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Remedy Control is without a doubt the most beautiful game I have ever seen. If you missed it, here's our comment on Xbox One X. But make no mistake. The PC version belongs legitimately to the new generation compared to the console version. Ray tracing is not a gadget. Its implementation in Control is incomparable.
Control on PC is nothing less than a technical masterpiece. It is the new benchmark for ray tracing, a deep calculation of the PC's consolidation as a leader in games and the most powerful, innovative and indisputable technology.
Prologue
Attention, this article will be of a technical nature. If technical language is not your cup of tea, well, you've been warned. If you are curious, however, do not hesitate to stay while I discover the technical aspects of control with a focus on ray tracing. Also, if you are reading this on your desktop or tablet, be sure to click on each image to see the maximum resolution quality.
Control is the first game to integrate multiple ray tracing implementations. Previous titles such as Battlefield V and Shadow of the Tomb Raider the tracing of spokes with leverage for a specific purpose, such as reflections in the first and shadows in the second. Metro Exodus, my former winner of the "Best Looking Game Ever" award, has benefited from ray tracing for global illumination. These games used a standard rendering, called rasterization, for all other aspects of lighting.
Controlon the other hand, uses several ray tracing implementations. These include both normal and transparent reflections, indirect indirect lighting and contact shadows for the most influential light sources. Control also leverages Nvidia's DLSS technology (optimized upscaling technology for artificial intelligence) for machine learning, for additional performance gains and anti-aliasing
This holistic multi-fronts ray tracing approach was what I'd been sitting on while learning this information. This has never been done before in games. Already. So it's not at all hyperbolic to say that Control is a real breakthrough in the industry and a new benchmark in real-time rendering.
Northlight: Remedy Storytelling Technology
In order to understand the implementation of ray tracing in Controlit is important to understand the foundations on which it is based. You can not build a house without tools, after all. Yes Control is the proverbial "home", the "tools" would be the exclusive engine of Remedy, developed in-house, Northlight.
Over the years, Northlight has seen many revisions. The most recent iteration was published in 2016. Quantum break. Even though the game presented problems, especially on the Windows Store version of the PC, the technology it contained was impressive.
The engine featured extremely detailed character models, such as SSS (Sub Surface Diffusion), an extremely cinematic presentation due to its rebuilding technique (present on both Xbox and PC versions, albeit at a time). it can be disabled on this) and a post-processing pipeline, in addition to an excellent PBR. materials (physical rendering) and phenomenal IG (global illumination).
It is this last characteristic, GI, which has seen the greatest evolution since its use in Quantum break to its current implementation in Control. Featuring an extremely robust PBR materials pipeline, a state-of-the-art lighting model and all the best tricks of the day, including tracing cones for reflections, Control is perhaps the pinnacle of today's rendering technology. C & # 39; is, Control This is the best rasterized game (without ray tracing) that I have seen and it presents the absolute limit of what is possible today with modern rasterization techniques.
You can see all of these elements and features brought together in the picture above to undoubtedly produce the best of what the current pixelation can achieve. Beautiful work on PBR materials, combined with excellent textures, creates real depth for all objects in the scene. SSR (Screen Space Reflections) technology, combined with Northlight's use of cone-shaped reflections, creates the best ray-less reflections I have ever seen to date. To complement, a good shading and SSAO (Ambient Screen Occlusion) act in tandem to create effective indirect lighting and shading. But in the end, they are all rasterization tricks used to emulate ray tracing.
Be very careful and you will notice that everything is going wrong. For example, the basket to the right includes a simple SSR reflection, which is a very rough approximation of its environment. As a result, RSS is distorted and unnatural. The shadows and reflections under the concierge basket, located quite centrally, although effective, are not quite correct due to its extreme proximity to the cart. The shadow just looks like a continuation of the basket. Finally, thinking about the top ventilation pipe, although present, is still a very rough approximation of its environment. As a result, it looks very flat and unnatural. The ceiling in the hallway is also guilty.
These tips are what players have been seeing for 30 years as technology evolves. For a player, this may seem "correct" because this type of scene looks "normal" in games. But it's fundamentally incorrect
Now that we have seen what the best current rasterization techniques can bring together, let's move on to the ray tracing version.
Immediately, the scene animates. The trash on the right reflects the environment correctly, including the red carpet in the room beyond. This same carpet is reflected correctly in the ventilation pipe above. The janitor's trolley is now separated from its shadow and receives a complete shadow and reflection. Even the left display board reflects the red color of the carpeted room, thanks to diffuse lighting and appropriate PBR material. This scene is mathematically accurate and is a good example of the future of rendering technology as it is presented in Northlight today.
Nvidia explained in a video how this ray tracing is processed on their RT cores in their Turing GPUs. Note that it is important to recognize that virtually all GPUs can perform ray tracing. Nvidia did not invent it. Nvidia has simply created hardware (RT cores) dedicated to the mathematical tree traversal and linked volume hierarchy (BVH) traversal required by ray tracing. As a result, Nvidia Turing GPU ray tracing with these RT cores is simply faster and more efficient than GPUs without this dedicated hardware.
The upper section shows the time needed to render a raster frame on an RTX 2060 with the RT cores disabled, while the lower part displays rendering times with the RT cores enabled. You can see that when RT cores are turned on, this rendering time is almost halved.
If we take a closer look at the graphical rendering of RT cores, we can see how each cycle is broken down as it devotes itself to performing specific ray tracing tasks. Remember that everything happens in real time. This breakthrough innovation explains why real-time ray tracing is possible today, not in 10 years, as I thought just 18 months ago.
If you are interested in the implementation of ray tracing in the Northlight Engine, check out these slides from a presentation of GDC 2018 by Remedy Entertainment. It is very informative and very impressive. With this page background irrelevant, let's look at what makes Control a masterpiece of ray throwing and the triumph of untiring PC power.
Graphical options
Control offers a myriad of graphical options, while supporting unrestricted framing and ultra-wide resolution resolutions. The PC version, in this respect, is well taken into account.
Control allows flip-flops for each ray tracing variant and is highly customizable in this regard. You can mix and match to your specific taste. However, if you decide to take advantage of ray tracing reflections (standard or transparent), disable global reflections in the settings above. Likewise, if you decide to use indirect indirect light scattered by rays, disable SSAO above. You will save some images by performing both operations.
Anti aliasing
But first, let's start with antialiasing, which is actually very important for the overall quality of the image and deserves to be discussed from the start. You will notice that the only AA (antialiasing) option available is MSAA or multi-sample antialiasing. Northlight is integrating TAA (time anti-aliasing) as part of its default, non-switchable post-processing pipeline. Thus, any added MSAA will be placed above the existing TAA.
In my opinion, do not bother with the 4x MSAA, because the performance can suffer too much. You can escape with twice the MSAA without penalizing your performance too much. TAA, while effective, does not cover high frequency objects or alpha assets such as hair. See, for example, the image below that shows only the TAA with MSAA disabled.
You will notice that Jesse's hair is noisy here. In addition, you can see that the grid of the manhole contains artifacts in its corner.
Enable 2x MSAA eliminates Jesse's hair noise and further cleans the image. The artifact on the sewer plate is now missing. As a result, the picture is sharper. It is worth activating 2x MSAA for this reason alone.
Indirect Diffuse Ray and Contact Shadows
So what is diffuse indirect lighting? In short, it provides accurate real-time illumination of the environment. This includes any light reflected from neighboring surfaces. The result is a colorful but mathematically accurate and photorealistic background. In fact, indirect indirect lighting is what the ambient occlusion is trying to mimic.
Contact shadows are like the icing on the cake. They are the final varnish applied to existing shadows in a scene. These are literally the shadows created at the point of contact between objects. Traditional pixelation makes contact shadows extremely difficult to imitate. However, with ray tracing, it works simply, even on the smallest and finest objects, as we will see later.
To illustrate this diffuse lighting, let's look at a very obvious example.
This image contains no ray tracing. It is simply the optimized version of the game containing only pixelated techniques. It does not look bad, right? This represents the "normal" appearance of the high end games of today. However, this is just not correct.
This is the ray casting version with all activated ray tracing options. Most importantly, the encircled sections are the areas you need to pay attention to. Note the distinct yellow hue that is now propagating the scene. This is due to the light from the ceiling that strikes the yellow pipes and the preservation of this color information when they bounce physically in contact with other objects in the scene. It's mathematically accurate and photorealistic.
Let's look at a more subtle example illustrating both diffuse lighting and contact shadows.
This scene contains no SSAO or ray tracing. It may not look bad, but look well and you will notice how flat everything looks. The wall, for example, seems to float without any real shadow on the ground. Likewise, Jesse simply does not have any shadows, which makes her seem floating. Now, turn on the diffuse lighting.
Immediately, the shadows enter the scene. The wall, the plant, the cart and even the phone are given proper shading and occlusion. Now let's take the shadows of contact.
Notice how Jesse now has shadows at the point of contact between her and the ground. The lamp, the desk, the typewriter and the flowers all receive appropriate contact shadows. Even the individual ball bearings in the thread holding the pen are properly hidden!
It's amazing the thin layer of detail that contact shadows bring to the game. As I said, it's the icing on the cake and it's truly a decadent luxury. If you are trying to preserve performance, do so by disabling touch shadows.
In short, scattered shadows and ray-patterned contact shadows in Control are nothing fancy and represent the ultimate graphics rendering technology for indirect lighting. The high cost of their performance may be confusing for some, but I can not get enough. For me, they are worth it.
Reflection rays and transparent reflections
Radial reflections may be the most obvious ray tracing technique visible to the average person. You've seen it in Battlefield V. In short, they simply reflect the surrounding environment with precision. This is completely different from SSR, which only reflects objects in the screen space.
Transparent reflections are reflections on a transparent object, such as glass in a window. In real life you can see through a window, but you also see the reflection of the environment behind you. This has been completely absent in games, which try to imitate it with projection mapping using cubemaps. But as cubemaps are by definition static images of a surrounding environment that are then cooked on a surface, you will never get any real thinking.
The two types of reflections traced by radii take into account the roughness of the material, which determines the degree of roughness or smoothing of the resulting reflection. For example, a polished floor is smoother than brick and will therefore produce a softer reflection than brick.
But first, let's start with ray tracing by looking at an image with SSR only and without reflections by ray tracing.
Note that the only reflections are contained in the area bounded by black. Everything marked in blue is empty. Indeed, the ceiling lamp stretches behind Jesse and behind the camera. Because he is behind the camera, he is outside the screen. Thus, this is not reflected. Now, let's go to ray tracing.
Suddenly, you can see the ceiling light reflecting completely in the wood on both sides of Jesse, even if it's not in the screen. Also note how the emergency alarm is reflected completely on both walls just above Jesse.
Now let's see the transparent highlights by first looking at the scene with only the SSR function and the ray tracing off.
This is the usual style of play that people are used to over the last 30 years in gaming technology. Now let's take a look at transparency.
Just like that, you can see the corridor behind Jesse while the environment is reflected in the windows. Notice how you can still see the wooden slats through the windows while watching the reflection of the hallway behind Jesse. Here is another example of transparent thinking.
Once again, you can see clearly through this window. But you can also see Jesse reflected out the window. It's physically correct.
Radial reflections and transparent reflections are very useful for Controleven on extremely subtle items. Let's take a look at this coffeemaker with ray tracing disabled and only SSR enabled.
This is yet another example of the normal "gaming" presentation. The scene uses a SSR and a cone plot to approximate a reflection on the glass kettle of the coffeemaker, but this is still not correct. Now, let's go to ray tracing.
Although this effect is much more subtle than the previous examples, it is by far the most profound. Looking closer, you can see Jesse reflected in the coffeemaker! This subtlety is something that can never be achieved with traditional pixilation, but simply works with ray tracing. I spent 10 minutes staring with wonder when I discovered this. It's really an incredible feat.
I mentioned roughness earlier in this section. Let's look at an example with only SSR enabled and no ray tracing.
You can see how flat the stage is. Note the very subtle but inaccurate reflection in the corner of the elevator. Let's turn on the ray tracing.
The scene is animating now and is much more natural. Above all, notice how the elevator's metal wall and the wood panels below reflect the environment. However, the metal wall is rougher than the wood panel and thus produces a rougher reflection. This is only possible when ray casting is combined with excellent PBR materials, allowing objects to reach their soil truth properties.
Ray traced glare in Control are absolutely incredible to watch. If you can only activate one type of ray tracing effect, activate the ray traced reflections and the traced transparent reflections.
Debris of rays
Control also tracing the rays for debris. This effect is more subtle and can be turned off if you wish. However, I've allowed everything because I love this technology. Debris traced by rays can trace the rays of various debris caused by chaos Control. This extends to particles and objects that are projected and exploded because of the chaos that you happily cause.
This is an example of what ray debris looks like. Note how the exploding object and its particles are properly reflected in the puddle below.
Problems and quirks
Despite this unquestionable technical achievement, Control is not without its problems. For example, a few hours after the start of the game, I started to experience stuttering. This only happened in DX12 mode and does not seem to be related to streaming. I guess there is a problem with caching or caching. Look at the graph to the left of this image. Note how uneven it is. These spikes manifest as stuttering and are intrusive in the experiment.
In addition, as with all ray tracing applications, a noise suppressor must be applied to smooth all ray tracing artifacts. In Control, a spatial and temporal denoiser is applied. However, in some rare cases, this descrambling is not effective and appears primarily in the shadows, as in the example below. You can see how the shadows are not a smooth gradient. I imagine that this can be improved in a patch. Note that ray tracing is correct here, descrambling does not behave properly.
In addition, there are clearly temporal ghost images caused by moving objects. I suspect that the very filmic look of Northlight is the result of such a temporal treatment. While this may produce a smooth image, it may result in ghosting. This even appeared to me immediately during the first five minutes when I watched vehicles outside. Notice the ghostly trail left by the car. A much more temporal sampling or a much higher resolution can solve this problem.
Of all these problems, the stuttering presented in DX12 is the most annoying. But it's not nearly as bad as the problems presented in the console versions of the game analyzed by Digital Foundry. These DX12 players can most likely be clarified in a patch, perhaps optimizing for shaders and cached if my suspicions are correct.
A look at the eye Control console performance, via Digital Foundry
Conclusion
Control is an absolute technical masterpiece on PC. This is the culmination of several decades of research and development and billions of dollars in investment, culminating finally in tools in the form of Nvidia GPUs that will be used by extremely talented Finnish developers of Remedy.
We must recognize this step and celebrate it for what it is. It's a decisive moment in our industry. The technology outlined here has never been possible before now. Control shows a true dedication to progress and the ability of those who have the audacity to take us there.
Control proves, more than ever, the constant, persistent, uncomplicated and unhindered progress that only PC gaming allows, and is a stark reminder of the raw power only possible on this platform.
Control is a technical masterpiece, unmatched in nature, and an unparalleled triumph of PC gaming.
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