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Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered: A deep dive into its enhancements

HeWhoWalks

HeWhoWalks

Gold Member
Vick said:
I wasn't referring to cubemaps + SSR as seen in recent ND games though (planar mirrors aside). Those can look good but never perfect, and SSR especially is something I hate and reason I welcome RT reflections so gladily. I referred to planar reflections and similar techniques that have been used for decades.
Thanks for the kind words by the way.
Click to expand...
Ah, yeah. I forgot how effective that stuff used to be. Modern visuals can make you forget what once was.

Also, you're welcome!
 
Vick

Vick

Member
HeWhoWalks said:
the latter of which cannot be replicated with any other technique.
Click to expand...
But you can. We had perfect reflections on PS2 games for both bodies of water and even diffuse borders puddles, probably even earlier. God of War games (and Max Payne 2) were also filled with absolutely perfect reflections on marble and ice, with particularly impressive results in GoW III. Similar stuff also appeared in the original RE4 on GC. These are just some examples, the same goes for mirror reflections (with better results than RT reflections we got in some games), as far back as Max Payne 2 and probably even earlier, but also Dead Rising on 360, Batman: Arkham Asylum and many, many others.
As for lighting, you can bake your outdoor/indoor GI and make it interactive (occlusion of bounce) by using a similar capsule AO ND developed, if not downright have a fully real-time and completely interactive GI:





As far as I know first appeared on PS3 in 2013.

It is possible, it's just a pain in the ass, especially lighting, that requires insane amount of working hours, talent and artistry.
All completely erased by RT automation, which on proper hardware (not quite there yet, certainly not on Console) would allow these devs to focus on other things.

As for software vs hardware, rember the entirety of this video is achieved with no hardware accelerated RT:



To be clear though, I am in no way against RT, the exact opposite is true.
Just at this stage of hardware demands for it, translating into low res, many artifacts and performance issues, it's not always the recommended approach.
 
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Corporal.Hicks

Corporal.Hicks

Member
bitbydeath said:
RT is a waste of time and resources.
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The lighting with prebaked GI can look amazing (TLOU2 or remake), but I just cannot stand screen space reflections because they constantly fade as you move the camera (especially vertically). When implemented well, RT reflections are not that expensive. I played RE3 Remake with RT in 4K native at 120-180fps. Even the base PS5 has some impressive looking RT reflections (Spiderman for example).
 
Gaiff

Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
Vick said:
But you can. We had perfect reflections on PS2 games for both bodies of water and even diffuse borders puddles, probably even earlier. God of War games (and Max Payne 2) were also filled with absolutely perfect reflections on marble and ice, with particularly impressive results in GoW III. Similar stuff also appeared in the original RE4 on GC. These are just some examples, the same goes for mirror reflections (with better results than RT reflections we got in some games), as far back as Max Payne 2 and probably even earlier, but also Dead Rising on 360, Batman: Arkham Asylum and many, many others.
Click to expand...
Planar Reflections can sometimes give off reflections that look almost as nice as path tracing, but there are clear limitations. The most obvious one is that they don't really work for complex and dynamic scenes and only reflect a 2D "plane" along one axis, hence the name. They also render the scene twice, so if you had a huge mirror/building that reflected a wide/large area, you'd lose A LOT of performance. More than with ray tracing. They are great for simple scenes in older games, though. Also, last I checked, they worked with forward rendering, and this isn't used much anymore. I think Id still used it in DOOM 2016 and DOOM Eternal. We didn't stop using Planar Reflections because we just forgot, they're just not viable for complex geometry.
 
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Vick

Vick

Member
Gaiff said:
Planar Reflections can sometimes give off reflections that look almost as nice as path tracing, but there are clear limitations. The most obvious one is that they don't really work for complex and dynamic scenes and only reflect a 2D "plane" along one axis, hence the name. They also render the scene twice, so if you had a huge mirror/building that reflected a wide/large area, you'd lose A LOT of performance. More than with ray tracing. They are great for simple scenes in older games, though.
Click to expand...
Yeah, they are obviously demanding. Just an example of an alternative.

But RT reflections are not only relatively cheap and much more versatile, they also don't have the side effects and artifacts still present in some other RT techniques. They are effectively virtually perfect already.

Gaiff said:
Also, last I checked, they worked with forward rendering, and this isn't used much anymore. I think Id still used it in DOOM 2016 and DOOM Eternal. We didn't stop using Planar Reflections because we just forgot, they're just not viable for complex geometry.
Click to expand...
 
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Gaiff

Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
Vick said:
Yeah, they are obviously demanding. Just an example of an alternative.

But RT reflections are not only relatively cheap and much more versatile, they also don't have the side effects and artifacts still present in some other RT techniques. They are effectively virtually perfect already.


Click to expand...
Oh, I know it's available on UE as well. Just saying it's only used with forward renderers. Interestingly, the documentation also mentions the following: Planar Reflections cause your entire scene to be rendered twice, so you'll want to budget half your frame time for it on the Rendering thread and GPU!

Half of the frame time...yeah.
 
Vick

Vick

Member
Gaiff said:
Half of the frame time...yeah.
Click to expand...
Season 2 Yes GIF by CW Kung Fu


Looking good though.

unbyGHX.png

kjj0Mrl.png


They served us great.

And still do in deferred pipelines from ND actually.







Assuming that's what they used. Thought out of bounds/off camera secrets could provide some insight, but..

HWtvtm4.gif
 
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DeepSpace5D

DeepSpace5D

Member
Sounds like a meatier upgrade than I was expecting, especially with things like more npcs present in the world, all the reworked foliage etc. But i’m really curious about the reworked dialogue and facial animations because from what I remember, that was an area that had room for significant improvement.

For ten bucks this is an easy pick up. It’s been a few years since I played Zero Dawn and Im looking forward to returning. The Horizon games are like comfort food to me.
 
James Sawyer Ford

James Sawyer Ford

Gold Member
Crazy how Guerrilla went from very low quality NPC animations to the best in the business in just one game. I wish Bethesda had similar initiative with their titles, because they are some of the absolute worst at that.
 
midnightAI

midnightAI

Member
gow3isben said:
Uncharted 2 and God of War 2005 remake you cowards!
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That one is rumoured to be happening and could be announced very soon (even a remaster at this point would be considered a remake most likely as they would have to remake everything)
 
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gow3isben

gow3isben

Member
midnightAI said:
That one is rumoured to be happening and could be announced very soon (even a remaster at this point would be considered a remake most likely as they would have to remake everything)
Click to expand...

I think it is just going to be a resolution/framerate thing.

If more than that will be soooooo stoked.
 
GymWolf

GymWolf

Member
Games of Today said:
This is exciting to me. It'll be a jump in graphics like Uncharted 4 to Lost Legacy. This game will look better than Forbidden West which will be really cool we also get to see Guerilla's newest rendering technology on display, giving us hints at the quality of their next title.
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Maybe you meant from unchy 3 to unchy 4, lost legacy doesn't really look much better than 4, it was just a dlc in the same console.

And i doubt it's gonna look better than fw, they are trying to reach parity, not surpass that one, nothing of what they said make me think that it is gonna look better than fw, i mean i hope so, but i keep my expectations low.
 
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King Dazzar

King Dazzar

Member
I take it there's still no news on what the Pro enhanced bit will bring us? I'm wondering if it will simply be higher base resolution and/or PSSR upscale.
 
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