Interesting video. Like DF says the fact that we already see this kind of raytracing is promising and it’s impressive in a open world title like this. They speculate that raytracing even might be in for 60fps more but naturally with decreased visual fidelity.
That part in the video where Spidey is in the mall looks great. I’m really hoping we’re gonna see raytracing like this in Xbox titles soon. Gears 5 seemed to have it but sadly that was a picture from PC.
Will watch this after the Iron Lords Podcast.
Looks really good. Seems to have big setpieces like the original had. Won’t get a ps5 unfortunately, but this looks lile a great launch title for the console.
Gears 5 does not support hardware based ray tracing full stop as far as I know. Not on Xbox or PC.
The gears pics had no RT at all. And the comparison pics from XSX version was not from a PC version, lol. AFAIK, no version of Gears 5 has any hardware based RT (all versions DO have sw RT for GI I think, even current gen versions).
I really feel like Spiderman has become a QTE-fest. Every vid shown so far really relies on QTE’s for the set pieces and it really detracts from the gameplay from the looks of it imho. Some of their comments seem at odds with what’s shown in the footage. The comments about LOD management is kinda awkward since they talk about MM and then show the Spiderman Remaster scene with the crane/water tower, which contradicts the point John makes (which is about MM) right before it. In that scene there is actually a lack of distant objects even relative to the PS4 original. That Spiderman Remastered clip also has pop-in.
Yes, you’re right. I thought the beautiful reflections on the floor was raytracing, it wasn’t, my bad. What you’re talking about is this
So there’s different kinds of raytracing then? I am gonna have to do my research on that, haha. I thought raytracing was just that, one kind of tech.
As for Spidey. Well, I have only played like a hour of the first game on my brother’s PS4, so I don’t know how it was handled in that game. But can it be that just for this footage they wanted to show some setpiece moments, much like the footage during Sony’s stream? I also recall that with the first footage of the first Spidey and Xbox did that with Tomb Raider reboot and Rise of the Tomb Raider as well. But the games were full of non set piece moments.
I have definitely noticed most of the gameplay shown from MM has been QTE’s. I suppose that is the best way to show RT? I guess we will see more when Sony let’s the review the hardware/software ( well whenever DF gets a PS5.
Yes, there are different types of RT, RT is just an umbrella term for others such as Path tracing.
What I wonder is can we access that mall that we see in the trailer or is that just only for that chase setpiece scene? That would be a shame. I thought the inside of that mall looked really cool but a bummer if only just used for that setpiece part.
Don’t expect pretty good RT at launch, it will get better as time goes on for both consoles. Right now, it seems they are generally associating RT with 30 FPS. I think I would prefer a mode with dynamic or lower resolution at 60 FPS with RT, as I always favor a better performance, and I think they will be able to do that ( at least on Xbox because of DirectML ).
I thought the Gears 5 reflections might be RT too! Hence my thread title on that topic. 
And there are different ways to do RT yeah. You can do it as a software approach which is slow and super intensive (Gears did it in limited cases and Crysis Remastered does it, both on current gen which is mind blowing tbh). The utility of next gen hardware is it is designed to do RT super fast, so fewer corners need to be cut.
It certainly might be the case that the game is a lot less QTE-heavy than they have shown so far, but I guess for me it just feels kinda lame seeing the marketing revolve around showing that kinda stuff. I’d had hoped the industry had moved beyond QTE-fests years ago. It’s bad game design and Insomniac can and has done much better there in other games (R&C looks great in this regard actually!).
With Tomb Raider, the purpose was to present a game that was mirroring the sorta stuff Sony was showing (i.e. something to compete with Uncharted). DF has a PS5 now I think/assume.
Agreed. I bet it’s just a set piece.
Not that impressed at all.
I don’t think any publicly available engine has Software RT outside Cryengine right now, that is why that Drone showcase video was the first showing of software RT and analysed by the likes of Digital Foundry as such.
From what I know, Unreal Engine doesn’t have software RT yet (it got proper hardware raytracing support itself a bit late), and Lumen isn’t gonna be RT either (will be Signed Distance Field/Voxel based much similar to what Godot Engine is doing right now). It’s possible for Coalition to add it themselves but I’ve yet to see a single screenshot of the game using RT.
Gears 5 at max has really good SSGI and SSR, and I don’t think it will get any sort of RT at launch, much like Forza. It’s only understandable given both engines are at a very big “revamp” state right now, explains the lack of Forza game for three years, presuming we won’t get FM in 2021, and on the other side, Unreal Engine is entering alpha rather soon next year so its gonna be a lot of experimentation and optimization for next gen and a whole new paradigm for Xbox games, given just how many first party studios are using UE. I suspect Gears 6, Fable and even Initiative’s game are gonna be proper Unreal Engine 5 next gen only games that’ll blow our fucking socks off, and that’s ignoring Avowed, Hellblade 2 and InXile’s next game.
Not going to lie, it looked damn good and as someone who loved Spider Man 2018, im hoping I can snag a PS5 at launch from Best Buy or Amazon because I really want to play Miles Morales once I wrap up Watch Dogs Legion on Xbox Series X.
13:00 min mark. 
“In this presentation by The Coalition, Studio Technical Art Director Colin Penty outlines how they utilized tools like Houdini, Maya and a number of UE4’s latest rendering features such as temporal upscaling, volumetric fog, distance fields, compute ray traced shadows, and bent normals for specular occlusion to craft the visually spectacular Gears 5. He also shares strategies for building on top of Unreal to achieve the desired aesthetic, all while hitting a silky smooth 60 fps on Xbox.”
Nice. It does confirm my suspicions of using Distance Fields for driving the Ray tracing. Although going by that quote, that’s just for shadows and not GI and reflections, which is why I said it still relies heavily on SSGI and SSR.
As mentioned, UE5 shall have a very robust realtime GI system based on Signed Distance Fields, which is gonna be a more advanced version of whatever they’re using now anyway, and not require any raytracing to produce amazing results. That’ll take care of GI and general lighting, but reflections shall be the forte where Ray tracing would have to come in.
Thanks for the link to the talk tho, will watch it later in detail! 
Not playing this at launch is one of the reasons I regret canceling my PS5 pre-order. Looks amazing.
I was worried there might be too many QTEs in the first Spider-Man and that wasn’t the case. So I think it’ll be fine here too.
I believe they call it software based RT GI. This makes me think it’s not running on the RT hardware and they could possibly be using RT to determine the coverage and maybe baking the results into the environments. It’s definitely not your typical RT method that we see in other games like Metro, Spider-Man, or Control.
Hopefully we learn more about this soon.
I might have mixed it up with GI for some reason. Yes, it is for shadows. Great vid to watch at some point btw.
That’s good. I didn’t recall how bad it was wrt their marketing the first game. Was it like this too or it the QTE focus amped up this time? QTE’s bore me to death.
Looks good. But Insomniac are high level Devs so it’s expected to look good.
Pretty much the same, which is what lead me to be worried about the number of QTEs in the first game. In reality outside of some segments during some boss battles, there were very few considering the scope of the game.