About this video
I picked up a pre-release version of Pascal Glitcher's (Marty McFly) RTGI shader for reshade.me from his Patron page mainly out of curiousity but also because I love that eye candy, and the idea of getting ray tracing in Skyrim was of interest to me.With nVidia's latest driver 511.23 SSRTGI is available at the driver level through nVidia's freestyle filters (among many others including Marty's DoF and SSAO).
I will say that the customization is easy to do in real time gaming as well as the effects although subtle do add to better skin coloration and more realistic shadows near the player.
I also have to talk about the elephant in the room though. The frame rate hit.
On average it zapped about 10 FPS right off the top to have these filters enabled. This finding is also consistent with what I saw using the pre-release RTGI from Pascal's Patron through Reshade.me
My personal take on it?
If you spend a lot of time talking with NPCs and taking vanity screenshots of your character it's a definite improvement in lighting and shadow over what ENB can do.
For regular game play however either in first or third person the difference of having SSRTGI on is truthfully hard to notice on top of a good ENB like Rudy's (which I run) but you sure notice the loss of 10 FPS.
So although this is a ground breaking advancement bringing next gen lighting and shadows to older games that don't support ray tracing natively it's a hard sell because of the frame rate cost.
To me the price to performance ratio just is not there for a heavily modded Skyrim running a really good ENB.
You decide what's best for your own game.
6 comments
Very interesting to compare it with Pascal Glitcher's (Marty McFly) RTGI shade or it's totally same? In your video I didn't find settings sliders like in reshade setting window
SSRTGI along with SSAO and DoF nVidia freestyle filter settings were made for nVidia by Pascal glitcher (Marty McFly).
The sliders have different names but essentially the same functions between Reshade.me and nVidia
The video you posted is comparing Vanilla Skyrim to RTGI using Reshade.
My video compares Rudy ENB to Rudy ENB plus nVidias SSRTGI.
If you’re running without an ENB then the effects of RTGI or SSRTGI will be more dramatic but limited to ray traced light and shadow.
ENB also offers things like particle lights, wet surface reflections, color balancing and FakeHDR among other things.
My observations were that adding SSRTGI (or RTGI though reshade because I have tried both) did not provide significant improvement over what can already be achieved through ENB to justify the frame rate cost.
in the end they are different means to the same end.
Both ENB and Reshade employ post process shaders to augment the image before it gets to your screen.
Many of Marty’s shaders available through Reshade have also been added to popular ENBs like his DoF and SSAO.
Now we have a third option through NVidias latest driver and what they call ‘filters’
All three come with a frame rate cost.
So my humble suggestion is spend only once, and not stack ENB, Reshade and nVidias filters as this will compound the frame rate hit.
Running Rudy ENB costs me about 15 FPS but also gives me a myriad of shaders to play with and tweak to my preference.
RTGI through Reshade or SSRTGI through nVidias driver costs me about 4-10 FPS depending on location but allows me to add other filters or shaders on top of it through either Reshade or nVidia filters.
Be aware though the more filters or shaders you add the more of a frame rate hit you will see.
So the question(s) becomes which platform suits your needs better and you feel more comfortable using?
I have made a Reshade preset to handle color and contrast improvements called Lucidicrous Reshade available here on the Nexus
You could run that (3-5 FPS cost) with RTGI on top of it (another 10 FPS) and the frame rate cost would be close to what running ENB would be but with less effects.
You could also just use nVidias new driver with freestyle filters to achieve about the same end result.
The thing about ENB as a choice is I haven’t seen any available (yet) that employ RTGI However they do have SSAO and DoF as well as particle lighting, wet surface reflections and other things built in.
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If you really got to have RTGI then go with Reshade or nVidias filters to fill out the rest of the effects you want
If (like me) you already use a great ENB like Rudy that includes many effects (some of which aren’t available through Reshade or Filters) then adding RTGI or SSRTGI on top will increase the frame rate hit dramatically with very little visual improvement over what ENB can already do.
Choose wisely but there is no right or wrong answer to this question
Just different means to get there :)
Sorry, I didn't method, that video have Rudy ENB (with wet and DOF edit) and Reshade. I just turn off and on reshade. In fact I need do subtitle, because Reshade significantly can change colors. I like warm colors like fantasy style or like in Oblivion was. So as I understood, change reshade to nvidia freestyle didn't give any improvements - just all will be the same. For me Reshade RTGI (exactly RTGI part of effects) really can hit performance in some outside areas. Like was 59fps become 42fps :)
My fault fix video :)
I set ctrl+end for turn off/on Reshade, so always sit when turn on/off :)
If you’re already running Rudy ENB you might want to try adding some of the other shaders included with it like SSAO, image space lighting, detailed shadows, and cloud shadows.
also highly recommend adding particle lights if you’re not already using them. My setting is at 35 for distance down at the bottom.
As you can see in my video you can get very close to the same result without using Reshade or nVidias filters and maybe save some frame rate.
Play around with it and find that balance between eye candy and frame rate.
Adventure ever on brother, Phat
The overall effect is rather nice although subtle on top of an ENB. It’s the frame rate cost that deters me from constant use.
Now for a candlelight photo shoot heck ya turn it on! But that’s not the way I play.