Raytracing Mod

General Discussion
1

Blizzard has been working on fixing the depth buffer since that is the reason this mod flickers in some cutscenes in the exact same places. Its a matter of time until its fixed completely.

Instructions included on channel. This is the range of quality settings you can choose from. This should work on almost any modern PC just fine and it will work on retro gaming machines as well without much fuss being screenspace only limited path based raytracing. Intelligent upscale tech that may (and probably does) in fact work on older than marketing said, will allow the trade off for objective clarity for more shader complexity, playably. Think oil painting where things arent necessarily the most sharp in detail.

AMD formally unveils fidelityfx-super-resolution open-source game upscaling
-anandtech

VERY LOW: A Trash IGPU:
The ambient occlusion or more generalized spatial layer is maxed out in its intensity (not samples!) to compensate for the turning off of 2 ambient occlusion layers since they all collectively overlap and darken accordingly anyway. The glow effect on geometry and 2 AO radius survive, as well as the best post process AA available presently.

LOW: Ancient GPUs:
All raytracing radius are enabled, and the quality goes up from literally the lowest setting. Color grading to more represent a realistic palette on vegetation is turned off for this quality and beneath it. Intensity compromises are present since lower sample rates leads to less real world intensity.

MEDIUM: Retro GPUs:
Bloom and ambient light are disabled for this preset and everything beneath it. Sample rates go up to cleaner less noisy values. Color grading to more represent a realistic palette on vegetation begins as standard going up the stack. Intelligent sharpening is enabled up the stack starting with this one.

HIGH: Slower GPUs (OC’ed GTX 1660 TI @ 1080 45-60fps):
The most reasonable sample rate to visual quality option if you have a decently modern higher end GPU. Bloom and ambient light are enabled for this preset and everything above it. Godray based light scattering is enabled for this preset and above.

VERY HIGH: The base folders DefaultPreset:
Sample rate is maxed well beyond what can be seen by human eyes at least at a 1080 screens pixel density, for the sake of objective clarity if you have that kind of compute.

2k upscaled to 4k Slower GPUs preset. Even on a 1080 screen it is recommended to buffer the 4k option since you will no longer be looking solely at the fruits of compression courtesy essentially supersampling.

2

As far as I am aware software raytracing draw call overhead is trivial compared with the actual software ray casting engine. Most of the CPU or GPU time spent running the ray casting engine as a lot of casts are needed for reasonable, noise free visuals.

As far as I am aware D3D11 does not support raytracing at all. The feature was only added with D3D12.

Raytracing is unlikely to give much visual improvement as nothing really needs it. I guess it could enhance the quality of water, but there are no wet ground surfaces or shiny materials that benefit from raytracing. Being an RTS game, the parts that would benefit from it are usually so small that the normal user will not be able to tell the difference between simple environment map trickery or realistic reflections.

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3

Its not trivial in programs that ordinarily dont know what multithreadedness is. The original game in no way was using 4 cores without dumping cache so throwing more complexity period can ride the edge of playability if you push your luck. Games like Mafia II Definitive Edition, and Assassins Creed II especially with DG Voodoo chucking extra passes ordinarily done on the GPU to the CPU, but you get that sweet raytracing under a DX11 wrapper, and its not just reflections. If you watch the video it should be super obvious there is ambient occlusion and its glowing opposite.

I highly doubt the CPU is doing much of anything. Its all in my case being done in cuda and the CPU barely messes with whats been prechewed and digested for it by the GPU. They call it software raytracing because it works pretty much in anything. Even in 3DFX glide courtesy wrapper technic. Its wild bro.

The promise of raytracing is no more prebaking from artists it saves them time, and therefore money. Hardware isnt there yet for that to become a reality so its going to be hybrid rendering for now. But the point is thats why it works in almost everything. Its less complex than pixel shaders. A game like AVP2 didnt use the full feature set of DX 8.1. The devs only included it because by the time it launched there was almost no one with actual Geforce 3 Tis. Nvidia was rebranding Geforce 2s as Geforce 4s literally. Its almost criminal. Adding raytracing makes it look a bit closer to DX8 without bump mapping so im happy this tool exists at all. Im not sophisticated enough to add something like that to a game especially one like that with some degree of its open source in the public domain. I am noob. The ambient occlusion and the glow effect on geometry help geometry look more 3 dimensional. Less flat.

With a bit more love to the depth buffer, and like some tiny tweaks to major cutscenes. Maybe even do a a.i. upscale of the textures for a higher texture setting option. Include uncompressed textures as an option for maximal clarity. AMDs FSR is due out in under 30 days. Word is it works in almost everything on any GPU. It would put the games visuals above and beyond what was originally promised everyone was mad wasnt a reality. It seems like there is a chance they are working toward something like this. I hope so. If for no other reason than its going to be a timeless classic for centuries to come.

4

Once again, as far as I am aware only newer versions of DX12 and Vulkan support hardware raytracing acceleration, which is required to run raytraced elements fast enough for complicated real time visuals.

Anything else is either a tech demo or using rasterisation trickery. Tech demos did exist running on powerful server hardware of the time using raytracing, but even with raytracing the games look primitive by todays standard, think original Xbox quality of graphics. A lot of games use raytracing calculated baked lighting hints to look more realistic, for example Sonic Unleashed which famously pushed the technology back in the day. Sonic Forces did progress the engine far enough that some of these raytracing like calculations were run in software in real time, but it is also why the engine performed so terribly compared to its older iterations for visuals that hardly looked any better (one of the many reason the game was critically panned).

I think the newest version of Unreal Engine has advanced this approach that it can calculate/bake the environment lighting in real time using raytracing, but this is proper hardware accelerated raytracing using DirectX12/Vulkan on modern GPUs.

Which is not viable for a game developer to use given that AMD does not support CUDA and is a huge player in the graphic card market at the moment. Both Intel and Apple also does not support CUDA. AMD supports hardware accelerated raytracing and soon Intel will as well.

Again, this feature is pretty strongly tied to modern Nvidia GPUs or Intel or Apple CPUs which offer efficient AI acceleration hardware. This leaves AMD users, which are a growing market share, in the dry.

Texture compression is largely about performance as it drastically reduces the memory bandwidth needed to draw with a texture. Additionally the way it works does not reduce clarity that much as it retains high frequency information. As it is some custom maps are pushing GPU memory when playing Reforged due to how much space the textures use.

The word also is that it is not that good as it is not AI driven like Nvidia’s DLSS is. I would not speculate on unreleased technology.

5

“Once again, as far as I am aware only newer versions of DX12 and Vulkan support hardware raytracing acceleration, which is required to run raytraced elements fast enough for complicated real time visuals.”

Marty Mcfly, or Pascal Glitcher:
The code im using isnt RTGI but its redundant. Hes an nvidia employee. Again, you dont have to trust me bro, you can test my work. How for example in Pokemon Snap, I did for scientific purposes, is the lighting effect on GEOMETRY occurring? Magical bloomy effects? Everything I offer is free other than your actual time invested in finding out instead of from the sidelines continuing to speculate in the face of repeated confirmation.

“Anything else is either a tech demo or using rasterization trickery.”

Nope. Its path based raytracing albeit screenspace only at this time, like HBAO+.

“Tech demos did exist running on powerful server hardware of the time using raytracing, but even with raytracing the games look primitive by todays standard, think original Xbox quality of graphics.”

Sad the anniversary edition of Halo Combat Evolved that first bridge you come across after impact on the planet below lost its bump mapping. I guess Bill Gates charitable outer extravagance has a real blind spot for the fact art that in some respects represents his entire companies gaming presentation. Its pure commercialization.

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His entire personality in a nutshell. Hopefully other CEOs arent so in our face about their instinctive drives. That bottom line asset afterall represents them perhaps centuries after their reign.

Even if he is half joking, im severely dissapointed in what he did to Halo Combat Evolved, both to netbursts context switching logical core complexity thread scheduler side, and how he basically shanked intel in the eye with a crayon metaphorically just to make xbox more relevant. This attitude is I think in very poor taste. Art should reflect the entire opposite. Excellent, quality taste. Not, who cares ringing through it like a bell as the planet shuddered from the KT boundary in the sands of time or momentary plasma to glass.

“A lot of games use raytracing calculated baked lighting hints to look more realistic, for example Sonic Unleashed which famously pushed the technology back in the day. Sonic Forces did progress the engine far enough that some of these raytracing like calculations were run in software in real time, but it is also why the engine performed so terribly compared to its older iterations for visuals that hardly looked any better (one of the many reason the game was critically panned).”

Hybrid rendering is what it is for the timbeing. I dont know why you keep talking like its being done on the CPU die itself. Its not. At least not in a modern context.

“I think the newest version of Unreal Engine has advanced this approach that it can calculate/bake the environment lighting in real time using raytracing, but this is proper hardware accelerated raytracing using DirectX12/Vulkan on modern GPUs.”

The only thing proper that I cant bring, is offscreen calculations. There is someone doing Gods Work with Star Wars Jedi Knight II Jedi Outcast. Im hoping he makes my work obsolete soon. Ive tried propagandizing him into doing Deus Ex Revision next.

“Which is not viable for a game developer to use given that AMD does not support CUDA and is a huge player in the graphic card market at the moment. Both Intel and Apple also does not support CUDA. AMD supports hardware accelerated raytracing and soon Intel will as well.”

Its actually very viable for game developers because all CUDA is, is basic full precision compute we have had since DX10 unified shaders. You dont need RTX or specific nvidia CUDA compute shaders to use my mods. They would work just fine on modern APUs assuming you use the fastest preset.

“Again, this feature is pretty strongly tied to modern Nvidia GPUs or Intel or Apple CPUs which offer efficient AI acceleration hardware. This leaves AMD users, which are a growing market share, in the dry.”

Are you sure you arent just talking out of your 1ss bro? The new consoles both use AMD half precision raytracing optimized hardware too, and its because of this hybrid rendering is now the new standard.

“Texture compression is largely about performance as it drastically reduces the memory bandwidth needed to draw with a texture. Additionally the way it works does not reduce clarity that much as it retains high frequency information. As it is some custom maps are pushing GPU memory when playing Reforged due to how much space the textures use.”

BC7 looks promising, but if you have the assets available anyway, and hardware is only getting more density as it scales forward you might as well offer both. It after all was exactly what John Carmack did with Doom III. Bro we have GPUs available today with 24Gbs of memory. Over the next decade assuming we dont nuke ourselves into oblivion, its only going to go in that sort of direction, and its just Reforged. You speak as if on custom maps its magically cyberpunk at 8k maxed out. Yeah the artists did a good job, but even with an inefficient basically DX11 wrapper tier job, which im not saying its inefficient anymore using 4 threads, its legit. One advantage you get from nvidia GPUs is you get multicore API support DX11 and up. AMD has no such thing probably unto this very day. As complexity scales upward, the more these bottlenecks in draw calls begin to potentially matter. AMDs long game of DX12 is finally paying off. Mostly because consoles is my guess. Porting should be brainlessly straightforward to PC today. Once A.I. replaces hardware abstraction, we are going to be super set, because its going to save devs money and they can do an exceptional job allwhile.

“The word also is that it is not that good as it is not AI driven like Nvidia’s DLSS is. I would not speculate on unreleased technology.”

Except its now public domain information AMDs solution doesnt use vector information, and is very similar to DLSS 1.0 as a result. That doesnt mean it wont be superior, it likely will be out of necessity, but training DLSS models in a game specific way, much like was required for MFAA maxwell era, is going to without question be superior to just a generalized approach. Especially if the accuracy of data to work with is 4-8bit inference based as opposed to 16bit precision. Thats not even controversial. Everyone knows its going to be inferior to DLSS 2.0. The only question is, how much better if at all will it be to nvidias first iteration. Its also super fast and potentially a hack from the future to help raytrace on retro hardware since I specifically have a bare bones option for almost every game ive tested and patched. According to at least one tech journalist on youtube it is in fact A.I. based. If it wasnt it wouldnt work, its just using its own method. My guess is its going to look best as actual supersampling above the screens density since without vector data its going to wobble a bit as the laziness of the floating points is basically trash. But dont get me wrong, its a cool tech. Im going to use it a lot. Humans cant hardly tell if a floating point is trash. Stacking L3 in a peaceful war against alderlake… breaths heavily

Dont do it Intel. Bill will strike again. Abandon mass production of the little cores since you already have to contend with logical cores as well. Use the diespace more wisely. Put that in mobile and server chips. The gamers dont trust this going well. If you like money id listen up. Your ICBM was a failure. That thread scheduler is and will likely forever be garbage. Please dont make us watch.

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