Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition arrives later this year with DLSS 2.0 and advanced ray-tracing

[nanoguy]

TL;DR: Metro Exodus is getting a free visual upgrade for people who have been able to get their hands on the latest gaming hardware. You may recall that Metro Exodus was among the first titles to feature ray tracing, even if the hardware available at the time was somewhat underpowered and couldn't do it complete justice.

Screenshot above showcases Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition's new visual effects

When we tested Metro Exodus at launch, even the RTX 2080 Ti struggled to maintain a locked 60 frames per second at 1440p with ray tracing effects. Enabling DLSS helped, but only at the cost of visual quality, since Nvidia's first implementation of the technology was a bit underwhelming. However, 4A Games did promise that Metro Exodus would receive a free, next-gen upgrade for PC gamers as well as next-gen consoles.

Today, the studio announced the Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, which brings a "fully ray traced experience" that takes advantage of the newest hardware (which is notoriously hard to acquire thanks to scalpers, miners, and other supply issues). Mac and Linux gamers are also getting the game this spring.

Metro's dev studio says it has built an all-new, fully ray-traced lighting pipeline that allows a host of new optimizations and visual upgrades to ray-traced global illumination, emissive lighting, and temporal reconstruction technology introduced with the original release.

For Nvidia card owners, there's also support for the much-improved DLSS 2.0, but there's no word if the game will support AMD's upcoming equivalent that is based on DirectML.

It's worth noting that Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition will be a separate download, as this isn't just a patch for the base game. The spec requirement to run the new game is to own either an Nvidia RTX graphics card or an AMD Radeon 6000 series graphics card, otherwise it just won't launch.

For console owners, the Enhanced Edition won't include advanced ray tracing reflections, but will sport the rest of the visual upgrades including 4K textures. Load times should be faster thanks to optimizations added specifically to take advantage of the storage architecture on the new consoles. And there's also added support for some platform-specific features such as spatial audio on Xbox Series X/S and haptic feedback on PlayStation 5's DualSense controller.

4A is aiming for the Enhanced Edition to run at 4K 60 FPS on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X with ray tracing enabled, while the Xbox Series S will only be able to run at 1080p 60 FPS. However, most of you will no doubt appreciate the ability to change the FOV, which will be possible on all consoles.

There is no set release date for consoles yet, 4A Games has planned to launch Mac and Linux versions of the game, starting with the macOS version in March. The PC release will be unleashed this April or May.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/88637-metro-exodus-enhanced-edition-arrives-later-year-dlss.html

 

[punctualturn]

And the spread of their proprietary lock-in tech continues unabated.

There is no hope.

Edit For the ones that missed it, I am talking about DLSS.

As we have observed over and over, RT so far only provides eye candy, but nothing else, gameplay wise.

 

[Skjorn]

And the spread of their proprietary lock-in tech continues unabated.

There is no hope.

and what would be the non-proprietary alternative that has been equally invested into?

 

[Irata]

And the spread of their proprietary lock-in tech continues unabated.

There is no hope.

The funny thing is that there will also be a console version with ray tracing. Want to bet if any of the RDNA2 RT optimizations make it to the PC version ?

 

[Shadowboxer]

The funny thing is that there will also be a console version with ray tracing. Want to bet if any of the RDNA2 RT optimizations make it to the PC version ?

Digital foundry recently showed that control runs quite a bit better on a PS5/XBSX with ray tracing on that it did on an RX6000 series GPU. They did note that it might have been because the console implementation of ray tracing is not the same. But it doesn’t bode well for ray tracing on current Radeon parts.

 

[Irata]

Digital foundry recently showed that control runs quite a bit better on a PS5/XBSX with ray tracing on that it did on an RX6000 series GPU. They did note that it might have been because the console implementation of ray tracing is not the same. But it doesn’t bode well for ray tracing on current Radeon parts.

Yup, and the reason why RDNA2 optimizations made on consoles (XBox uses DX 12) don‘t make their way to the PC version is ?

I mean, the work is already done but yet....what could motivate publishers ?

 

[Shadowboxer]

Yup, and the reason why RDNA2 optimizations made on consoles (XBox uses DX 12) don‘t make their way to the PC version is ?

I mean, the work is already done but yet....what could motivate publishers ?

From what I’ve seen publishers are putting an enormous amount of effort and money into ray tracing. But for Nvidia cards. AMD cards do support most of the ray tracing out there but don’t perform anywhere near as well. This has lead to either AMD or the publisher locking ray tracing out on Radeon parts.

RDNA2 console based ray tracing is significantly lower quality than RTX ray tracing. It costs money to develop a lower quality PC solution. I can imagine with consoles it’s worth spending the cash to get it working. But for the 10 people who own RDNA2 and actually use it for gaming and not crypto mining I can understand why developers don’t bother.

We aren’t going to get developers making bespoke lower quality ray tracing solutions for PC RDNA2 with the tiny market share it has so really we need AMD to make a a card that can run the existing ray tracing close to or as good as Nvidias cards do.

However if you are a fan of godfall then you are in luck as it appears AMD have paid the developers to prevent Nvidia cards from running it with ray tracing so they can market it as a ray tracing exclusive.

 

[Irata]

From what I’ve seen publishers are putting an enormous amount of effort and money into ray tracing. But for Nvidia cards. AMD cards do support most of the ray tracing out there but don’t perform anywhere near as well. This has lead to either AMD or the publisher locking ray tracing out on Radeon parts.

RDNA2 console based ray tracing is significantly lower quality than RTX ray tracing. It costs money to develop a lower quality PC solution. I can imagine with consoles it’s worth spending the cash to get it working. But for the 10 people who own RDNA2 and actually use it for gaming and not crypto mining I can understand why developers don’t bother.

We aren’t going to get developers making bespoke lower quality ray tracing solutions for PC RDNA2 with the tiny market share it has so really we need AMD to make a a card that can run the existing ray tracing close to or as good as Nvidias cards do.

My point was that developers already made the investment to get RT running on consoles (RDNA2) with good performance. So what would the extra effort be to simply use that on PC - using DX12 Ultimate just like the XBox ? The work is already done, so why invest additional resources on creating an entirely different RT implementation on PC ?

As for mining - sadly for miners, AMD stopped making GPU that can mine close to or as well as nVidia, so I doubt miners use RDNA2 given the much better Ampere supply.

 

[Shadowboxer]

My point was that developers already made the investment to get RT running on consoles (RDNA2) with good performance. So what would the extra effort be to simply use that on PC - using DX12 Ultimate just like the XBox ? The work is already done, so why invest additional resources on creating an entirely different RT implementation on PC ?

As for mining - sadly for miners, AMD stopped making GPU that can mine close to or as well as nVidia, so I doubt miners use RDNA2 given the much better Ampere supply.

My guess would be because not enough people own a ray tracing Radeon card for developers or AMD to bother.

I don’t think it’s as easy as simply copying the work done to enable ray tracing on consoles.

 

[punctualturn]

The funny thing is that there will also be a console version with ray tracing. Want to bet if any of the RDNA2 RT optimizations make it to the PC version ?

As I mentioned on my edit, I was talking about DLSS.

As Steve has mentioned a millions times, RT is simply eye candy.

That said, your question is a good one, but I am personally not holding my breath on RT, since not even a 3090 can really do much RT wise yet.

This is at least 3 generations way to be usable, hence not a big deal.

The big deal is the relentless push of DLSS, which as we know, is just one more lock-in tool from Nvidia.

 

[Shadowboxer]

As I mentioned on my edit, I was talking about DLSS.

As Steve has mentioned a millions times, RT is simply eye candy.

That said, your question is a good one, but I am personally not holding my breath on RT, since not even a 3090 can really do much RT wise yet.

This is at least 3 generations way to be usable, hence not a big deal.

The big deal is the relentless push of DLSS, which as we know, is just one more lock-in tool from Nvidia.

What are you on about? I have an RTX 2080 and there is no game with ray tracing that I can’t run at 60fps or more. Claiming a 3090 can’t do much RT wise is laughably false.

Also yes of course RT is eye candy. What isn’t? Surely using something like Anisotropic filtering or ambient occlusion is just eye candy. Do you not want to run with the best visual settings? If not then you ought to either buy a console or a 5 year old budget GPU and never anything more.

Also DLSS is class. In some games it doesn’t just offer a better frame rate but improves the image quality above native too. Il happily buy into that tech. The benefits for me the user are awesome. What exactly is wrong with this? You seem annoyed purely because AMD can’t offer the same thing...

 

[Irata]

My guess would be because not enough people own a ray tracing Radeon card for developers or AMD to bother.

I don’t think it’s as easy as simply copying the work done to enable ray tracing on consoles.

According to Microsoft, it should be :

Prior to DX12 Ultimate, there was limited overlap between these two cycles. Even when hardware was similar, the software interfaces were quite dissimilar, discouraging aligned adoption by developers.

By unifying the graphics platform across PC and Xbox Series X, DX12 Ultimate serves as a force multiplier for the entire gaming ecosystem.

No longer do the cycles operate independently! Instead, they now combine synergistically: when Xbox Series X releases, there will already be many millions of DX12 Ultimate PC graphics cards in the world with the same feature set, catalyzing a rapid adoption of new features, and when Xbox Series X brings a wave of new console gamers, PC will likewise benefit from this vast surge of new DX12 Ultimate capable hardware!

Announcing DirectX 12 Ultimate - DirectX Developer Blog

It is time for DirectX to evolve once again. From the team that has brought PC and Console gamers the latest in graphics innovation for nearly 25 years, we are beyond pleased to bring gamers DirectX 12 Ultimate, the culmination of the best graphics technology we’ve ever introduced in an...

devblogs.microsoft.com

and

Though all that sounds esoteric, in practice it creates a unified programming interface across the upcoming Xbox Series X console and Windows 10 for all the newly hyped acceleration and intelligence algorithms on that console, which is due out at the end of this year. This makes cross-platform game design simpler (at least in some ways for those two), PC graphics-card driver support swifter and -- what we really care about -- means potentially more games looking more realistic and adding playability without taking a performance hit.

Windows' DirectX 12 Ultimate will help Xbox Series X, PC games look better

It dials DirectX 12 up to 11.

www.cnet.com

So to me it looks like if someone makes a ray traced game that runs fine on Xbox Series X‘s RDNA2 gpu but poorly on the PC must have made a conscious effort to do so, I.e. put in extra work. How that pays off financially is rather curious.

 

[Shadowboxer]

According to Microsoft, it should be :

Announcing DirectX 12 Ultimate - DirectX Developer Blog

It is time for DirectX to evolve once again. From the team that has brought PC and Console gamers the latest in graphics innovation for nearly 25 years, we are beyond pleased to bring gamers DirectX 12 Ultimate, the culmination of the best graphics technology we’ve ever introduced in an...

devblogs.microsoft.com

and

Windows' DirectX 12 Ultimate will help Xbox Series X, PC games look better

It dials DirectX 12 up to 11.

www.cnet.com

So to me it looks like if someone makes a ray traced game that runs fine on Xbox Series X‘s RDNA2 gpu but poorly on the PC must have made a conscious effort to do so, I.e. put in extra work. How that pays off financially is rather curious.

I’m not a software developer of any kind so I don’t know. However I do know that a lot of the resources of the dev team are spent testing and optimisation. So a game gets finished then the teams set about improving performance and saving process cycles/memory etc. Perhaps they didn’t bother doing this with Radeon due to the small tiny market share?

One other thing I would say, we know the consoles can do limited ray tracing. But they aren’t using the same GPU as a RX6000 series card. Same architecture we are told. It’s entirely possible that the consoles are better at ray tracing than the RX6000 parts. Although I would find that unlikely.

My best guess would be that there must be some cost to it and that either AMDs ray tracing performance is not good enough or the market share of people gaming on RX6000 parts is too small.

 

[grumblguts]

Im not convinced about any of this tech.
can do it with contrast sharpening and planar reflections.
Be hard to tell the difference if done right.