[@ Egosoft] have you been playing around with ray tracing for X4?

[pjknibbs]

AFAIK, the only graphics cards that support real-time raytracing are the nVidia 20XX series, and even they don't actually support it yet--it's a feature which will be added into the drivers at a later date (translation: when they get it working properly). That being the case, I don't see the point of wasting development time on it right now. Maybe in a year or two when it's matured enough to actually work reliably it'll be worth adding.

[nemesis1982]

Agreed. Would be a fun feature to be added. However it'll a few years before ray tracing will become even close to mainstream. I'd say investigate it for x5 or maybe even x6.

Just give it 5 years or so. Also from what I understood ray tracing will only be supported on the 2080 and the 2080TI which are rediculously priced. The card will most likely cost the same as the rest of the system.

[Moncada]

I hate to be that person but lets not forget its not "real" ray-tracing. Its a vendor specific implementation of a subset of the features of ray-tracing. So calling it ray-tracing isnt correct . Ray-tracing a single frame can take up to hours so that probably isnt going to be happening any time soon no matter how many MarketingBS™ terms vendors throw at it. I dont think RTX is going to storm the gaming world and suddenly become the new way of doing things. Its just another one of nvidias marketing stunts to cripple their competition just like the rest of their extra features like hairworks and so on.

The thing that is powering RTX isnt a nvidia specific thing but a part of directX called DXR. AMD is also working on implementing DXR so if anything is going to be the next big thing its going to be widespread support of DXR.

Its long been a pipe dream of computer enthusiasts for atleast 10+ years to believe ray-tracing is just around the corner. Sorry but it aint happening any time soon. The reasons for its absence is not something that can be corrected with a few extra features and do dads on the GPU. Its about raw power that GPU's arent even close to reaching. Even Nvidia is joking about it on their homepage with the phrase "Ray tracing is the future, and it always will be!"

[Morkonan]

Yeah but ray tracing in a space game, that would add so much immersion visually for reflective effects and surfacing. If I knew a game made the effort and it was say a X game and I had the hardware I'd be so pumped to play it.

Maybe for XV then ray tracing might be more widespread and egosoft would hopefully invest in making ray tracing was done well in a space game.

Actually, you probably wouldn't notice it a bit in an X game. At least, not if it was anything like previous versions. You "might" notice some visual improvements with the interior shots and some organic models in them, but that would be about it.

It'd be a lot of wasted time and processing power for few, if any, visual gains.


Edit - Added:

..."Ray tracing is the future, and it always will be!"

^-- This.

I don't know much about the current ray-tracing scheme, but it's all a general approximation. It's not possible to really do what "ray-tracing" say's on the box with the computers we have. HOWEVER, it is possible to get "close enough." That's what this is, most likely. (AFAIK) It's some specialized stuff/hardware/whatever that allows for some dynamic generation of guide rays that are, legitimately, ray-traced and that will guide the rest of the effects to, more or less, resemble "Real-Time PBR Ray Trace Lighting Effects."

In a world of baked in shadows, this is really "A Big Deal ™." It's exciting! But, it's going to take a lot of work and hardware to truly make this "A Thing ™."

I am very happy to see it happening. But, I also don't expect to be lining up to get my time in the Holodeck anytime soon.

[Moncada]

I just wish they would stop calling it ray-tracing since that implies something that isnt technically possible at current date. If you watch the tubes you will quickly see that the stunt is working since people arent aware that its not a ray-tracer. I would be totally okay with it all if they would just call it what it is. A hybrid renderer

[Morkonan]

I just wish they would stop calling it ray-tracing since that implies something that isnt technically possible at current date....

Well, parts of it are very "technically possible," but only up to a point. For instance, a ray can not be traced to infinity. But, it can be traced across a certain number of bounces that are enough to give enough information to a renderer in order to render realistic lighting effects. It's even very possible to calculate all the meaningful variables associated with light and light bounces.

But, only with a limited number of logically generated "rays." If one wished to "calculate the results of the paths of all photons" then we're going a bit too far. Do I really need to calculate an "every possible path" result? Or, am I happen culling the ones that don't really matter or will never be viewed?

So, yea, it's possible and it's already being done in rendering engines. It's just not normally done in real-time since that would, realistically, involve a ridiculous amount of calculations. Now, they've figured out ways to do it, but just still within the standards of the definitions of "ray tracing in a 3D environment."

Unless my understanding of what they're describing is severely off-base, that is. There would be "guide rays," accurately calculated within a set of limited parameters determined by what is "meaningful" for the viewer and then the "let's fake the rest" rendering, which would be visually accurate.

Just a note: NVidia says this is also being worked on for Vulkan, so Egosoft could make use of this in X4 if they wished. For release, I don't see how it would be a value-added inclusion, though.

[pjknibbs]

But, only with a limited number of logically generated "rays." If one wished to "calculate the results of the paths of all photons" then we're going a bit too far. Do I really need to calculate an "every possible path" result? Or, am I happen culling the ones that don't really matter or will never be viewed?

The way ray tracing works is fundamentally backwards, though--what you're doing is casting rays backwards from the "eye" and determining what colour and brightness the pixel on a "screen" is from that. This means that traditional ray tracing can't reproduce the effects of, say, light shining through a glass filled with water--they have to add an additional stage where they cast thousands of rays from the light source through the glass to do that, making it even more computationally intensive.

[linolafett]

The way ray tracing works is fundamentally backwards, though--what you're doing is casting rays backwards from the "eye" and determining what colour and brightness the pixel on a "screen" is from that.

Though thats not true for all cases.
There are for example bi directional solvers which also emit rays from the light sources for better rendering of caustics.

ANd quite a few more ways to throw rays at your scenes. See the Lux render dokumentation for example.
Lux render is an open source render engine which creates incredibly realistic results.

see "surface integrator"

[BigBANGtheory]

X4 uses Vulkan and as I understand it Nvidia RTX uses NVIDIA OptiX API which is only accessible via DirectX atm but will probably include Vulkan later.


So are Egosoft experimenting with raytracing specifically for X4? seems highly unlikely until Vulkan supports the Nvidia api's


Would raytracing in a space sim be a good thing? Sure why not, it will be interesting to see who gets there first probalby Star Citizen given its still in heavy development and their love for gimmicks

[Morkonan]

The way ray tracing works is fundamentally backwards, though--what you're doing is casting rays backwards from the "eye" and determining what colour and brightness the pixel on a "screen" is from that. This means that traditional ray tracing can't reproduce the effects of, say, light shining through a glass filled with water--they have to add an additional stage where they cast thousands of rays from the light source through the glass to do that, making it even more computationally intensive.

Agreed - That's how it traditionally worked. As you describe and as linolafett defines, that's why caustics have always been "faked" in real-time simulations. (Besides - How much do they really come into play where they are in a game?) It's also why true emitters and dynamic shadows cause all sorts of issues, too, since a lot of those are sort of kludged together. Reflection, refraction, caustics, etc... All those are things that have been faked, but sometimes so obvious that even the best PBR mats and best-lit scene just "doesn't quite look right."

That sort of reverse-tracing is great, since it's a sort of automatic logical cull of any spurious crap that doesn't need to be rendered, but it's got limitations.

For X4, I don't see any advantage in this. There's not much for light to interact with, really. Do fighter cockpits need refraction? What about for NPC pilots? Do we really want to see a refracted Boron face? "Fake" is "real enough," especially if it allows for more important effects, like 'splosions and LAZORS with good fake bloom effects.

IIRC, X4 is making use of PBR materials an' such, right? So, that's a bonus. I'm only familiar with X3, so not seeing the same "look at that metal" material will be welcomed. Maybe even get some real Luxuriant Corinthian Leather seats for my commander's chair?

[jlehtone]

Now that you did mention Borons ...

They are the show off faction of X2 and X3.
Their ships had moving parts in X2. Their ship had that shiny on X3.
We could admire the white of their tentacles in X4.


It does not take long any more (before RTX) to render publication quality image with ray tracing. Yes, that is still way more than 1/60 sec. Admittedly, simple static scenes. That might be with entirely different algorithm than what the RTX does offer.


If, and only if the idea catches on -- that DXR/Vulkan and hardware bothers to provide ubiquitous support -- then there will be light at the end of the tunnel/ray.

On the other hand, if "ray tracing" remains proprietary NVidia endeavour, then ... This is Off-Topic, where (almost) everyone can enumerate "technologically superior" ideas that did not make it commercially and lost the market to "the inferiors".

[StoneLegionYT]

Not something will see right now or maybe even in X4 but nvidia just posted this yesterday for the nerdy people who enjoy reading this stuff.

Introduction to Real-Time Ray Tracing with Vulkan
https://devblogs.nvidia.com/vulkan-raytracing/

[Morkonan]

Not something will see right now or maybe even in X4 but nvidia just posted this yesterday for the nerdy people who enjoy reading this stuff.

Introduction to Real-Time Ray Tracing with Vulkan
https://devblogs.nvidia.com/vulkan-raytracing/

So, basically, there's a pre-computed/rendered sort of baked shadow map combined with a derived (?) primitive (not sure how that's generated or if it's baked/manually added from scene objects that helps cull the process a bit, making at least that part much faster?

IOW - "This is how we lie to the compooter to make it do the thing." I wasn't really expecting real-time ray-traced refraction for human hair. I guess I need to find out what they mean by "primitives." That's usually what it sounds like. But, I don't know how they're generated, here. I "get" why they'd want to use them for this, but don't know where they "get" them or if they're defining them differently than I'm used to.