Black Myth Wukong - Full Ray Tracing VS Lumen - Is There a Difference?

I compare the two ray traced solutions in Black Myth Wukong between Nvidia's "Full Ray Tracing" and UE5's Lumen solution. While the focus is image quality we take a look at the performance difference as well.

PC SETUP:
ASUS TUF OC RTX 4090 - Graphics Card
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X 3D - 8 Core Processor
360 AIO H150i Corsair Elite Capellix
32GB 6000 mhz CL30 DDR5 Memory
ASUS ROG Strix X670E - A Gaming WiFi Motherboard
ASUS TUF Gaming 1000 Watt 80 Plus Gold ATX 3.0 Fully Modular Power Supply
1TB Samsung 980 Pro NVME SSD Operating System Drive
2TB Samsung 980 Pro NVME SSD Game Drive
Lian Li 011 Dynamic EVO PC Case

Windows 11 Pro
Nvidia Driver 560.94

00:00 Intro
00:28 Performance Difference
02:15 Global Illumination
05:10 Reflections
09:00 Water Caustics
11:01 Shadows
14:13 Conclusion

#blackmythwukonggameplay #rtx4090 #pcgaming

[Lil.LonLy]

This game needs the option for removing the sharpening effect

[syncmonism]

Lumen without any hardware RT seems to be worth using even on a lot of Nvidia graphics cards, given how much performance it saves you. Of course, it's likely to be a much better choice than running hardware RT if you're running an AMD GPU.


And, of course, technically, Lumen can be worth using in some UE5 games even on a 1080 ti or Titan XP, which obviously don't have the option to run hardware RT anyway. It's pretty amazing that actually nice looking ray tracing can run on an 8 year old graphics card.

[pixel]

If I'm not mistaken, the version they used is UE 5.0, so, because at the time UE didn't support Nanite for vegetation they had to disable VSM and use standard Cascade SM, this is why you see the resolution changing with the distance. They also use Lumen only with Signed Distance Field and not with Proxy Meshes, plus, Lumen improved a lot since 5.0, both in performance and quality, same goes for reflections. I don't know how the difference would compare between NVRTX and Lumen in 5.4. Usually you have a benefit when you have multiple light sources, but this game seems to just mostly relay on sunlight, so shadows and GI should be pretty close in the last version. Too bad they didn't upgrade to 5.2 at least, but I understand it's not a small endeavor.

[Sweenus]

I prefer how Lumen looks, darker areas that should be dark, are dark, the RT looks like there's way too much light in the scene

[Jkend]

Ray tracing looks great, no one is arguing it doesn't. The problem is that it requires a 4090... if you replace that 4090 (and the 7800X3D) with actually affordable alternatives (in other words, don't go with the money is no object setup, which is the reality for I dunno, 99% OF GAMERS) Ray tracing makes the games a slide show, Lumen does look worse but it doesn't cripple performance as much as Ray tracing. The real problem is that both are unplayable on anything other than a money is no object rig.

[soumitrasarkar]

"Lost about 25 FPS, again, the difference is not that big". Bruv. That's 20% loss in FPS. What are you talking about? Using the same specs and same exact game settings but on a 4k monitor, I am achieving 110 FPS (Lumen) and 70 FPS (Very High RT). On a high refresh rate monitor that makes a huge difference.

[HamalgamUB]

as a game dev, lumen is definitely more realistic, the rtx in wukong doesn't have indirect lighting, look at 3:40 and how with lumen the whole place is filled with orange from the light bouncing of the cliffs, that is how it's supposed to be. Even if you can afford ray tracing in my opinion having realistic indirect lighting is much more important.

[silvio]

Pathtracing is pretty heavy to run, we peasant gamers can't afford 1000$ cards, it's not worth it at the moment, fortunately Lumen looks really good and I'm happy it's at least a solid alternative.

[AlphaHub]

An update separating ray tracing and path tracing will be much appreciated by all the gamers 👍🏻

[Zayer]

I love being able to max everything out and not giving a crap on my 4090

[mosthated]

Hopefully, Game Science devs just made truckloads of money. They release a patch for more graphical settings and, a sharpening slider. Also sucks the game doesn't have HDR.

[Spratty-wbis]

Great job man!
Im actually surprised how little of a hit to performance Full RT was..
Shadows are definitely the biggest stand out.
The water reflections being next!

Im currently playing on the XTX however and in fairness i have no real complaints with Lumen.
The difference when you see full RT cant be argued however..

[connostyper]

It's not an Nvidia solution. it's simply ray tracing. Great video.

[TheIndulgers]

Hell, Lumen looks better half the time. I bet a blind survey would be 50/50.

I don't know why anyone would use fg in a latency sensitive action game.

Edit: 4:50 I hard disagree. The right looks much more natural and rich while the full RT looks shockingly washed out.

[prophicie]

Lumen looks terrible. Looking at it in person and not through a compressed video shows the difference as clear as night and day.

[ThiagoVieira]

Hey your content is pretty rare and this video is great!

[Rajonas]

Amazing video, I look forward to more videos

[LeHoax]

Lumen has the contrast turned up to 11.

[madeofnapalm]

IDK about the "not much difference" part, RT on low halves my FPS on 3080Ti

[BPMan]

Great video I also was impressed with how good lumen looks in this game hopefully more devs learn how to use it properly