Black Myth Wukong: Ray Tracing Showdown - Low vs. Cinematic Quality Test

00:14 Global Illumination low vs cinematic - maybe unecessary due to Full Resolution Multi-Bounce Ray-Traced Indirect Lighting (low looks more realistic) - I doubt we are tweaking bounces here, I know it is 2 bouncer at max ("natural colored lighting bounces up to two times"), because 0 bounces completely dark some areas, and it is not what i see here
01:05 Ray-Traced Shadows
01:31 Torsch Shadows - these ones doesn't seem even ray-traced since resolution changed. Is there any Engine.ini mod to make them ray-traced?
08:58 more Full Resolution Ray-Traced Reflections
10:37 Foliage wind movement distance is higher when shadows are cinematic (at low foliages move when you get closer) - I would love someone share a code snippet that adress it?
12:25 More Ray-Traced Shadows
12:53 Foliages start movement when gets close at low shadow quality setting
14:15 Ray-Traced Caustics
22:17 More Full Resolution Multi-Bounce Ray-Traced Indirect Lighting
23:22 Full Resolution Ray-Traced Reflections
28:37 Full Resolution Multi-Bounce Ray-Traced Indirect Lighting
Many other in between.
www.nvidia.com/en-eu/geforce/news/black-myth-wukong-full-ray-tracing-dlss-3/
In this video, I dive deep into Black Myth Wukong to compare the visual impact of low vs. cinematic shadow quality, global illumination, and reflection settings when full ray tracing is set to very high.
My findings:
Shadow Quality: When ray tracing is maxed out, lowering shadow quality seems to have a minimal effect, primarily affecting torch shadows and some foliage movement due to wind.
Global Illumination: Reducing global illumination brings a more realistic look to the world, but I'm unsure if this primarily affects the number of light reflection bounces or other rendering techniques.
Reflection Quality: Surprisingly, I didn't notice a significant difference between low and cinematic reflection settings when full ray tracing is enabled.
Your thoughts:
What exactly are we tweaking in these graphics settings when full ray tracing is at its highest? Are these fine-grain adjustments or broader changes like Screen Space Reflections, Screen Space Ambient Occlusion, or modifications to existing GI solutions?
I created this video to explore the impact of changing certain settings from low to cinematic. I discovered that this can significantly affect gaming performance. If I can confirm that ray tracing is handling all the necessary tasks, it might be beneficial to keep these settings as low as possible, as NVidia sugests "With multi-bounce ray-traced indirect lighting, natural colored lighting bounces up to two times throughout the world of Black Myth: Wukong, creating more realistic indirect lighting and occlusion. Rendering techniques including Screen Space"
Performance hit is real, though.
NVIDIA confirmed that Reflection Quality is directly tied to Ray Tracing. So, if you have Ray Tracing set to very high, you don't need to adjust Reflection Quality: "Reflection Quality will come under Ray tracing, If the ray tracing is set to high, it is not necessary to change the settings for the Reflection Quality.".
However, I believe the in-game graphics settings could still use some refinement. For example, it would be helpful if options were automatically grayed out when they're already handled by Ray Tracing.
Since NVIDIA didn't mention Global Illumination, post-effects, anti-aliasing, or shadow quality in their response to my email, it's possible they're currently analyzing these areas for potential optimizations. This could lead to future updates that better organize the in-game settings for Ray Tracing users, preventing them from wasting GPU power on unnecessary features.