NVIDIA and CD Projekt Red Discuss the Present and Future of PC Gaming

It’s nary concealed that PC gaming is perpetually evolving, with much developers focusing connected it arsenic their level of prime and technological advancements allowing them to marque games that look and tally astatine a level that would person been unthinkable 10 years ago.

With that successful mind, IGN sat down with NVIDIA and CD Projekt Red to chat astir the existent authorities of PC gaming, the games that champion showcase the latest tech advancements, and the challenges and opportunities that could assistance specify the aboriginal of PC gaming.

NVIDIA introduced a big of advancements earlier this year, starting with the motorboat of DLSS 4 alongside its GeForce RTX 50-Series hardware, which uses AI-powered rendering to heighten visuals and amended performance. It offers improved representation quality, overcomes anti-aliasing limitations, and its Ray Reconstruction uses AI to trim ray-traced noise.

It besides adds improved Frame Generation and Multi-Frame Generation, which alteration show and graphics features that weren’t imaginable previously. They flooded CPU bottlenecks, allowing way tracing astatine implicit 200+ FPS.

“Frame Generation uses AI to make an full framework based connected information from the crippled itself,” GeForce Evangelist Jacob Freeman said. “We introduced that with DLSS 3, and it generated 1 further frame. For DLSS 4, it’s generating 3 further frames. So you’re getting overmuch smoother gameplay, overmuch higher performance.”

Lighting mightiness beryllium the country of crippled improvement that has seen the biggest betterment successful caller years, archetypal with the proliferation of Ray Tracing. DLSS 4 allows developers to utilize Path Tracing, which tin beryllium utilized to make photorealistic 3D environments with dynamic airy and shadow, reflections, and refractions.

“[Path Tracing] is not needfully a caller technology. I mean, it’s been utilized successful CG for a agelong time,” Freeman said. “But until recently, it was fundamentally unachievable for real-time graphics. It’s conscionable excessively computationally intensive. Basically, DLSS helped america to present path-traced visuals astatine a afloat 60 FPS.”

Path Tracing enhances lighting crossed the board, taking the prime of ray-traced lighting to the adjacent level, reflecting further item and crippled elements connected surfaces. It provides much realistic illumination, and airy bounces disconnected aggregate surfaces, creating much elaborate and varied environments. One of the benchmark implementations of Path Tracing came successful the Phantom Liberty enlargement for Cyberpunk 2077.

“I bash request to accidental with large pridefulness that we were 1 of the frontrunners erstwhile it comes to Path Tracing, and we worked with NVIDIA for years,” said Jakub Knapik, VP/Global Art Director for CD Projekt Red. “We started with Ray Tracing successful our basal game. The determination to merchandise Path Tracing was really triggered by the information that DLSS was susceptible of what it was susceptible of. And portion we released Phantom Liberty, it was much oregon little the aforesaid clip wherever DLSS evolved.”

CD Projekt Red has continued moving intimately with NVIDIA to instrumentality much improvements, with Cyberpunk 2077 adding DLSS 4 enactment with Multi-Frame Generation successful January. It works successful performance with DLSS Super Resolution and DLSS Ray Reconstruction to multiply show connected GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs by 9.2x connected mean astatine 4K with the afloat ray-traced RT Overdrive Mode enabled and each settings maxed out.

“With each those features [of DLSS 4], we were capable to have, for example, Path Tracing moving successful Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty successful 4K,” Knapik said. “When you conscionable process that, the 1 framework with Path Tracing successful a movie 10 years agone required 24 hours to render. One frame. Now we are rendering 240 frames successful 4K to play the game. Obviously we’re utilizing a batch of tricks, but erstwhile you conscionable flip successful your caput the mathematics … this is simply a breakthrough.”

While Cyberpunk 2077 is an fantabulous illustration of the tech’s implementation, determination are plentifulness of different standout games that showcase what’s imaginable with DLSS 4 and Path Tracing.

Doom: The Dark Ages had its framework rates multiplied connected GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs by an mean of 4x astatine 4K utilizing DLSS 4 with Multi-Frame Generation. Its show doubled connected GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs utilizing DLSS Frame Generation, and representation prime and framework rates were enhanced connected each GeForce RTX GPUs utilizing DLSS Super Resolution’s transformer AI Model. Path Tracing besides enhances airy sources, specified arsenic lamps, torches, and the Doom Slayer’s weapons. These emissive elements present much realistically illuminate surrounding detail, and dynamically illuminate corridors arsenic airy from emissives hits shiny, specular surfaces.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is besides enhanced with DLSS Super Resolution, Ray Reconstruction, and Path Tracing. Using DLSS 4 with Multi-Frame Generation, it tin scope antecedently unobtainable framework rates connected RTX 50 Series graphics cards. With Path Tracing, shadows, reflections, and planetary illumination are each accurately rendered, elevating representation quality.

Remedy Entertainment’s FBC: Firebreak features the afloat suite of RTX exertion that was developed for Alan Wake 2 (also from Remedy). FBC: Firebreak is simply a three-player co-op FPS, showing that DLSS improvements tin beryllium implemented successful a wide scope of genres. Lighting reflections, shadows, and ambient occlusion are each enhanced with Path Tracing. This improves fidelity passim the Federal Bureau of Control’s unpredictable and extradimensional headquarters, including transparent and opaque reflections accurately mirroring their surroundings astatine afloat resolution, heightening immersion.

And the upcoming enactment RPG Phantom Blade Zero from developer S-GAME has committed to launching with day-one enactment for DLSS 4 with Multi-Frame Generation, on with Ray Tracing.

Speaking of aboriginal titles, Freeman and Knapik discussed wherever the manufacture is heading and what challenges are adjacent to beryllium tackled. They some mentioned hairsbreadth being an country of focus, peculiarly successful however it reacts to airy and making it look and behave much realistically.

“There’s besides much precocious ray tracing that tin inactive beryllium done. For example, we precocious talked astir a caller diagnostic called RTX Hair, which is simply a much close mode to correspond however airy interacts with hair,” Freeman said. “With RTX Hair, it’s utilizing a caller diagnostic connected RTX 50 bid that is called linear swept spheres and it’s a antithetic mode to really render the hairsbreadth strands. It’s a much businesslike mode to render the hairsbreadth strands, which tin interact amended with path-traced lighting. What it volition let you to bash is conscionable person much realistic-looking hairsbreadth erstwhile you airy it with Path Tracing.”

Freeman besides mentioned neural rendering being the question of the future. That started earlier this twelvemonth with the merchandise of NVIDIA RTX Kit, which is simply a suite of neural rendering technologies to usage AI for ray tracing, render scenes with immense geometry, and make much lifelike characters. It enhances geometry, textures, materials, and lighting, providing greater ocular fidelity and show for analyzable unfastened worlds portion reducing artifacts, instability, and VRAM usage.

While next-generation technologies similar DLSS and Path Tracing are becoming much modular successful games, the experts astatine NVIDIA and developers astatine CD Projekt Red and different starring studios are perpetually pushing to find caller ways to leverage technologies to amended graphics and performance, giving PC gamers the champion acquisition possible.

“There’s surely a batch much that tin beryllium done with lighting, with Path Tracing, with Ray Tracing, that we inactive person to explore,” Freeman said. “There’s ever places to go.”