Elder Scrolls Online and nVidia's RTX technology

Geroken777 · August 2018

The RTX technology is definitely a new age of graphic cards for gamers and developers, but how will WE be affected by this? E.g implementation of this into the ESO engine.

I'd like to quote this from an nVidia article:

“Integrating NVIDIA RTX into our Northlight engine was a relatively straightforward exercise,” said Mikko Orrenmaa, technology team manager at Remedy Entertainment. “Developing exclusively on NVIDIA RTX, we were surprised just how quickly we were able to prototype new lighting, reflection and ambient occlusion techniques, with significantly better visual fidelity than traditional rasterization techniques. We are really excited about what we can achieve in the future with the NVIDIA RTX technology. Gamers are in for something special.”

With the cards just released a few minutes ago, what is ahead of us in ESO? @ZOS_GinaBruno

reprosal · August 2018

We don’t even have DirectX 12 support. What makes you think they will have plans to utilize this new architecture specifically anytime soon...?

Dragonnord · August 2018

Sounds like more lag to me.

ghastley · August 2018

Nerf consoles!

Isn't this a PC-only thing?

randomkeyhits · August 2018

Short term? nothing.

Its the lowest common denominator thingy, most players will still be on GTX cards or AMD for a long time yet.

If they want to add it as an optional display mode then its whenever they want but with what feels like strong focus on marketplace stuff I don't see a purely tech thing like this having any priority at all.

TheRealPotoroo · August 2018

ghastley wrote: »

Nerf consoles!

Isn't this a PC-only thing?

For now.

I also watched the release and I agree RTX is a game changer. I can't comment on the feasibility of incorporating it into the ESO framework but let us dream.

Alcast · August 2018

"It just works"

rumple9 · August 2018

They can't even fix the servers let alone implement new RTX technology.

TheRealPotoroo · August 2018

Alcast wrote: »

"It just works"

When your objects are modelled correctly, which for RTX purposes means getting textures (wood, metal, glass etc) right. It's intuitive for a pseudo-real world FPS like Battlefield V but not necessarily for a fantasy game where fidelity to such mundane concerns may be lacking. That said, the Battlefield V demo in particular made my inner DK weak at the knees.

danno8 · August 2018

I remember when tessellation was going to change the way developers used polys.

Like any new tech, only time will tell. I sure won't be holding my breath for anything in the next few years.

TheRealPotoroo · August 2018

danno8 wrote: »

I remember when tessellation was going to change the way developers used polys.

Like any new tech, only time will tell. I sure won't be holding my breath for anything in the next few years.

You'll start seeing RTX enabled games in September (https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/08/20/1554134/0/en/NVIDIA-RTX-Platform-Brings-Real-Time-Ray-Tracing-and-AI-to-Barrage-of-Blockbuster-Games.html). In principle, RTX should speed up graphics design in games because once you've done your object modelling and built your world you no longer have to play software tricks to get scenes looking halfway decent, you just drop in your lights, turn RTX on and let the hardware do the work. Since you're not rasterising everything, but part rasterising and part ray tracing, and since the ray tracing part is hardware based, development should be more straight forward and therefore faster. Yes, it will take time to become mainstream but I know enough about graphics to know this is a fair dinkum game changer. Nvidia changed the graphics world today.

Whether ESO will incorporate it is an open question. Is it worth reworking the engine just for PC? My bet is ZoS will say it isn't. But new stuff is not years away, it starts next month.

rumple9 · August 2018

Battlefield V have been tweeting today that it is RTX enabled and before/after videos looks damned impressive

Bevik · August 2018

Can't even run RTX 2080 Ti the new Tomb Raider in 1920x1080 with stable FPS and you want that in ESO. LOL!

ZeroXFF · August 2018

Bevik wrote: »

Can't even run RTX 2080 Ti the new Tomb Raider in 1920x1080 with stable FPS and you want that in ESO. LOL!

While I agree in principle that they shouldn't do anything lowering ESO performance, unless you're running ESO at 4k, the bottleneck is almost certain to be the CPU (unlike Tomb Raider that is GPU bound). If this technology is only affecting the GPU, you should be seeing an improvement in visual quality without any or with only minimal fps loss.

Sailor_Palutena · September 2018

Bevik wrote: »

Can't even run RTX 2080 Ti the new Tomb Raider in 1920x1080 with stable FPS and you want that in ESO. LOL!

Only with the new feature turned on. If you don't turn it, it should be able to play 60fps 4K even.

It is TressFX allk over again.

f047ys3v3n · September 2018

ESO actually appeared to have some ray tracing built into it's lighting a while back. Often, shadows would properly display in my housing in a way that only ray tracing does. This was disabled at some point though so I really doubt they are looking to make things prettier in this regard. Seems like they are more on the try to get it to run with stability objective.

JinMori · September 2018

Alcast wrote: »

"It just works"

This rtx card that is specifically made for ray tracing is 6 times faster than the 1080 ti at ray tracing, WOW would have never guessed, the actual performance though is most probably in the 20/30% range, but doesn;t stop them from charging double the price.

What a travesty, sure ray tracing is gonna be very useful, but does it justify the price, *** no.

Notice how they didn't release a single benchmark, during the conference and after, why do you think that is? It was to keep up the hype obviously, the actual performance we will see is most probably disappointing, if the cards were 70 % improvement like the previous generation, they would have already bragged about it to no end.

Use your brain guys, don;t fall to the hype, and most of all NEVER PREORDER.

Kadoin · September 2018

Why would they waste time implementing a feature that barely any of the players would be able to use? Also implementing into an engine is a lot different than implementing a game that's already developed. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't forgive any more lag or bugs for some effects that are barely noticeable when playing.

iiYuki · September 2018

*** me, we've only been waiting 4 years for optimisation, lag fixes, connection fixes etc, *** me I can find posts from 2 and 3 years ago talking about "infinite loading screens", I had one today for 20 minutes when they implementing that patch?
We already have tonnes of bugs ranging from annoying to game breaking still not fixed.
The last thing we need is them *** around with gimmicky features that are going to introduce more problems.
I plan on buying a 2080ti when they release btw.

Malmai · September 2018

Geroken777 wrote: »

The RTX technology is definitely a new age of graphic cards for gamers and developers, but how will WE be affected by this? E.g implementation of this into the ESO engine.

I'd like to quote this from an nVidia article:

“Integrating NVIDIA RTX into our Northlight engine was a relatively straightforward exercise,” said Mikko Orrenmaa, technology team manager at Remedy Entertainment. “Developing exclusively on NVIDIA RTX, we were surprised just how quickly we were able to prototype new lighting, reflection and ambient occlusion techniques, with significantly better visual fidelity than traditional rasterization techniques. We are really excited about what we can achieve in the future with the NVIDIA RTX technology. Gamers are in for something special.”

With the cards just released a few minutes ago, what is ahead of us in ESO? @ZOS_GinaBruno

LoL

qbit · September 2018

Ray tracing has existed in DX12 for a long time. No one uses it because it's slow. The nVidia card speeds it up (6 times?). Buy the card. You still won't have any games that use it. By the time some one-off game implements some scene element somewhere that everyone gushes over (oh wow look at this straw in this cup of water, light refracts so realistically!) far better RTX cards will exist. Making the early adopters total suckers.

It won't affect ESO. And game artists have got very good at making traditional shaders look practically as good as the proper ray tracing.

I'd be happy to see ESO get DX12 support. I won't hold out for any use of ray tracing APIs. I foresee it being used about as much as nVidia Hair Effects or whatever that's called. Pretty sure nVidia pays a lot of money to some AAA game developers to include this silly stuff and it winds up only getting used in cut scenes.

Sorry to burst bubble with my jaded debbie downer attitude.

qbit · September 2018

TheRealPotoroo wrote: »

Alcast wrote: »

"It just works"

When your objects are modelled correctly, which for RTX purposes means getting textures (wood, metal, glass etc) right. It's intuitive for a pseudo-real world FPS like Battlefield V but not necessarily for a fantasy game where fidelity to such mundane concerns may be lacking. That said, the Battlefield V demo in particular made my inner DK weak at the knees.

This right here. The artists will have to go back and define all kinds of surface properties they've never thought about. Things like index of refraction, sub surface scattering intensity, etc. etc. Completely uncharted territory for artists that have only ever worked in games and never in offline 3D rendering (i.e. Pixar movies, etc.).

MLGProPlayer · September 2018

We obviously won't be getting RTX on a 4 year-old game.

Also, RTX is nothing but a gimmick at this point. You barely get 60 FPS at 1080p in most games with it enabled. Nobody is going to use it until at least the next generation of cards.

Ragnarock41 · September 2018

You made my day OP, kudos to you

TheInfernalRage · September 2018

When ray tracing becomes the norm, then I'll consider buying a card for it. As long as it remains irrelevant, count me out. It's all commodity fetishism nowadays; just to feel good about being, according to Nvidia, "ahead of the curve".

Capitalism usually makes you feel bad about yourself so it can sell what it can make you feel good. If I'm just gaming, ray tracing is not important and not having it is not a problem.

Saucy_Jack · September 2018

I just like the fact that they made a concerted effort to make RTX available for laptops.

Ragnarock41 · September 2018

TheInfernalRage wrote: »

When ray tracing becomes the norm, then I'll consider buying a card for it. As long as it remains irrelevant, count me out. It's all commodity fetishism nowadays; just to feel good about being, according to Nvidia, "ahead of the curve".

Capitalism usually makes you feel bad about yourself so it can sell what it can make you feel good. If I'm just gaming, ray tracing is not important and not having it is not a problem.

Even with RTX, real ray tracing is soo taxing that its better to fake the effect (and games are really good at faking many things). I think its way too early for this technology and my gtx 1070 will be enough for another 2 to 3 years.

I'm sick of nvidia gimping games with gimmicks like gameworks and other over the top stuff that is unneccessary.(remember the ridicilous tesselation in crysis 2 or hairworks in witcher 3? I mean who the hell needs 64x tesselation? Its obviously there for marketing purposes and to make amd look bad in benchmarks.)

I feel really bad about this cause without amd , prices will skyrocket and progress will slow down. Vega gpu line was a disaster in terms of price to performance, so Im really hoping amd has an answer this year. After all they did it with ryzen, forced intel to improve their standarts and now they need to step up their game in the gpu market.

Otherwise we, gamers will suffer.

JinMori · September 2018

Ragnarock41 wrote: »

TheInfernalRage wrote: »

When ray tracing becomes the norm, then I'll consider buying a card for it. As long as it remains irrelevant, count me out. It's all commodity fetishism nowadays; just to feel good about being, according to Nvidia, "ahead of the curve".

Capitalism usually makes you feel bad about yourself so it can sell what it can make you feel good. If I'm just gaming, ray tracing is not important and not having it is not a problem.

Even with RTX, real ray tracing is soo taxing that its better to fake the effect (and games are really good at faking many things). I think its way too early for this technology and my gtx 1070 will be enough for another 2 to 3 years.

I'm sick of nvidia gimping games with gimmicks like gameworks and other over the top stuff that is unneccessary.(remember the ridicilous tesselation in crysis 2 or hairworks in witcher 3? I mean who the hell needs 64x tesselation? Its obviously there for marketing purposes and to make amd look bad in benchmarks.)

I feel really bad about this cause without amd , prices will skyrocket and progress will slow down. Vega gpu line was a disaster in terms of price to performance, so Im really hoping amd has an answer this year. After all they did it with ryzen, forced intel to improve their standarts and now they need to step up their game in the gpu market.

Otherwise we, gamers will suffer.

Competition promotes advancement and lower prices, this is one of the perks of the free market, the problem is when you have a monopoly, and you can just set prices however the *** you want, and pretty much nothing to regulate it other than people not buying, which has been proven itself to be very unreliable, looking at how people still buy apple for example, even though it's actual value, price to performance is ludicrously low.

Ragnarock41 · September 2018

JinMori wrote: »

Ragnarock41 wrote: »

TheInfernalRage wrote: »

When ray tracing becomes the norm, then I'll consider buying a card for it. As long as it remains irrelevant, count me out. It's all commodity fetishism nowadays; just to feel good about being, according to Nvidia, "ahead of the curve".

Capitalism usually makes you feel bad about yourself so it can sell what it can make you feel good. If I'm just gaming, ray tracing is not important and not having it is not a problem.

Even with RTX, real ray tracing is soo taxing that its better to fake the effect (and games are really good at faking many things). I think its way too early for this technology and my gtx 1070 will be enough for another 2 to 3 years.

I'm sick of nvidia gimping games with gimmicks like gameworks and other over the top stuff that is unneccessary.(remember the ridicilous tesselation in crysis 2 or hairworks in witcher 3? I mean who the hell needs 64x tesselation? Its obviously there for marketing purposes and to make amd look bad in benchmarks.)

I feel really bad about this cause without amd , prices will skyrocket and progress will slow down. Vega gpu line was a disaster in terms of price to performance, so Im really hoping amd has an answer this year. After all they did it with ryzen, forced intel to improve their standarts and now they need to step up their game in the gpu market.

Otherwise we, gamers will suffer.

Competition promotes advancement and lower prices, this is one of the perks of the free market, the problem is when you have a monopoly, and you can just set prices however the *** you want, and pretty much nothing to regulate it other than people not buying, which has been proven itself to be very unreliable, looking at how people still buy apple for example, even though it's actual value, price to performance is ludicrously low.

All I can day is that being a blind fanboy of a corporation is just dumb. I never understoof apple fans, nvidia fans, amd fans etc... I will always buy whatever is more reasonable, however if I can justify it, I will support the underdog.

As for apple PCs, I don't even consider those as an option for obvious reasons.

JinMori · September 2018

Ragnarock41 wrote: »

JinMori wrote: »

Ragnarock41 wrote: »

TheInfernalRage wrote: »

When ray tracing becomes the norm, then I'll consider buying a card for it. As long as it remains irrelevant, count me out. It's all commodity fetishism nowadays; just to feel good about being, according to Nvidia, "ahead of the curve".

Capitalism usually makes you feel bad about yourself so it can sell what it can make you feel good. If I'm just gaming, ray tracing is not important and not having it is not a problem.

Even with RTX, real ray tracing is soo taxing that its better to fake the effect (and games are really good at faking many things). I think its way too early for this technology and my gtx 1070 will be enough for another 2 to 3 years.

I'm sick of nvidia gimping games with gimmicks like gameworks and other over the top stuff that is unneccessary.(remember the ridicilous tesselation in crysis 2 or hairworks in witcher 3? I mean who the hell needs 64x tesselation? Its obviously there for marketing purposes and to make amd look bad in benchmarks.)

I feel really bad about this cause without amd , prices will skyrocket and progress will slow down. Vega gpu line was a disaster in terms of price to performance, so Im really hoping amd has an answer this year. After all they did it with ryzen, forced intel to improve their standarts and now they need to step up their game in the gpu market.

Otherwise we, gamers will suffer.

Competition promotes advancement and lower prices, this is one of the perks of the free market, the problem is when you have a monopoly, and you can just set prices however the *** you want, and pretty much nothing to regulate it other than people not buying, which has been proven itself to be very unreliable, looking at how people still buy apple for example, even though it's actual value, price to performance is ludicrously low.

All I can day is that being a blind fanboy of a corporation is just dumb. I never understoof apple fans, nvidia fans, amd fans etc... I will always buy whatever is more reasonable, however if I can justify it, I will support the underdog.

As for apple PCs, I don't even consider those as an option for obvious reasons.

Yes, being a fanboy is one thing, but there comes a point where you can say, this is objectively bad, for what they give, apple pc, phone etc, are objectively bad, nice screen i guess, worth 1 k dollars or euros, *** no.

SHADOW2KK · September 2018

Geroken777 wrote: »

The RTX technology is definitely a new age of graphic cards for gamers and developers, but how will WE be affected by this? E.g implementation of this into the ESO engine.

I'd like to quote this from an nVidia article:

“Integrating NVIDIA RTX into our Northlight engine was a relatively straightforward exercise,” said Mikko Orrenmaa, technology team manager at Remedy Entertainment. “Developing exclusively on NVIDIA RTX, we were surprised just how quickly we were able to prototype new lighting, reflection and ambient occlusion techniques, with significantly better visual fidelity than traditional rasterization techniques. We are really excited about what we can achieve in the future with the NVIDIA RTX technology. Gamers are in for something special.”

With the cards just released a few minutes ago, what is ahead of us in ESO? @ZOS_GinaBruno

Going by ZoS and its incredible skill at messing things up, I really would like them not to even remotely go near adding dx12 support never mind maximising the potential of the next gen Nvidia cards.

Competent devs can deal with this but not ZoS please for the love of all unholy gerbils.