Cyberpunk 2077The long awaited Overdrive feature is here. Announced alongside the Nvidia RTX 4090, the new ray tracing mode brings full path tracking to the world of Night City — and it looks incredible. It’s also extremely demanding, and while there’s some argument that the visual improvements are worth it, after testing it myself, the new ray tracing doesn’t strike me as a reason to buy a new graphics card.
Trajectory tracing is essentially a hard way of doing ray tracing, and is now only possible with the massive power of current generation GPUs and some clever AI frame generation. So if you don’t have access to the latest and greatest, you can’t turn on the feature. But don’t worry; because no matter how impressive it is to follow the path on paper, it does not change the appearance Cyberpunk 2077 in full.
Trajectory tracking is not just ray tracing
Cyberpunk 2077 | Ray Tracing: Overdrive Mode – 4K Technology Preview Reveal
It’s important to set the stage for how demanding pathfinding really is. Road tracing is ray tracing, but it’s a much more laborious version of ray tracing than what we’ve seen in countless games over the past few years.
By basic definition, ray tracing works by following the ray coming out of your camera. That ray travels across the scene, bounces off objects and circles around until it reaches the original light source.
But here’s the trick: with the ray tracing you usually see in games, only some rays actually matter. They are calculated — the game only takes a ray sample to calculate the final pixel color.
Path tracking is a difficult way to get things done. It is often referred to as full ray tracing because it takes into account multiple reflections and surface nuances that traditional ray tracing cannot account for. Developers often find ways to save on performance with traditional ray tracing.
As I described in my dissection Portal RTX, ray tracing feature like a flashlight in the Dying Light 2 it saves on performance because it does not calculate shadows or color reflection properties from the air.
The effects of path tracking compared to ray tracing are not always visible, as I will discuss later. When performance matters, it is really questions. A good example is something like fog, which may not take on color properties in a game with reflections and ray-traced shadows. With full path tracking, light bouncing in the fog will take on color from the sources around it.
Before we go deeper, it’s important to point out that the latest update for the Cyberpunk 2077 it adds much more than path tracking. It sees the introduction of Nvidia’s Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing (DLAA), along with Intel’s XeSS Super Resolution feature. The update also overhauls the benchmark screen, now showing system specs, driver version and more.
It’s not always easy to spot
Image used with permission of the copyright holder
It is not always easy to see the differences between ray tracing and path tracing. For example, in a large outdoor scene like the one above, there are only minor differences between the ray-traced and path-tracked versions.
In the path-drawn version (left), there’s a little less reflection from the trees above as the puddles get closer to your character. Contrast that with the ray-traced version (center) where you get the infamous glossy surface effect.
At first glance, the image without ray tracing (right) actually looks a little better — the reflections are sharper and the color more whimsical. However, there are some compromises. Unlike the ray-traced and path-tracked versions, the tree reflections are cut off because they are not visible to the camera, and the big purple lights don’t bloom.
Image used with permission of the copyright holder
Those small differences can be important, as the comparison above proves. Without ray tracing (right), the big lights on the right do not bounce off the stone pillars. There are also some other significant differences between path tracing and ray tracing here.
The shadow cast by the ledge above is much less noticeable in the path-drawn version (left). Instead, the sheer force of bright sunlight washes out the shadow as it would in the real world.
Image used with permission of the copyright holder
Similarly, in the scene above, the shadows are much less intense in the path version (left). Instead, objects like the bench take on more natural shadows. This is especially true with the light right next to the bench. Without ray tracing (right), there is a clear direct reflection on the bench. However, in beam and path tracking, that reflection absorbs much stronger sunlight. This image is also a good illustration of what path tracking can do for shadows (see the trees in the background).
In my time with the new path tracking, the interior scenes stood out the most. Here, path tracking is really better than beam tracking. Comparing the two, you can see how the reflection on the ceiling barely registers with ray tracing, while it nearly destroys the scene with path tracing.
Similarly, reflection from the ground is absent and you don’t get that subtle mix of white and red light mixing on the floor.
Image used with permission of the copyright holder
If you look at the non-ray-tracing version (right), you’ll get many of the reflections that are present in the path-tracing version (left). The devil is in the details here though. The bench does not pick up any red reflections from the table next to it, and the back wall does not reflect a lot of white light. Additionally, the counter is covered in shadow, instead of being illuminated by the open door that is off-camera.
That’s the power of path tracking. It’s remarkable when you can see the nuances of lighting in a scene and see how this expensive technique can improve the look.
There is a problem, however; track tracking is expensive. As good as it looks, the differences between path tracking and even traditional screen space techniques can be hard to tell in normal gameplay, and turning on path tracking can greatly reduce your performance.
Nothing comes for free
Jacob Roach / Digital Trends
You may not want to turn on trajectory tracking to achieve success, but there are a good number of people who simply shouldn’t turn on trajectory tracking. Cyberpunk 2077Path tracking works best on RTX 40 series graphics cards, so you should have at least an RTX 4070 Ti to turn it on. It also technically runs on an RTX 3090, though the developer says you should expect the game to run at 30 frames per second (fps) at 1080p. With other GPUs, good luck.
I tested path tracking with an RTX 4090 and Intel’s Core i9-13900K, which is, by almost every measure, the most powerful gaming PC money can buy right now. Going from the highest preset of no ray tracing to path tracking dropped my fps from 118 fps to 31.4 fps — a 74% drop.
Even with the highest ray tracing setting, you can comfortably play the game at 60 fps. Also note that I tested on an Alienware 34 QD-OLED monitor with a resolution of 3440 x 1440. At 4K, the game is even more demanding.
Image used with permission of the copyright holder
You’re not should have use this kind of trajectory tracking. There’s a reason you need an RTX 40-series GPU, and that’s DLSS Frame Generation. It’s no coincidence that DLSS Frame Generation boosts performance to about the same level as the original non-ray-tracing performance. Of course, turning on DLSS without ray tracing results in even better performance, but at around 120 fps? That’s not bad for one of the most demanding games a PC can run right now.
If you have one of the best graphics cards on the market, Cyberpunk 2077Overdrive mode is a great way to enhance the look of the game. However, as my testing and pictures show, it’s not a revolution. It’s still very demanding, turning off much of the otherwise powerful hardware, and while it looks the best, the differences are sometimes hard to tell.
So turn on Overdrive if you can. But don’t worry if you can’t; you don’t miss much.
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Categories: GAMING
Source: newstars.edu.vn