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DXR Spotlight Contest - UE4 Diode Demo
3D artist Alden Filion, who has worked in some triple-A games like Battlefield 4, Crackdown 3 and Lost Planet 3, has released a new Unreal Engine 4 ray tracing tech demo. This tech demo was created for the Nvidia DXR Spotlight contest. UE4 Diode is basically a short third-person action/melee game that takes advantage of real-time ray tracing. Players can explore a castle, solve a simple puzzle and fight some enemies.
schmidtbag
Senior Member
Posts: 4905
Joined: 2012-11-10
Senior Member
Posts: 4905
Joined: 2012-11-10
#5698486 Posted on: 08/08/2019 04:06 PM
So much pessimism.
Raytracing can be great, the problem is how people are implementing it. Raytracing is the difference between a highly detailed scene and a realistic-looking scene. The reason that hasn't happened yet is because all of the demos are over-emphasizing shiny things (particularly flat shiny things, which you don't need fancy RT for at all). So, it just leaves people to believe that shiny things are all RT is good for, which it isn't.
Take this image for example:
Notice how there's nothing shiny in this scene, but RT plays a pivotal role here. Notice the the sides of the balls are slightly colored, because of the painted walls. You'll also see how they affect the shadows on the walls, even though the light source is only directly above them.
If you or the balls move around, the reflected colors have to change, so you can't always pre-render their appearance. So if you stood between the ball on the right and the blue wall, the ball shouldn't still appear blue, because you should be blocking much of the reflected blue light. If the game were especially realistic, you could wave your hand in front of the ball, and there should be a faint skin-colored "glow" on the surface of the ball.
That's what RT is important for. Unfortunately, such details are way too subtle to convince anyone that it's well-worth it, so devs use surfaces that are obnoxiously glossy.
EDIT:
As for games with pre-rendered scenes that look hyper-realistic: those look so realistic because of ray tracing. The only difference is it's not processed live.
So much pessimism.
Raytracing can be great, the problem is how people are implementing it. Raytracing is the difference between a highly detailed scene and a realistic-looking scene. The reason that hasn't happened yet is because all of the demos are over-emphasizing shiny things (particularly flat shiny things, which you don't need fancy RT for at all). So, it just leaves people to believe that shiny things are all RT is good for, which it isn't.
Take this image for example:
Notice how there's nothing shiny in this scene, but RT plays a pivotal role here. Notice the the sides of the balls are slightly colored, because of the painted walls. You'll also see how they affect the shadows on the walls, even though the light source is only directly above them.
If you or the balls move around, the reflected colors have to change, so you can't always pre-render their appearance. So if you stood between the ball on the right and the blue wall, the ball shouldn't still appear blue, because you should be blocking much of the reflected blue light. If the game were especially realistic, you could wave your hand in front of the ball, and there should be a faint skin-colored "glow" on the surface of the ball.
That's what RT is important for. Unfortunately, such details are way too subtle to convince anyone that it's well-worth it, so devs use surfaces that are obnoxiously glossy.
EDIT:
As for games with pre-rendered scenes that look hyper-realistic: those look so realistic because of ray tracing. The only difference is it's not processed live.
Picolete
Senior Member
Posts: 288
Joined: 2014-12-09
Senior Member
Posts: 288
Joined: 2014-12-09
#5698513 Posted on: 08/08/2019 05:44 PM
Almost all the raytracing demos i have seem do the same, make the games look like bioshock 1, with the floor full of pools of water
Almost all the raytracing demos i have seem do the same, make the games look like bioshock 1, with the floor full of pools of water
AldenFilionCG
Junior Member
Posts: 1
Joined: 2019-08-08
Junior Member
Posts: 1
Joined: 2019-08-08
#5698525 Posted on: 08/08/2019 06:16 PM
Hi everyone, I'm the creator...and longtime lurker on here. Wanted to give context to what this is. This is a prototype for a game I'm working in my free time as a solo developer. This video was made as an entry to win a Titan RTX. I'm hoping to have the game in early access, late 2020.
As a developer I am just getting my hands on ray tracing and its very much in it's early form but I'm just happy its finally part of the conversation for video games. There are still a lot of features not supported (as mentioned in an earlier comment) and some features that are for the time being costly to the frame rate. The thing that is hard to illustrate, is how fast engines like UE4 optimize these features to make this stuff more usable and get it into the hands of players.
The video shows last months build. After the latest 4.23 preview build for UE4 came out, I saw a 10 ms speed increase on ray tracing. When I started this demo, ray tracing features had to be tweaked in command lines and now its fully integrated into the post process volumes. The tech is new and I understand everyone's frustrations that there aren't more games using it in spectacular ways but as developers get acclimated to what they can do with it and engineers find ways to optimize it (which they always do) We are going to see some really mind blowing stuff very soon as the tech matures.
This is running at 30-40 fps @ 1080p on a 2080 TI It's using Ray Tracing for ambient occlusion, shadows, and reflections.
A new build for Diode will be available later this month so please stay tuned to my youtube channel for updates and free download links. Also these demos are all very playable without ray tracing. There is an executable included that will launch the regular game so people without RTX cards can still get down
.
Hi everyone, I'm the creator...and longtime lurker on here. Wanted to give context to what this is. This is a prototype for a game I'm working in my free time as a solo developer. This video was made as an entry to win a Titan RTX. I'm hoping to have the game in early access, late 2020.
As a developer I am just getting my hands on ray tracing and its very much in it's early form but I'm just happy its finally part of the conversation for video games. There are still a lot of features not supported (as mentioned in an earlier comment) and some features that are for the time being costly to the frame rate. The thing that is hard to illustrate, is how fast engines like UE4 optimize these features to make this stuff more usable and get it into the hands of players.
The video shows last months build. After the latest 4.23 preview build for UE4 came out, I saw a 10 ms speed increase on ray tracing. When I started this demo, ray tracing features had to be tweaked in command lines and now its fully integrated into the post process volumes. The tech is new and I understand everyone's frustrations that there aren't more games using it in spectacular ways but as developers get acclimated to what they can do with it and engineers find ways to optimize it (which they always do) We are going to see some really mind blowing stuff very soon as the tech matures.
This is running at 30-40 fps @ 1080p on a 2080 TI It's using Ray Tracing for ambient occlusion, shadows, and reflections.
A new build for Diode will be available later this month so please stay tuned to my youtube channel for updates and free download links. Also these demos are all very playable without ray tracing. There is an executable included that will launch the regular game so people without RTX cards can still get down
.
Ricardo
Senior Member
Posts: 122
Joined: 2019-04-26
Senior Member
Posts: 122
Joined: 2019-04-26
#5698526 Posted on: 08/08/2019 06:17 PM
That's the nail in the coffin for traditional lighting - it's static and/or handcrafted. Raytracing does what a good lighting artist does, but everywhere with precision and realism, not to mention more accuracy.
Unless you're making a unrealistic light on purpose (even then, raytracing probably can be modified?), it's simply the future.
As for games with pre-rendered scenes that look hyper-realistic: those look so realistic because of ray tracing. The only difference is it's not processed live.
That's the nail in the coffin for traditional lighting - it's static and/or handcrafted. Raytracing does what a good lighting artist does, but everywhere with precision and realism, not to mention more accuracy.
Unless you're making a unrealistic light on purpose (even then, raytracing probably can be modified?), it's simply the future.
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Senior Member
Posts: 714
Joined: 2008-07-18
Im not very impressed with Ray trace in general, its heavy, and its marginally better than a scene illuminated by a good artist on a rasterized engine, and while reflections are nice, how many parts of the world are reflective like a mirror? not many, in nature almost none apart from water and I though we had that pretty much covered already in modern games, I think that most developers that rejoice with RT are the lazy ones that prefer to let the engine take care of the illumination instead of you placing the lights in a strategic way to get the best results.