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

[Hector0x]

like the realistic hair techology from a few years back.

And this hair didn't even look better. I remember trying it out while playing the first tomb raider reboot. The air resistance felt way to high, making it flow like being underwater. Collision with her shoulder happened way above her body.
And the biggest bummer: Her hair never got dirty. It always looked fake and flawless, compared to the normal version which got stained over time.

Normally i'm not nitpicky about graphics. But if something is occupying this much system resources and gets advertised heavily, it should perfectly blend in.

[DavidGW]

Exactly - this is nothing more than a tech gimmick, like the realistic hair techology from a few years back.

Unless we'll get to the point where GPU and CPU are so powerfull that the ray tracing eat up only small % of capacity, this will be probably turned off by most players.

No point for Egosoft to waste their time for technology that may or may not adopt in couple of years.

Even today I have a habit of switch off shadows or turning them to low beause back in the days they tend to eat up a lot of FPS.
Not to mention some of these tech are straight up repulsive - I always turn off motion blurr (or as I call it motion bluff) because it gives me nausea and it a cheap console method to mask ugly graphic.

I think you are very wrong here. I would be astonished if ray tracing disappeared. It is obviously vastly superior to rasterisation for graphics quality, and improves EVERYTHING. In contrast, comparisons with TressFX Hair and HairWorks doesn't make sense, as they only focus on a tiny part of graphics.

We will get to the point where CPU/GPU is so powerful that ray tracing can be done with ease. Of course we will. It's just a question of whether it takes 2 years, or 5.

Shadows make graphics a lot more realistic. If you don't have the hardware to enable them, fair enough. But in a couple of years, next time you upgrade your computer, you will. Same with Ray Tracing.

Motion blur is not meant to "mask ugly graphics", it is supposed to mask ghosting. It does not matter how powerful your GPU is, or how low you set your graphics options, ghosting will always occur without motion blur because of display refresh rate limits, unless you own an expensive 120Hz+ gaming monitor. Even at those refresh rates, it's still going to be there, just less noticeable. Decent motion blur at reasonable refresh rates should remove it completely.

By the time ES have finished polishing X4, and released a couple of DLCs for it, I expect we'll have a pretty clear idea of whether RT is here to stay or not. We also have no idea how difficult it would be for ES to implement ray tracing. It could be so hard that even if everyone got a compatible GPU for Christmas, it wouldn't be worth it. Or, it could be a reasonably easy addition for a game like X4, which would make it worthwhile to add for the benefit of the few people who do have a compatible graphics card in 2020. We don't know. The ES devs might know, but I doubt it, as they obviously have other things more important to do right now.

But again, things might change in 12-24 months.

[mr.WHO]

I think you are very wrong here. I would be astonished if ray tracing disappeared. It is obviously vastly superior to rasterisation for graphics quality, and improves EVERYTHING. In contrast, comparisons with TressFX Hair and HairWorks doesn't make sense, as they only focus on a tiny part of graphics.

I'm not sure if making everything unnaturally flashy, shiny and reflective justify investing in high end GPU:

https://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/st ... .45-PM.png

Look at that picture - you notice the reflection in the center that draw attention, but when you look at the rest of picture it's not so astonishing at all. For now it's just a gimmick and will remain at least for several years untill this will become standard for mid and low end GPU.

Not to mention the original sin of AAA industry - putting too much efford and cash into graphic and marketing, while the game mechanic become more and more shallow and repetetive (see Battlefield V and every second game planned to release in near future to be Battle Royale).

I'll stick to "ugly games" of Egosoft, even X-Rebirth.

[Arvel]

I get what you're saying Arvel, and I mostly agree about the slow adoption. However, I don't think the overall conclusion is fair. You would not expect someone who has a 9xx NVIDIA card to upgrade to a 10xx card. I think the fact that we're 24 months into the 10xx generation is inconsequential, as if someone is waiting for a worthy upgrade, then they will keep waiting until a worthy upgrade is released, even if it's 12 months longer than they were expecting.

The competition at the high end of GPU is a bit weird right now, with NVIDIA being pretty close to a monopoly, and therefore having no real reason to release better GPUs on a fast schedule. Hopefully AMD will properly throw it's hat in the ring soon.

Yes, only the 1070 or above have hardware RT right now. However, I'd be very surprised if the next generation didn't have RT in lower tiers, and likely by the 40xx generation, they will be basically across the board. Especially if AMD embrace RT as well.

As far as Trump's tantrum tariff goes, I don't think it will last long. Once enough people realise it's just as damaging to the US as it is to the rest of the world, he'll overturn it and claim it as a "success". Either that, or he'll get booted at the next election, and the tariffs will disappear.

Also, I'm not convinced developers have had enough time to thoroughly explore heavily hybridised RT/Raster techniques, which could end up with most of the graphical benefits of RT, with most of the speed of rasters. Either way, a hypothetical RTX 4060 is likely to perform similarly to an RTX 2080ti, and could be available in around 24 months.

I agree AMD needs to step up. While Intel has announced they're planning to enter the GPU market, I'm not overly optimistic since they're basically the Nvidia of CPUs.

Anyway, you seem to agree with the gist of what I was saying: It'll be two to three hardware generations (i.e. the 30-series or 40-series) before the majority of GPUs in the ecosystem support ray tracing.

I agree the hardware isn't likely to disappear, I just think the 20-series isn't powerful enough for games with ray tracing to really take off. Even the 2080ti seems to struggle with 30 frames on current titles, and while driver efficiency and implementation will surely improve, that's still not a promising indicator for their top-end GPU.

The main reason I predict Turing architecture will gain traction is DLSS. Based on early testing it provides a significant boost to performance while looking near-as-good or sometimes better than 4k with TAA. Developers appear to concur, as more than twice as many upcoming titles have announced DLSS support as they have for ray tracing.

At any rate, I suppose we'll have to wait and see. I think it's something Egosoft could potentially patch into the game a few years from now if it seems worthwhile, but I think this question will be more relevant when the tech has matured and Egosoft is working on X5 or X4's equivalent to Terran Conflict.

[Alan Phipps]

Since this has already been replied to in respect of X4 and has then developed into a general discussion of RTX and graphics hardware, this can move over to Off Topic.

[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.