Control: Ultimate Edition runs at 1440p/30 FPS on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X: ray-tracing might flatline graphics progress this generation

[Redaktion]

Control: Ultimate Edition recently launched on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. Remedy's latest game has evidently joined the ranks of ninth-gen titles running at 30 FPS with a sub-native resolution, thanks in large part to its hardware ray-tracing implementation. Could ray-tracing hold back progress in other aspects of scene complexity and visuals this generation?

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Control-Ultimate-Edition-runs-at-1440p-30-FPS-on-the-PlayStation-5-and-Xbox-Series-X-ray-tracing-might-flatline-graphics-progress-this-generation.517829.0.html

[Rich4143]

That's why we either have to do another revolutionary advancement in the GPU world or continue to optimize Raytracing for video games because if one of the highest tier cards, the 2080Ti, is required for 4k AND 60fps, that's just not good.

[S.Yu]

Probably because adding asset complexity...requires a lot of manual labor?

[hank1298]

At this point it's just a marketing gimmick for ngreedia to increase prices for tech that most can't use in any practical way at least at the lower end popular cards. Remember when top level cards were not much more than $300? Now that's a minimum gaming 50/60 level card or less. It may be good for devs IF they decide to use it but until tech has increased a lot most of them won't use it as a primary required thing for logical reasons of limiting their own customers, why do you think DX11 is still used in so many games? Lots of win7 locked out of DX12 customers still out there. I've played cp77 with rt and without and hardly noticed a difference, other than slow sluggish framerates, only slowly doing a "tour" mode would you see it.

[GimmieVids]

What we need is a RTX off button

[Josiah Compinder]

You seem to fail to mention that the game does feature a mode without Ray tracing at 60 fps.

[KZBFF ELF]

More polygons, larger textures, kind of boring already, still lifeless... Ray tracing on the other hand brings life to everything, this is why CGs in movies must use it, would render ray traced scenes for weeks just for it because it is a must. To me too I found ray tracing is even more impactful than VR. Ray tracing is the true next gen, not more polygons and textures.

Cyberpunk + RTX + Reflection + HDR = most immersive visual ever. It is the first time I feel something is *real* in a game, characters included, simply mesmerizing, without RTX reflection skins would just look like it's painted, just like in every other games.

[Jotham Smith]

I mean, it wasn't long after release that Spider-Man PS5 released their 60fps Ray Tracing mode, and it's the best looking game I've ever played. It's possible to get performance and ray tracing, it's just a new technology that needs mastering like anything else.

[Yoshimatsu414]

That's why we either have to do another revolutionary advancement in the GPU world or continue to optimize Raytracing for video games because if one of the highest tier cards, the 2080Ti, is required for 4k AND 60fps, that's just not good.

RTX 2080 Ti isn't even a "high tier" card anymore....

[Joshua]

This is starting to p*** me off. Why can't developers understand how important framerate is? In this day and age of 144+hz, 30fps is not even playable anymore. I'd rather have Super Mario graphics at 60fps than cyberpunk graphics at 30fps.

[Quickdawn]

I think everyone forgets here that consoles don't have dlss implementation. Sure it has rt but it seriously hurts performance to do everything without it. Dlss saved the 2080 from rt being a unplayable gimmick. What really needs to happen so games on consoles can advance is for AMD to get the DLSS of their flavor out to the world. Until then RT on consoles will be set to minimal with huge performance costs.

[Maniac McGee]

Correction: Demon's Souls does not render at native 4K on PS5. In fact, the internal render is 1440 which is the native resolution for its performance mode, it uses checkerboard upscaling to scale the game to 4K in quality mode. The devs state as much in their interview with Digital Foundry. As well as not using RT shadows because it was too expensive.

[rdmetz]

At this point it's just a marketing gimmick for ngreedia to increase prices for tech that most can't use in any practical way at least at the lower end popular cards. Remember when top level cards were not much more than $300? Now that's a minimum gaming 50/60 level card or less. It may be good for devs IF they decide to use it but until tech has increased a lot most of them won't use it as a primary required thing for logical reasons of limiting their own customers, why do you think DX11 is still used in so many games? Lots of win7 locked out of DX12 customers still out there. I've played cp77 with rt and without and hardly noticed a difference, other than slow sluggish framerates, only slowly doing a "tour" mode would you see it.

You can say what you want but as someone who does in fact have the ability to use this technology properly today along with an amazing display 65" 4k/120 HDR OLED w VRR

I can absolutely say that when used properly (like in cp2077) both ray tracing and DLSS are a God send.

DLSS for just being black magic that can up to double your fps and RT for finally delivering a world that feels believable in all the small ways. Control is another that does this as well and I might be able to play cyberpunk without it I would NEVER play control with it off.

You can be mad that the tech has priced you out and that your $300 that used to be ok for upper mid to high is now considered minimum hardware levels but doesn't change the fact that real improvements are happening at the top and those of us who have it do benefit from it.

The world's not always fair and sometimes things we used to afford can be pushed up out of our range but that just comes down to a s**ty unbalanced economic system.

[Nytebyrd]

First, bc it's the most important aspect of this discussion atm, both console manufacturers have been working to create their own version of dlss. Neither elected to use AMDs. And Nvidia announced months ago now that DLSS 2.0 is openly accessable to developers, as they no longer need to send individual frames in for it know what the image should look like. It's unlikely consoles are capable of supporting Nvidia's version bc of it being hardware accelerated, but adoption should increase significantly on pc. I have far more faith in both Sony and MS to release a fully functioning version before AMD does, as there will likely be months of hard crashes when AMD drops theirs.

For many developers, once ray tracing is integrated into their engines lighting will become far simpler than it currently is. Now that its in DX and Vulcan at least. From there, it essentially functions as a physics engine for light and shadow.

One developer used a dungeon as a great example. Typically, they work with either global illumination or simple assets which have a sphere of illumination. If you want to hide something, a reward or enemy, you need to lower global illumination. That has the side effect of requiring more lighting assets for the areas you don't want things hidden. Even if its things like hidden assets on the other side of the wall, akin to how Skyrim did a number of things. Which then acts as a tell for the players. With ray tracing, you don't have to manipulate global illumination. You can use fewer lighting assets and let the geography manipulate the light as it would irl. So you can have a well lit pathway with any enemy completely obscured to the side. All of which requires far less manipulation by the developer, thus far less time sunk into it.

tl;dr version - Traditional lighting CAN look just about as good and be manipulated to work nearly as well... if developers want to continue to dump hundreds to thousands of man hours into something that can be essentially automated with greater effect.

[Shredenvain]

im sorry but this article is extremely deceptive either through ignorance or malice. 1st you completely neglect even the mention of the performance mode available on both ps5 and XSX that hits 60fps! Then you neglect the fact that Control wasnt developed specifically for these consoles. It is literally the equivalent of improved back compat. Control does not take advantage of any of the extra horse power that comes with the wider gpu on the series x. It has the exact same performance as ps5 even though the XSX has 40% more ray tracing cores as well. Its obvious control for these consoles was a quick cash grab. Also you guys tend to forget the way next gen console launches go. It takes a minimum of 2 years to show the true ability of a next gen console.