Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora was Digital Foundry’s alternative for 2023’s greatest graphics of the 12 months and so it was with a point of pleasure that we acquired overview code for Star Wars Outlaws. Ubisoft Huge’s high-tech Snowdrop Engine has returned, as soon as once more delivering a number of the greatest visuals we have seen. The important thing technological foundations stay: RT world illumination for diffuse lighting and reflections, volumetric fog, clouds and sky, and excessive high quality element and texture work. On prime of that, PC customers can take visuals to the subsequent degree with RTX Direct Illumination, making each gentle and shadow ray-traced. There are flaws and points that want enchancment, however there isn’t any doubt that that is one other key showcase title for the PC format.
Trying on the key Snowdrop options although, there are some fascinating adjustments – if not within the core expertise itself then within the execution. I’d argue that the ray-traced lighting specifically will get extra alternative to shine as a result of range of the worlds you go to and the plethora of industrially-produced surfaces. In Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, man-made interiors had been maybe the least spectacular components of that recreation’s visible make up, with outside areas trying so significantly better. In Star Wars Outlaws, there is a related dynamic time of day to Avatar and different open world video games, however by necessity, a fantastic chunk of the sport takes place in areas which can be constructed up, like industrial areas, habitations, and mining complexes.
You could find your self sneaking round excessive tech interiors with easy curvy strains and polished surfaces, or you could find your self in grungy low-tech areas which can be overcrowded and have poor entry to sunlight. With dynamic lighting, indoor environments, or areas which can be closely sheltered from direct sunlighting, are tougher to light up convincingly as all objects occluding gentle make it tougher to depend upon typical rasterisation methods. Ubisoft Huge’s utilization of ray-traced world illumination and reflections in Star Wars Outlaws makes the sport scenes’ structure truly work from a lighting perspective with out trying awkward – and it permits viable playspaces which can be uncommon to see in video games utilizing conventional rasterised lighting methods.
For instance, town of Mirogana is constructed into – and beneath – what seems like an enormous hollowed out mountain, and plenty of areas of town by no means ever see direct daylight attributable to rock, masonry, or different constructions getting in the way in which. In a recreation that makes use of rasterised methods for real-time lighting, lighting such a metropolis can be a nightmare as these methods lack the precision to make occluded areas with out direct lighting look sensible.
Because of RTGI and RT reflections in Snowdrop, Mirogana truly works regardless of the dearth of direct lighting. All these areas out of daylight or out of the neon glow of synthetic lamps tackle a hyper-realistic look – the place the little bits of sky peaking via gentle up the areas beneath, giving them a blue or gray directional tint. In the meantime, all objects forged shadows from that skylight, grounding them into the world and making them look pure – not hovering or glowing such as you may see in a recreation missing ray-traced lighting. This constancy on this surroundings can be not possible to mannequin with earlier state-of-the-art real-time lighting methods.
In case you have the PC horsepower to spare, you possibly can transfer to the subsequent degree in realism due to RTX Direct Illumination and DLSS Ray Reconstruction. RTXDI is a way often known as ReStir Direct Lighting. This system is a type of path-tracing, changing almost the entire recreation’s direct lighting – eliminating shadow maps and making every gentle and its shadow ray-traced. Like Avatar, the bottom recreation makes use of shadow maps and rasterised lighting for all of the closest recreation shadows from the solar or from any of the sport’s synthetic lights: RTXDI replaces these with ray-traced lights and ray-traced shadows. That is a very simplistic overview however successfully, we’re taking a look at a much more complete resolution for RT lighting that the video embedded above is greatest positioned to showcase.
With Outlaws possessing so many ray-traced lighting options, it is smart to denoise them to make them look higher and right here is the place DLSS Ray Reconstruction involves the fore. This Nvidia RTX-exclusive expertise seems to enhance upon basic denoisers by utilising machine studying to do the upscaling and denoising in a single step – in observe it has proven nice promise and outcomes, albeit with points. It is a related scenario in Outlaws, however with some key variations. To level out the various positives first, Ray Reconstruction dramatically improves the standard of lighting, reflection stability and element – particularly in movement, the place results replace a lot quicker than they do with customary denoisers. Moreover, noise and flicker are lowered with ray reconstruction and element in shadows and reflections is far, a lot improved.
Ray reconstruction additionally has some points – edge instances that simply do not look proper. Some element is denoised into oblivion, whereas there’s some smearing on Kay’s hair. I additionally observed that the holograms smear on edges, whereas Ray Reconstruction additionally has issues with arduous edges, with undulating waves and ghost results that are not there with customary denoising. We’re nonetheless within the first technology of Ray Reconstruction, however a 12 months has handed now since we first noticed it in Cyberpunk 2077 and it is time for a high quality replace from Nvidia. Its advantages are supremely apparent, however the drawbacks merely cannot be missed proper now.
On that lower than optimistic be aware, I wish to go into a number of the issues that Outlaws doesn’t do properly, requiring enchancment. For instance, characters look higher in gameplay than they do in cinematics, which applies to Kay and all of the lead forged, but in addition NPCs too. Kay’s stilted animation and lighting do her no favours in cutscenes, virtually making her appear to be a distinct character altogether – an animatron compared to the life-like individual seen in gameplay. In most triple-A fare, cinematics fare significantly better than in-game characters, however not right here. Within the grand scheme of issues, I’m completely satisfied that fewer assets are spent on cutscenes than gameplay constancy, however it’s jarring when the sport switches to cinematics the place the whole lot seems so stilted compared to the in any other case naturalistic feeling of the gameplay scenes.
Getting again to picture high quality, there are points in two areas. First, aliasing and ghosting. Options like Kay’s hair or the shifting grass within the recreation by no means look secure. With hair rendering, it’s eternally aliased, no matter how a lot picture high quality you throw at it. For grass or different tremendous options, it could actually smear and look aliased in a lower than nice method, even when maxed out. Maybe this has one thing to do with movement vector high quality for these components, however Outlaws has points with picture high quality right here that Avatar didn’t.
One other picture high quality subject stems from the sport’s post-processing. Star Wars Outlaws has a continuing blur and lens barrel distortion across the display screen edges – this, coupled with movie grain and chromatic aberration, results in a distinctly softer picture than that seen in Avatar. You may flip off movie grain or chromatic aberration, however attempting to show off different lens results has points. Utilizing the cinematic results high quality choice, dropping to medium settings does appear to eliminate the fixed unfocused pixel look within the centre of the picture, however provides its personal semi-transparent horizontal line artefacts. This isn’t good. As I see it, Ubisoft Huge ought to make all of its lens results and post-processing individually togglable so customers can tune visuals to style. Lens flares, bloom, barrel distortion, and extra ought to all be separate choices, similar to chromatic aberration and movement blur are.
Past this I did discover a pair different smaller issues that I want had been totally different. Some water results within the recreation seem to maneuver at decrease frame-rates than the remainder of the presentation, which is not good. In the meantime, movement blur seems tremendous, however doesn’t appear to use to the principle character – maybe this intentional, however her motion seems a lot ‘framier’ than different character motion. And lastly, glass is shaded with a semi-real-time cubemap system with very gradual updates. Given the wealth of ray tracing, even in clear surfaces like water, I want transparencies like glass equally used RT reflections.
And lastly there are points with these RT reflections – they’re tremendous sufficient within the recreation, however just like Avatar, they nonetheless don’t use extremely top quality objects and supplies discovered within the main world. When the digicam goes out of display screen house, you may see how objects nonetheless use averaged supplies, missing texture element. That is tremendous sufficient for tough reflections, however on mirror-like surfaces like water and extra, it’s actually apparent that screen-space reflections are doing heavy lifting, even on extremely settings. Principally, I actually want there was a mirrored image choice which supplied increased texture and materials high quality to reflections out of display screen house and in addition added within the objects that RTXDI is tracing in opposition to. It will be the cherry on prime right here for a beautiful ray tracing implementation – costly, however much more forward-looking.
Talking of which, an ‘-unlockmaxsettings’ command line choice opens a hidden “Outlaw” graphics preset, designed for the {hardware} of the long run and massively impactful on in the present day’s {hardware}. Most of those settings supply small refinements for an enormous GPU value and aren’t beneficial. Nonetheless, the extra high quality out there for RTXDI is extra fascinating, including additional stability to lighting. In the meantime Outlaw-level specular reflections add characters into RT reflections – a transparent improve over the sport’s customary extremely. In the end although, the Outlaw preset is for optimum picture high quality with the bottom frame-rate potential.
By way of efficiency typically, we’ll be going into depth on this in one other article, however typically it is simply pretty much as good because it was in Avatar – however there are two flaws, each linked to RTXDI. I noticed GPU load growing by virtually 2.5x in some space, for no apparent cause. These little zones are scattered throughout the open world and make RTXDI a lurching efficiency mess at instances. One other subject is frame-time stability which may range drastically with RTXDI, resulting in distracting frame-time stutters when traversing the sport world. It is within the realm of 150ms on an RTX 4090 and Ryzen 7 7800X3D and it feels terrible when this occurs. To my thoughts, this wants fixing for RTXDI to be thought-about a viable choice for any participant.
In abstract although, Star Wars Outlaws does look gorgeous. I feel Ubisoft Huge has made one thing particular that’s proper up there with the most effective we have seen this technology, if not even higher. I additionally wish to reward the truth that Outlaws lets highly effective PCs stretch their legs and isn’t artificially restricted by console restrictions. It’s good to see a recreation look quite a bit higher on PC as a result of the developer provides customers the forward-looking tech that PCs get years forward of time.
There may be greatness right here, however there are additionally severe polish points that want addressing. Regardless of its apparent high quality wins, Ray Reconstruction must be up to date by both Nvidia or Huge to be extra viable to stop the paths behind objects and to stabilise geometry edges to stop the ‘waviness’. RTXDI must have its frame-time points ironed out. And for the sport typically, picture high quality wants to enhance. Some patches are required to enhance the presents, however I am assured it will occur – and at that time, we’ll be taking a look at the most effective – if not the most effective – PC video games of the 12 months.
