Quake II RTX is out now for free

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, RejZoR said:

How is Unix (DXR) named OSX (RTX) and locked to apple (NVIDIA) any different than Unix (DXR) lol?   Please...

 

Did you just literally confirmed my point? LMAO

SMH

 

My point was you are taking two things that do something similar and convincing yourself they are the same.   RTX is hardware unique to nvidia,  DXR is software anyone can use.

 

I have linked you to articles explaining this, pointed out why they are different and been very patient while you simply ignore it all,  At this point you either lack the knowledge to understand or are intentionally ignoring reality because it upsets you.

 

[Guest]

11 hours ago, Hellion said:

This looks awful and way too over dramatic.

 

I don't think I've ever seen a better example of how to ruin a classic game.

now way... did i read that right

how to ruin a classic game. It is just a techdemo friend .... rejoice for the mighty core count will double again

[Doobeedoo]

Cool. Fuly ray-traced scene games the dream. I get the demo and to show off, though at times and places seems exaggerated be it saturation or too mirror like. Not just this game. 

[RoseLuck462]

I’m so close to impulse buying a 2070 so I can experience RTX for games like this...

[RejZoR]

1 hour ago, RoseLuck462 said:

I’m so close to impulse buying a 2070 so I can experience RTX for games like this...

It's pointless. There are like 3 games in existence and everything is stupid shiny because apparently NVIDIA only knows to do things in binary mode. Either it's full on or full off. They have yet to invent things like distance blur in reflections. You know, something that would actually increase performance and realism. No surface except mirrors reflects 1:1 perfect sharp world. Yet they are doing just that. It's stupid and actually looks ugly. Pretty much all reflections except mirrors could be done at half the accuracy and run on any existing card because you wouldn't need so much horse power to do it.

[Mira Yurizaki]

2 hours ago, Doobeedoo said:

Cool. Fuly ray-traced scene games the dream. I get the demo and to show off, though at times and places seems exaggerated be it saturation or too mirror like. Not just this game. 

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealityIsUnrealistic

 

1 minute ago, RejZoR said:

It's pointless. There are like 3 games in existence and everything is stupid shiny because apparently NVIDIA only knows to do things in binary mode. Either it's full on or full off.

They said the same thing bout hardware transform and lighting when it first came out. They said the same thing about programmable shaders. They said the same thing about DX10. They probably said the same thing about tessellation.

 

Also uh, of course it's on or off. You're either ray tracing or you're not. Though at the moment it's not fully ray tracing, but a hybrid approach to get the best quality out of both ray tracing and rasterizing.

 

5 hours ago, mr moose said:

SMH

 

My point was you are taking two things that do something similar and convincing yourself they are the same.   RTX is hardware unique to nvidia,  DXR is software anyone can use.

 

I have linked you to articles explaining this, pointed out why they are different and been very patient while you simply ignore it all,  At this point you either lack the knowledge to understand or are intentionally ignoring reality because it upsets you.

 

What's really funny is Quake II isn't using DXR. It's using Vulkan with NVIDIA's RT extensions (which I linked in an earlier post they're trying to make standardized). I don't even know why DXR is being brought up.

[Drak3]

3 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

It's pointless. There are like 3 games in existence and everything is stupid shiny because apparently NVIDIA only knows to do things in binary mode. Either it's full on or full off. They have yet to invent things like distance blur in reflections. You know, something that would actually increase performance and realism. No surface except mirrors reflects 1:1 perfect sharp world. Yet they are doing just that. It's stupid and actually looks ugly. Pretty much all reflections except mirrors could be done at half the accuracy and run on any existing card because you wouldn't need so much horse power to do it.

If everything is reflecting perfectly like mirrors, that's on the game developers. That doesn't happen in Quake II RTX, which is using RTX either exclusively or almost exclusively.

 

And @Mira Yurizakihas shown pictures of mirror like reflections in glass, water, and the finish of cars, on page 4 of this thread.

[Mira Yurizaki]

Maybe this post would be helpful, but eh, I've been saying this in various places.

 

This version of Quake II started off as a side project from someone working (interning?) at NVIDIA. The original name of project was called Quake II VKPT (short for Vulkan Path Tracing). You can find more about it at http://brechpunkt.de/q2vkpt/. As the name implies, it uses Vulkan as the rendering API (which I'm not sure if it's based off of vkQuake2 or if person who did VKPT ported it on their own), using NVIDIA's RT extensions for Vulkan.

 

The inspiration for this project came from Edd Biddulph, who decided to make a real-time path tracer on the OpenGL render path back in 2016. You can find his work at https://amietia.com/q2pt.html . The astute among you might point out that the initial performance figures Edd reports appear much higher than that which you can get from VKPT (22 FPS on a GTX 680!?). However, looking at the videos Edd shared, it looks like he only implemented path tracing for diffuse/reflection lighting and shadows. i.e., it looks less feature rich than VKPT.

 

Ultimately it's important to note two things about this demo:

• This is not using DXR. DXR is a DirectX 12 feature.
• This is not using GameWorks. While GameWorks has a ray tracing API, it's NVIDIA's OptiX API, which as far as I know is deader in usage for games than PhysX

[mr moose]

6 hours ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

 I don't even know why DXR is being brought up.

Because some people are trying really really hard to make it sound like NVIDIA are doing something wrong or scummy.  

[Mira Yurizaki]

8 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Because some people are trying really really hard to make it sound like NVIDIA are doing something wrong or scummy.  

But like, DXR isn't even NVIDIA's thing.

 

Maybe Microsoft is doing a poor job making it clear to muggles that DXR != RTX.

[Drak3]

1 minute ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

But like, DXR isn't even NVIDIA's thing.

 

Maybe Microsoft is doing a poor job making it clear to muggles that DXR != RTX.

Is it even surprising that people see DXR and Raytracing in general as a Nvidia thing? AMD hasn't exactly marketed the crap out of their ability to do it, nor do they have a dedicated counterpart to RTX. They just do it with the unused potential of their architecture, and there are fewer instances of that happening right now.

[Mira Yurizaki]

8 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Is it even surprising that people see DXR and Raytracing in general as a Nvidia thing? AMD hasn't exactly marketed the crap out of their ability to do it, nor do they have a dedicated counterpart to RTX. They just do it with the unused potential of their architecture, and there are fewer instances of that happening right now.

Here's some food for thought. The whole project is on GitHub: https://github.com/cschied/q2vkpt/

 

AMD has a ray tracer API built on top of Vulkan, much like NVIDIA has one:

 

AMD could simply come out with their own version of Q2VKPT. I'm pretty sure it won't take that long to make one (and who knows, maybe someone's actually doing such a thing).

[mr moose]

6 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Is it even surprising that people see DXR and Raytracing in general as a Nvidia thing? AMD hasn't exactly marketed the crap out of their ability to do it, nor do they have a dedicated counterpart to RTX. They just do it with the unused potential of their architecture, and there are fewer instances of that happening right now.

 

It's definitely going to be a thing on both brands.   It's like the whole freesync thing all over again.  NVIDIA make a thing that works, AMD follow up later with an open standard,  People get pissy with NVIDIA for being proprietary.   Nvidia push ahead with RTX,  AMD will eventually showcase DXR on their cards, yet people are getting pissy with NVIDIA again for being proprietary. 

 

The amusing part is that some are even trying to claim their "locked down" option is exactly the same as the not locked down option.  You know, because you can have something proprietary and exclusive while exactly the same as an open/free to use standard. 

[Drak3]

1 minute ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

AMD has a ray tracer API built on top of Vulkan, much like NVIDIA has one

But there are still some key differences, namely in advertising and how each achieve the end goal. Like I said, AMD is tapping into otherwise unused resources, while Nvidia added dedicated silicon (and advertised comparatively heavily on it).

 

2 minutes ago, mr moose said:

It's definitely going to be a thing on both brands.

No doubt. We're still in generation 1, and we've got visual upgrades without sinking below what many people consider playable framerates. I don't think that was the case with some older technologies.

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

No doubt. We're still in generation 1, and we've got visual upgrades without sinking below what many people consider playable framerates. I don't think that was the case with some older technologies.

It wasn't,  this is the fastest I have seen any new tech get taken up by developers in the domestic market.    By the end of this year I expect to see some competitive AMD options and significantly more games.  

[Mira Yurizaki]

7 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

No doubt. We're still in generation 1, and we've got visual upgrades without sinking below what many people consider playable framerates. I don't think that was the case with some older technologies.

Throwing up a few things from the past:

 

DX11 and Tessellation:

http://www.hardwarezone.com/feature-radeon-hd-5870-shootout-when-juggernauts-clash/unigine-heaven-results-1

https://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/11/06/unigine_heaven_benchmark_dx11_tessellation

https://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/30297-nvidia-geforce-gtx-480-review-21.html

 

Basically performance could be cut practically by a huge chunk (ass-pull guess is around 40%).

 

DX10 and whatever it brought

https://bit-tech.net/reviews/gaming/pc/company_of_heroes_dx10_comparison/4/ (has a comparison between DX9 and DX10)

https://www.anandtech.com/Show/Index/2267?cPage=6&all=False&sort=0&page=4&slug= (has a comparison between DX9 and DX10)

https://www.legitreviews.com/company-of-heroes-goes-directx-10_507/3

https://www.anandtech.com/show/2267/3

https://www.legitreviews.com/ati-versus-nvidia-directx-10-benchmarking_504/3

 

Basically you went from PCMR playable (60 FPS) to PCMR "what the hell is this?" (< 30 FPS)

 

DX8 and Programmable Shaders

 

(from http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=724&amp;page=9)

This is from AquaMark, one of the few DirectX 8 apps that was available around the time the GeForce 3 was released. For comparison, this is Quake 3 at 800x600:

 

(from http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=724&amp;page=10)

 

And 3DMark 2001 tests on the GeForce 3, GeForce 2, and Radeon cards back then: http://ixbtlabs.com/articles/gf33dmark2k1/

 

DX7 and Hardware Transform & Lighting

This is about as good as my Google Fu skills will get, considering how hard it is to find data of T&L supported games (I believe Quake 3 had support, though it's an OGL game), but I'll at least throw in this GeForce 256 review: https://www.anandtech.com/show/429

 

I think for that review though, the tests were more about testing 3dfx's claim that a fast enough processor would make up for the lack of hardware T&L.

[Drak3]

@Mira Yurizaki on phone atm, can I get a TL:DR?

[Mira Yurizaki]

25 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

@Mira Yurizaki on phone atm, can I get a TL:DR?

Every major version of DirectX has brought some feature with it that tanked performance if you used it compared to the same GPU running a game using the previous generation API or disabling the feature.

 

Though I skipped DX9 because DX9 was weird. By the time ATI and NVIDIA were using the same DX9 version, people stopped caring about DX8.

 

EDIT: I guess for the sake of throwing it in, here's what happened for Half-Life 2 using DX9, which impacted performance by around 20% at higher resolutions for a GPU that worked with DX9.0b: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1549/3

 

(Before anyone goes "lol look at how bad NVIDIA did", Half-Life 2 used DX9.0b, whereas NVIDIA for the FX series based it around DX9.0a)

[Drak3]

33 minutes ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

Every major version of DirectX has brought some feature with it that tanked performance if you used it compared to the same GPU running a game using the previous generation API or disabling the feature.

Thank you

[Mira Yurizaki]

Ultimately, if this wasn't released as an NVIDIA sponsored project, would anyone react differently? Like the YouTube comments on the original Q2PT project were fairly positive. 

 

But because it has NVIDIA's name on it, I feel like people are immediately going "lol look at this NVIDIA bullshit" 

[Drak3]

2 minutes ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

Ultimately, if this wasn't released as an NVIDIA sponsored project, would anyone react differently?

Unlikely.

[Unixsystem]

21 hours ago, mr moose said:

The amusing part is that some are even trying to claim their "locked down" option is exactly the same as the not locked down option.  You know, because you can have something proprietary and exclusive while exactly the same as an open/free to use standard. 

The problem I have with RTX is that it seems wildly wasteful for what you get. Yes, you can get significantly better performance than using just compute based RT on modern cards, but you are sacrificing massive amounts of die space for the privilege, and the end result is barely even playable.

 

Even if we assume next gen is 7nm plus higher "IPC" on the RT cores, I still doubt you are going to easily get 60+ fps at 1440p+ on AAA titles, all while sacrificing a ton of real estate that could instead be dedicated to both better rasterization and better compute performance (which in time will lead to better RT performance). And even then we're still talking about a hybrid/partial RT solution, and not the real thing which is even more unobtainable.

 

I feel like in the best case scenario we are at least 5-10 years away from ray tracing being a totally common and usable feature. The RT cores may help move that timeline forward a year or two, but it's at the cost of every other aspect of what a GPU is (cost, rasterization, heat, power). I'd much rather that they invest their time into compute focused RT algorithms that will be applicable to any GPU, especially since I don't see them shipping cards with RT cores for more than a couple generations, especially since both AMD and Intel seem to be pushing full software RT. 

[Drak3]

Just now, Waffles13 said:

the end result is barely even playable.

Maybe for you. These games are capable of 1080p60 with reasonable RT settings (basically, same scenario as ultra settings), which is very playable for most people.

[illegalwater]

51 minutes ago, Waffles13 said:

Even if we assume next gen is 7nm plus higher "IPC" on the RT cores, I still doubt you are going to easily get 60+ fps at 1440p+ on AAA titles, all while sacrificing a ton of real estate that could instead be dedicated to both better rasterization and better compute performance (which in time will lead to better RT performance). And even then we're still talking about a hybrid/partial RT solution, and not the real thing which is even more unobtainable.

I get 60+ FPS at 1440p in all three DXR games on my 2080 right now..

[Unixsystem]

2 hours ago, Drak3 said:

Maybe for you. These games are capable of 1080p60 with reasonable RT settings (basically, same scenario as ultra settings), which is very playable for most people.

 

1 hour ago, System32.exe said:

I get 60+ FPS at 1440p in all three DXR games on my 2080 right now..

Fair enough, I haven't paid a ton of attention to RTX benchmarks since right around launch, when a lot of the demos were pretty rough. Regardless, everything else I said still stands; you are trading a lot in every other category in exchange for a slight/moderate graphical advantage in a tiny subset of titles.

 

Meanwhile you can look at Vega, which admittedly has much worse RT performance, but not orders of magnitude different (obviously hard to tell apples to apples since they don't run the same games, but it seemed to run the original Quake II RT mod reasonably well). And that was without sectioning off large sections of the die for single use hardware.