First Details About Path Tracing In Cyberpunk 2077

At GDC 2023 CD Projekt Red and Nvidia showed off Cyberpunk 2077 Overdrive, an upcoming addition to the game that is fully path traced. In this interview Gordon chats with Jakub Knapik, Global Art Director at CD Projekt Red, and Pawel Kozlowski, Senior Developer Technology Engineer at Nvidia, about the artistic and technical ideas behind this version of the game.

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#cyberpunk2077 #cdprojektred #nvidia

00:00 - CD Projekt Red Interview
06:52 - Nvidia Interview

[sbs]

I wish that instead of showing the rather irrelevant "RTX On VS Off" comparisons, they had shown "Path Tracing Vs Original RT". Still, kudos to CDPR for still adding free features and bug fixes to their game so long after the release where most companies (I'm lookin' at you EA/Ubisoft/Bethesda) instead of fixing anything beyond game-breaking bugs in their original IPs move on to paid DLCs and microtransactions.

[filipborch-solem]

Wish he would have asked if shader execution reordering is specifically used for RT overdrive, or if it works on all RT modes.

Edit: I’ve tested it, and as I feared, performance is not improved in RT psycho (normal rt) mode after the update. What a shame.

[JonatanE]

They should do comparisons between regular RT and Path traced because these clips just looks like regular RT to me

[larsmuldjord]

I think CP2077 is the first big game to try and do this as far as I know. There's Portal RTX too of course (and Quake 2 RTX and mods for even older games), but that's kind of in the "old game" category and it has a much more clinical look with almost no characters. I find it refreshing that you keep reiterating that this tech is "of the future" to avoid people with old GTX 2080 cards complaining when they can't run it above 10 fps. Because that is probably the case.

I have a 3080 and even with this I'm pretty sure I'll only hit ~10 fps with this mode. But, to simply be able to see it running at almost playable framerates will be a joy to me.

I am all in when it comes to raytracing in games. I've been waiting for the tech to arrive for years. And we're juuuust on the brink of it actually making some kind of sense. To think that you can take a process that normally takes minutes or hours per frame and scale it to work realtime is mind-boggling. And it has the potential to completely demolish the complexity of building worlds for artists. Now they are required to do all kinds of "hacks" to make lighting look good. Stuff that needs manually adjusting depending on the surroundings of all areas. With a single ray-tracing pipeline this can be reduced to simply creating the geometry and placing the lights. And that's it!

But, it IS of the future. No way this will run fantastic on even an RTX 4090. I'm guessing playable, but not much more than ~30 fps if even that.

[crestofhonor]

I’ve never thought that ray tracing or path tracing are a gimmick. The only people who thought that don’t know much about the technology. Right now we are in a hybrid situation where developers are slowly learning to use it and not everyone makes a good implementation of ray tracing as this even happens with standard rasterization. Implementation is important

[DarkOmenX]

For me RT is not gimmick. VISUALS and SOUND are the most important aspect of games with one rule it has to bring enough FPS to be smooth and stutter free, so far Cyberpunk 2077 is a great example of it . I would say it is the most technical advanced game out there with awesome visuals, performance and game play. But devs. should focus on Multi core/multithreading CPUs as well and finally take a use of it just like lately DCS did and showed a massive improvement in gameplay and fps .Oh ! devs there is something called DIRECT STORAGE, try use that too .

[SinisterPuppy]

Wonder how powerful is powerful. Guess I'll enjoy this at 2fps on my lowly 3060ti. :) I'm going to have to try even if I'm sure it's too much.

[ataksnajpera]

Let me guess. 30fps on 4090 using DLSS 3.0 in 1080p

[SlyNine]

Will they finally fix the issues with the BVH discontinuity, especially with timing.

[BuzzLighyearr]

Kudos to CD projekt red, technical previews are what drive the industry forward!

[bartdierickx]

You need high end hardware means: "You need 4090 rtx while we are doing nothing you can't do in UE5 with other GPUs. We are deliberately crushing performance on every GPU, but crushing it less on Ada Lovelace. Nvidia paid us a lot of money to turn our game into a 4090 RTX advertisement."

[itsdeonlol]

RTX is not a gimmick, but it will take awhile before Ray Tracing is the standard.

[siddhantjain]

"So you need high end pc"
.
.
"Yes you need VERY high end pc"

Bro wanted to say 4090 @1080p 60fps

[jsserch]

I wonder if will be able to at least try it with a 3070 or is it going to be locked to only 4000 series cards. Like you won't even have the option enabled.

[kylerclarke]

It's odd that it's out in a week and a half and there's still only one short trailer from months ago.

[kiddosstuff]

cyberpunk 2077 is basically cdpr’s test ground, and still isn’t out of beta lol

[AdrianMeredith]

This looks to be combining all the research that one minute papers had been talking about over the last few years into an actual product! (See the million light sources video) very exciting

[nne]

why haven't they shown any gameplay of this yet?

[exoticspeedefy]

The pathtracing in video games isn't fully pathtraced. Most of them are baked lighting with some tips to make it feel like it's dynamic and real time

[Devildoginvu]

They sound really desperate to sell some 40 series graphics cards. The 30 series supports DLSS 3.0 but he didn’t mention if path tracing can be used on 30 series cars.