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00:00Hey guys, I'm Tom the Tech Chap, and you probably saw that Nvidia just launched their new RTX graphics cards here at Gamescom.
00:07And Battlefield V is one of the biggest upcoming games that will support the new real-time ray tracing technology.
00:13Now if you watched the Nvidia livestream, you'd have seen a quick walkthrough of what ray tracing can do in Battlefield,
00:19which also showed off the new Rotterdam map.
00:22Now I was lucky enough to see a little bit extra beyond the end of that tech demo,
00:27where DICE developers came on stage and showed that this was all running in real-time.
00:31So I got my camera out, I filmed it, I did get permission to use this, so I thought I'd share this with you guys.
00:37We also saw some questions on the internet before, reading some comments saying that they were confused,
00:44the demo was running slow motion, so how will the game run in real-time?
00:47And I mean of course, it's all fine, it's 60 FPS, it's solid, rock solid, you can run around.
00:54And a really annoying thing for me as a gamer has really been, if I turn the SSR on,
01:02you can see how the clip on my weapon cuts off the rays in the reflection if you look to the bottom left.
01:10And same thing if I'm aiming down my sights, then I just find a really good example for this.
01:17You can see it cuts off the reflection here, which is just a really annoying thing to focus on.
01:23But with ray tracing, it feels a lot more responsive, it just gets you more immersed in the world,
01:32and it feels really good to play with.
01:34We still, in certain areas, need to apply a cull distance, so in theory,
01:40maybe not everything at all points in time will be reflected, or show objects which are really, really far behind.
01:48But what we've seen with the performance people we have in here,
01:51that we can push the boundaries much further than what we thought was possible up to recently.
01:58So I'm really positive that we can get this to feel super consistent at all times for the player.
02:07Of course, implementing all this in a large and complicated engine,
02:12and very content-driven engine like what we have in Battlefield V and Frostbite,
02:19is quite a massive engineering effort to make sure that we can translate and understand
02:26that we did not only hit this triangle with this material, but also apply all the lightning models
02:33and then tie a Frostbite's rendering model onto the reflected objects, including particles.
02:39And I think that the particles and the explosions and all these dynamic bits really worked out really well, I think.
02:48And it's also great performance now.
02:51So that's Battlefield V, and it's absolutely beautiful.
02:54But while I've got you, let me show you what the devs behind Metro Exodus
02:57and the new MechWarrior say about ray tracing and the new RTX cards.
03:03So with RTX, we have the ability to determine not simply how surfaces should be lit,
03:08but actually how few rays should penetrate down into those deep, dark recesses
03:14that give our worlds those atmospheres and that believable richness.
03:20If we were to compare that for a moment to a traditional global illumination system,
03:25we see that up there in the rafters, it's over-lit, it's not as believable.
03:30So RTX, RTGR, global illumination, it's the only means we have.
03:36It's the only means that elements in this environment have for communicating to one another
03:41how light should bounce between them and how they should illuminate one another.
03:45It's very subtle, you may not be able to see it, but as we've been playing with it,
03:49we've noticed these little effects, little effects that we didn't plan, that we didn't intend for.
03:54They're emergent and they've appeared just out of using the technology.
03:59And this happens when you find a new technology like this, that's doing things properly.
04:04You know it's an instinctive thing, you know you feel that you're on the right track
04:08when those little emergent gems appear.
04:11And all we really had to do at the end of the day in order to make this sort of thing happen
04:16was go back to nature, to model light the way it actually behaves in reality.
04:20Now this is a massive leap for all of us.
04:23We've finally got over what is without a doubt the biggest hurdle in games development history,
04:29real-time ray tracing.
04:31This kind of attention, this kind of detail you just get now,
04:35some of the other presenters were talking about it, it's just, I don't even know how much our time,
04:39you know it saves a studio like ours, it's really immeasurable.
04:42In a science fiction environment like this, this technology just really works so well
04:47for these hard surfaces in this sci-fi environment.
04:50We'll focus in on the floor as the mech moves in.
04:53We really want to see just the types of reflections that we can now have with the RTX technology.
05:08If we look a little further down there, that's oil spills, messy technicians.
05:14We turn the RTX off.
05:18I mean, this is I guess my final point here today.
05:22If you look at the reflection of the glass over there,
05:25and let's move a little bit behind the battle mech here and take a look.
05:29This is a real easy one.
05:32This is a softball one from here because it just works.
05:36And if you turn the RTX off, this would be an example of something
05:40where we would just have to change the design of our hangar probably
05:43rather than trying to make this work the old way.
05:47I have to say, it is really impressive to see what kind of a difference
05:51ray tracing on new RTX graphics cards can achieve
05:54when it comes to lighting, reflections and shadows.
05:57It may not make any fundamental changes to how we play the game,
06:00although feasibly you could see your enemies in reflections around a corner
06:03before they see you.
06:05But it really is a big step up in visuals.
06:07And of course, this is just the first generation of games
06:10on the first generation of real-time ray tracing hardware.
06:13So this really is just the beginning.
06:15Something I didn't realize though is this ability to turn RTX on and off
06:19and this ray tracing stuff won't actually be available at launch.
06:23You'll only be able to use it when Microsoft publishes their DirectX update,
06:26which will support it and will come in October.
06:29Then it's up to the games to support it, whether they do out of the box
06:32or with a post-launch patch.
06:34So what that means is if you pre-order a RTX 2080 today
06:37and you get it on September 20th, obviously it will be a very powerful card anyway,
06:41but you won't see the fancy RTX effects until a few weeks afterwards.
06:45But also let me know what you think.
06:47Are you impressed by the RTX 2070, 2080 and 2080 Ti?
06:51Is ray tracing awesome or just a bit gimmicky?
06:54Let me know what you think in the comments below.
06:56Do like and subscribe if you enjoyed this video
06:58and I'll see you next time right here on The Tech Chap.