![]() ![]() At Digital Foundry, we've started a new series of tech discussion videos based on multiplayer games - the idea being that we have more to talk about if we're all in the game commentating on it 'live'. In terms of how we put together our Crysis Reshade/RT video, we really tried to push the boat out. However, beyond our experiments with Crysis, testing suggests that the biggest improvements to visual quality are likely to come from older games with far less sophisticated lighting, so this new filter should still produce some impressive results on a lot of games, even without top of the line graphics hardware. Because Reshade works on DX9/DX11 titles, there's no access to the Nvidia hardware acceleration if you do have an RTX card, because the implementation there uses DXR under DirectX 12, or the Vulkan API. Another profound limitation is that because Reshade only has access to depth and colour information, it can only make educated guesses on where light is coming from and how it should be traced.Īnd of course, ray tracing is a highly intensive task from a computational standpoint, so the performance impact is significant. ![]() Again, the video reveals a range of scenarios where this can break the effect. ![]() The biggest is that Reshade's access to in-game data is limited to screen space, meaning that anything you don't see on-screen won't be ray traced. The Reshade RT filter is still deep in development (though Reshade Patreon supporters can access the latest alphas right now) and there are a number of limitations to factor in. Crysis as you've never seen it before - the iconic first level tested in co-op, embellished with real-time path traced global illumination. Take a look at the video below and you'll see a number of A to B comparisons that reveal a stark difference. The technique has evolved constantly over the last decade, but path traced global illumination can take this to the next level: Reshade beams out three rays per pixel in calculating shade and light bounce - giving a new layer of accuracy and depth to the way the scene is lit. It's not a full fat implementation as we saw in Minecraft, but it can have a transformative effect - particularly on titles like the original Crysis, created at a time when the way games were lit was somewhat naïve compared to modern day implementations.Ĭrysis was a pioneer for screen-space ambient occlusion (SSAO) which uses data from the depth buffer to add shade to the nooks and crannies on-screen. A new ray tracing feature is now available in alpha builds - and strictly speaking, this adds a new layer of global illumination derived from path tracing. Reshade works by hooking into DirectX, accessing the data contained in the depth and colour buffers to accomplish a range of post-process effects, including SMAA anti-aliasing, screen-space reflections, depth of field and colour tints to name but a few. It's all because of a new extension currently in development for the powerful post-process injection tool, Reshade, created by modding veteran and Nvidia Ancel contributor, Pascal Gilcher. We recently looked at a stunning path traced version of Minecraft, but what if RT techniques could be applied to all DirectX9 and DirectX11 games? And what happens if we apply that new technology to classic PC mangler, Crysis? Watch the video embedded on this page and you'll see that it works to a transformative degree - albeit with limitations. The arrival of Nvidia's RTX line of graphics cards may not have immediately ushered in a new era of games built around the concept of ray traced rendering but it has put the technique on the map, with results impressive enough to inspire developers to add ray traced effects to existing games - several of which do not actually require Nvidia hardware acceleration. ![]()
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