CD Projekt's CYBERPUNK 2077 Release Thread - The Next Gen Update

[soulburner]

RT is still in its infancy. It brings back memories of GeForce 3 and pixel shaders. The early games used them sparingly and even then it was a big performance hit. At least two GPU generations went by before shaders became the norm and had no performance concern. Doom 3 was designed around the idea of shaders of the GeForce 3, but when the game was released it was pretty much unplayable on it.

So we've had two generations of RTX cards, one generation of RT capable Radeon cards. I believe RT might become less of a curiosity with the upcoming generation of GPUs that's coming later this year, but RT as a feature you see enabled by default in most games will happen no sooner than a year later. It will probably take years before full path tracing becomes anything else than a Quake 2 RTX you play for half an hour and forget about.

There is no doubt we can achieve great lighting and shadows with pure shaders and no hardware ray tracing. Unreal Engine 5's Lumen does pretty much everything without engaging hardware RT and looks absolutely marvelous, but I think we're close to crossing the line of what is feasible with "normal" rasterization (by becoming too complex and requiring too much raw horsepower) vs doing RT in hardware.

 

[Bad Sector]

If it was some tech that required even more artists to create assets for the game, inflating the costs of production even further, I would be against it. But it's the opposite, potentially automating away a lot of manual work required for creating scenery.

Indeed, raytracing simplifies a lot of things, from the visual perspective you get more accurate lighting and shadows and from the programming perspective you get a simpler rendering pipeline (no need for shadowmapping hacks). The hardware isn't at that point yet though, some hacks are still needed and we still only get to shoot a handful of rays, but raytracing is even more parallelization friendly than rasterization so performance is bound to boom in the future.

In addition it can enable some things that were hard or even impossible to do previously, e.g. better transparencies and -if/when the intersection tests themselves become programmable- volumes like smoke and water that aren't rendered as surface approximations (or as particle quads) but take depth and translucency into account and get properly shaded and cast and receive shadows.

 

[Perkel]

yeah i expect raytracing to pick up pretty quickly as hardware improves. The best thing about full raytracing pipeline is that it massively simplifies rendering. No need for hacks, no need for quadruple 360 hops around various problems, no need to build advanced math techniques to have just a taste of GI and so on.

I think the real test for raytracing will come with 4xxx of nvidia gpus. 3xxx improved raytracing only just a little bit performance wise while 4xxx should be where nvidia will change a thing a bit. There should be a lot of low hanging fruits at start of this process.

 

[gurugeorge]

Just as an amateur onlooker, it strikes me that raytracing is in an analogous position to what shaders were like in the first couple of Nvidia generations that had shaders - heavy load, more of a gimmick and not really worth it, games didn't implement it much, or didn't impement it well. But it eventually picked up to be ubiquitous and fantastic. I think the same will probably happen with raytracing.

 

[Bad Sector]

The best thing about full raytracing pipeline is that it massively simplifies rendering.

Well, we're still far from full raytracing pipelines, right now the GPUs aren't fast enough even for secondary effects without denoising and the rasterization functionality is still a large part of the GPU - meaning if it isn't used then the GPU's power isn't used to its fullest and the game would be leaving performance on the table.

I think it'll take a few generations for rasterization to take a back seat and even a bit more for it to be removed from the hardware (rasterization can be "emulated" in terms of raytracing) - consider that Nvidia GPUs even in the 4xx series (and most likely later too) still had dedicated hardware for fixed pipeline functionality even though theoretically that could have been implemented in shaders several generations before.

 

[soulburner]

Each new 3D technology is barely useful initially. Shaders tanked performance on a few generations of shader capable cards. So did tessellation. So will RT. And as with shaders and tessellation before, RT will soon become the norm.

The rumors and leaks suggest the new gen of GPUs will supposedly be ~100% faster in each price segment, but they're also completely silent about the RT aspect. It's worth to know that RT calculations are very memory bandwidth intensive. I recall reading an Nvidia paper about moving BVH calculations from the shader engine to a fixed pipeline hardware, which could be 2-3 times faster in theory, but it currently makes no sense because memory is not fast enough to offer a significant performance improvement, if any. So until we see graphic cards with GDDR7 I wouldn't count on a huge RT perf increase just yet.

 

[blessed king of longing]

Just as an amateur onlooker, it strikes me that raytracing is in an analogous position to what shaders were like in the first couple of Nvidia generations that had shaders - heavy load, more of a gimmick and not really worth it, games didn't implement it much, or didn't impement it well. But it eventually picked up to be ubiquitous and fantastic. I think the same will probably happen with raytracing.

that's generally been the trend with nvidia over the decades, rtx isn't an isolated thing in that

 

[Wunderbar]

The entire story of first expansion has been leaked.

It was accidentally added into game files with patch, now dataminer who found it after quarell with CDPR moderator leaked it. It was originally on r/ff06b5 subreddit, but now its deleted. You can find there every line and dialogue from first expansion.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/nzf1swld4io43or/ep1.7z/file

CDPR is the gift that keeps on giving.

 

[gurugeorge]

Christ, at this point I'm actually starting to feel sorry for them.

 

[Ibn Sina]

Summary of leak?

 

[lukaszek]

Summary of leak?

Spoiler

You portray Roszondas, who's just awakened from a decade of death with no memory of his past other than hazy recollections about fighting demons and the undead. However, in short order, you recall a lot about who you are, including your mission to defeat the evil forces invading the land of

Spoiler

Gorasul

and the special powers granted by your dragon stepfather, Crakan. These powers serve as an addition to the basic character stats. You're rated in dragon breath, dragon fear, dragon strength, and dragon eyes, and each can be adjusted with points awarded every time you advance a level. These attributes are of questionable value during the game, as they typically come into use only when Roszondas is in immediate peril. Whenever death approaches, he'll automatically use flame breath, a fear effect, or immense strength to fend off enemies.

 

[Ibn Sina]

Summary of leak?

Spoiler

You portray Roszondas, who's just awakened from a decade of death with no memory of his past other than hazy recollections about fighting demons and the undead. However, in short order, you recall a lot about who you are, including your mission to defeat the evil forces invading the land of

Spoiler

Gorasul

and the special powers granted by your dragon stepfather, Crakan. These powers serve as an addition to the basic character stats. You're rated in dragon breath, dragon fear, dragon strength, and dragon eyes, and each can be adjusted with points awarded every time you advance a level. These attributes are of questionable value during the game, as they typically come into use only when Roszondas is in immediate peril. Whenever death approaches, he'll automatically use flame breath, a fear effect, or immense strength to fend off enemies.

Sounds like an improvement in every way over the main story imo.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

Well, at least one thing is certain after this leak... the expansion exists.

 

[gerey]

CDPR is the gift that keeps on giving.

They're reaching Fallout 76 levels of trainwreck.

 

[Ibn Sina]

This will be the one and only expansion before abandoning the game and the engine

https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberpunkg...dam_kiciński_states_that_cyberpunk_2077_2023/

 

[gerey]

This will be the one and only expansion before abandoning the game and the engine

Pretty much what I expected, considering that not only did CDPR massively scale back the support for the game post-launch (hence why it took them so long to patch the game), never delivered all the promised free DLC and went completely radio silent. They likely cut the second expansion a month post-launch and simply kept quiet until people stopped giving a shit about the game.

I predict the expansion itself will be cobbled together with whatever stuff was left around from the base game, with a few addition, and it will be done on the cheap (hence why Keanu Reeves isn't reprising his role as Johnny) as a final cashgrab. In the meantime they'll release one final patch that will do fuckall, like all the other patches, and shift their focus towards fucking up Witcher 4.

Mark my words, the expansion won't fix any of the oustanding issues with the game, won't overhaul any of the retarded systems in place, won't introduce any new features - it will just be a bunch of shitty quests that all boil down to "go here, kill stuff".

CDPR can't die fast enough.

 

[Kjaska]

Lay off the black pills, dude.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Cyberpunk was my biggest vidya-related disappointment in recent memory. Such squandered potential.

 

[Wunderbar]

I predict the expansion itself will be cobbled together with whatever stuff was left around from the base game

pretty much this - the DLC will be set in Pacifica, the famously unfinished area.

 

[Drop Duck]

This will be the one and only expansion before abandoning the game and the engine

https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberpunkgame/comments/uyc0ug/adam_kiciński_states_that_cyberpunk_2077_2023/

I don't think I have ever seen a developer waste customer goodwill and tarnish their reputation this hard before in gaming history.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Cyberpunk was my biggest vidya-related disappointment in recent memory. Such squandered potential.

Mine is still Gothic 3 ...

 

[markec]

I would be happy with a "expansion" that doesnt actually add new content but just restore the things they cut from the game.

 

[Haplo]

I would be happy with a "expansion" that doesnt actually add new content but just restore the things they cut from the game.

Well, that'd be a lot more content then most "expansions" nowadays.

Although they did pretty big ones for Witcher in the past.

 

[markec]

I would be happy with a "expansion" that doesnt actually add new content but just restore the things they cut from the game.

Well, that'd be a lot more content then most "expansions" nowadays.

Although they did pretty big ones for Witcher in the past.

True and I would not hope for everything but some things.

Like expanding existing quests and dialogs with additional options, so you have new alternate paths of solving some quests and your background being a bigger factor trough the game.

Restoring lost character customization options like skills, attributes and lifepaths that play part with above point.

More immersive world with NPC schedules and better behavior.

Better police and reputation system.

But yeah even that would be a lot of work.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Game is near abandonware now? Christ, they proper fucked this game didn't they.