Does Raytracing make Halo look worse? 

Honestly I didn't realize how much the shadows actually helped the game look better, this video really brought light to that, and I appreciate it.

Who is Ray and what is he tracing?

The game's ambient occlusion is very minimal, even on its highest setting, which plays a big role in the shadows looking weird at times. I think the lighting engine works great for campaign, multiplayer not so much, but campaign yea, those forerunner interiors with blue reflections everywhere are beautiful.

One thing I really like about the look of Ray-Traced shadows in Halo Infinite is now they can vary in softness depending on how far away the shadow is from the source. Whereas the default shadows look uniformly way too soft.

Man I just can't get over how awesome Infinite would have been if it launched as an actual finished complete product. Since they are working on a new Halo game, I hope they manage to pull it off from day 1. No more post-launch features we used to have on day 1. It should be post-launch expansion, not post-launch development.

I just miss ultra-sharp Stencil Shadows, man, I don't care if they're not realistic, I love the look and it would be effortless for modern hardware to pull off, so you could cast as many shadows as you wanted on things.

Sucks it's multiplayer only but I do love the shakeup. Definitely helps at times that when I'm playing I feel the environments look "off" or muddy

Game worlds becoming EVEN MORE static was the last thing we needed.

That’s odd that baked shadows don’t react to gun fire and stuff. They could have, as they react to the flashlight and the energy sword, so it must been another optimization. Only certain dynamic lights effect the light map.

I don't think the lighting was ever really the problem with the visuals in Infinite, there's 2 major things that stand out to me about the way it looks. First is the way the game uses PBR materials, there's just something about the way the game handles the shading on these textures that makes them seem flat and... off looking... This is the largest contributer to how Halo 3 is better looking in many cases even with its lower fidelity, every shader and texture in Halo 3 was fine tuned to look as good as it does, there's several layers of textures and shaders that go into making the ghost have the beautiful shine with little detailed scratches in Halo 3 as an example, the PBR textures in Infinite just don't seem to have the same tweakability and end up looking far worse in the end IMHO. The second problem is the gamma and contrast, it looks like the game has its gamma set too bright by default, giving everything that nasty slightly washed out look, at least you can sort of fix that by lowering your gamma setting, but if I'm remembering correctly some dark areas suffer from the contrast being overkill at the lower gamma setting (I haven't played the game since last year however) but yeah, I'm 99.9% sure the texture system and gamma are why the game just doesn't look right.

I just wish halo infinite had better ray tracing options, sun shadows is great, but ray tracing lighting and reflections, etc, could take the game to the max. Games like cyberpunk show the benefits of RT, and halo infinite could definitely benefit a lot from it. Hopefully when they find a comfortable pace of development with this new team, 343 is able to go back and add stuff like this to campaign or whatever 😊

2:13 - There's actually a bug afaik with the SHADER of baked lighting. It's "supposed" to mix the given ambient light color into the texture, but for some reason doesn't (or heavily clips the impact). I believe this was fixed in MCC? Or maybe I have it the other way around (halo 3 works, but MCC's shader is broken). I remember looking into and tinkering with normal maps and lighting shaders in college and used halo 3 as a test bed.

I think this game would be a stellar candidate for ray traced reflections, as there are so many huge shiny surfaces that make it painfully obvious how much the game leans on screen space reflections to make it work. I understand it might not run on console, but Infinite is not a super demanding game on PC and I definitely think they could integrate more ray tracing without tanking PC performance. On another note, the low performance cost was one of the main reasons I kept RTSS on at all anyway.

Some of my maps are indoors and have the skylight disabled. They don't have that weird grey sheen. And there's a lot of areas that are completely in the dark or partially lit. It bothers me so much that I try to entirely rely on light objects instead to avoid that, which is so impractical and time consuming.

One thing I can’t recommend enough is to lower that games brightness down to around -25. It really makes the colors pop out a lot more and makes it look more vibrant.

Very informative! Kind of funny looking back the the early 2000s when games had to bake details for shadows and lighting into the textures themselves, and Halo 3 was no exception! As someone who's worked on that kind of work as part of a team of devs, I loved seeing the textures from then in this video too.

Hearing you talk about the raytracing really made me hope Halo Infinite had raytracing for the campaign, and then at the end of your video you said that they didn't add the raytracing the campaign, I'm pretty sad to hear that, it could've even more beautiful 😭🙏

Its a shame raytracing wasn't put into campaign. Personally campaign is the only place where I'd elect to use raytracing since usually the fps tradeoff in for it in multiplayer isn't worth it for me, but i do enjoy a nice singleplayer story with awesome graphics

Point about the end. All these things are toggle-able , so 343 could 100% give the campaign RT sun shadows and allow people to pick and choose the option, regardless of the system. Consoles really need to start moving towards letting us pick and choosing graphical settings, like PC. There’s no reason not to. I bet you I could find a settings sweet spot for the Series S that would allow you to have RT sun shadows and still have a stable and enjoyable fps experience if 343 opened up the option to me.

Thank you for pointing this out! While it may go under some people’s radars, to me those shadows turn Infinite from a last-gen-looking game to a current-gen one. Really interesting to learn about the lack of animations. I assume that means the ray-traced shadows are baked-in in some way, similar to Halo 3?

I admit the shadows in ray tracing are great and I love them. But I think this is also why I prefer Halo 3 and similar games by the look of it. It doesn’t look realistic, but it looks just right for your eyes.

I always love these types of videos from you. Can't wait for the next impossible to see it the first time but now that you brought it up I can't ever unsee it video

One technology I'm surprised infinte doesn't have yet is fsr2, that would definitely help with performance on older pcs like those with a gtx 1060 or rx 580. Hope it comes at somepoint in the future.

The trees and moving objects becoming static kinda reminds me of Elden Ring's RT. While it does not stop moving shadows, the ray-traced shadows are of a much lower resolution. This might be done to prevent performance issues.

sucks that the TAA/resolution scaling makes the image so blurry :(

When I started learning Dev on Unreal 5 with lumen, I found that dynamic shadows on foliage tanked FPS and even more so if that foliage had animation. We are talking about going from 120fps to less than 20 with animations enabled.

Sweet Baby Rays Tracing

As amazing raytracing technology is, I wish GPU's will be powerful enough where every can safely turn it on without affecting performance too much. Probably not in my lifetime though but I'm hopeful

One aspect of Infinites graphical presentation I love is how high resolution textures are. Rarely ever do they break down from close viewing

Oh wow, I didn't realize the ray tracing in infinite was that complex. I thought it just made shadows sharper. That being said, as someone who enjoys their games looking "hashtag cinematic", I was hoping infinite's raytracing would be more akin to the kind in fortnite, as I find that one really makes the colours pop. Now that I've played it that way, turning off RTX makes it feel like I applied a grayscale filter

I’ve been watching you so long I get nostalgic at your video format now

Dude, LNG, big bubba. Stop it with the informative and good videos. Go to making garbage click bait. But in all seriousness, these videos are really well put and I’d love to see more of it.

this is an amazing video.

also Halo Infinite uses Screen space contact shadows which will result in some odd looking shadows when used in tandem with the RT sun shadows

Some Forge light pieces also give you the option to have weapon shadows in first person.

I can’t find the answer to this question anywhere online. In halo 2 and 3, are the odsts more formidable than the regular marines in battle. I never noticed a difference but wondering if they are coded differently. Thought someone on a late night gaming video could help

the shadows help to add contrast back into the dull, washed out visuals, however the saturation and vibrance needs a boost. Modern look seems all about HDR, which gives a more grey look to it. But colors (or color filters) should be used to add emotion and feeling back into these "modern" looking visuals that still look worse than older games because they have no color tone or vibrance.

also also i wish they would enable the option for animated objects with RT on PC exclusively

Having to render RT in real time was a awful developer choice in the first place for the multiplayer maps as the lighting is static, the maps of should had high resolution prebaked lighting in first place as there is no time change unlike the single player which would have actually benefited from RT.

Where are the two clips at 0:53 from?

TBH ray tracing on my series s looks fine to me. Anyone else? I suppose it's subjective to an extent. (lol my phone auto correctd "ray tracing" to "day traing") 😅

hot take: people complain how this game's raytracing is simple, but in reality it's a benefit since the developers should aim for a unified art direction instead of going the boring "realistic" route a lot of them take that's why raytraced shadows are my preferred way of playing infinite, it's simple yet super effective at making the game look pretty

People saying they dont notice a difference between raytraced shadows and PCSS are out of their minds. Id argue that raytraced shadows as well as GI for more dynamic games are THE gamechangers in therms of graphics fidelity.

Hey LNG, question about the battle passes, is the Winter Update available today at any point? Just that i really want my CQC helmet in Infinite. I bought Heroes of Reach so I can settle for Recon or MK7 but it's just not the same. Do i need to buy Lone Wolves too or should I just wait and see? Thanks.

It's not the graphics that makes a great game it's it's story line and how immersive the gameplay to players is . We still love all old halo ce ,2,3 and odst cause they got some good storyline to keep the players engaged

i would like to see rt reflections and global illumination come to infinite later down the line forerunner metal would be super reflective

I did find it funny when people couldn't tell the difference so this is a fantastic video to showcase how much this does improve infinite's visuals. I also had no idea thats how the older halo games shadows worked.

Thanks for the Series S part at the end, I wondered if I'm crazy, but i noticed it just dropped the frames and looked nothing different when I activated it on mine.

I do enjoy the shadows but I'm not gonna kill the atmosphere that the animations bring by slapping RT over it

So strange for animated objects to freeze? So basically we are back to baked lightmaps they just come at a 1000x performance cost

id imagine that level geometry still uses a different shadow system from actors and i guess its just too hard for them to dynamically generate the shadows for moving objects using that system more proof that infinite should of been made right from the get go

Whoa hang on, I didn't even know Halo Infinite added Ray Tracing Support. Those shadows look superb too! Definitely gonna give it a try now!

This is actually great content, I have not seen many talk about ray tracing implementation in Halo Infinite. Finally!

Could you do a video on the evolution of Jackals Late Night Gaming? You’ve already done a video on the Elites, Grunts, and Hunters and I’d like to learn more about the Jackals history through your content, maybe even include the skirmishers in the same video as they are the same species. Whether you do or do or don’t include the Skirmishers in video if you do, keep up with the amazing content.

ive been wondering why my game looks a little more flat compared to some videos i see apparently it's because i forgot i had RTX shadows off

8:06 the maps feel dead and static? i mean the Halo Ring IS an artificial environment; under the plants and grass; there is metal.

Lighting is a very large part of anything to look good. so is temperature designs. and bump maps or material types on textures. I make maps in source, for gmod. and i have found a way to compile the lighting of my maps using my GPU (usually its a CPU thing), and this helped me to better atmospheres and designs.

This and RT reflections would make the campaign looks so good

"But I noticed them" *Zooms in on a normal, unremarkable brute armpit*

Nice video explaining RT Shadows in Halo Infinite. I would've loved them to let us PC players to opt having animated objects when RT ON.

Couldn’t tell in the twitter picture comparisons. But I could absolutely tell in the video. Well done👍🏼

halo used stencil shadows for all of the dynamic props (halo 2 and 3 and ODST and Reach) Halo 1 used a different shadow system that was far simpler ... it would have been nice if Halo Infinite used RT for diffuse light bounces and reflections and kept the raster shadows they were using before the RT update

The likely reason why the objects stand still is because the BVH for the RT doesn't use skinned meshes and thus does not have them moving in that model. This is likely why this happens and it kinds sucks. I think they should add in an option for RTGI and RT Reflections as well as Halo has a ton of very shiny objects and RTGI can help with ambient shading as well as color bounce. It would also help forge maps look much better as well because all that lighting data needed is captured in real time

i havent noticed if it looks better or worse, but the first few weeks i had raytracing on, i almost shot at shadows thst werent there before coz i thought there was an enemy 😅

When i first turned on RT i didn't see a difference, but when you point out exactly whats happening now i can see an improvement.

I feel like they just tuned up the shadow resolution instead of adding ray traced shadows because I can still see some edges not connecting with its shadow on things like windows and wall equipment. Contact shadows with a high resolution smacked on the default lighting.

It still baffles me 343 went for 24hr Day/Night cycles in multiplayer maps instead of doing one version and bake the lighting. The lack of detail makes it look so shoddy. Baked lighting has next to zero impact at runtime, and while it takes a while to generate in dev, it's a pretty common nessisary evil most are used to. Opting for a dynamic time of day in multi-player means they lose out on having those really nice detailing elements, and we have to resort to RAY TRACING to get it back. I'd so much rather have 1 day and one night version of each map. Or hell, even just one variant.

The reason that shadow casting objects like trees become static is likely due to the temporal cost of calculating real time ray traced shadows. For complex objects like trees, it probably takes a couple seconds to fully calculate the entire shadow which means that the shadows can't dynamically respond to short time scale swaying/moving. This probably means that truly dynamic objects like crates and whatnot have shadows calculated slightly differently which makes sense because these objects are much simpler. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if truly dynamic objects don't use ray tracing at all.

“My name is Rey.” “Rey who?” “Rey Tray Sing.”

You should do a graphics stress test between the series X and S. Compared to max settings on PC

The trees and stuff freeze probably because those animations are done in the vertex shader and ray traced stuff doesn't have those. It'd all have to be converted to a compute prepass to generate the animated meshes and they likely decided they weren't worth the effort at the time.

I remember when I first played breath of the wild the graphics was not outstanding, but what stick to me was how alive everything felt. Trees and grass flowing with the wind, that truly immersed you more in the environment. I’d take moving trees over pretty shadow everyday, if you need to make such compromises it’s not worth it imho

I don't know why they make the foliage trade-off on pc, a very high end graphics card could definitely handle the moving foliage in raytracing.

Do you think RT disables object animations to decrease the amount of calculations the GPU needs to do? Like as a performance optimization?

Also foliage physics freezing is really common place in games to save performance, go lock skyrim to 29fps and you'll notice trees stop moving

It's situations like these that make me wonder why devs don't just up the resolution of shadows or add more traditional dynamic lighting. It has the same (or better) effect as these raytracing solutions WITHOUT requiring proprietary hardware that'll still struggle to run it.

Damn, I really want to see this in the open world now.

Is the raytracing only for MP or also campaign?

I think Slipspace Engine could learn a baking technique from Source 2 engine, where the map editor requiring raytracing then bakes the rendering result in the map, then again, Valve tech are leaps and bounds better than most engines out there because you can get AAA RTX like graphics for fraction of the hardware requirements other titles require

The weird thing is, the engine can clearly handle static shadows since you can bake them separately in Forge maps. So why don't MP maps have much higher res static shadows attached to the texture settings?

I dont know how I got here, but this a was very cool video to watch

I think the main problem that people have with raytracing is not understanding what it actually means and does. A buddy said it looked bad because it made the shadows “blurrier” (the shadows were softer in the screenshots he showed me because there were multiple, dim light sources from different angles), vs the otherwise sharp prebaked shadows in MW2019, the game we were playing at the time. I think some criticisms stem from the misunderstanding of how lighting actually works in real life. Take a look around your room at the soft shadows and what light sources might be causing them.

Infinites rasterised shadows are already much lower resolution than most of its peers. If they could be made higher res, the game would have benefited much more from RTGI. I still insist the biggest graphical upgrade this game could get is simply the ability to disable TAA or use DLAA. I have to supersample to an insane degree to still get a soft image, at that point I'd be better off without anti aliasing at all and just rely on SSAA

so that means ray tracing is at odds with the networking code, since the networking is why things like elevators and zanzibars wheel werent moving but now are if you are on the network test versions while the trade off is worse hit detection and bugs galore, infinite needs some heavy behind the scenes work on the code

Last time I came this early, she was very surprised

I especially like the way raytracing enhances self shadows on character models and the way it enhances foliage and plant life, in all games it's in

Honestly I think ray traced lighting isn't really worth the cost. It's worth saying that I only have a 2080ti though. Ray traced reflections on the other hand make a huge difference other other methods. I hate screen space reflections.

I wish there would be a mid cycle update to the consoles that are more powerful versions with focus on pc quality ray tracing. Similar to like the Xbox One X was focused on 4K gaming.

Reminds me of how Digital Foundry did a tech analysis(?) of MW2019 and they said how RT Shadows made it look WORSE.

All infinite needs now is the plasma rifle

One of the factors that kinda ruin the details of the graphics in this game is its implementation of TAA. Makes everything have a "painted" effect and smeary in motion, ESPECIALLY at low resolutions. Even at 4K the details can get a bit muddled.

Amazing how Halo 3's lighting engine aged like a fine wine.

Biggest issue with raytracing will always be the high end gpu's neded to utilize it with good in game performance. Most arnt able to get 4080 and amd equivilant cards. My rig has a Ryzen 7 5700x Rtx 3070 ti 32gb ram. Infinite runs very smoothe until i turn rtx on. The moment it clicks on i drop to almost sub 30fps.

Ray tracing does come with a performance penalty for "skinned meshes". Even Cyberpunk 2077 on RT Overdrive does freeze some vegetation (but only in the BVH if I remember correctly). Other games like let's say Avatar Frontiers of Pandora may not have humans or Navi show up in the BVH, only in screen space. To be fair that game pushes ray tracing hard with no fallback solution. As such something had to give. In that case it was the BVH.

New fear unlocked: shadow hearing

Now if only Halo Infinite could update the washed out colors to something a bit more saturated. I think that would be the thing that helps me view the game as less ugly. Because I hadn't played since season 2, so I hadn't seen the ray tracing. The lighting and washed out colors always killed me, especially because the texture work and models in this game are so crazy good.

Is there any in-game advantage to rtx tho?

The names Ray Tracing. Im your intro to art teacher this year.

I dont understand why devs dont use ray tracing to figure out where shadows in a map must go and then bake them into the map itself then use computational power to enable active ray tracing only on objects that must move and have dynamic shadows so that way you can have way better performance

Wish we could have this for campaign :(