ladies and gentlemen the g-force rtx 20 series reinvented Oh developers all over
the world are working hard on RTXing we're gonna have all kinds of amazing
games coming your way yeah that was August of 2018 when the RTX 20 series
launched we were promised a large library of games to support ray tracing
and the more realistic lighting environment that just works but the
general consensus right now is that RTX on equals FPS off as perfectly shown in
this game from 1997 where everything is ray traced but still we cannot hit 60fps
but it's 2020 now and now want to explore the current state of RTX and
games and whether or not it is as groundbreaking as we were led to believe
in terms of the whole visual experience but also what it has done to performance
I've already done detailed analysis for Metro access and ba5 when they were
launched welcome to check out that content I'll still be including them in
this video to give us a refresh plus many other games that support ray
tracing so in this video we'll do a visual analysis of all current rate rays
games on the market we'll do performance testing and see what the overall
experience this very expensive technology delivers after this the NMX
t-50 ax air cooler now comes in this gorgeous white finish with an
addressable RGB high-pressure fan along with a patented air guide grill to
increase air flow the vortex differential fin design helps increase
air convection around the heat pipes so the your CPU can stay nice and cool
learn more in the description down below alright so the first thing I need to
clarify with RTX are two forms of implementation so the first being our
games that have some form of ray tracing whether it be ray trace shadows global
illumination or reflections and all of which aim to provide the most realistic
lighting environment and this is the part that Jensen was talking about as
just works everything just works everything just works because ray
tracing just works because game designers don't have to fake lighting
inside a room for example if you have Ray traced lighting the engine does the
whole thing for you and the second thing with RTX is DLSS which is deep
learning super sampling which aims to improve performance by up sampling lower
resolution to your native resolution the downside here is training the algorithm
seeing what needs to be sharpened in a particular game and so that takes time
as you'll see later in the video but I really want to start with the fun
stuff first let's explore my favorite rtx titles Metro excellence and control
so let's take control and see what they've done right and first of all game
context and level design must complement ray-traced reflections as with control
we have large open areas with glass walls and all types of appropriately
glossy surfaces like wood paneling floor tiles and lots of lots of marble all of
which work beautifully to create the realistic reflections that you will
notice throughout the game so not only are you visible from these glass
reflections but whatever is behind you as well and I find this example with
rtx on just beautiful as the fire extinguisher the top light strip and the
doorframe are already traced very well however it's not perfect as all glass
surfaces act as almost like transparent mirrors and lose that hazy texture
that's my only complaint with this game other examples of ray-traced reflections
include bf5 which you'll notice and really shiny polish to destroy cars on
the street and mainly in puddles too that in my experience is unnecessary
even for single player because how fast the gameplay is but you can see fire
smoke and ricochets all properly reflecting from this bottle while the
art takes off reflections are pixelated and overall less realistic and I really
think pacing is important for ray-tracing to matter as I've been
exploring another game called deliver us the moon in which reflections are ray
traced and we can see our character reflecting in the pretty much all the
glass surfaces which is great because not having anything reflecting it looks
kind of weird but it's kind of the same transparent mirror effect as we saw in
control where glass loses texture and also kind of looks off for example
imagine having the glass texture of the left image with the reflections of the
right I think that would be the most realistic scenario now here's a weird
example where some objects are not rendered in our reflections like the
monitor should be visible with RTX on but in fact the RTX off looks more
realistic because of that particular element and one more example where I
concede the character reflecting off the glass surface in front of us but the
spacesuit behind the glass isn't rendered properly in the reflection
of that blue tile I've also seen this in the game called bright memory where
there's this massive puddle outside the elevator but only the light shape is
properly rendered where the rest of the scene inside the puddle actually looks
better with rtx off and this game is still in early access so I won't bother
with it too much but I mean this is the opening level and having these things
not working as they should is yeah whirring so those are the four games
that currently support ray-traced reflections as far as I know not a large
sample size and only control has them figured out I feel like it fits the game
context and level design while it does give you a better reflection job of like
seeing your character and deliver us the moon but some things are not working
properly as they should and it throws the whole thing off now let's take a
look at Metro Exodus where global illumination is ray-traced
and now the title that I think benefits greatly with rate racing here's a scene
illuminated by a single exterior light source the Sun thus making all shadowy
areas properly dark unlike that flat look with RTX off now global nation with
this game means a more realistic environment that complements the whole
apocalyptic level design so all the light sources have a more realistic roll
off this scene in the train for example is lit up by a single lamp to my right
giving us a very dark but properly rendered train car while rtx off is
still Moody and dark but lacks the natural contrast the lamp should create
while going outdoors I found this example really interesting as the snow
with rtx on just gets much brighter because of that bright skybox that
actually gives us more detail in the helmet of the soldier and again better
contrast in areas that aren't receiving as much light like his left side if you
have the means to play Metro with ray-tracing enabled I highly recommend
it especially the N levels are beautifully done in terms of light
contrast shadows and dark areas that ray-tracing really kind of like sums it
up together for a beautiful atmosphere and the last ray-traced implementation
we can talk about our shadows so the latest call of duty modern warfare is
awesome and I finished the single-player campaign without realizing that I had
RTX enabled and that's because raytrace shadows is probably the least exciting
rtx technology in my opinion the shadows are soft
the lighting is very harsh anyway plus no shadow for our digital Fred come on
while other scenes look more realistic with RTX off because raytrace shadows
become just too soft and difficult to notice like with this corner and the
yellow washing bucket plus after you done with the campaign who else goes
into the graphics settings and turns everything to minimum I mean this is a
multiplayer game so I'm all about giving me the best FPS and least visual clutter
and finally we have shadow of the Tomb Raider as the name suggests we have
raytrace shadows and in two words this implementation is disappointing still I
mean we waited for over a year after the game launched to finally have RTX
support and it doesn't even look that good so many shadows in the environment
gets so soft by the time they hit the surface that they lose all contextual
meaning while there's very little visual difference between closer objects
getting hit by my flashlight regardless if arti is enabled perhaps in this scene
the shadows from the wall are properly cast but RTX off already looks very good
I think global illumination which shadows would be a much better visual
cell because even with properly rendered shadows everything in this scene is so
flat that I simply lose appreciation for ray-traced
proper shadows now let's come back to a very special throwback quake to RTX this
is a very special example as everything in the game is ray traced and that
includes shadows reflections and global illumination so obviously it looks
better versus the pixel art of 97 but look what it does to performance and
this is a clear example why ray tracing is so difficult because even with the
best hardware and something is visually simple as quake 2 it is difficult to
have full ray tracing and also have some performance which surprise surprise
brings us disappointing performance across the board and it really sucks to
have some games like Metro and deliver us the moon literally cutting frame
rates in half when RTX is enabled and less severe performance hits with Cod
ba5 Tomb Raider and surprisingly bright memory - which is still in the early
access and this is all with the 2080 ti there's something that really needs to
be called out here - and that is how variable performance impacts are in
these games I can see ba5 metro and control needing tons of resources since
the actual look be different with their features enabled
but modern warfare and Tomb Raider I mean come on they just feel like
terrible optimizations one thing to note here are all my ray-tracing settings
were set to maximum so they're your worst case scenario and then all of
these games the level of ray-tracing can be reduced to lower performance impact
but you also end up sacrificing the features you end up paying for when it
comes to RTX so think about that now when we bring in the lower tier RTX
2060 onboard performance it is actually consistent to what we saw with the 2080
TI per game quite bad especially in control and metro but you could get away
playing them with ray tracing enabled and some visual settings tone down which
i think is worth it which brings me to DLSS or deep learning super sampling and
my opinion and its performance and implementation has changed since its
first launch which is a good thing in the beginning would be a 5 and Metro
Exodus that made everything too soft we lost too much detail but now that has
greatly improved so on bf5 the overall image is still sharp and only the
smaller details like tree leaves and the fine texture on a soldier gets slightly
smoother but performance is so worth it I tested this with the RTX 2060 which
is how you're able to play Metro with ultra ray tracing preset as we gain over
10 FPS and actually think it makes the image sharper with DLSS enabled which
again was not the case when it first launched and control the image to me
looks identical this is with the highest settings but on the left
I had the render resolution set to 1080p to give me a little bit extra playable
framerates while DLSS delivers a much better
performance and still a very similar image unfortunately while in game you do
lose a bit of detail in the distance and textures are not loading until you get
closer which is just not very pretty as for deliver as the moon performance
is greatly improved and image sharpening is present with a tiny loss of sharper
edges around text for example but at 1440p which I tested all these games
adds DLSS is a must for ray tracing while getting a nice performance boost
as well so DLSS definitely has potential but as with ray tracing
rollout I feel like it's going to be a waiting game and if
Lincoln's going to be a long one so bf5 and Metro Exodus look much better now
than they did a year ago when the DLSS was first launched and that whole year
of training has definitely paid off but I feel like we're never gonna get like
the sharper best deal s as possible at launch of certain games and that's kind
of disappointing something else I should mention is that ray tracing was unlocked
on gtx cards as well but without dedicated tenser course it's more of a
tease as performance absolutely tanks not recommended even on some powerful
cards I will leave on a positive note because we have so many exciting games
coming out in 2020 that promise ray tracing potentially they are not
launched but sometime in the future and at least that's kind of exciting but
until performance is not cut in half I think we should remain skeptical I'm
Dimitri thanks much for watching let me know if you tried rate racing and what's
your experience been like do you like the visual or is it kind of
like a-- yeah shadows are not my thing global nation looks great and
reflections only in certain games as usual this whole video has been rate
raised fully I hope you appreciate that I'm a Dmitry thanks much for watching
I'll talk to you in the next video