CD Projekt RED Announces Cyberpunk

You not noticed the other people who said it was buttery smooth over 60fps too most of the time?
We don't know anything about the specific performance/optimisation of this game because we haven't benchmarked the release build, have we?

The previewers played a preview build - so a build that will end up being at least 6 months old by the time the game comes out.

Of course RT is going to be expensive - that's a given, to state that RT is particularly demanding in this game is patently rubbish. No one aside from the developers knows anything.
This is the same for every other title that's had RT features - you either want RT and accept the FPS cost or you don't.
It's an emerging technique that's likely going to be fairly standard in the near future - so the sooner people get on board and accept it's current implementation the sooner the game and hardware devs can improve it.

 

Hey I totally want to see it succeed, but for me the game support just wasn't there enough yet. Now after seeing CyberPunk, sign me up for a RTX 3060 on day one.

 

That is not correct and doesn't apply to all systems. In most cases, RDR2/Vulkan runs on W10 vs W7 with +-3% difference. In my case, it runs on W7 even slightly faster in some cases.

Choosing DX12 only is bad idea. CDPR should reconsider this and add a Vulkan patch later. If I take into account CDPR's background, I see no sense in choosing DX12.

 

Is that in your personal system or a work machine? Windows 7 is so old now, damn thing needs to be put out into the pasture.

The developer said it was due to DXR and the Xbox One's DX12 commonality.

Does Vulkan even have a raytracing API they could use? DX12 seems to be improving at a much faster pace than Vulkan, which isn't surprising as only one developer is helming it compared to several with Vulkan.

 

4 Intel-based test PCs @ work and my personal PC @ home
Honestly, W7 and Linux distributions are still my preferred OSes. W10 is built for plebs.

Saving some time is not a good reasoning when you develop a game for 7+ years. Every PC developer should follow R* and use Vulkan as main API, DX12 as a fallback.

Yes, Vulkan has RT support for quite a long time. Even Quake2 RTX is built on VK and not on DXR.

You're completely wrong here. VK development is much faster and also closer to chipmakers like NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, Imagination(PowerVR), ARM, Qualcomm etc..

 

Well, for gaming purposes, Windows 10 is the undisputed champ for certain. Even without DX12 and the security improvements, Windows 10 is superior to Windows 7 by virtue of how much better it handles the security mitigations for Spectre, meltdown and the other vulnerabilities:



Source

I would have no problem with CDPR using Vulkan, but the fact that they decided to go all in on DX12 is quite telling if you ask me.

Quake 2 RTX was released with a proprietary Nvidia extension. Only just a few months ago has the Khronos group released a cross vendor/platform agnostic ray tracing extension.

DXR on the other hand was released almost two years ago.

DX12 beat Vulkan to ray tracing and multi GPU support so I don't know about that. And historically speaking, DirectX was well ahead of OpenGL till DX12 and Vulkan started taking over.

 

I think that's a good idea. CBP 2077 will be horrendously GPU bound due to the ray tracing effects, and Ampere should have a huge performance increase over Turing when it comes to ray tracing.

 

Khronos implemented VK Raytracing almost exactly the same way as nvidia implemented their vendor extension.

 

Just stop proving your point by misleading information. Firstly, we were talking about RDR2 + Vulkan and secondly 99th percentile says literally nothing about rendering API performance, it actually says more about OS handling caching or access to storage, more than anything.

And even from you own source: (average FPS)
ARMA3:
i5-2500K (Win 7) 35,8
i5-2500K (Win 10) 35,3

I was giving you info, if you don't want it, leave it, but don't try to prove stuff this way.

And one last thing, Vulkan supports RT since v1.1 (in 2018). It wasn't vendor-agnostic, because there was no other vendor with RT. Now, when the situation is finally changing, VK has added cross-vendor support and continues with further improvements as we speak.

DX is only a MS' tool to enforce Win10 updates onto gamers now, nothing more.

 

Well my source also had some FPS benchmarks as well. At any rate, I have no problem saying that Windows 7 is a decrepit OS that needs to be taken out back and mercifully put out of its misery.

I would have thought that Microsoft ending all support for it this year would do it, but it still clings to life like a cockroach on the windshield of a car going 100mph.

But my point was that Microsoft was first to support ray tracing with DXR, and also the first to support multi GPU, both of which are true.

DirectX has been critical to PC gaming over the years. If it weren't for DirectX, PC gaming would not be where it is because the alternative OpenGL kind of sucked in comparison. I remember when Doom 2016 first released and didn't have the Vulkan support, and while Doom 2016 had good framerates with OpenGL 4.5 for the most part, there were some areas where the single threaded CPU renderer was especially terrible, causing the framerate to drop below 60 FPS. If you were an AMD user, you were in an even worse spot because you had to use OpenGL 4.3.

I'm pretty sure DX12 and Vulkan will play out similarly to how previous versions of DirectX and OpenGL played out.....with the former outrunning and evolving faster than the latter.

 

Isn't that already happening?
Mesh shading as of DirectX 12_2 is something I expect to see Vulkan pick up in the 1.3 SDK and then you have a number of extensions from back in the 1.1 version that bridged much of the D3D11 feature set for compatibility plus functionality for multi-GPU and also one later on adding support for exclusive full-screen display support plus landing support for HDR and recently the ray tracing features.
(Async compute for another one come to think of it and there's probably more.)

Version 1.2.130 something also landed some extensions that helps with some of the D3D9 functionality which allowed projects such as DXVK to improve compatibility with a few older games such as Halo CE although overall the two API's work pretty well but they have their own progression and updates since back with Mantle and AMD but it certainly looks like Microsoft is pushing for new functionality which the new GPU hardware then supports and this lands in Vulkan a bit after.

But I'm sure Vulkan has it's own things going for it as well plus the flexible extension system and other differences.


Core OS improvements to the CPU scheduler, DXGI and kernel from Windows 8 and up is also a factor even if it's a bit decoupled from the graphics API's at least to some extent.
Flip model presentation over what it's called bitblt I think and additional improvements to reducing input delay and latency overall improving frame time variance and perceived smoothness.


Well that's assuming the implementation of D3D or VLK or back with OGL and other problems isn't total ass but it's at least improved much as there's API violations and non-standard practices and implementations in games still.


EDIT: I'm certain Microsoft could also have patched in some of the key features missing in Windows 7 but they did not though Windows 8 and it's 8.1 update fares a bit better at least in this regard.


EDIT: And by this point aside from extension support and bugs on the driver side or the software (game side.) VLK and D3D seem pretty well matched at the moment, development can't be easy either though trying to see what NVIDIA and AMD supports or what breaks or behaves unexpectedly even with the core API and feature sets before doing vendor specific extensions or more advanced features.

Well that goes for D3D12 too I guess, spring boarding from D3D11 or how to call it as a common thing from what I remember but we'll probably see more thorough support now with this new generation of hardware and the consoles shifting to something newer again.

 

Basically yeah. And should we be surprised? How many corporate entities are in the Khronos group that actively contribute to Vulkan? Must be close to a dozen.

Whereas with Direct3D, Microsoft is calling all the shots and can unilaterally steer the API in any direction that it wants.

 

Yeah it took a while but with DirectX Microsoft was already changing the home computer gaming situation in the 1990's and especially the early 2000's with D3D7 and later as pixel shaders and additional functionality landed with involvement from the graphics card manufacturers and then working on more standards and how this would work especially changing it up with Vista and D3D10 though OpenGL was still around but only a few game engines used it as their primary API.

There's been some ups and downs and changes on what the OS supports and what Microsoft wants plus working with AMD, NVIDIA and Intel and the groundwork for D3D12 plus Khronos and Vulkan so it's looking good both for Windows and also Linux gaming thanks to efforts such as Proton but Microsoft is very much steering things I would say as that work results in newer GPU hardware which then sees support in Vulkan as well drawing upon the new shader model support or functionality for this unified shader programming with mesh shading (I'm far from a expert on this.) although Linux is also problematic with all it's numerous distributions and builds even if the driver situation and support far as I'm aware has steadily improved which can't be easy to support either.


Good to have choice though and with Microsoft and Khronos co-operating and the graphics vendors not being too divisive in what they want to support or focus on things are looking good.
Far as I know both API's are also well supported in the current driver releases and the situation on Linux is also pretty good for Vulkan API support plus DXVK and Proton and Wine are bridging compatibility for non-native ports well as they can.

Long as the developers know what they are doing either API should be good although D3D12 preferably needs Windows 10 and for some reason Microsoft had this software solution for Windows 7 support added on even as the OS support ended whereas I would have preferred a better solution targeting Windows 8 if they aren't going to do the work for a Windows 7 SP2 and landing the missing key functionality and features that this OS would need as a standard to continue to be viable if they are not going to drop it outright. (Yeah support is nice but SP1 and the recommended updates results in a lot of holes and optional updates adding features that all should be bundled up and improved for one final large update or end support and switch to Win8/8.1 and on.)


What else is there to say, suppose Vulkan 1.2 driver support still being in the earlier stages and landing ray tracing as a key extension in the core part of the API might have also seen D3D12 as preferred and working with NVIDIA initially for RTX and then expand into D3D12_2 possibly and a update either ready for when the game comes out or as something for the next-gen consoles and the supported features that version of the game will be having.

That's going to be a bit of a gap for a year or two I'd imagine as a lot of GPU's will be 12_0 or 12_1 and OS's will have Win7 or Win8 plus Windows 10 Threshold to Redstone but only a part will be Vanadium (2004+) initially.
Can't really build for 12_2 only have to be 12_0 or 12_1 and feature levels for supporting upwards and however that will work because if you start relying on these new features while still having to support the old model that's going to be a interesting little roadblock to overcome but then that always happens.

D3D10 never truly took off as it could have, D3D11 took years and support for D3D11.1 took a while also let alone 11.2 and newer. (Windows 7 and it's sort-of 11.1 support in part being a thing I'd imagine.)
It's never a quick process and with a hardware limit now also in place that's going to be a thing for a while as coding follows the lowest common denominator.


What do I know though, looking forward to seeing what this can do and how this new console generation will shake things up but there's always a bit of a transition period and the PC ports and how things work can be a bit rocky for a while.
CD Project probably knows what they are doing, not that larger studios haven't had problems with their PC ports and efforts but with NVIDIA involved they likely have a direct partnership and support so that's a strong plus on getting things right.


Yeah there's AMD support but the core D3D12 bits and feature model for what it's drawing on with that will work and RTX isn't really a factor so what they implement won't be a hindrance though it also won't be a thing at all which I am also looking forward to seeing how AMD and NVIDIA will resolve that as DXR is just a path into D3D12 ray tracing now updated to 1.1 or what it was but it's more to it than just that in itself.
(For Vulkan the Khronos extensions should be universal but then that's instead up to AMD to be supportive of and not drag out for however long for later - faster, obviously. - hardware and some driver for when that is available.)

 

If the game goes from 60 to 30 fps that’s the problem. And on resolution lower then 1920x1080 with the best graphics card. In the cases where it goes down to 30 is probably fight scenes with a lot of npc's, which is btw situation where you need high framerate.
Btw, we have better raytracing techniques, less demanding, which will be used in UE5, aka Lumen. That's the future.

 

Lumen is not a full RT feature though, is it?

The future is dedicated RT hardware - at present we have that but it's in it's infancy - the equivalent of a Voodoo card.

Or maybe it isn't... but that doesn't really matter. The reality is that this is a game attempting to push forward technologically, you can take advantage of that if you want to. If you're upset at the performance cost you can just turn it off.
The game without RT will almost certainly run very well given the system the pre-RT builds was being run on in 2018.

 

You don't need dedicated RT hardware for Lumen, which is the technique Cryengine has, SVOGI.
Nvidia RT is a fraud.

 

Isn't it just calculating light bounce with voxels?

 

You don't need dedicated hardware for RTX either. It just helps - they enabled it for Pascal.
Don't forget that both new consoles have dedicated RT hardware - as will all new GPU's.

AFAIK, yes - they even state explicitly in the demo that it's not raytracing. And it's not even being released to developers until next year.
Unlike RTX which will likely be 4 years old by the time we start seeing UE5 games released.

It the same for Cyrengine's RT - it's a hybrid solution. Which is great in the interim while we are waiting for hardware that can handle significant full-fat RT features.



I really do hate the fact that a proprietary RT technology is being used. Just as I wish that Physx was open - but that doesn't mean I hate the tech itself. Particularly when I can just turn it off.
I hope that a hardware agnostic RT tech gets adopted to kill RTX - I don't want to be tied to Nvidia because of a proprietary feature, but in the meantime I'm happy that the tech is being pushed.

 

You need to learn difference between triangle and voxel raytracing. In case you missed; https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/unreal-engine-5-revealed.432179/page-2#post-5791314
Sure, you don't need dedicated hardware, but if you don't have it Nvidia solution will work like crap even with optimization. So you do need it.

Cryengine solution works differently, much better, and on all hardware. Lumen will use Cryengine SVOGI approach, with different levels of quality i hope. Btw, both triangle and voxel methods are raytracing, but not raytracing like you have in reality.
So you are happy with this Nvidia fraud which increased prices from 700 to 1200+ usd!? But in the same time you have better raytracing solutions which work on all hardware.

 

You are wrong. Doing a "paper launch" of API is not making it available. DXR was officialy available to public in Windows 10 1809 released in October 2018. Meaning, you had to UPDATE THE WHOLE FING OS to get DXR. Nobody sensible wants to go through this shitty process just to get an API update. Vulkan received RT in September 2018 along with NVIDIA drivers. So yes, I had my RT support in Vulkan months before I even installed DXR via OS update.

DX was key API years ago. Not anymore. "DX is only a MS' tool to enforce Win10 updates onto gamers now".

Lumen runs like crap if you don't have GPU with fast ray-marching processing, which limits it to Pascal gen or newer anyways.
And since AMD does raytracing in RDNA2 exactly the same way as NVIDIA in their RTX, I guess they are both frauds and you are the king, right?

And just for your info, Lumen is not equal to SVOGI. Voxel based raymarching is only one part of Lumen for high level low-res GI. That's the only thing it's good for.