CD Projekt's Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.0 + Phantom Liberty Expansion Thread

[Modron]

Titan Quest had an expansion come out last year, 15 years. Age of Empires 2 is getting a new expansion in two weeks.

 

[Gargaune]

That expansion segment's what, around 15% of all resources? In terms of hard numbers, it might not be that small a team given CDPR has enough people to run a space program, and the graph indicates a slight 10-15% staffing uptick over Dec 2021. But that doesn't matter for shit if you consider the results - more than two years to regurgitate a single expansion for the game? What a joke.

 

[gurugeorge]

Pretty sure it will have the gamebryo curse, the old area cannot be touched and the new loads up seperately. Which will make outskirts stand out as sore thumb even more. This stuff poisons gamedev for far too long now, if server side streaming (preferably textures not frames) is needed to get rid of it then old platforms should just roll over and die.

Not to mention before the recent misfiring UE5 marketing barrage it was kinda established unreal games will reside in datacenters because too high storage req.

Huh? Don't hard drives just get bigger and bigger? When I started gaming, a terabyte was inconceivably huge, now it's commonplace. Internet also gets faster, so downloading all that shit isn't a problem either.

 

[Antigoon]

Greedfall's first and only expansion also took about 2 years, was shit though.

 

[Gargaune]

This stuff poisons gamedev for far too long now, if server side streaming (preferably textures not frames) is needed to get rid of it then old platforms should just roll over and die.

What? Did you just make an argument in favour of cloud gaming? I'd rather all games everywhere be Cyberpunk 2077 Dragon Age 2 forever than have that shit paradigm succeed. Stadia's failure was the biggest incline the medium's had in years, even if it was just a reprieve.

 

[tritosine2k]

Pretty sure it will have the gamebryo curse, the old area cannot be touched and the new loads up seperately. Which will make outskirts stand out as sore thumb even more. This stuff poisons gamedev for far too long now, if server side streaming (preferably textures not frames) is needed to get rid of it then old platforms should just roll over and die.

Not to mention before the recent misfiring UE5 marketing barrage it was kinda established unreal games will reside in datacenters because too high storage req.

Huh? Don't hard drives just get bigger and bigger? When I started gaming, a terabyte was inconceivably huge, now it's commonplace. Internet also gets faster, so downloading all that shit isn't a problem either.

https://venturebeat.com/2020/05/13/...l-engine-5-to-make-next-gen-graphics-shine/2/

What we’ll see as people start to get their heads around Nanite is the data streaming — not just a primary and secondary cache, but a tertiary cache that’s cloud-based. We’ll see where people take it. But we’re definitely designing the next generation of the engine so that storage can be off actual hardware.

Sweeney: Sony’s new PlayStation 5 is a remarkably balanced device, not only the GPU power, but also an order of magnitude increase in storage bandwidth, which makes it possible to not just render this kind of detail, but stream it in dynamically as the player is moving through the world. That’s going to be critical to rendering the kind of detail in bigger open-world games. It’s one thing to render everything that can fit in memory, but another thing to have a world that might be tens of gigabytes in size.

Libreri: That’s our goal with Unreal Engine 5. Huge, complex, large-scale worlds can be streamed into the machine with incredible detail, and without noticing things popping in the traditional way you’d see.

Generally AAA is more trouble than its worth, so cyberpunk first person perspective wasn't a bad idea for less trouble, but if you do FP you need to match it up with 48-60 frames at least. Not to mention input lag REALLY makes a difference and short is sooo much better.

So the logical choice is >300-500 GB worth of precomputed lighting "KEY" lighting. Yet 3-500 GB is luxury, especially with mobile around the corner closing the gap already.

Libreri: We wanted to get to a point where we felt that things started to look very real and very photographic. You can’t do that without dynamic global illumination. For years we’ve had a system in the engine we call Lightmass that allows you to bake GI, but the problem with that is that in the next-generation, you’ll want everything moving and animating and destructible. You need a live GI solution.

We’ve tried. Even in Unreal Engine 4 there were a few pieces we did that helped with live GI, the screen-space GI thing we did and other things. But this was the first time that we really nailed it, where at console performance levels in a huge scene you were able to get dynamic lighting. It’s awesome. When the roof opens in that big area that the statues are stored, that light is — we’re not keyframing anything. It’s just the wall opening and it illuminates the space.

Yet they can't hit 48-60 frames with that so does it really matter. You just stream keyed stuff and that's that. This stuff has no input lag if not frames are streamed but other formats. Not to mention client side volumetric stuff has no chance. Not even transparency.

 

[Kjaska]

It makes no fucking sense that a dynamic global illumination technique would cost you 500gb of storage. You're placing light sources, not textures. Either you're Terry Davis and the most cleverest programmer in the world and understand these concepts way better than I do. Or you're a schizo making connections where there are none.

Based on the shit you've been spewing in the Path of Exile thread, I tend to believe the latter.

 

[tritosine2k]

So the logical choice is >300-500 GB worth of precomputed lighting "KEY" lighting.

^dude you shat up that thread with your Tourette's antics you can't help and you can't even read and you shouldn't even play that game because you just ape others to hell and back.

 

[mediocrepoet]

This stuff poisons gamedev for far too long now, if server side streaming (preferably textures not frames) is needed to get rid of it then old platforms should just roll over and die.

What? Did you just make an argument in favour of cloud gaming? I'd rather all games everywhere be Cyberpunk 2077 Dragon Age 2 forever than have that shit paradigm succeed. Stadia's failure was the biggest incline the medium's had in years, even if it was just a reprieve.

I agree with the overall sentiment here, but Dragon Age 2? Let's not get crazy.

 

[Kjaska]

What you're suggesting isn't dynamic anymore. Even if you would do it like that, which makes no fucking sense, pre-baked lighting maps for the entire game world would only cost a fraction of the storage space of the actual map, since you're only storing 1 (one) singular data point per pixel. Depending on the resolution, you can compress that map even further.

But you don't do it like that. Nobody would. Have you heard of RTX? This is where the technology is going, not 500gb of pre-baked lighting maps.

 

[racofer]

Just install some mods, dude!

I would rather install (and play) modded Skyrim than attempt to fix Cyberpunk with mods.

 

[tritosine2k]

https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=15022

This might work really well in an open-world game like Fallout.(Paraphrase)

Sadly, that would be very difficult. Rage is big for a modern shooter, but it’s peanuts compared to Fallout 3 / New Vegas / Skyrim. Having texture stampers running around trying to fill in ALL THOSE DUNGEONS with unique textures would be exceptionally labor-intensive. Moreover, it final game data would be gargantuan. Covering Skyrim in a megatexture would take terabytes.

However, you might be able to do some really cool stuff if you mixed megatexturing with procedural techniques, so instead of streaming pre-made data off of disk you’re just building it on the fly in-memory. You’d basically be combining Project Frontier with Rage, which is like making a steam-powered space shuttle.

"Covering Skyrim in a megatexture would take terabytes."

accounting for day night cycle it certainly is >TB

RTX doesn't hit any sensible framerate at sensible resolution in unreal5 "thanks to" dynamic lighting and that's with cascaded shadows stuff so it's already sub-optimal even below 48 fps and not as smooth distance gradiation as RAGE. Not to mention temporal "reconstruction" .

You thought Rage was underrated?

I’ll get around to doing a proper review eventually, but my short answer is: Yeah. This is an old-school shooter with modern sensibilities. No sticky cover. You can play it like a cover shooter if that’s what you like, but you can also run out there and blast people in the face if that’s what you’re into. (That’s what I’m into.) I loved the atmosphere. Weapons were fun. Foes were fun. Driving was fun. Scenery was spectacular.

Disclaimer: The story has a lot wrong with it. Like, I need a whole post to deconstruct it fully. Also, the software is surprisingly fiddly for an id Software game. This is the least-stable id game I’ve ever played. (Which is still more stable than the best Bethesda game I’ve ever played, so your mileage may vary.)

 

[Red Hexapus]

cyberpunk being outsold by two other games in the same theme-genre on GOG

Anachronox on the fourth place in bestselling? Yeah, it's cheap dirt I guess, but I don't envy people who decide to play it. Better to watch Anachronox the Movie on YT.

 

[Kjaska]

https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=15022

This might work really well in an open-world game like Fallout.(Paraphrase)

Sadly, that would be very difficult. Rage is big for a modern shooter, but it’s peanuts compared to Fallout 3 / New Vegas / Skyrim. Having texture stampers running around trying to fill in ALL THOSE DUNGEONS with unique textures would be exceptionally labor-intensive. Moreover, it final game data would be gargantuan. Covering Skyrim in a megatexture would take terabytes.

However, you might be able to do some really cool stuff if you mixed megatexturing with procedural techniques, so instead of streaming pre-made data off of disk you’re just building it on the fly in-memory. You’d basically be combining Project Frontier with Rage, which is like making a steam-powered space shuttle.

"Covering Skyrim in a megatexture would take terabytes."

accounting for day night cycle it certainly is >TB

RTX doesn't hit any sensible framerate at sensible resolution in unreal5 "thanks to" dynamic lighting and that's with cascaded shadows stuff so it's already sub-optimal even below 48 fps and not as smooth distance gradiation as RAGE. Not to mention temporal "reconstruction" .

Literally the first lines of the shit you've linked say this:

I still don’t understand what technical advantage you get out of having one huge texture image instead of lots of smaller ones.

It’s not a technical advantage, but an artistic one

Not to mention they are talking about textures, not lighting. Nobody is going to use that shit. Meanwhile even the PlayStation 5 has some RT tech enabled already. I'm playing Cyberpunk with RT on at 2,5k resolution at around 60fps. Have you ever heard of DLSS? Take your meds, dude.

Not to mention it's a 10y old video, lmao. id tech7 dropped megatextures for DOOM Eternal altogether.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

It makes no fucking sense that a dynamic global illumination technique would cost you 500gb of storage. You're placing light sources, not textures

I'm fairly certain Cyberpunk 2077 uses light mapping and shadow mapping so this is why. You are using textures and dynamic lights at the same time. I read somewhere that claims it doesn't so I could be wrong and if that is the case CDPR has a lot of explaining to do lol. Witcher 3 on the switch had to use Lightmaps so the engine can use it, the question is does it in this context as well.

 

[Kjaska]

It makes no fucking sense that a dynamic global illumination technique would cost you 500gb of storage. You're placing light sources, not textures

I'm fairly certain Cyberpunk 2077 uses light mapping and shadow mapping so this is why. You are using textures and dynamic lights at the same time. I read somewhere that claims it doesn't so I could be wrong and if that is the case CDPR has a lot of explaining to do lol.

Of course it does. It's on old and trusty technique, but it's not dynamic. The artist places light sources around the world by hand and these are then turned off or on, based on the level of destruction the scene is experiencing. The storage required for that is minimal compared to other assets. Cyberpunk is also not 500gb in installation size. tritosine is connecting dots where there are none.

 

[Bad Sector]

Literally the first lines of the shit you've linked say this: [...]
Not to mention they are talking about textures, not lighting.

Shamus was wrong on that one, lighting was a big part of megatextures - instead of lightmaps that are lower resolution textures merged in render time with reusable (and often tiled) higher resolution textures, id Tech 5 (and 6 to some extent) merged everything into a (sort of) single unique texture. The "source" material was still the same textures made in the same way as in other games and the game still had precomputed lighting, however instead of treating textures and lightmaps as separate things, the engine had tools to calculate a new texture (the megatexture) from both textures and lighting at the same time (as well as merging in decals, small meshes, etc) and the renderer only had to worry about that single megatexture.

It is kinda weird that he missed that part considering that at the past he did something similar for a terrain engine he made himself by baking both the texture and lighting on unique terrain textures. Megatexture is basically that, but instead of being only for terrain it is used for everything.

Also what - i assume - tritosine2k is saying is to use megatexture-like functionality for an open world game where you not only bake the lighting in a single time (like Rage did) but also create multiple "megatextures" for different times of day/night and interpolate between them (Assassin's Creed Unity did something like that too AFAIK, but for regular lightmaps). This would obviously require massive amounts of data especially with higher-than-Rage (apparent) texture resolutions, hence the mention of streaming.

(having said all that i'm not sure if that'd really be practical, especially when it is much much cheaper for everyone involved to just let realtime raytracing do the GI job and just expect that nextgen GPUs will be better at tracing rays to reach 60fps)

 

[rusty_shackleford]

'megatextures' is just a marketing word for virtual texturing, basically every modern game uses it

 

[Bad Sector]

'megatextures' is just a marketing word for virtual texturing, basically every modern game uses it

Megatextures are more of an implementation of virtual texturing (remember that it is entirely done in software) and while some (though not so many as to say that basically every modern game uses them) modern games do use sparse textures / tiled resources (same thing, different name between OpenGL/Vulkan and Direct3D), they are very rarely used like in megatextures. Modern use tends to be limited to specific parts of the world (often terrain) and instead of loading the tile data off disk directly, they are generated on the fly which allows for higher fidelity "textures" but without the enormous disk usage of a megatexture-like approach would require.

Not sure what UE5 would do that, i haven't looked into how nanite works, however when i toyed with the idea of virtual geometry some time ago i stored everything in textures so that i could use virtual texturing for streaming in the data (i never went on doing that since i lost interest pretty much the same day i posted the video since i have no use for such high polycounts myself), so if nanite does something similar i'd expect future games to actually rely a lot on it (especially if PS5-like direct-to-GPU data streaming becomes more widespread).

 

[tritosine2k]

https://jcgt.org/published/0004/04/01/

(having said all that i'm not sure if that'd really be practical, especially when it is much much cheaper for everyone involved to just let realtime raytracing do the GI job and just expect that nextgen GPUs will be better at tracing rays to reach 60fps

Wakey wakey.

1.There will be always more holes than cheese with realtime RT. Carmack was right. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/201...me-ray-tracing-card/?comments=1&post=23723213
2.Meanwhile megatexture pipeline just can use photogrammetry if you want something both really cheap and really massive.

So you can even instinctively say:

This might work really well in an open-world game like Fallout.(Paraphrase)

And it's very true.

 

[Bad Sector]

1.There will be always more holes than cheese with realtime RT. Carmack was right. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/201...me-ray-tracing-card/?comments=1&post=23723213

This is a very old article that predates Nvidia's RTX implementations which addresses most of the issues mentioned there and that article is basically Carmack repeating a much older reply he had.

2.Meanwhile megatexture pipeline just can use photogrammetry if you want something both really cheap and really massive.

Photogrammetry and megatextures are not really related, one will give you raw high fidelity (though messy) data for 3D models, the other (remember that we refer to the approach used by id Tech 5/6, not sparse resources in general) will give you a large texture to store surface data data in (it doesn't store surfaces though).

 

[tritosine2k]

1. "Old", is just handwaving, everything he says still stands, most of this Lumen stuff is very laggy temporal reconstruction that's unfit for action games & >30watt clients fell out of fashion really hard,while Rage looks good enough, Order1886 is good enough even without remasters, not to mention both have MSAA instead of that blurry temporal reconstruction that even makes Diablo2 resurrected unplayable to many.

2. "Photogrammetry and megatextures are not really related," how do you know? Photogrammetry and reverse modeling is improving hence uptick in "neural radiance field" publications, it's literally all over the place. Meanwhile in AAA

 

[Wesp5]

I don't care what texture modus Unreal Engine 5 uses, but hopefully it doesn't have the textures-popping-in-while-looking problem that all other Unreal Engines and many others have !

 

[Abu Antar]

https://twitter.com/cdprojektred_ir/status/1514644881045610497?s=21&t=_FtuQxXRy3HQX5LDNG1XjA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfMcnsdfDJc

How many copies did Witcher 3 sell?

40M+

 

[DeepOcean]

About the sales number, problem is that from those 18 million copies, Cyberbug only sold 4 millions on 2021, while this hardly means CDPR will be bankrupt, it means a reduction on the interest on the game after the launch debacle and the ridiculously long patch cycle as some sources claim CDPR was expecting sales closer to the Witcher 3 levels, the massive bad reputation from the launch disaster sticked and the new gen version barely did a dent into fixing that what was their goal, it seems CDPR is abandoning the Cyberbug Titanic.

So, for the few true believers remaining that still believe CDPR will keep supporting this game in large scale are up to a rude awakening, CDPR scrapped their plans to add multiplayer functionality on Cyberbug engine and that means they are pushing hard their transition to Unreal right now and scaling back any remaining investment on RedEngine, if you look to their man power distribution chart, the part for Witcher 4 only grows larger. People are talking of "expansions" but lately the CDPR PR is mentioning "expansion", meaning, they arent commiting on a second expansion and it is questionable if the first expansion wont be just a glorified DLC.

Hilariously, CDPR setup an internal committee that will be elected by employees to advise the management if they have a massive fuck up like this on their hands again, supposedly a committee like this wont be made of sychopants that say what the management want to hear as they are on a group, and in theory, as there is less of a threat of they losing their jobs, they will speak their minds. Of course, one could ask the question of how about the management stop having their heads on their asses?