4 ms·

I love RTX, but it's so hard to demonstrate it. It doesn't give presence of any "wow!" effect (apart from demos that overdo reflections), it only gives absence

by pornel 8y ago

I love RTX, but it's so hard to demonstrate it. It doesn't give presence of any "wow!" effect (apart from demos that overdo reflections), it only gives absence of incorrect shadows, and humans are bad at noticing absence of things. Instead of "wow" you get "well, duh, that's how things should look".

kuzehanka 8y ago
Path tracing has huge wow factor. The problem with RTX is that on current gen hardware it runs at laughably low sample rates and the result is very noisy even after DLDN. Games are handling this by dialling the amplitude of RTX effects way down and having a smoothing pass. After all that is done, the wow effect is gone and you're just left with a more dynamic version of the same or worse aesthetics that we're already used to. I expect it'll truly take off on next gen hardware, whenever that rolls out. Here's what RTX+DLDN actually looks like if not dialled down and smoothed: https://youtu.be/CuoER1DwYLY?t=553 https://youtu.be/CuoER1DwYLY?t=553 My takeaway is yes that quake 2 demo looks really cool, but you just know that they used every black magic hack in the book to get there, and most of it can't be replicated in a modern high fidelity game. It's definitely not a case of flicking an 'RTX on' switch.
- echeese 8y ago
  What's DLDN? I tried Googling it with some relevant keywords but it just brings me back to this comment.
  - kuzehanka 8y ago
    Deep learning denoiser. I don't know if NVIDIA came up with some marketing term for it. It's what allows RTX to produce meaningful images at all despite the renderer running at 0.5-2 samples per pixel which looks little better than random noise. I kind of assumed they'd call it DLDN because they called their deep learning supersampling DLSS. I guess not, go figure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjjTPV2pXY0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjjTPV2pXY0
Wohlf 8y ago
I've noticed something similar with a lot of the game remakes from a few years ago, particularly the N64 Zelda remakes on 3DS. The remasters look how you remember the games back in the day, but if you compared them side by side the remakes look vastly better.
- mikepurvis 8y ago
  Zelda 64 is a particularly interesting case, though. As such a beloved title with a long-standing fan following, there has been an almost endless parade of remakes/demakes over the 20 years since it came out. If you thought the official 3DS one was pretty, wait until you see the fan work done on a UE4 version: https://youtu.be/OrMRjK_5RRU?t=113 https://youtu.be/OrMRjK_5RRU?t=113
dahart 8y ago
That’s a good way to put it. There’s some kind of uncanny valley of rendering, I think. Not exactly the same idea, but I noticed this starting decades ago while playing on an SGI- the demos with flat shading oddly seem more impressive than the ones that had an environment map and chrome reflections. It felt like the computer was doing more work when the image was less realistic, and the more realistic it got, the less it felt like billions of amazing calculations were happening under the hood. It’s still true, and it’s ironic when I’m seeing these amazing demos today with real time path tracing and astounding amounts of complexity, the visceral feeling is more like looking at photos than amazement for how incredible the rendering is. I have to force myself to think harder about what’s going on in order to appreciate it.
zamalek 8y ago
> humans are bad at noticing absence of things. Until you ask them whether a scene is a photo or a render. They won't know to look for shadow acne, but they will still make a judgement that includes it. RTX has a few things that we've had for years, but it seems to do a way better job at energy preservation.

by pornel 8y ago

kuzehanka 8y ago

Path tracing has huge wow factor. The problem with RTX is that on current gen hardware it runs at laughably low sample rates and the result is very noisy even after DLDN. Games are handling this by dialling the amplitude of RTX effects way down and having a smoothing pass. After all that is done, the wow effect is gone and you're just left with a more dynamic version of the same or worse aesthetics that we're already used to. I expect it'll truly take off on next gen hardware, whenever that rolls out. Here's what RTX+DLDN actually looks like if not dialled down and smoothed: https://youtu.be/CuoER1DwYLY?t=553 https://youtu.be/CuoER1DwYLY?t=553 My takeaway is yes that quake 2 demo looks really cool, but you just know that they used every black magic hack in the book to get there, and most of it can't be replicated in a modern high fidelity game. It's definitely not a case of flicking an 'RTX on' switch.

echeese 8y ago
What's DLDN? I tried Googling it with some relevant keywords but it just brings me back to this comment.
- kuzehanka 8y ago
  Deep learning denoiser. I don't know if NVIDIA came up with some marketing term for it. It's what allows RTX to produce meaningful images at all despite the renderer running at 0.5-2 samples per pixel which looks little better than random noise. I kind of assumed they'd call it DLDN because they called their deep learning supersampling DLSS. I guess not, go figure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjjTPV2pXY0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjjTPV2pXY0

Wohlf 8y ago

I've noticed something similar with a lot of the game remakes from a few years ago, particularly the N64 Zelda remakes on 3DS. The remasters look how you remember the games back in the day, but if you compared them side by side the remakes look vastly better.

mikepurvis 8y ago
Zelda 64 is a particularly interesting case, though. As such a beloved title with a long-standing fan following, there has been an almost endless parade of remakes/demakes over the 20 years since it came out. If you thought the official 3DS one was pretty, wait until you see the fan work done on a UE4 version: https://youtu.be/OrMRjK_5RRU?t=113 https://youtu.be/OrMRjK_5RRU?t=113

dahart 8y ago

That’s a good way to put it. There’s some kind of uncanny valley of rendering, I think. Not exactly the same idea, but I noticed this starting decades ago while playing on an SGI- the demos with flat shading oddly seem more impressive than the ones that had an environment map and chrome reflections. It felt like the computer was doing more work when the image was less realistic, and the more realistic it got, the less it felt like billions of amazing calculations were happening under the hood. It’s still true, and it’s ironic when I’m seeing these amazing demos today with real time path tracing and astounding amounts of complexity, the visceral feeling is more like looking at photos than amazement for how incredible the rendering is. I have to force myself to think harder about what’s going on in order to appreciate it.

zamalek 8y ago

> humans are bad at noticing absence of things. Until you ask them whether a scene is a photo or a render. They won't know to look for shadow acne, but they will still make a judgement that includes it. RTX has a few things that we've had for years, but it seems to do a way better job at energy preservation.