Elden Ring Ray Tracing Upgrade Test - Is It Worth It? - PS5 vs Xbox Series X vs PC
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- Опубліковано 29 бер 2023
- Elden Ring was recently upgrade to Patch 1.09, bringing with it the introduction of hardware-accelerated ray tracing on all current-gen systems... exclusing Xbox Series S. In this in-depth content, you'll see exactly what the difference is, how the PC version scales across multiple settings - and most scary of all, the performance hit for engaging RT up against the rather minimal improvement to the presentation.
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It’s an ok addition but would have preferred just more performance improvements for frame rate stability on the current modes.
Wait what??This game is still not fully fixed?Its a shame man
@@thegamer6872 I played recently at a perfect 60fps at 4K, then again, I have a 4090 so..... I suppose I just brute forced it to a stable 60fps lol
The stability, from what I understand, is WAY BETTER than at launch, I only bought it recently because of that and it was 50% off.
It's worth playing now imo, but they need to fix their outdated engine for SURE (and give us higher fps options, etc.)
I still get the same studder that I did at launch. It's a joke.
@@tbidzzzz skill issue
@@tbidzzzz Pretty sure it has something to do with their online infrastructure because playing offline or with mods that don't use FS's servers, the stutter is gone. They also introduced the stutter to Dark Souls 3 to a lesser extent when they fixed that game's hacker situation. Can only assume it's the game checking to see if you're online periodically.
They should have added FSR 2 to the console version and DLSS+FSR2 to the PC version alongside this. Not only is the built-in TAA sub-par, but it would have helped with the performance hit.
FSR2 would've given us a better performance across the board - regardless of RT features to begin with.
I really can't wrap my head around FromSoft's priorities here...
@@epoch151 Wouldn't go as far as to say it's not worth playing, but it definitely bothers me as well. Especially considering there's so many Unreal titles coming out and most of them have TAA as the only option, sometimes not even being optional lmao
according to my tests elden ring is much more limited by the cpu than by the gpu, I have seen areas of the game at 40 fps with the gpu at 60% so adding fsr / dlss would not contribute much
@@Willie6785 That part sucks developing in UE. TAA which I hate, is the only decent option. You had that, nothing, and FXAA.
UE5 is working on their own DLSS/FSR thing to address this. But TAA still worked better as of 5.1.
@@epoch151 I see. Makes sense, and yeah I despise the blurry, grainy look so goddamn much.
Adding shadows to the character indoors would make a huge difference.
I'm so puzzled why this wasn't implemented indoors. The outdoors is where the game looks best imo, the baked shadows do a good job.
Not only that, but using it outside adds another struggle to the demanding open world, where the game usually runs worse.
@@bismarckluna It's because it's a game seemingly produced by an art team with nary a person who can modify the engine in sight..
@@bismarckluna They don't add indoors light shadows because of the performance. You can see the performance went to 30fps just for a Sun shadow and ambient occlusion
@@matiasbenitez As I said, the open world is the most demanding part of the game, and they don't see to care much to tank the performance even more there.
I don't see how this RT would run worse in closed spaces like castles and caves. It's probably yet another quirk of their engine.
It's sad that Dark Souls II had indoors dynamic shadows on the freaking PS3, yet Elden Ring can't have them on the highest end PC today.
@@bismarcklunadark souls 2 only had those in preview builds for demo purposes, and there is a reason why they removed in the final game. Real time shadows suck performance up, Dark Souls 2 couldn't actually run those shadows at all in an acceptable playing frame rate
After 750 hours or so, I’ve never thought, “man I wish my shadows were a bit softer, and my frame rate a bit worse”.
if you have the overhead you won't lose any frames since it's capped at 60.
I just never cared that much for ray traced shadows, it's too subtle and I don't look at them that closely to even realize if they should be more soft because they're further away or not. I get it, it's more accurate, it just doesn't mean that much in the grand scheme of things and takes a lot of performance, were other rt effects would be more effective visually.
@@user-os7ec4dm8x 😂 wow just because I said other rt effects have a bigger impact for the performance lol. I said I can tell the difference, holy crap and then out with the disses, what an asshole.
@@user-os7ec4dm8x the problem is: video games are not life. And shouldn't be meant to be-- aesthetical choices can be far more interesting or visually appealing than real life ones.
@@user-os7ec4dm8x games and real-life are two very different things; get outside more and you’ll find out!
Agreed. They need to be using this power for more physics based effects in most games
I'm partly with you, but, the fact that hasnt been a meaningful implementation of raytraced Shadows doesn't mean we wont see a game that makes great artístic use of them in the future.
Can't believe they didn't add more shadow casting lights. The mood of cool torch shadows etc, is so good. Was constantly disappointed in the base game that there weren't shadows from so many light sources, and I guess I'll continue to be disappointed
Light bounce would completely transform this game to looking even more gorgeous. It’s a poor RT implementation
That would fulfil the broken promise of DS2. Dynamic light made that demo looked so gorgeous.
RT lighting would look amazing in this game. Especially in the dungeons and Farum Azula.
Can't believe they added RT before fixing the random stuttering on PC since release...
Everyone: We just want better more stable performance
From Software: Heeereeeeeeeeeeee's Ray Tracing!
I can't see any reason on console to turn this on. It oddly looks worse in some places ie. the shadow refresh reduction.
It’s just insanity. This ray-tracing craze needs to stop; especially on games that don’t even run well without ray-tracing. Also, Elden Ring isn’t exactly a game people play for its visuals which makes it more jarring as what the purpose of adding ray-tracing is? Surely the developers also share this logical standpoint; at this point ray-tracing feels like some corporate buzzword where developers are being forced to implement it as a corporate box-ticking exercise.
Because it's a shitty engine with their shitty raytracing implementation tacked on.
@@chrisstucker1813 nothing wrong with RT. The issue here is the game already isnt optimized to hit 60 fps and doesnt have a 30 fps cap option. Plenty of games have good uses of ray tracing on consoles. Look at insomniacs RT reflections (at 60 fps too)
@@dickdanson I absolutely agree. I just meant the craze for it needs to stop because it’s clear that ray-tracing is being forced into games where it just isn’t needed or very poorly implemented.
Looks terrible
They should have went for 1440p resolution, would have bumped the frame rate high enough to make you want to use RT mode
Exactly! A lot of games should do this! 1440p is honestly the sweet spot
@@ALilCancer exactly, like why push a higher resolution when you’re frame rate is tanking?
The silver lining of my eyes getting older: 1440p is usually the point where I can’t see jaggies. So 4K is basically wasted on me (except for UI elements and text.)
@@TheCrewExpendable Jaggies have nothing to do with resolution. You can have 8k and have a screen full of shader crawl and pixel shimmer if there is no temporal component.
It's likely not that simple. It looks to me like the Ray tracing itself was the bottleneck in this case. Chances are, lowering the resolution would have had only a minimal effect on increasing framerates, otherwise I'm sure they'd have done it.
Elden Ring really is a great example of how far good art direction can carry a game's visuals. Most games I play lose they're wow factor after a bit despite their much higher fidelity, but I was consistently floored by this game's visuals all the way to the end credits.
I agree wholeheartedly, this game's visual art style and loved how the game looked even if it's not the most realistic looking shadows or grass lol😂. The looked really nice while I was playing it and the visuals are so memorable
Hopefully Fromsoftware will add DLSS/FSR2 to the game in the upcoming patches, with some optimization for the RT modes such as adding shadows cast from light sources, etc. (even without RT enabled). Elden Ring was my favourite game of last year, and the best I played since Sekiro and NIOH over the years. I still plan to play more of Elden Ring, specially once the DLC is released later this year, so would be nice if From can update/optimize the engine further by or before the release of the DLC.
FSR wont work nicely with the foliage, flickering will just increase even more. DLSS would be the perfect solution tho
@@PrefoX sure, but DLSS is not available to non-RTX cards. Which is why both DLSS and FSR2 are needed by games.
They should add DLSS/FSR and add RT illumination and better shadows (like from torches and graces).
It's from soft. You got more chance of finding rocking horse shit
@@Toripusutashi Yep. Mostly love their games, but no matter how much they've grown, they haven't put any attention into the technical performance of their game. As is said in the video, the fact that ray tracing was prioritised over the more critical technical elements is unbelievable when you think about how success the game was. Considering how much Armored Core 6 will rely on speed and scale to succeed, if the team hasn't figured out how to properly utilise DX12 yet, it's going to be a mess, as will most FromSoft games going forward.
This is my biggest problem with this game. No DLSS or FSR. These upscalers work so well now that there isn't a reason to leave them out.
They've won GOTY so don't really care anymore
@@trblemayker5157 nothing about goty, this was always their mentality since dark souls 1 terrible port, they never updated it. When you think about it, it makes sense, why pour assets money and time in something that is working when you can put it in a new franchise or the next game.
It is baffling they incorporated RT, but not other more important features...
@@Maxwell1725P such as the still locked 60fps or lack of ultrawide. unlocking 60fps could be done in 10 minutes at fromsoftware. modders were able to do it week 1 and it's not like they have access to the source code. why does fromsoftware refuse to move beyond the antiquated 2012 console era when it comes to how they treat their games? mad annoying
I'd like DLSS for the image quality benefits alone, it's miles better and more stable than native with TAA in every single game.
But for performance reasons, you should be aware that ER's frame drops are almost entirely caused by the CPU. It's very CPU heavy, and the 60 FPS cap would limit any performance gains from upscaling even in non-CPU limited scenarios.
I wish we had more granular options. Id turn on the rtao and leave the shadows off.
Makes the foliage look very nice.
agree. the rtao on those foliage looks so nice. the shadows, i can do without. needs FSR/DLSS tho.
I know it's annoy as hell every game should have a tick box on an off for each feature Hogwarts legacy is a prime example the reflections are totally worth keeping, everything else can get in the sea and look way worse.
You mean, sharp, unrealistic shadows? ;-)
Excellent video as always for comparative analysis.
Great work on this video, as always ! I couldn't decide whether to play ER on PS5 or PC, so the video is very insightfull !
2 quick questions though : my PC monitor is only 1080p. Do you think an equivalent configuration (or higher) of the PC setup you showcase in the end would allow for more than a thirty-ish FPS with RTX On ? Also, do you know if the PS5 benefits from being plugged to a 1080p screen when using the best settings un ER ? Thank you for all the work you do for gamers !!! \o/
I upgraded my GTX 1080ti last year because it was hovering around 45-ish fps in Elden Ring at 1440p. Glad to see my new RTX 3090 also hovers around the same fps at 1440p now as well. 😂
It sounds like you might be CPU bottlenecked. I have a 4070 ti (arguably same performance as a 3090) and at 1440p max rt I get 60 fps locked with gpu utilisation below 80%.
The performance difference between 800*600/low vs 1440p/Max is like 2-3 FPS with my I5 4690k/2060 Super. This game is cpu limited all the time.
100% cpu need to be changed
Old CPU+New GPU = CPU bottleneck....... why is this not common knowledge?
This is just nonsense. I have a 3080ti and not only do I play at 1440p, but it's then upscaled using DL scaling to 4K. All at a rock solid 60FPS. Your CPU is the bottleneck, quite obviously.
Just a big shotout to DF for how many testings and comparision videos we have been receiving off late. This is a very busy game release season and DF has been doing a massize job without any drop in content quality. I am extremely thankful 😍
🍆
And being one of the few to actually tell the truth. It takes ALOT to be brave enough to say something bad about Elden Ring
@@alumlovescake yes so brave. lol
@@alumlovescake brave? Lol they shill too
Except hogwarts legacy on PC, we all just gonna pretend alex didn't blank that.
I think these kinds of additions to games, while nice, contribute to the criticism raytracing gets. It's really not a transformative change to the game's visuals and yet performance gets kneecapped. It's especially frustrating when the game doesn't have any of the modern upscaling techniques to help fix the game's bad optimization.
never understood why people think RT is a gimmick, but if *this* is what they think RT is, then yeah, I'd think it were a gimmick too.
go fire up CP2077 on a proper PC and look at the difference with RT/PT enabled and disabled and you'll understand why it is not a gimmick at all
Honestly I prefer the look without RT shadows, they hardly add anything and I'd argue the sharp shadows add more to the dramatic presentation of the game. The only thing I like more is how the grass shading is more refined
Yeah based on this comparison the noticeable dip in fidelity, grainy backgrounds and artifacting on consoles are just too much for RT implementation you won't notice unless standing still and panning the camera around specifically looking for the differences.
I tried RT on PC once when it launched and I didn't feel the dip in framerate was worth a negligible visual flourish.
For me, they both look different but I wouldn't say either were necessarily better. With RT off, there are certain shadows that look really blocky, especially when they're moving slowly. But I think the diffused shadows with RT on are a little too soft? But yeah this has been my RT experience in general so far, it's a massive performance penalty just to make games look a little different.
Q. Is It Worth It?
A. Absolutely and unequivocally No
I'm irritated they spent valuable dev hours on this nonsense
I wish raytracing would die off already
@@Szanth ray tracing is actually a good thing. This implementation of it is not.
The problem is when the games not developed initially with raytracing in mind, when activating ray tracing it messes up the intended lighting the artist originally set up for the game which can make scenes look worse even tho they arguably are more realistic.
Cutscenes usually feel it the most
@@uncleurda8101 well raytracing came too soon if you ask me.
The first gen of RTX cards could barely run it. It's being focused on and pushed too hard for such minimal gains, and often drastic fps losses.
@@CodingWithUnity Half Life RTX is a very handy counter example to what you're saying.
Not long ago sharper shadows mean higher detail, RT tells us now you get the old low detail blurry ones for half of your fps. Nice one.
In most cases, shadows aren't supposed to be very sharp, it's not physically accurate. Real lights are not points
@@user-ur8co1yn5l Sharp shadows aren't physically accurate, but neither is Elden Ring, and in games like Elden Ring sharp shadows always always look better than blurry ones.
@@user-ur8co1yn5l my point is, no one likes the blurry low detail ones before RT, no one found them more realistic.
I kinda agree but at the same time low shadows meant low resolution which result in artifacts/alaising. Ray traced does not.
Lol I was thinking the same. I always thought when they would say a console or PC had sharper shadows that it wasn't realistic. Shadow's aren't that sharp IRL.
So now we are back to low rez shadows and it's superior?
Expertly crafted comparison video, thanks
I can deal with the reduced resolution, but 30 FPS just doesn't work for me anymore. I'd consider 1080p/60 with RT though.
yeah sadly i dont think elden ring is going to ever optimize their game to 1080p
@@motorbreathjz pc
With how good games looks nowadays I failed to understand why I would choose ray tracing on PS5 if I get half the fps.
I mean you just wouldn't
Raytracing is rarely ever worth it with how it's implemented in games, Cyberpunk is one of the only game that are worth it, but even then it's only if you are okay with destroying your fps
@@BassBanj0 you played control?
It's just the trendy thing being pushed by the industry. Kind of like how 4k was a few years ago, even though to this day native 4k barely exists in AAA gaming. It'll die out in a year or two and they'll move on to the next thing.
Agreed IMHO so long as the game looks great FSP > RT IMHO.. I mean for anyone who has played Hogwarts Legacy this is a perfect example of how great the performance mode looks and for me it's a much better experience higher fps vs 30 and RT.
@@bobby_c07 no it won't. The consoles have shitty first gen RT hardware and are holding everything back as usual.
AMD sucking is nothing new...but games starting dev now are going to be expecting better hardware from the mid cycle refresh.
I've barely ever noticed a difference on any PS5 game. All I know is framerate goes down the pan, and I need my frames! So I'll always choose that option.
You have low attention to detail span, you likely don't notice details around you in real life too....As for ray tracing in Elden Ring, the difference is vast for those who are aware of detail, of course, however , you are correct that the frame rate loss is also way to much, unfortunately.
@@user-os7ec4dm8x lol, stop offending people 🤡
@@justfun5479 I don’t notice real life details because I can’t see negligible shadows in a video game 😂
Frames first for me. I feel like pushing for aspects like 4K, HDR or ray tracing creates a sharp curve of diminishing returns to any "realism". Smooth action creates the most immersive experience IMHO, so I'm glad mode preference is becoming a more common option with console games.
Frames all day all this r t is over rated for me never cared for it
I agree, I feel like pushes to visual fidelity should be a priority for movie-like games like Tell Me Why or Detroit: Become Human.
I think once you try HDR you can’t go back. 4k on the other hand? You could go back to 1440p or 1080p without much pain. Ray tracing (in Elden Ring atleast) is just a gimmick.
I wished at 5:05 you would have shown the Dark Souls 2: SOTFS implementation of shadows around light sources, it was amazing!
It baffles me how that was just implemented for one game and then never again. It looked amazing. Meanwhile they are implementing RT for shadows that are already there. Talk about weird priorities.
@Dman I think I must be in the minority, because I really enjoyed dark souls 2 scholar of the first sin.
@Dman Gotcha. I was aware that people seem to have a lot negative to say about it, but as a person removed from the drama and going into it with no predisposition (other than it being a Souls game), none of those things colored my opinion. It was objectively a good game IMO. It scratched the itch as well as most Souls (and Souls-like) games.
It's funny about the lighting being downgraded though, because it actually has better lighting in many ways than DS3. The dynamic shadows were also really nice in that game.
@@sammysokosammysoko I don't really get this recent trend to pretend Dark Souls 2 is a great game worthy of its name. Fromsoft is getting some sort of cult status where they can do no wrong, perfectly exemplified by the amount of people who forget ER was unplayable and unfinished at launch.
But enfin, DS2. I preordered it and never finished it because it was just that bad. Even if you ignore the misleading pre-release statements and demo, I can just start up the game now and the terrible hitboxes are still there. Iframes is still a stat, soul memory still exists. I can still take elevators into the sky to fight Big Guy In Armour no. 57. Horse fuck valley still exists.
Command & Conquer 4, Dead Space 3, WoW: Shadowlands, and Dark Souls 2 are all not bad games in their genres, but they're all such horribly subpar installments in their respective franchises that we like to pretend they don't exist. They're not worthy of their name.
Apologies if I come across heated, but I just really hate this trend of Fromsoft games being praised into the heavens.
@@sammysokosammysoko I liked DS2 a lot more than ER
So basically it's like turning shadows to low but instead of getting fps you lose them
It’s fascinating to me that making something vastly more realistic and accurate = “worse” simple because you’ve been conditioned to associate sharpness with superiority. Excuse the pun, but it seems like a needlessly low resolution take
Yeah I feel like we are getting gas lit. It used to be the more detailed the shadows were the higher quality and they got progressively less detailed and blurrier as you you cranked down the shadow quality. Now they trying to convince us the opposite is true.
@@RivaZA1 It is a bit more complicated than that. Softer shadows are more realistic, blurry low resolution shadows are not.
But I think it's also a bit subjective if you like soft or sharp shadows more
@@FigmentHF Oh no I didn't want to say it is worse, that is actually how shadows work IRL, if you like them sharp or difuminated is a preference thing. I was just making fun of how you can get the same visuals if you lower the shadows, without having your fps cut in half.
@@AlexRedknot but you don't get the same visuals? Why say blatantly untrue things?
On PS5 raytracing mode, personally it is too choppy and not smooth for me. I personally prefer the smoother frame rate and prioritizing frame rate. Especially with fast action and combat.
Great in depth review Digital Foundry!
Yes, the boss fight doges got harder with ray tracing. My controller felt a bit laggy.
Quality mode way to go its decent
I think the shadows update at a lower rate because the tree it self is updating at a lower rate. ER seems to cull the update rate of stuff behind the camera to save on performance.
the walk up to malekith is the best demonstration of RT in elden ring... all this other things can be done by toning down your tv's sharpness setting
It would be nice to have an option to have one or the other or both and would be nice to have light sources cast shadows too
Wish it enabled dynamic lights from more light sources too, such as indoor environments
What a day to come by... We used to crank up all the settings to high to get crispier shadows and now the setting which is meant to enhance the experience blurs out the crispy edges of the shadows. My advice is to use lower setting of shadow quality so to feel that it is more believable.
As much as I love Elden Ring, this addition feels more like a box that needed to be checked off before shipping an obligatory "Game of the Year Edition" with dlc & "enhanced visuals". As you said in the video there really were plenty of other opportunities that Fromsoft had to create a better player experience, but instead it seems they decided to go the marketing 101 route shortly after teasing the release of additional dlc.
That’s because is literally a box being checked, they said at reveal that ray tracing was gonna be added in the future, well, this is the future. This is just a game balance patch with the RT promised as a plus.
While RT shadows are always a welcome addition in my book, seeing beautifully diffused RT shadows alongside grass patches that are completely missing any shadows at all (yes, not all the grass casts shadows in the game) completely kills the purpose of RT to me. If anything, RT shadows make said grass patches stand out even more in all its lit, but not shadowed, uglyness.
And the fact that to this very day not all the dynamic light sources (like torches in dungeons) make the player model cast shadows adds even more to confusion.
It's like some higher ups just woke up, saw the buzz around RT effects, and forced FROM to slap the RT tech into the game as soon as possible, without any second thought, just for the sake of adding ray tracing so the game would have ray tracing, and nothing more. You know, having ray traced something doesn't mean the game would look ten times prettier in an instant.
Demon's Souls for PS5 still has the best and most immersive ambient lighting inside the dungeons, caves, and other areas.
Yeah because it was not From Soft's job. 💀
@@fabrb26 Exactly. Up until they were acquired, and with the exception of their first title, Bluepoint's entire purpose was to pretty up old games. FromSoft have never shown any interest in optimising their technical capabilities, and they never will, because the games keep selling and they don't get called out enough for it to impact their sales figures.
@@osidiusemphatic3505 they dont need to they focus more on artstyle, story and gameplay unlike most of the game company who focus more on graphics
@@aganbraganca4156 Not in terms of visuals, but definitely on a technical level. The microstutters in Elden Ring are horrendous, and the fact Valve managed to remove them with an update to the Steam Deck suggests there's a very simple remedy that From just don't have the experience to recognise.
Yeah, I would have preferred some fixes to the rare framerate dips on the PS5 version. I don't know if FSR would assist with that but it would be appreciated
Thanks for explaining it, I tried enabling it and couldn't notice the difference except the framerate hit.
I love From Software games, they are in fact my most played games this decade. Cant count the thoundsand hours I played the games.
But technical issues were always an issue and its unnacceptable that they still cant figure out 60fps gameplay on perfomance, 30fps optional cap (for any mode), and PROPER FRAME PACING. Not to mention the 40fps cap on cinematics, and proper PC features like the lack for ultra wide resolutions, 60+ fps, and maybe other stuff I forget.
Just to mention that modders have fixed frame pacing on Bloodbrone (and added 60fps gameplay), and Proper frame pacing on Dark Souls 3, Sekiro on jailbreak ps4 get off my nerves. FROM SOFTWARE GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER and hire people that can do this stuff, and maybe even add 4K support for older titles too (Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne).
It is a major bummer. I think Dark Souls 3 runs fine on PS5 right? & Sekiro? That just leaves Bloodborne and Elden Ring as the poor performers on current consoles, but it is absurd how From Soft will just never address the FPS issues.
They can't and won't be. Performance issues is prevalent in their games starting from demon souls to now, elden ring and we know that fromsoft devs never cared abouf fixing performance, ever since demon souls.
The only game that was well optimized was Dark Souls 2. The games after that, all ran like dog shit
definitely maybe we should criticize them more so that they get their shit together, its really disappointing
I've never experienced technical issues with these games; they are well polished I've always thought
I just.... I just want a 60fps update for Bloodborne.
Love Tom's reviews!! He is superb!!
It's funny to remember that, before the advent of ray tracing, sharper shadows were desirable and demonstrated the superiority of one gpu over the other or the PC over consoles, which normally had more diffused shadows. Now, with ray tracing, diffused shadows are considered (as indeed they always were) "more natural".
Right, I like the sharper shadows better.
I feel like making sure performance mode gets closer to a locked 60 fps and giving quality mode a 30 fps cap with even frame pacing would've been a much better use of time and resources
100% agree
We're talking about FromSoftware here. Asking them to implement a properly paced 30 fps cap is like asking a cat to bark.
I've got a weird setup but I get a pretty stable 60 fps at 1440p with RT on.
My pc is an e5-2690-4 with 32 gb or ddr4 quad channel ram and an RTX A5000.
I have rt turned up to max but I've found that two settings seem to really affect frame rates.
I also found that certain areas, such as mistwood, are easy 2 to 3 times harder on the gpu than the rest of the game. Areas with a lot of foliage and volumetrics.
So with rt and everything else at max, I dropped the shadow setting from max to high and saw a massive overall improvement in all areas but especially in mistwood. I also turned down volumetrics to high, since that setting seems to affect my goofy ass cpu.
My cpu shouldn't even be able to run the game, based on minimum cpu specs but with the settings and gpu above, I see almost no difference in performance between rt on or off.
One last setting seems to uniquely affect my gpu and it's an NVidia setting, not an ingame setting. For some reason my gpu boosts less and runs cooler when I have the transparency antialiasing setting bumped up to 8 times, under the Nvidia control panel. For whatever reason this makes things run smoother for me and not worse. Also it makes transparencies look a lot cleaner.
I've also set a launch parameter in the registry to force the game into high cpu priority, since the anti cheat prevents you from using task manager to do it after the game launches.
I just was playing the game on a 4080 at maximum RT settings.
And even at 1440p i got one area where it dipped to 49 fps.
Now, while this happens the power usage of the 4080 goes as low as 150 Watts, which is absurd for a 300-320 Watt card.
This makes me think the game may not even be using the RT cores of NVIDIA cards, but is just running off the other Compute units to generate the raytracing, and this may cause a serious bottleneck for the other graphical features being rendered.
In fact, it is like they worked as hard as they could to get the game as worst optimized as possible lmao.
The RT shadows make the visuals feel more grounded. It connects things together that looked a bit floaty before.
You're just making things up lol
@@Owl90 you’re just betraying your ignorance here, this is literally what the RT does, it helps ground assets in the environment by creating more realistic, actuate and deeper shadows around and beneath them.
Ray tracing means "an actually physically accurate light simulation without a ton of hacks"
Graphics devs everywhere are eagerly awaiting the death of rasterization outside of a few edge situations. It's much easier to conceptualize and work with and gets you much better results.
That boss battle music in the background gave me back my trauma’s
So before I dive into the expansion in a few months, should a fella bother with a 'next Gen' version or keep with the ps4 version on the 5, which to my knowledge is still considered the greatest version of the game?
Thank you DF!
still no 60fps lock is a complete joke. PS4 Pro version on PS5 easily attains this so there's no reason for this to be a thing. give us an option at the very least.
Thank you for choosing a budget pc setup for testing. It’s my exact setup. 😊
Great video Tom
The differences are so minor but it's cool seeing that they're still working on the game. I feel a bit bad for those developers slaving away on such a minor feature though.
Poor dev: "Should we fix the performance problems?"
Designated villain (Miyazaki?): "Nuh uhh, raytracing first"
@@bikechan9903 😂
It is knowledge they can hopefully bring forward into new games, however. As a programmer (though not in games), it is nice to have a reason to learn new APIs and techniques. Hopefully it was enjoyable for From’s graphics programmers as well. Plus since having at least some baseline level of RT is becoming more and more expected by gamers, hopefully it provides a good business reason for the bean counters in the business department to give the graphics programmers time and money to learn these new techniques 😁
I hope they didn’t have to crunch!
I mean ? they've just announced a new dlc coming. I sure hope they'll keep updating the game 😅
It seems to me that this is mostly a technical proof-of-concept for ray tracing on the engine that will be used for future projects
I think they have a lot to learn when it comes to Ray tracing which is fine, the same thing happened with the Resident Evil remakes. Eventually they honed it and now the ray tracing is really good
ray tracing has been around for decades, they're only attempting to use a chip to do it in real time, it's not going to have any large breakthrough.
It looks exactly the same to my eyes and I actually prefer the hard shadows. I'd take the extra framerate over placebo image improvements any day!
Must really suck to be a developer working hard on this and have it end up being so pointless
💯
@@exiledrabbit Not really - developers were paid ;-)
Great job Thomas!
Man, i would never sacrifice framerate that goes under 60 over visuals, that's just me ofc
Thanks Tom 😊👍
Have they fix the performance issues yet? Considering getting this game for PS5.
It's horrible on ps5
The way the character is lit is much better now. In motion looks really nice now honestly.
Are we sure there's not some ray component to the motion blur? It seems like it has more quality in raytracing mode.
Rayvtracing is quality.
In my eyes, it makes the games more valuable.
7:11 Ssao doesn’t technically have a draw distance since it operates on the depth buffer, if an object is visible it will get ssao , it doesn’t cost anything extra
then why do some games offer close ssao and far ssao it must have a draw distance
I don't really care about Ray Tracing itself, I was more so hoping for a DLSS option that I could enable for the PC version to get some extra frames as it's still bareley playable on my PC and framedrops keep happening at the same frequency whether I'm playing on High settings 1080p or Low settings 800x600 resolution.
DLSS won't help with stuttering, it's just how the game runs sadly.
@@epoch151 That's what I thought too, but I did some testing and saw that my cpu isn't getting used much and also isn't heating up enough for it to be problematic. Gpu on the other hand is getting used up all the way whenever I have a spike or low fps (lower than 60) in general so I don't know what to make of it lol
one of my biggest complaints about elden ring was the ambient occlusion, so this is a big upgrade (im on pc)
It still runs terrible on PC, barely better than console, it's not worth it for this title, unfortunately.
If you're on PC why not use ReShade and use an ambient occlusion shader? I mean you can add so many visual effects, sky is the limit really.
I wonder if some of the tech issues stem from From's "bolt-on" approach to technology. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they're still using the same engine since the original Demon's Souls, just updated over time. I remember when Dark Souls 2 released, and it could finally be played at 60fps, but dodging, parrying, and durability were tied to 30fps, so the higher framerate actually put you at a disadvantage.
I wonder when/if they'll ever build a new engine, or switch to a more modern one?
I played it a bit when it came out, and it was a good game, of course, but the stutter was very annoying, and I'm holding off playing it until the performance is fixed so it at least sticks 60 FPS steadily.
If you don't have an RT capable GPU just set the shadow setting to "low", it looks exactly the same.
Hahaha so smooth shadows = bad shadows? Okay go outside and show me those crisp sun shadows, like they are in elden ring without RT and shadows = high
@@speedtree Where did you see the word "bad"? Just "same."
i think that stencil shadows add to the art style as well, no need to change that, unless its red dead redemption 2 where realism is the point of the graphical style
Given what we got, and what we didnt, i'd say its reasonable to guess that the rt isnt for the players, but more of practice for the devs. Its their first foray into rt i believe?
I tested this on my PC. I set everything to maximum and RT to high. RX 6800XT and Ryzen 7 5700X hovers in the 50s in Limgrave. I'm not sure they should have added this without some kind of image scaling, like everyone else is saying.
Well, the RTX 2070 is not a 1800p gpu, it should be running at 1080p or 1440p at the most, because as you can see, even without RT the game falls below 60fps at this resolution. Also, it's mindboggling that to this day, 1 year later after release, there is no upscaling in this game, no dlss, no fsr, nothing, and they still haven't fixed the stuttering and fps drops.
Considering a game like Horizon Forbidden West can run 60fps on PS5, it's more a case of this game should have been optimised much better. The only good way to play this game on PS5 is to play the PS4 version and brute force it to 60fps.
There is no stuttering or FPS drops in Elden Ring. Apart from a few cutscenes, I never had any with my old system (RTX 2080 Ti). With my now new system (4090) its still running flawless.
@@EldenLord. I should hope a 4090 can bruteforce Elden Ring, graphically it's not a very impressive game, it has a great artstyle though. Both the 4090 and 2080Ti are far beyond the 2070/2070S which is the closest equivalent of what's in next gen consoles.
Tree shadows look WAY better with RT off. We need some dev someday to choose to implement robust raytracing that's not so aggressive with shadow falloff, raytracing implemented in a more artistic fashion rather than a "realistic" one --- not that I've never seen sharper shadows in real life, but for the nonce "blury" seems to be synonymous with "real".
For some games, sure, but these takes just feel like basic, confused intuitions around “sharpness and resolution” in video games. You’ve been conditioned to appreciate sharpness in sacrifice of accuracy. Rather than demanding devs stop making things look more realistic, why not try to adapt and have a more sophisticated understanding of scene composition and how light actually effects environments.
Devs have their hands tied because the console AMD RT hardware blows compared to what's available on the PC now.
@@sighssssss The draw distance thing is a hardware limitation, the shadow diffusion isn't. Just try experimenting with a lamp in your room and see what the shadows do as they stretch out into the distance.
honesly i like the defined shadows in my games, i get the blur happens because the shadow is calculated in real time but to me from a distance they just seem like low res shadows
14:16 Did the legendary "tools" arrived yet? lol
I wonder if a locked 1080p would get you closer to 60fps or at least a locked 30fps?
Yes, I also thought about this. Too sad that Tom didn’t test PC with 1080p. Then we would see whether the console CPUs could handle RT at 60 fps or not.
The worst part about that lack of Ultrawide support: It actually can.
The game can 'bug out' and forget to place the black bars rarely. When this patch dropped I loaded in and it rendered perfectly fine across my entire 21:9 monitor in Roundtable Hold. They choose to disable ultrawide support during normal gameplay, rather than only restricting it in cutscenes.
Im also on a 21:9 (3440x1440) display, the flawless widescreen app saves the day.
Japs are ignorant to PC gaming, their ports in general are lousy and equally lazy,, and as for their support, well equally abysmal...what's new.
@@themadnes5413 Second, Flawless Widescreen is an absolute must in this game.
@@Volker_A4 not worth it since no online with mods
I'm sure there is some bullshit PvP reason for not enabling it for everyone.
To get a pretty solid 60 FPS with high RT, I have to drop resolution all the way to 1267P (or whatever the closest Nvidia image scaling resolution is), that's on a 3080 10GB. Got a solid 60 at 4K max settings without RT. DLSS would be nice!
Thanks! What about Ray Tracing frame rate if you're playing on 1080p on PS5?
They should have went with more RT quality options with toggles for unlocked framerate and quality settings. This would help future proof it for future consoles. All games should do that!
I really like this upgrade visually on my PC, but the cost is way too heavy.
I could run it completely maxed out at 60fps if only they had included DLSS....
Maybe some modder will do it? 😅
DLSS doesn't work like that. It's not something a modder can implement so I wouldn't hold your breath on that one
@@e2rqey actually, DLSS is something a modder CAN implement. For example there's a fully functioning mod which adds DLSS to Resident Evil 4 remake, and it works well.
@@e2rqey It can be implemented, but it isn't easy. Skyrim has FSR and DLSS implemented via mods, but it is not something that you just throw inside some machine and magically it has that feature installed.
But Elden Ring should have implemented FSR and DLSS way before thinking about RT. It is not a very optimized game for PC anyway.
@@VittorioBaldini1997 they could do that because it had fsr2 support, which means it had motion vectors and all the right data available that dlss needs. There’s no guarantee Elden Ring has that. If it doesn’t the best you could do would be fsr1.
There are very few games that ray tracing impresses me enough to want to use it. Surprisingly one of them is the witcher 3. The other off the top of my head is re4. Feels like the game just looks a little better when playing in framerate mode with ray tracing enabled.
Same very gimmicky.
Somewhat not directly related, but bears mention: *the Godskin Apostle theme slaps so hard :)*
Remedy’s Controls display of RT effects STILL takes the cake for me. Along with CDPR’s CP2077.
Yes but on console control runs at a very choppy 30 fps.
And Shadow of The Tomb Raider, this game can't even do shadow casting of light sources that games did a over decade a go
@@TheBean87 60 if you have ultimate edition.
@@bobby_c07 not with raytracing which is what I was referring to
Check out Darktide it blows them all out of the water.
A 4080 can hold 90+ fps at 4k with DLSS quality with all RT settings maxed. The 40xx series is just that big of a leap.
I wonder how the decision of prioritizing Ray Tracing over DLSS/FSR was taken (from a management perspective). For example, do they go for internal or external Polls?
Firstly because DLSS/FSR is the logical path to take, first you implement them and get the performance boost so that you can balance out the performance hit with Ray Tracing. Secondly because DLSS/FSR help the majority of gamers, those with old and mid range cards whereas Ray Tracing can only be afforded by those with top tier cards. I have an RTX 3070 that might handle it near 60 FPS and still would prefer to have DLSS first.
Even DF guys can’t explain why better hardware (mainly PC but Series X too) is suffering from bad ports and lack of features left and right. But coincidentally PS5 is having all this “wins” all the time. Sounds and looks like a paid marketing push… very questionable. But of course I could be wrong and it’s just laziness or lack of professionalism, and I don’t know what’s worse. Pick your poison.
@@spacedovahkiin1364 I think they once explained that the PS5 has some API advantages over Xbox and PC (of similar graphics card and CPU power, e.g Ryzen 3600X and 2070 Super or RX 5700) that makes it more efficient but that goes away the more load on the GPU, say higher resolutions and graphics settings. Take this comment with a grain of salt as I don't remember the details. On the other hand, I think you are right and there are always solutions in order to improve performance and they are trying to just go for good enough in order to sell on PC and move on.
@@raudelravelo1169 oh yeah, no doubt Playstation was able to make their API the main build across the board. And that’s not bad, but the aftermath we are seeing is highly questionable. This paired with Playstation pushing extremely hard with the “parity” worries on COD makes you wonder.
Imo after I got to play a couple games with RT... Ray tracing is usually not worth the cpu cost. Its better, but without a ton of reflective surfaces/ concaved environments... the differences arent noticable unless youre looking for it.
This is the first time Ive seen RT affect shadow sharpness.. so in this case... RT might save a little time by programing a shadow style... but if deva had more time (yeah right) they technically could old school the shadows in to be soft or sharp based on how far away they are from most surroundings.
Idk.. I think I'd rather have a good performing game than something that's JUST BARELY more pretty... if you're looking for it
I wish they would have done a Balanced mode for 120hz displays, kept the Raytracing & ambient occlusion but dropped the resolution to 1080p so we could get a steady 40fps.
120Hz with 40FPS? Useless.
I was REALLY hoping for Ray Traced Global Illumination. That's what would have made this game pop. Shadows and Ambient Occlusion is not interesting.
Good to see a 2023 test using a RTX 2070!
Time of day is a major factor for the fps. On my 4090 4k. Max everything Dusk pointing towards a castle will drop in the 30s fps. Looking away will make it go back to 60
Just what Elden Ring needed! Who needs a stable 60fps when you can make the shadows look nicer? Maybe the frame rate will be fixed in the two year update!
The ray tracing seems to be very CPU heavy for some reason. Even at 720p low settings my 3060 can't hit 60fps while being really underutilised. Just another case of modern games being really poorly optimized.
Because they are updating the BVH, the main RT acceleration structure, on the CPU and probably doing it poorly because they are targeting console RT hardware and not the much more viable hardware in the 40xx series.
The leaps from the 20xx and 30xx to the 40xx series are big.
The shader execution reordering engine is huge for ray tracing...like approaching 2x theoretical performance improvements in the mathematics (how that translates to real world perf is more variable).
DF always went on about shadows. The sharper the shadow the better. Now they are all about them being more blurry or “diffused ” as they call them now 😂
I know right? For me it also looks like LOW quality Shadows with RT On on the right images like the tower wall, while the left image without RT looks like HIGH quality Shadows.
The shadows with RT on are more realistic, but that doesn't necessarily mean they look better.
No, they are saying shadows are supposed to depend on distance, and be softer for distant objects but hard for near objects. They said sharper is better in the context of shadow resolution (as in not blocky and pixelated), not how diffuse it is.
@@motokid6008 I dunno man, shadows in real life are pretty much defined and clear edges. Literally just looking outside now at trees, leaves and other objects. The RT shadows here looks more like Low quality normal shadows of the past. The effect doesn't work
@@SlayerSeraph They're only defined and clear the closer the object is to the ground. Real life shadows as the obstruction gets further away get more soft and diffused because of the way light bounces. ( which is what RT simulates ) Funny enough its the same reason theres an umbra/penumbra in solar eclipses.
On PS5, the frame-rate mode is the only one to be within limits for the VRR so it's the best choice IMO
Looking at the ray tracing mode screen, I thought I left my glasses somewhere.
It doesn't look good. Throughout the presentation, I preferred the images at the left side.
😵💫
That mode is going to be useful once we play this game on the PS5 Pro or PS6.
On the current PS5, I'm just going to play using the 60fps mode.
Played on Series X, and I couldn't agree more. Great experience on performance mode. Losing 30 fps or more just for a few RT effects you won't even notice is really not worth it.
Exactly this gen is still not good enough for ray tracing at constant 60fps on large open worlds so there's no point even trying, maybe next gen...
I prefer the sharpness of the regular shadows
Yeah, they match the art design a lot better imo-- the intricate details of the armor and enemies. The ray tracing shadows just kind of mute things for the sake of realism.
That’s really interesting, it’s very unrealistic and unnatural, but I imagine certain people are simply conflating “high res and sharp” with “always better”
Actualy making them less sharp all the way would be less disturbing than the out of sync shadows.
@@FigmentHF At the end of the day your playing a game, all the extra stuff just becomes unnecessary especially when the difference is so minimal it won't affect immersion.
I don't see a decent reason to use the RT mode on consoles, but seeing Elden Ring running in frame rate mode once again really makes me wish it was using 1440p to stabilise that frame rate. Performance mode in every current gen console game should cap at 1440p 60fps & try to squeeze in RT & give us an option for 1080p unlocked frame rate to hit a possible 120fps.
Cold comfort: this is future proofed to some degree, inspite of our frustration with the optimization woes in the now. Later hardware should make this shine a lot better even if it shouldn't have to. From Soft has the money, during Armored Core they need to take time to work on their engine.
On the consoles, the quality mode looks better. The RT shadows/AO is nice when you can see it- it does add a lot of depth to foliage and such- but I think the drop in resolution is just too much. It's a shame they didn't use a compensating technology like FSR 2.0 on the consoles to make up for it.
On PC, with a 4090 and 13900k, I still hit 60fps, so I might as well turn it on. If the game wasn't capped to 60 though, it'd be another question. Just a shame that they half-assed it.
I wouldn't play a game that's artificially locking itself to a low frame rate. The developer can at least show respect to fix what can be fixed with a simple ini tweak. The disdain for my platform is enough to make me ignore the developer, which tbf I should have done a long time ago instead of hoping for anything to change over there
You cab uncap it with Flawless Widescreen. Works really good.
@@joeykeilholz925 60 fps is really not bad though. Even though i can understand the frustration of being locked to 60, Fromsofts games are fucking outstanding as far as gameplay and art direction. They are worth playing, whether at a locked 60, or at 120. I just wish i could play bloodborne at at least 60.
I played at 30fps most of my life, and even though my current pc can do more, im happy with 60, and am not upset at the cap.
I've actually always preferred the sharper shadows.
It's kind of funny actually when you look at standard shadows in games, you would get a shadow quality option, and the higher it was the sharper the shadows were, and a shadow distance option, and the higher that was the further out the sharp shadows would be drawn with further shadows getting increasingly blurry.
So in a way, ray traced shadows are like the old shadows having their qualities reversed, the higher it is the blurrier it is.
I realize that has to do with diffusion over distance from the actual thing casting the shadow, but the visual impact isn't all that different.
Sure glad we have to lose half our framerate to get shadows that kinda look like they did two generations ago... I'll take the higher framerate instead, thank you very much.
They are not just softer. They are hard for close objects and soft for objects more far away. GTAV had something similar with it's PCSS shadows.
Aren't shadows one of the first settings people turn down to improve performance? IMO this seems like the last thing that should have been targeted for a specific upgrade
For people not noticing differences: well... you are right.
They implemented RTAO (RayTraced Ambient Occlusion) and RTS (RayTraced Shadows) and the problem here is they didn't implement RayTraced Lights: the game still uses baked lights so the raytraced shadows can't really work, because the lights literally don't exist anymore in the game to be considered by the RTS algorithm. The only way to see the difference is outdoor, because the only dynamic light that exist is the "sun" that project dynamic raytraced shadows in the environment and the player.
This is just to let people understand what's going on.