RTX support any soon ?

Sarousse

Hi devs,

We're seeing these days many games getting RTX support : Fortinite, Wow Shadowlands, etc...

Any chance that we see it coming to ESO ? (right now we can get rtgi to emulate it through reshade but native support would be far superior).

craybest

Eh, i watched wow trx and it didn't really was much of a difference. Reminds me of a few shaders already available in reshade.

Gythral

lol
GTX support is the first step, as this games has no clue what a GPU is!

Even at 4K i see only a handful of FPS difference between a 'ancient' GTX970 & a current RTX2070SUPER, as the game is more interested in CPU...

& no effort has been made to support even ancient APIs (on PC) let alone things like Raytracing and DLSS!

RefLiberty

Gythral wrote: »

lol
GTX support is the first step, as this games has no clue what a GPU is!

Even at 4K i see only a handful of FPS difference between a 'ancient' GTX970 & a current RTX2070SUPER, as the game is more interested in CPU...

& no effort has been made to support even ancient APIs (on PC) let alone things like Raytracing and DLSS!

When Division 2 on Ultra settings does not have fps loss sometimes but eso does

Ruder

I`m 90% sure that we are going to see some kind of Ray Tracing support, because both Xbox and Playstation will support it, and the new Nvidia GPUs will be monstrosity in Ray Tracing performance.

rumple9

Game is broke as it is without RTX

Kiralyn2000

Ruder wrote: »

... and the new Nvidia GPUs will be monstrosity in Ray Tracing performance.

For the small fraction of people who get them. I wonder what the overlap of "ESO players" and "spend waaay too much on gaming rig" is.


tl;dr - why would an older MMO bother with something for a small fraction of the playerbase? I can only assume WoW is doing it because they have a huge budget & staff, and figured they'd do it for kicks.


edit: I've never paid attention - does this game even do DX12 yet?

eKsDee

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

Ruder wrote: »

... and the new Nvidia GPUs will be monstrosity in Ray Tracing performance.

For the small fraction of people who get them. I wonder what the overlap of "ESO players" and "spend waaay too much on gaming rig" is.


tl;dr - why would an older MMO bother with something for a small fraction of the playerbase? I can only assume WoW is doing it because they have a huge budget & staff, and figured they'd do it for kicks.

It's increasingly becoming a thing for more than just a small fraction of people, though. As far as I know, the entire 30 series lineup from NVIDIA will support the full gamut of RTX features, as well as AMD bringing their own version to the desktop card market. New PS5 and Xbox Series X will also be supporting AMD's version, too, so anybody with a PS5 or XSX will support hardware-accelerated raytracing.

Not everybody will have cards or systems that support it (not well at least, DXR provides a regular compute fallback for the operations that are typically hardware-accelerated with RTX, but it's obviously far slower and can cripple even a top end Pascal card), but, given enough time, enough people will that it becomes more feasible to support in game engines.

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

I've never paid attention - does this game even do DX12 yet?

Nope, it's currently on DX11. I vaguely recall reading somewhere a couple years ago that Zenimax was looking into supporting DX12, not sure what came of that, though, if it was true at all.

Toanis

To benefit from raytracing performance, you first need to actually use raytracing. Raytracing is a technique for shadows and reflective surfaces that emulates real life, by actually tracing a ray of light from a light source all the way to the camera. That's a completely different approach to what GPUs use today, resulting in a much more natural behavior of light and shadows. (e.g. mirrors where you can see yourself or shadows that are affected by all light sources)

It's not currently used in gaming, because the performance is abysmal compared to texture mapping and shaders. A dedicated raytracing unit will greatly reduce that performance hit, but at the moment it's a niche function provided by premium hardware, and before it's reasonable to add some super eye-candy for a chosen few, the basic graphic engine should work reliable and issues like the deteriorating FPS when quick traveling within a zone need to be taken care of.

JTD

I can't wait for the people buying that 3090 and being disappointing by the performance ....

Darkstorne

Lots of people talking down the performance impact of RT in here, which is weird to see. Nvidia's implementation is super impressive, but only one way of doing it, and next gen consoles won't be relying on their proprietary RTX at all.

Fun fact: on PC you can play ESO with ray tracing today. Support the guy working on a screen space RT shader for Reshade via Patreon and you can get access to it. At $5/month it's cheaper than a sub to ESO, and you can sub once to download the current beta version and then immediately cancel (so a one-off payment for it), and just forgo future updates to the shader until you feel it's made enough progress.

It's screen-space, so much more performance friendly than RTX, but with some minor caveats (as screen spaced shaders all have). I run the game maxed, with RT, at 1080p/60fps on a GTX 1070. And remember, this is the work of one guy, and it's still in beta. Imagine what next gen strength GPUs can achieve with dedicated AAA teams working on RT implementations.

RT Off:

RT On:

Kiralyn2000

eKsDee wrote: »

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

Ruder wrote: »

... and the new Nvidia GPUs will be monstrosity in Ray Tracing performance.

For the small fraction of people who get them. I wonder what the overlap of "ESO players" and "spend waaay too much on gaming rig" is.


tl;dr - why would an older MMO bother with something for a small fraction of the playerbase? I can only assume WoW is doing it because they have a huge budget & staff, and figured they'd do it for kicks.

It's increasingly becoming a thing for more than just a small fraction of people, though. As far as I know, the entire 30 series lineup from NVIDIA will support the full gamut of RTX features, as well as AMD bringing their own version to the desktop card market. New PS5 and Xbox Series X will also be supporting AMD's version, too, so anybody with a PS5 or XSX will support hardware-accelerated raytracing.

Not everybody will have cards or systems that support it (not well at least, DXR provides a regular compute fallback for the operations that are typically hardware-accelerated with RTX, but it's obviously far slower and can cripple even a top end Pascal card), but, given enough time, enough people will that it becomes more feasible to support in game engines.

I guess I'm still an old fogie - I miss when they actually made affordable consumer-level GPUs (rather than these $300+ monsters), and it never occurs to me that anyone beyond Big Spenders would buy even a $300-500 card. The idea that anyone would buy a $1500 card just blows me away. Of course, the crypto market the last ~5 years screwed prices up even more.


(I finally bought a "new" card last spring - a $175 RX 570. Came with two free games, so it was even cheaper! And that's about the most I've ever paid for a GPU. My other two over the last 9 years were a Radeon 6870, and an R9-270X)

DigitalHype

Massive architectual changes and engine overhauls can't be sold in the crown store.

Vevvev

Darkstorne wrote: »

RT Off:

RT On:

Wow, that actually looks pretty good. I don't have a computer that can do real time ray tracing very well but if I did I'd love to play ESO with it looking like that!

rumple9

There's plenty of good free sweet FX shaders on nexus.com which make the game look far better than vanilla

Darkstorne

Vevvev wrote: »

Darkstorne wrote: »

RT Off:

RT On:

Wow, that actually looks pretty good. I don't have a computer that can do real time ray tracing very well but if I did I'd love to play ESO with it looking like that!

What GPU do you have? The performance hit of RT isn't as bad as most people would imagine when it's a screen-space shader. And there's also a performance boost option to run the shader at half your screen resolution (leads to a noisier image in motion, but still beautiful in still images).

I have zero issues hitting 1080p/60fps on a 1070 (until the framerate loss over time bug kicks in of course, but that happens without RT too )

The benefits to shadowing and bounce lighting are immense. Especially around detailed architecture like the DLC zones feature:

craybest

i would have to see *** much it impacts ingame. so far i think reshade is enough to make the game look better

RefLiberty

Darkstorne wrote:

The benefits to shadowing and bounce lighting are immense. Especially around detailed architecture like the DLC zones feature:

This should be the next step in ESO upgrade, to look like that native, especially that new 30xx series are now released with affordable prices.

I think that $460 for RTX3070 or cca $680 for RTX3080 is reasonable enough, and those cards are brutal fast AF now.
PC users must be aware that it is a pricey hobby and upgrades are needed every few years.

Kiralyn2000

That you think $460 is "affordable" or "reasonable" just shows how crazy the entire GPU market has become over the last 5+ years.

Darkstorne

RefLiberty wrote: »

Darkstorne wrote:

The benefits to shadowing and bounce lighting are immense. Especially around detailed architecture like the DLC zones feature:

This should be the next step in ESO upgrade, to look like that native, especially that new 30xx series are now released with affordable prices.

I think that $460 for RTX3070 or cca $680 for RTX3080 is reasonable enough, and those cards are brutal fast AF now.
PC users must be aware that it is a pricey hobby and upgrades are needed every few years.

I mean... no. The whole point of my posts and screenshots in here is to point out that RT doesn't have to be done through Nvidia RTX, and doesn't need a ludicrously over-priced GPU to run.

This is a RT shader in beta (so performance will only improve) running ESO maxed out at 1080p/60fps on a GTX 1070. No dedicated RT hardware.

I love that Nvidia have been pushing for RT effects in games, but they're doing it in the same ridiculously over-priced and closed-doors way they always do with their new tech. AMD are always slow to counter, but when they do, they prove that Nvidia is full of bluster and price-gouging for no good reason. They did it with freesync to counter Gsync, and they're about to do it with RT on console hardware and their new GPUs. A next gen ESO could easily have RT at 60fps, and won't need a bleeding edge GPU to toggle the option on for PC gamers.

Synnastix

Pricing is whatever the market will bear - you’ll be lucky to get one at MSRP anytime near release. Just because it’s not affordable/reasonable to you doesn’t mean they won’t sell out anyway.

People who started their PC hobby on a VooDoo 3 have been climbing the economic ladder long enough that $500 or even $700 may not be that big of a deal if they want to be on that bleeding edge. Also worth keeping in mind that some of the in-game items sell for ~$100 worth of crowns and the fact that they still SELL tells you something about player base here.

Sarousse

Please, reread my initial post, I know about rtgi/reshade (and using it), but that's not the goal of my post.


As an RTX owner, and seeing that other games and MMOs are getting RTX support, I'm asking if there's a chance that we'll get it on ESO soon.

danno8

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

Ruder wrote: »

... and the new Nvidia GPUs will be monstrosity in Ray Tracing performance.

For the small fraction of people who get them. I wonder what the overlap of "ESO players" and "spend waaay too much on gaming rig" is.


tl;dr - why would an older MMO bother with something for a small fraction of the playerbase? I can only assume WoW is doing it because they have a huge budget & staff, and figured they'd do it for kicks.


edit: I've never paid attention - does this game even do DX12 yet?

Yah the RTX 2000 series accounts for only 10% of total GPU's out there. Whereas something like DX12 compatible system/cards accounts for 80-95% of systems out there (this is all according to Steam Hardware Survey).

If ZoS wanted to spend money to improve the game, I would place my hope in a DX12 upgrade to benefit the most people by taking advantage of certain DX12 architecture features that can really help CPU's with threading and caching. CPU's are after all the biggest factor to performance with ESO.

danno8

Darkstorne wrote: »

RefLiberty wrote: »

Darkstorne wrote:

The benefits to shadowing and bounce lighting are immense. Especially around detailed architecture like the DLC zones feature:

This should be the next step in ESO upgrade, to look like that native, especially that new 30xx series are now released with affordable prices.

I think that $460 for RTX3070 or cca $680 for RTX3080 is reasonable enough, and those cards are brutal fast AF now.
PC users must be aware that it is a pricey hobby and upgrades are needed every few years.

I mean... no. The whole point of my posts and screenshots in here is to point out that RT doesn't have to be done through Nvidia RTX, and doesn't need a ludicrously over-priced GPU to run.

This is a RT shader in beta (so performance will only improve) running ESO maxed out at 1080p/60fps on a GTX 1070. No dedicated RT hardware.

I love that Nvidia have been pushing for RT effects in games, but they're doing it in the same ridiculously over-priced and closed-doors way they always do with their new tech. AMD are always slow to counter, but when they do, they prove that Nvidia is full of bluster and price-gouging for no good reason. They did it with freesync to counter Gsync, and they're about to do it with RT on console hardware and their new GPUs. A next gen ESO could easily have RT at 60fps, and won't need a bleeding edge GPU to toggle the option on for PC gamers.

I would love to see some videos for ESO using this shader. I have seen a lot of pictures but since this is Screen Space only, I always think that the camera movement in and out of various lighting situations would cause all sorts of strange visuals no?

SS reflections are really weird at times especially when moving, whereas SSAO and HBAO (which is still screen spaced) look pretty good most of the time even when moving around.

eKsDee

These screen space RT shaders are just that, screen space. Look away from the light source, and all the lighting disappears. It may look pretty when looking at a city scape or forest tree lining from afar, because most of the geometry that could bounce light is on screen, but during actual gameplay you're gonna end up with light popping in and out of existence, especially if shader fully raytraces lighting.

That's another issue, these screen space RT shaders literally can't fully raytrace lighting, because injectors like Reshade lack critical information for properly doing fully raytraced lighting -- namely raw albedo without lighting influence, roughness/smoothness, metalness/reflectance, emissiveness, etc.

ENB's could get closer, since (to my knowledge) the ENB injector is usually made for specific games, and so could and probably would go out of its way to grab this information by injecting at certain points in the renderer, but you can probably imagine how Zenimax would immediately shoot down something like an ENB injector due to it being quite invasive, especially compared to Reshade.

With both of these in mind, these screen space RT shaders are nice proof-of-concepts, but are a far cry from a proper RT implementation. Compare MartyMcFly's RT Reshade preset to something like Minecraft's Continuum RT or SEUS PTGI shader packs, which are built with the Optifine mod for Minecraft, that modifies Minecraft's renderer at specific points to allow for a proper RT implementation, and you'll immediately see the difference.

Unfortunately, something like Continuum RT or SEUS PTGI that manages to perform well without dedicated hardware like RTX is only possible in Minecraft, because Minecraft allows for these shader packs to cut corners in terms of the technology used (specifically the data structure that the Minecraft world is stored within for use by the shader's raytracer), due to the vast majority of Minecraft's geometry being large scale cuboids.

Any other game, with wildly varying scales and complex geometry shapes, will actually perform significantly worse than even RTX games, when using the same technology that these Minecraft shaders use, because this technology does not scale well at all when it comes to varying scales and complex geometry shapes.

This is why RTX has become a thing in the first place, because the technology that RTX accelerates is just simply best for other games, even despite being slower to use than Minecraft's. The industry wouldn't just invent and adopt a technology for no reason.

The only way you'd see "real" raytracing, ie fully raytraced lighting that isn't confined to screen space, is if ESO adopts DXR and by extension RTX.

Kiralyn2000

eKsDee wrote: »

The industry wouldn't just invent and adopt a technology for no reason.

The entertainment & consumer electronics industries invent & adopt new technologies all the time, for the reason of "Moar Money!" Like how every other year, the TV manufacturers come up with some new feature to get the crazy early adopters to buy a new panel, even though they just got one last year, because New Features! Buy Buy Buy!.

Sure, every once in awhile one of those features is actually useful and sticks around. But a lot of them? Are just to have a new buzzword to throw in advertisements, keep the price of goods higher, and keep the enthusiasts spending money on stuff they don't really need.

Darkstorne

danno8 wrote: »

I would love to see some videos for ESO using this shader. I have seen a lot of pictures but since this is Screen Space only, I always think that the camera movement in and out of various lighting situations would cause all sorts of strange visuals no?

SS reflections are really weird at times especially when moving, whereas SSAO and HBAO (which is still screen spaced) look pretty good most of the time even when moving around.

eKsDee wrote: »

These screen space RT shaders are just that, screen space. Look away from the light source, and all the lighting disappears. It may look pretty when looking at a city scape or forest tree lining from afar, because most of the geometry that could bounce light is on screen, but during actual gameplay you're gonna end up with light popping in and out of existence, especially if shader fully raytraces lighting.

It's RT for ambient occlusion, not full lighting, so you don't get lighting popping in and out the way screen space reflections do for example But yes, it does limit bounce lighting if the light casting object is off-screen. Luckily that's super rare, and barely noticeable. It's essentially the best version of AO available for ESO right now, that enhances the rasterized lighting as much as possible:

Off

On


But you're right @eKsDee - we would need a big engine update for full raytracing of lighting, and not just raytraced ambient occlusion

mattaeus01b16_ESO

my RTX2070 SUPER is hot garbage with this game.
They arnt interested in fixing what's broken unless it effects their bottom line. And its easier to get new players, then it is to keep old players happy.

danno8

Darkstorne wrote: »

danno8 wrote: »

I would love to see some videos for ESO using this shader. I have seen a lot of pictures but since this is Screen Space only, I always think that the camera movement in and out of various lighting situations would cause all sorts of strange visuals no?

SS reflections are really weird at times especially when moving, whereas SSAO and HBAO (which is still screen spaced) look pretty good most of the time even when moving around.

eKsDee wrote: »

These screen space RT shaders are just that, screen space. Look away from the light source, and all the lighting disappears. It may look pretty when looking at a city scape or forest tree lining from afar, because most of the geometry that could bounce light is on screen, but during actual gameplay you're gonna end up with light popping in and out of existence, especially if shader fully raytraces lighting.

It's RT for ambient occlusion, not full lighting, so you don't get lighting popping in and out the way screen space reflections do for example But yes, it does limit bounce lighting if the light casting object is off-screen. Luckily that's super rare, and barely noticeable. It's essentially the best version of AO available for ESO right now, that enhances the rasterized lighting as much as possible:

Off

On


But you're right @eKsDee - we would need a big engine update for full raytracing of lighting, and not just raytraced ambient occlusion

All right so I bumped into a leaked version online which I really shouldn't be using and feel bad about but...

The experience was not great. First off, because ESO is an online game, Pascal (the shader author) has made it so that reshade is constantly checking for high network traffic, at which point the shader is disabled since it uses the depth buffer. This is a necessary thing since access to the depth buffer is a prime way to cheat in online games. So the shader is constantly popping on then off, making it unusable.

Secondly the RT shader is causing the grass and foliage to "buzz" with static.

Overall a poor experience. I am happy to pay for a really good shader, but if it won't work in online games due to depth buffer access, then I am happy to not have paid for it since I can't really use it.

Darkstorne

danno8 wrote: »

Darkstorne wrote: »

danno8 wrote: »

I would love to see some videos for ESO using this shader. I have seen a lot of pictures but since this is Screen Space only, I always think that the camera movement in and out of various lighting situations would cause all sorts of strange visuals no?

SS reflections are really weird at times especially when moving, whereas SSAO and HBAO (which is still screen spaced) look pretty good most of the time even when moving around.

eKsDee wrote: »

These screen space RT shaders are just that, screen space. Look away from the light source, and all the lighting disappears. It may look pretty when looking at a city scape or forest tree lining from afar, because most of the geometry that could bounce light is on screen, but during actual gameplay you're gonna end up with light popping in and out of existence, especially if shader fully raytraces lighting.

It's RT for ambient occlusion, not full lighting, so you don't get lighting popping in and out the way screen space reflections do for example But yes, it does limit bounce lighting if the light casting object is off-screen. Luckily that's super rare, and barely noticeable. It's essentially the best version of AO available for ESO right now, that enhances the rasterized lighting as much as possible:

Off

On


But you're right @eKsDee - we would need a big engine update for full raytracing of lighting, and not just raytraced ambient occlusion

All right so I bumped into a leaked version online which I really shouldn't be using and feel bad about but...

The experience was not great. First off, because ESO is an online game, Pascal (the shader author) has made it so that reshade is constantly checking for high network traffic, at which point the shader is disabled since it uses the depth buffer. This is a necessary thing since access to the depth buffer is a prime way to cheat in online games. So the shader is constantly popping on then off, making it unusable.

Secondly the RT shader is causing the grass and foliage to "buzz" with static.

Overall a poor experience. I am happy to pay for a really good shader, but if it won't work in online games due to depth buffer access, then I am happy to not have paid for it since I can't really use it.

There's a way around both of those issues. It works flawlessly when you know how. And I would be happy to help if you'd actually supported the guy putting time into the shader, but if you're happy to pirate things then I won't be helping.

danno8

Darkstorne wrote: »

danno8 wrote: »

Darkstorne wrote: »

danno8 wrote: »

I would love to see some videos for ESO using this shader. I have seen a lot of pictures but since this is Screen Space only, I always think that the camera movement in and out of various lighting situations would cause all sorts of strange visuals no?

SS reflections are really weird at times especially when moving, whereas SSAO and HBAO (which is still screen spaced) look pretty good most of the time even when moving around.

eKsDee wrote: »

These screen space RT shaders are just that, screen space. Look away from the light source, and all the lighting disappears. It may look pretty when looking at a city scape or forest tree lining from afar, because most of the geometry that could bounce light is on screen, but during actual gameplay you're gonna end up with light popping in and out of existence, especially if shader fully raytraces lighting.

It's RT for ambient occlusion, not full lighting, so you don't get lighting popping in and out the way screen space reflections do for example But yes, it does limit bounce lighting if the light casting object is off-screen. Luckily that's super rare, and barely noticeable. It's essentially the best version of AO available for ESO right now, that enhances the rasterized lighting as much as possible:

Off

On


But you're right @eKsDee - we would need a big engine update for full raytracing of lighting, and not just raytraced ambient occlusion

All right so I bumped into a leaked version online which I really shouldn't be using and feel bad about but...

The experience was not great. First off, because ESO is an online game, Pascal (the shader author) has made it so that reshade is constantly checking for high network traffic, at which point the shader is disabled since it uses the depth buffer. This is a necessary thing since access to the depth buffer is a prime way to cheat in online games. So the shader is constantly popping on then off, making it unusable.

Secondly the RT shader is causing the grass and foliage to "buzz" with static.

Overall a poor experience. I am happy to pay for a really good shader, but if it won't work in online games due to depth buffer access, then I am happy to not have paid for it since I can't really use it.

There's a way around both of those issues. It works flawlessly when you know how. And I would be happy to help if you'd actually supported the guy putting time into the shader, but if you're happy to pirate things then I won't be helping.

I am not happy to pirate at all, as I stated. I am also not happy to bypass the depth filter which may actually be against the ToS, as there is a reason that restriction on reshade is in place.

You don't know me from Adam, but rest assured I don't pirate anything, but I do believe in testing before buying and am glad I did in this case. A shader that requires me to bypass legit restrictions is not for me.