Frequently Asked Questions
Is this real Ray Tracing?
This question probably comes from the comparison people are making with Nvidia's Ray Tracing technique, since it takes advantage of out of screen information to deliver accurate results.
Marty McFly's shader is hooked to informations provided by ReShade (depth buffer). The end result is a Screen Space Ray Tracing calculation, just like Unigine SSRTGI (Ray Traced Global Illumination), which indeed is a form of Ray Tracing.
If you still have doubts on this point, I'll be happy to have a peacefully discussion about it.
Which games are supported by this shader?
Unlike Nvidia's solutions, this shader is not restricted to a limited amount of games.
Any game where Reshade can get depth buffer from is supported.
That's the power of generic post processing!
RTX GPU related questions
-Do I need an Nvidia RTX card to make it work?
No, you will be able to use this with any cards, including any AMD card or "old" Nvidia's GTX series.
-Will I get benefits in terms of performance with an RTX card?
No, this shader can't make use of RT cores from newest Nvidia GPUs' architecture to make it perform better.
How can I try it?
Right now, the shader's still work in progress, and it's not available for the public yet.
Once it reach its final build, it will be available to anyone for free.
Early access versions of this shader are available on Pascal Gilcher Patreon's page.
The shader's actually in beta stage. If you wanna try it right now, you'll need to join the $5 tier.
Patreon's rewards are the following:
$1 Tier - "Supporter"
Get access to Patron-only channels on discord server.
$5 Tier - "Beta Supporter"
Get access to beta state of Pascal's works, including the RT shader. Plus, the benefit above.
$20 Tier - "Alpha Supporter"
Get access to alpha state of Pascal's works, including the RT shader. Plus, the benefits above.
Pascal Gilcher Patreon page: www.patreon.com/mcflypg
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Troubleshooting
How to improve Performance
Real time Path Traced Global Illumination rendering is an exhausting work for any hardware. This inevitably leads to a huge impact of performance.
The first parameters to look at for quality / performance ratio are "Ray Amount" and "Ray Step Amount".
The higher the Ray Amount values, the less noisy and temporally stable results.
The higher the Ray Step Amount values, the more defined GI quality.
Use the following scheme as a reference for a generic quality-price ratio:
PERFORMANCE
Ray Amount: 3
Ray Step Amount: 6
BALANCED
Ray Amount: 3
Ray Step Amount: 9
QUALITY
Ray Amount: 5
Ray Step Amount: 12+
GI Render Resolution Scale is responsable for internal GI resolution and, by default, allows you to set it to full scale ( 1 ) or half of it ( 0.5 ). You can still manually change it to a custom value by holding "ctrl" while clicking on the parameter. For example, if you wanna lower resolution down by 1/3, type 0.75. Values above 1.0 will cause visual artifacts.
Other than that, Spatial Filter is a filter set among the Preprocessor Definitions. It will trade a tiny bit of precision and performance for high quality denoising. Set it off you are desperately looking for more performances.
To do that, click on "Edit Global Preprocessor Definitions", add a new definition, name it SPATIAL_FILTER and set its value to 0.
The image is getting over-saturated
A saturation slider is currently on the author's to-do list.
Meanwhile, use any saturation-controlling shader to fix this problem and, in case, drag it below the RT shader.
Shader passing through in-game elements (fog / water ...)
This is a common issue that affects all depth-based shader, included RT Global Illumination.
It's due to the generic post-processing nature of Reshade, and unfortunately not much can be done about that.
A way to make it less obvious is making the shader more subtle:
-Reduce Ambient Occlusion and Indirect Light Intensity
-Reduce the Filter Sensitivity (values under 0.100 are not reccommended)
-Apply a grading after RT Global Illumination. It can help to blend the shader with the game.
The shader enable a weird red-ish tint
This was an issue with the pre-beta shader. It was caused by the default preset of Sky Color.
In case you're getting this issue, you're using an older version of the mod. The updated one will be in the "Patreon" channel of Marty's PG Hub discord server.
Sky Color, by the way, is one of the tweakable values of the shader.
Since Reshade can't provide out of screen color / luminosity infos, this value was added as a way to fake them.
Keep in mind that Sky Color is hooked to Indirect Light Intensity, so it's easy to mess things up. Lower / Darker Sky Color values are recommended.
In case of doubt, set all RGB values to 0.
Halos around objects
In post processing there's not a way to calculate how thin or thick objects are. You'll have to use an approximate general value.
Move the slider Z Thickness to a point where you won't see halos anymore.
The effect persist for a bit in motion
It's called Ghosting . It's a side effect to deal with in generic post processing.
The author of the mod is currently working to reduce this effect and make it less distracting.
Turning on the Spatial Filter preprocessor definition seems to alleviate ghosting a bit.
Image shot during motion. Ghosting occurs on the left side of the weapon and the barrel
Last edit: 4 years 7 months ago by Duran.te.
