The Witcher 3: Next Gen Update - Ray Tracing ON vs OFF Comparison 

yeah finaly not someone looking at random puddles, and calling it a day XD

most games they say raytracing only have reflections, when this game has ambient occlusion and shadows, lighting and reflections so it makes bigger difference

This is one of the best RT comparison on this patch that I have seen on youtube.

@@eclisis5080 actually that’s not really true. There’s a wide variety of ray trace implementations in pc games It just so happens they in consoles Developers can only afford to implement 1 type of ray tracing. Because they have to go to the “most evident visual impact” And yes , when reflective surfaces , like bodies of water , and or reflective floors/metals/windows are present , it is the most noticeably change. It goes from , there is nothing but blurry cube maps , to “oh look , it’s actually reflecting stuff” The thing is , that when there aren’t reflective surfaces around , wich depending on the game , can be most of the time. RT reflections aren’t doing anything. RT GI and RT AO are a bit more subtle (and u say a bit , because depending on the scenery they aren’t subtle at all , they make a huge change) But the thing is they affect every scene all the time. So it is actually a better visual improvement than reflections. But when developers develop for console , their objective isn’t for the game to look better. It is for people to see , oh look , there it is. It’s reflecting , it does has Raytracing. Every idiot can notice oh look , reflections While using other types of RT might be giving a higher boost in image quality , but console players , that usually are not well versed in graphics can’t tell it is there. And end up thinking that there is no difference . But in the pc versions , Rt has been implemented in many ways beyond reflections for quite some years now.

Most videos i've seen place Geralt in direct sunlight looking at a long vista, which makes people say "there's no difference". That's the wrong approach, for the global illumination to really shine you need structures for the light to bounce off, obstruct, occlude.

imo all of the changes are pretty insane , not just some XD

All scenes are night and day difference.

Bro there isn’t a single instance where it doesn’t look like a last gen game compared to Rt. I commend cdpr for this implementation HOWEVER there is some MAJOR performance bugs rn. My 4090 5800x3d is seeings huge stutters and gpu utilisation randomly drops sometimes to 10% for no reason, Geralts armour looks all blurry in the inventory and Fxaa makes everything look blurry for some reason. It’s also somehow more demanding than cyberpunk Rt and portal Rt which also doesn’t make any sense 😢

@@Drip7914 Yes I noticed extreme performance issues on my RTX 3070 so you're not wrong. It looks great but there are issues

@@Drip7914 I agree with the second part , but not the first one. I do have the exact same set up as you , 4090 and 5800X3d , we pc twins haha. And I have the same performance issues you have , there is clearly some things to patch. But I can’t agree with the first part. Except for npc animations , that outside of Geralt and the main characters , can be quite rough some times. The visual presentation itself. With the much denser foliage. The 4 types of ray tracing working simulationously to give the both foliage , buildings and objects in general, a much more realistic look , and much more attached to the world. The new 4k native textures , the added mods. All things combined it is looking right now better than half of the games that came out this year . Actually wish I could show It here. I’ve always compared the Witcher 3 to RDR2 , because those are my 2 favourite games . And my veredicto has always been Physics , immersion , and graphics go to RDR2 Story telling , side quests , characters , gameplay , to the Witcher 3 I was so impressed with this update , that I’ve been taking screen captures. And then took some of the RDR2 maxed out screen captures. And when comparing , it definitely looks better than RDR2 right now. Now graphics goes to the Witcher 3 too. And that’s no small accomplishment. Even if it is from 2018 That game still gives most of 2022 a good run for their money. I think it definitely looks next gen. I mean 4k textures. 4 different types of RT Only those 2 alone sound pretty next gen already haha

You did a good job!

Amazing work! I have nearly the exact same rig as you and saw MAJOR dips in FPS in certain areas with everything maxed. Did you notice the same?

@@jamesmorgan6042 Yep, the game can maintain 60fps with 1440p and DLSS balanced in most situations, but the citys bring down fps to the 30-40s with RT enabled. Hope there is some room for optimization.

Early access? Seems like you're going places, lol. Good video.

Wonderful Job you did here. Thanks a lot. Quality material to show to the Rtx haters.

Photorealism here we come.

Nanites, lumen, just wow and all of that on ps5/xbox/pc now, shut up and take my money

@@johnnybravo5969 ps5/xbox won't be able to run all this xD

@@samusmaster64 shadercompilationstutter here we come :-(

They kill my fps too :\

If you go into certain heavily wooded areas it becomes the most apparent from what I've seen so far. Thick brush is properly dark and shadowy and the way the sun cuts through the foliage is so much more convincing. The contrast between sun and shadow is mindblowing compared to the default rendering.

Thank god they added raytraced ambient occlusion for PS5 otherwise it would have looked pretty dull.

@@exxmodel Or games like Metro Exodus where you are in interior, but have slivers of light shining through.

I think that must be why I think raster looks so much better without RT than with it on. HBAO+ on raster looks better. Hairworks and RT just look worse to me. Like the only time I ever think CDPR games look better hands down with raytracing on is when there's lots of water.

That's right

What do you mean by 'where to compare'? Isn't it that its effect should be visible everywhere, significantly?

​@@abcdefgh6121It IS visible everywhere, but some places are much more noticable than others. Traditional rasterization and ray tracing are all but indistinguishable for parts of objects lit directly by the light, but any time there are reflections or just indirect lighting, rasterization begins to come up short. So the places you will see differences are precisely the places that rasterization comes up short. So look in the shade, and at shiny things, anywhere where the light plays, as an artist would say.

This is absolutely true. Proper lighting in a scene makes up the majority of photorealism. You can even have a simple textureless 3D scene and as long as you have a physically accurate sun it looks pretty believable as long as you have global illumination with radiosity.

Lighting is a huge portion of what makes CGI in films look good or bad, most of the time when something is unconvincing it's the lighting rather than say texture quality

@@SpartanArmy117 that's got more to do with the way RT is set up in that specific game, they tend to use the minimum amount of rays with fast decay for performance reasons therefore it gets dark pretty quick where there's no nearby light sources. In such areas it can be compensated with extra lights, if the game is though out with RT in mind.

While "hand-made" illumation can still be on par, the same way a human can create photorealistic images, it still takes a huge amount of time and effort to imitate. RT basically reduces this to a matter of flipping a switch.

@@sendnoobsplease no, it's impossible to manually create illumination which is as convincing. You'd have to go back to using baked lighting and actually color the textures as if they were lighted in a realistic way (it's a bit more complex than this, but for the argument's sake this simplified explanation will do), which is an outdated technique for good reasons. We moved away from this technique not only because it's incredibly tedious, but you'd completely lose any dynamic light capability (eg lights which have to move). The torch in your character's hand which lights up the cave you're exploring? Impossible to implement without dynamic lighting. RT simply takes dynamic lights and computes the way individual photons bounce in a fashion which mimics reality.

This is such a cope "there is little visual difference" the ray tracing is a huge difference. Just be a man and say you prefer higher framerate. Personally I prefer playing at 30 with all of the ray tracing modes on because its not a little difference its a HUGE difference.

@@AlternateKek In all fairness 30 fps is also a HUGE difference from 120fps. I think the RT looks better, but the 30fps sacrifice just makes me feel like all the improvements were made null because it looks and feels terrible for me to play.

While my fps loss isn't quite that extreme at 2560x1440, i too have about half the framerate I would with RT enabled. It's perfectly valid to not enable it if you prefer a high framerate, no cope about it.

I went from 120 FPS to 60 - 70 FPS (RT off) with just the update. With RT, I'm at 50 FPS. AA type doesn't change the FPS at all. I think this update just isn't implemented well.

Ray tracing is the whole reason DLSS exists, why would you run it at native 4k? If anything, the visual difference between DLSS on and off is small

Looks pretty bland

Cyberpunk was first :)

i had to change my gamma a bit

RT* RTX is something different

don't feel bad, even the 4090 is brought to just 60fps with RT, no GPU is ready for prime time with RT yet, we still have a few more generations to go before everyone can enjoy it

@@SharkWithADrill frame generation makes it butter smooth though

This is badly optimized for RT, Spiderman had some great RT at less performance cost

Bro my 3080ti cruise with RT on in this game lol

@@SharkWithADrill It's more that the DX12 version of the game is a bit weirdly optimized and It's clearly still not well optimized for RT as most people are getting worse performance than even in Cyberpunk, and there is an example of a game that pulls off very good RT performance with all the RT features (Metro Exodus) so I think the DX12/RT implementation just isn't up to par sadly :(

enjoy your stutter even if you have a 4090 LOL!

@@visceraeyes525 No stutter on my RTX 4090, just enable DLSS frame generation.

@@paul2609 that ruins picture quality

Have fun with the dogshit performance... i closed the game after 5 minutes... before the update i had smooth 90 fps on 1440p, now it's 30 to 60 at best with horrible frametimes and stuttering. Without RT!

I wanted to include more Toussaint scenes but something is definitely wrong with it, it looks very odd.

@@N7Andy You're wrong. In the game,there is only one or 2 light bounces which are replicated/calculated.So places which should be lighted by the 3rd,4th etc (it is unlimited) bounces aren't and they are dark when they shouldn't. You remember Metro exodus ? Its first RT version only had one or 2 bounces of light and people like you were screaming that it looked realistic.THEN they released Metro exodus ENHANCED version with the version 2 of the RT. With infinite bounces and guess what,dark places turned lit and people started to say that NOW it looked realistic and that before,it was trash. So the witcher 3 RT is not realistic at all . Next time,inform yourself before talking about things you don't know because atm,the witcher 3's maths and physics are wrong. LOL.

I’ll do Portal RTX next (if I can get it to record at useable framerates, lmao) Callisto Protocol looks interesting, I’ll keep it on the radar

@@RayTracingRevolution awesome thanks for the heads up ! :D i am just about to play portal rtx myself , i grew up in the HL2 era so im really curious what the "rtx remix" feature brings to the table, looks promising for now... alltough rip performance ;_; (im using 3080TI and 5800X and im barley getting 60+fps at 1440p dlss balanced)

Calisto protocol requires a full game restart to change any settings, making comparisons near impossible and extremely time consuming. Even digital foundry isn't bothering to do PC coverage because of it. It's a shame because it would make for a very interesting comparison.

@@existentialselkath1264 that explains the really suttle changes overall god damn i feel stupid now ._. thanks for pointing that out tho xD

it looks like they either mixed up the captions for the pictures or .... it got worse :))

I feel like it's more of a dynamic range issue. There's always going to be issue with rendered images having light range than we can see in real world. It's the same deal with cinematography.

I mean you're not wrong but the problem here is basically the number of light bounces. More bounces would make the light reach deeper in that tunnel. but yeah that's limited by current hardware but it's all still very new and this tech will get better soon with the 5000 series. Dont forget this is just a mod on a 2015 game.

to fix that would require absorbtivity, relflexivity of all materials. that would be way to mathematically intense and will require many more rt cores. this technology will take time to perfect

Bigger then CP2077 no.

I have a 3060ti as well, I used to play on intel integrated graphics so I’m honestly just glad that I get a consistent 50-60fps on RT Ultra at 1080p. Ray tracing has always intrigued me and I finally get to have an enjoyable RT experience :)

I think Running through a deep thick forest is probably the best show of RT Seeing how bright it is towards the top of the trees and how the ground is darker because the light is struggling to reach the bottom really makes the Forests look crazy moody

I wish they would have implemented the fur physics from the e3 demo!

LmaoThis is far Better than the e3 demo

@@sur3089 You need a reality check.

@@simonrockstream It is far better, the e3 demo lighting for example was way too intense in the e3 demo. Textures, shadow quality, reflections etc are much improved. At least unlike Ubisoft CDPR did something with a 7+ year old game.

The E3 trailer is overrated imo. There are a couple things you could point to that are better about it but overall this updated version looks better.

IGN is always embarrassing.

*cries in rtx 2070 super*

Do I need to update geforce drivers to play at better framerates? The RT is so awesome but mannn feels like im playing at 20 fps. Running 3070 ti

@Rome Same here. Can play it on ultra @ 4k with 60fps solid. Turn RT on goes to shit even at 1440p.

@@rome229 3070ti at what feels like 20fps? Dude, you need to buy a new CPU.

@@MonkeyDIvan 20 fps, really?

i am the other side i find RT is such a day and night difference so i cant paly without it i play with 30 fps +- over no RT with above 60 fps

@@tomhanke7703 Clearly. I dont even know how to say "Unless you’re looking super close " lol. Guess his eyes and brain are completly broken.

People always say they cant tell the difference when they are coping they cant run it. It's a huge difference and I can easily tell on vs off in games.

@@AlternateKek i can run it with raytracing though and do, everything except global illumination is raytraced. My fps doesn't suffer too bad that way and I still get a great looking game. I can tell the difference if I'm looking for it and it looks objectively better, but I don't think it's worth the performance hit for many

@@idkwhattohaveasausername5828 You can't reason with these people, their screenshots are more important than actually playing the game.

Agreed, the RT shadows are nearly always "off" if the option is there. It's such a small difference.

are you high or smth, this update is a mess

@@bravethomasyt rt shadows in this game is pretty good, specially AO. Makes a huge difference on grass and tress.

DX11 don't support ray tracing... Change it to DX12 and see the options showing again.

Not every video card supports Ray Tracing. Maybe that's why it's greyed out

That's exactly all it effectively is. RTX is a scam.

👍👍👍👍👍speaking the truth

Calculate the pixels per inch using a calculator that let you select both monitor 's resolution and monitor's size in inches and compare both of them. For example my 24.5" monitor with 1920x1080 resolution is 89.91 PPI (Pixels Per Inch). Edit: Google "Pixels Per Inch Calculator", first link on Google itself.

What? With DLSS3 this runs with like 100fps even on a 4080. It's only unplayable on amd cards.

@@Iconocla5t I run it with all ray tracing enabled on a 3070, people are over exaggerating the performance loss lol.. And a mix of high + ultra settings

@@MrAzmore what are your settings?

Couldn’t get it to run acceptable on an RTX 3080. Ordered RTX 4090. Well, not because of that, but let’s see.

@@cvayta How did it go dude, Im planning on a 4090 myself

RTX in this game was a nonsense scam. Just like RTX in every other game.

@@thatfirstone It's subjective. If you need every frame per second in any game where's it added. You without problem can turn off it.

Oh and they pay most contend creators too to make all those videos...

It depends on the area for me. Some of the citys are very rough on performance and even DLSS can't quite save the day here.

Worse thhan cyberpunk!!! Jesus Christ Then imagine the RT overdrive for cyberpunk, you will need a 4090 for a console experience.

I agree, I ended up just turning RT of because while it does look insanely good the game is still very nice looking without it.

@@RayTracingRevolution Honestly, I also tried every single DLSS mode (except for dlss 3 of course), and it barely made any difference for me. I have a strong feeling that it's either broken in Witcher 3, or that it somehow doesn't work on my system. Every other game shows significant FPS gains when turning DLSS ON, so idk what's going on here. It's also weird how they have DLSS hidden in the Anti-Aliasing graphics option.

@@RayVa0 Yea it's getting ridiculous. Feels like we would need a 5090 to run overdrive CP smoothly, without the frame-generation tech.

I can't believe you're referencing 3:02 and picking the non-rt version. The non-rt is lifeless blue and their is no depth to any of the scene. It's all the same garbage lighting. With RT enabled the lighting bounces and the wood and rocks come to life with natural warm lighting. The sky at 3:10 looks like a perfectly normal day, why should the city buildings look blue?

​@@Phil_529Oh, sorry, I might have phrased it wrong, I was talking only about colors there, you can google "why shadows appear blue on a sunny day" answer would be too long for a comment. But yes, I think raytracing is an awesome tech and I am looking forward to it, Reflections and GI especially. Witcher team did an outstanding job here. I would like to see other old titles with full RT, something like Fallout: New Vegas would be insane.

Download the patch, start the game in DX12 mode,go to graphics options.

I see more complaint on Steam now. So I'll just play it on ultra+ for now

you may have installed the PS4 version on your PS5. Make sure you claim the free PS5 upgrade from the PS store

​@@itsjase92THIS! I did the same thing and thought,where are all the options?! 😄

I did the same with installing the disc from the homescreen.it only installs the ps4 version.you need to go to ps store to get the free ps5 install