Digital Foundry: Metro Exodus PC/RTX Analysis: The Next Level In Real-Time Visuals

Flappy Pannus · Feb 16, 2019

Dictator said:
A secret from the production - The console versions have a slightly different FOV set up than on PC - yep, it "fish eyes" at a different point in screen space for some weird reason - I have no idea why. We had to correct this in post to actually make the shots line up or they never would.

The consoles have fatter looking aspect ratio, more horizontal.

Edit: Fixed! Problem is with EDID reporting 4096x2160 as the max res of the TV (it's 3840x2160), which some games see as the 'native' res and set their aspect ratio accordingly. You can either use the CRU utility to delete this res (see https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=806615157), which may not work depending on your TV. In my case I couldn't get it to see the res, but as a user suggested in that thread a workaround was to just create a custom 16:9 res higher than 4096 in the Nvidia control panel, that worked.

________________

Actually this seems to be a problem with the 4A engine. Did you take this footage from a TV or monitor through HDMI? The PC version definitely has an elongated aspect ratio there, it's not really FOV.

Reason I surmise it might be an engine issue is because I just loaded up Last Light Redux and 2033 Redux on my 55" Visio 4K TV for the first time, and I immediately noticed the same vertically stretched aspect ratio in both. Circles are elongated ovals - not drastic, but noticeable. You can see it in your video especially when looking at the moon, it should be a circle yet it's definitely stretched. Changing resolution, despite the aspect ratio of that res does not fix this (only the aspect ratio of the menu UX changes).

Switching over to my 4k monitor which is hooked up to display port however, no problem - correct 16:9 aspect ratio. If I edit the user.cfg and set the game to windowed mode, then the aspect ratio is back to normal on my TV, but fullscreen stretches it. Something to do with HDMI + TV's, very odd.

Edit: See the attached pics. Top is on displayport at 4k, how the game should look. Below image is from 4K though HDMI to TV.

Vanta Aurelius · Feb 17, 2019

Dictator or Durante, as games are designed with a ever greater emphasis on hybrid rendering, How do you think GPUs will evolve? Will raytracing performance scale linearly with RT cores?

Firefly · Feb 17, 2019

Remij said:
Sometimes the game just looks.... stunning.

I'd love to see this team with a huge budget and full facial capture equipment. These guys are extremely talented.

Are you kidding me? This some in engine cut scene?

HeWhoWalks · Feb 17, 2019

Remij said:
Sometimes the game just looks.... stunning.

-pic

I'd love to see this team with a huge budget and full facial capture equipment. These guys are extremely talented.

Indeed it does, precisely why I said the character models were good enough to get the job done!

SliChillax · Feb 17, 2019

Ste said:
Does the pc version have dolby atmos?

I ask as this may be the first game that supports everything.

HDR 10, Ray tracing, dlss and dolby atmos.

I was hoping to wait for a while but I do love tech!

Although my suspicion about dlss seem to be true, you just can't beat native resolutions, same thing with checkerboard rendering.

DLSS doesnt work with HDR

WordsintheWater · Feb 17, 2019

Dang, couldn't get this to run smoothly on my system, but to be fair everything was turned up all the way, I'm gonna drop it to High quality and see if I can get a smooth 60 FPS.

icecold1983 · Feb 17, 2019

tuxfool said:
Even there he is wrong. At best you can say that they both launched at the same time (and only one console had a unified architecture). IIRC the GeForce 8800 actually launched before the Xbox 360.

8800 launched a year after the 360

Spark · Feb 17, 2019

I watched the video again and there's no way ray tracing isn't the future of videogame lighting effects. The scenes just look so much more natural and visually appealing. I understand the complaints with the RTX series cards but if a few expensive first generation products are needed if we can achieve a faster large scale adoption of this technology then so be it.

The mean the part when a cloud covered the global illumination source (the sun) causing the light to dim in a house where the lightrays were being projected around the room was amazing. A true simulation.

Villein · Feb 17, 2019

Firefly said:
Are you kidding me? This some in engine cut scene?

Gameplay

WordsintheWater · Feb 17, 2019

Holy crap, the game runs as smooth as butter now with RTX on high, I dunno how my shading rate was at 2.0 instead of 1.0. Damn, it was driving me crazy with judder.

IMACOMPUTA · Feb 17, 2019

This video gave me the new gpu itch.. shiiit!

Isee · Feb 17, 2019

IMACOMPUTA said:
This video gave me the new gpu itch.. shiiit!

The phenomenon that first came up with the Monster 3D card. We all are suffering from it.

bxsonic · Feb 17, 2019

Wow. Very impressive. Maybe I should build a PC for next gen.

Deleted member 49611 · Feb 17, 2019

jeeez this game looks fantastic. it's a shame i didn't enjoy the previous titles and i refuse to purchase it through Epic anyway if i did want to give it a try.

GymWolf86 · Feb 17, 2019

Toriko said:
Does Metro have as good motion matching, facial animation, contextual melee animation etc..?

There is no point going down this route.. Different games striving for different things.

With regards to the video.. While this game looks absolutely gorgeous I really dont think it is a gen ahead at all. Technically ray tracing will be a big deal but nothing I saw in that video makes me think any less of how jaw dropping RDR2 or TLOU 2 look.

When real next gen consoles hit this will not look as good. There will be PC games that look far superior to this once next gen hits and the baseline performance gets raised.

Same here and i'm mostly a pc gamer.
Those next gen shadow do almost nothing for me compared with other snips of next gen tecnology like the motion matching in tlou2.
Lucky me i guess because i'm not in a hurry to buy an rtx gpu only for prettier shadow or reflections, for now i'm good with a precanned system.

P. S. i'm not downplaying anything, is just a matter of taste.

GymWolf86 · Feb 17, 2019

Sorry double.

Deleted member 22585 · Feb 17, 2019

Very well done video. I'm actually a bit surprised how much of a difference rtx makes.
Is there no HBAO+ here? Maybe it would at least make crates and stuff not look that bad indoors.

JahIthBer · Feb 17, 2019

GymWolf86 said:
Same here and i'm mostly a pc gamer.
Those next gen shadow do almost nothing for me compared with other snips of next gen tecnology like the motion matching in tlou2.
Lucky me i guess because i'm not in a hurry to buy an rtx gpu only for prettier shadow or reflections, for now i'm good with a precanned system.

P. S. i'm not downplaying anything, is just a matter of taste.

Dunno why people keep calling motion matching next gen, For Honor already uses it.

regawdless said:
Very well done video. I'm actually a bit surprised how much of a difference rtx makes.
Is there no HBAO+ here? Maybe it would at least make crates and stuff not look that bad indoors.

VXAO would get somewhat close to RTX i think, but Nvidia want you to purchase the RTX series & seem to have sadly dropped support for it.

GymWolf86 · Feb 17, 2019

JahIthBer said:
Dunno why people keep calling motion matching next gen, For Honor already uses it.

VXAO would get somewhat close to RTX i think, but Nvidia want you to purchase the RTX series & seem to have sadly dropped support for it.

We called next-gen because of how naughty dog use it.

For honor is not near close to the animation blending that we watched in the tlou2 gameplay video.

tuxfool · Feb 17, 2019

GymWolf86 said:
We called next-gen because of how naughty dog use it.

For honor is not near close to the animation blending that we watched in the tlou2 gameplay video.

Yeah. But you called "motion matching" next gen. It isn't, and while its implementation might be very good, it remains to be seen how it actually works in game.

Spartancarver · Feb 17, 2019

Yeah this cements that RTX is the future as far as I'm concerned. AMD needs to come up with their own ray tracing solution.

Excited to see this tech mature further, I'm going to try to hold out for RTX 2080 Ti to become more reasonably priced lol

WellbornWarrior · Feb 17, 2019

pulsemyne said:
The 2060 can hit 60fps on RTX high at 1080.

Monster Zero said:
I'm playing at 1440p 60fps High setting with RTX on High as well using a 2080FE. I probably could play RTX High with other settings Ultra but I like a little more overhead to maintain 60fps.

Sounds good but RTX in BF5 still tanks my fps with a 2070 despite everyone saying they could run it fine so I'm still a bit sceptical.

Slochy · Feb 17, 2019

Flappy Pannus said:
Edit: Fixed! Problem is with EDID reporting 4096x2160 as the max res of the TV (it's 3840x2160), which some games see as the 'native' res and set their aspect ratio accordingly. You can either use the CRU utility to delete this res (see https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=806615157), which may not work depending on your TV. In my case I couldn't get it to see the res, but as a user suggested in that thread a workaround was to just create a custom 16:9 res higher than 4096 in the Nvidia control panel, that worked.

Dude, thanks for posting this since it was affecting me as well in some games when playing on my Samsung Q9FN. The tool worked fine on my end, so thanks again!

Monster Zero · Feb 17, 2019

WellbornWarrior said:
Sounds good but RTX in BF5 still tanks my fps with a 2070 despite everyone saying they could run it fine so I'm still a bit sceptical.

What cpu do you have?

GymWolf86 · Feb 17, 2019

tuxfool said:
Yeah. But you called "motion matching" next gen. It isn't, and while its implementation might be very good, it remains to be seen how it actually works in game.

well is next-gen compared with any other similar game out in the market.
people don't even believe that it's real because of how good it is.

but yeah we have to wait for the final game, i give you that.

Nooblet · Feb 17, 2019

Despite the obviously improvements and the sheer possibilities due to the dynamic nature of it (like cloud blocking sunlight through a hole..that's just wow).

I can't help but feel that the non raytraced implementation of GI and contact shadowing in this game is rather sub par in comparison to some of the best out there, leading to the rasterised solution looking pretty crappy in comparison.

Dictator · Feb 17, 2019

CanisMajoris said:
I can't help but feel that the non raytraced implementation of GI and contact shadowing in this game is rather sub par in comparison to some of the best out there, leading to the rasterised solution looking pretty crappy in comparison.

It really is not though - it is just the nature of the game's design goals. Fully dynamic TOD, moving shadows, large levels, lots of areas covered shadow that have to use indirect lighting.

Obviously a game that had a sun that never moved and baked shadows and indirect lighting would look better, but hell if you bake out all those indirect shadows and light bounces for a large world you have a massive game file size, and even then, dynamic objects are still not conencted with that lighting and not affecting it.

In the interviews that will be posted soon it will be obvious that the standard GI is not incompetent at all, rather pretty state of the art as is.

tuxfool · Feb 17, 2019

Nooblet said:
I can't help but feel that the non raytraced implementation of GI and contact shadowing in this game is rather sub par in comparison to some of the best out there, leading to the rasterised solution looking pretty crappy in comparison.

That's very much the thing. If you go to the PC screenshot thread you'll see that at a macroscopic level the raster implementation looks really good. You can even see that in this video, on that icy street pan, there is very little difference that is immediately apparent. It is where specific details that it starts falling down.

But that's the whole thing with raster implementations, they need to be customized and poked and prodded to get them looking their best in specific scenarios, which is a lot of work when you're dealing with non-static elements like TOD.

plagiarize · Feb 17, 2019

GymWolf86 said:
Same here and i'm mostly a pc gamer.
Those next gen shadow do almost nothing for me compared with other snips of next gen tecnology like the motion matching in tlou2.
Lucky me i guess because i'm not in a hurry to buy an rtx gpu only for prettier shadow or reflections, for now i'm good with a precanned system.

P. S. i'm not downplaying anything, is just a matter of taste.

I'm not sure that there's anything different from a technical level when it comes to Metro Exodus's animation, but Artyom's animations are some of the best I've seen in first person and worthy of noting. Facial animations are less impressive (during one scene last night, his wife coughed mid sentence while it was still playing her speaking dialogue beneath it, seemed like the cough animation just overrode the talking animation rather than the two blending together).

Nintendo · Feb 17, 2019

Remij said:
Sometimes the game just looks.... stunning.

I'd love to see this team with a huge budget and full facial capture equipment. These guys are extremely talented.

Exactly my thoughts when I saw that cutscene!

Numador · Feb 17, 2019

Flappy Pannus said:
I can't find a 1080/4k comparison, but here's a 1080 Ti at 4k with everything maxxed video. He gets anywhere from high 30's to low 50's in gameplay. Considering it's maxxed out at extreme, I would say high with tesselation+hairworks+physx at 4k at a 30fps lock should definitely be doable on a 1080.

Thank you for the video, looks great, as expected. I will decide it later today, though I am veering towards paying the price difference and going with the PC version as in all these videos I don't see a huge difference between ultra/extreme (as I think was mentioned by DF) but I see a bigger gulf between ultra/xbox One X (might be placebo though).

Dictator · Feb 17, 2019

Numa Dgg said:
Thank you for the video, looks great, as expected. I will decide it later today, though I am veering towards paying the price difference and going with the PC version as in all these videos I don't see a huge difference between ultra/extreme (as I think was mentioned by DF) but I see a bigger gulf between ultra/xbox One X (might be placebo though).

The differences between high and extreme are much more minimal than being able to play at an arbitrary framerate and have tessellation. I undersell it a bit in this video, but tessellation is quite literally everywhere. Consoles not having it is a big loss.

Numador · Feb 17, 2019

Dictator said:
The differences between high and extreme are much more minimal than being able to play at an arbitrary framerate and have tessellation. I undersell it a bit in this video, but tessellation is quite literally everywhere. Consoles not having it is a big loss.

Thank you Dictator, going with the PC version then for sure.

taggen86 · Feb 17, 2019

I think I have found my perfect settings for rtx in this game on my 2080 ti: 1800p, ultra, 50 fps v sync. Seems to be more or less locked 50 fps on my oled tv. Much better than 2160p, 30 fps in my opinion

Dictator · Feb 17, 2019

A correction to my video - I mistakenly say that it is single bounce diffuse GI, which is incorrect and I somehow managed to never go back and adjust my recording after getting our interview back. There is indeed an indirect specular component to the GI that is most obvious around 15:36 in the video.
Sorry for the mistake.

PcPlasticFuzz · Feb 17, 2019

I'm a console gamer only. However I love watching the PC videos to see what is possible. Ray Tracing appears true next generation to me as it lends such an element of realism to the lighting. I really hope the new consoles have something even remotely as good.

Kareha · Feb 17, 2019

It looks pretty but the cost to run it at it's best is unjustifiable.

J_ToSaveTheDay · Feb 17, 2019

Whew, this analysis may have just inspired me to go from a planned RTX 2070 build to a 2080ti... I'd have to save up for a few extra months but it might be worth it. :p

vivian_r · Feb 17, 2019

Is the difference in noise due to Metro using nvidia denoiser vs BFV using their own denoiser? I haven't heard any explanation on why BFV is so much noiser than Metro, which looks perfect basically!

tuxfool · Feb 17, 2019

Kareha said:
It looks pretty but the cost to run it at it's best is unjustifiable.

Yeah. Good thing that Nvidia is being hammered economically on this front, they just expected people to swallow those RTX prices.

Terbinator · Feb 17, 2019

tuxfool said:
Yeah. Good thing that Nvidia is being hammered economically on this front, they just expected people to swallow those RTX prices.

Have prices dropped significantly since launch?

BuBu Jenkins · Feb 17, 2019

tuxfool said:
Yeah. Good thing that Nvidia is being hammered economically on this front, they just expected people to swallow those RTX prices.

exactly why I'm waiting for next-gen RTX before I jump in... no way in hell they're going to charge the same overpriced garbage that they did this gens with how badly it's been doing in sales....hopefully

tuxfool · Feb 17, 2019

Terbinator said:
Have prices dropped significantly since launch?

Lol, no.

But in their revenue report for the last quarter they said:

sales of certain high-end GPUs using our new Turing architecture, including the GeForce RTX 2080 and 2070 were lower than we expected for the launch of a new architecture.

This is the most Pikachuface.jpg thing ever.

Kingpin Rogers · Feb 17, 2019

Still not seeing the big deal about RTX. It makes it look different sure but I wouldn't say it makes things look better. Especially in darker areas as it just makes things even darker, it would just make me want to crank the brightness up so I can actually see things.

Deleted member 4970 · Feb 17, 2019

Seriously considering buying an RTX 2070 for this and Quake...

EatChildren · Feb 17, 2019

Kingpin Rogers said:
Still not seeing the big deal about RTX. It makes it look different sure but I wouldn't say it makes things look better. Especially in darker areas as it just makes things even darker, it would just make me want to crank the brightness up so I can actually see things.

I mean, if that's you're take, fine, but there's not really much anybody can show or do to convince you when your perspective really boils down to "it's too dark and I don't like it". RTX Ray Tracing in the case of lighting/shadows isn't here to make the game look to your tastes, it's demonstrating real time complexities that aren't available elsewhere. And in this case it's the lighting/sahdows, approximating more real life-like lighting. If you don't want it, okay, but you either don't have an eye for or just don't care about this technology and what it does.

Celcius · Feb 17, 2019

The global illumination in this game looks awesome. Once games that I normally play start using it then I may be really tempted to upgrade (but will still most likely wait for the 2nd iteration of rtx cards). Can't wait to see more games start using the tech.

tuxfool · Feb 17, 2019

Kingpin Rogers said:
Still not seeing the big deal about RTX. It makes it look different sure but I wouldn't say it makes things look better. Especially in darker areas as it just makes things even darker, it would just make me want to crank the brightness up so I can actually see things.

The shadowing and depth in the scene is much more subtle. Objects are much more grounded on account of the accuracy.

Though I will agree that a lot of indoor scenes are way too dark, running contrary to what the scene should be.

vivian_r · Feb 17, 2019

BuBu Jenkins said:
exactly why I'm waiting for next-gen RTX before I jump in... no way in hell they're going to charge the same overpriced garbage that they did this gens with how badly it's been doing in sales....hopefully

I read their earnings call transcript and I believe they said that Turing makes less profit per card than Pascal despite the higher price.

SleepSmasher · Feb 17, 2019

Hey Dictator , might be a stupid question but was AO even turned on with during the non-raytraced test? I know that RTX and GI are a generational leap but some of the scenes (like the barrels) looks like they're completely lacking ambient occlusion.

Digital Foundry: Metro Exodus PC/RTX Analysis: The Next Level In Real-Time Visuals

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