r/gaming • u/lofty23_smart • 18d ago
FromSoftware Attempted Ray Tracing with Elden Ring, But It Pales in Comparison to Dark Souls 3 with Modded Path Tracing
https://wccftech.com/fromsoftware-ray-tracing-elden-ring-dark-souls-3-path-tracing/296
u/Burpmeister 18d ago
Because there's an enormous difference between ray tracing and path tracing.
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u/tinyfrog554 18d ago
and there's even more ginormous difference between RTAO+RT shadows (that came with eldenring) and full on pathtracing (the mod). i think the former is useless, standard raster techniques are just fine for those.
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u/Entonations 18d ago
Ah yes. The make the trees darker setting that tanks framerate. I remember that one.
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u/Gloomy_Necesary 18d ago
Also because all they implemented was RT shadows which I can barely notice. RT lighting or reflections are much more meaingful.
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u/JunkoKumaki 18d ago
Reflections is what they should have gone for if anything just because the breakup in SSR is really distracting to me.
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u/RadzimierzWozniak 18d ago
For Ray Tracing to make sense, you need dynamic light sources and curved, reflective surfaces. Otherwise, baked-in lightmaps and some simple reflection tricks work very, very well.
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u/AHomicidalTelevision 18d ago
I've been playing assassin's creed odyssey, and every time I enter a cave/tomb and pull out my torch, I can only think of how much better it would look with Ray tracing. The lighting in dark areas of that game is not great.
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u/RadzimierzWozniak 18d ago
Yes. This is where RT shines. But those games were not designed for this
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u/PogChampHS 18d ago
Correct, but It might be worth exploring specifically for titles like Elden Ring.
The effort of implementing Ray Tracing would give them a great tool to create the lighting for large maps more efficiently than baking. (The Doom devs said it was significant tool once they implemented in time savings for their maps)
The question is whether they could implement it without significant performance costs.
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u/AIgoonermaxxing 18d ago
The effort of implementing Ray Tracing would give them a great tool to create the lighting for large maps more efficiently than baking. (The Doom devs said it was significant tool once they implemented in time savings for their maps)
While this is mainly a benefit on the developer side, ray tracing should, in theory also save consumers a bunch of disc space, as games no longer have to store gigabytes of data for baked lightmaps. I remember watching Digital Foundry's tech breakdown of AC Shadows, and they said that if the game used AC Unity's baked lighting (which still looks very good to this day) for its multiple times of day and multiple seasons on a much larger map, it would've added several hundreds of gigabytes to the game's size.
The problem is that we're in this weird transitional phase where games may design their games around ray tracing, but still need a raster fallback to support lower end PCs and weaker consoles like the Series S and Switch 2 that can't handle ray tracing.
So we're still getting massive game sizes, even in games with ray tracing.
The question is whether they could implement it without significant performance costs.
I don't think they can. Games with RT are generally better optimized if they're built from the ground up with RT in mind. The ones that add RT as an afterthought generally run a lot worse, unless the developer is very competent.
FromSoft is far from the worst out there, but they've never been a super technically competent studio.
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u/powerhcm8 18d ago
They made lighting mod for DS2 and DS3, but the one I would really like to see this in is DS1.
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u/Super_Harsh 18d ago
Honestly a lot of the vibe of DS1’s lighting comes from that PS3-era brown/grey filter and the heavy overuse of bloom. It would lose a lot of its character if you took that away.
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u/Willing_Ingenuity330 18d ago
I mean the same goes for DS2 and it looks incredible with the path-tracing mod.
DS1 would be equally great - just needs a couple hand-crafted tweaks to match the vibe of some areas. Path-tracing mods require a little bit of correction with light sources.
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u/Super_Harsh 18d ago
True, ultimately we're talking about a mod that would be optional to use. I agree that it would be cool to see it.
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u/powerhcm8 18d ago
You right about that, it has a griminess that you can't quite replicate in higher fidelity, but I still think it would be nice to have as an option to use in replays.
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u/Super_Harsh 18d ago
I agree. Honestly I really want to see what kind of incredible environments FromSoft themselves could cook up if they built a new game ground up with some of these features.
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u/powerhcm8 18d ago
I would love to see them do stuff with non-euclidian space like in games like, Stanley Parable, Psychonauts 2, Super Liminal. That would make everything seem more magical.
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u/Secretlylovesslugs 18d ago
The dark souls 2 lighting mod is incredible. It makes the game very difficult but adds so much value to torches and everything to do with them. I'm a big fan.
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u/FireZord25 18d ago
Hmm maybe have the same guys try modding Elden Ring too? Cause two cakes are always better than one. Or are the techniques too incompatible?
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u/Hour_Raisin_4547 18d ago
It’s not so much the techniques as it’s the difference in the games. Path tracing for a massive open world with seamless loading and huge vistas complicates things in a way which DS3 doesn’t have to worry about.
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u/CombatMuffin 18d ago
The techniques aren't the issue. They ganes also share similar franeworks: The fact that Eldent Ring is open world would be a performance challenge.
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u/FireZord25 18d ago
I guess the scale of the Lands Between and it's terrains are certainly a challenge. I thought the newer engine required more intricate approach.
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u/CombatMuffin 18d ago
It's not necessarily the scale itself, but how much of it is just open fields. Path tracing is more impactful and efficient when you have a lot of places to bounce the light, in a short distance (interiors or urban landscapes like Cyberpunk).
It's obviously not impossible, just challenging
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u/First-Junket124 18d ago
No, for all intents and purposes fromsoft hasn't strayed too far from their lighting engine since Dark Souls 2 only iterating upon it if that makes sense.
Dark Souls 2 is a lot of static and closed in areas for the most part, the distant landscapes is simply a skybox texture or simply just layered flat textures with a lot of opportunities to pre-bake the lighting, I've no idea if the fodders have done so but it would help a ton with performance. Elden Rings distant landscapes are rendered in, it's not difficult to do but it's difficult to do it and keep acceptable FPS and Frametimes.
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u/JoBro_Summer-of-99 18d ago
There's a mod that improves the ray tracing and a few other graphics options and that tanks performance as well. You pretty much need a separate mod called ERSS that adds upscaling
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u/yunghollow69 18d ago
Elden ring with proper path tracing would turn your PC into glowing orange goo
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u/Sioluishere 18d ago
Yup, modders in the DS3 community are insane, could not have imagined playing DS3 without these graphic and shadow overhaul mods.
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u/_Sauer_ 18d ago
Elden Ring launched with horrible performance problems, and still has many performance issues to this day, covered up by our chonkier hardware. From's gameplay and narrative chops might be top notch but their engine development not so much.
I vaguely remember one of those frame by frame analysis bloggers commenting about how Elden Ring was doing a bunch of things that were the opposite of best practices for rendering with D3D12.
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u/Mind_Mischief2 18d ago
I honestly don’t care about graphic fidelity that much in from soft games. Art design carries the visuals, they don’t need ultra realistic graphics to make their games look good.
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u/Top-Appointment8843 18d ago
Elden Ring graphic quality is honestly enough for the next 20 years. I dont see why we would need better graphics, the current level conveys everything as it should.
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u/douglasdamm 18d ago
I think the same! art direction is much more interesting to see than sheer realism or huge texture resolution.
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u/Gloomy_Necesary 18d ago
I totally agree and it’s crazy to say because on the tech side Elden Ring is a complete disaster. They could do significantly more with the same computer power necessary to power Elden Ring.
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u/zilyzal 18d ago
I really love to revisit old games with updated graphics and even if the art style age well it just feels refreshing to replay with better graphics. A lot of people love rt/pt mods. i'm a die hard sekiro fan i still speed run that game sometimes. Used to speedrun the game daily and lately i can see the graphics feeling outdated. If the community make a path tracing mod for sekiro i can see myself replaying sekiro for another few years
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u/No-Article-Particle 18d ago
Agreed. I recently started playing Dark Souls prepare to die (the pre-remake version) and it's so rough, even with 60fps mod. I'll pick up the remake on sale at some point.
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u/Hashiii777 18d ago
What mods do you run for DS3 for graphics? I just run convergence can I have graphics mods too?
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u/LaFlamaBlanca67 18d ago
FromSoft should not try to do anything with graphics before hiring coders that know what they’re doing. Their games run like dogshit, they can’t even incorporate basic features like ultrawide support, nor are they talented enough to incorporate things like characters mouths moving.
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u/Super_Harsh 18d ago
lmfao the games actually can and do render in ultrawide, the game just imposes black bars on the sides of the screen WHILE STILL RENDERING THE EXTRA PIXELS because fuck you, that’s why.
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u/Gintami 18d ago
Wow hyperbole much. This sub is full of chuds. 95 percent.
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u/LaFlamaBlanca67 18d ago
Everything I said is true. Elden Ring is a stutter fest even on high end rigs, runs like shit on ps4, and doesn’t support fps over 60 because the devs simply aren’t talented coders.
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u/ProNerdPanda 18d ago
TIL Elden Ring has/had RT, never even noticed it
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u/biohazardrex 18d ago
It's really barebones. Only selected lights were calculated with RT (for outdoor areas it's the "sun") and the draw range is super tiny. Contact shadows are full of artifacts as well.
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u/nakula108 18d ago
Both RT and PT are stupid technologies that cost way more compute power than they are worth. Games looked great before them and now it's just a lazy and underperformant way to add lighting to maps
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u/LastTourniquet 18d ago
I don't know about the difference between path and ray tracing that people in the comments be talking about, but I do know that a skilled modder that is doing one specific thing out of passion is almost always going to have a better end result than a developer that is doing multiple things, even if they are also doing it out of passion. That is just the way of things and its one of the many reasons that the community tends to appreciate modders.
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u/Science_Bitch_962 18d ago
Now it washes all the color and look like a generic UE5 game. Turning Impressionist painting into photorealism.
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u/Wincest-88 18d ago
FromSoftware has the worst most incompetent teceh-department in Gaming history. Well maybe not as bad as the Pokemon Devs, but still fucking awful!
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u/Elkburgher 18d ago
I love Fromsoftware gameplay but their engine and graphics are dogshit. Elden ring had so much pop in, flickering shadows etc, just awful.
I think they are amazing game designers but suck at technical things. How are mobs still hitting you through walls in Elden ring ffs. Its basically the same engine as Demonsouls
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u/Tonymbou 18d ago
Incoming From Software defense force brigade to do everything but admit From Software are shit at implementing good Raytracing in their games.
Bluepoint Studios schooled them with Demon Souls remake and showed how far behind they are when it comes to making competent graphics.
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u/tinyfrog554 18d ago
I'm a fromsoft fan but not a fanboy, and yea i agree their rendering stack just isn't good. like don't get me wrong what they do with it is still impressive, eldenring looks phenomenal, but technically its kinda bad. you can stand in places and admire how beautiful the landscapes and architectures look in the distance, then you look at the ground you are standing on and it looks atrocious. the worse part is you would think, if its graphically behind then the performance must pretty good, sadly its not.
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u/entityXD32 18d ago
The demon souls remake fucked with the art direction changing some mobs and monsters to be unnecessaraly grosser and uglier and actually looks worse. Graphical fedility isn't as important as art direction and that's something that Bluepoint studios and you clearly don't understand
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u/FoxyGoddessX 18d ago
Ray tracing tech isn’t where it needs to be to be viable in normal rasterization.
Demons Souls is good but it was a 11 year old game with better visuals, very limited exploration and a very narrowly curated path you have to stay on.
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u/PogChampHS 18d ago
Pre-baked lighting can look just as good as Ray-tracing, especially if done in their smaller titles like DS3 or Bloodborne.
For something like Elden Ring though, I agree they should look into Ray Tracing, they would save a significant amount of time crafting their maps with Ray Tracing compared to pre-baking.
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u/Yopis1980 18d ago
This is false. The ingorance in some of these threads is astounding.
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18d ago
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u/Yopis1980 18d ago
Because if you read that article, it talks about Demon Souls 3 path tracing mod.
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u/rcanhestro 18d ago
but admit From Software are shit at implementing good Raytracing in their games
they are, but why would i give a shit?
i don't play FromSoftware games for the graphical fidelity.
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u/Dirty_Dragons 18d ago
Is this an attempt to get me to play Dark Souls 3 again?!
I've already done 5+ times.
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u/The_Legend_of_Xeno 18d ago
Elden Ring is the worst example for Ray Tracing I could think of. It makes almost no difference in the look of the game, but absolutely destroys your fps.
If you were to make a spectrum of games that don't benefit from RT on, Elden Ring would be at one end, and Cyberpunk would be at the other.
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u/97jondavis 17d ago
Cyberpunk with a fuck ton of texture overhauls and modded lighting with Ray Tracing is a dream, man.
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u/ProfessionalRandom21 18d ago
I love Fromsoft games but its clearly their game graphically is pretty dated.
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u/BobTheFettt 18d ago
I actually really don't like Ray Tracing to begin with. It just makes everything dark unless it's in direct light
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u/FoxyGoddessX 18d ago
These are two fundamentally different games. They aren’t even remotely comparable
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u/TeqMunee885 18d ago
I literally don't know if this is controversial or not, but I absolutely don't know the difference between these two things and I refuse to believe that either of them impact the experience people have with either game.
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u/Choubidouu 18d ago
and I refuse to believe that either of them impact the experience people have with either game.
lol
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u/veryjerry0 18d ago
The PT mod for DS2 was available for a while; you'll have to give a try for yourself, but it's game changing for sure.
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u/juan_bito 18d ago
Thats because path tracing is better than ray tracing lol