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Tom's Hardware: Far Cry 6 Proves Consoles Aren't Powerful Enough for Ray Tracing

Fbh

Member
Honestly, when prior to the release of this gen even high end PC GPU's were tanking in performance when enabling RT I don't know why everyone expected this would be the gen of amazing RT on affordable console.
Ubisoft is recommending an RTX3070 to play FC6 with RT at 1440p/60fps. A GPU that's currently selling for $1000+
 
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SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
Metro have all assets of a last gen game other than the RT effects. I don't know about FC6 assets...
This is not exactly true of the next-gen enhanced edition. They re-worked all the lighting in the game, so the assets are different. On the PC side, it's a totally separate download because they don't share the same assets.

I mean it's the same models and textures for the most part, but it is a game that recognizes that RT is not something you simply "switch on" and take full advantage of; When your scenes are still designed around "fake" lighting, they're going to look less realistic even with RT on. ME:EE is the first RT-only game on PC so it's the first to really take full advantage and light the game around RT.
 
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Black_Stride

do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
Releasing on PS4 and XB1 not necessarily means all assets being last gen on the PS5/XSX/S version.
Let me get this straight are you blaming the lack of RT in this game specifically on the PS5/XSX versions having "nextgen" assets?
But Metro Exodus doesnt have any "nextgen" assets because?????
The nextgen version of Metro Exodus EE was completely reworked, this game is a .ini file difference between PS4 -> PS5 -> PC.
And what assets are these prey tell that are affecting the RT accelerators from doing something as "simple" as Hybrid Raytraced reflections or even just the Shadows.
 
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Meh, FarCry6 isn't all that visually impressive anyways. This is about budgets and deadlines, and they don't want to spend any extra time to optimize their game on consoles.
 





Knew it.
What an absurd (agenda-fueled) and wholly disingenuous conclusion.

FC6 merely uses RT'd reflections which can be rather expensive depending on the implementation, but at the end of the day, the issue with the consoles is that they have a fixed hardware spec, whereas the PC is an open platform.

It should be no surprise to anyone that the AMD RT acceleration hardware solution is not as capable as NVidia's. So YES the console RT capability is lower than the fastest and flagship NVidia cards on PC, but that's not evidence of the fallacious conclusion Tom's Hardware jumps to.

Neither consoles nor PC can actually manage full raytraced global illumination together with RT soft shadowing. So all RT currently is hybrid RT with traditional raster lighting.

In this case, the FC6 dev is using a more advanced raster lighting model, and have decided to forego RT reflections on consoles to be able to include all the other visual features. You don't have unlimited hardware on consoles and so you have to make compromises, unlike on PC. The consoles could be twice as powerful in terms of single-precision floating-point computation, and they'd still miss out on some limited RT and non-RT features on some games because those features are deemed by the devs to be acceptable compromises. Again, because you don't have unlimited power and so something has to give.

None of this means consoles aren't powerful enough for RT. The prevalence of existing games with limited RT features clearly demonstrates the fallacy in that argument. You could argue that those RT features are only limited, but then that is still the case on PC too because there doesn't exist consumer-level hardware capable of full-on Monte Carlo RT lighting at AAA fidelity without compromises.

So Tom's Hardware are really being daft with this one.
 
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rodrigolfp

Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
This is not exactly true of the next-gen enhanced edition. They re-worked all the lighting in the game, so the assets are different. On the PC side, it's a totally separate download because they don't share the same assets.

I mean it's the same models and textures for the most part, but it is a game that recognizes that RT is not something you simply "switch on" and take full advantage of; When your scenes are still designed around "fake" lighting, they're going to look less realistic even with RT on. ME:EE is the first RT-only game on PC so it's the first to really take full advantage and light the game around RT.
So, just the lighting RT. Geometry, textures are all the same...
Let me get this straight are you blaming the lack of RT in this game specifically on the PS5/XSX versions having "nextgen" assets?
But Metro Exodus doesnt have any "nextgen" assets because?????
The nextgen version of Metro Exodus EE was completely reworked, this game is a .ini file difference between PS4 -> PS5 -> PC.
And what assets are these prey tell that are affecting the RT accelerators from doing something as "simple" as Hybrid Raytraced reflections or even just the Shadows.
No. I am blaming the lack of other RT effects in RC, Spidermans for not having last gen assets that taxes more the hardware/memory bandwidth. RT effects don't just taxes the RT accelerators but also memory bandwidth. I said I don't know about FC6.
 
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yurinka

Member
Next gen consoles are perfectly capable to support games with raytracing, as many games already proved and as its hardware indicate. Tom's Hardware should know that if has a minimum idea about hardware.

Far Cry 6 devs maybe didn't have enough time to update and optimize their previous gen engine to support raytracing in next gen consoles while keeping a good performance, and decided to leave RT for future games and for this one instead to focus on higher FPS and resolution. That's all. Once they have their next gen engine properly adapted to the new consoles their future games very likely will use RT.

These games also use pretty limited RT implementations, although they're a good argument that in the right game RT reflections make a big difference.
These games are launch window games made without time to fully adapt and optimize their engines to the next gen hardware, very likely they didn't even have next gen devkits and final hardware specs when they did start to develop them. Almost every generation 2nd and 3rd gen games are the ones who start mastering the hardware, not the launch games. Devs need time, and now with AAA needing way more development time and in the middle of a global pandemic, even more.
 
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Nothing is powerful enough for raytracing at the moment, that's why a hybrid solution is used with the majority of the scene still rasterized 🤷‍♂️ Even something like the lowly Quake II RTX, being a step above with its full pathtraced lighting & reflections, taxes hardware far more than almost all these other 'RT' games
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
What an absurd (agenda-fueled) and wholly disingenuous conclusion.

FC6 merely uses RT'd reflections which can be rather expensive depending on the implementation, but at the end of the day, the issue with the consoles is that they have a fixed hardware spec, whereas the PC is an open platform.

It should be no surprise to anyone that the AMD RT acceleration hardware solution is not as capable as NVidia's. So YES the console RT capability is lower than the fastest and flagship NVidia cards on PC, but that's not evidence of the fallacious conclusion Tom's Hardware jumps to.

Neither consoles nor PC can actually manage full raytraced global illumination together with RT soft shadowing. So all RT currently is hybrid RT with traditional raster lighting.

In this case, the FC6 dev is using a more advanced raster lighting model, and have decided to forego RT reflections on consoles to be able to include all the other visual features. You don't have unlimited hardware on consoles and so you have to make compromises, unlike on PC. The consoles could be twice as powerful in terms of single-precision floating-point computation, and they'd still miss out on some limited RT and non-RT features on some games because those features are deemed by the devs to be acceptable compromises. Again, because you don't unlimited power and so something has to give.

None of this means consoles aren't powerful enough for RT. The prevalence of existing games with limited RT features clearly demonstrates the fallacy in that argument. You could argue that those RT features are only limited, but then that is still the case on PC too because there doesn't exist consumer-level hardware capable of full-on Monte Carlo RT lighting at AAA fidelity without compromises.

So Tom's Hardware are really being daft with this one.
They are also recommending a 3070 for ultra settings 1440p 60 fps. Dropping to high usually nets you 20% more performance. Medium should be another 10% or so and consoles typically use medium PC settings. Using checkerboard reflections like they do in Control and Ratchet should also reduce the ray tracing load by half.

They can easily have a 1440p 30 fps ray tracing mode on consoles.
 

jaysius

Banned
Tom Warren and logical fallacies go together like wine and cheese.

This is a logical fallacy created by Tom's Hardware, different Tom.

But just because a company is too fucking lazy to get it's ass in gear to optimize an ancient engine for RT to hit the targets required on console doesn't 100% mean consoles are too weak for ray tracing.

If you follow trends of any kind you realize that when technology speeds plateau, graphic card sellers need to shift "what's cool" ray tracing is just the newest gimmick to recreate demand for their products, do we need RT in games? It sure is nice, is it REQUIRED to make things look good? Nope, but good lemmings need to follow the industry line and they NEED RT in EVERYTHING because Nvida said so!

There's probably another way to get great lighting just as easily, but the industry has chosen this path to be the one getting attention.
 
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KellyNole

Member
Build a PC for 500$ and let me know about it's RT capabilities.

Context is a beautiful thing, these articles can suck my balls.

This is very true. Not just a PC, but a PC with a Dual Sense and a 4k Blu-Ray player. Oh and a super-fast SSD. It's hard to beat consoles for the price and ease of use.
 

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
So, just the lighting RT. Geometry, textures are all the same...
A lot of them, but the game is 20 gigs larger, so I think they redid a lot of the materials too. It's not like they updated every asset but it's incorrect to say they share the same assets.
 

Black_Stride

do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
No. I am blaming the lack of other RT effects in RC, Spidermans for not having last gen assets that taxes more the hardware/memory bandwidth. RT effects don't just taxes the RT accelerators but also memory bandwidth. I said I don't know about FC6.
I didnt fully understand this but from the gist of it.....you have no idea why FC6 "fails" to have RT on consoles while other games manage to get atleast shadows or reflections in.
 

TonyK

Member
I wish those resources wasted in RT reflections in Ratchet & clank and Spiderman were used in other graphical improvements. Now, RT in consoles basically means pixelated reflections that eat 30 fps.
 

rodrigolfp

Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
A lot of them, but the game is 20 gigs larger, so I think they redid a lot of the materials too. It's not like they updated every asset but it's incorrect to say they share the same assets.
Redid to the point of becoming more like current gen level? By the side-by-side video I didn't see big differences...
 

Pedro Motta

Member
This is very true. Not just a PC, but a PC with a Dual Sense and a 4k Blu-Ray player. Oh and a super-fast SSD. It's hard to beat consoles for the price and ease of use.
yup, and they're comparing them to 3000$ PC's, obviously the later will be better, but no need to bring consoles down when they are more than capable for the price range.
 

elliot5

Member
Console RT won't be anything great without some cutbacks until AMD gets their shit together in comparison to Nvidia in that area. That being said, it's possible far cry 6 could run at some gimped 1080p resolution, but the CPU or ram could be the bottleneck not the GPU. Idk.

Ubisoft isn't "lazy" for not having RT in this specific game. The game is releasing on a shit ton of platforms with multiple graphical settings. There's a ton of QA and dev work. Adding on RT to potentially 3 more consoles is a lot.

A game not featuring raytracing isn't automatically shit. Having such high expectations is ridiculous.
 

Hunnybun

Member
And they look like exactly like a PS4 game but with over pixelated reflections.

On R&C, going by the two pixel counts, the RT uses about 35-40% of the GPU budget.

It doesn't seem plausible to me that that's the best use of that power, even if you were happy with 1440p. IMO just the extra resolution usually looks much better.
 

FranXico

Member
5lL.gif


Congrats on the free clicks, TomsHardware!
Courtesy of Ubisoft.
 

SkylineRKR

Member
Consoles do a very limited form of RT, and even then at the cost of a considerable amount of pixels or framerate. Its just not there yet.
 

Skifi28

Member
Personally I'm surprised with the RT results these consoles have shown considering they have AMD gpus. I'd never expect to see 60fps + any form of RT. Sure, it's nowhere near native 4k but even the top AMD cards can't really do anything above 1440p with RT in most titles. I consider it a huge win.
 
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Portugeezer

Member
It's not that important, it's just a bit strange of an omission... a lot of the time people need to be told something is Ray traced as opposed to the traditional methods used.

That said, when used well Ray tracing can look great. It's clear Ubisoft just wanted a quick port with 4k60 "next gen" mode and be done with it; not even a lower res Ray tracing mode, or 30fps Ray tracing mode, etc. There is nothing special about FC6 for this not to be the case.
 
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