. The open world level when Ellie and Dina first get to Seattle looks far worse than other areas because of the fact that they had to render this massive area you could explore on horseback. Talent and budget couldnt help them hide the limitations of an open world.

The rest I agree with. With the Matrix, we can see just how close to realism we have gotten in cutscenes. Yes, they had to reduce the framerate to 24 fps and add black bars but The Order 1866 did that last gen and 24 fps movies arent really an eyesore so it doesnt matter.

Id rather they focus on pushing physics, destruction and other simulations going forward.
TLoU2 looks that good because it's made by Naughty Dog one of the most talented studio out there, with Sony putting a lot of money into the game. Lost Legacy was pretty open and looked great and even TLoU2 has plenty of large areas that look great, let's be real here.

The Matrix demo is not a game, where are all the Unreal 5 games that look like that? Turns out you still have to make the games and tech alone won't do that much.

Epic probably spent an unholy amount of money on that engine to that point but it's not like all the other devs that work with other engines were sitting still. How much will Unreal 5 have to accelerate development for it to impact games that we'll be seeing any time soon?
 
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Path tracing in any form is too much for these GPUs. Even the 3090. If consoles are struggling to just do RT, then PT isn't going to be used at all.
I didn't say real time path tracing. Prebaked lighting is done nonrealtime in expensive workstations. That's what I meant. Of course character and enemy shadows wouldn't receive the benefits of prebaked lighting, but most stuff in the environment could if it is fixed lighting.
 
PCs got ray tracing in 2018. By 2020, consoles had it.

Whats hilarious to me is that consoles have basically become PCs. they use repurposed PC CPUs and GPUs. The PS4 pro even used Polaris GPUs literally the year they came out. AMD GPUs didnt get ray tracing until a month after both the PS5 and XSX launch. So if AMD has a GPU powerful enough to do full path ray tracing in 2025, its entirely possible consoles will get that GPU in 2027. Though I suspect this generation will last until 2029 anyway.
Imagine how underpowered these consoles will be by 2029 ...yikes
 

10v12

Member
Do people here really expect even enthusiast GPU's to be performing path tracing in an acceptable way by PS6 generation? Even with massively improved ML application to rendering, I suspect it will be ~2035 before companies even start marketing "path tracing".
 
Do people here really expect even enthusiast GPU's to be performing path tracing in an acceptable way by PS6 generation? Even with massively improved ML application to rendering, I suspect it will be ~2035 before companies even start marketing "path tracing".
with things like nanite we only need a bit more rendering power for 4k 60fps, and then all remaining additional transistors can be devoted to path tracing and ml.
 

PUNKem733

Member
So a PS6 will do realtime path tracing when the ps5 can't even do regular ray tracing well. Gotcha! AMD must be going to pull out a rabbit from their hats. And all for a lowly price of $500.
I never thought that. I was just making a guess based on that 2-4 year timeline for PC.
 
I never thought that. I was just making a guess based on that 2-4 year timeline for PC.
I too think it depends on what happens on the pc space. If path tracing doesn't appear for 8-10 years in the pc space, it is unlikely to appear till ps7. But if it appears on pc in the next few years, it is likely to be possible on ps6.
 
No game has taken advantage of what the new consoles offer, and it might take awhile before we do see it as engines are going to have to be changed to use Mesh and Primitive shaders, SSD and IO speeds at a minimum.
I think this is why this generation is going to stretch out a bit longer.
 
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