this is, even though sponsored, one of the most precise and understandable videos about raytracing, props man

It's absolutely crazy just how far we've come the past ~5 years or so. DLSS is like pure magic

Personally, the raytracing needing to catch up isn't a big deal. For me it feels more like exposure adjustment. Like when you turn a flash light off in a very dark room you'll get a momentary after image.

I love when you do deep dives like this. There are plenty of other KZfaq channels that do these, but you have a real knack for it. Your speaking cadence also lends itself nicely to narration. I can't wait to pick this game up, I played over 100 hours of the first one. I am a bit let down that firearms are no longer a part of the franchise, but that still leaves the recurve bow.... And boy is that thing ever fun :) I hope you're well Philip!! Edit: Also, yes that soundtrack is poppin!! Makes me nostalgic for the first Dying Light, such a great game. The fear of going out at night is like nothing else I've experienced in a video game. Edit #2: I am SO GLAD that studios are finally starting to use ray traced global illumination and ambient occlusion. Those are the two most important aspects of ray tracing making assets look more realistic. Yes, it hits systems hard, but with DLSS it's a non issue unless you're using an ultra potato.

Honestly I absolutely love raytraced global illumination, raytraced shadows and raytraced ambient occlusion. (which is all kind of the same but you know) It just looks so good. You do make the point that people have become used to the shadows as they are in game with their crispness etc. but I could never bring myself to like it. Now with raytracing games just look much prettier and more realistic. Love that this is a thing we have now

This video is a labour of love, you've included every single thing I could think of that makes a video a complete one: interaction with the viewer, comedy, a full dissection of the subject being presented and much more big and tiny little details that I can't name :). Great work on this one, if that's what you were talking about when you said that you're going to shake things up then for my opinion it's a great step towards the right direction!

Loved the slightly unhinged rants about shadows shimmering and warm coloured under lighting!

One thing that doesn't get talked about enough with raytracing in video games that it can ease development -- most helpful for smaller studios who want to go for more realistic graphics. The designers can save time tweaking lighting for the levels, especially when it also requires re-rendering shadow and other maps with each change.

Scary games are scary but they are no way as scary as empty source maps where you are all alone...

I’d honestly love to see this series across many more RTX games. Please, NVIDIA, make it happen! Pay this man!

i was really hoping you'd touch on dying light 2's raytracing and dlss. to me it's the pinnacle of implementation for both so far, and i am excited to see games match up to its level

Big thing you mentioned with the flashlight is lack of shadows, and that brings up the fact that many many games turn off shadows for lights completely. Any light that isn't the sun or moon often cast no shadow in the vast majority of games, even brand new ones. When you see a game that has them turned on, it's crazy how much better it looks, and how it enhances the scene. Another thing with flashlights is that games always use these really hard set textures for the light. As if it's coming out of an old cheap bulky flashlight, and I think it always degrades the quality greatly. One of the only games I've seen with a proper flashlight is ready or not.

I don't know of a channel that treats these subjects better than you do, I like how it felt very in-depth and rich in information but managed to stay entertaining

"Ah, much worse. Just the way I like it." Brilliant way to describe RTGI sometimes.

For once, a video that really shows the difference. I hope your life is and will be perfect because people like you deserve happiness.

Speaking of flashlight shadows, I was really impressed with the shadows in Black Mesa

Loved the energy you gave to this video!

This is an absolutely fantastic video for everyone who doesn't know much about the topic! Well done, philip!

the 'glowing potatoes' are because the flashlight is rendered from close to your eyes, which means you can't see shadows so it looks like full bright, so it's a limitation of the game and not raytracing

Very cool! Let me just say that I really enjoy this content, even if I had to watch his one on mute because always stating which image we were looking at became very grating!

Great presentation, man. Good job.

Really great video, so many comparisons!

Watching this video after purchasing a 4080 Super on release day, Dying light 2 was the first game I loaded up with the new card, and playing around with the settings I didn't notice much outside of the performance hit with raytracing. This video really have me a new appreciate for what raytracing does, and with DLSS and Frame gen, I can get 150+ fps max settings. Very cool to see

Just the video I was waiting for

The part of the orange underground lighting made me loose it, i've laugh out loud. Nvdia you should hire Mr 2kliksphilip always, becouse he's awesome, cheers !

It's too bad that the game, much more Ray Tracing can't even give us Cast shadows given by a flashlight. A game like this needs it soooo bad especially in dark spots.

thanks a lot for this one, havent used raytracing yet, but might once ive finished the main story

Really enjoyed this! Didn’t enjoy the KZfaq algorithm not showing this in my feed.

i feel like raytracing needs a fear level of a game to show off the lighting

metro exodus enhanced edition is still probably the only impressive ray traced game that's actually playable at high fps and at a resolution that keeps the visuals sharp.

You do make a lot of very good videos, but this one was excellent!

High quality browns on the bottom, is what I came here for.

Love the soft/sharp shadows raytracing is capable of. Don't particularly like how some scenes look otherwise though, very dark and washed out.

I'm excited for how raytracing can be become more integral to the core gameplay in the future, it's another degree of freedom finally unlocking.

i really enjoyed sitting through and watching it

This video is in the tier of videos that *deserve* millions of views. Very well done, even compared to your usual quality level.

Out of interest, what GPU did you use for this testing?

Great content !

Hey phillips , if you ever make a video about dynamic music , this game is the best example out there now

i'm watching this at 2 in the morning so i zoned out for a bit and came back to you talking about 4k raytracing performance. i was then amazed at how powerful systems are these days and then depressed at how i'm still on a 1060 6gb

I lloved this video, it quite literally maade my day

I'm really happy to finally see raytracing evolve so much. It's the first time I can notice the difference without using binoculars .

no words but. banger video

Wow, dying light is a such a quiet and relaxing game :o Jokes aside, thanks for the video, it was awesome. I learnt a lot and it was FUN!

Very fun video

I don't have an rtx GPU, I don't want to play dying light 2, yet I still clicked this video because Philip has this strange ability to make anything fun and interesting.

I haven't enjoyed a 2kliksphilip video that much in a while. Well done.

this video is absolutely beautiful

Wow, we're really breaking through a barrier graphics wise, slowly but surely

[Nvidia]: We will pay you to talk about how cool raytracing is with our cards. [Philip]: "It looks too glorious with rasterization. Raytracing allows it to be worse and more depressing!"

I don't know why I got so excited after I got all of the "is there ray tracing?" Questions. Got them all right though :)

10:27 i actually started to have a cold sweat seeing you try to crawl into that dishonored rat way

I love the way you pronounced Call of Juarez lol

One suggestion: in your “FPS counter” bits, put the hardware you’re using on-screen. It’s hard to get the context for what you’re saying otherwise! Good video tho! I enjoyed it.

I think with some color correction, the game with raytracing could look more colorful like the non-raytracing graphics

I’ve never seen such a substantial difference with ray tracing. It’s amazing.

Love the depth raytracing adds, it's such a small, but noticeable change. Graphics are getting so good these days, my 1050 doesn't approve, but thankfully I know not to listen to it.

Suggestion: maybe you could do the text in different colors, I have problems knowing which example is currently on screen, so: "Native" = green, "4K DLSS Performance" = red and so on...

yeah im buying dying light 2 now to play with my 3070ti, thanks philip, this video helped me with my decision

3 out of 3 babyyy Although i just looked at the shadows

Hi Philip, What GPU did you use for the real life outdoor reflection scene? It looked like real life.

my man 2kilks really loves pixels

I find if you know what youre looking for its really easy to tell rtx and conventional apart. Firstly like you mentioned the sharpness of object, but seems to me like the rtx shadows are a lot more calm than the normal ones. Id argue that has a bigger impact then the rtx shadows themselves because the "fake" shadows already look pretty good, ngl. Especially in close ups.

2kliksphillip doing what digital foundry does best, but with a considerable layer of dankness

not upscaled... dlss performance... not upscaled... dlss performance... not upscaled... dlss performance... it sounds like a chant.

i hope ray tracing is the norm soon, there are so many interesting things that could be done with global illumination and real time reflections if every somewhat modern system could use them.

RT really is impressive in games with terrible (or subpar)raster lighting, like Dying Light 2. I think showcase the point of it better than some of the more "impressive" RT showcase games, it reveals the true advantage of the tech: It can't really be bad implemented as easily as raster lighting can. what do I mean by that? well, instead of having to master every trick in the lighting book it does things like GI and reflections, things which with rasterization are done with a combination of 3 or more different techniques("tricks") each, all of which have possible artifacts and can go wrong in so many ways, it does it in one pass by simply simulating more closely what light does irl(but not perfectly, it's still a trick in many ways). You can do breathtaking and often almost indiscernable from RT raster lighting(and sometimes even more asthetically pleasing! I still prefer top notch raster than RT in many cases, for performance reasons and appreciation for the tricks and how well they can do the job) but it takes good developers and tech people who are good at doing it, while RT only takes getting it working and it "does the rest" so to speak. While during exclusively rasterization age (where we were not long ago and still are in a lot of ways) lighting quality varied wildly between games and while some looked (and still look) stunning, some had really annoying lighting glitches and jank or looked flat, in a hypothetical future where every (or most) games are RT'd all games willl look more uniformely well/realistically lit, with none of the (raster) jank (but maybe some RT jank like noise and increasing ray count effect).

aww I was hoping this video was about Resident Evil 7 and RE2 being given raytracing recently

DLSS is still a game changer imo, and definitely superior to FSR. Once I upgraded from my old 1080 to a 3070 a few months ago, I noticed a huge difference in performance and image quality in DLSS-supported titles as compared to my old 1080. Much higher performance and better image quality even at the same graphics settings. Dying Light 2 runs great for me at 1440p DLSS Balanced using the Digital Foundry-optimized settings with Ray tracing fully enabled.

Would love to here you analyze game graphics together with the guys from DigitalFoundry

Can you keep doing videos on the RX 6500XT? I liked those ones a lot

The real life reflections where fun, felt like the UK. Brown crumbling and slightly dirty, ah my home land.

What song is being played 3:52? I tried to find it in the OST but I couldn't see it.

I like the raytracing in the game, though it makes everything darker so some scenes were partially just black screen

Not upscaled --- dlss performance .. Not upscaled --- dlss performance .. I will like and subscribe ....

What hardware was used for this video? Are these performance numbers and footage from a RTX 2060 or a RTX 3090 Ti?

Great video, reminds me of when i played teardown because of your reviews on the alpha. Btw is there any Radeon Super Resolution in the game?

"reflections are something I don't ever feel we ever found an acceptable way of faking using older methods" half-life 2 in 2004: 🗿

When game devs get new tech they tend to excessively overuse it (like the bloom in Oblivion) but with raytracing it's not necessarily the case. You can't 'overuse' it unless you make every surface reflective or colourful

i like these videos

I wish we could see more games that use ray-tracing in a way that’s not just visual, like making a games that aren’t possible with traditional rasterization. Something like CodeParade’s Marble Marcher comes to mind, being able to render a perfect sphere and dynamic fractal geometry without the need for triangles is incredibly unique, and that was possible with just ray-marching. A lot of people pass off ray-tracing as an unnecessary expensive gimmick that’s used to justify paying for an overpriced GPU or console, but I believe that ray-tracing could be redeemed in the hands of the right developers. Early 3D rasterized games had to prove their worth with games that could only work in 3D like Super Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot; if ray-tracing wants to be taken seriously, it needs developers that are willing to take creative risks to bring experiences that rasterization isn’t already capable of.

10:20 What a beautiful simile

Nvidia really did make a feature before knowing if people wanted it or not, and now they have to convince people the feature is actually good and useful

thank you for teaching me papa phill

That real life raytracing does look good. I wonder if it gives better performance if you enable DLSS as well?

12:59 I love how he has to specify that this is real life footage 😂

This video explains why they went with the saturated colors. it's all about the RT. Unfortunately it was still released on consoles and had to target a bunch of different set ups, so not everyone will use it to target the 60 fps

I wish you could combine the realistic gi and the artists intent

considering how dark raytracing gets sometimes games surely will have to adapt to the fact that the human eye adapts to lower light situations. something that doesnt really happen through the screen so games probably have to artificially compensate for that too in order to get an even more realistic (and much more pleasant as we can see stuff in darkness again!!!) experience.

Meanwhile me, watching at 480p: Ah yes, pixels, we have those! Moving grass, yes, I knew that's what was onscreen!

I wanted to give the video a like but it already has a like ... I feel like Neo when he saw a black cat ... and a black cat again ...

13:20 tell me you at least FOUGHT yourself from making the Agent Smith reference come ON

Do more videos with nvidia, this partnership seems to work!

Wish Call of Juarez got remade with RTXGI, liked those first two COJ games.

since lighting is a very big part of deep rock galactic, whats your expert opinion on its lights and reflections?

Damn this is better than Digital Foundry. I would love more of these.

flashlights usually don't emit any shadows in games, because the light is casted directly from the center of your screen and all shadows it casts would be obstructed anyway and so they save performance by just not doing it.

how to use msi afterburner RTSS fps Counter/stats ingame? I can't get it to show/work in dying light 2...

Regarding the old ambient occlusion methods, HLA has crazy good ambient occlusion despite not being raytraced.