The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is coming to the next generation!

[SigilFey]

First of all, nobody said that lighting needs to be completely redone. They just have to bring back the lighting that existed prior to the release. And the reason is because ray tracing alone won't drastically change how the game looks. Unless they opt for a fully ray traced lighting. Which they won't because it would kill performance. Even Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't do that and it's built with ray tracing in mind. Besides, Cyberpunk 2077 already uses ray tracing and all the other technical and graphical effects that The Witcher 3 doesn't. It's pretty obvious that they're planning to implement those effects into The Witcher 3 to achieve that next-gen look. Both games use the same engine, so that's half of the work already done.

It won't kill the performance as the new technology will be specifically built to handle ray-tracing. That's what things like RTX cards are: all of the existing 3D tech, plus (introducing!) the new-fangled ray tracing technology.

Will there need to be optimizations done? Of course. And will the console versions be able to attain the same levels of ray tracing as the PC equivalent? No. But that's always the case, with everything. It will be all of the in-game lighting, because as far as I know, you can't have point-based or volumetric lighting and ray tracing. The modes are exclusive. If you use one, you're not using the other. It's either or.

 

[Yelhamadi]

I repeat what someone asked if somedody knows , what about people who own the physical disc but buy the PS5 digital edition and Xbox Series S which don't have any disc drives?
Can they get the free update ? (For cyberpunk 2077 too)

 

[SigilFey]

I repeat what someone asked if somedody knows , what about people who own the physical disc but buy the PS5 digital edition and Xbox Series S which don't have any disc drives?
Can they get the free update ? (For cyberpunk 2077 too)

I think this was answered at some point, but when you purchase a physical copy, it should also come with a GOG code or a code for the Sony store, Microsoft store, etc. That should work.

 

[ImprovizoR]

It won't kill the performance as the new technology will be specifically built to handle ray-tracing.

There's nothing about the hardware inside the new consoles that is specifically built to handle ray tracing. They're just very powerful and they support ray tracing. How ray tracing is implemented is up to the developers. And it takes time for them to learn how to adequately use the hardware resources to implement a relatively new feature such as ray tracing without sacrificing too much performance. Don't expect fully ray traced games on the market for at least the first year. Maybe even longer.

And you absolutely cannot expect a remaster of a 5 year old game that was never even built with ray tracing in mind to be fully ray traced. Wake up dude. That's not going to happen.

as far as I know, you can't have point-based or volumetric lighting and ray tracing.

That's why they'll probably limit ray tracing to reflections, as is the case with most games that support it. That's the big feature that everyone likes to showcase. And it's not like The Witcher 3 couldn't use it considering how awful and halfassed SSR in The Witcher 3 actually is.

 

[SigilFey]

There's nothing about the hardware inside the new consoles that is specifically built to handle ray tracing. They're just very powerful and they support ray tracing. How ray tracing is implemented is up to the developers. And it takes time for them to learn how to adequately use the hardware resources to implement a relatively new feature such as ray tracing without sacrificing too much performance. Don't expect fully ray traced games on the market for at least the first year. Maybe even longer.

And you absolutely cannot expect a remaster of a 5 year old game that was never even built with ray tracing in mind to be fully ray traced. Wake up dude. That's not going to happen.

This is false. The GPU in both the PS5 and the Xbox X will use AMD Radeon solutions that will be part of the RDNA2 line. That includes all of the present ray-tracing specific hardware acceleration plus whatever advancements are made between now and when they settle on the exact model of Radeon GPU they are going to incorporate. It will be 100% specifically designed to handle ray tracing at the hardware level.

This is what a "Graphical Processing Unit" is for. ALL graphical elements (geometry calculations, textures, shaders, post processing effects, anti aliasing, mip-mapping, etc., etc., etc...) are simply software coded to be processed ( -- by anything -- a CPU is perfectly capable of doing it -- we don't "need" a GPU in order to process graphics). Ray tracing is simply one of the latest techniques that video software engineers have come up with to make things look cool. A GPU is a specific piece of hardware designed to take the processing load off of the CPU, so that a system can process levels of detail many orders of magnitude more complex than anything a CPU could ever handle on its own. The GPUs used in the next gen consoles will include hardware specifically designed to handle ray tracing in addition to all of the other features already offered in games. All "gaming" video cards that come out from this point forward will include hardware and drivers that specifically handle ray-tracing acceleration. It's simply the next "trick" added to video cards' bags of goodies. Again, that's what a GPU is.

DirectX is a totally different concern. It's an "Application Programming Interface". DirectX is not "how ray-tracing works", it's simply one possible "middle-man" that can be used to make a program more universal, especially when trying to communicate a single application's code over a spectrum of different hardware solutions (like having a game be able to run the same way on the vastly different architectures and driver suites, whether Nvidia, Radeon, Intel HD, various on-board audio solutions, features like multi-monitor display, HDR lighting, etc.) DirectX works sort of like a translator. It doesn't actually do any processing work. It just translates messages between the software and whatever hardware is available.

That's why they'll probably limit ray tracing to reflections, as is the case with most games that support it. That's the big feature that everyone likes to showcase. And it's not like The Witcher 3 couldn't use it considering how awful and halfassed SSR in The Witcher 3 actually is.

I doubt it! I would expect that ray-tracing will be used to calculate all light sources and have that light reflect on all surfaces in each frame. It would have to. That's what ray tracing does.

Let me explain again: it's not possible to have only certain lighting display through ray tracing. That would conflict with other methods of lighting, and it would not be possible to simultaneously have lighting be point-based or simply volumetric fill over a 3D area, and also have the light source be drawn by tracing the rays from its source to the surrounding geometry. They are exclusive modes. Either all of the lighting will be processed, rendered, and drawn using point-based transport directly onto surfaces...or all of the lighting will handled via ray-tracing calculations.

(A method of hybrid rendering may eventually be developed, but I know of no such method yet. Nor do I really see any benefit to it except for stylization, maybe.)


_______________


Thus, looping around to the topic, the Witcher 3 build for next gen consoles would most logically contain ray tracing as its universal, rendering technique. Everything. From moonlight, to torches, to cutscene washes, to puddles.

 

[Yelhamadi]

I think this was answered at some point, but when you purchase a physical copy, it should also come with a GOG code or a code for the Sony store, Microsoft store, etc. That should work.

I already have the disc for Xbox One and i can confirm you that there is no code and never had one (or atleast mine never had one) i preordered Cyberpunk in disc too because it was way cheaper than in the Microsoft store , so i really want to know if then its worth ti me to buy the Series S or X
Thank you

 

[HadesNebula]

hey friends. i have a question about this update, so if i start w3 now after update i can load my saves and
continue my game? or need start new game? i speak about pc verssion in steam.

I want to start playing now because I have a lot of free time, but I'm afraid that the save will stop working after the update. i can start play or better wait?
Thx, and sorry for my English

 

[0248991]

(A method of hybrid rendering may eventually be developed, but I know of no such method yet. Nor do I really see any benefit to it except for stylization, maybe.

It could be like directional lighting + raytracing for indirect lighting or volume-based lighting with shadowing based on some sort of "direction offset" - so you would be calculating shadows rather than light

 

[SigilFey]

It could be like directional lighting + raytracing for indirect lighting or volume-based lighting with shadowing based on some sort of "direction offset" - so you would be calculating shadows rather than light

I think it would wind up making the effects that were not ray-traced look "painted on" when compared to the rest of the scene. Like...how you can sometimes tell that a person is standing in front of a green-screen...or that a certain object is CGI...

Plus, it would likely wind up increasing the load of processing to be done, in some scenarios at least -- as you would need to tell the engine to specifically not apply the ray-tracing to a given surface...then load up a totally separate lighting system and make a totally separate rendering pass...before creating a final, composite frame of both techniques.

However, your suggestion about shadows is interesting. Maybe have "global" shadows be standard point-based maps...then have things like split shadows from multiple light sources be rendered by the ray tracing. That might save a lot of CPU / GPU cycles for huge, open world scenes and stuff, where characters, buildings, hills, trees, etc. all need shadows cast by the sun or moon, then separate shadows cast by things like torchlight, or spells, etc. Curious...

 

[ImprovizoR]

I doubt it! I would expect

I wouldn't, and I'll elaborate further why.

Let me explain again

I know. It's exactly why I said that the lighting system won't be a fully ray traced lighting. Look at the way it works in Cyberpunk 2077. Lighting looks spectacular, but it's not ray traced lighting. Ray tracing is simply used to add aditional new effects to existing lighting, but the lighting system itself is not ray traced lighting.

Aside from the obvious performance related issues of such a solution, you have to understand that if they were to implement a fully ray traced lighting, that would leave a lot of PC gamers unable to experience the new update unless they have an RTX capable card. And why would they do that to The Witcher 3, when they aren't even doing it to Cyberpunk 2077?

Whatever they're doing to Cyberpunk 2077, expect about the same for The Witcher 3.

 

[SigilFey]

I wouldn't, and I'll elaborate further why.


I know. It's exactly why I said that the lighting system won't be a fully ray traced lighting. Look at the way it works in Cyberpunk 2077. Lighting looks spectacular, but it's not ray traced lighting. Ray tracing is simply used to add aditional new effects to existing lighting, but the lighting system itself is not ray traced lighting.

Aside from the obvious performance related issues of such a solution, you have to understand that if they were to implement a fully ray traced lighting, that would leave a lot of PC gamers unable to experience the new update unless they have an RTX capable card. And why would they do that to The Witcher 3, when they aren't even doing it to Cyberpunk 2077?

Whatever they're doing to Cyberpunk 2077, expect about the same for The Witcher 3.

That's simply not how ray tracing works. Consider ray-tracing to be cooking a raw steak on the grill, whereas point-base transport is cooking a raw steak in the microwave. You can't cook it both ways. If it's cooked via the grill, you need a totally different steak to cook in the microwave. You can't cook the same steak from raw to complete twice...only once.

If games use point-based lighting, then the algorithms to calculate which surfaces will receive lighting and to what degree is determined by the point-based math.

If games use ray traced lighting, then the algorithms to calculate which surfaces will receive lighting and to what degree is determined by the ray-traced math.

I can't use the same data from the same light source two different ways to calculate the same lighting on the same surfaces.

There is a possibility that someone may eventually come up with a technique of blending one method with the other...but the results would likely be both resource intensive and result in an overall degradation of the quality of the frame.

Not much more that I can say here. There's plenty of documentation on the technique, the specific applications, and its limitations.

Will it suddenly make TW3 look like a brand new game? No. I doubt it. It's simply a technique used to handle the overall way that a computer program calculates how light interacts with a given environment and alleviate the need for things like separate shaders for reflection, refraction, diffusion, and obstruction.

 

[ImprovizoR]

How do you still not understand this?

It's simple:

The game will most likely utilize the same lighting system that Cyberpunk 2077 utilizes. It's a more advanced form of lighting that we've seen in early Witcher 3 trailers, but it's also supplemented with ray tracing EFFECTS, not with ray tracing lighting. A fully ray traced lighting system would be insanely difficult to run on anything but the most expensive high-end hardware.

There are four RTX effects in Cyberpunk 2077: diffuse illumination, reflections, ambient occlusion and shadows (https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforc...tracing-dlss-geforce-now-screenshots-trailer/). The lighting system itself IS NOT RAY TRACED. I don't know how to make this more simple than it is.

 

[SigilFey]

How do you still not understand this?

It's simple:

The game will most likely utilize the same lighting system that Cyberpunk 2077 utilizes. It's a more advanced form of lighting that we've seen in early Witcher 3 trailers, but it's also supplemented with ray tracing EFFECTS, not with ray tracing lighting. A fully ray traced lighting system would be insanely difficult to run on anything but the most expensive high-end hardware.

There are four RTX effects in Cyberpunk 2077: diffuse illumination, reflections, ambient occlusion and shadows (https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforc...tracing-dlss-geforce-now-screenshots-trailer/). The lighting system itself IS NOT RAY TRACED. I don't know how to make this more simple than it is.

@ImprovizoR , I'm afraid you're the one that is not understanding how this works. The use of the word "supplemented" means that the player has the option to switch between lighting techniques. You will not be able to use both at the same time. You will need to choose whether to render the lighting via ray-tracing or whether to use the more traditional point-based lighting, as many GPUs that will be running Cyberpunk (including all modern gen consoles) will not have the processing power to run ray tracing reliably.

It's exactly like having the option to switch between SSAO, HBAO, or VXAO to handle ambient occlusion. You must use one method to complete the process. If I'm using SSAO, I cannot also use HBAO. It has to be one or the other.

Thus, even if the option for standard lighting is included in TW3 for next gen, if you choose to use ray tracing instead, all lighting will be handled via ray tracing instead. Having a choice between methods does not negate the exclusivity of each method.

 

[DOSS216]

Question, would ray tracing make the implementation of the E3 effects such as volume based translucency, bloom shafts, aerial perspective fog, and forward lit soft particles still possible?

 

[minicrom]

Good question. I hope they will showcase their progress with this update

 

[ImprovizoR]

@ImprovizoR , I'm afraid you're the one that is not understanding how this works. The use of the word "supplemented" means that the player has the option to switch between lighting techniques.

No, it doesn't. It means that the effects supplement the existing lighting technique. You don't get to choose the lighting technique. You can only choose additional effects. Since these effects are used to create a more realistic looking scene, they "supplement" the lighting.

The only game that uses ray traced lighting is Metro Exodus. Every other RTX game uses the same lighting techniques that have existed for years, with added RTX effects like the ones I mentioned in my previous post. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is a good example. It uses the same old lighting technique used in Rise of the Tomb Raider, you only get to choose between SSR and RTX Reflections or regular shadow mapping and RTX shadows.

I literally gave you an example of a CDPR game that is currently in production that utilizes the same methods. Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't feature a ray traced lighting. It features a regular lighting system and only four RTX effects. Those RTX effect supplement the lighting because by using these effects, they add more realism to the scene. It's what effects do. The effects are not a lighting system.

 

[Septerra_Core]

No, it doesn't. It means that the effects supplement the existing lighting technique. You don't get to choose the lighting technique. You can only choose additional effects. Since these effects are used to create a more realistic looking scene, they "supplement" the lighting.

Dude, I think u didn't even read the article u posted...
They clearly state the way of general Ray tracing Illumination will be presented with their first paragraph... "Ray-Traced Diffuse Illumination " They clearly say "the sky radiance" which obv is the general lighting.

End somewhere in the end of the article they speak how they have specifially build RTX cores in their deticated RTX GPUs.
Therefore u were wrong in both ur arguments the whole freakin time.
U can finally let it rest. Because after a certain point it starts looks like trolling.

 

[ImprovizoR]

which obv is the general lighting.

Since when?

The RTX effects makes changes to some aspects of lighting, not to the entire lighting system. There actually is such a thing as hybrid rendering, using rasterization and ray tracing. We've known about this for several years now. It involves keeping the part of the rasterized engine and enhancing it with ray tracing effects in some places where it's most adequate. The rasterized engine still produces most of the elements of the fame, ray tracing simply supplements certain elements or effects. That's essentially what RTX does. It can do that because modern engines are versatile and modular enough that you can make certain elements in the scene use either rasterization or ray tracing. But you don't do that to the whole scene, because that would be too performance intensive. You do it where you can, where it makes sense, where it adds a lot of eye candy without killing performance.

 

[SigilFey]

Since when?

The RTX effects makes changes to some aspects of lighting, not to the entire lighting system. There actually is such a thing as hybrid rendering, using rasterization and ray tracing. We've known about this for several years now. It involves keeping the part of the rasterized engine and enhancing it with ray tracing effects in some places where it's most adequate. The rasterized engine still produces most of the elements of the fame, ray tracing simply supplements certain elements or effects. That's essentially what RTX does. It can do that because modern engines are versatile and modular enough that you can make certain elements in the scene use either rasterization or ray tracing. But you don't do that to the whole scene, because that would be too performance intensive. You do it where you can, where it makes sense, where it adds a lot of eye candy without killing performance.

Ray tracing handles the way light affects all surfaces based on an algorithm that calculates the way individual particles of light would reflect / refract / diffuse / etc. between one surface and another, inherently, following the "rays" originating at a starting point, then moving in straight line into the game world in order decide which surface it would strike, what colors would be reflected, and in what intensity. That surface is then treated as a new source, and the particles of light reflecting / refracting / etc. are treated as new "rays" being emitted in to the world from there. The result is very natural, soft light that fills spaces in organic ways, creating areas of detailed tone and color based on constantly shifting conditions. In order to calculate this lighting, the light source must be coded in such a way as to deliver that data.

More traditional techniques use a "transportation" system. A light source is placed into the world with general data about its color, intensity, location etc. No rays are drawn. That light source is simply given a cube, sphere, or cone. It is coded so that the intensity of the effect is decreased or defused by set amounts as you move away from the center-point of the light source. All surfaces are then "painted" with the effect according to those relatively hamfisted calculations. Other visual effects like a mirror, for instance, is accomplished by using a separate system of shaders, in which the actual surface of the mirror must generate an actual 3D model by reversing the vertices of the object being reflected and drawing in those 3D images in the mirror's drawspace. (This is why things like mirrors or reflective glass in games tend to be used sparingly and often won't reflect all parts of the gameworld. It's incredibly resource-intensive to do so.)

Now, I can't take the systems that are being used to create the data for transport and magically start applying rays. The light source will not contain the correct information. There will be no data about the various surfaces in the game and what sort of light they should reflect. And if I do include that data, it serves 0% purpose to also calculate lighting surfaces for transport, as they are already illuminated and colored by the ray tracing, and I don't need to. I don't need a separate system to handle mirrors or shiny glass because the the rays will create natural, actual reflections on those surfaces. All I'd need to do is code it to reflect 100% of the light rays that strike it.


_______________


The Metro Exodus example is excellent evidence of what I'm talking about. The game initially used ray tracing only in its outdoor environments. Indoor locations used only rasterized lighting (which is a way of using direct transport from a lighting source to a given surface, exactly as I describe above).

Spoiler: These are two, totally different systems being used in disconnected areas of the game.

These are two totally separate systems, and two areas of the game that do not overlap. Yes, the illusion created by a game may be that the world is "seamless", but it is not. You're misunderstanding how these types of games are constructed. The outdoor overworld and the detailed indoor locations like the metro tunnels are completely disconnected locations within the game's code. The same is true of TW3, actually. When you walk around in the streets of Novigrad or wander around the landscape of Velen, a completely different area of the world with completely different code and completely different lighting is being used than when you enter into a building, or open the door to a tavern, or enter a cave. The outside world is largely unloaded from memory, the ambient lighting will often change noticeably, and the same will happen when you exit the internal location and walk back out into the overland area. At that point, the data for the stuff inside the location you were just in is unloaded.

This is why, on slower systems or if the game is encountering a glitch, you may see elements of the new location suddenly drawing in, like townspeople that appear to materialize two feet from you. That's because, to the computer, up until milliseconds ago, they didn't exist in the game.

Think of this like a movie. In the film, there is a scene where two characters ride through a rainy forest and up to a beautiful castle. They walk through the gates and into a large throne room with huge windows gleaming with light. The king then escorts them into a private solar for a meeting, lit by candles and hearth fire.

While in the movie, this all seems like one, continuous location, it's not. It's an illusion. The rainy forest was filmed on-location in Ireland in the fall. The scene of the throne room was filmed 2 months later on a Hollywood sound stage using a green screen, and everything was CGI. That's why the lighting was so different and more intense than it should have been for such a rainy day. The scene in the small solar was filmed a week before the throne room scene in a basement in Prague. There is no castle. They were just individual sets spliced together, and the lighting techniques can be 100% different for each of those sets.

This is how video games work as well -- things like Metro, GTA, Assassin's Creed, FarCry, etc. all use this type of system. Think of internal and external locations like totally different sets. Using the magical powers of real-time computer technology, the player is simply "teleported" to the other set when they cross through the mystical portal that looks like a wooden door. To the computer and game engine, you were just teleported to a totally different "set" in a totally different location. Other games, like Minecraft, ARK, Fortnite, ArmA, PUBG, etc. do not use such systems. All of their locations are congruous, and that's why internal locations may seem a bit sparse and clunky.

So, in Metro, they took the outdoor environments and re-coded them to use ray tracing instead of using their original lighting system. When the player moved into an internal location, the ray tracing engine would be completely unloaded and the older rasterized lighting system would be loaded instead.

Now...they've gone back and added ray tracing to both internal and external locations in The Two Colonels, so neither area is using the transport system any more. But at no time did internal or external locations ever use BOTH the ray tracing lighting and the rasterized lighting. That would be neither possible (at least not yet) nor sensible (for any reason I can think of).

Here's a quote from an article that explains it pretty well:

Metro Exodus DLC takes its ray tracing to the next level

The Digital Foundry analysis of Metro Exodus The Two Colonels, specifically its new ray tracing abilities on PC with RTX graphics cards.

www.eurogamer.net

In The Two Colonels, indoor scenes finally get their killer RT feature with ray-traced emissive lighting. Put simply, emissives are simply textures that are tagged as being of one or more colours which maintain that colour regardless of lighting conditions. For example, you might see these in sci-fi games for objects that glow. These textures are normally paired with point or spot lights placed inside or nearby, so that the emissive texture looks like it is lighting nearby objects. However, these two systems are disconnected in the game world, so the illusion can be broken by the emissive texture changing colour, growing in size or disappearing altogether when that change is not reflected in the paired point light. Metro Exodus solves this by using ray tracing for its emissive surfaces, so that light emanating from such a surface always matches the surface's shape and colour - no longer an illusion, this is now a physically-grounded simulation.

 

[Guest 4414958]

I really hope when they do this Next Gen stuff they add something that allows you to do +newgame more than once I have been playing this game for over a month now and have over 1000 hours down on it and I'm so afraid to start a +newgame now that I've started over because I know once +newgame is done the game is pointless since after your done their is no quests, No contracts or anything so you pretty much have nothing to do. I could redo this game over 100 times and I would never get bored of it but the loosing everything starting over is what is killing this game for me and it took me years to find a game I love now it's starting to feel like i have to give it up. I can't wait till they add this Next Generation stuff because i hate load screens that is if im still playing the game because this one +newgame and then your done is ruining the game for me